The delicate balance of raid consumables
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Mar 2nd 2007 at 9:55AM
As you might imagine, raiders are unhappy with the Burning Crusade raid game. Is it because more of the developers' energy has been focused on more casual players, leaving the raiders out in the cold? Nah. The issue is the steep curve of BC raids and consumables.
Right now, there are two raids that can be done by most guilds: Karazhan and Maulgar, the first boss of Gruul's Lair. Everything from Gruul onward is still considered bleeding-edge content, since most guilds are stalled at Gruul. The problem, according to Solipse of Blackhand, is that everything from Gruul onward is tuned to a group using full consumables.
Now, in the past, groups would go in fully flasked to beat new content. I remember using every potion I had the first time my guild defeated Vael. But Solipse argues that Blizzard's efforts to decrease the gear gap between raiders and non-raiders has created an inadvertent problem. Guilds used to go in fully buffed and flasks the first couple of times they did a boss, but after that, the gear they got from progression helped them enough that they didn't have to use so many consumables. Now, since the gear gap is much smaller, the guilds still have to use the same amount of consumables for each attempt. And since farming consumables for minimal gear upgrades is a giant pain in the heinie, a lot of raiders are getting fed up. If a healer needs 100 potions and two flasks for a night of Hydross attempts, how fun is farming that going to be?
There are a couple ways Blizzard could help, but all of them have nasty side effects. If they make the gear "worth it " in regard to consumables, the gear gap between raiders and non-raiders will quickly get to be as big as it was pre-BC. If they nerf consumables, the encounters will be even more impossible and alchemists like me will be out of business. And if they tune the encounters for groups without consumables, guilds like Nihilum and Death and Taxes will kill Illidan the first day he comes out, since they'll still flask and use pots.
Solipse ends her argument with a pretty good idea: if Blizzard is going to require mass consumables, then alchemy should make mass consumables. Instead of getting one Fel Strength Elixir when I combine two terocone and two nightmare vine, I should get a stack of five. This would keep the alchemy economy intact while making it much easier to farm consumable mats.
What do you think? How should Blizzard fix the raiding game? Or have raiders been catered to for too long?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, The Burning Crusade
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tigraine Mar 2nd 2007 10:11AM
I guess it's a bad idea.
But why don't they do two difficulty settings.
One with consumeables, one completely without.
The one with consumeables drops the same shit as it does now, without they drop superior stuff.
Yea, i know it doesn't work
greetings Tigraine
Sylythn Mar 2nd 2007 10:18AM
I'm a noob when it comes to raiding, and I've only hit Terrokar Forest as far as my progress into Outlands (though I'm at 66).
But the one question I keep asking whenever I hear about all these raiding problems is this - are people trying to hit these up too early? Maybe we're just not ready for these yet. Brand new 70's with quest/craft/rep/pvp gear and no new tier sets yet, might have a tough time with the raids. My guild doesn't have enough keyed for all-guild raids either, so we're stuck doing pug raids...haven't those always been doomed?
Maybe I'm totally off-base, but I can't help but wonder if people are biting off more than they can chew and rather than admitting it, they're saying it's too hard.
Twinny Mar 2nd 2007 10:21AM
who gives a flying f*** about uber guilds like death and taxes, if they see fit to blow through all the content using flasks and consumables good for them. But catering for those gobshites is what makes the smaller guilds miss out on the content.
we shouldnt be forced to farm hour after hour for consumables just to try to clear new content. it should be a fluid: learn the boss fight > wipe *x > kill the boss > next challenge. not wipe > wipe > wipe take pots like a weightlifter uses steroids > clear content.
Jack Kelly Mar 2nd 2007 10:23AM
I could care less if D&T, Nihilium , and their ilk take Illidan down on the first attempt. It's a bit sad that 5 of the top guilds in the world can dictate what the vast majority of the rest who play the game have to endure.
Say around 200 players that play WoW full-time with sponsors to keep them not-working? Screw 'em.
The devs should stop tuning the game for them or maybe give them special patches tuned just for those players or something if they're THAT concerned they'll do things too fast.
There are loads who will struggle through Karazhan for the duration and many thousands who may never see the inside of that instance, never mind go through the seemingly never-ending grind that is attunement to many of the other instances.
I'm all for progression and a sense of accomplishment. Heck, I'm doing alot of it but I also feel for the players who pay the EXACT same amount to play as I do and will never see the same content because I'm in a great guild.
