The Weekly Marmot - The Casualization of Hardcore Raiding

[Aggathon]

You are assuming that all "hardcore raiders" do not want hard modes nerfed in a reasonable manner. I don't think that's the case, unless you are defining hardcore as people that don't want the nerfs. In that case, I would say you can't always get what you want. There are people that do heroics that don't want to be stuck on the same boss for months and do want appropriate nerfs. You can scream that it's not optional all you want, but it is optional. That's a fact.

Also, in Dragon Soul the nerfs aren't about letting everyone see the bosses. It's about not wanting players to get stuck. Without the nerfs, it's inevitable that many guilds will hit a wall at some point. Now you can say "just get better" but in reality that is not a reasonable answer for most guilds. A large portion of the player base is not going to be willing to wipe on the same boss for weeks and weeks. Someone will give up and quit, and then that is a huge setback for the rest of the players that don't want to quit.

And lore and I's argument is that the way to get around people hitting that wall is NOT to arbitrarily nerf the entire instance and also NOT to arbitrarily nerf the entire instance on an arbitrary time table that is not based off of whether or not people are getting stuck. He and I would advocate specific nerfs to specific bosses, like the Spine of Deathwing nerfs where they nerfed the health of the burning tendrils or whatever it was to prevent guilds from having to class stack like 6 sub rogues in order to even have a chance of doing the fight. If they look at their data and go "hrmm... people seem to be brick walling on the gigglesplat boss, there's very few new kills, okay let's tune this mechanic back a little bit" then I'm OKAY with that. I am not okay with "hrmm... people seem to be brick walling on the gigglesplat boss... let's nerf the entire instance by 5% every 4 weeks"

And again, turning off the debuff is only an option in the sense that it is physically possible to turn off the debuff, but that's much the same as saying "well I could also jump off a bridge because I'm physically capable of doing it, but why would I, there's no reward." But people jump off bridges all the time, SO IT'S STILL A CHOICE RIGHT!?

WRONG. It is a non-choice, it is the illusion of choice, not the other way around.

Until you can disprove/counter argue effectively the 3 well written points I posted about why, then you will not change my mind on this.

[mavfin]

Also:re:nerfing normals. I'd like to get someone's opinion on the difficulty of the normal raids, because from my perspective they seemed like a joke, but I was also in a very high-end guild that had killed H-Rag, so we were probably "supposed" to steamroll normals. Were they hard and do they need a nerf?

My Ally guild (I wasn't personally on their raid team this expansion, but my daughter was) is one of those 'social' guilds that has a 10-man raid team. However, unlike your guild, they aren't going to always be able to field the '10 best' people on any given day. A typical raiding Saturday would have 6-8 of the 'decent raiders' and a couple 'fillers' from the guild. There's probably two of the 6-8 that could make it in Agg's guild if they wanted to, but they don't. The rest of the 6-8 can get out of fire, and do decent DPS, but, they'd never make it in Agg's guild, and the last two, well, the really good ones I mentioned have to make up for them, really. (If you must know, my daughter was one of the people doing some of the carrying. She more or less walked into my old spot.)

I know that sounds pretty sad to you, and your first question is probably going to be "Why do the really good pair stay?" They would rather raid with their friends and make up for them, than go to a raid guild. Simple as that.

They raided most Saturdays and Sundays for about 3.5 hours each, so 7 hours a week from probably the 2nd week after 4.3 went live. They got Madness down the first time on 3/11/2012. Again, you may think that's a pretty sad performance, but, they had a lot of fun doing it. I think there's a TON of guilds out there like them, and they're the reason normal gets nerfed progressively. Not everyone is interested in leaving their friends to up their raid performance. Evidently there's enough of them that Blizzard is interested in helping them finish the content eventually. Keep in mind, these people don't post on the forum asking for nerfs. They also don't turn them off, because they can use that little bit of help to make up for those two 'filler' people they seem to have most raid days. (It's my Horde friends who turned the buff off till they got Madness down.)

I'm sure someone's going to flame me, saying "Well, why do they raid at all if they suck that bad? They just need to get better or not play at all!!111" Go ahead. Remember that Blizzard likes their money as well as yours.

I think my Ally guild is fairly representative of a ton of social guilds out there who want to do more than LFR, but aren't interested in a 'raid guild' to do heroic with.

[Zoltar]

However, I will say this: I agree that they should leave heroic alone, other than bugfixing impossible stuff. If it takes you two months to get a boss down, fine. Normal is there and nerfed progressively for the guilds who need a little help over time for whatever reason. By definition, none of you should care at all that normal gets nerfed, because it's just a speedbump on the way to 'your' content: heroic.

Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with this, but that attitude just doesn't makes sense from Blizzard's perspective. They want to keep people playing, and hitting a brick wall in your progression will cause people to leave. If your 10m is brick walling against a boss, and say one of your healers decides to give up. Now the other 9 people are going to have an even harder time on that boss. The raid might disband all together, and now several people quit the game rather than deal with having to start all over.

[mavfin]

Until you can disprove/counter argue effectively the 3 well written points I posted about why, then you will not change my mind on this.

And as long as you admit that competive speed > challenge for your guild, you won't change mine. Sure, your points are well written, but, to me, they're like a house built on quicksand. Your basic assumption is bad (imo); you already made a choice to put speed > challenge, so we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

Edit: to add a different way of saying it: IMO, You built your well-written arguments that there isn't a choice *on top of* a choice you already made, but won't acknowledge, so they have a bad foundation.

[Aggathon]

@mav's post about normal mode guilds. By my standards that might be bad, but I don't consider it a bad thing that those exist, I just honestly have no perspective on the "real" difficulty of normal modes to normal raiders, but based on your ancedotal story it sounds like it was just about dead on for normals and I'm very very OK with those nerfs, they make sense to me. Blanket HM nerfs do not make sense to me. Nerfs of specific mechanics for specific bosses DO make sense to me for HM.

[Aggathon]

And as long as you admit that competive speed > challenge for your guild, you won't change mine. Sure, your points are well written, but, to me, they're like a house built on quicksand. Your basic assumption is bad (imo); you already made a choice to put speed > challenge, so we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

Edit: to add a different way of saying it: IMO, You built your well-written arguments that there isn't a choice *on top of* a choice you already made, but won't acknowledge, so they have a bad foundation.

Competitive speed isn't > challenge, but blizzard forces us into that paradigm when they put forth a nerf for the pragmatic reasons laid out in the above post. That's what lore's talking about when he says that he feels like blizz handed us this content and also that it should be about us getting better, not them holding our hands through it.

[Theotherone]

Also:re:nerfing normals. I'd like to get someone's opinion on the difficulty of the normal raids, because from my perspective they seemed like a joke, but I was also in a very high-end guild that had killed H-Rag, so we were probably "supposed" to steamroll normals. Were they hard and do they need a nerf?

Should normals start out harder to begin with and then be slowly nerfed to make the content last longer for the "non-hardcore" players? Like I feel like that's one of the problems, they clear normal modes and go "okay well we're supposed to do heroics now" and they get maybe one of the easy ones down like Shannox in T12, Morchok in T13, and Atramedes or whatever that first boss in BoT was... and then after that just kinda brick wall on HMs and go "zomg this sucks" because it's not content catered for them. Just like LFR isn't content catered for HC players, just in the opposite direction.

My current guild is probably represenative of a lot of the just shy of hardcore but greater than casual guilds. We have a core of very good raiders, but had our ranks kind of thinned as the expansion wore one. We found normal DS to be fairly easy, downing Madness on Jan 5, but having missed two raid nights because of the holidays. We didn't start heroics until the week before the 5% because of RL issues for certain members. We're 4/8 heroic now and seem to have had our raid group stablilize.

That said, one of the casual guilds that I was in finally got Warlord last week and may have gotten Madness last night.

Was DS too easy, no, it felt about right; if you were in 391 FL gear then it was a true faceroll I would imagine.

[Zoltar]

And again, turning off the debuff is only an option in the sense that it is physically possible to turn off the debuff, but that's much the same as saying "well I could also jump off a bridge because I'm physically capable of doing it, but why would I, there's no reward." But people jump off bridges all the time, SO IT'S STILL A CHOICE RIGHT!?

WRONG. It is a non-choice, it is the illusion of choice, not the other way around.

Until you can disprove/counter argue effectively the 3 well written points I posted about why, then you will not change my mind on this.

That is a terrible analogy. There is a reward for turning off the debuff. It might not be tangible, but there is a reward. As you stated, the fun is in the challenge. So turning it off provides you with that challenge and makes the kill more fulfilling.

Anyway, I just read your post with the 3 reasons why it isn't a choice. I'll start with 3 and go backwards. I don't think that turning off the debuff is equivalent to intentionally gimping your gear. There may be some basic similarities, but there are also clear differences. Maximizing your gear in an attempt to overcome a challenge is a core tenant of the game, and there is specific intent and design behind each raid challenge. Now, lets say that there is a hypothetical but clear exploit that you can use, and you know for a fact that Blizzard can't detect if you used it. Would you say that not using the exploit is equivalent to intentionally gimping your gear? No. Because one is clearly intended to be part of the challenge, and the other is not. Now, with respect to the nerfs, the debuff is not intended to be part of the original challenge. So, if you want to complete the original challenge as it was meant to be, then you will not use the nerf. Maximized gear* on the other hand, was intended as part of the original challenge. That's the distinction.

