Patch 4.2: Normal mode tier 11 encounters nerfed
by Anne Stickney 
May 24th 2011 at 1:40PM
Patch 4.2 PTR testing is in full swing, and we've got another round of patch notes, courtesy of Zarhym and the official Warcraft blog. Today's notes are primarily a metric ton of nerfs to normal mode encounters in Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, and Throne of the Four Winds. The nerfs were explained by Nethaera as follows:
Nethaera
Follow us after the break for the full list of patch notes.
Nethaera
With the upcoming content patch, 10- and 25-person Normal mode raid encounters will be receiving a comprehensive set of tuning adjustments to decrease their difficulty.
These changes will allow players, groups, and guilds who have yet to experience the content in Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, and Throne of the the Four Winds an opportunity to do so.
With the addition of a new tier of armor and weapons, we want to make the previous tier more accessible in ways other than just a shift of currency type, so we are making item level 359 gear purchasable for Justice points in the upcoming content patch.
These changes will allow players, groups, and guilds who have yet to experience the content in Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, and Throne of the the Four Winds an opportunity to do so.
With the addition of a new tier of armor and weapons, we want to make the previous tier more accessible in ways other than just a shift of currency type, so we are making item level 359 gear purchasable for Justice points in the upcoming content patch.
Follow us after the break for the full list of patch notes.
ZarhymClasses
- Dodge: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%.
- Parry: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors now receive 27% of their Strength bonuses as parry rating, up from 25%. This conversion still only applies to Strength above and beyond their base Strength.
Mage
- Pyroblast: The version of this spell cast when Hot Streak is not active did slightly less damage than the Hot Streak version. Its damage has been increased so that both versions of Pyroblast now do the same amount of damage.
- Spellsteal mana cost has been increased 100%.
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Fire
- Impact: When Living Bomb is spread via this talent, it will only be spread to two additional targets. The net effect is that if the Mage's most recent Living Bomb target is the same as their Impact target, that target will no longer lose the Living Bomb effect. If Living Bomb is active on multiple targets when the Impact effect is cast, Living Bomb will remain active on the most recent Living Bomb target, and will be added to two other nearby targets.
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Frost
- Deep Freeze and Ring of Frost will now cause diminishing returns for each other.
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Ring of Frost now has a 1.5-second cast time. -
Spellsteal now has a 6-second cooldown.
- Seal of Righteousness – now can be proc'd by any melee ability, not just single target melee abilities. This adds Hammer of the Righteous (the physical component) and Divine Storm to the list of abilities that can proc it. In addition, Seal of Righteousness procs can now crit.
Talent Specializations
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Holy
- Walk in the Light now improves Word of Glory healing by 30% in addition to its current effects.
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Protection
- Guardian of Ancient Kings now uses the 'Assist' pet stance functionality.
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Retribution
- Seals of Command: This talent now makes Seal of Righteousness hit an unlimited number of melee targets, instead of only 2 additional targets.
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Glyphs
- Glyph of Seal of Truth: The expertise bonus granted by this glyph now also works when Seal of Righteousness is active.
- Shadowfiend now uses the 'Assist' pet stance functionality.
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Shadow
- Sin and Punishment's Vampiric Touch backlash Fear effect no longer has diminishing returns.
Dungeons and Raids
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Bastion of Twilight
- The damage modifier on Normal has been reduced for Arion, Elementium Monstrosity, Feludius, Ignacius, and Terrastra.
- Removed one of each type of Bound elemental from the Ascendant Council chamber.
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Arion
- Chain Lightning damage has been reduced.
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Cho'gall
- Health, melee damage, Health of Corrupting Adherent, Depravity damage, Corrupting Crash damage, Flaming Destruction damage, and Unleashed Shadows damage has all been reduced by 20%.
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Corrupting Crash and Depravity
- Halved the amount of Corruption they give to 5 from 10.
- Corrupted Bite effect caused by Blood of the Old God reduced.
- Damage Taken from Corruption of the Old God per Corrupted Blood has been reduced from 3% per stack to 2% per stack.
- Debilitating Beam damage has been reduced by 20% to 6,400.
- The duration of Twisted Devotion has been reduced by 25%.