Ampersand Mar 2nd 2007 10:25AM
I know exactly where your coming from. Just last night my guild attempted Doom Lord Kazak. I spent about an hour and a half grinding the major shadow protection potion recipe so my guild could have pots. Fortunately another member also had the recipe, so we made about 100 shadow resist pots for our first attempts (Which takes 1 primal shadow per pot fyi). Between the 29 people we had at the raid we were all out of consumables after our 2nd attempt. Two attempts at learning a boss fight before having to farm a whole week to get the mats and try again...for two attempts.
It's getting a little out of hand. We coordinate with our alchemists and what mastery they have. We give our potion mats and our elixir mats out accordingly so those people can make extras from their mastery proc. An extra potion every now and then isn't enough to feed a whole raid of people raiding every single night of the week. The stress on alchemists is getting very heavy and something should be done.
Having pots for a raid should be a bonus, it should NOT be necessary. If a guild is dedicated enough to make pots for everyone then the raid should be that much easier. It should not still be close to impossible fully raid buffed and potted to hell and back again.
Tigraine Mar 2nd 2007 10:29AM
I think what blizz does currently is quite good.
They bring in the really hard content, and week after week they patch the old content down so normal people can do it.
At least they did it in normal WoW. Remember Razorgore? Now he's a joke .. first he was really really hard.
They just tune the encounters more towards casuals when the top guilds have already progressed through the content.
greetings Tigraine
stapleboy Mar 2nd 2007 11:20AM
I agree with the earlier posters who think Blizzard shouldn't work themselves in knots keeping the Death & Taxes crowd happy with the level of difficulty. When players are spending hours a day throughout the week farming virtual items for virtual potions so they can beat a boss in a game, fun has gone out the window and crashed right into the ground.
On the other hand, I agree with Sylythn that people need to slow down some when it comes to the new raids. My roommate had to cross himself off the raid list in his guild because they ran the 5-mans just enough to get keyed, and now are failing at the raids without getting people into dungeon sets first.
Armand Mar 2nd 2007 11:32AM
I agree with Tigraine, they will have to nerf the encounters like they always have. Then raiders will blow threw it and go on to the next. Most people never see these instances because of serveral reasons, one being they choose not to.
I don't agree with the notion that since someone pays the same amount of money they the deserve the right to see all of the content. Do all games have to be made so that you can beat them, no matter how skilled you are? (This PS3 game is too hard, Sony can you please make it easier?)I understand giving everyone a shot, but don't blame Blizzard if you can't farm enough mats or get enough good players together to kill a boss.
Again with that said they will nerf alot of what we see now. That already have done this with some of the 5-mans.
Incoming nerf bats! Run for your lives.
Mats Mar 2nd 2007 11:44AM
They could also remove consumables...
Thesian Mar 2nd 2007 11:59AM
Making alchemy create more potions each time doesn't solve the problem. That would kill the herbalism economy; your just moving the problem down one step.
Samidare Mar 6th 2007 12:37PM
I say go heroic with better rewards, and a lower setting with less benefits. Those who really want to beat the content and get the uber gear will have to pay for it with their time farming and such. Give them a higher reward for the extra time and effort they put in.
Least this would stop them from crying about casuals getting gear equal to theirs. If they are that badass they can do it.
*side note* Armand... even playstation games come with diffent difficulty settings. They know that different level players play the same game. Same goes for WoW. There is a differnce between attempting content, and attempting content tuned for people in the very best gear availible, every potion or flask they can stack.... simply because a handful of guilds have a habit of quickly destroying every thing you put into the game.
But overall, they should bump how many potions are made during the combines. It seriously blows big time farming for hours just to make one attempt worth of pots.. only to have all of it undone by an early or accidental pull. They are changing it with transmutes/elixirs and such. But I think it should be across the board.
Halicante Mar 2nd 2007 1:26PM
In my experience so far, we've needed the consumables to get through the first kill of a boss then have been able to ramp off the consumables for the second kill.
One thing that really irks me though is this flask discovery thing. Our guild could really use a couple of these recipes, but damned if there is no way to get them other than raw luck. How is that productive? Having to pay some random guy who got the recipe bothers me to no end as we have more than enough alchemists to go farm this stuff...if it were only farmable.
Nick S Mar 2nd 2007 1:24PM
Why not put a few consumables in with the trash drops on non-heroic? I know, I know, it'll kill the poor working alchemist.
But if the trash early in the instance dropped a few potions (not a whole lot of them, but enough to help) that were maybe only good for a couple of hours, that would ease the burden on non-heroic raids without taking difficult away from the hardcore types.
Melf Mar 2nd 2007 1:44PM
So 70 is the new 60, and Karazhan is the new . . . UBRS?