*Now when I say maximized gear, I mean what was available at the time. I think a better analogy for your comparison would be using hypothetical MoP items that are a higher ilvl than whats available in Cataclysm to run Dragon Soul. So in this case, I would say that turning off the debuff would be equivalent to refusing to use these items that were not intended to be available when the encounter originally was designed.

Recruiting-

I think you have this backwards. If there really are a lot of "hardcore raiders" that don't like the debuff, then the fact that your raid doesn't use the debuff should be a significant advantage to your recruiting efforts. Make the fact that you turn it off part of your sales pitch. Say "<Hardcore Guild> 4/8 HM without Power of the Aspects debuff. #1 hardcore guild on server not using debuff!". If hardcore raiders do really value the challenge more than the kill, people should flock to your guild, no? If that doesn't happen, then perhaps you are overestimating how much people agree with your position on the debuff.

Homogeneity-

I'll give you that this can be a challenge, just as finding a schedule that everyone can agree on, loot rules that everyone can agree on, behavior that everyone can agree on, etc, etc is a challenge. You have to balance the goals and ideals that the raid is based on with the thoughts and wants of the different players. If the raid is split, then try to come up with a compromise. Maybe if you're close to gettting a kill, you leave the debuff off until you get that kill. Then you use the debuff on the next boss until you get him down, at which point you turn it back off to get the non-debuff kill.

[Aggathon]

There's a reward to jumping off the bridge too, it's just not worth it to me which is why I'd never do it.

Gear: you do realize that the difference between full epic gems and regular gems is equivalent to have an entire NEW gear slot, right? Especially with how good base stats are for DPS, epic gems make a HUGE difference, probably even bigger than the debuff. I'm sorry but you're wrong, turning off the debuff flies directly in the face of min-maxing for an encounter. It is hamstringing yourself to make it harder, just like doing the fight without wearing pants would be.... in game... not real life... it's probably optimal not to wear pants in real life while raiding...

Recruiting: Hardcore raiders don't like the debuff because they don't like being time limited by blizzard, NOT because the debuff exists or that there's a ton of hardcore raiders that want to raid without it for NO REWARD. Especially if it means the guild is behind the progression curve you're looking for as a hardcore raider. Honestly, if I saw a guild that was like "#1 guild that doesn't use the debuff on our server" my immediate thought would be "probably the only guild that doesn't use the debuff, who are you competing against, go away."

Homogeneity - might be easier to find 10 people like that, but not 25, that would be neigh impossible.

[Zoltar]

There's a reward to jumping off the bridge too, it's just not worth it to me which is why I'd never do it.

Gear: you do realize that the difference between full epic gems and regular gems is equivalent to have an entire NEW gear slot, right? Especially with how good base stats are for DPS, epic gems make a HUGE difference, probably even bigger than the debuff. I'm sorry but you're wrong, turning off the debuff flies directly in the face of min-maxing for an encounter. It is hamstringing yourself to make it harder, just like doing the fight without wearing pants would be.... in game... not real life... it's probably optimal not to wear pants in real life while raiding...

You're totally missing the point. The difference isn't in the degree of the advantage, but in the nature of it. Min-maxing doesn't mean you take advantage of EVERY possible advantage. Using a clear exploit is not min/maxing. It's cheating. Similarly, whether you use the debuff or not has nothing to do with min/maxing.

I have to go to work now, I'll respond to the rest of your post later.

[drusylla]

Also:re:nerfing normals. I'd like to get someone's opinion on the difficulty of the normal raids, because from my perspective they seemed like a joke, but I was also in a very high-end guild that had killed H-Rag, so we were probably "supposed" to steamroll normals. Were they hard and do they need a nerf?

Should normals start out harder to begin with and then be slowly nerfed to make the content last longer for the "non-hardcore" players? Like I feel like that's one of the problems, they clear normal modes and go "okay well we're supposed to do heroics now" and they get maybe one of the easy ones down like Shannox in T12, Morchok in T13, and Atramedes or whatever that first boss in BoT was... and then after that just kinda brick wall on HMs and go "zomg this sucks" because it's not content catered for them. Just like LFR isn't content catered for HC players, just in the opposite direction.

I can give you an opinion from normal mode raiding. When you do not have a gear advantage over the content, it is much more challenging than most people on boards like this one will acknowledge, it is just to fashionable to say it is too easy.