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Dragon Siblings
- Health, melee damage, Twilight Meteorite damage, Devouring Flames, Blackout damage, Unstable Twilight damage, Twilight Zone damage, Twilight Blast damage, Fabulous Flames damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
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Elementium Monstrosity
- Electrical Instability damage has been reduced.
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Feludius
- Damage due to being Frozen while Waterlogged has been reduced.
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Halfus
- Health, melee damage, Fireball/Fireball Barrage damage, Furious Roar damage, Scorching Breath damage, Shadow Nova damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
- Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Time Warden, and Orphaned Emerald Whelp health has been reduced by 20%.
- Shadow Nova base cast time has been increased.
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Ignacious
- Rising Flames now increases damage by 3% per stack, down from 5%.
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Terrastra
- Harden Skin now increases Physical damage dealt by 20% (down from 100%.)
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Blackwing Descent
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Atramedes
- Health, melee damage, modulation damage, Roaring Flame Breath damage, and Searing Flame damage has all been reduced by 20%.
- Modulation no longer causes Sound in normal difficulty.
- Sound given by Sonar Pulse has been reduced to 3 (from 5.)
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Chimaeron
- Health reduced by 20% and melee damage reduced by 10%.
- Chimaeron will now only cast two caustic slimes per 30 second cycle, at second 17 and second 23.
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Drakeadon Mongrel
- Time Lapse no longer stuns.
- Frost Burn silence is now 3 seconds
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Dwarven Kings
- Whirlwind no longer drops threat.
- Execution sentence now deals damage only.
- Shield of Light absorption now reduced.
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Magmaw
- Damage and hit points reduced by 20%.
- Lava Parasites have been diminished
- Lava Spew damage, Magma Spit damage, Massive Crash damage, and Infectious Vomit damage have all been been reduced.
- Mangled Lifeless no longer instantly kills, and damage has been reduced.
- Parasitic Infection has been decreased.
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Maloriak
- Health, damage, Aberation health/damage, Arcane Storm damage, Prime Subject damage, Flash Freeze/Shatter damage, and Scorching Blast damage has all been decreased by 20%.
- Aberration stacking damage buff decreased.
- Prime Subjects no longer fixate, and are no longer immune to taunt.
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Nefarian
- Animated Bone Warriors take 33 seconds to fall over, (down from 50.)
- Blast Nova cast time increased.
- Chromatic Prototype Health reduced 20%.
- Electrocute damage reduced 30%.
- Fewer Animated Bone warriors spawn.
- Magma Stacking debuff effect reduced 75%.
- Nefarian health and melee damage reduced by 20%.
- Nefarian's Shadowblaze cast frequency cannot increase beyond 1 per 15 sec.
- Onyxia health and melee damage reduced by 20%.
- Shadowflame Barrage damage reduced 20%.
- Tail Lash damage reduced 50%.
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Omnotron Council
- Barrier absorb amount increased by 100%.
- Increased the cooldown on Power Conversion (Converted Power chance).
- Health, Melee damage, Electrical Discharge damage, Lightning Conductor damage, Health of Poison Bomb, Incineration Security Measure damage, Arcane Annihilator damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
- Flamethrower damage has been reduced by 40%.
- Static Shock caused by Unstable Shield damage and Poison Bomb damage has been decreased by 50%.
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Atramedes
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Throne of the Four Winds
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Al'Akir
- Acid Rain now stacks every 20s (up from 15s.)
- Electrocute now pulses every 1s (up from 0.5s.)
- Feedback duration increased to 30s (from 20s.)
- Health, damage, and Wind Burst damage have all been reduced 20%.
- Lightning and Lightning Rod recast time has been increased.
- Lightning Strike friendly chain damage has been halved.
- Will no longer use Static Shock on normal difficulty in phase 1 or phase 2.
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Conclave of the Four Winds
- Gathering Strength cast time has been increased
- Ice Patch slow is now 5% per stack, up to 10 stacks (down from 10% per stack, up to 30 stacks), damage reduced by 20%.
- Rohash, Anshal, Nezir melee, Ravenous Creeper health/damage, Ravenous Creeper toxic spores damage, Hurricane damage, Sleet Storm damage , Permafrost damage , Slicing Gale, and Wind Blast damage have all been reduced by 20%.
- Wind Chill damage decreased by 20%and now increases damage taken by 5% per stack.
