The Weekly Marmot - Ragnaros and the Rest of Us

[Norfolk]

We are a 10 man guild with 6/7 pre-nerf heroic Firelands. As I am writing this we have just wiped on HC Rag exactly 245 times. It is seriously squishing our balls and ovaries. The fight is mind-bogglingly punishing for ANY mistake. And I do agree with the thought that the difficulty curve is off in Firelands. However I also think that HC Rag fight is currently at the proper difficulty level.

Our team has always aimed for clearing the content at our own pace while it was still "current". We are definitely not seriously aiming for server firsts but we consider ourselves fairly skilled and were able to land a realm first sinestra. It is also disheartening to sit out people for the fight because we cannot afford melee or a specific class. Our team is pretty far from generally accepted "optimal" and we do prefer the player > class. But HC Ragnaros changed this. We have to sit out certain players because of their class of choice due to the classes not bringing enough synergy to the fight. Individually they are exceptional players, but certain combinations just don't cut it. Luckily we are able to at least rotate our players a bit so no player has been completely left out on our progression on the said fight. But this results in a certain player dependancy. We cannot rotate almost any of our ranged dps classes. And they are starting to feel like they have a second job of having to participate and not have a rotation week.

The biggest problem I see in the fight itself is the actual length. Sure it may seem like an epic thing to fight for 15mins but when the first three phases takes 10mins to waddle through to finally get to p4 just to have your raid die instantly to a magma geyser (Yes we are aware of the mechanic) it feels disappointing.

We are getting more constantly now to p4 and we finally managed to actually group up on the Breadth of Frost for the first time ever without having it instantly disappear in a fiery blast and it felt promising. This made us feel that there is progression happening and not just random stuff killing off players. Sure someone screws up every now and then, taking a lavawave, failing the dance, letting a son get to the hammer, getting trapped by a meteor and getting it punted to his/her face, but it happens less constantly.

There are only TWO things I would change in the fight slightly.

1) Molten seeds should be a visible cast on Ragnaros (small thing what with the boss mods and such, but it would give a better reason to look at the game and not addons)

2) Breadth of Frost. The spell effect is just horrible. The spell effect covers a "much" larger area than what the actual area is. I don't want to inch my way into it and looking at my buff/debuff bars to see if I am on it. While on my screen the blue flashy things have been licking my characters feet for a while but superheated keeps stacking. I'd rather see the BoF area increased by maybe 1-2yards max OR make the spell effect "sharper" on the edge.

HP and damage are fine.

We will kill it before 4.3 I am sure. But I don't think we will repeat the feat anytime soon. Probably work on the achivements after that.

I also want to congratulate everyone who killed it pre AND post nerfs. Good job and well played! I admire the skills and dedication those people have put into the encounter. Carry on!

[Maziel]

Me personally I think all Heroic Raid Bosses should be for the hardcore players (which isn't me). I don't think heroic raid bosses should be nerfed so that all players can experience it. Normal raid bosses, sure, nerf away so that all can eventually see the content and experience the end game. But leave the heroic raid bosses to for the hardcore guilds. I'm totally satisfied to not ever see a heroic boss and continue just doing normals. But that's just me. For me, if left this way both satisfies the casuals and the hardcore guys who likes bashing their heads against challenges.

That said, I do feel based on what I've heard and read, that maybe they did make the first six heroic bosses too easy and the final way too hard. So they probably should nerf the last heroic boss but NOT to the point that it is a breeze. Still make it challenging for those hardcore players who want the challenge.

And I know you hate the use of Hardcore and Casual, but hopefully you know what I mean.

[feralminded]

Wow this topic exploded fast, looks like Lore is talking about something good. I'll try and be concise for a change.

