Return of Reckoning

Solution 1
Is actually the worst solution; it took lots of effort to to recreate a working potion crafting system and as long as if there is another way to balance pots, removing a major part of the game content shouldn't be considered.
Potion crafting has also a big role in the ingame economy and removing it could have some unwanted/toxic side effects. For instance the auction house fee was recently introduced as a gold sink and the removal of potion crafting would lower the effect from it again.

Solution 3
I'm not a fan of this, because it gives people a "get out of jail" card, like with the active renown abilities (cleansing winds etc.). The effects are not as strong as on the renown abilities and you don't need to spec renown for it, but it still means that people with lots of gold/time get a huge advantage over others in certain ingame situations.
I think that this would also be very hard to balance: If the cooldown is too high, most people probably won't bother with pot crafting anymore and we might end with 95% of solution 1. If the cooldown is too low it might be even worse than atm.

Solution 2
I think to lower all pot values to about one fifth and make them stack with abilities is the best solution. Not only would it allow to make forgotten class abilities viable again, but also the difference between "pot-buffed" and "non-pot-buffed" players would be lowered.
Pot crafting would still be useful for min-maxing and the economy shouldn't be affected noticably (if necessary, the max. pot duration could be changed to 30 minutes).
As this affects the whole game balancing/meta, absolutely mandatory for this solution is also that the WP/dok armorbuff has to be changed to something else, so that his fixed place in groups is not further cemented. Maybe all group armor buffs have to be rebalanced, but that's for another topic.

Edit: i just realized that probably all easy to apply group buffs would have need to be rebalanced for the same reason.

We are discussing potions. If people think we should discuss about talismans, make a proposal - Penril.

Restating a debunked point - Penril.

Annaise16 wrote:Quoting Azarael,

" A simpler variant is to convert armor potions to % physical damage reduced. Effect is greater the lower your armor mitigation is."

Another kick in the teeth to WH/WEs.

Example for 10% phys damage reduction:

WIth no armor: 10% of the damage received is mitigated.
With 25% armor: 7.5% of the damage received in is mitigated.
With 50% armor: 5% of the damage received is mitigated.

People complain about armor potions in the context of light classes, so make them more effective on light classes. I'm interested to hear how this is worse than a linear effect, which mitigates the same amount of damage regardless of how heavy your armor was to begin with?

Akalukz wrote:could look at changing the 4 point bonuses on anni / merc to 660 armor and do away with potions. This will keep the status quo for the current meta, on Classes that already have an armor bonus could be changed to resistance

I considered something similar but dismissed the idea as it would be the same as making armour pots stack with the buffs.

Azarael wrote: People complain about armor potions in the context of light classes, so make them more effective on light classes. I'm interested to hear how this is worse than a linear effect, which mitigates the same amount of damage regardless of how heavy your armor was to begin with?

It would be better than the current system as long as the new potions and the career based buffs i.e. armor auras gave less armor / mitigation than they do currently.

The worst thing that could happen right now to a few different careers is for light armor to gain a lot more physical mitigation, because aside from armor debuffs, there are not a lot of ways of countering armor stackers. Weaponskill just doesn't seem to be working properly as an armor counter, and + armor pen on gear is very very rare. A few careers get some abilities with built in ignores, or an armor ignore tactic, but that's only a few.

It is an entirely different conversation but when looking at potions / abilities, and armor in general it might be time to talk about the base cap of 75% and whether that is where it should be for physical.

Sollution 3:
As stated by the others I have to push a lot of buttons already. So a 30sec buff I need to remember is not increasing My game experience.

Sollution 2:
Reduced effectivity of pots still help you to characterize your build. Not as much as before but still it does.

Been talking about this a bit more internally, so I'll summarise:

Alternative option: Add drawbacks to pots, so that they still provide their maximum effect but they offer a weakness to be exploited elsewhere.

Thoughts on secondary element of problem:

Armor pots are a problem because they are OP within their class.

They are the only choice for the defensive slot - there is no point in using that slot to buff resists. Why? Why else.

Knight and bloody Chosen auras.

Knight and Chosen auras being OP breaks so many things. I think we're going to have to deal with them.

Azarael wrote: They are the only choice for the defensive slot - there is no point in using that slot to buff resists. Why? Why else.

Knight and bloody Chosen auras.

Knight and Chosen auras being OP breaks so many things. I think we're going to have to deal with them.

This has been something talked about since the very beginning with chosen, and again when knights launched. It is also relevant to WP / DoK, and a few others. Having AoE buffs with near equal and often greater values than short duration single target buffs was always odd from a balance perspective. Especially when some of these were pure passive buffs / auras. When stacking buffs were removed, and I don't mean just armor, it really destroyed the usefulness of some careers.

A good example of this was IB pre change when both of their str buffs stacked. You could buff something like 240 str on your oathfriend for a short duration, and maintain it if you worked on it. But when stacking buffs were removed these abilities, and this advantage disappeared. You could get the same str from a single ability, from a potion, or from an aura.

But talking about the defensive slot choice, could more diversity be added to give other options to armor potions. Thorn potions, maybe move toughness over to defensive, or possibly even add new types of potions? 2-3% dodge, or parry, or disrupt. Weaponskill, or initiative could be a good choices too.