Looked back a number of pages both here and in the Items subforum (posting here, rather than the Items subforum since this idea also involves the Coliseum) and didn't find anything similar, but feel free to lock/delete if I missed something.

Anyways, this is something that's bugged me since I started up battling with my pet, why can't we equip HP Potions to our pets like the Dark ____ Potions and similar? There's no use for the HP Potions at all right now because you can't use them in the middle of battle (that I know of) and the Healer is so terribly much cheaper to use out of battle that there's no reason to buy HP Potions in the first place. Though you can go into your inventory in the middle of a battle and use a potion, it doesn't seem to do anything to affect your pet's HP for the battle. Anyways, I know this is a rather nit-picky suggestion, but it just seems like it'd be useful for lower tiered pets as well as give the HP Potions a use beyond the occasional item needed for a quest.

If we're talking potions specifically, Dark Life Potion heals 15 HP every time you use one and you can equip as many as you want.

Apart from that, there are already a LOT of healing options in battling. Here is a semi-complete list of them. Phoenix Quill is the most popular, it heals your pet 100% of their HP once per battle. But there are many other weapon and scroll options that give you a smaller heal each time you use them.

Personally, I rarely use potions because you have to keep equipping them after you use them, which becomes incredibly time consuming. So I don't think more potions are needed. Potions also aren't limited by tier so something like a 500HP Healing Potion would be overkill for a T1 pet.

And you can't heal during battle because you are only allowed to use what you brought into the battle. Trying to use the Healer or any external healing items will not work.

Back in the day, when using the healer was way more expensive, I used to use a heal potion, then go fight a mini creature and finish healing in battle. That's not necessary anymore, so I don't use heal potions at all (except for quests).

Seems to me the initial intent of the heal potions (whatever it was) no longer exists and the items should be re-evaluated.

I suppose if they were introduced as weapons with tiers, that would work out a bit better. If they were in the potions section, even if you could only equip one at a time, that would allow for too much healing for smaller pets.

You might be able to make the same argument about certain scrolls. I was encouraged in the battle thread to do pretty much that very thing by buying GotF scrolls for use by a pet that at the time was T3 with 165HP :P Granted, AP and expense/availability are major roadblocks to that strategy.

I agree they should be reevaluated, but I'm not sure that even if they were limited by amount, type, and tier that they wouldn't make battling unintentionally easy. Even at middish tiers an extra 500hp heal could be significant.

I doubt many casual battlers would want to invest in GotF if each costs almost 100m to buy and 240 intelligence to equip :P That's pretty extreme just for some extra healing.

The healing potions are also separate items so you could get a 500HP heal in one turn, a 300HP heal in the next, a 200HP in another, etc. and it would barely cost you anything. That is a lot more problematic, imo. If you put them in as weapons and limit them by tier, then make them single use or put a 'healer' label on them to prevent equipping more than one, I think that would make more sense. Putting them in the potion box would be too much.

But I still think there are plenty of healing options around already.

I think they would have to have some kind of “type” limitation, so you could only equip one healing potion the same way you can only equip one healer, freezer, and stealer weapon. I’m not sure if adding that functionality to potions would be doable or just too much trouble though.

GotF at T3 is pretty funny when you have fights that actually last more than three turns.

I never liked the tier system. I support any Suggestion that subverts or weakens it.

Healing Potions never were cost effective.

NPC Selena used to charge 10sP per point. This was still way cheaper than the official cost of a 100HP Healing Potion. Healing Potions used to sell in user shops for prices far cheaper than they ever could be restocked because folks would come across them by RE or by quest and never needed them because y'know Selena. Since each Healing Potion required you to go to the item box and choose 'use' even then they were obnoxious to use even if they were cheap in user shops. You would have to be seriously poor to even begin to want to use them.

Nowadays Healing Potions sell for good prices because they are now quest fodder and quests have been made into this sites UBI. (Quests used to be much harder to turn a profit on). Making them actually useful would drive their prices insane.

There's also a lot of similar stuff around already, like the lesser quills (Bronze, Evil, Silver, Jewel Encrusted, Gold, Sparkling, Rainbow, Turkey), Ruffie Healy Bones, UltimaPlus Tag, etc. Adding more healers seems a bit redundant.

I would be more interested in seeing the potions have their healing outside of battle increased by 10x so they would be more practical. If a 500HP Healing Potion became a 5000HP Healing Potion, but stayed the same price on the user shop search, it would be cheaper for me to heal Crimsyn that way than at the Healer (19,400 sP vs 30,000 sP).

I would say the counter-argument to "unbalancing" low tier pets, is that it really doesn't matter if a T3 pet can beat a T5-6 pet through the use of spending a bunch of sP on potions because it will not be cost-effective either way.

If a T3 pet with 100HP wants to use a bunch of 1K HP healing potions to beat a "T6 challenger" that drops a couple tomes, does it really matter?

If anything letting people do things that seem broken is FUN. The entire Diablo franchise was basically built on trying to make it seem like you were doing something game breaking. "Breaking the game" without influencing the economy isn't a problem at all.

is an equabble healer. Tier 5, heals 1k hp.

I could support one for smaller pets, like tier 1/2 that heals like 100hp. Otherwise I think that one is enough, considering at least one of the throwing vials offer a percentage heal and there's the pylonic that offers a full blocker. That should be enough bonus coverage?