1. Nerfing heroic modes (besides Ragnaros) was a mistake. As it is right now ~30% of all raiders are 6/7HC. 30%!!!! That's not a "great achievement" as Leucifer points out ... it's almost par for the course. By 4.3 what ... 50% of raids will be 6/7HC? There's nothing heroic about it. Essentially the nerfs removed content progression from the majority of players and instead turned the game into "wipe on ragnaros 400 times to win".
2. Even without the nerfs there just wasn't enough content in firelands. In T11 ~8% of raids went at least 12/13HC by the end of the tier ... meaning the other 92% were working on something besides Sinestra even after 7 months of raiding. More than 8% of raids were 6/7HC in fireland before the nerfs and even without them we still were going to see at least 15-25% of all raids 6/7HC before dragonsoul which will be only 5 months after firelands. Not. Enough. Content. FFS.
3. Indeed the curve was all wrong, even pre-nerf. Post nerf it was just a flat line with a cliff. You have people who rightly should never be looking at the final heroic mode boss wondering why they can't kill it. The answer is: "Because you can't, you're just not good enough, get over it. If blizzard didn't screw up you wouldn't even be there ... but they did and now you have to stare face to face with a boss that is not designed for you." Yes that's harsh but blizzard themselves admits the skill disparity between the ultra elite an the average player is massive. Well at this point the average player can nearly go 6/7HC ... so it's no wonder they are falling apart on the only boss in the dungeon designed for the ultra elite.

[Pruke]

I think every HM encounter should have the same difficulty level. Obviously, you should need to use different tactics to defeat each encounter, I do not see a point in every encounter being "easier" or "harder" then the encounter before it. Some things maybe easier or harder for different people. I mean Shannox HM should be as hard as Ragnaros HM, but the tactics used in them are obviously going to be different based on encounter design.

As a personal note, I do not think any boss is hard, the tactic used is simple even for Ragnaros. A happens B is the proper response. AB happens CD is the proper response. What each person has to do is learn all the steps and do their specific job correctly.

[Lore]

@ Leucifer:

I'm pretty sure I said in this weekly marmot that I didn't think Rag needed another nerf. I said I was surprised that Blizzard hadn't nerfed him, but that that was more because the rest of the instance was so easy and not because he needed one.

The underlying point that I probably didn't make very clearly is that, if the rest of the instance had been more difficult, we would have been better prepared for Ragnaros. To speak directly to our situation: we're having DPS problems in phase 3. Our DPS has been able to take down the rest of the instance no problem. In fact, as I mentioned, we were 6/7H before the big wave of nerfs, and we were way ahead of DPS checks on the previous encounters then as well. But now that we're on Rag, our DPS is an issue. The numbers that were more than enough for the rest of the instance are not even close to enough on Rag. So, instead of our DPS core improving their capabilities over time as we progress through the instance, it's just suddenly "by the way, you're nowhere near good enough for this." That's not good design by any stretch of the imagination.

H-Rag is supposed to be the hardest fight in the game right now, for sure. It's supposed to be more difficult than the rest of the instance. But if we're just not capable of killing him -- if it's just so far out of our reach that our people will just never be able to put out the numbers to kill him -- we should, at best, be barely scraping by to clear the rest of the instance. Not farming it all in an hour on Tuesday.

If the progression is more natural, then we would have a) had a more tangible focus on getting better over time, and b) been able to replace the people who just can't perform long ago. Now we're looking at possibly having to replace upwards of 1/3 of our raid team, for just one boss.

It's just not good design.

[feralminded]

H-Rag is supposed to be the hardest fight in the game right now, for sure. It's supposed to be more difficult than the rest of the instance. But if we're just not capable of killing him -- if it's just so far out of our reach that our people will just never be able to put out the numbers to kill him -- we should, at best, be barely scraping by to clear the rest of the instance. Not farming it all in an hour on Tuesday.

Bingo. 'nuff said.

