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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard announces first round of Firelands raid hotfixes
by Mathew McCurley 
Sep 20th 2011 at 2:00PM
Normal difficulty bosses Shannox, Beth'tilac, and Rhyolith took 15% decreases to health and damage, whereas all of the other bosses in Firelands took a 25% hit. Certain trash packs have had their proverbial bite removed, and Alysrazor's tornadoes will now move more slowly. All adds in these encounters have had their health pools and damage decreased in the same proportions to their corresponding bosses'.
On heroic difficulty, all bosses' health pools and damage, along with adds' corresponding health and damage, have been reduced by a blanket 15%, which is a huge nerf for heroic modes. Alysrazor also drops more feathers on both difficulty settings, and her Wings of Flame buff is now a static 30 seconds.
While many players will be upset with these nerfs, I can only imagine the many raid groups that will happily charge forward to finally defeat the encounters that they have been banging their heads against for the better part of the patch. Blizzard has said that there will be more nerfs coming, as this is just the first round, so make use of this time to get as many of the bosses as you can while the getting is hot.
First round of Firelands hotfixes
As announced in the 'Firelands Raid Changes Incoming' blog post ( http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3494581/Firelands_Raid_Changes_Incoming-9_12_2011 ), we'll be making the below hotfixes which have gone into effect during today's raid reset.
Normal difficulty
• Shannox, Beth'tilac, Rhyolith - health and damage reduced by 15%.
• Other bosses - health and damage reduced by 25%.
• All adds' health and damage have been reduced in the same proportions as bosses.
• Hellhounds and Unstable Magma deal much less damage.
• Alysrazor's Fiery Tornados move slower.
• The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
• Alysrazor drops 1 additional feather for 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers for 25-player mode in all cycles.
• Wrath of Ragnaros in Stage 1 now knocks targets up, but not back.
Heroic difficulty
• Boss health and damage reduced by 15% (Heroic Ragnaros' health has not been reduced.)
• All adds' health and damage have been reduced in the same proportions as bosses. However, Heroic Ragnaros adds have been reduced by 15%.
• The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
• Alysrazor drops 1 additional feather for 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers for 25-player mode in all cycles.
Stay tuned to the 4.2 Hotfixes blog post as these and other live updates are made to the game: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3019413
Normal difficulty
• Shannox, Beth'tilac, Rhyolith - health and damage reduced by 15%.
• Other bosses - health and damage reduced by 25%.
• All adds' health and damage have been reduced in the same proportions as bosses.
• Hellhounds and Unstable Magma deal much less damage.
• Alysrazor's Fiery Tornados move slower.
• The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
• Alysrazor drops 1 additional feather for 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers for 25-player mode in all cycles.
• Wrath of Ragnaros in Stage 1 now knocks targets up, but not back.
Heroic difficulty
• Boss health and damage reduced by 15% (Heroic Ragnaros' health has not been reduced.)
• All adds' health and damage have been reduced in the same proportions as bosses. However, Heroic Ragnaros adds have been reduced by 15%.
• The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
• Alysrazor drops 1 additional feather for 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers for 25-player mode in all cycles.
Stay tuned to the 4.2 Hotfixes blog post as these and other live updates are made to the game: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3019413
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 8)
furrama Sep 20th 2011 2:29PM
You can't really blame them, they have to have some reason for why they wiped on bosses 200 times other than being early. In a way their sense of accomplishment is being diminished, as most people aren't going to thumb through their achievement pages to see if they downed bosses before a certain date of nerfs.
Hopefully this will be avoided next tier and here on out, and they'll leave heroics out of the nerfs, and only do it to normals and LFRs. Maybe they won't even have to do it at all, who knows?
threesixteen Sep 20th 2011 2:31PM
well... don't they deserve to claim their laurels?
Consider: as evidenced by the number of people on the forums indicating their relative difficulties in advancing through the first few bosses on normal, i'd say aknowleding the guilds that have in fact cleared content in its un-nerfed form is the classy thing to do. They deserve the respect from the player base in general i'd say.
