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by Alex Ziebart 
Oct 1st 2008 at 3:00PM
As of last night's beta (and PTR) patch, players have been reporting that mob health throughout all of the Burning Crusade raid zones have been reduced by up to 30%. That struck me as really, really odd, so I decided to pop into Sunwell Plateau and Black Temple to take a look. It is, in fact, completely true. Every mob and boss that I could see in both zones (and I could see a lot- Mind Vision hopping through raids for the win) had their HP drastically reduced.My gut instinct was, "Ugh, why are they nerfing everything so badly? That's ridiculous. Just because it's the end of the expansion doesn't mean they need to make it easy mode for us." Then I actually thought (gasp!) about it for a little bit. Looking at the changes coming in Patch 3.0.2, this was a change they needed to make to let us still raid until Wrath. A lot of encounters probably became impossible to beat as they were with those changes, Sunwell Plateau especially. Sunwell was designed with all of the insanely OP stuff players were doing to win in mind. Stacking Shadow Priests for mana regen, stacking Shaman to chain-cast Heroism/Bloodlust, half the raid going Leatherworking for Drums, yadda yadda.
Those are all things they nixed for Wrath of the Lich King. Lots of Shadow Priests and Heroisms were more or less mandatory to progress through Sunwell. With mana regen from Shadow Priests nerfed, your Caster DPS would never, ever last through half of the Sunwell encounters, even chaining mana potions. Their personal regen is quite simply not enough to beat those encounters as they are. Sure, some of your casters can just stack more MP5, but if they all did that, you would never make the DPS check. The boss would enrage and destroy you all. Every single time.
It's the same with Heroisms. The DPS checks are built with the assumption that your raid is stacking Shaman, simply because they're available to you. If they didn't design the encounters with that in mind, they would be too easy. Your raid would bring 6 Shaman and /rofl through the entire zone. It would trivialize the entire place if they didn't plan for that. Is it lame? Yeah, but it was necessary. With Wrath and patch 3.0.2, you can't chain them anymore, so they needed to fix old content to compensate. You simply would not be able to meet the DPS checks with only one or two Bloodlusts.
So this wasn't a needless nerf to the zones so much as an absolutely necessary retuning. I'm very glad they did it, because it means we can actually continue raiding if we want to. You can make that final push to Illidan or Kil'jaeden or whatever you're working on without being totally screwed by the patch.
I wouldn't be surprise if they made a lot of other changes we haven't seen yet. Bosses not hitting as hard to compensate for some mechanic changes, Crushing Blows being retroactively removed from everything, et cetera. We'll see what else crops up, but I have a feeling less HP across the board isn't all we'll see.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Iwanttobeasleep Oct 1st 2008 4:09PM
But the regen doesn't stack anymore. If you have one spriest, then all the other spriests are redundant, and so is anyone else who would bring the mana regen. You have more options for mana regen now, but you're going to have it less of it than you could before the change.
R. Sue Oct 1st 2008 3:19PM
All of which only means my just-finished-Kara-and-doesn't-have-25-whole-capped-players guild can actually have half a shot at ZA before Wrath hits. Huzzah!
Heilig Oct 1st 2008 3:21PM
The nerf is in line with the 30% increase in XP coming in the same patch. It's supposed to speed leveling. Everyone is only checking the raid mobs, but I would be willing to bet it's all mobs over level 60.
Harmun Oct 1st 2008 3:25PM
I don't think that holds water- they are reducing raid mobs because the expectation is that a raid will have shamans to chain pop heroism/bloodlust, but outside a raid, that's simply not the case.
Robert M Oct 1st 2008 3:23PM
Rememeber that when the patch hits, paladins and warriors are going to lose 4% of their hp pools due to the stamina nerf in combat expertise and vitality, respectively. Mobs might have to be adjusted to not hit as hard with the loss of effective health. I say might because the increased block in the str to bv conversion could mean its a wash. If the change in druid gear happens in the patch (such as the belt of natural power going from 423 armor to 227) means that the crushing blows would have to be removed or your druid tanks are going to be obsolete for raiding until lich does come out.
Mitch Oct 1st 2008 3:34PM
But druids are getting talents to make up for it. Like Protector of the Pack which reduces damage taken by a certain percentage (been bounced around a lot lately), not having to worry about crushing blows, not worrying about being crit-immune (since defense/resilience are wasted stats for druids), being able to use potions/healthstones in form, using barkskin in form, Survival Instincts to increase health by 30% for 20 seconds, bash finally being a spell interrupt, and more I'm probably forgetting. It's not all doom and gloom. I actually think I'll want to tank more after the patch.
