flask, elixirs and food buff's

I have a running debate going with my current guild. They are telling me that flask are the item to get and use, they are cheaper than the elixirs. What started this is we have a few members who are not using flask or elixirs but will use food buffs. I was saying they are nice to have but most are a waste of time to use.

What I use is elixir of the master plus my 90/90 food buffs. If I know we will be wiping multiple times on a boss then I wont use elixirs because of that reason, also tend to not use food buffs either.

Last night the debate turned into 300 stamina is the ideal flask to use. My input is if it's a gimmick fight then sure 300 stamina is helpful but 300 stamina will never mitigate damage like the flask of the master will which is 95% of the fights (perhaps more like 99%)

I am wondering now what everyone is using for flask and elixirs and maybe I am missing something here and would like some input on what everyone has to say on this topic.

Personally I use Lavascale Minestrone (90 mastery). I use Elixir of the Master for my battle elixir, and either Prismatic Elixir or the armor elixir for my guardian elixir depending on the fight.

The Stam flask is very underwhelming. It is severely underbudget compared to the other flasks, and again underbudget compared to using elixirs. Depending on prices on your server than the price is somewhat comparable.

Unlike you though, I always food/flask for every pull, but that's up to you.

Gab wrote:Personally I use Lavascale Minestrone (90 mastery). I use Elixir of the Master for my battle elixir, and either Prismatic Elixir or the armor elixir for my guardian elixir depending on the fight.

The Stam flask is very underwhelming. It is severely underbudget compared to the other flasks, and again underbudget compared to using elixirs. Depending on prices on your server than the price is somewhat comparable.

Unlike you though, I always food/flask for every pull, but that's up to you.

if i am just learning a fight, i wont food/exliar for the first pull or 2, but once everyone has the jist of the fight then ill do everything i can just in case everything clicks and having that little bit extra health or mitigation/avoidence keeps us from wiping and we get the kill

its just part of running any instance, learning the fight is one thing, but why gimp yourself?
would you expect someone to run with unenchanted gear? or empty gem slots?

you do everything you can to be ready with your gear, why not take it the next step and use your consumables?

I run this as well most nights - "Personally I use Lavascale Minestrone (90 mastery). I use Elixir of the Master for my battle elixir, and either Prismatic Elixir or the armor elixir for my guardian elixir depending on the fight."

I also buff to the nth regardless of the boss, learning, etc. Money is so easy to come by it just doesn't make sense not to. Our guild has 207k in the guildbank and we provide cauldrons, feasts, repairs, and pots to two 10 man raid teams 5 nights a week and still have the 200k+ in the guild bank.

In short this is nothing like vanilla where you would spend all day farming enough gold to afford raiding consumables for the week and we should be buffing (especially as tanks) whenever possible. Hell i'm 359 and I still food buff for my daily eff off heroic. I hate wiping on easy crap so when minimizing that is in my control I rock it.

Just my .02

I just ran some numbers here. I use Tukui and this is avoidance %.

86.12 normal
87.24 w/ 90/90 food buff (lavascale minestrone) (9g / 1 hour or death) +1.12%
90.07 w/ 09/90 food and elixir of the master. (25g / 1 hour or death) +3.95%
88.94 w/ elixir of master (15g 1 hour or death) +2.82%
87.24 with steelskin (155g / 1 hour)
88.09 w/ 90/90 food and flask of winds (129g / 1 hour)
87.59 w/ 90/90 food and flask of titanic strength (100g / 1 hour) +1.47%

this is assuming you bought all the mats on the AH.

Of course this will be server dependant and no one person is TOTALLY responsible for a wipe but I do agree after the 1st few attempts getting totally buffed up and doing everything you can help your healers mitigate damage is priority.
The 300 stam is a tad underwhelming and I go with mastery elixer as well. No matter what thou, I do get a food buff even on the 1st few, I guess I feel guilty if I don't that I could have always done more.

I go with Elixir of the Master (Battle Elixir, 225 Mastery ) and Scroll of Stamina IX (Guardian Elixir, 130 stamina) for most fights. For Al'Akir, I use the Elixir of the Master and the Prismatic Elixir.

I use the steelskin flask because that is what I get from the cauldron. It lasts for 2 hours and thru many wipes.
I buff food every time because someone always throws down a feast.
Even if we don't have the feast, I still use Lavascale Minestrone for every pull.

Gold is a non-issue in Cataclysm. Just buy the stuff in the AH. I always make sure I am carrying 3+ Steelskin and 3+ Titanic Strength flasks, depending on if I am tanking or going Retribution DPS.

I always eat food, usually mastery food. My main has a chef's hat and can cook them in no time

However, my gear is mostly parry, giving me an imbalance in parry/dodge. So when I face Halfus, I usually take dodge food to help minimize (even marginally) the Mortal Strike stacks. I really like the elixirs too, either mastery + armor for most pulls, or mastery + resistance if I expect a lot of magical dmg. I try to use at least the food + mastery elixir for almost every pull, unless we pathetically wiped. If I go ret-OS for a fight like Atramedes, I will re-food, but i don't change my elixirs. The mastery elixir's have been increasing in price on my server so I've been thinking of having my alchemist alt change specs just to keep me supplied more cheaply.

Noting that stam ~ 1.5x other stats for gear and gems, it does seem lame that it is 1 to 1 for the flasks. I mean you could almost make a case for a bear to use the 300 agility that a kitty would get, over the 300 stam. However, a lot of ppl judge tanks by health, and as my guild hit lvl 20 last week, we get free flasks from guild cauldrons. So I do take the free flask, and do pop them for more of the fights.

I am ~76% base dodge/parry/blk and like getting upto ~83% with the mastery flask and other buffs, but sometimes making the rest of the raid comfortable seeing a high health number is good too, at least until I can get clsoer to being block capepd.

I carry stacks of Parry/Sta food, but I also provide barbecues, and if I drop one I'll usually eat from it instead of burning my own food.

So far food is every non-trash pull, but I haven't started using new flasks. I had a few Wotlk flasks left and have used those so far to burn them up.