Miroku's Little Shop of Potions

Okay guys. This is something I've been thinking of doing for a while and I hope it really works. I know you're probably tired of buying all of your potions on the AH or from vendors and the like, so what I want to do is make myself the Guild Alchemist. I make EVERY Alchemy recipe except 7 and one of those I cannot get until Christmas . Anyways, now that I got my promotion at my job i now work M-F 7am to 3:30pm est, which frees up my nights and weekends (excet sat nights and sun morn), and from 7pm est to 9pm (or when i finish) in IF probably in Tinker Town do NOTHING but make potions for the guild, NOT TO BE SOLD ON AH, for the guild to use. To make this work I will need help from the guild Herbalists along with myself to gather Herbs for me to do this, otherwise it is going to be a BYOM (Bring Your Own Mats) kind of deal and I'd much rather be a vending machine where ya walk up say 'I Need This' then me spit it out.

 

This is a list of the Herbs that will be in highest demand:

 

Dreamfoil

Icecap

Mountain Silversage

Golden Sansam

Plaguebloom

Gromsblood

Ghost Mushroom

Goldthorn

Sungrass

Blindweed

Khagdar's Whisker

Stranglekelp

 

Other reagents that will be in high demand will be:

 

Oily Blackmouth

Stonescale Eel

Elemental Earth

Elemental Fire

Dream Dust

Elemental Water

 

 

 

Anyways, I'd like to have the guild's opinions on this idea before this kicks into high gear and i become an Herb vacuum. Please keep in mind that any Herb donations are completely voluntary as i know some have Herbalsim for their char's livelyhood. If this does work out and the guild likes the idea. I will every night that I am on from 7pm to 9pmish (or whenever I'm finished), sit in Tinker Town and make potions for the guild.

 

Thank you!

Your local guild Alchie!

 

Miroku

I like this idea, and I've been trying to remember to keep herb tracking on for ya

Great Idea Miroku...

 

My alt is an herbalist...but he is still low level...so if need be I can farm low-level herbs for you...

 

also..I would be HAPPY to go to arathi and farm up STACKS of the elemental water and elemental fire for you...regardless of how long it takes...

 

 

just want to my part to help...

Hey, im always down for contributing to stuff like this. i dont have a very high fishing skill, but ill try and get it up so i can start catchin those fishies, as well as the elemental stuff, that stuff is just lots of killin.

Ah ha! Fishing! I can do that! Check the bank, I think there's gott'a be atleast a stack of Oily Blackmouth there.

 

Same for Dream dust, and I put one elemental firein there the other night...

I already sent him something like 14 blackmouth oil and 18 fire oils...lol.

I had a long discussion with Miroku yesterday about that and promised to try to summarize my point of view here.

 

First of all I'd like to thank him for this generous proposal. Every week there is somebody in this guild who impresses me with his team spirit.

 

Now let's come back to the subject.

 

There are a couple problems with potions. First of all they are expensive which make them luxury products. All of them.

Then they are, in general and aside from the health/mana ones, they are very poorly known by the average player. (Probably a consequence of the price thing)

 

What FP could benefit from is not having access to free pots (which would just be a resource sink) but 1/ Getting to know pots better so that it can turn into a real personal and collective improvment, 2/ Allowing players who want to get better to have access to those potions at reasonable price

 

There are exceptions to that. I'd be all for a collective effort to make sure our healers are stuffed with Mana pots when they do MC. Or that melee players have Fire Protection pots for the imps for instance. (but I also believe that running MC requires personal involvment)

 

Aside from this kind of exceptions I don't think that anybody should ask for free pots.

 

Miroku was trying to bait me into this with things such as "hey, wouldn't you like to have free Mongoose potions ?".

Mongoose potions are 2 gold on the AH. Gives agility and +2% crit.

I've had some in my bank for months. I just don't see what justifies to spend 2 gold to get this kind of buff. I would be ashamed to burn the time and energy of my guildies so that I can kill murlocs a tad faster. (the only reason I see myself using some is to annihilate Heilel in a dmg contest in ubrs)

 

So...in a nutshell...