[Quintem]

Finally signed upto Tankspot as this was something I felt this was a topic I could give an opinion on. WARNING: Wall of text

I'm in what is a 10man "semi-hardcore" raiding guild. We're currently 4/7H. Last week we were 1/7H. That should tell you a little something. I think we spent maybe a week testing the water on Rhyolith but we felt we did not have the gear level so we thought the more technical but less RNG based fight of Alysrazor. We spent about one and half raid nights on Rhyolith another on Alysrazor. That was last week, I think week before that we took down Shannox in about 1 hour and 30 minutes. Most of us found the strat for heroic more strait forward than normal. This week we took Alysrazor down on Thursday, followed up by us going "lets try Rhyolith again". We took him down first go back on him after our run on Alysrazor. On monday we spent the entire raid night pretty much on Majordomo Staghelm. We've killed him as well now. 3 Heroic boss fights in one week. Sure we've been practicing on Alysrazor/Rhyolith.

Now I've explained whats happened with my guilds progression to what Lores been saying. Sure the bosses have been nerfed. For us thats a well whatever. We're undergeared anyway. Most of my guild have only just finished up almost complete normal Fireland gearset and a few have handful of heroic pieces (we lost out on a lot of progression on T11, many guild issues happened and we survived!) So our gear was mostly Normal T11. So whats my point here? We've taken about two and a half months on normal. Most of it was gear curve thing. We killed Ragnaros after his nerf but we had been doing well on him pre-nerf. We got into Heroic mode firelands and in I think about 3 weeks maybe 4 I would have to check, we've killed 4/7! So my long winded explaination is, Lore is probably right. If the heroic bosses were still 15% tougher what it might of taken is 15% longer to kill them? So what another few hours throw on top and a bit of pushing hard.

This leaves us with Beth'Tilac and Baleroc. So if we're going to do a week of farming to try bring our average gear level up to better attack these harder than last four bosses. Take another week of progress to kill those two. We're left with what 3-4 weeks tops of bashing our heads against Heroic Ragnaros? No where near as long as months, Months Behind has been at him.

I know 10man is slightly easier and there has been a blanket nerf. I'm all for hard fights but maybe Blizzard did get the curve leading upto and Ragnaros wrong. If its at the point where only less than 1% of Raiders actually get any enjoyment out of such a fight like Ragnaros then maybe, its just toned down slightly so very good to good players actually feel like their is a curve and not, as Lore saids, easy, easy....Hard as <insert anyword that suits you>.

To finish up, I guess some people might find raiding easier than others or learn faster, I know I'm quick to pick up and hardwire mechanics into my head. Maybe the best thing Months Behind could do is just skip doing Ragnaros on Heroic for a week, maybe returning to a boss with a less stressed heads and people could recover a bit from burn out. As I just finish this a final thought came.

"If there was 8 bosses and not 7 maybe some of that difficulty of Ragnaros could of been put into that other boss or maybe just the other 6 and what Blizzard ended up doing was treating Ragnaros' Leg Phase as half of another boss?"

And sorry for the great wall of text in my first post here.

[Harroth]

I didn't read all the other responses so someone may have said this already but I think the problem lies in a little bit of information you gave in the last PST. You mentioned that they design encounters to be cool and don't plan on how to do them, that they basically don't have a group of paragon's testing everything in-house. Based on that, they really don't know which mechanics are going to be the hardest to deal with and that leaves them really only one way to guarantee to make the fight harder....make it longer.

When you take the fact that Rag is such a long fight compared with other fights in FL (Alysrazor being the only comparable one but those phase just repeat, making it quicker to master) and combine it with tricky mechanics each second you have more of a chance for a screw up. I'd like to see more consistency in fight length, with the last fight being maybe 2-3 minutes longer. Looking at WorldofLogs, the average fight duration for the first 6 on 25H is 404.83 sec. The average Rag duration is 782 sec making it 93% longer than the average fight in FL. That has to make it incredibly hard to balance difficulty of mechanics when they don't know how your going to deal with them.

[ginzza]

I'm in a guild that cleared 7/7 on 25 hm. This boss just requires tons and tons of learning hours. On average I think it takes a guild about 500 wipes, so that times 10 mins average and u'll have about 83 hours of learning before a kill. Tbh, that's just to long and not fun. They should scale down the boss after a while and then everyone can claim that they killed the boss before some nerfs. Right now (9-11-2011) only 281 guilds killed the boss on 25 hm. That should be around 1000 by now just like with the LK who had about 1100 kills on 25 man.