Either way, what people don't realize is that there's that whole "heroic" step between the full 25-player raids and Karazhan. I almost feel that they should have required Attunement to all of the 25-man's from Heroics to force people to l2p a bit before they step into the 25-man's.
That way they could up the gear gap between Heroics and 25-man's without trivializing the gear. yes, it will separate raiders from casuals . . . so?
While I agree that casual players should be able to experience many of the same things, they should not be able to experience all of the things that a player who puts in more time, effort and skill can experience.
So, maybe retune the instances a little, but up the quality of loot dropped. Make it so that you need to get that first boss down before you can move to the second. Luciferon -- Magmadar was an excellent example of this, I think, in that you had to get Luci down enough to get the hunters with Tranq before you could seriously work on Magmadar.
Just a side note . . . many players are now skipping the Azeroth end-game and running straight into TBC. With mixed T2 gear, I replaced only a few pieces of gear before raiding in TBC. If other players took the time to hit up even ZG and AQ20, not only would they get decent gear but they would learn how to coordinate 20+ people.
Mike Schramm Mar 2nd 2007 2:42PM
Yeah I don't really care if D&T or Nihilum want to make a run for the endgame. The encounters should be tuned to the majority of people according to what Blizzard wants. If these are supposed to be hard encounters (and they are), Blizzard should make them simply hard for the majority of guilds, not hard for the few hardcore guilds who burn through content because they can.
Annoula Mar 2nd 2007 3:03PM
This is really what tends to happen. The content is really hard when it initially comes out and then it becomes easier and easier.
I really disagree with making sets weaker to cater to casual players. I consider myself a casual player. I don't really have any problem with the fact that people who run two or three raids a week have far better gear than I do. I understand, they want to commit that kind of time and energy good for them.
I may be a bit prejudiced, because I'm in a raiding guild that doesn't mind I only do one or two raids a month and took forever to get to 70. Which is definitely the exception to the rule. I guess I'm lucking out. I get the purples without the commitment.
snider.jake Mar 2nd 2007 3:41PM
I all honesty, most of the mention post deals with consumables, not to mention primals. Now, I am an alchemist/tailor, and pretty much all of my stuff requires consumables. The problem with this is I work, and I also attend classes. I only farm about 2 hours MAX a day, the rest I'm trying to raid or working on my reputation. During those two hours of farming primal fires with NOBODY else around, I got 3. Now, I'm trying to make
A)Shadow Cloth
B)Spellcloth (For guildies)
C)FR potions
D)Work on my spellfire set.
(All of this farming was just FIRE, not to mention the multitude of other primals I need.
Now, there's not enough primals for it all to go around, so where do I go? The AH of course. And now EVEN after I had the epic drop Night Blade, I'm STILL low on cash. Many problems with the consumables could be solved if the mote drop was more acessable. But then agian, this might make craftables far too easy to make. What do you guys think about this?
Rohnaj Mar 2nd 2007 5:06PM
They wouldn't have maintained a player base this huge for this long if the content were so easy that hardcore players could beat the game on a single subscription fee. I think the problem is the gear divide, or rather lack thereof. Most of the raid epics I've seen are barely better than party/solo rares that are a thousand times easier to get. Seasoned raiders with all of their purple text aren't doing that much more dps, so they still need to spend half of their play time obtaining potions to make them stronger, even for "farm" encounters. I realize that Blizzard must appeal to the lowest common denominator to maintain their game's immense popularity, but petting the casual player's ego by making gear differences so marginal simply breaks game theory. The magnitude of the reward should always correspond to that of the task performed to achieve it.
Argent Mar 2nd 2007 7:06PM
wellm if jeff kaplan talks about gruul and magtheridon being the new onyxias and given how retardedly hard they are at the moment, then there is a pretty big disconnect going on here.
the moment blizzard decided to use a fully flasked raid as the baseline for some fights, things started to go to hell in a handbasket, imo.
i think it's perfectly reasonable for some people (tanks, maybe some dps who want or need) to flask up, but when you need a fully flasked raid to take down gruul, it becomes pretty stupid fast.
using some potions and whatnot to gain an edge, even across an entire raid is pretty reasonable. but building encounters using a paradigm that REQUIRES you to either be a herbalist or have a fully leveled herbalist around is just frightfully lazy on part of the developers.
Primax Mar 2nd 2007 8:10PM
People forget that Onyxia was super hard also when the game was released. Currently levels of difficulty are fine imo, people need to learn and adapt.
The gear situation is not, however. I'm not going to waste 4 hours a night raiding for a 15% upgrade.