Consumables - Why I'm For Them

Catalyst for this post - Sharpening Stones and Mana Oils being removed in wrath.

I like Raiding, don't get me wrong. I could spend a whole lot of time in an instanced dungeon, stomping around with 24 other people, and pretending they are the extent of the WoWplayerbase. There were times that I forgot that there were textures and architecture other then the shiny insides of Tempest Keep, or the dank caves of SSC.

There is, however, a whole rest of the world full of stuff - and one of the things that coaxed me out into it was consumables. 

All of a sudden, I'm seeing that there are rolling hills, dense forests, and barren wastelands, full of... look! - a Rich Adamantite Node! World PvP! A Rare Spawn! That Guy with the Server First Legendary! Whether your farming mats or doing dailies, your taken all around the world, so that you stay engaged with the server as a whole. Heck, even a trip to the AH gives you a chance to see other players (and view the 'colorful' trade chat).

So all flowery-RP reasons I liked having to gather consumables aside; there are also some very serious reasons I think that consumables are important.

Its one thing to read a strat, and watch videos. This gets you, the player, prepared for a fight - but it's not all of it. There is something very concrete about having a stack of food, two flasks, a stack of sharping stones, a stack of wards, repair bots, resist cauldrons, and ammo. Your character is as prepared as you are. 

When you put in time getting ready to raid, you are more focused about the time you are raiding. That flask is ticking, and you want to put it to use! It also gives raid leaders, and those around you, a visual indicator that someone has put in the time and gold to be there. I can't imagine a situation where someone is ready to pour full consumables into a fight they haven't read up on. 

Consumable gathering time is also flexible - you can do it whenever you want, regardless of your guilds raiding schedule. Assuming that consumable acquisition was a time-sink factor in progression, it allowed guilds with less together time to get more done. We may now see fights where the consumable farming time is built into the learning curve of bosses.

Compared to Vanilla WoW, Consumables are easy to get. Gone are the days of needing to get theOny Head Buff, Lung Juice Cocktail, FR Buff from UBRS, Gone-on-Death Flask, Unlimited Stacking of Elixirs, Dire Maul buffs, ZG Buff, ect. 

And for most - Mana Oils and Sharpening Stones were the cheapest buffs to keep up - hour long, persistent through death buffs, that stacked in your bags.

Anyway, I'm against the removal of stones and oils. I think consumables are an important part of raiding, and think that this is an un-asked for, and unneeded change. 

Words For Pictures

Ok - Here we go. Pictures and words, together!

Yakra the Paladin! (Yakradin?). After much necropolis hunting, and taking out a few invasions with a three-man group, I got the two rare pieces (but not before getting four cloth legs, and 3 leather legs). With my trinket-granted Consecrate and (soon to be) Hallowed title, I'll be dancing in the light!

I was out for the weekend, and ended up making the call to not rush home on Sunday for the raid - opting rather to spend some time with friends I only get to see once a month. Its hard to not be there (ontime) for a progression night, but I have bags full of confidence in my officers and raiders. I got home around the time of the first pull, but decided to just let them ride things out with the tanks that were in. Aertimus hoped in about mid way though (for lack of healers), and I got to watch the kill on her computer. It was pretty sweet.

Mu'ru! I don't know how people did sides without Shockwave (or rather, I just know that it was done with extreme difficulty, the likes of which I sadly was not able to encounter). We didn't have a ton of time to work on him, but we got entropus to 46% the one time we got to p2. I was kiting him faster then I should, and feel like the erratically placed black holes probably were a factor in the wipe, but I'm confident we'll rock him next night we're in there.

At one point between fighting waves, I looked off to the side and realized I was looking at the Sunwell. The spot that I floated by in the MGT cinematic, and figured I'd never get to. I had a similar moment fighting Felmyst, and realizing that I was in the spot that I'd flown by during bombing runs. It's a little surreal.

Oh, and as a last min note (and a rare, PvP one at that), I got the achievement for running/capping the flag all three times (Ironman), and the 3-0 victory, in WSG last night. Do Darkspear/Cyclone Horde run premade losing WSG now, or did I get stupid lucky? (going to need Vene's insight here). Ally usually get roflstomped on Cyclone WSG.

Raid Synergy and Raid Wide Buffs

My initial reaction to the anti-raid stacking changes (buffs going raid wide) was negative. 

One of the things I really enjoy is composing groups - finding just the right way to squeeze the most synergy out of the group, weighing the pros and cons of putting X class/spec into Y group. Would I make a survivability focused tank group (Resto Shaman, Resto Druid, Paladin), or a Threat focused one (I liked a Shaman/GoA, 2x Hunter, Feral Druid group). Do we crank the dps synergy, or the healers? 

After talking it over with some people, I'm starting to see the plan behind all this. 

(In theory) - I'll be able to bring players because they are good, rather then because we want/need X class. I can think of many times we've had to deny guild membership to, or bench quality members of a certain class - because we were "full" on them (in general, or for a certain fight). 

Archimonde was probably the best(worst?) case of this. As Alliance, Shamans are still somewhat of a commodity, and we wanted 4-5 tremor totems for Archimonde's fears. When we couldn't fill that number, our standards (unofficially) got lower for shaman apps. We did get some excellent shamans, but I think I can also say that we got some that would otherwise not have been recruited. 

Progressing elsewhere, I noticed that certain people were sat out, (presumably) because of their class. Our Balance Druids come to mind - two great veteran players, but our caster DPS officer found it hard to justify raid slots for both of them, so we often would only have one or the other (if we had one at all). 

I also am happy this will let us function on a smaller player base in general. Rather then have extras of each class (ie, Warlock, Mage, SPriest) - so we don't run low/out of one on any given night - we could instead just have an extra dps caster, and know that we won't be suffering for lack of buff/debuff/synergy. 

I'm sure there will still be some amount of Min/Max potential, but I look forward to raiding along side my guild's best players, not necessarily the most beneficial characters. 

How about you? Feelings/thoughts on raid synergy changes?