Firelands raid changes incoming
by Mathew McCurley 
Sep 12th 2011 at 8:22PM
I think that the Icecrown Citadel approach, nerfing raiding content as the tier progresses, is an excellent move by Blizzard to keep raiders playing and trying encounters they may have fallen just short on progression. World firsts have already happened, and that race is long over. Now, groups that weren't working on the content as intensely now have their shot at checking out some of the great encounters in Firelands.
Firelands raid changes incoming
With the final showdown against Deathwing approaching, we've been keeping a close eye on players' progress through the current Firelands raid content. Before patch 4.3 is released, we want groups who are working on Heroic-difficulty content to be able to get as close to Ragnaros as possible, and we want players who are tackling normal progression to be able to experience as many of the encounters as they can. To achieve these goals, we'll be toning down the difficulty of both normal and Heroic raids through hotfixes in the coming weeks. In general, we plan to reduce health and damage of all raid bosses in both normal and Heroic Firelands by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released.
We're looking forward to seeing more groups of players face off against the Fire Lord in the weeks ahead. However, before we make these changes, we want to give everyone a final shot at the bosses at their current difficulty level -- so this is a heads up that we're planning to apply the difficulty hotfixes beginning the week of September 19.
Stay tuned to the Patch 4.2 Hotfixes blog for these and other live updates to the game as they happen.
We're looking forward to seeing more groups of players face off against the Fire Lord in the weeks ahead. However, before we make these changes, we want to give everyone a final shot at the bosses at their current difficulty level -- so this is a heads up that we're planning to apply the difficulty hotfixes beginning the week of September 19.
Stay tuned to the Patch 4.2 Hotfixes blog for these and other live updates to the game as they happen.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back! 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Rai Sep 12th 2011 8:24PM
Too soon?
vertigobliss86 Sep 12th 2011 9:59PM
Too soon, Executus!
dumaal Sep 13th 2011 7:54AM
tbh, apart from being a great way to keep raiders playing I can easily see this as an insult to those that struggled but didnt manage to get Ragnaros just yet. It's Blizzard petting its retards in public. I will never understand why splitting in Normal and Hard modes is not good enough.
...or why (with so many retards) getting a full tier set requires killing the hardest boss, why not get full tier on easy bosses and get a weapon or some imba rings on last encounter. What is the purpose of getting the full tier bonus when most guilds dont get to even start heroics before next content.
Anyways, maybe its just me.
Mugutu Sep 12th 2011 8:27PM
Honestly can't believe they're nerfing heroics mid-tier. That's just a little absurd.
Kaphik Sep 12th 2011 8:30PM
Yeah, was just talking with some friends in game, it's a bit depressing. And we're not super progression either, but I just feel it's a bit unnecessary. It's like all we have to do is just wait it out and we get everything handed to us. :(
adamjgp Sep 12th 2011 9:19PM
Waiting it out is the key. If you wait long enough, everything becomes easy. If you choose to wait for the nerfs, then the players that aren't waiting for them are gearing up faster and progressing more than the ones that are.
i'm in favor of the nerfs, because this way when 4.3 drops my guild will have a good chance of jumping straight in instead of waiting around and gearing up in FL more.
ZodiacDragons Sep 12th 2011 10:02PM
Personally, I think heroic content should be left as is. Nerf regular content so more people can experience it, sure. But leave heroics alone so that the people who want to experience the challenge can. This would please both casual and hardcore raiders on both sides imo.
Utakata Sep 12th 2011 10:03PM
They're doing it to get players like me to come back. The problem is it's not the raiding difficulty...it's the raiding. It's the only option on the plate if you want to get anywhere in PvE. And I'm not interested. Give me something meaningful to do other than raiding and I might reconsider Blizz.
thpthpthp1 Sep 12th 2011 10:05PM
I think they should nerf Firelands, just do it when the next tier comes out like they did with tier 11 content. Makes the most sense to me personally.
Cambro Sep 13th 2011 12:40AM
Zodiac, if they nerf normal modes and leave heroic mode alone, heroic will be much more difficult to attempt by those people that want to attempt the content but either don't quite have the skill or the opportunity. As is, heroic modes are enough of a challenge for the more skilled players that they will get bored of them before 4.3 comes out so whether they're nerfed or not is irrelevant to that set of players.
