Tuesday 13 September 2011

The Way of the Raid Nerf

It seems that, from next week (Sept 19th), Blizzard will be nerfing the current tier of raiding.

With the final showdown against Deathwing approaching, we've been keeping a close eye on players' progress through the current Firelands raid content. Before patch 4.3 is released, we want groups who are working on Heroic-difficulty content to be able to get as close to Ragnaros as possible, and we want players who are tackling normal progression to be able to experience as many of the encounters as they can. To achieve these goals, we'll be toning down the difficulty of both normal and Heroic raids through hotfixes in the coming weeks. In general, we plan to reduce health and damage of all raid bosses in both normal and Heroic Firelands by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released.
We're looking forward to seeing more groups of players face off against the Fire Lord in the weeks ahead. However, before we make these changes, we want to give everyone a final shot at the bosses at their current difficulty level -- so this is a heads up that we're planning to apply the difficulty hotfixes beginning the week of September 19. Stay tuned to the Patch 4.2 Hotfixes blog for these and other live updates to the game as they happen. 

source

This is interesting, in 4.2 they nerfed the Tier 11 raid, but that was old content and players could get much the same rewards from Justice Points. Now they are actually nerfing a raiding tier while it is current, and by the sounds of things, by quite a lot. The amount they nerfed the Tier 11 raids was quite noticeable, fight strategies changed and bosses often just rolled over and died. In my mind it was quite a hard nerf.

Part of me likes this change. It means our guild gets to see more of the bosses in Firelands and get them killed, and it may increase interest in raiding for the current tier.

Part of me doesn't like it though. One wonders if they have to nerf the content this hard, perhaps it was actually too hard to begin with, and they would have been better going with more bosses and a slower ramp up in difficulty.

This action also suggests an even slacker approach to the current tier of raiding. Why bother grinding against hard bosses for a tiny amount of Valor Points, when you can face-roll heroics for far more Valor Points? Why not just wait until Blizzard nerf the current tier of raiding, then go in there with all your Valor Point gear you ground in heroics, and face off against some far easier raid bosses, with the chance of far more progression.

Maybe because grinding heroics is boring, especially 2 troll ones. So although some raiders may well give up until 4.3 is nerfed, I may continue against Deathwing. I just hope there is enough content, and not a short and hard raid, intended to keep us "busy" until the next expansion.

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