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Al'Akir
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Tier 11 Set Bonuses
- Restoration druid Tier 11 2-Piece: This set bonus has been redesigned to work with the new Restoration druid mastery. Druids with this bonus now receive the bonus to Spirit while the Harmony mastery bonus to periodic healing is active.
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Tier 12 Set Bonuses
- Hunter 4P: The effect which makes Shots cost no focus now also makes Kill Command cost no focus.
- Mage 2P: This set bonus can now also be triggered by Frostfire Bolt.
- Mage 4P: The portions of this bonus referring to Arcane Missiles have been removed. Instead, the set bonus now makes Arcane Power reduce the cost of Mage spells by 10% instead of increasing their cost.
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Arenas
- The Ring of Valor has been added to the Arena rotation once again.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
Dodes May 24th 2011 1:53PM
So does that mean that 359 Tier Helm and Shoulders will be sold for justice points?
Nopunin10did May 24th 2011 2:00PM
I don't believe they've mentioned doing that. You'll probably still need to kill one of the three end bosses to get those.
Krytture May 24th 2011 2:38PM
This whole nerf thing says to me, if you want to see content, but not have to deal with other people failing, and you don't care about gear or being super elitiest, then wait until a new patch comes out, go in, coast through, and then go back on hiatus until the next patch turns on ez-mode for the new stuff.
Really? They need to actually change the encounters? It will be easier to gear up already...so...why do you have to make it easier? Instead of a group going in in Blues, and having to be utterly perfect to get through, they can grind on heroics for a couple weeks and be in full T11 and then go do it and have plenty of room for mistakes and learning.
So now, you can get instant T11, and go through a raid thats been dumbed down to near dungeon level.
Or you can try and talk people into doing the Heroic version, but, hah, who wants to go through that pain with Firelands and T12 sitting right there?
Blacksen May 24th 2011 2:46PM
In addition to being handed 365 gear from daily quests and 359 gear from heroics, it seems a bit strange that they'd tab on additional nerfs. Especially nerfs [i]this[/i] drastic. Things like Chimaeron, Nefarian, and Al'Akir's nerfs are a bit ridiculous. They're removing major elements from the fights.
Obviously they're reaching out to the population of WoW players that are struggling to complete normal mode Tier-11, but what's going to happen after they do? They're just going to go up to Firelands and get hit by a brick wall? I'm also worried what this actually means for Firelands - who are they tuning the content for? Are they expecting those who kill Nefarian for the first time after 4.2 to be able to succeed in Firelands?
The problem with nerfs this drastic is that it accelerates people into content that they're simply not ready for.
Congratz, you killed Al'Akir for the first time after 4.2, and you've got your "Defender of the Shattered World" title. Does this player have even a remote chance at succeeding in Firelands? If yes, then Firelands is way too undertuned. If no, then why are you throwing them into a brick wall?
John May 24th 2011 2:52PM
"Really? They need to actually change the encounters? It will be easier to gear up already...so...why do you have to make it easier? Instead of a group going in in Blues, and having to be utterly perfect to get through, they can grind on heroics for a couple weeks and be in full T11 and then go do it and have plenty of room for mistakes and learning."
Gear doesn't help with the vast multitude of 1-shot or raid-wipe mechanics that are in the "normal" difficulty T11 boss fights.
I don't think you've tried to do Council with people who don't respond to lightning rod or Atramedes with people who can't kite fire or Alakir with people who can't dodge squall lines, etc. etc.
You call those people "bad." I call them my friends whom I want to play WoW with and not get angry at. I don't want to replace them with ... you.
Mr. Crow May 24th 2011 2:58PM
@Blacksen
One could argue that a chain of successes benefits a team's morale more than a chain of failures.
Yes, nerfing the T11 content with the release of T12 will produce a bunch of epic'd characters who don't know how to raid well -- but this increases the pool of geared players who can potentially fill in slows for Firelands raids. It eases gearing alts to also fill in slots.
If the objective is to allow the broader playerbase to see the content, nerfing the content is better than overpowering the players. Though would you prefer if the T11 raids were instead made accessible by bringing back the ICC buff mechanic instead, which progressively increase player effectiveness instead of nerfing bosses?
Travieso May 24th 2011 3:38PM
"I don't believe they've mentioned doing that. You'll probably still need to kill one of the three end bosses to get those."
With these changes, I think you mean you'll have to derp in the general direction of the three end bosses to get those.
