Will the nerf change the progression order for Heroic 10mans?

[Orlanth]

Just as the topic says - "Will the nerf change the progression order for Heroic 10mans?"

We are currently at 2/7 with Shannox and Ryolith down. We've pushed Majordomo to sub 20% and not really tried Baleroc, Alysrazor or Beth'ilac yet. Should we stick to our planned progress of Majordomo, Alysrazor, Baleroc, Beth'ilac or will the announced nerf shift the difficulty order?

[swelt]

I think it's entirely possible that it will, but that we really need to see the full details of the nerfs before speculating too much. The blue post said "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." They haven't explicitly stated that the full nerfs will be applied, all in one go, and to all difficulties from next week. That might happen, or it might be staged over 'the coming weeks'.

The way I understand it, the conventional wisdom for progression goes roughly like this:

Easy: Shannox
Next: Rhyolith / Staghelm / Alysrazor
Then: Beth'tilac / Baleroc
Proper hard: Ragnaros

Obviously it's very difficult to give absolute X > Y and you can argue whether individual bosses are plus or minus one, different raid groups have different strengths etc. 25 man is a bit different, with Beth'tilac being slightly harder in 10 man due to the way the encounter stretches your raid comp.

I'm going to guess that Beth'tilac will become a lot more accessible. It doesn't seem right that one of the first bosses you do in the normal mode, and one which doesn't reward tier pieces, has ended up at the tougher end of the scale. Also the nature of fight is very much that of a dps race - if you can keep up with the pace of the add spawns in phase 1, if you can beat the soft enrage in phase 2. Alysrazor might be similar for the same reasons, although I suspect that any group that can't avoid fire will continue to struggle with it.

Edit: note though, that I'm in a similar position to you progression wise, so I really am just speculating.

[Rudolpho]

If they decrease the health and dmg output of the bosses, domo will become more of a joke, and baleroc will no longer be difficult at all.

Edit:

Actually, if they put in a 20% health nerf for domo, I would say he is easier than Shannox at that point.

[klausi]

If they decrease the health and dmg output of the bosses, domo will become more of a joke, and baleroc will no longer be difficult at all.

I'm not quite sure with that, there are still mechanics to handle: Imagine they'll bring back the ICC buff and increase outgoing damage, damage reduced and healing done by 5% per week or every second one.

10m-PoV

Shannox: if you don't reset Rageface stacks he'll still oneshot you after x frenzy. If you don't reset Jagged Tear on your tanks it will likely kill you around 10ish stacks.

Rhyolith: 5% less damage taken versus Stomp + Magma Flow + Volcano stacks won't make or break the deal, if you stay in the fire you're dead. More damage might help on the control part, it feels wonky on one week and perfectly on another with the same lineup..

Alysrazor: this is just an execution fight, if you stay in worm's spew or tornados you're dead, simply as that. Unless they'd reduce damage taken in half i can't see how this is changing. They could increase the time between two fieroblasts or greatly increase it's casttime so you can always handle it with one interrupt without any backups. More damage = less time overall on that fight, we actually push him with only one flyer in two sets.

Baleroc: unless they change how Decimation blade work and you don't handle your stacks and shards properly you're still dead meat. Less damage taken will help your tank but it's not like tank damage in general was an issue, it's double/tripple hits decimation blade and healing buff running out during a burst window of unavoided attacks. If they want to change anything they could exclude healers from getting countdown. One or even both healers with that -50% healing debuff during a tripple hit decimation blade is rough..

Beth'tilac: you'll still have to handle spiderlings, taunt spinners and avoid getting bombed to hell from broodlings. But 5% more of everything will help getting this done and will greatly help on phase 2. It's one of those fights that gets considerable easier with more gear.

Staghelm: you can already cheese him getting zero slashes at all, i really hoped they'd hotfix that somehow.. It's not a hard fight per se, nothing new to learn and a x% buff won't hurt.

Ragnaros: we had to adjust our timings greatly after his 15% hitpoints nerf and with another damage buff you should be able to get into phase 4 more consistently with one meteor, making things easier by far. But nontheless it's still a very, very hard fight with a long learning curve. Unless they're going to change the seedlings (stun- & knockbackable) i can't see many guilds progress far beyond that point. Any 10+ minutes fight is far beyond good, the attention span will drop at one point or another and you die.

For the future (tier 13 and beyond): they could (should?) just bring a rising buff with every new id, increasing everything (healing, damage, own hitpoints, reduce damage taken) by 1%. That's no HUGE jump at the start and over a three month period that's still a +12% buff and even that's not sufficient they could increase it after 10 weeks to 5% jumps up to 20-30%?!.

[Orlanth]

a rising buff with every new id, increasing everything (healing, damage, own hitpoints, reduce damage taken) by 1%.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Perhaps add a period of grace of the four first ids, but after that a steady change that is clearly communicated and understood. That way raids will be less of headbutting brickwalls, knowing that each week will be easier than the week prior.

