v3.3.2
Nothing constructive to read sorry. Not much makes me want to swear on my blog, but this is it.
Fuck off with the ICC nerfs already!!
We’re in a great place with 35+ raiders enjoying their raiding. We’ve just downed Prof Putricide and VD in 25 man and started on Blood Queen. 10 man we’ve just started on the Lich King. People are excited and we have huge raid turn outs.
Next progression kill the second thing on everyone’s minds (after yay we did it), will be along the lines of, “did we push ourselves enough to do it, or did they just nerf it down to our level?”
Only one horde guild on our server has started on hard modes and they are nerfing already? Sad day 😦
Gobble gobble
PS Yes I know some people will be rejoicing. Sorry, but i’m not one.
PPS Yes this might make me sound like an elitist prick, well so be it.
PPPS What do you mean Blizzard don’t manage this game just for me? 😉
BobTurkey's blog 
@bob: Right click the buff off. You can still do it in elitist mode. Don’t piss on other’s parade 🙂
For our 10 man, where we’re stuck on Putricide (movement issues) we’re going to use the buff to get TO putricide a little faster, then click it off to get him down properly. It’ll sure be nice to do him properly, and maybe get an extra attempt in due to saved time.
I think this is a fantastic way to do nerfs. I would even be ok if you can only earn achievements if everyone in the raid does not have the nerf.
I think it’s great, too.
It lets the more casual guilds (or guilds that don’t raid as many hours) speed things up. And, eventually (gradually) it will allow the lesser-geared, casual, or perhaps, yes, the less-skilled players to see Arthas. That’s what Blizzard wants – for everyone to see all of the encounters, at least in their normal modes.
This way allows them to do it, gradually, and without cheapening the experience for serious raiders, who have the option of removing the buff to do things “properly”, so they aren’t robbed of the feeling of doing it “pre-nerf”.
You can keep the bosses at their current difficulty level if you want to – or you can utilise the buff to help you get through it a bit faster or more easily.
Use it or don’t use it – it’s only a nerf to the instance if you choose to keep it on. That’s the beauty.
Bob, I’ll be a raiding snob with you. I freaking detest that they’ve nerfed ICC already. They should have given it at least another two weeks, IMO. Yes, you can click it off, but as a good friend of mine likes to say “another victory for the casuals!” (I’m not really that upset and won’t be until tomorrow, when I get to find out if my raiding group is opting in to make the farm content of ICC easier or not…)
Have to agree. This is a good idea, but too soon. If you’re stuck at Putricide, you’re stuck at Putricide, it’s not the end of the world. You don’t NEED a buff yet, you’re not that far behind.
Asking a min-maxing progression raider to voluntarily ignore a 5% across the board increase is stretching it. We value our raid time too, and it’s not very fun to wipe when you know you could down the boss with one click.
[…] main concern is that this buff came out way too soon. I agree with BobTurkey. The later bosses in ICC are still very challenging on normal mode for many guilds out there. […]
Optional [op-shuh-nl]
–adjective
1.
left to one’s choice; not required or mandatory: This ICC zone buff is optional.
2.
leaving something to choice.
Nerfed difficulty should be rewarded with nerfed loot and no achievments 🙂
I do see your point, I really do … HOWEVER I think ICC has some steep demands for some casual raids, and actually getting to the same point every week and then getting stuck is extremely demoralising (especially when it’s as punishing as a mandatory 7k DPS on Festergut for 25 man.) I also think that, even though it’s optional, it might put some raiders in a difficult position – I mean, it’s hard to ignore a benefit, right?
As a final point, though, just because other people are being given the opportunity to take a crack at what you’re doing: it doesn’t undervalue either your achievement or yours.
It’s the final raid of the expansion… This is the black temple / sunwell of wrath… Of course it’s supposed to be hard. Half the problem with this entire expansion is everything has been easy. Easy normal 5 man instances, easy heroic 5 mans, easy entry level raids (naxx), ToC normal. Nothing has any feeling of worth or accomplishment anymore. Ulduar was fantastic but blizzard killed it with Trial of Crap.. umm i mean Crusader and free gear from heroic badges. Why does everyone seem to want things to take 10 – 15 minutes to do… what the hell are you going to do for the next 6 – 8 months if you kill a nerfed lich king tomorrow? this is it…. this is all there is besides possibly another 1 boss loot pinata. Enjoy and savour it for gods sake and stop wishing away all of the very very limited content we have left.
