So I spent about roughly 5 hours in raid groups attempting to kill heroic raid bosses. Of those 5 hours, we managed 13 or so Heroic Sire pulls and 5 Lady Inerva pulls averaging roughly 4 minutes per pull. People left almost every pull, so here’s the math:
18 attempts @ 4 minutes = 72 minutes.
Flasked/food buffed the entire time + temporary weapon enchants… 5hrs @ 60 minutes each = 300 minutes - so less than 1/3 of the time was spent actually utilizing the consumables.
Could we get a temporary version of consumables? Like an elixir that activates once you deal damage or heal while in combat and only lasts the duration of combat? Weapon enchants that do the same? Just that people are extremely unreliable with raids and dungeons and often times it’s painful to just sit there and wait while your money-per-minute item is running out of resources.
Flasks for raid are cheap as hell at 30 costing only the same as 8 (really 9 as two gems costing less than a flask also) via caldron. Food is the same via feasts highly reducing it.
Food is balanced around using it for one fight it’s not really meant to get the full duration hense why it goes away on death. If you get more that is a bonus nothing more why food costs a fraction of flask cost.
Aug runes are the only really costly ones but also are the ones not expected to be used all the time and only used for the final push.
Flasks while sure looking at it per min is fine but than you also need to add in the content done. When solo a flask has no waste as you don’t have to wait for people but you pay full price. When raiding you pay 8 flasks for 30 so less than 1/3 of the cost by your own math this 1/3 cost is exactly where it should be with even your numbers showing your getting by about 1/3 of the time used for 1/3 of the cost. In fact better guilds won’t have that kind of down time with wipe turn around in under 2 min further making your math incorrect.
People leaving every pull is a issue with the group in question not a issue with the consumables. As such the math is really a much higher percent of the flask being used than 1/3 for 1/3 of the cost quite fair.
Seams to me your issue is not using the correct materials for the content being done this means caldrons not flasks for raiding. Flasks are made for solo or 5 man content m plus where you get at least 1/2 to 3/4 of the flask used in a single run.
As for armor kits and wep oils there cheap as hell at 100g for 2 hours on the armor kit and 20g for an hour on the oil. Buying per fight stuff would be more costly than that for sure if you want them worth making. These are fine as is.
I agree with you that this doesn’t need to change, but it doesn’t answer the OP’s point as a solution. If you have people cycling constantly, your cauldron will run out in the initial grouping (everyone will take two and double chug) and then a person who joins an hour in gets screwed out of it.
But I don’t think it’s a problem with consumables personally. The problem is you are running with people who aren’t sticking it out as a cohesive team, and raiding is meant to be done in that way. You are supposed to progress through the content and stick it out. The problem OP raises is the same as what people raise with people ditching keys - it’s a player-driven problem that requires player-driven solutions.
Yall can go into semantics over raiding, but aside from that argument, I’m simply saying that there are some player-drive-problems that temporary buffs would help address. Specifically, saving players a mental hassle amongst the many that they face while pugging. Can both of yall see that?
I can see the issue, but I don’t know that I’d classify it as a problem. But sure, if the cost of flasks were prohibitive based on current gold economy I’d say yes it is a reasonable problem to consider addressing. I don’t think it is expensive enough to warrant being a problem worth addressing, but if i’m out of touch with the reality of gold then I’m happy to just step on out of the discussion.
What is improvement anyways?