Heal potions, cooldown, alchemy

[chattius 2,536]

As we all know heal potions have a cooldown around 5 seconds. As we all read in the AddOn discussion: alchemy boosted heal potions were made better. But has anyone tested out what was changed? Testing heal potions and alchemy is a bit challenging since the effect normally shows only if you are very close to death. And honestly I never tested alchemy and heal potions before the AddOn in depth.

 

The cooldown:

If you quaff a heal potion less then 5 seconds after your last one, it will have a reduced effect.

 

The difficulty level effect on health potions

Even a strong health potion will only heal 60% of your health in niob difficulty---if you don't have alchemy.

 

High Alchemy will even let a small health potion do a 100% heal in niob (This was even so before the AddON). So if your health is down at 10% you don't have to quaff 2 potions. And remember: the second potion will even have a reduced effect because of the cooldown.

 

And now the tricky part: if allready the small potions do 100% heals, is it possible than the strong ones do 100+% heal? This may be of no interest for a single potion, because you can not heal more than 100% anyway. But what if we quaff it while being in the cooldown and the potion would have its effect boosted by alchemy to reach a theoretical 200%?

 

Will the cooldown make a potion which could have a more than 200% theoretical heal limit to 100% and then reduce its effect?

Or

Will it reduce the the 200% to say 130% and then apply it?

Or

Will alchemy affect the cooldown directly?

 

If it is the second, we could have 100% health potions even in the cooldown thanks to alchemy. It's hard to do real tests, but I never watched a less than 100% heal when having alchemy mastered and boosted to 200+ with equipment.

 

And remember, health potions are only a small aspect from what alchemy affects and I never read from anyone, except myself, that one reason for taking alchemy was better heal potions. There are also heal trophies which seem to be not affected by the cooldown, mentors lasting for minutes, pink's to ban undeads from standing up again, ...

Edited April 20, 2010 by chattius

[chattius 2,536]

I heard reports that alchemy wouldn't boost up the effect of heal potions pre-addon. So on 2.43 and consoles a 75% strong heal potion in niob would always be 75% and not boosted by alchemy to a higher percentage ?

[essjayehm 58]

I heard reports that alchemy wouldn't boost up the effect of heal potions pre-addon. So on 2.43 and consoles a 75% strong heal potion in niob would always be 75% and not boosted by alchemy to a higher percentage ?

 

Yes, I am thinking this is true. Maybe. I'll do some tests, soon, for consoles.

 

Also, the trophy effects do not increase until you start a new "pile" of trophies, so there are a lot of weird questions to answer with Alchemy on console.