Cataclysm

[SurfD]

Holy shit that is a HUGE nerfbat they are swinging.  20% HP and Damage Output Reduction pretty much across the board on everything?  That seems a bit extreme.  10% i could maybe understand, but 20%?  Wow.

[caladein]

Holy shit that is a HUGE nerfbat they are swinging.  20% HP and Damage Output Reduction pretty much across the board on everything?  That seems a bit extreme.  10% i could maybe understand, but 20%?  Wow.

Eh, it's effectively the same as ICC's nerf via the buff.  The new raid has a tier-and-a-half better gear and most things got knocked down 20% instead of it being a 30% buff to players.

[sinij]

MMO Champ lists a ton of raid nerfs incoming for patch 4.2.  

Do you think people will come back to WoW until next expansion? I highly doubt it. Damage was already done.

Also if these are nerfs to only old stuff... I don't see casuals being happy with doing second-hand content.

[Ingmar]

Actually this is exactly the sort of change that might cause a spike of interest for us, we'll see.

[Paelos]

MMO Champ lists a ton of raid nerfs incoming for patch 4.2.  

Do you think people will come back to WoW until next expansion? I highly doubt it. Damage was already done.

Also if these are nerfs to only old stuff... I don't see casuals being happy with doing second-hand content.

There are people watching closely still. Like I said before, it's a step in the right direction. I'm sure lots of people weren't that pissed off and simply wanted this from the get-go, and now they are happy. I'm also sure lots of people want to know what the plan for the future is before they dip their toes back in the water, simply because we're moving up a tier.

[caladein]

Also if these are nerfs to only old stuff... I don't see casuals being happy with doing second-hand content.

Everyone outside the US Top 100 (or equivalent) does nearly all content post-nerf (or "second-hand") already.

[Azuredream]

Yeah, I don't think that really bothers anyone who would identify as casual.

[Simond]

It also depends on how tough non-heroic Firelands is. If Activision have any sense, it comes pre-nerfed with Heroic mode kept at 'smash gonads with meat-tenderiser' difficulty.

[Rokal]

I expected nerfs in 4.2 for T11, but I thought they would be smaller than this since 4.2 will also bring easy access to 359+ gear. I think the combination of easy 359+ gear and 20%+ across-the-board nerfs to T11 will be over-kill, but it doesn't matter a whole lot considering the patch will also bring a new raid cluster. We'll see how compelling Firelands ends up being.

[Miasma]

It also depends on how tough non-heroic Firelands is. If Activision have any sense, it comes pre-nerfed with Heroic mode kept at 'smash gonads with meat-tenderiser' difficulty.

With only seven bosses to pass the time with I have to assume they are going to be made absurdly difficult so that they will last.

[El Gallo]

It also depends on how tough non-heroic Firelands is. If Activision have any sense, it comes pre-nerfed with Heroic mode kept at 'smash gonads with meat-tenderiser' difficulty.

With only seven bosses to pass the time with I have to assume they are going to be made absurdly difficult so that they will last.

Trial of the Crusader was arguably the easiest raid tier (sans nax 2.0) and only had 5 bosses.  They can make the regular modes easy, maybe a little harder on the 5th boss.  Just make the first couple hard mode bosses hard but not ball-bustingly so, and the non-terrible casual raid guilds can spend time wiping to that after they clear the regulars.  Maybe.   

[Lakov_Sanite]

Trial came out when many weren't even done with ulduar and also had 20 bosses effectively, when you consider 10 and 25 regular and hard. I also seem to remember getting sick of that place very, very fast compared to other raids.

[Malakili]

This isn't really relevant but I didn't know where else to post it:



Note, I'm not making commentary on the nerf to the raids, I actually didn't even read those posts until after I posted this original, just came across this image and thought it was funny.  Unintentionally slightly topical.

[Merusk]

Ack.. they're removing the keyring. I'll have to find spots for all my blacksmith keys once more. Damnit.

[Sjofn]

Ack.. they're removing the keyring. I'll have to find spots for all my blacksmith keys once more. Damnit.

wtf, why would they do that?

[Merusk]

Because adding new storage space is hard.  They have to carve out all those bits and bytes by hand, you know.