Btw my trick on keeping the encounter fun is by constantly improving myself and listening to your story about p3, then you guys might need that too ^^. At first I did around 21k dps in p3 and now I can do around 30k dps. It's about impossible that you don't have the dps in p3. I would recommend making a post on your internal forum about how much dps everyone is doing in p3 (you can somehow link that from World Of Logs). It should give you a lot of insight. I can also recommend 3 tactics to prepare better for p3:
- Wait to push into the transition fase untill everyone has spread out to their positions.
- During the transition keep 1 Son of Flame up for as long as possible. Mark it so everyone knows u shouldn't kill it.
- Then use BL around the time your killing the 2 Lava Scion or just after you killed them.

Anyways, coming back to constantly improving myself. I'm still learning how to improving on when to pop cooldown, how to combine them with procs, etc. It makes the wipes a little less painfull, because at least u feel like u made some progress yourself

Last advise: U rly have to stop seeing p3 as a major obstical fast. p4 is a lot more complex and you still have tons of hours to go there and getting back to p4 is even more painfull then to p3. Either you find the challange again now or just call a break, because this boss kills guilds and make people stop raiding.

[Jazzan]

I can't speak to the difficulty on heroic, but I think the same applies on normal. Not in that it is impossible to kill normal Rag (since clearly many have done so), but that the rest of the bosses are so much easier in comparison. I only recently started raiding (as in 4 weeks ago recently) and I've gone 6/7 with my group. Out of 10, 8 of us had never set foot in FL before. And we've never wiped on Shannox and only once on Domo. I'm totally not saying this to brag or anything, because lets face it... after the nerfs, those two bosses are extremely easy, and it wouldn't surprise me if piles of people have never wiped on either of them!

So basically, I was going along, thinking that FL was easymode and I'd be sporting my Tier helm in two weeks. And then I got to Rag! Took me a bit by surprise how much more involved he is compared to the others. And rightly so, he is supposed to be the most difficult encounter. But speaking as someone completely new to raiding, I was also expecting a more linear increase in difficultly from boss to boss. Hence why I agree with Lore, in that the jump from the rest of bosses in FL to Rag is a big one. I can definitely also see why banging your head against a wall for months (and who knows, its certainly possible that will happen to me on normal) would suck. Especially when Blizz kind of sets you up to fail, so to speak. Easy, easy, then "Surprise!!!! Have a boss thats 10 times harder!" on Rag.

Of course, I've found the tuning in this whole xpac to be a bit odd... 6/7 in normal FL, yet if 5 of us run ZA we wipe on trash... lol or maybe thats just us not paying any attention to things.

[kymmico]

Wow. I find it amazing that you would hit on the exact topic my husband and I were discussing last week (when our raid week ended). He only managed a few attempts in - because we were running late that night - but he was he saying that it is ridiculous that Rag is so. much. harder than the other bosses in FL.

So, I guess I'm sayin; I don't think it's QQ when you're droppin truth bombs.

[Mohawkgrenade101]

I am in a 10M N guild, and here are my thoughts as I have seen them through videos and your own stream Lore:

I do not think that pacing is sub-par, nor do I believe Heroic Ragnaros is too hard. I haven't done heroic modes like all these other really interesting people, as of right now we beat Domo (or as we call him Mojojo) and our now going to go on progression with Ragnaros.

You are going through what happened to us with Nef. We were in T11 content when T12 came out. Sure we were behind, but the goal was from our GM that we wouldn't go into the next tier until we beat all T11 bosses. At that point in time she was in the process of moving so she couldn't get on much. We just kept wiping and wiping and wiping and wiping on P1...