After all, anyone who has raided will agree that it does take quite a bit of effort, time and organization to 'win'; and those qualities ought not be diminished because some folks are envious or feel vexed with elite guild's pride in their achievements.
ashaani.tuuremya Sep 20th 2011 2:37PM
They already have that, in the form of a dated kill achievement. The issue isn't pride, it's being a douchebag to people who don't play the game the same way you do.
Some hardcore raiding guilds are truly classy. They don't act like dicks to players who haven't gotten as far through the content, or assume they're better people because they have more time to invest in their hobby. It's the ones who do that I'm taking issue with.
(cutaia) Sep 20th 2011 2:39PM
Yeah, I think a Feat of Strength for people who clear raids pre-nerf would be a nice touch. (Not that I'd have any of them.)
watspr02 Sep 20th 2011 2:42PM
Just b/c someone takes pride in doing something does not mean that they wish that others do not have an easier time doing it. I take pride in my running/jogging. I aspire to do a marathon someday and have completed several half-marathons. Do I take offense when someone else does a half-marathon an hour slower than me? No, I actually go up and congratulate that person for having the ability to actually do it. Everyone has their own feelings of achievement and we should not say or do anything to lessen it (aka good sportsmanship). Is their standard the same as our standard? No, everyone has their own standards. Is your standard lessened by their standard? Once again, no. At the end of the day, all we have is personal enjoyment of the game. If this increases other people's does it decrease mine? The answer should be no. You should derive your enjoyment of the game by how you want to play it and ignore everyone else. Take into account the other 9 or 24 people in your raid group of course, but don't take your sense of enjoyment by saying that "I is leet, everyone else is noob". Take your enjoyment from your own achievements and let others say and do what they will.
Guttsu Sep 20th 2011 3:04PM
"douchecanoe" ... hmmm, I think you just changed my life.
Daedalus Sep 20th 2011 3:18PM
@furrama & threesixteen:
At the risk of sounding like a motivational poster, a sense of accomplishment can't be given to you; if you don't feel it unless other people celebrate your achievement, that's your problem.
You know when you did it, you know how hard it was then versus now, so you can be proud of that; you don't need an accomplishment or feat of strength to wave in other players faces to show how 'leet you are.
Who would you have more respect for: a guy who climbs Everest and never speaks of it again, or a guy who climbs it and spends the rest of his life wearing a flashing neon "I climbed Everest" pin?
threesixteen Sep 20th 2011 3:27PM
daedalus:
what is the sound of one hand clapping?
your post doesn't make sense; and i suspect entirely misses the point.
what exactly is your objection to the guy who climbed everest being recognized for that? esepcially if after he climbed it, the natural forces of nature chopped it down in size by 25% thus allowing a host of other mountain climbers who had previously simply been unable to reach the summit? Do you think that they'd have the nerve to lay claim to the same 'achievement' that the pioneer climber has?
And do you really believe that the first climber, celebrating his success, would truly begrudge the others from their own ascent? knowing full well that any achievement's true merit is the internal sense of satisfaction that one feels in living up to one's own, personal expectations?
I think you should downrate your own post.
Sirn Sep 20th 2011 7:56PM
@watspr02
Hey Watspr02, I like your reasoning. I would most certainly applaud someone who was dedicated enough to train and finally tackle a half-marathon. I think your analogy is lacking something though:
What happens if that person believes they should be able to take a car to complete the remainder of the marathon? or maybe run on a moving sidewalk? You would probably still not care, because you are able to complete the task exactly as you want. What happens if they institute a world-wide rule that says all marathons must be run using a moving sidewalk. Now your progress, your sense of achievement, has been a bit diminished. You may even tell your grand kids you ran a marathon "before the sidewalks were added".
My guild completed heroic alysrazor on Thursday of last week. We raid 2 hours per night, 3 nights per week. We have made steady progress all summer (H4/7), and I was looking forward to working on the remaining content as is. By nerfing normal content, I might furl my brow and shake my fist (damn kids these days!). By nerfing the heroic content, they have forced me to do it differently then all who have come before - despite the fact that we are progressing.
perasitewow Sep 20th 2011 2:25PM
You know what? I'm glad they nerfed them this much. I hate that WoW websites require you to put your credentials in order to have your voice "matter," but here they are: I was 9/13 HM last tier and 2/7 HM this tier before I quit raiding.