My old raid group finished up regular firelands in about two weeks of running and were preparing to start heroics when the MT, a healer and a dps decided that they did not want to pursue HM because there was no purpose in it for them (all of them have been running, and clearing, hard modes since Sarth+3). They had cleared the instance and killed every boss. When DS dropped, we reformed and in the first week made it up to Blackhorn that night. The first few bosses were a little undertuned, but more challenging than Firelands was when we were in, mostly, T11 heroic gear. You could definitely feel a challenge though, as we had to play well (not great)to down the bosses without having the health and power bonuses you get from the extra tier of gear. The next week, 6 people quit to play with glow-sticks on Hoth... bastards.

With that, there are people who just really aren't that "good" at the whole package of raiding current content and to whom clearing the normal modes are a challenge. I know a lot of people who love the raiding experience but just don't get some core concepts. For them, gradual nerfs are needed to normal modes just to clear.

Now, with all of that being said, the second group of people have no place in HM raiding and nerfing or not nerfing it will have no bearing on their ability to clear it. Personally, I think it is a bad precedent to set when you nerf HM becuase a group of people cannot clear it and may get mad about it and quit when they brickwall. There is probably less than 1% of the raiding population that can truly be called "hardcore raiders". The rest of them just play at it and use the phrase to make themselves feel better about being slightly above average.

I would rather see no nerf, especially not blanket nerfs, in hard modes at all. If a mechanic is impossible to deal with, then target it as the bug fix it is and let the HM stand as the challenge it is supposed to be. When people start complaining that they have brickwalled at 3/8 or 9/14 let them realize that it is the limit of their ability. Nerfing it just allows people to think that they are somehow good enough to clear content that they shouldn't.

[Leucifer]

I know I'm going to get flamed for this.... but screw it....

There are several reasons, the three primary ones being, "it's sub-optimal" even if the people in guilds like Lore's and like my guild's was, we don't raid a LOT, but we like to get quality raiding time in when we do raid. We probably spend roughly (and sometimes less) total attempts than the hardest of the hardcore guilds, but it's spread out over months instead of weeks. We want the challenge of doing it without a flat blanket nerf. I agree with Lore that sometimes specific fights need specific nerfs, like SoD did, but blanket nerfs are... harsh at best.

This I can buy. I agree completely with Ion's earlier point (see my previous post). I agree with this concept. Nerf specific parts of bosses that are non-functional. Like the example you gave where "we need to stack 6 sub rogues". That sort of thing isn't "challenging"..... it's bullshit. It's forcing a raid to alter it's comp specifically to handle a task. It's something that 25's MIGHT be able to do, assuming they have the player base on standby who can jump in for a stupid mechanic, and something that 10's really can't, because for them, at a certain point class-stacking just makes it a new raid group (which it does for the 25 also, because they couldn't clear it with their base comp).

However... you say....

We want the challenge of doing it without a flat blanket nerf.

and then you follow it up with.....

Now, as you say "well just turn it off." The reasons why it's not a choice are as follows:

Bullshit Agg. I'm throwing the bullshit penalty flag.
You are effectively saying, you want one thing, but when afforded the opportunity.... OH NO I CAN'T DO THAT!!!
And then you give a list of excuses.

IF YOU WANT THE CHALLENGE..... AND IT'S THERE AND AVAILABLE.... DO IT.
Otherwise, you're just a hypocrite.

1) Homogeneity in raid philosophy. Just because *I* want to take the buff off, doesn't mean I can convince the other 9 or 24 people in my raid that it's a good idea (and they have valid reasons that will be listed below).

Sounds like you need to have a raid with people who share your "love of the challenge" instead of hanging out with those people who don't share your philosophy.

Pissing these people off and saying "no, you can't have your goodies even though the reward system for doing it with the buff or without the buff is the exact same other than this nebulous concept of doing it "pre-nerf" which is still not really pre-nerf b/c it wasn't done in blizzard's arbitrary time frame.

1) Well... why do they want something without earning it? I mean, that's the argument I see flung about by some people on here. They're just lazy and want stuff handed to them. This is a little bit hypocritical. If you guys REALLY want the prestige of beating it pre-nerf, or in pre-nerf equivalent conditions, you'd do it. Simply put... again.... this idea of challenge being all takes a back seat to these people's greater priority..... loot.

2) The "nebulous concept of pre-nerf".... it's easy. I mean, we have all of these videos and the ability to take screenshots, you can generate evidence of your accomplishment. Besides.... all that really matters to the person who "loves the challenge" is that they know they did it. Oh... but that's right. We need to have some sort of special cookie. It's not good enough for me to know I'm good enough.... I need a trophy.

There's not even so much as an achievement to prove that you DID it without the nerf.