One part of me want to couple the pace of the "nerf" to say daily quests of some sort, though that will likely cause an uproar on low-pop servers.

[severyn71]

I agree with the rising buff as it will not immediately trivialize the content and give those who need just that slight edge to get past their slump! Even if the did exactly like ICC of 5% w/ it rising 5% biweekly stopping at 20%, or even spread it our further so that the 20% is at or just after the release of 4.3!

Great Idea though!

[Esarael]

I guess nerfs especially to HP of boss/adds will make some "DPS race" fights considerably easier. Majordomo is already fairly easy, but with this comment I'm looking specifically at Baleroc and Beth'tilac. Perhaps even Rhyolith, although the coordination component of driving him throughout P1, I predict, will still be a major part of the encounter.

Shannox will continue being easy, but Alysrazor was never really about DPS (well, unless your tanks are having real difficulties with their Hatchlings), it's about execution and dodging stuff.

Depending on the magnitude of nerfs I'm thinking Baleroc and Majordomo might end up coming before Rhyolith, but at this point those are all guesses, honestly.

[arctus]

You already get with every gear upgrade maybe 1% stronger. So what you ask with the rising buff, is already implemented.

All Bosses (beside Shannox) were quite difficult in the first weaks, without proper gear.
And now you already kill Baleroc in 5 Min and say Majordomo is easy! Gear is a really strong boss nerf!

[swelt]

Reminder: the point of this thread is not to discuss whether or not the nerfs are justified or over the top - there are enough of those threads. The question is what progression order a guild that hasn't done heroic modes in T12 yet should consider.

The dust has settled, people have had an opportunity to try it. Those who had already killed the bosses no doubt found them to be massively easier. Coming at this from an alt raid that was 1/7 (fairly close on killing staghelm pre-nerf), we went 5/7 without too much stress (we didn't even try heroic baleroc which might have been a mistake in hindsight). Even with my initial caveats, I think it's fair enough to say that many of these fights which were once hard are now much more accessible. I felt that Alysrazor got the biggest changes (although I hear Baleroc is also fairly significantly easier than he used to be). The birds die so quickly that tanks really don't need to risk leaving them without satiated for long, if at all, and avoiding the various fires is a lot easier. In my previous post, I had a number of different tiers of difficulty. I'd revise that list to look something more like this:

Entry: Shannox / Alysrazor / Staghelm
Next: Beth'tilac / Rhyolith / Baleroc
Finally: Ragnaros

A lot will depend on the strengths (and weaknesses) of your group. If a group has only just made it into heroic modes, then they are by definition a little way behind the curve. If you know you have poor communication/coordination then fights like Baleroc, Shannox and Staghelm might not be good first choices. If your tanks are not very skilled, Alysrazor might be harder. Beth'tilac will be a lot easier if you have a good player or two of an appropriate class that can handle the spiderlings/broodlings. I've stuck Rhyolith in the 2nd tier, not because he's hard but just because he's annoying to learn and without the best rewards.

[Orlanth]

Entry: Shannox / Alysrazor / Staghelm
Next: Beth'tilac / Rhyolith / Baleroc
Finally: Ragnaros

Thanks! This meshes fairly well with my own experience too.

[Esarael]

Baleroc is a lot accessible now and I don't really see it as a fight that needs a whole lot of coordination. Where you needed to run 2 healers and 1 tank pre-nerf, you can now comfortably run 3 healers and 1 tank which makes the whole fight a lot less prone to badly handled RNG.

Even though he fell, my group has had some trouble with Rhyolith and I'm eager to try out other HMs, but we've been kinda short on time... Staghelm does appear to be easy and most people who have tried him appear to think so too. It's just a shame that in order to try him you need to kill all others.

All in all though, I must say I agree with swelt that the order now is highly dependent on your groups strengths and weaknesses.

[Bigbad]

Alysrazor hc is kinda a joke now, we still had a bit of problems with baleroc people spreading tormented around but the dps requirements for baleroc aren't hard anymore.

[Tipton]

Any tips for 25man HC progression?

We got Shannox on the first try. Rhy seems a bit trickier, only saw Ph2 once, but with a few ppl dead.

I'm tempted to focus on Alys next raid, then Majordomo before reset (Which seems to match with Swelt's 10 man kill order).

[severyn71]

You already get with every gear upgrade maybe 1% stronger. So what you ask with the rising buff, is already implemented.

All Bosses (beside Shannox) were quite difficult in the first weaks, without proper gear.
And now you already kill Baleroc in 5 Min and say Majordomo is easy! Gear is a really strong boss nerf!

Yeah true in part but w/ every new tier, the bosses are designed around simulation of what the new teir of gear is expected to output on toons! The one problem w/ this is that if ppl aren't killing bosses they aren't getting gear from raid drops!, although they can get gear from VPs(Pre-T13)!, but the vendor gear really isn't very good aside from the tier pieces, which you can't get all of!

Basically the raid wide buffs are implemented to make up for bad players lack of ability,commonsense, and reaction time!