Nothing was going right for us, we were in a stump if you will. Then we downed Cho'gall when our GM finally made it back. It was such an astounding accomplishment that the very next week we killed Nef. But during this entire summer (from May-September) We just kept making the same, stupid mistakes on P1 and rarely getting into P2. It looked like we would never down him, but we did! We had accomplished our goal through sheer determination. Through sheer struggle.

You as of this moment are in this stump. So don't fret too much over all the mistakes people like (insert Caisha :P) make, just realize that they too are in this stump with you. You will have terrible weeks that seem to go on and on, but then you have that one great week where you continuously keep making it to the last portion of the fight (Phase 4).

"Just keep on swimming"...

It isn't much, but you will get through it. Like I said earlier, it isn't because you and all those other guilds are stuck on H Rag because he's too tough, but because you are all in the same boat that will soon make it to the docks.

Happy Hunting

[Gregasaurous]

Okay, I like a few others posting here am not what you would call a "Super Hardcore Raider". My guild is 2/7H for some reasons that just aren't our fault and some that are. Replacing 2 healers and a tank is a messy business for a 10 man guild, I'll leave it at that.

Anyway, From what I've seen and heard, Lore's calculations about Rag being 10x harder than the rest of heroic mode bosses is easily correct. 1,000/10,000 nuff said. And yeah, Blizz screwed up quite a few things about 4.2. All and all it was a good patch, Firelands does have some very original fun-filled fight mechanics. But when they started nerfing things, they just started digging a hole for themselves. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been nerfed, I'm saying it should have been done differently. In my opinion a buff system similar to ICC would have probably worked better. For one thing it gave the 100% hardcore thrill seekers of WoW the option to just right-click the buff away (if i'm not mistaken). It also left room for future "nerfs" (not technically a "nerf" because you're getting a buff, nothing happens to the bosses). ANd if the even jsut wanted to do it for Rag, that would be ok. Also it would fit perfectly with what's already there. If I recall correctly from what I've read and the videos I've seen of the fight there are a few NPC's in there with you. How much sense would it make if they said: "Well hey there, we just happen to be really BA so we'll give you this nice buff to help you kill the evil Firelord!" Tell me I'm not the only one who thinks this would fit perfectly into the story line.

Anyway, that's how i think it should have gone down. Lore, needless to say I'm a fan of your work, good luck on that Firelord title.

[Nagassh]

Good God. To add to my earlier post, a few weeks back one of our main tanks confirmed that he wasn't going to be renewing his subscription for MoP. Today our other one has announced his subscription is canceled and he's got 2 weeks left due to not enjoying the game anymore, amusingly enough both eye of sulfuras and a binding dropped for him in one run the day he announces it. Considering they were both tanks, raid leaders and officers I can't help but think that the stress ragnaros has been putting on the guild has helped contribute to that in no small factor.

Thanks blizz.

We'd just went and killed heroic neferian on a fun run, something we'd missed doing last tier and never gotten around to going back for due to firelands, it was a fun, albeit easy run - but it really lifted everyone's spirits, I wish he'd been there for that.

I can only recommend the same thing to anyone who's got a guild that's growing tired of Ragnaros and has some old, but still engaging content (we cleared the rest on normal since it wasn't what we were going for, that was demoralizing seeing what the nerfs had done to the place). Neferian lifted the guilds spirit about as much as the first time we got all seeds down before they reached the raid, which caused the GM to have an explosion in his pants if TS is any indication.

[Leucifer]

This......

Wow this topic exploded fast, looks like Lore is talking about something good. I'll try and be concise for a change.