In my own guild, we've been having trouble this expansion with scheduling issues, such that getting enough of the geared/skilled people online at the same time for Firelands has been a challenge, and some weeks even a 4.0 raid night gets a little iffy. Nerfing the raids (normal or heroic) gives us more of an opportunity to see that content, as well as more opportunity to farm them as we're able, so that we can at least keep up with the content. In some situations, the lack of nerfing the older content would inherently lock a lot of people out of the newer content; the gap between them gets wider and wider, making the final content practically undoable until the next expansion.
Sure, it's great to have really challenging content, but if circumstances don't allow it, at least Blizzard has made it so you can at least get in before the expansion ends and kill the boss you paid to kill.
Revanel Sep 13th 2011 2:37AM
You have to realize that this tier is going to be shorter in nature anyways. So will 4.3's length. That's why they're doing it this way. It does make a lot of sense.
Mitch_b_666 Sep 13th 2011 3:09AM
Perhaps they need to Nerf normals, and then Nerf hc to a lesser extent, maybe progressively getting less nerfed the deeper in you go, up to not nerfed at all for ragnaros.
I know that for some reason, our guild can easily handle normal content, but when it comes to hc we just can't seem to grasp it, even T11 so a Nerf to the earlier bosses would give guilds a good foot holding in the realm of heroic raids
DragonFireKai Sep 13th 2011 3:27AM
@Mitch
The reason why your guild can't handle even T11 heroics is because T11 heroics remained untouched by the 20% nerf. The skill requirement gap became immensely vast after the 4.2 nerf, while an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of computers could farm an infinite number of T11 helm tokens, even heroic halfus is harder than many of the bosses in normal firelands. And because the loot is by and large inferior to normal firelands loot, the risk/reward for T11 heroic content isn't there for most guilds.
JattTheRogue Sep 14th 2011 5:04AM
I'm really disappointed in this. My guild is very small (as in we only have 8 raiders small) and only raids one night a week, and last week was our first time into Firelands. We were really looking forward to having a few weeks to work on the current content at the normal difficulty level before patch 4.3 came out since we didn't get into T11 raids before their nerf. Now all we have is this week's raid before nerfs, and we obviously won't clear the entire raid our second time into it. They say this is a "heads up," but it's not much of one. If we had known they would be applying nerfs earlier than they did for the previous tier sooner, we would have gone into Firelands much more quickly.
cyanea85 Sep 12th 2011 8:28PM
I gotta say that I love this methodology of ensuring that everyone sees the content, though I'd like to see a Hellscream's Warsong kinda thing (where you can toggle it on/off) rather than just a flat nerf.
razion Sep 12th 2011 8:39PM
Normally this sort of thing would be fine--but 4.3 isn't even on the PTR yet, let alone out and released. Most guilds who want to get to Ragnaros haven't had enough feasible time to get to him yet, and already the content is getting nerfed in just a few short weeks. This is the sort of thing we might have expected to see once 4.3 launched, or even half-way through 4.3... but we're still in the middle of 4.2.
finlay Sep 12th 2011 8:39PM
I fully agree with you, you sir a very smart
Snuzzle Sep 12th 2011 10:20PM
I agree with cyanea85. Something toggleable would be great, but you have to think hey, Blizzard has the information from Icecrown. I bet they can see how many people actually toggled the buff OFF. And I bet that number is very, very small.
As to razion, remember, Blizzard said they wanted to get content pushed out sooner and sooner. They were already to bring us Ragnaros with 4.1, but held back as they felt it was "TOO SOON EXECUTUS!" I would bet dollars to donuts that the Deathwing raid is already pretty close to being finished, at least finished enough to go onto the PTR shortly. If they're announcing the nerfing to start on Sept 19th, I'd also be willing to bet that the 4.3 PTR will be out right around that time, too.
Eladonra Sep 13th 2011 10:20AM
Agreed. I'd much prefer a toggle, especially with the change happening this early. The theory that the data is going to be used for the Raid Finder makes a lot of sense though
razion Sep 12th 2011 8:32PM
This seems... quite a bit early for this?