What? You want something special? Just knowing you did it isn't good enough? Oh.... and by the way, if you do it in the timeframe BEFORE the nerf, the achievement marks the date that it was completed..... so.... if you did it before then, anyone IN THE KNOW (who are the people who you are obviously concerned about) will recognize the date stamp and say, "Yeah, that guy did it pre-nerf. They're awesome."

You don't get better gear, you don't get an achievement, and it's significantly easier.

Back to this issue about people not wanting to work for what they get. If the real priority was the challenge this would not even be an issue. The reality is.... challenge is not the primary motivation or consideration

People will follow the path of least resistance, especially in the kind of guild Lore and I describe (for the most part). It's like saying "well if you're not killing it on HC, why don't you just do it on Normal" only in this scenario "normal" gets you the exact same gear as HC. If there was zero reward for doing HC mode, almost no one would do it I'd imagine. If there was no tracking of who did HC, if there was no achievement, no loot, no NOTHING (just like turning off the debuff) you'd only get a handful of niche people that wanted to do it, and they probably wouldn't do it nearly as seriously.

Finally something we can agree on. People will follow the path of least resistance.....
even those who claim they "want a challenge" or are in it "for the challenge".
I pretty much agree with you on this point. Especially the last part that, you'd really only have a handful of niche people who really are playing it for the challenge, and not for some other motivation. In the end..... there are so many other things that drive these people in heroic mode, and "challenge" sure as hell is NOT the foremost of these. It's probably more like.... better loot.... ego in it's various forms (I'm better than players A, B, C, D).... and so forth.

2) Recruiting: If you choose to hold yourself back by continuing to do a fight without a nerf when it has been nerfed, and every other guild is 8/8 or 6/8 or whatever, and you're still back at 4/8 or 5/8 or something, it will be a lot harder to recruit. 25 mans especially have had recruiting problems unless you are on a server that can cater to it well. 10 mans have the inverse problem in that there are so many 10 man guilds that people can look for exactly the kind of guild they want. If you fall behind on the progression curve, recruiting becomes significantly harder.

But once again, this is a self-imposed issue. What's MORE IMPORTANT? Doing it for the challenge? Or having the perception of being "more accomplished"? Which it IS a perception because really, the people who did it WITHOUT the help/aid of nerfs or buffs HAVE ACCOMPLISHED the more difficult task. But no.... the PRIORITY (that which is more important) is NOT "the challenge".... the priority is RECRUITING and LOOKING LIKE WE'RE ACCOMPLISHED.

3) Min/maxing: We may not raid 40-60 hours in the first 2 weeks that an instance comes out, but that doesn't mean we don't want to min/max our gear and our output on a fight. Saying "well just turn the buff off" is equivalent to saying "well fights are a lot harder if you don't use epic gems, so why don't you just use all blue quality gems". It's purposefully hindering yourself on a fight when you can gain an advantage by doing something. And epic gems even have a downside, they're expensive! And there's zero downside to keeping the buff on. Like... it doesn't flow right with the philosophy and mindset of a guild like Lore and I's (which, btw, there are a LOT of guilds like us, it's not just some niche group of only a couple of guilds) to purposefully hamstring ourselves with respect to all other guilds.

Once again.... IF THIS WERE REALLY ABOUT THE CHALLENGE.... you would go for the harder fight.
You complain about min/maxing..... let's break this down...
1) must have gear maximized for effect ---- reduction of challenge
2) must have all possible buffs ------ reduction of challenge
3) must have all nerfs/buffs on ------ reduction of challenge

Yes, I'm playing "devil's advocate" a bit here. I understand the idea of preparing and getting into peak ability to perform, especially for the individuals.
But.... there is a difference between "being the best that I can be" versus "having the game 'rules' altered to my advantage". Maxing out gear and stats and such is the equivalent to a football player training, hitting the weights, and trying to be in peak condition prior to a game. Having the buff is like getting an extra yard or two every time that TEAM plays a down. You are 'being given something" that you didn't EARN.

So.... we could really say, all the guilds that did something pre-nerf.... they earned their stuff. Anyone who got loot/achieves/whatever post nerf.... well, "they were given" their win. Or as someone else here so eloquently put it......

The majority of the player base don't want to work for their rewards, but if they aren't given access to them despite that, they will likely quit the game. I know players who quit in t11 because they felt it was too hard and the game wasn't fun for them anymore. Quitting was an easier option for them than improving, which to me is disappointing, but let's face it, not everyone wants to challenge themselves that way. Blizzard has now told these players, through game design, that if they wait, they don't have to improve, so they will then wait for access to rewards that people used to have to improve their play to gain. Blizzard brings the content to their level, so why would they invest the time to bring their level to the content.

