Firelands Nerf Incoming.Follow

Source.



I can imagine the QQ already.

Yeah. My guild can get maybe 7 or 8 competent people on raid night (small group of a RL social network, not fond of mass invites), that's counting both guildies and friends from outside the guild who don't do their own raiding. The other slots are made up of either pugs or guildies we know and love but who just can't seem to get their head around things. I won't call those guildies idiots, but their strengths lie in areas other than the skills used by raiding, whatever those may be. You know, the people who need to focus so much on doing a "proper" dps rotation that they can't watch their feet, or in avoiding Shannox traps their dps falters and then Riplimb jumps them and they panic.

We got Shannox down, figured out the kinks and it was pretty straightforward. Beth'ilac felt complex at first, but once we distilled it down and gave the "complicated" parts to the more skilled people the others could be told "stay on drones unless the hunter tells you he needs help on spiderlings, in phase 2 stand here and click lightwells". Rhyolith was annoying mainly because he's so big we have trouble seeing the map (there's still a fight over who has to figure out where volcanos are and call steering), but when we were about to get our **** together anyway he was nerfed a bit and we could suddenly spin him like a ballerina when we wanted to, so no biggie there.

Baelroc's a matter of figuring out what's going on, and teaching people that if you're taking over the crystal you can stand RIGHT NEXT to the other guy, they can swap it with a single step and there's no risk of bouncing things onto a healer. We also figured out that the online strats suggesting 2 tanks are BS, and that a feral starting things by taking 18 stacks and living is better than trying to take all 25 and dying (I got close soooo many times). We plan to get him next week if attendance works (the guild's college kids grown up, so if our MT needs to do overtime at work or others are handling the baby for the night we gotta adjust).

Phoenix is where I think a nerf will help us. We die before we can figure out what's going on, but we also haven't spent much time with her. It's so easy to wind up in cascade failure as somebody screws up.

So overall I don't mind and even welcome a nerf. It doesn't change what we've done, and will make what we do in the future easier. Maybe I can get my firekitty staff while it's still useful.

If they need to tweak heroic content to make it balanced then sure.


Nerfing Heroic content is bunk, it is there to be hard and a challenge. If you can't do it, then you can't do it. Live with it.

An issue that Blizzard needs to address, but is unlikely to in the next year, is the differing level of skill.


We have a raid difficulty that is very binary, easy or normal, with one or two world class trophy bosses thrown in per tier (Algalon, FireFighter, Lich King HM etc). Easy mode is for pugging or for casual guilds which have rotating line ups due to real life priorities. Then you have normal mode (HM) content which is basically raids as you would have seen them in Vanilla or TBC, your top 5-10 guilds per server are going to push through it and the rest stand no real chance of seeing the end.

There are a lot guilds that fall inbetween those two levels of play, where players burn out because they are left with content that is either too easy or content they stand no real chance of completing. We need an actual easy/normal/hard spectrum/. Easy with the equivalent of blue or za/zg level entry epics which allow pugging and gear/point reward which also focuses on teaching core mechanics like Karazhan. A normal level which is not pug friendly but not top end either that pushes the average guild but which they can hope to clear by end of the tier and finally a top end hard mode which is there to push the elite raiders on the server.

I've gone 6/7 in a pug. Avg on server is 4/7.

Well, it's entirely possible I don't have an accurate viewpoint of Firelands pugs since I don't pug it. However, I do keep an eye out in trade chat when I'm sitting around Org, and the vast majority of people using trade are either a singular person wanting in on a Firelands raid, or people asking for more for a trash run or a T11 raid. But like I said, Horde is vastly outnumbered by Alliance on my server, maybe they have better luck for pugs.

I find it very hard to believe that you managed to get into a pug that was organized enough for Alys. I'm not saying you're lying, just that I find it hard to believe from my own experience with her. In my group of relatively skilled players, we spent over 2 hours working on her last week, but still didn't get her to a second down phase. This was the first night of our new roster, although all the people are folks I've raided with before except one. I think me and the guy organizing it are the only people playing mains, everyone else is on alts, three of which might be slightly undergeared for Firelands so that probably didn't help.

Are you still on Lightbringer? Your character's battlenet isn't showing up.

Aye, still on LB, which has always had a strong pug community. I have also been playing since Vanilla WoW, so I know how to avoid a stinker (though yesterday my alt shaman got into a BWD that couldn't kill the first boss!).


The need for varying levels of difficulty was obvious in Ulduar and the content shined on bosses like Iron Council, Freya and Yogg-saron where you could make those decisions. Removing bosses with multiple levels of difficulty makes sense in terms of development time I suppose. However it has been clear since T9 that WoW needs more options for difficulty at end game. The sad thing is that it will take until the next expac or even well beyond that to see something that was obvious in 2009.

Was that the trash in TK you were telling me about a couple weeks ago? =x

I suppose this goes back to the whole "LFD ruined the social aspect of the game" debate. I've been on Proudmoore for over a year now, and in SM for 10 months and I've only really made 2 or 3 friends outside of the guild. All three of those were via pugs, and it wasn't really due to their skill. I thought they were fun people. Although the pally healer did seem to be pretty good, in addition to having a voice so cute it makes me want to nom her face. >.>

I've seen this thread title show up more than a dozen times on Live View, and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME I have read it as "Friendship Nerf Incoming."

Well 90% of WoW players are stupid kids who aren't capable of understanding the tacts of a single boss, Blizzard wants their clients satisfied, so they nerf everything.

In the old times they would've never done that.

It is pathetic.

There's no reason to see his numbers. His argument failed as soon as he said this, "In the old times they would've never done that." Blizzard has been nerfing content from the start, it's part of their M.O..

90% of WoW players aren't stupid kids, they just don't know what it means to raid. Why? Raiding is about team work, something a lot of players are too selfish to understand, or even act on. It also takes commitment, not just time and research but to other players. It's not about getting that uber tanking shield, it's about your team getting that uber tanking shield, and the mage's funky staff of lawldeeps, and the cleric's Aegis of Superior Divinity. Any and all slack is pulled by other players, or content is nerfed down to your level.

It's not a bad thing, players will always be at varying levels. Blizzard is just trying to cater to all of them. It's a big order to fill.

You mean you weren't really my friend :(

And you did those things anyway? Shame on you.