I'd love to see Miro prepare posts on the board to educate people about not so frequently used potions. Maybe you want to run this on a class per class manner. "Potions for Mages". Or "Potions against rogues" for instance.

One thing that is key is to allow players to know what potions share a timer with Health/mana pots because it's a key issue.

For instance, stoneshield potions give you an armor boost for 1:30 to 2 minutes (depending on variety). But it makes using Health pots impossible for 3 minutes. You have to know this. As you have to know that +1000 armor against a melee unit is better than a Major Health pot in term of HP saved.

What we need is pragmatic, field tested experience. Not theoritical thing on each and every pot. If we have too many pots in our bags we'll end up using none.

 

Then it would be nice to have some kind of a "price list". Price list for the pots and price list for the materials that can be given in exchange for pots.

 

I don't want to make this post too long but I think it's a waste of everybody's time to bring "materials" for pots though. Except if you're an herbalist of course. It would be much more efficient to trade pots for discounted price in gold.

The reason is that each one of us has a couple of domains where his gold/effort ratio is high. Mining for miners for instance. Farming humanoids for everybody.

Seeing someone fish for an hour to catch 20 Oily Blackmouths that are worth 2 gold on the AH while they could make 10 to 20 gold in the same time by farming their "usual" stuff is NOT something that will make our guild more effective.

I will be the first to admit that I know VERY little about potions. I've never really minded this, though, because I figure if I can play without them, then the day I learn to play with them I will just be even better. This is also due to the fact that druids cannot use items in forms, so there are fewer times when potions are useable. Granted, mana pots in MC on boss fights are ALWAYS useful. If every healer had 2 of these, it would make the Luci fight a piece of cake. Use one at half mana so the potion timer can cool down, then use the other at oom.

 

I also don't want to see Miroku taking a loss here and don't want people abusing his generosity. In addition to the value of the herbs themselves, the time it takes for him and any other herbalists to collect them is also a consideration.

Since I can easily turn HP into mana...and can make healthstones...i very rarely use pots...I used to use swift pots...but now i have my stop watch...

i used to invis pots but now i have my cloak device...

 

(i should probably learn to use pots )

 

However, I wouldnt mind some info on them...

 

Also, regardless of me using pots or not..I will continue to send Elemental Earth, Water and Fire when I have them...for miro to use for whatever pots need them...

 

Im usually bored anyway...and elementals have low shadow resistance so they go down easy

Here is the breakdown of what I think a warrior's pots should be, and if im missing some, then please let me know.

 

Elixir of greater defense +450 armor/hour

i forget the name, but it increase max HP by ___ for 1hour

Greater Stoneshield Potion +1000 armor for 2 min?

 

 

Also, through a joint venture, Mirkou and myself aquired the Flask of Petrification, immune to everything for 1 minute, cannot attack or do anything though.

 

So, say were getting close to a wipe, Have someone who is not DI's or SS's pop one of these, say in the corner, and then everyone stops attacking said boss, you have 1 minutes to start rezzing people, but it would take massive coordination, because no one could attack said boss, and 1 minute isnt alot of time, but should you be able to get 3 healers up in that amount of time, and have another person rezzing more people who are bandaging/re entering combat, it could be like a second wind for a very hard boss.

Hehe, but FG, I LIKE fishing...

 

At any rate, I don't really need potions. The only time I use 'em is when some stupid Hordie tries to gank me at half-health. But, meh. All this math hurts my head. History and English ftw.

Not sure if this will help, but people I have passed it to before thought it was very helpful to them for climbing through herbalism and after the fact to help decide what to collect (based on numbers)

www.inkredible.ca/axis/herb.pdf

 

Maybe if I still have the source db I created to run this report on (I was REALLY bored one day at work) I'll resort it by Potion Name rather than by Herb name...

Ha, there are only a few rogues I conceed defeat to when it comes to instance damage output.

 

Sadly...especially since rogues *should* have higher single mob dps.