Sqtsquish May 24th 2011 3:45PM
Sure mistakes happen and in regular mode one simple mistake shouldn't wipe a raid, but when you allow strong players to carry oblivious players (not weak players, weak players can get better with practice, oblivious ones don't care to get better), then you perpetuate the system of being rewarded for bad behavior, ie being rewarded for intentionally not caring about the fight mechanics.
THAT is what a great deal of people are afraid of, not people getting to play with their friends, if you and your friends genuinely want to play you'll care enough to at least try to learn some of the fights. When you bring your friends that don't want to play then you have players that don't want to be there and don't care about the fights- so if that is also the case don't bring people that don't want to come, friends or not.
Sqtsquish May 24th 2011 5:05PM
Sorta curious what I got downvoted for. I'm all for raids with normal modes that are forgiving of an occasional mistake here or there, of people raiding with their friends assuming that everyone wants to be there.
All I said is that you shouldn't be allowed to brute force your way through every mechanic in a fight, otherwise its just Patchwerk, and boring to everyone, in addition to rewarding people for intentionally ignoring fight mechanics.
IMO fights are about learning to cooperate, if you don't cooperate as a whole, and difficulty for raid bosses should scale not based on gear but on how well a raid group cooperates with each other.
emberdione May 24th 2011 5:09PM
"You call those people "bad." I call them my friends whom I want to play WoW with and not get angry at. I don't want to replace them with ... you."
JOHN! I LOVE YOU.
This so ACCURATELY boils down the points I have been trying to make all day. /salute
Donhorn May 24th 2011 6:04PM
Bear in mind, this nerf if for reg raids. They haven't said anything about touching heroics. So yes, you'll have an easier time with regs, but to truly be 1337 you need to do heroics.
I see this as more of a quality of life nerf to regs, no more no less.
Skarn May 24th 2011 7:20PM
@John,
"I call them my friends whom I want to play WoW with and not get angry at."
I don't have a problem with that. That's a great goal! I'm the same way. I like to play with my friends too.
Video games have never really been about "play with anyone at any skill level" though. You can just play with your friends in Halo, but if they're not any good at it (like me!) your group will not win very much and not have a fun time. Same for Starcraft. Those are against other players though, true. What about a single player game? Well, you could do Halo co-op...but you'll still get destroyed on the harder difficulties if your friends aren't any good. There you have the choice of a lower difficulty level. How about Portal 2? Well, I've not actually done the co-op yet, but if you and your friend can't solve the puzzles you aren't going anywhere. If there are any "shoot the portal at just this time" like there was in Portal 1 (which there probably are), you and your friend will need some level of coordination and reflexes.
Many, many video games have required a certain "skill" or "competency" level to progress. This is true for both solo and multi-player. This is not a new concept at all. At it's heart, there is nothing wrong with the idea of a difficult video game. The place WoW runs into trouble is the lack of difficulty VARIETY. Halo has 4 difficulty levels. So does Starcraft 2. The Warcraft RTS had difficulty levels, as did Diablo. At the release of a current raid, it has a normal level and a hard level. It lacks that easy level that a significant portion of the playerbase likes. It's the "easy" level that lets you play with just about anyone, to get your friends into the raid even they just aren't very good. Interestingly, the only time WoW has had that Easy level present from the beginning of a raid was Naxxrammas. It wasn't present at the beginning of ICC. Well, the first few bosses were, but the rest of the place was pretty rough until the stacking buff hit.
It's interesting. I don't recall such an outcry at the release of Ulduar, most of which was also very rough, but came right after the ease of Naxx. My guess is that it's mostly related to the lack of any raid content to run. Even with Ulduar, people could go back and run Naxx again if they wanted something to do. Also, it's possible the, uh, "easy raiding boom" didn't happen until later. Possibly people expected Naxx to be the exception, so when Ulduar was hard and not cleared by many, it was just business as usual. That mentality shifted with ToC and ICC. Interesting how it started shifting with ToC, despite how nasty the Faction Champions fight was.
