Being an Alchemist, I have done some research on everything related to the new recipes for Cata. The amount of information for Cauldrons is not much, though, and some of what I found is a little disturbing.
From what I can see, to get the recipes to be able to create Cauldron of Battle and Big Cauldron of Battle have current requirements of "Create 10k / 25k Cata flasks." Now, am I the only one who think this is quite too much? Let me put this in clearer numbers, from two points of view: Mats required to create that many, and how long will a guild need to raid to use that many flasks.
At 24 plants and 6 Volatile Life each, the current requirements would mean to harvest 240k plants and 60k Volatile life to get the recipes for the small cauldrons, and 600k plants and 150k for the recipe for the big cauldron. How is that supposed to be a normally achievable amount for medium sized guilds? To put this in perspective, the DMF Exalted requirement of Insane requires about 40k plants if you pick the easiest one.
From another angle, lets see how many flasks a guild will use and how long it will take to use all the flasks created to get the cauldrons recipes. A medium sized guild of casual raiders might have about 3 10-mans goups raiding every week (I know this might not be representative, but I'm using this so just read on and adjust to your own milage). Each group could raid for 2 nights of 3 hours each. This means 3 groups * 10 people * 2 nights * 3 hours = requires 180 flasks per week. Lets say we also add 20 extras for pugs and role changing that require flasking more than once per hour (and ignore extanded durations for alchemists). For a total of 200 flasks used per week by the guild. This means this guild will have access to the small cauldron after creating flasks that will last them for an entire year of raiding.
You could say that you will be able to sell many on the auction house, but then, since every guild will have their own alchemists working on their own cauldrons, I don't see the auction house or trade channel as a viable way of getting these flasks out, unless you will be willing to hand them out at a very low price. I'm even considering have my guild leader rule out that no guild member uses flasks not created inside the guild, to help reach the goal.
Also, you could say that you can stockpile them untill you have access to cauldrons, then create mass amounts of cauldrons. But then, let alone the insane mats grinding, you consumption will be lowered a lot. 10k flasks will generate 2.5k cauldrons, which will last 2h for everyone at Guild Level 21 and fill all 10 people at Guild level 19. Assuming we have this, the above guild will use 2 cauldron * 2 nights * 3 raids = 12 cauldrons per week, so 2.5k cauldrons will take 4 years of raiding to use.
Sorry for the wall of text, I wanted to make it clear what was the implications of needing 10k flasks in numbers everyone would understand. I will let you make your own conclusions for the big cauldrons and 25k flasks requirement.
Has anyone heard/read that they will review this? Or was it changed already on the PTR?
TL;DR: Requirements for the small cauldrons (create 10k cata flasks) and big cauldrons (create 25k cata flasks) will require more than insane herb amounts (300k/700k+ herbs/life) and take years to use the flasks/cauldrons created, for a 3 10-man casual raiding guild).
EDITS: Typos and reorganized some of the info to make things clearer and easier to read.