 

Ok, so here's kopi's guide to potions--

 

First off, let's name a stat and how we can buff it:

Str : There are a number of potions for this, but most notably you have elixer of lion's strength, giants, etc which give you standard str increase (up to 25/hour). These potions don't share a timer as they're buff pots, but they do disappear if you die. There's also a potion specifically for warriors called "____ Rage potion." I admit that the nomenclature of potions seems like it was created independently by 15 people, but you start to get a feel for it. The highest one is mighty rage potion, which not only restores 60-75% of the warrior's rage bar instantly, it also increases strength for the next 10 seconds (don't remember off the top of my head).

 

Sta: These potions are the most straightforward. Elixers of fortitude do the job for 1 hour, can be chugged without a timer (note I've not been able to drink this after casting power word: fortitude). Also, there's a potion out there called troll's blood on a related point, that will regenerate in the range of 5 health/5 seconds, lasts 1 hour and no timer. Learned from the trainer, and easy to make.

 

Int: There are two potions which modify this, elixers of wisdom (1 hour buff, up to 25 int...not that I've not been able to drink this after casting arcane intellect). There's also the relatively new elixer of the sages, which increases both int and spi by 18 for an hour.

 

Spi: See elixer of the sages and troll's blood potions.

 

Agi: There are the standard agi potions (up to 25 for 1 hour) but what makes this area particularly interesting is the mongoose potion mentioned above. This is a difficult to acquire recipe without laying down far more gold in the AH than what I personally think it's worth. Nonetheless, it adds both 25 agi AND an additional 2% chance to crit in melee for 1 hour.

 

Armor: Elixers of defense give up to 450 armor for 1 hour. Also there are the stoneshield potions, but more on those later in the combat potions section.

 

Resistances: Magic resistance potions will use the combat potion timer, so consider before using them. Still, if you don't want to waste a flask against a cast, these are decent. The minor one gives you 30 resistances across the board for the next minute or so, the regular one gives 60.

 

Ok, now that we've gone over the stat buffs, let's get into the combat potions (so noted because they share the combat potion timer, usually 2 minutes but in some cases 3).

 

We have the standard Health/Mana potions. These are on a 2 minute combat potion timer and the mana ones always restore more than the health ones are the same level. They go minor->lesser->regular->greater->superior->major. At the major level these potions will restore in the range of 1500 health or 1800 mana, give or takea few hundred.

 

There's also rejuvenation potions. I'd always wondered about these since I got 1 recipe as an apprentice, called minor, then never heard about them again. Turns out the major version drops in MC (lost the roll on that one...heh). These share the same 2 minute timer as health/mana pots, but they restore both health AND mana, usually a bit more than the same level health/mana pots. The major one I beleive restores in the range of 1700 health/mana.

 

Stoneshield potions increase your armor by 1-2k for 1.5-2 minutes, but they come at a 3 minute combat potion timer. These are very situational. The problem you run into is that if you're taking massive damage, then they could potentially save you more HP than a health potion regenerates, but at the same time it also depends on your armor. A cloth wearer would get much more use from this than a tank. The effects of armor decrease rapidly with how much you have. At 5k armor that extra 1-2k would only mean about 8% dmg reduction, yet at 500 armor would mean about 20%. Use wisely.

 

Limited invulnerability potions give you the blessing of protection pally buff, essentially, but it only lasts for 6 seconds. 2 minute timer I beleive.

 

Purification potion removes a curse, disease, and poison and is on either 2 or 3 minute timer...personally I think unless you have a curse of agony, deadly poison, and cadaver worms on you simultaneously, the health pot will be more useful...

 

Swim speed potion...raises your swim speed. 50% for the next 15 seconds I believe, 2 minute cooldown. Bleh.

 

Wildvine gives you anywhere from 1-1000 health and mana. It's random, so you just hope for the best, but it's available for before the major version of health/mana, which makes it useful in the late 30s low 40s range.

 

Dreamless sleep makes you unable to do anything during the next 15 seconds, but it does regenerate 1200 or so health, and possibly mana. I've never played with this one, so I don't know the rules...sorry.

 

Free action potion..gives you what the blessing of freedom would be like if it worked.

 

Those are the most useful ones off the top of my head. Now for some lesser seen ones:

 

Underwater breathing potions: eitehr 30 minutes or 1 hour depending on variety, no cooldown. They aren't hard to make and I don't know why people don't use them...