So which is it? Do they just not want to work for their awards? You know.... by running content without any nerfs or assistance? Is it "too hard"? Is quitting just an "easier option" for them instead? Or is that "not everyone wants to challenge themselves that way" by doing the content "pre-nerf"/pre-buff? Or is Blizzard just telling them "these players, through game design, that if they wait, they don't have to improve, so they will then wait for access to rewards that people used to have to improve their play to gain. Blizzard brings the content to their level, so why would they invest the time to bring their level to the content"

Like... it doesn't flow right with the philosophy and mindset of a guild like Lore and I's (which, btw, there are a LOT of guilds like us, it's not just some niche group of only a couple of guilds) to purposefully hamstring ourselves with respect to all other guilds.

Right.... because for you guys.... it's not about the "challenge". It's about completing the material or content in order to "prove yourself" in some way. But, then again.... if you're doing it with nerfs or a buff..... what are you really proving?

That a good enough explanation for you? That's three very solid reasons why you almost never see anyone take the debuff off for a first kill. Sometimes people will go back through and do it afterwards... you know when they have gear from the boss already and sometimes even more powerful gear from bosses further on... That hardly counts, imo.

Yeah.... but it's still taking on more of a challenge that those who take the buffs, ride it through to completion, and then rest on their laurels and whine that "the content isn't challenging".

TL;DR:

In the end, ALL OF THE CRAP ABOVE is why I fully and wholeheartedly support the following:
1) LFR for "those who want to see content). Here's your bunny-slope. Grats.
2) Normal for those who want a moderate challenge. This will be nerfed on bosses as appropriate. A raidwide buff may be applied to allow for groups to progress through the raid when they hit plateaus.

3) HEROIC MODE: No raidwide buffs. Ever. Nerfs ONLY to mechanics or content that has been shown to be dysfunctional by the raiding community (H-Rag health being insanely high.... H-Spine dps needed just insane) and is of a nature that effectively makes the boss unkillable. No instance-wide nerf to bosses. If you can't progress..... get better. If you'e not good enough to kill a heroic boss, either as a raid, or individually.... too f**king bad. GET. BETTER.

End the double standards and hypocrisy. Make heroic raiding a true, inflexible competitive standard for guilds/raid teams to judge themselves by. It'll end solve all of these issues when Blizzard comes out and says, "This is how it is.... we're not compromising this content. You either can cut it, or you can't."

P.S. - Agg.... I have nothing against you personally.... I'm just really tired of listening to the heroic raiding community whine about how things are being "casualized" but refuse to take it upon themselves to push a higher standard. They don't want things handed to anyone and complain that no one wants to work for their prestige..... but when things are handed out or made easier, they jump all over it faster than we can freakin blink.... and then proceed to complain about anyone "not them".

[Leucifer]

Just to clarify my stance on this issue.... I AGREE 100% COMPLETELY WITH THIS........

I'm not going to answer anything specifically here, but this post did make me think this:

Right now, if you're in a "world first" or even "server first on a high pop/competitive realm" guild then the idea of when nerfs come is irrelevant to you, because you're GOING to beat it before then...you'll do attempts until you can't see...you'll poop in a sock...whatever. If it takes you 500 attempts to kill it...then 500 attempts there will be.

If you're in a "casual" (for "in it for fun, not a challenge and not for competition" values of "casual") guild then you also don't care...because you're progressing at whatever rate you can and having fun doing it (presumably). If it gets nerfed before you kill it...oh well, you probably don't even care.

If you're in guilds that are like Lore's (and, to an extent, mine) then you play N amount of hours a week but are looking for a challenge...it's not FUN if it's not challenging. If those N hours mean you get in...say 50 attempts on a boss before they nerf it, but it would have taken you 60 un-nerfed attempts to kill it...you're kind of getting screwed over. If you were willing to put in a bit more time before the nerf then you would have gotten it, but because of the nature of your guild and the choice your guild has made to do N hours a week...you end up with the unsatisfying nerfed kill (and again...you can say "you can turn off the nerf", but that just never happens...you are ALSO still in competition for #2 (or whatever) through #X on your server so you can maintain a roster by being decently competitive on your server...you can't just throw the nerf out the window when the people behind you won't be).

Eh, I don't like the "nerf it over time until even little Jimmy's grandma can beat it on a 4hr/week schedule". Leave hardmodes ALONE...let them CONTINUE to be hard. Jimmy's grandma can do normal modes if they're too hard for her. If they want people seeing ALL of their content...there's no equitable solution there. You can't have both...you can have "hard" content or you can have "content that everyone can see." LFR should be the "seeing the content" version...even normal modes...it makes no sense to create a hardmode and then, over time, make it easier than the "normal" version was originally.