In today’s Azeroth, keys don’t really serve much of a purpose except to take up physical storage space from the game (which could be used for other awesome stuff), and visual interface space on yours. Because of this, we’ve decided to get rid of the Keyring in order to free up some user interface space for exciting new features. This change could also potentially allow us to play around with the amount of default storage space you’re allotted down the road. So, what does this mean for you and the keys you might not have looked at in the last couple expansions or so?

[Selby]

Great.  A bag in the bank dedicated to the 10 keys my main has accumulated over the years once again.  And the whole "shit I forgot the key, brb" moment...  Unless they are going to not make them take up any physical space at all yet still have them...

[Ingmar]

I think there are going to be like 5 keys left total that they're not just deleting, but yeah, still kind of annoying.

[Setanta]

Did I read the patch notes correctly? Elemental shaman get a slow from thunderstorm for PvP AND a glyph to allow the casting of lightning bolt on the move???

Since when did shaman get positives? I though Blizzard policy was to nerf shammies each patch as they had the potential to be broken, obscene dps.

^^^ is irony btw - I think that the last real time I thought my shammy was broken was in vanilla and I was smashing clothies with Hand of Ragnaros :D

God I miss those days.


In other news, Fire Nova is still shit and Earthquake is still a top of the tree bad joke.

[Shrike]

Fire nova blows syphilitic goats. With plywood dentures. On fire.

Just tonight I was dragooned into using that abomination on heroic Halfus on the whelps. God, I hate that spell. It was a huge relief when the RL decided that wasn't such a good idea and maybe interrupts on the big guy might be a better option. Life suddenly got a lot better. God, I hate that spell.

[Fabricated]

Good for Blizzard in regards to the nerfs, but I wonder if they realize that the "Casuals" who are playing catchup will get geared for T12 pretty quickly (they HAVE been killing stuff, just usually...well, half or less of the content) and then be stymied by their shitty "normal=hard, heroic=superhard" design philosophy again. Hello: you need to keep your players engaged for as long as possible, you have learned painfully that brickwalls/cockblocks do not accomplish that goal.

[Merusk]

I think there are going to be like 5 keys left total that they're not just deleting, but yeah, still kind of annoying.

Yeah, and they're not big deal keys.  I can't get at the list here at work, but it was the Jump-o-tron key, all the BRD keys and a few others.  The dungeon keys were going away or being set as a flag or something.  I'm honestly more annoyed I'll have to have bank/ bag space for the Blacksmithing keys.

[Simond]

 Interweb-famous e-blogtivisterati  TotalBiscuit is throwing his toys out of the pram and sulking because of the normal mode T11 raiding nerfs.

And nothing of value was lost.

[Malakili]

Interweb-famous e-blogtivisterati  TotalBiscuit is throwing his toys out of the pram and sulking because of the normal mode T11 raiding nerfs.

And nothing of value was lost.

I quite like TB myself, though I didn't regularly watch the Azeroth Daily. 

[K9]

Interweb-famous e-blogtivisterati  TotalBiscuit is throwing his toys out of the pram and sulking because of the normal mode T11 raiding nerfs.

And nothing of value was lost.

I think that is a bit of an overstatement, his case sounds like a lot of other people's in that there is a combination of burnout from six years of playing the same game, and frustration with the set-bar-too-high then nerf-bar-too-low approach of gamemaking Blizzard has at the moment. While raids have been nerfed as course in the past, generally they were also soft-nerfed by the addition of more powerful gear. Now the gear is gated and the content difficulty is all over the place.

But then I'm with him, I had my most fun through TBC, and up to Ulduar, after that things generally went downhill.

[Xanthippe]

I'm not going back unless I see a change in attitude by Blizzard.  None of the changes I see indicate this has happened.

Is developer hubris an inevitable result of a successful mmo?

[Minvaren]

Ack.. they're removing the keyring. I'll have to find spots for all my blacksmith keys once more. Damnit.

Wonder what they'll remove next in their efforts to "streamline" the game?   

And yeah, my main had about 12 stacks of these in the keyring...

[Paelos]

Forgive me if I don't have 25 minutes to listen to geek rambling, but is he just bitching because they are making content easier, or is he bitching because they don't know wtf they are doing with difficulty?