One of WoW's difficulties with, uh, difficulty lies in the "reason people raid." Overwhelmingly, it appears to me that people raid for loot. While loot is nice, it's a lot better to raid just for the fun of it. Perhaps that's just my perception. Maybe I'm wrong...but I don't think so. So in addition to the difficulty level, Blizzard has to balance the reward element. Plus, with raiding (partly due to that reward element) people tend to start at the lowest raid level and then move up. I worry that if an "easy level" was added that raiders who should be on normal would start at easy, then move up. This would contribute to burnout I think. A rough problem to solve for Blizzard.
This is a lot longer than I intended, so back to the original point which is that historically, it is quite common for a video game to require some minimum competency level. This certainly varies from game to game, but I think it's pretty unique to MMOs to see this sort of "I want to play with my friends but can't" problem show up. Oh, I'm sure it's happened in many games, but the complaints don't crop up, probably because most other games are pretty static. Anyway, it's certainly a reasonable request that makes sense, but it's still seems odd to me. Not odd that you want to play with your friends, but odd that you want to alter the game to fit your needs. Most times, when a game is too hard people just find a new game. I'm not advocating that (well, to an extent I am, don't play something that's not fun!), but it's certainly more common to stop playing the game than to try to change it...except for MMOs. They are an odd creature indeed.
Toggle May 25th 2011 5:51AM
In Halo we could do free for all. Or play the campaign on easy. Bad or inexperienced players will be matched against each other. All of these things are designed to allow the whole game to be accessible to anybody.
I think that heroic modes aren't much of a substitute for difficulty settings, though. You generally don't walk into a raid for the first time and flip it on heroic. They're more like artificial progression extensions. I think that they should be more akin to difficulties in other games.
I do find it ironic that anyone is upset about nerfing the encounters in 4.2 anyways. If you're an elite player, go do the new hotness. No need for you to rub elbows with the unwashed masses. At least now more people will be able to get more value out of the game they're paying for. Whining about less skilled players being able to do a raid that you're not even gonna do anymore is quite silly.
Poltergeist May 25th 2011 2:48PM
A lot of these players that are so quick to QQ don't stop to think that two, maybe three months from now, their elitist guilds will wind up losing a handful of players that need to be replaced. A portion of these losses will inevitably be replaced by skilled players who took advantage of an easier gear curve due to getting into Cata later than others.
A lot of these players that are so quick to QQ don't stop to think that at some point in the future, their elitist guild may not be the well oiled raiding machine that it is today. I used to be in a guild that I though would never collapse, having been together for years. Guess what, it did. And when the rug gets pulled out from underneath them, they may have to resort to raiding with people that took advantage of an easier gear curve to kick start their progression.
A lot of these players that are so quick to QQ don't stop to think that they will get quite bored with whatever character they tend to raid with today, and that someday they would love to try playing an alt that, thanks to an easier gear curve, will have a much easier time getting brought up to par with relevant raid content.
A lot of these players that are so quick to QQ don't stop to think. Period.
SamLowry May 28th 2011 9:40AM
I suspect Blizz may also be "reaching out to the population of WoW players that are struggling to complete" heroic 5-man dungeons. I shut off my account three months ago when it became clear that you have to be in a raiding guild just to complete a heroic daily.
The normal routine was "Wait 40 minutes in the queue, group wipes 5 minutes in, group breaks up; wait another 40 minutes in queue...."
After completing only one heroic after about 15 tries, I said screw it.
Oh, and now that the initial raids will be easier for casuals, will we be seeing a Raid Finder any time in the future? Because as I said, I ain't in a raiding guild and these guys are apparently the only ones who are seeing the insides of these joints.
Mr. Crow May 24th 2011 1:47PM
In before "catering to the casuals."
If anyone wants to make arguments that this will makes Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's rest a highly common legendary, this will prolly be a strong reason why.
Thrasher May 24th 2011 1:53PM
Does Tarecgosa's Rest require running a lot of BWD/BOT/TotFW? If not, I'm not sure how this affects it.
These aren't nerfs to Firelands, just the old raids that we are CURRENTLY doing (and will be moving away from once Firelands drops)
tabardsrock May 24th 2011 1:59PM
the nerf is to T11 raids, and Tarecgosa's Rest is a T12 legendary
Maccabeus May 24th 2011 1:59PM
@ Thrasher
To access the legendary questline, you have to have your Defender title. In other words, you have to have completed all the T11 raids to get the quest.
Jugzwei May 24th 2011 2:08PM
Its because you have to be 12/12 normal mode in order to be eligible to obtain the legendary staff.