Again..... the problem arises wit hthis idea of "competition" with other guilds. And to that end.... to fix the problem.... see the bolded section.

Don't f**k with hardmodes. Leave them alone. Every time you screw with these you are screwing with these competing guilds and f**king them over.
If they can't hack it.... too bad. If they want things to be nerfed over time..... go do normal mode.

Hardmode needs to be a set standard for these guilds to judge themselves by.

[Theotherone]

3) HEROIC MODE: No raidwide buffs. Ever. Nerfs ONLY to mechanics or content that has been shown to be dysfunctional by the raiding community (H-Rag health being insanely high.... H-Spine dps needed just insane) and is of a nature that effectively makes the boss unkillable. No instance-wide nerf to bosses. If you can't progress..... get better. If you'e not good enough to kill a heroic boss, either as a raid, or individually.... too f**king bad. GET. BETTER.

Here's where there economics bat hits you square upside the head. As some pointed out earlier, there comes a point in the game where normal is just too easy for some guilds and heroic is too difficult - maybe they get 2 heroic bosses down and are stuck. At that point, if it happens to enough players (Blizz has said they track player kills) then what's Blizzard's option - keep these customers frustrated so that they end up quitting or give them a boost so they keep coming back because they are progressing. Guess what kids, the shareholders would be pretty pissed if Blizzard chose the former.

As Blizzard has said to all the epeen, hardcore, no nerf, get better crowd get over it, it's a game - I believe that was Bashiok's response. It's not personal, it's only business.

[mavfin]

Here's where there economics bat hits you square upside the head.

As Blizzard has said to all the epeen, hardcore, no nerf, get better crowd get over it, it's a game - I believe that was Bashiok's response. It's not personal, it's only business.

And this should tell some people that maybe they're really not as large a percentage of the playerbase as they think they are. If they were as large as they say, they'd have more clout. Those of us on this forum can only speculate, or look at the 'raid completion' sites, and Blizzard has already said that those aren't correct. Blizzard knows the percentages, and makes their economic decisions accordingly.

Having said that, I'm ok with no nerfs to heroics, and no sympathy.

[Kemanorel]

Tbh, some nerfs feel 'right' and others feel like a hand-out.

ICC's stacking damage, health, healing and such buff felt like a hand-out.

When targeted nerfs like reducing the number of times Baleroc would swing during decimating blade, or reducing sound gains on Atramedes go in, I'm more ok with it.

Personally, I'd trade 20% aspect buff on spine for +5s on blood corruption duration and +5s on each tendon exposure...

There are two basic aspects to most encounters, Gear threshold and Mechanics.

The current DS mode of nerfing addresses Gear threshold mostly, but leaves Mechanics intact. Fading Light still kills people on Ultraxion (in theory) yet the hard enrage is more reachable to more players. Blackhorn adds go down quicker, but if the boat dies you still wipe. Hard modes aren't just 'hard' because the boss hits harder and has more hp... every hm fight has a 'twist' so to speak. Yes, often this falls into the add a debuff/adds/fire/phase category, but not always. Every now and then Blizz comes up with a way to add a small change that completely alters the 'feel' of the fights still-existing normal mechanics.

Speaking from personal experience, it is very rarely a failure to kill a boss due to lack of gear in such a manner as the aspects buff addresses. No, usually someone or several someones fail to correctly deal with a mechanic in such a way that results in a wipe. My personal rule of thumb is: If no one dies or disconnects, and we perform mechanics correctly, and we still die to the enrage, its a gear issue. Otherwise, we screwed up somewhere. Having recently arrived to work on hm spine is hammering the point home further. At this point, for my guild, spine is far from a numbers challenge. Rather, we are failing to correctly address certain mechanics.

TLDR: full raids of DS geared raiders can still easily wipe on HM LK, even with 30%, simply by stepping in shadow traps. Nerfs do not guarantee content will be accessible to all, just to those who pay attention and try to improve.As long as blizzard continues to add mechanics that cannot be outgeared or outnerfed, hardmodes will remain for the hardmode raiders.

[Ion]

Here's where there economics bat hits you square upside the head. As some pointed out earlier, there comes a point in the game where normal is just too easy for some guilds and heroic is too difficult - maybe they get 2 heroic bosses down and are stuck. At that point, if it happens to enough players (Blizz has said they track player kills) then what's Blizzard's option - keep these customers frustrated so that they end up quitting or give them a boost so they keep coming back because they are progressing. Guess what kids, the shareholders would be pretty pissed if Blizzard chose the former.

As Blizzard has said to all the epeen, hardcore, no nerf, get better crowd get over it, it's a game - I believe that was Bashiok's response. It's not personal, it's only business.