[Xanthippe]

He's bitching because Blizzard's attitude seems to be that if a player can't do the content as is, stick around, they'll nerf it into the ground so that any monkey can.  It's not the nerf per se but the enormity of it, ensuring that players will never learn how to become better players.

But I only half-listened to half of it.

[Malakili]

Forgive me if I don't have 25 minutes to listen to geek rambling, but is he just bitching because they are making content easier, or is he bitching because they don't know wtf they are doing with difficulty?

More the second than the first.  He is fine with easy content, but he really hates when they make easy content at the expense of difficult content.  He mentions the optional hard modes (like Yogg Saron and Freya) as a good way of doing it, as well as having more options 10/25 man easy/heroic, etc as all being better.  He also complains about the content being nerfed for the lowest common denominator.

Also what Xanithippe said.

[Rendakor]

Xanthippe, it's rare that players actually get better at the game once they've been playing for a while. Sure, they might learn the fights better or get used to a new rotation, but we all have those guildies who just don't watch out for the fire, don't interrupt, etc. I've been raiding with a few of them since WotLK; if they were going to get better, it would have happened by now. Nerfs like this and the ICC buff help us finish content, without me having to kick/bench RL friends because they are poor raiders.

[Xanthippe]

Xanthippe, it's rare that players actually get better at the game once they've been playing for a while. Sure, they might learn the fights better or get used to a new rotation, but we all have those guildies who just don't watch out for the fire, don't interrupt, etc. I've been raiding with a few of them since WotLK; if they were going to get better, it would have happened by now. Nerfs like this and the ICC buff help us finish content, without me having to kick/bench RL friends because they are poor raiders.

Oh, I agree.  The issues that TotalBiscuit has with Blizzard are not my issues.  I don't really care about what he is upset about.

[Paelos]

I agree with him in principle that there should be more options on how to set difficulty for your group. The idea that one set of content having one level of difficulty that is impossible to scale up or down is stupid.

I disagree completely on the idea that having content that's more difficult somehow makes people learn. It's been six fucking years. You can cram that "but I want people to get better!!!" mentality up your ass at this point. You really don't. That's a veiled way of saying that you don't want content to get nerfed because you like being king of the dorks. It sounds all nice and good, but the quasi-hardcore are the ones espousing that nonsense, and they do it because they know they can't be the best, but they want to make damn sure they aren't lumped in with the scrubs.

Example: I picked the top threads crying about the nerfs just now and did a look at who was complaining. What did I find? 20 people vehemently disagreed with the idea that the nerfs were a bad idea. Those ran the specrum from people that didn't raid to people that were 12/12 with a few heroic kills.

10 people agreed that the nerfs sucked and were making things ridiculous. Seven of those ten were 11/12 and missing NEF, or 12/12 with a Halfus heroic kill.

[Malakili]

It sounds all nice and good, but the quasi-hardcore are the ones espousing that nonsense, and they do it because they know they can't be the best, but they want to make damn sure they aren't lumped in with the scrubs.

I get the idea that this is right.  I think there are a lot of people who fancy themselves as above the masses of WoW players, but aren't actually cutting edge.  This seems to be the only group that has anything riding on this.  The "actual" hardcore people are just going to do their best to smash whatever content is cutting edge at the time and aren't really going to care about nerf batting content they killed months ago.  They have no ego riding on this (the nerfed) content being difficult at all.

My gut reaction is that I like raid content to be difficult rather than easy IF they choice is one or the other (more difficulty options is better yet).  But I haven't raided in years, all that is left in me is the remnants of someone who raided in TBC and liked learning stuff like pre-nerf Gruul.  I think my experience would've been cheapened learning the encounter post-nerf.  However, I'm not stupid enough to think that because my experience would've been cheapened that others would feel the same, which is why I support multiple difficultly levels.

[Rendakor]

I agree with him in principle that there should be more options on how to set difficulty for your group. The idea that one set of content having one level of difficulty that is impossible to scale up or down is stupid.

There are 3 difficulties for each raid fight now: Normal, Normal with Achievement (example), and Heroic; you could even do Heroic w/Achievement if you were so inclined. How many more options do we need? Did anyone actually turn off the ICC 30% buff?