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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsFirelands 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 4 of 5)
Jaq Sep 12th 2011 10:28PM
If they're going to nerf it, then nerf it on their sides. I had so many headaches with raids when people would, intentionally griefing or just because they didn't know, turn off the ICC buff. I'd rather deal with forum QQ over how easy things are now than have to reassemble a raid because someone turned off a buff, thank you very much.
Sergel Sep 12th 2011 10:03PM
The only thing i worry about is that with only one raid afterwards people may get bored.
But there is all the stuff afterwards, like the world event and such.
UnLokly Sep 12th 2011 10:05PM
My guild has been wiping on 10-Man Rag for about 7 weeks now... We breeze through the other bosses in 1 nite (3hrs) and then focus on him for another couple of nites before reset. We deal with crappy RNG, lag, player absentees and the odd mistake... now that we fully understand the mechanics and movement. After nearly 2 months of wiping I (and my guildies) welcome any nerf to the Rag fight as this got very very stale about 2 weeks ago.
That being said there should be some type of reward for the pre-nerf kills like a title or something to acknowledge the cream of the crop (... and the lucky).
@ the emo's that farm old content waiting for major nerfs due to lack of skill and effort... There is no true victory without struggle.
Cambro Sep 13th 2011 12:51AM
Blizzard can never make everyone happy, but they can give people plenty of things to work toward and show off. In this case, there's a date attached to your achievement for when you killed a particular boss. So you can show the achievement, and to the people that it matters to, you can show them by date that you killed Boss X pre-nerf. Beyond that, there are guild achievements, server firsts, and world firsts, plus of course the gear and tokens. How much more do you want? And just how granular do you want the rewards to be?
[Defeated Ragnaros on Heroic Mode, 10 man, no battle rezzes used, 2 people or fewer dead, in less than 5 minutes, and /mooned Ragnaros at 5% health]
Marius W. Sep 13th 2011 1:45AM
You make a great point. Im in a casual but progressive guild. We raid every week. We raid three days a week and have gotten through all of the raids till firelands.
We wiped continuously on all bosses. After some time, it got to be a bore.
After 584953 wipes, you can close your eyes and do it blindly cause you know it so well already.
The server I xferred to wasn't really a great PVE server as it is a rp server so it suffers from the rp syndrome.
It just got stagnant doing the same bosses every single week.
Kara never seemed to get this boring, but Kara was epic as were all the blackrock mountain raids and dungeons in vanilla. Still are epic solo'ng them now.
I guess it just wasnt one boss after another. You felt like you were truly in a haunted castle or down in the depths of blackrock. Now its just go from one room to the next without much changing.
erndawg Sep 12th 2011 10:35PM
OK, maybe I'm remembering things wrong, but weren't Tier 11 Heroics barely touched? It was just the regulars that were hit 20%; the heroics only got a couple tweaks. Correct me if I'm wrong.
However, if I'm right the blue post says that Firelands will be nerfed on regular and heroic the way Tier 11 was by the time it's over, so that means 20% to regs, a few tweaks on heroics. But heroic mode is hardly going to become effortless. There will still be a challenge there.
If memory serves...
Phoenix Psaltery Sep 12th 2011 11:20PM
I'm on the Rag...naros.
moonburn Sep 12th 2011 11:34PM
Statement of disclosure first: I haven't played WoW in almost three months and don't intend to come back, for a variety of reasons.
That said, I do have friends who still play, and contacts in my old guild, which although 6/7H, is a shadow of its former self due to players burning out, departing due to boredom, etc, and can only do 1, sometimes 2 10m groups where it used to be a world top 100 25m guild going back to Vanilla. Other friends are in a more casual guild that is 7/7 normal.
Not one of them is in favor of the heroic portion of this nerf, even if it means the progression guild downs Ragnaros or the casual guild gets one or more heroic kills. To them the heroic modes being nerfed renders them meaningless, and both guilds expect their attendance problems to increase pre-4.3.
