4.2 Nerfs

As of today, September 20th, a series of nerfs have hit to most Firelands bosses, on normal and heroic. There were smaller, more specific nerfs to some boss abilitites, in addition to blanket 20% Dmg and Health and 15% Dmg and Health on normal and heroic, respectively. My guild is 2/7 HM and I for one, am not tickled with these nerfs. Granted some of my exasperation is with the troubles that my own guild has had that have prevented us from performing on a level that we have grown accustomed to, but my primary anger is directed towards Blizzard in this case. Hardmodes should be left alone.


I'm all for nerfs. I think that nerfing normal modes once a tier has reached a certain age is almost a universally good decision. It allows the more casual raiders to move deeper into the dungeon or to finish it and start hardmodes, and allows people who hardly raid at all to get to go in and experience the content. Plus it makes gearing easier, makes clearing it easier if you're farming it, ect.

Heroic Mode is the hard shit. This is the content that isn't meant to be touched. Its there for the guilds that want to challenge themselves and compete with other hardcore raiding guilds. Upon its inception, Blizzard decreed that hardmodes wouldn't be nerfed. In fact, when it was first created, hardmodes had a limited amount of attempts (50) per week, so that once you had wiped your fill, you were done, which happened more than you'd think (Prof Put says hi). The only nerfs to HM would be the increasing or removal of those limits that would occur at some point late in the tier, or not at all. That system was eventually scrapped due to consistent complaints by the bleeding edge hardcore raiders not liking that there was a limit to how much work that they could put into a boss. You'll notice that most of the early Ragnaros HM kills took guilds from 400-600 wipes. Yeow.

I will forever stick by the opinion that Hard Modes should never be nerfed. The natural nerfs of gear and practice usually lead to bosses eventually dying anyway. I also think that Hardmode kills are a very effective means of measuring how strong your guild is. Take tier 11 for example. A guild that was 13/13 2 months into the expansion was pretty well set (the first Sinestra kill was about 6 weeks in.). A guild 13/13 at the end of the tier probably needs a bit of work if they want to be among the top but they're pretty well off in the grand scheme of things. A guild that finished the tier 9 or 10 or 11/13 is a solid raiding guild but needs work if they want to really compete. A guild that finished at 5/13 is towards the bottom half of guild that can call themselves hardcore, and while they clearly have some skill, they presumably need to invest more time or fill weak player links. You won't be able to do that with this tier. Of the current 7/7 HM guilds, of which there are 34 in the U.S., I would wager that maybe half of them would have killed Heroic Rag without the nerf that came in at this point. However, with the series of nerfs to virtually each boss in FL that have come through, only looking at when a particular guild got a kill will you be able to tell how different they really are from any other guild who got 6 or 7 HM bosses down.

Ashunei from Pie Chart, the top guild on my server and one who is consistantly in the top 10-20 in the U.S., said in his seriously good post on the wow forums that "Vanity isn't something to cater to," which I both agree and disagree with. Sure that from a moral standpoint, one of the more damaging human characteristics should definitely not be encouraged, however we should take into consideration that Vanity is one of the biggest drives to many of the hardcore raiders, myself included, and that it is these Hardcore raiders who are the largest cogs in the raiding machine. By making content trivial and with it, the items that Raiders use to show off like Titles, Gear, Mounts, and Achievements, you take away part of the lasting value that raiding gives to many players. I still think that once a tier ends that the raiding mounts and achievements should die with it so that the players who got it when it was truly difficult can have something to hold on to. Something that says, "I was there, and I and 24/9 other people put the work in to get this done."

In the end I wish Blizz would just leave the HMs alone. In terms of their content being visible, raiders saw every boss in normal modes. If they can't kill it they can't kill it, but the purpose of raiding in WoW isn't that everyone be able to see everything. It's that, if you work hard enough and are skilled enough, you can see everything. Nerf normals till your hearts content, but please please please. If we raiders can't get a kill, don't just give it to us.