Potions: When will they be useful?

[Babydoll]

I hope they fix the cool down timer for PVP...and make them actually useful. I never, ever use them. I use the MP one rarely though lol

[Bharata_Senka]

I don't want potions to be how I cure myself, I want to carry a few potions with me in a emergency situation.

Rokien, I'm not sure what's happened, but you seem to have developed some common sense as of late

I agree 100%. Potions were never meant to be a main source of healing.

I can tell you that just last night, I had gotten myself in over my head in a leve at Treespeak, and my GLA had run out of MP, and I was so close to dying, but I popped a potion, and it was enough to let me finish the leve. This was just a regular ol' potion, not a mega...

So, in my circumstances, I was very thankful for that potion.

Thank you very much

Have a nice day

[Dawiichan]

Potions right now can be very useful. In ifrit extreme I used to carry around a few mega-potions since 600 HP can easily make the difference between life and death. Mega-ethers are also really nice since they have a decently low CD and help with fights where you mana-burn. Elixers are great for paladin since it can give them a lot of enmity through the heal and also help their MP in an MP intensive fight such as ifrit where you heal yourself many times. Nerve drops and maddening potions have made it so that a WHM can use benediction on a party which are all at yellow HP after the paladin pops hallowed ground and doesn't steal hate. Potions can be used effectively in multiple ways (specially the Str and Int potions to increase damage output).

The usefulness of lower tier potions is pretty much only the reduced cost.

[Molly_Millions]

Hi-potions have never been useful unless I was a low level. And I tried nerve drops once as a WHM when I accidentally took hate, and it didn't do any good.

that's because nerve drops don't shed hate, they prevent you from gaining as much hate for the actions you perform while the effect is active. Hi-potions do help in a pinch, they give a small amount of hp faster than you could with a cure.

[Molly_Millions]

STR helps?

mega-potions of STR add 125 attack power in addition to the STR they add. hell yes they are useful!

in seems to me that people aare using the wrong potions in the wrong way. I pop potions like they are going out of style, the high-end potions are almost all very usefull.

[Kinseykinz]

The problem is potions aren't supposed to give a long-lasting benefit. They are supposed to be an 'emergency' item or a special that does something like help with 'spike' damage for a short time. That said, I think SE needs to re-evaluate the recast timers or potency on some, not necessarily all potions,remedies, elixirs etc.

Potions/Elixirs -I believe the recast time on these is probably okay. However, they should give better benefits. These should be solely for 'Oh POOP!' moments, so it's okay in my opinion if a Potion healed your average level 20and below, ungeared character to full once, a High Potion maybe level 30 and under Mega-potion 40 and under and Elixir's the 50's...or close to it. But kept the timer (maybe even lengthen the timer a bit for the higher level potions). This way, they don't truely replace the Healer class/mp refresh skills etc, but they still have some in-game value.

Ethers should follow the same logic but give back maybe 50% mp based on level of potion and player level. Lastly, potions and Ethers should be 'tiered' sorta like food is so that a low-ranked player benefits more from a low ranked potion than a high ranked one.

Throat Drops (and similar items) -Really the timer is TOO long on these items. I should be able to use throat drops several times if needed in the same Boss battle. Sure, whm's have Esuna, but it's single target (unless Sacred Prism is up) and it's timer is a tad long to be able to single target more than 2 people in a decent time span....plus, in order to cast Esuna, the whm needs to not be silenced in the first place. A compromise would be a recast timer shortened to double the natural Esuna timer OR making it that occasionally the throat drops fail.

I think the Stat based potions actually do work fairly well and are nice perks atm. I believe the issue the WHM had with the Nerve Drops is that you need to use them BEFORE the blinking hate, not after...but not 100% sure on this.

[Molly_Millions]

I think the Stat based potions actually do work fairly well and are nice perks atm. I believe the issue the WHM had with the Nerve Drops is that you need to use them BEFORE the blinking hate, not after...but not 100% sure on this.

That's correct, if you get blinking hate as mage, you screwed up. Nerve drops won't help that.

[Orophin]

I think an elixir should heal you to full with a very long cooldown. (20-30 mins since no fights really take that long) I don't know if this would break game balance, but in the traditional sense this is what an elixir did. The only downside to this is, as other posters mentioned, they will become a necessity and not an "oh shit" type item. Once a BLM runs out of MP and convert isn't ready, they'll just pop an elixir and get right back to it.

[Punainen]

There's always:

Elixir - HP Regen : +50% (2000 max), MP Regen : +30% (1050 max)
Mega-Ether - MP Regen : +20% (600 max)
Mega-Potion - HP Regen : +20% (600 max)

But, yea, otherwise the rest of the healing potions aren't all that noteworthy.

600 MP is like 1 to 2 spells for a BLM, and is therefore ultimately useless, not worth buying/carrying.
And my point still stands, if it doesn't have 'mega' in the name, its garbage. So why are they in the game?

[AeraLucis]

usefull potions:

Mega-potion of STR (I love these! I can out DD a BRD on my PLD by using them)
Mega-potion of INT
Mega-Ether
Hi-Potion and better
nerve drops
throat drops
maddening potion
Elixer
all the status inducing potions

there could be more, I just haven't used them. OP try them, you'll see potions are quite usefull.

^ Quoted for truth.