Guilds are dying, hell the entire concept of a meaningful endgame is dying, and Blizzard just shot the patient again. Nerfs to normal modes are fine - no one expects normal modes to always be difficult, even for the most casual of guilds. But taking the incentive away for guilds that really only function on the pride of accomplishment, when there is precious little of that pride left, only serves to hasten the demise of WoW's endgame as anything meaningful.
Zal Sep 12th 2011 11:42PM
I stopped playing WOW all together not because it was too hard or too easy to raid Firelands. I stopped playing because all the fights kept bugging out, even now, that made it impossible to progress at all in 10mans. Nothing was more /demoralizing/ than to have Rhyolith activate volcanoes behind him even though he was "fixed" to activate those closer to his front first. That the webbing on Beth did not catch you as you fell down which mean more damage the healers had to deal with followed by her eating a spiderling from across the room. Baelroc doing a decimation blade first thing before we can even get a single healer with a stack to switch in hopes of having him survive.
I stopped playing because this tier of raiding has been buggy, pushing into the Nintendo Hard difficulty instead of just difficult, and simply not worth the effort. When it is hard for a small guild to keep enough people in it to raid with because they are not hardcore enough to deal with this failure in software development on nearly all the bosses then you have no reason to play.
I don't think even these nerfs to the raid are enough to draw me back into the game, there is just of little interest to me in the game. I, unfortunately, do not really subscribe heavily to the achievements metagame. I only really cared about noncombat pets and after the chore of getting to 150, I have nothing else of interest. The remaining pets are alternate faction, too expensive and of little interest for me to go nuts grinding gold.
Marius W. Sep 13th 2011 1:30AM
Same here. Firelands was buggy due to all the mechanics. It was frustrating as you think you are doing everything you should be doing but then it would bug and we wipe.
They had the right idea with the theme of Firelands. It felt epic till you got to the fights, then they just seemed sloppy and poorly thought out.
You can only kill rage face while rip limp was over there but then X + 4 = a brown bunny.
Thats how these fights felt.
I also got all the pets, mounts I wanted. I figured out how to make a ton of gold without doing much work. It lost all challenge like it used to have and the challenge that was left was buggy and stupid (firelands).
karatesmashunhurt Sep 13th 2011 7:46AM
I'm not sure if any or all of the things you mention are genuine bugs.
"That the webbing on Beth did not catch you as you fell down which mean more damage the healers had to deal with"
It sounds like people were falling down through the holes caused by meteorites, not the hole in the centre of the web. I made the same mistake before I looked at death logs and asked my raid what was going on. The webs do catch you if you fall through the centre of the web, they don't if you fall through the holes caused by meteorite. Which makes sense: the meteorite holes are things you're not supposed to stand in.
"Baelroc doing a decimation blade first thing before we can even get a single healer with a stack to switch in hopes of having him survive."
I'm glad they changed the fight so that decimation blade never comes first, it feels fairer that way, but it isn't a bug. Maybe poor design, but not a bug. All three groups in our quite casual guild downed him before the change, and there are so many guilds ahead of us I don't
I can't comment on the Rhyolith fight, since I'm too busy tunneling on healing and not paying attention to which volcanos are about to activate.
I'm sorry if this post just sounds like me saying L2P, but I think you're too quickly dismissing mechanics you can't handle or don't fully understand as being bugs.
venicide Sep 12th 2011 11:54PM
this will allow you to bridge a gap and get an upper hand on some guilds before 4.3.
be ready! when it drops your guild could get a server first!
hoskiz01 Sep 13th 2011 12:09AM
Do remember that they are introducing the Raid finder next patch aswell... this will likely determine if pugs will be capable of completing our current content while guilds attempt the new 4.3 content
Rainbow Sep 13th 2011 12:35AM
Bring back a Vanilla server and save us from this Cataclysm!!!