 

Flasks: Super buffs, best ones in the game. Take your pick among 1200 health, 2000 mana, 150 spell damage increase, immunity, 25 resists across the board, etc etc... You can have only 1, and with the exception of immunity and spell damage, all last 2 hours. They are exceedingly difficult to acquire, require a BoP herb that MAYBE spawns once every few days, can only be made in scholomance, require about 40 herbs in addition (most intensive pots use 5, standard is 2-3). They also disappear when you die.

 

Dream vision lets you go explore places that are apparently too dangerous to explore in person. Never tried it, but I might some day.

 

Oil of immolation: use this against a rogue. You have a dot aura for the next 15 seconds, it's small, but it breaks stealth. Not too hard to make.

 

<insert school of spell here...including holy> protection potion. I've never really used these much as I have numerous ways to combat spell damage on heilel. Their protection is significant, especially the greater versions, and their buffs last 1 hour or how much damage they absorb. Perhaps someone could talk more on them?

 

And there's many more potions, but I'm a bit tired of writing on the subject now.

As an addendum to the armor thing, for a tank, armor is always better than stamina.

 

Short number crunch:

 

Say you are at 5000 armor and 45% damage reduction. Let's say an additional 2000, for a total of 7000 armor, puts you at 50% damage reduction.

 

This means if the mob was doing 100 damage, you were only taking 55, but now you are only taking 50. Hence you have reduced your damage TAKEN by (55-50)/55*100 = 9.1%.

 

Now lets say you add another 2000 armor, for a total of 9000, and are now at 54.5% damage reduction.

 

This means that if the mob was doing 100 damage, you were only taking 50, but now you are only taking 45.5. Hence you have reduced your damage TAKEN by (50-45.5)/50*100 = 9%.

 

 

If that is not obvious, then consider going from 0 to 1% damage reduction. You've reduced damage TAKEN by 1%. Now consider 98 to 99% damage reduction. You've reduced damage TAKEN by 50%. You were taking 2% of mob damage before, and you are now only taking 1%.

 

So while it may take increasing amounts of armor to increase your damage reduction due to "diminishing returns", this is more of a myth than anything. Your reduction in damage TAKEN remains approximately the same. (eg. it would take the same amount of armor to go from 0 to 50% damage reduction as it would to go from 98 to 99%, because both reduce damage TAKEN by 50%).

A big thanks to Heilel for his long post. That made more clear a couple of things.

 

One of the problems I have with combat potions (same with engineering stuff...) is that I never use them. It's probably the same with all classes but I find myself very busy when I fight and rarely have the time to click on buttons.

And since drinking a pot breaks stealth I can't drink just before entering combat either.

 

Still...there are a couple of things that I've tried or seen used as a rogue or against rogues.

 

-Oil of Immolation : very cheap potion which, as explained by Heilel, gives a DoT Aura. It DOESN'T share timer with Health Pots

This is a very situational pot but I'd say that anyone (that is not a rogue or a mage) should carry some.

There are numerous situations where you KNOW there are rogues around. Either because you heard their stealth sound of because they just vanished, etc.

Rogues are highly dependent on their opening. Whether it's cheap shot or Ambush it can only be done from stealth. Breaking a rogue stealth before he can open or reopen is a HUGE advantage. Drink Oil of Immolation and run around. You have a large 5 yard DoT around you.

One thing that would be intersting to test is whether you can mount and still get the DoT aura.

Beware of one thing. A rogue that sprints to you WILL get his opening. It's the same with Mage's Arcane spam.

 

 

-Free Action potion.

This completely negates the ability of a rogue to stunlock you with Cheap Shot and Kidney shot. I'm not sure about Gouge.

This one shares the timer with Health pots so be careful.

It's sthing that I mostly used in WSG as a flag carrier but haven't used it much in regular PvP. I know that I hate when people use it against me since I'm a stunlock rogue

The recent massive rogues vs rogues battles in Tyr's hand look to me as great occasions to use it. The problem when you fight a group of rogues is that you don't even have time to finish one before the others stun you to death. You don't even get a chance to drink a health pot in those occasions. Popping one of those pots right after the opener allows you to finish the job. All classes can benefit from this potion but the ultimate use has to be for Warriors. There is absolutely no way a rogue can beat a warrior that has a Free Action Potion up.