I, again, wasn't going to say much more than I already have...but this seems like a spurious argument to me.

People didn't quit when they brickwalled against h-Rag. They didn't even quit back in TBC when Kara was really hard and Mag was almost impossible. The people likely to quit ARE the hardcore people who find things too trivial...not the people who are brickwalling.

[eald]

As Blizzard has said to all the epeen, hardcore, no nerf, get better crowd get over it, it's a game - I believe that was Bashiok's response. It's not personal, it's only business.

I assume that everybody here knows that and understand that the changes that are going to be made in the future from Blizzard are more in the sense of: When to start the nerfs, maybe granting a feat of strength for doing it before the nerfs start, how hard the pre-nerf normal and heroic modes are. But that doesn't stop people for expressing what they thing is the best.

I do think that nerfing over time is bad design, it works for Blizzard but there should be other way. In the end the issue is that doing the nerfs they provide 16 bosses to the vast majority of raiders, doing the art work for only 8 and some bits here and there for the mechanics. If the 6/8H heroic pre-nerf guild only gets 6 because the others doesn't count for them is something that Blizzards accepts and given the numbers seems to accept to sacrifice; maybe because these are their more loyal customers, they know how to survive for a long period of time doing the same content again and again and knowing that there is no more content until next patch.

[Idefix]

The issue with content is the lack of any REAL progression.

Progression has become based on levels of difficulty instead of based on clearing content, THAT is the problem.

Blizzard should just go back to providing content and nerf old content for those stuck once the next tier is available, as for Hardmodes, only provide some titles, mounts, pets, or cosmetic rewards.

There's tons to do in this game, people just don't want to do it once a new tier is out because it is no longer relevant in our current system, everyone just skips to the final tier regardless and that's an issue, I have yet to see a game that says "Hmm you suck at level 1, lets just move you to level 2, but we'll nerf it for you so you can complete it". When 100% of the player base is at the same spot at the same time with different gear and skill levels there's bound some breezing through content and a number of people hitting walls, when most should still be doing 5 mans to improve their game play or gear up PROPERLY in the previous tiers.

Keep LFR around to provide people a means to SEE CONTENT... i.e. it's original purpose. The gear provided should be equal to the previous tier, this way you provide an additional avenue to prepare for the new tier.

So much animosity on this topic.
- LFR - See end-game content with previous tier gear as a reward.
- Regular - Progression route (Farm for gear to make your raiding life easier)
- Heroic Mode - Similar to Challenge Modes

Sounds very Ulduar-esque but I think by far it was the best raid implementation thus far for both progression and distribution of legendary items.

[Aggathon]

Okay Leuc, you have me somewhat confused because you and I advocate the exact same course of action, basically what you say is: it's about competition not about challenge.

I think it's not as black and white as that, competition is definitely a huge part of that, and the reason why it's a "non-choice" is because it's not JUST about the challenge, though that is a part of it. Competition, mindset, and pragmatism also come in to play. And the problem with flat nerfs that you can "turn off" is that it's just another advantage you can use to kill the boss. For me it's never been about loot. I just straight up do not care about loot past what it can do for me to kill a boss faster. I get loot to kill bosses, not kill bosses to kill loot. And you're right, it's really not necessarily about that challenge (wholly about the challenge) it's about seeing the boss die. If blizzard gives me an advantage to kill the boss faster, be it a better ax, epic gems, free server transfers to increase the ability to recruit better players, or a zone wide buff, I will use it. I might not like it, but I'll use it. It's the exact same mindset that hardcore raiders run LFR for "well it's there and gives me the ability to get better gear so I can be more competitive in HC modes, so I'll do it even though I don't like the fact that I have to do it since it means I'm staring the same boss in the face twice a week." Do I want to do it? No, not really, I don't find it "fun" but I WILL do it because it gives me an advantage.

Honestly, I don't care about the "nature" of the advantage, be it gems, enchants, spec, raid comp for improved buffs, or a zone wide debuff, I'm going to use the advantages to kill the boss if they're presented to me. The exploits is kind of a bad example because the only exploits that are "undetectable" that blizz hasn't technically caught/punished (see savage roar on hagara), PEOPLE DID USE!!!!! And the ones that were detectable PEOPLE STILL USE, and often get temp banned for, or in the case of AQ40, perma banned.

So I'll still use those advantages, but because I don't have the time to raid 40+ hours a week, I might not kill the boss before this random blanket nerf that seems arbitrary, and I don't like it. I'd much rather give it a few more weeks, but you're right it's NOT just about challenge, but you act like challenge isn't a part of it at all, there's several contributing factors, and some become more important than others based on the climate.

That's why it's a non-choice.