I’ve been reading your blog for some time now, and I love it. I’m trying to subscribe, but I can’t find the option for it on your site. Is it me that just can’t find the button, or is this something you intend on implementing?
The buff trivializes some of the content but is not strong enough YET to negate some of the mechanics requiring movement and target switching.
I don’t think you will be able to get Arthas’s mount without disabling the zone wide buff by talking to the npc at the start. (Yes your raid can turn the buff off for the rest of the lockout at the beginning of the instance). I was less than excited about the buff because it basically will make our players complacent and sloppy. Then when we hot those hard fights people don’t know how to tighten up their play to succeed.
Elitist..yes a little. I do think this is a better option to nerf the hard content than simply nerfing fights alltogether on a case by case basis.
But epics don’t mean what they used to.
do not complain about this buff plz. everybody will have his own oppionion about this 😉
but far more interessting is the t10 4piece boni change on the PTR
•Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%
[…] The reaction on the blogosphere has been more cautious. Miss Medicina feels this is a pity buff; Bobturkey feels that it’s too early, and wonders if this will make people wonder if their future […]
I admit that I’m disappointed by having the buff/nerf implemented this soon. I was hoping it would be at least another month off instead of just one month after the Lich King encounter was available. This is the last “true” raid of the expansion and it’s not like we’re going to be getting Cataclysm before late fall/winter. What does implementing the buff/nerf now do other than make more people bored and burnt out while waiting for Cataclysm for the next 6-8 months.
Yes it’s optional and the raid can choose to click it off or disable it, but convincing your raid to do so is the hard part. Also, as has been constantly rammed down my throat, even if you disable the buff, all kills after March 2nd (or 3rd for Europeans) will be assumed to have been achieved with the buff/nerf so you might as well be guilty of using it.
I have to say I am in total agreement with you. I was VERY dissapointed when the Nerf (Buff?) came out this past Tuesday. We decided to use the buff none the less on our Prof Putricide attempts so we could focus on learning the different parts of the fight mechanics without worrying as much about DPS output. We’re putting a vote tonight whether we take it off for when we think we have the mechanics as a raid group down pat. I’m hoping my guildies will vote for removing the buff. We shall see hehe.
2 weeks more without the buff would have been sufficient for us as a guild to accept. This week is a hard pill to swallow.
@Bob yeah we were disappointed that we did not have the time to down lich king on 10 before the nerf but I still wouldn’t call it easy with 5%buff.
@Garalor (and everyone)
woah did you see that about the T10? I agree, way more interesting that the zone buff…as Disc I completely skipped the T10 and the change isn’t that great but it is tempting.
My initial reaction was also disappointment, but I’m past that. I’ve moved on because this buff is really designed for guild’s like mine. No, I’m not in a cutting edge guild. I understand the cutting edge or even those just behind have their playstyle and this is insulting to that, but I’ve got my playstyle to. Mine is just as valid as yours.
This buff is exactly what we needed. We downed Rotface and the Princes in 25 a month ago and haven’t really progressed since. Raiding has been depressing with less people showing up. This tiny 5% buff was just enough to push us over the edge and get Festergut down last night. We were excited, we had fun and yes, it was still hard. We still almost hit the enrage timer anyway. Yeah, we’re not hardcore. We don’t care. We just want to have a good time and yes, it’s still a challenge for us.
If you REALLY want to do it “pure,” go right ahead. It just takes a moment of talking to the right NPC and you’ll be buff-less.
Raid snobbing, I like it Codi.
Thanks for the comments all.
@Shot – the optional thing is interesting. If you’ve done the nerfed fights once, how likely is it you’ll go back and do them again unnerfed?
@Tam (and others) – personally I think the achievemnts and the Kingslayer title are pretty much valueless now. I mean who is going to carry their Kingslayer title around with pride post-Cataclysm when most people know that with a 40% ICC buff (i’m pulling numbers out of the air) you can just brute force most of the balance mechanics in the instance. Will the title just mean, “I was not dumb enough to fall off Arthas platform?”
A counter argument to this is (yes i’m arguing with myself) that fights like Algalon and Yogg+1 are still challenging even with T10 gear.
Although a counter counter argument would be at least these fights were really hard when they were the current tier…
@Kel – click the orange RSS symbol in the address bar (Mozilla) or on your tool bar (IE). Sorry i’m not sure for other browsers.
@Arrellian – “Yes your raid can turn the buff off for the rest of the lockout at the beginning of the instance” I didn’t know this. Last night my raid turned it off for the first wing, but it magically turned its self back on somewhere along the line.