1. Nerfing heroic modes (besides Ragnaros) was a mistake. As it is right now ~30% of all raiders are 6/7HC. 30%!!!! That's not a "great achievement" as Leucifer points out ... it's almost par for the course. By 4.3 what ... 50% of raids will be 6/7HC? There's nothing heroic about it. Essentially the nerfs removed content progression from the majority of players and instead turned the game into "wipe on ragnaros 400 times to win".
2. Even without the nerfs there just wasn't enough content in firelands. In T11 ~8% of raids went at least 12/13HC by the end of the tier ... meaning the other 92% were working on something besides Sinestra even after 7 months of raiding. More than 8% of raids were 6/7HC in fireland before the nerfs and even without them we still were going to see at least 15-25% of all raids 6/7HC before dragonsoul which will be only 5 months after firelands. Not. Enough. Content. FFS.
3. Indeed the curve was all wrong, even pre-nerf. Post nerf it was just a flat line with a cliff. You have people who rightly should never be looking at the final heroic mode boss wondering why they can't kill it. The answer is: "Because you can't, you're just not good enough, get over it. If blizzard didn't screw up you wouldn't even be there ... but they did and now you have to stare face to face with a boss that is not designed for you." Yes that's harsh but blizzard themselves admits the skill disparity between the ultra elite an the average player is massive. Well at this point the average player can nearly go 6/7HC ... so it's no wonder they are falling apart on the only boss in the dungeon designed for the ultra elite.

Not even going to try to add/remove anything. All 3 points are spot on. Thank you Feralminded.

@ Leucifer:

I'm pretty sure I said in this weekly marmot that I didn't think Rag needed another nerf. I said I was surprised that Blizzard hadn't nerfed him, but that that was more because the rest of the instance was so easy and not because he needed one.

The underlying point that I probably didn't make very clearly is that, if the rest of the instance had been more difficult, we would have been better prepared for Ragnaros.

To speak directly to our situation: we're having DPS problems in phase 3. Our DPS has been able to take down the rest of the instance no problem. In fact, as I mentioned, we were 6/7H before the big wave of nerfs, and we were way ahead of DPS checks on the previous encounters then as well. But now that we're on Rag, our DPS is an issue. The numbers that were more than enough for the rest of the instance are not even close to enough on Rag. So, instead of our DPS core improving their capabilities over time as we progress through the instance, it's just suddenly "by the way, you're nowhere near good enough for this." That's not good design by any stretch of the imagination.

H-Rag is supposed to be the hardest fight in the game right now, for sure. It's supposed to be more difficult than the rest of the instance. But if we're just not capable of killing him -- if it's just so far out of our reach that our people will just never be able to put out the numbers to kill him -- we should, at best, be barely scraping by to clear the rest of the instance. Not farming it all in an hour on Tuesday.

If the progression is more natural, then we would have a) had a more tangible focus on getting better over time, and b) been able to replace the people who just can't perform long ago. Now we're looking at possibly having to replace upwards of 1/3 of our raid team, for just one boss.

It's just not good design.

If a person actually listened to the full Marmot, they'd catch that point. I did. I did agree with you. Heroic Firelands should have been more progressive. You can tell it wasn't simply by the distribution of guilds at 6/7H. 30%! 1/3 of all heroic teams have made it up to the final boss. Has this ever happened before? For that matter, SHOULD it ever happen? And again, not to be mean... but man... not everyone should be 6/7H (not that everyone actually is) and not everyone should be able to down H-Ragnaros. I DO understand your frustration. It's really misleading when you're able to pound through 6/7H and then..... BAM. You have now hit something that is not just another step harder.... but something that is like a wall compared to anything leading up to it.

Again... 6/7H before nerfs is pretty damn good. Can you admit that to yourself? Or have you lost perspective on how accomplished that is? You got to see Ragnaros as originally designed. Honestly, I'm totally freakin' envious of you. Anyone who paid attention realized that, Heroic Ragnaros, pre-nerf.... was wickedly difficult on an order that.... frankly I'm not sure there is anything prior to it that is comparable. Blizzard accepted that they screwed up and nerfed it. Again though.... we are talking top content, heroic mode final boss. There are people that have beaten it. Again, over a thousand guilds have pulled that off. We're not talking top 10 or even top 100. 1051 (I think that was the number someone relayed earlier in Shoutbox) guilds have done it. It is NOT impossible.