 

I think I'm going to try to use those 2 a bit more in the next few days. As with a lot of things, practice makes perfect.

 

-Catseye Elixir. This is HUGE and also pretty cheap.

As soon as I get into rogue vs rogues fights I switch from my SC cap to wear this crappy cloth armor Catseye Goggles that give me a +9 stealth detection over rogues. To give you an idea, it allows me to see a lvl 60 Rogue like he was a lvl 51 rogue. The reason I'm mentionning those goggles is that the Catseye pot gives about the same bonus. I often use both and that's why I almost never loose a 1v1 against another rogue.

Suggestion :

 

A couple of guildies may already feel like trying some of those pots but if they can't put their hands on it quick they will forget about it soon.

 

Idea : we say for instance that this week is "Oil of Immolation" and Catseye Elixir week (or any other you want to select)

Miroku then manages to make a stock and he comes up with a price for them. All we have to do then is to drop him an email in game and he sends them cod when he has time.

 

Then we move to other pots

 

Another advantage is that if we start to fill our bags with a zillion different pots we'll end up never using any. Especially the combat ones

Ok, so I'm going to talk a little more on potions here:

 

First off, here are a couple more combat potion addtions: invisibility and lesser invisibility.

 

Basically, unless the person has the warlock detect [lesser] invisiblity buff, you cannot be seen while this potion is active. I've only ever used these for escape, and I think they may break if you attack. Note they're also helpful for completing quests if you're not a rogue and can't stealth them. The lesser potion works for 15 seconds, the regular for 18. Once again, same timer as the health/mana.

 

We also have the catseye elixer that FG mentioned. I never really got into this one too much because when I was doing most of my potion experimentation, they still hadn't nerfed stealth, so basically I could chug one of these, throw on perception, and be buffed out the ass by a warlock with a felhunter out and I'd still only have a marginal chance of detecting someone stealthed. Now, of course, things have changed and these may in fact be useful.

 

We also have some marginally useful, if at all, potions:

Detect undead and demons. Basically for 1 hour you have a tracking for one of the two. Woo...

 

Some fairly useful ones for casters are:

Arcane elixer: bonus to spell damage. There are two ranks of this to my knowledge, and the buffs are pretty nice. If FG wants to cheat and use a mongoose elixer, I'll be sure to chug some of my specialty potions

 

Elixer of shadow power: not only is this a crafting item, it can be used to increase shadow damage.

 

Some fairly useful ones for melee:

Frost oil: this is used in tons of recipes and in the tribute run, but it is actually pretty useful as a potion since you can apply it to a weapon and give yourself a frostbolt proc. I think that's pretty cool, and better than spending the extra 100g on the epic equivalent of what you currently have, minus the stats.

 

shadow oil: same as frost oil, except a shadow bolt. Doesn't come with the movement debuff, but higher dmg, so pick and choose.

 

Elixer of demonslaying: it's a slightly weaker version of the demonslaying enchant...I believe it's an attack power bonus against demons. I only ever make this for enchanters since the demonslaying sells decently (I suspect people want the glow more than the buff, although the warlock mount quest could use the help), so I don't pay much attention.

 

Note that the oils will replace a poison or sharpened/counterweighted buff on a weapon.

I love lesser invisibility pots. I always keep a stack on me.

 

I originally wanted to use them for smallscale pvp when the honor system came out. Priests tend to get targeted first, so I was looking for something to extend my survivability by 8 seconds approximately. I tried the lesser invis. pot during combat, but it was flagged as an out of combat only thing. Has this changed since then?

 

I still think they are the ultimate in utility because of the lack of anything commonplace to counter them. For example... Soloing and see a bunch of horde come up over the hill with murder in there eyes? Pop the potion, avoid the gank. There are much more crucial uses in AV. At certain points in a battle you come to various chokepoints that are well patrolled (most active graveyard is just beyond). Maybe rogues and druids can get past these with some luck, it's nice to get other classes to infiltrate as well.

 

The best thing about them is that they are a low tier potion that is still as potent at level 60.

 

--Wren