07.29
Like most of you, I heard the news of Potion Sickness being implemented in the Wrath Beta today. For those who don’t know Potion Sickness is a debuff that you receive once you imbue a potion that prevents you from quaffing another. The debuff has no timer and will only be removed once you leave combat. Obviously, this is a huge change.
When I first heard about the change my reaction was, “WTF, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard of”. After taking some time to think about it and do some reading I realize that it probably isn’t the end of the world as we know it. That’s not to say I feel fine about it though (Yes, I hate myself for that two sentence stretched out reference as much as you probably do). Now, there is no question that this is going to change the way the raiding works immensely. I feel like we will be saying goodbye to our Haste and Destruction potions because a mana pot or emergency health pot is just far more important in the long run. On the surface this sounds just absolutely, utterly terrible but we all have to bare in mind that encounters will be tuned in such a way as to no longer require the use of these potions in order to succeed. Overall, this should make raiding significantly cheaper which is something I should be happy about but I’m apprehensive. Exactly what are the overreaching effects of this?
Chain pulling? We can probably say goodbye to this long loved mechanic. Without the ability to chain pop mana potions the need to drop combat between pulls becomes pretty strong.
What about Healthstones and things that share that cooldown like Thistle Tea and Flame Cap? Will these be affected by the new potion sickness or will they have their own, similar debuff? I know that personally having the three different types of healthstones is a huge boon.
I mentioned earlier that it is likely that encounter designs are going to change to order to accommodate this new mechanic, however, in the current high raiding world AOE boss damage is the norm and with the buff to Circle of Healing to make it more like Chain Heal it is not likely that this fact is going to change. So does that mean there is just more pressure and responsibility on the healers (like they don’t have enough already)? And how are they going to cover this without chain quaffing mana pots?
I don’t really have any answers, no one does at this point I would guess. Things are clearly changing, for better or worse is yet to be seen. I’d say it’s far too early to be completely freaking out over something that may or not even make it live. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not squirming apprehensively in my chair at the moment.
This’ll stink! Sure, future encounters will be tuned to not require more potions, but what about current encounters? They’re making most all current raids impossible. In a long, healer intensive fight, the healbots will just run out of mana. So unless they change the regen mechanics, potions every 2 minutes is needed. Maybe the debuff will get a two minute cooldown, but only be applied when you’re in combat, and wear off as soon as you drop combat.
I’m pretty much in agreement with you, although I’m not too concerned about current encounters. Outside of the 5 mans for leveling (which don’t really require chaining poting) I don’t see a lot of the current content being run anymore once the expansion drops. You don’t see too many MC or BWL runs outside of nostalgia purposes currently and though I do expect some Retro runs of the old instances I’d like to think (hope) that once we’re all 80 we won’t need to chain pot them anymore.
Either way, I’m not a huge fan of this change.
Edit: I just checked out your Blog and noticed you’re a Coldfusion developer. Awesome! Me too