Suggestion for nerfing SP pots to restore some balance.

[Angelus_dead]

Various approaches to limiting allow Mnemonic Enhancer intake. Although the goal is to prevent players from using bunches of pots to beat things that are otherwise well out of their reach, another goal is to preserve mana pots as a valuable and useful item.

Note: These effects would only apply to potions or other expendable items, and (mostly) not rechargable mana clickies like Spell Storing Ring.
Note: If any effect prevented you from gaining mana from a potion, the potion should not be deducted from inventory.
Note: It would be possible to add a limiter effect that only applies in certain raids, and maybe even only for the first month the raid is out.

1. Mana pots are totally banned and do nothing. (Only reasonable as a temporary limiter in specific new raids)
   
   
2. You can only drink 1 mana potion until you rest. (Has the problems of being too biased against smaller potions, and making mana pots too weak overall)
   
   
3. Mana potions stop returning your spellpoints once they have given you an amount equal to your current max sp capacity, reset upon resting. (Might be too restrictive for very long battles?)
   
   
4. Drinking a mana potion has a 5 minute cooldown. (Problem: biased against smaller pots)
   
   
5. Drinking a mana potion has a cooldown of 1 second per spellpoint. (Not biased against small pots, but causes the problem of pushing players to start drinking early if there's a possibility of needing any)
   
   
6. Each character has X amount of "AllowedSp" mana potions can give them, which increases by 1 per second and resets to 0 when shrining, entering instance, or aggroing boss. When you attempt to drink a pot, it only works if AllowedSp > 0, and then AllowedSp is decremented by the amount of sp you just got. (Problem: hard to explain to players, although maybe that can be skipped)
   
   
7. Drinking a mana pot gives you a penalty to hp or constitution proportional to the sp returned, which can only be removed by resting. (Has the problems of being biased in favor of high-con caster/healer builds, and also being maybe too punitive in general)
   
   
8. Drinking a mana pot gives all nearby monsters +100 hp per sp you gained. (Too weird)

[Ilran]

I have over 2300 sp. I manage my sp the best that I can. However when the run out of sp I am EXPECTED to drink a pot. On the AH they cost around 20k a pot. In the DDO store, that is real money. Either way it is expense. You can't carry to many healers in a party or the party will fail. Nurfing a cleric more than he is will cause clerics to become fewer. I have built my cleric to be over 2300sp and 600 hp fully buffed. I can't do damage but I can stay alive and heal most of the time. Please explain why you want to nurf in any way a healer. Maybe I should not carry pots and let the party die.
There are things in the game to help healers but they are VERY RARE drops. The ring of spell storing, and the bauble. They have already taken things from the cleric and increased the cost of spells in the past. Change the cleric much more and watch the party die. I think the cost of healing spells should be decreased and a pot offered to a healer at the end of EACH quest. Those pots could be BTC.

[Absolute-Omniscience]

Lol this makes no sense... if you're doing elite ToD for instance and **** hits the fan, you can't wait 3 minutes for a new potion.

/facepalm
You really didn't think that through, did you?

That's the whole point! It's not supposed to be "trollface.SP potion" if you face problems. You're actually supposed to be able to fail a quest.

[Chaos000]

That's the whole point! It's not supposed to be "trollface.SP potion" if you face problems. You're actually supposed to be able to fail a quest.

Solution: Permadeath server with no mana potions.

Designed for people that want to investing time and energy only to fail and enjoy the experience.

Different playstyle guys. If you want the challenge then start lfm's stating clearly that it's a "dry" (casters are not to drink any mana pots) run.

[Vyrn]

An idea like this should be implemented the day melees have a "Stamina Bar" implemented. Once the stamina bar goes empty you're no long able to swing your fancy axe.

Great idea, lets nerf melee even more!

[Vyrn]

[*]Mana potions stop returning your spellpoints once they have given you an amount equal to your current max sp capacity, reset upon resting. (Might be too restrictive for very long battles?)

How would this be calculated, would it just use the number of SP you had when you last shrined? Drank your first SP pot? Stepped into the quest?

[Kadran]

Only exceptions to this currently are elite ToD and the new raids on elite and epic. Everything else in the game is easily completed without any potions by a competent pug group.

Have you tried Elite Shroud post update? It's ridiculous. We had a very good group and still used a LOT of pots. The average PuG will not be able to complete without MASSIVE resource consumption if at all.

[Airgeadlam]

/not signed.

If you don't want SP pots on your runs, don't use them. Simple as that. Stop telling everyone how they should play the game. And no, I will not chug down pots as crazy, and do not expect anyone to drink 100 potions to beat a quest, I have no hurry to be equiped and prepared for any of the content of this game, but I won't tell others what they can do with a time they are paying for.

[stoerm]

My first reaction is a big LOL, think about the u11 moan threads. Healers are having such a hard time healing raids now that boss HP has been buffed, this would be the final nail in PUG epic and elite raid coffins. I suspect healers use more pots than arcanes, so nerfing pots would actually be worse for melees, who are more dependent on healers, than your OP arcanes.

My second reaction is fine, this will reduce the pressure on healers to spend huge amounts on pots. I'd actually prefer being able to say sorry, sp gone. Unfortunately it jus means having to spend plat on scrolls. Nothing achieved, except remove the TP sinkhole for the dollar rich.