vegetto375 Sep 13th 2011 12:57AM
So for all of those against the nerf to Heroic i have a question. Were you able to finish HT11 before 4.2 hit? Did you finish HT11 after 4.2 hit? If you did it after did you use any T12 gear? In my opionio if you used T12 to down HT11 content then thats the same of the contet having been nerfed? unless your plan was to finish HT11 and HT12 only using gear revelant to that tier of content that you were using and advantage that was not avaliable to those that finish current content at the current time. Now if heroic gets nerf than thats the same as you finishing when you arewearing T13 gear, with the only diference of finishing while it is still the top end. I welcome changes that allow more people to hae access to the game. We all want to say we made it to the end of the race before everyone else was doing the next race, we all want to reach the goal line even if we get there dead last at least we finish it before it was over and no longer the end we strived to reach.
If small guilds get a chance to say "yay we are 1/7H" is that such a bad thing?
smartazjb0y Sep 13th 2011 1:20AM
The thing is, they're rolling these out on September 19th. I HIGHLY doubt that 4.3 will be live before then. Why does Blizz need to roll them out so early?
Heroic content isn't much "content" that people are missing out on. The only significant content that people would feel bad about missing is Heroic Rag's new phase. Saying "Yay we're 1/7H" only really matters because of the challenge, not necessarily because they saw more content. Only going 7/7H would say something about seeing more content that's more accessible.
Marius W. Sep 13th 2011 1:20AM
This is what I've been saying. They are making this game way too easy and taking all the challenge out of it.
Part of the fun is learning fights and wiping over and over. You know you are on the right track when you get further each wipe.
I don't get their logic. They stopped with the typical tank n spank raid bosses of the past and put in lot more mechanics to freshen up the experience.
That deemed to be too hard for most so we have these nerfs coming in.
This one is just ridiculous. It hasn't even been out that long.
Dont put in so many wacky mechanics if you want it to be easier for all. Most can't stay out of the fire. Most have trouble with situational awareness. They stand right in fire and die and then over vent say "why did I die?".
They need to find the balance between mechanics and tank n spank and then itll be challenging yet accessible to most.
I dont know who they are trying to make this game for anymore?
I loved the premise of firelands but the bosses were so mechanics heavy that is was tough to remain in a positive state when most couldn't handle running around from point a to point b to point a to point c over and over and over.
I can't really dps a lot if I have to keep moving. My rotation doesn't work when I have to move around. I felt useless in firelands as a shadowpriest who has to stay still for max dps output. I can put up dots but thats a small fraction of my dps.
Ill be back for 4.3 cause im soooo excited for the new faire and hopefully the Gilneas story continuing on. Of course Hallows End too as everyone loves killing the big spooky pumpkin head!!
Marius W. Sep 13th 2011 1:35AM
On the other hand, they may just be setting everything up so that everyone can see what they are doing for Mr. Deathwing himself.
We know they are going a totally different way with him. We get to ride him. WE GET TO RIDE DEATHWING!!
THAT IS AWESOME!! Everyone should see that.
This also lends a bit of credibility that 4.3 will be gigantic and they want everyone done with 4.2 when 4.3 comes out. I may be overly optimistic, but im thinking 4.3 will be as big, if not bigger than what we got when Cata was released.
It could also mean nothing, of course.
rudynoname Sep 13th 2011 1:59AM
THe Heroic nerfs might be taking it a bit too far. But nerfs to normal are i wouldnt say are welcome but understandable.
Instead of patching and hotfixing midpatch however I wish they would implement something from the get-go like in ICC where theres a buff that increases over time. Have it start 10 weeks after patch release and have it increase 2% every week untill it reaches 20% or whatever floats blizzards boat. The delayed-start aside having something like this that players no about from the very begining will prevent other players from getting up in arms about changes like these announced today.
matticus Sep 13th 2011 2:26AM
People who finished T11 Normal but not any heroics (or just halfus) had a brutal time with any boss other than Shannox during the first bit of 4.2 I think they are trying to make sure those guilds are not so far behind the curve when 4.3 hits.