Robert M Oct 1st 2008 3:39PM
I don't think its doom and gloom, but the game mechanics that tanks have always geared against are changing as well. Less hp may mean nothing with the block and the protector of the pack, but with the changes that are takign place, tanks are functioning a little differently.
Herid Oct 1st 2008 3:39PM
Live - Vitality:
5/5 - Increases your total Stamina by 5% and your total strength by 10%.
Beta - Vitality:
3/3 - Increases your total Strength and Stamina by 6% and your Expertise by 6.
Can you please point out the nerf to Vitality?
Robert M Oct 1st 2008 4:02PM
Herid,
I apologize, I play a prot paladin, and remembered reading somewhere that vitality was being nerfed the same way combat expertise was.
You will have to excuse my wishiful thinking that Blizzard had every intention of leveling the hp playign field for the shield wearing tanks. Shoulda remembered that they will probably have their heads up the butts of the warrior main tanks six expansions from know.
Again, I apologize
Slugburn Oct 1st 2008 3:23PM
This is good news. This will give raids that can't put together that "perfect" composition a fighting chance at making some progress. This is especially important given the pre-expansion drop off of raiding population.
brent Oct 1st 2008 3:38PM
On PTR Just about everyone got a dps buff, which would make the fights shorter already, 30% nerf seems excessive.
Our guild is working on brutallus and if all of a sudden we steamroll him it is going to be very a bittersweet victory.
3,000,000 hit points is quite a chunk.
bigdaddyjay Oct 1st 2008 3:51PM
Cheers to Blizz. My guild has backed off from raiding leading into the expansion release because some officers don't see the point since the gear we get will just be replaced quickly. So they are all leveling alts and professions, and farming gold, making it hard for those of us that want to raid to put together full groups. I, personally, just like killing new bosses (as I never really seem to win rolls for my gear anyway). I think this move is great. Increased DPS from talents plus faster deaths from bosses due to lower HP equals an opportunity to down a few bosses I didn't expect to before the expansion. Of course I still think Hyjal will be fun with a group of 72-73's, but it would be nice to get there as a lvl 70. Now maybe it will happen. And to all you 'leet peeps out there, understand that I'm in a guild that has only downed one boss above T4 content (lootreaver), so we are nowhere near as cool as you sunwell guilds. Don't be harsh.
Jaril Oct 1st 2008 3:54PM
FYI, the heroism/bloodlust change is actually an increase to DPS. One hits the whole raid, so that would count as 5 hero/BL. If the fight is longer than 5 minutes, the whole raid could get a second one, meaning 10 hero/BL in one fight.
The HP nerf is more about the change in buff stacking, potion cooldowns, Drums, and mana regen.
Allurissa Oct 1st 2008 3:56PM
I would note that you can't chain chug potions in the beta. I haven't been on the PTR's, but the last time (read: before yesterdays patch) I tried it I noticed that when I drank one, none of my potion cooldowns would start until I was out of combat.
For a while, they returned the potion cooldown to 2 minutes, but it looks like we may have new potion mechanics again. I'll be online tonight, I'll double it at that point and hopefully I'm wrong.
Rip Oct 1st 2008 4:35PM
The reduction will also allow players who don't reach 70 until after Wrath launches to run some raids along the way without requiring epic gear.
Naix Oct 1st 2008 5:03PM
This is great choice for Blizzard to do this. No reason to keep all the players out of of end game content. Why not?
a. No one is going to run BT after wrath comes out
b. No one
video_game_master91 Oct 1st 2008 7:17PM
When I get to 80, I will try and convince some of my guildies to run TK/SSC (maybe BT) because I never did them and it will be way easier with 80 blues/purples.
Djinn Oct 1st 2008 5:05PM
This is great news and all I have to say is WOOT!! I will probably actually see Illidan go down with this change. Plus it will give us a bit of wiggle room relearning all our classes as 51 point talents come in with the patch. I was hoping for the patch yesterday, but hopefully we see at least a month of EZ mode raiding before the expansion hits.
Suzushiro Oct 1st 2008 5:47PM
I personally figured that the DPS increases that a lot of classes are getting (specifically hybrids) would balance out the loss of DPS from not being able to stack drums and heroisms, on top of people outside of the optimally-stacked groups being able to benefit from more raid buffs. But then again, I never exactly did hard testing on this.
Regardless, 30% might be a little much.
crsh Oct 1st 2008 6:26PM
Eh, at this point, I don't see the big deal.
There's only one month between the time 3.02 hits and WotLK comes out, TBC will be forgotten after that and it's a buffer patch for testing talents and keeping players busy.
Let players kill Illidan & Co in whatever gear they may have, at least they can experience it at least once.