I'm not trying to be a jerk. Honestly. I've seen enough people mock the content though, remarking how easy it is when there still are people who have not completed 6/7H (remember.... 30% who are 6/7H still means that 70%, a much greater proportion still aren't), that for that 30% that is stuck at 6/7H.... I'm not inclined to feel much sympathy for them when they ridicule the remaining 70%.

Again, heroic mode.... super bonus round. Going up against the best players/teams in the world on an open, competitive field. I'm probably more unforgiving and cold-hearted in regards to this than Blizzard. Not clearing normal.... I can understand some heartache over that. Going into heroic.... a difficulty specifically intended to challenge the player.... that not everyone is supposed to be able to do.... and not being able to clear it all. Sorry. Just like how not everyone is cut out to be a Navy SEAL, and how not every NCAA Div I team is going to get a shot at the national championship, not everyone is meant to beat Heroic Ragnaros. It's done as a team. I really hope your team can pull it off, but again, you're in bonus round. You're competing at this point against the best out there in a fairly open field. Your guild has nothing to be ashamed of. I get being disappointed, but again... it is not impossible.

That said.... again, I wish you and your guild the best. I hope you guys get to come back here before the week is through saying you guys pulled it off.

And yes... I'll come forward right now... I'm not raiding heroic. You're very likely a much better player than I am at this point. I'd almost guarantee that. So.... Lore > Leucifer at the game of WoW. You win.

I also understand part of my problem is I'm in a guild that just doesn't raid anymore and I'm stuck pugging. I also know I have a few things to improve on in my gameplay (thank you Aggathon for the education, even if it was rough). No one is going to pick me up for their heroic raid team with my current resume. So be it. I chose this when I decided to try and keep one of the oldest guilds on my server alive and had GM-ship tossed in my lap. I chose my lot and am stuck with it until I chose something different. At the same time, you make a choice every time you run with Months Behind. If they aren't cutting it, you need to ask yourself what matters more to you: getting a heroic-Ragnaros kill, or sticking with the people you run with. That's in your hands man.

[Moweed]

I agree with you Lore and our progress is the perfect example.

We started our first firelands raid on 8th of august. We raid 2 evenings a week that's 8 hours a week. Last reset before the nerfs got in we had 3/7HC. In that last week we killed beth hc in less then 20 tries. Baleroc hc took less then 10 tries. And we FUCKING 1 SHOT domo hc. So we had 6/7 hc pre nerf. This week we finally killed rag hc after 178 wipes. We spend more time working on rag hc then on 7/7 normal and 6/7 hc combined. Not kewl at all.

Not saying rag should be nerfed but imo each hc bos should be a little harder then the previous and not the ridiculous shit I described above.

ps. sorry for my grammar, it's pretty late here in Holland and I smoked a couple

[Shaidar]

I'll just throw this into the RL guide for heroic rag when I do it this week.

http://www.youtube.com/user/shaidyad.../0/cyLjwNN3CUk

[Trahvolta]

"The first 6 were too easy." This is exactly right. Blizz needs to stop f#$king with hard modes.

[Trahvolta]

And Lore, you're kind of sounding like you are QQ'ing.

[Leucifer]

"The first 6 were too easy." This is exactly right. Blizz needs to stop f#$king with hard modes.

This. Mess with normal (until LFR) all you want. But for the competitive player, the hardcore raider..... don't screw with the material. Every time you adjust or tweak or do something to it, you change the bar by which these people measure themselves and their guilds/raid teams accordingly.

If there's one thing that I think should be taken away from this whole thing, it's that Blizzard needs to put some serious thought into the heroic mode raiding and establish what expectations are right out the gate. Tune it so that at the start, the stuff is maybe harder than expected so that if they need to soften it, they can do so in a very gradual manner.

But when they make some things too soft..... the ripple effect is NOT something you can undo easily, if at all.

Make heroic mode a true competitive setting and make it clear from the get-go that, not everyone is expected to clear it. Set the standard and fix it. Only adjust it when absolutely necessary.