@Garalor – I’ll complain if I like, its my opinion (or was when I wrote my knee jerk reaction post). Thanks for the heads up on the T10 priest gear BTW.
Gobble gobble.
“Although a counter counter argument would be at least these fights were really hard when they were the current tier…”
Bob, you said it all right there, really. How is getting the growing over time buff any different than doing obsolete content in gear 2-3 tiers higher than the encounter was designed for?
Getting One Light now, with 264 available….
Getting Starcaller when you’re in 264 gear. I personally don’t see much difference. It all comes from what you personally derive pleasure from and what you see as an accomplishment.
Also consider this. All the BC bosses got a 30% HP nerf at the end of the BC cycle, and yet many people never got the achievements for tier 5 or tier 6 completion.
People in 232+ still wipe on Illidan.
Kingslayer as a title will not be as ubiquitous as a tier 9 set. More than 2% of the population will have it, but I doubt it will be so many as to make you feel like you twiddled your thumbs.
Oh and for the record, the zone buff caps at 30%, not 40%.
I can’t really complain about this buff. While I’m in a guild that downed LK before this, and we’re currently on hardmodes, I believe that everyone should have a chance to see the demise of the Lich King if they want. I don’t think the LK fight will be easy, even at the 30% buff maximum, as it will still require communication and coordination, but it helps to level the playing field.
I also think that Kingslayer won’t be quite as common as some think it will. The top guilds will still get their special title The Light of Dawn.
@BobTurkey: Are Algalon and YS1/YS0 still challenging? When my guild did those we were in a mix of T8 and T9, and it certainly was difficult. We did go back and kill Algalon while working on ToGC, and it was pretty simple. Our YS0 kill was also during our ToGC days, so we were in T9.25, and while it was challenging then, I imagine it would be made a lot easier by T10.25. However, this is coming from the mindset of a guild who has already done it, and knows how to do it.
[…] ICC nerfed! v3.3.2 Nothing constructive to read sorry. Not much makes me want to swear on my blog, but this is it. Fuck off with […] […]
I do agree with most of the above however as far as the 5% is concerned it doesnt make it that much easier. In fairness its fine for you guys who live up the backside of the server with 0 – 100 latency but try living overseas and downing bosses with latencies between 400 and 700. Your overall dps is already down 20%. These nerfs just make it a little easier for these players so stop crying about something which you already have an advantage with. Simple, turn it off.
Way way too soon… we have about 6+ months give or take (this is a very loose assumption based on some articles) till Cat rolls out, and it sounds like we will have one more instance (short?) in between then and now. Really why make it easier so soon, wiping as much as it can suck is a good thing, it makes your raiders work on skills/gear/etc that are required for that encounter before they can just bash through it. They will probably need that skill(s)/gear/etc for later encounters in the instance, so having to work on it over and over again will (in most cases) make you better at it.
Blizz don’t give out the gimmie hand outs yet, yes its optional but it almost feels like it makes some of your purples costume jewellery wait a bit before you start them. I agree to a point to make them available later on down the road, but so soon? Really?! It feels like we just got into the meat of it and they are passing us desert while we are still noming on the steak.
Our guild, struggling for 7 weeks due to personnel issues, swapped a tank/dps and with the buff, the dreaded buff, we got Putricide, Blood Council and Blood Queen down for the first time in 4 hours.
The buff only really helped on Blood Queen, as that was the first time we’d seen her, the other two were simply movement issues and nobody was really ever near dying, with over 3 mins left on enrage timers.
So this is great because we finally get to move on, and we can drop the buff in the future to do it “the right way” I don’t find this any different than a 25 man raid doing 10 man stuff in better gear than we get as a primarily 10 man guild (with a few 25 man items in the entire group)
I think really the problem is, all you people think the content is “easy.”
BC content was “hard” in the people that got through all the content were the absolute top guilds. The average player saw a small amount of the content.
Wrath content is “easy” in that more people can do it. YOU can (and will, and do) still wipe, even if you’re elitist, skilled, geared, capable and coordinated guild, for example. That means you should STFU, click off the buff, and get on with your lives. When MY guild manages to get 10 people online and gets Saurfang after the 7th wipe with a 5% buff, I feel good about not wiping 10 times and calling it.. We were challenged, and succeeded.
Now, if you guys really are hardcore and you want your raiding to be hard/difficult/nigh impossible, just put your i200 gear back on and stop bitching.