[Niab]

I play permadeath with 1/2 shrines so mana pots in some quests are a life saver.

They are rather infrequent to find (we don't use AH) and require saving up over the life of the character to have some to finish those few tough quests.

I hope there frequency is not reduced

[Rosze]

I have a capped fvs and a gimp cleric on its way to cap and i enjoy healing. I admit i sometimes have to use a pot to get the party trough a hard time when boss is like 1-20% left. But i don't really jug pots i hate to use any at all but its a must sometimes. The post is completely absurd for me i can't get the point your trying to make here...

After U11 i have seen that there has been a sort age of healers lately and the way i see this this would be the last drop for some. If you play a healer and you think mana pots should be banned the i even care what you think but if you only play a mele that just always magically keeps healed then i don't care what you think. Next time you run a ToD don't remove your curse and see how long you last with out the help of the healer.

For me seems that all that are complaining just think all casters are OP and have to be nerfed. But I'm sure after that they would nerd sp pots i could see many healers TRing or just not running raids. So be careful what you wish for.

[Chai]

As a player I agree, but as buzz killington the DM, I have to say that youre all crazy if you think Turbine is going to nerf the cash cow...ermmm..I mean mana potions, heh.

[Chai]

An idea like this should be implemented the day melees have a "Stamina Bar" implemented. Once the stamina bar goes empty you're no long able to swing your fancy axe.

Melee does have a stamina bar. Its the blue bar right underneath the healers red bar. When that goes dry, its a matter of a small amount of time before the melee can stop swinging their fancy ax.

[Angelus_dead]

How would this be calculated, would it just use the number of SP you had when you last shrined? Drank your first SP pot? Stepped into the quest?

Well it could be done in several different ways, but the method I recommend (within the scope of that approach) is that each character has a TotalPotionSp number which is reset to zero when you shrine, and incremented by the amount of provided sp each time you use a mana potion. If you attempt to use a mana potion and TotalPotionSp is greater than your current spellpoint maximum, then nothing happens (and the potion is not wasted).

That detail isn't too important, though.

[Forzah]

/facepalm
You really didn't think that through, did you?

That's the whole point! It's not supposed to be "trollface.SP potion" if you face problems. You're actually supposed to be able to fail a quest.

What is there to think? Waiting three minutes for using a potion is just too harsh... especially in ToD where you have to act quickly if something goes wrong. Your mechanic lowers the chance of completing an elite ToD dramatically. The whole run has to be flawless. That's really not preferable for one of the hardest raids in this game. For one, I think it's a lot of fun to recover a run that is going bad, even though it costs a lot of pots; it gives a lot of satisfaction.

Moreover, you're also trying to fix the wrong thing. SP pots are not the cause of balance problems in this game; it's the power of some spells. SP pots are hardly ever used anyway... only if there is real trouble. I think it's a good last recourse.

[Viisari]

Have you tried Elite Shroud post update? It's ridiculous. We had a very good group and still used a LOT of pots. The average PuG will not be able to complete without MASSIVE resource consumption if at all.

Perhaps. I did run VoD on elite though, and as long as you have an AC tank there it's still very easy. I doubt a barb would be able to survive suulo without three healers on him.

And meh, Epic LoB has been done without potions already, I doubt elite shroud is harder, which leads me to believe that the group you ran it with was not infact all that good. From what I hear harry just hits harder and has a lot more hp, so basically just get a few healers who don't overheal and you're good.

But yes elite shroud is probably outside the reach of an average pug group too. The point was though, that there's only a few quests like that in the game and they're all elite and epic raids.

[Edyit76]

nerfing pots would hurt melee more than casters.
why? because now you'd actually have to make a some what decent toon instead of your current gimp.

think about how reliant you are on a "healer" (its not a healer its a divine but thats a whole other argument)
now think about the divine saying sorry cant cast heals. pots on timer

[Vyrn]

What is there to think? Waiting three minutes for using a potion is just too harsh... especially in ToD where you have to act quickly if something goes wrong. Your mechanic lowers the chance of completing an elite ToD dramatically. The whole run has to be flawless. That's really not preferable for one of the hardest raids in this game. For one, I think it's a lot of fun to recover a run that is going bad, even though it costs a lot of pots; it gives a lot of satisfaction.

Moreover, you're also trying to fix the wrong thing. SP pots are not the cause of balance problems in this game; it's the power of some spells. SP pots are hardly ever used anyway... only if there is real trouble. I think it's a good last recourse.

Thats the *point*, elite ToD is supposed to be hard, not a Drink SP Pot to Win type deal. Being able to fail is good.

[Viisari]

Thats the *point*, elite ToD is supposed to be hard, not a Drink SP Pot to Win type deal. Being able to fail is good.

Potions don't mean you will be able to save things if they go wrong in elite ToD, they mean that you *might* be able to complete it if you do get things under control. Have ever seen what happens when Horoth goes berserk on the party? It's not pretty, and you won't get the situation under control just by using SP pots. Heck, you could have unlimited SP bar and that still wouldn't mean you'll be able to make it if Horoth goes berserk.

[Forzah]

Thats the *point*, elite ToD is supposed to be hard, not a Drink SP Pot to Win type deal. Being able to fail is good.

Even if you drink SP pots, it's still not an auto-win.

edit: Viisari was first, but then again Viisari always agrees with me