Consumables, enchants, enhancements, and you

The expansion is coming to a close, and you can see it in the attitudes around the realm/server. Unfortunately, this has led to some disturbing habits in raids - one that I fear will continue into Cataclsym.

Getting every buff you can

We all love gear. That shiney new piece of awesome that is your payoff for the raid. We get new gear to make us more powerful, to help us overcome some new content. Why then would you not use every consumable available on every raid attempt? Changes were made in BC to drastically reduce the number of consumables available/needed - to the point now where you can use a single flask, two different elixirs (one Battle one Gaurdian) and a single food buff.

That's it.

Most raids now even drop Fish Feasts, which provide both SP and AP - along with your standard base 40 Stamina. While this food might not be 'the best' food you can use (unless you're an enhance shaman or maybe a ret paladin) it's still free stats. The same goes for using a flask. Here's some basic food/flask stats (remember all flasks persist through death).

Flask of the Frost Wyrm - 125 SP for 1hr - your utility flask.
Flask of Pure Mojo - 45 mp5 for 1 hr.
Flask of Stoneblood - Increases maximum Health by 1300 for 1hr.
Flask of Endless Rage - 180 AP for 1hr.

Fish Feast - 80 AP, 46SP and 40 Stam - great utility food.

Now this list doesn't even go into some of the specialty foods you can use. I personally carry 3 or 4 different types for each raid (SP, Haste, mp5 and Crit) along with different elixirs (Int, SP, Haste, and Crit).

How it adds up

Just using a standard flask (18-25g), and a raid provided Fish Feast (free - or 5-10g if you buy them off the AH) will net you a whopping 171SP, 260AP, or 1700+HP. This is a huge boost to your stats, and is nothing to be scoffed at.

Let's look at the difference between the 251 and 264 Paladin holy legs. By upgrading to Santified Leggings, you gain 14 Stam, 14 Int, 12 Crit, 6 mp5, and 22 SP. The tokens for Pally/Priest/Warlock go for about 100 DKP in our guild - and this is a fairly marginal (though still nice) upgrade. I imagine that most 251 to 264 upgrades are similar, with your 251 to 277 or 232 to 251 jumps being slightly larger.

So for a small gold cost, you can gain more from a simple food/flask combo than you would from upgradeing two or even three pieces of gear. My only question is, why wouldn't you spend this if you're serious about raiding and progression?

It doesn't matter - it's farm/trash

I see this excuse a lot - and it really irritates me. Trash and farm bosses count. Bottom line. The smoother/faster trash is, the faster we can get to the boss. The faster and smoother a farm boss kill is, the sooner we can get to the progression/heroic bosses that aren't a complete push-over.

Imagine the snowball effect if everyone decides to phone it in on these encounters. Let's assume a 'balanced' raid with 2 tanks, 5 healers, and 18 DPS (9 each melee and caster). If nobody in the raid eats a Fish Feast (or flasks), you're missing out on 2340 AP, and 1539 SP just from your DPS. That's easily the DPS output of an additional raider. Most of us would balk at the thought of 24 manning content - so why would you intentionally gimp your raid in this way?


Conclusion

Anyone who can't be bothered to use the best, regardless of the reason, has no place in my raids. It's been shown time and time again that gear can help push through encounters, so why not use everything you can on every pull. Players who don't use top gems, enchants, or consumables are telling me that they are content with where they are Stat/Gear wise, and don't require upgrades. If you don't need any upgrades, then you shouldn't be taking gear away from those who do - and you shouldn't be taking raid spots away players who DO need those upgrades. Especially when they're willing to put forth the maximum effort every time.

Go big, or go home.