I hate HMs. I can do them, the challenge is fun, but that's not the point. Either make them all hard, make them all easy, or make some bosses easy and then other bosses hard. I hate that I never feel the elation of a first kill. I hate that WoW players' first response when you criticize anything raid related is "Where's your Rag HM kill?!?!?" Having hard modes be the exact same boss tuned to a higher level has killed the joy of raiding.
You work your way through normal modes, and sure, it feels a little nice to kill each boss along the way, but in the back of your mind your saying to yourself "this kill doesn't count. It won't count until we kill HM." So, you take a couple of weeks to clear through normal and then start working on the "real bosses." So during those 3 weeks getting through normals, you've already killed that first HM boss 3 times before ever facing the HM version of him. You kill him and... oh joy, you get the same loot with "Heroic" tagged under it and the underwhelming sense of deja vu that you've done this before.
Now since you're not in Ensidia or some guild like that, you don't clear through the HMs in 2-3 weeks, so you get 1 HM boss, maybe 2 per week. This means that you keep killing the other bosses on normal mode. So, when you finally kill them on HM, you're back to that deja vu, lackluster feeling that makes it really not worth the effort.
So, why am I glad that they've nerfed all these encounters? Because it means guilds will spend (hopefully) less time on normal modes and maybe, just maybe that first HM kill will feel special. Oh, who am I kidding? Everyone will say, "Oh, you killed it post-nerf, that doesn't count." It's a lose/lose.
Blizz needs to knock it off with the lame hard modes and just give more individual bosses tuned to get progressively harder. Otherwise, raiding just sucks.
(cutaia) Sep 20th 2011 2:33PM
"You know what? I'm glad they nerfed them this much. I hate that WoW websites require you to put your credentials in order to have your voice "matter," but here they are: I was 9/13 HM last tier and 2/7 HM this tier before I quit raiding."
Honestly, I can't remember seeing a "let's see your progression" retort on WoW Insider. That seems more like an MMO-Champion type of thing.
threesixteen Sep 20th 2011 2:34PM
some cogent points here.
perasitewow Sep 20th 2011 2:40PM
You're right. MMO-champs is where I see it most. I guess I'm just fed up with that mentality.
Coopaloop Sep 20th 2011 2:49PM
Problem with this is that the more casual guilds will not be able to reach the hardest bosses and miss out on the content and I think that is Blizzards biggest priority.
I like the way heroics function as the elitist/professional way to raid and normal/soon-2-come LFR function as a way to raid, have fun and progress. Not sure why they would nerf HM. I agree that the people that cry "wear iz your HM kill," are complete idiots that do not understand the stress others have with life schedules or that some people just don't like the pain that comes with smashing your head into the comp screen after wiping for the umpteenth time. But as cutaia mentioned, WoW insiders community does a great job of purging said idiots.
perasitewow Sep 20th 2011 2:56PM
If Blizzard wants to let everyone see those final bosses, then I'd be more than happy to see a toggle-based buff, that increasingly nerfs the content, introduced to correspond to each new tier. Give me more bosses, not hard modes of the same bosses. In order to insure that everyone gets to see all the bosses, Blizz could make it standard procedure to implement this auto-nerf mechanic after x number of weeks, increasing in potency every x number of weeks until they are satisfied that everyone that wants to see it has cleared the content. If you make the buff have a toggle, then everyone is happy and those of us who want to see the epic sense of accomplishment, that we are robbed of right now, returned to raiding will be able to finally get that sense again.
Skarn Sep 20th 2011 10:05PM
"I hate that I never feel the elation of a first kill."
While I understand your point, I don't agree with it. I've been elated at every single Normal mode kill this tier. I haven't killed Ragnaros yet. I've obviously not killed anything on Heroic mode. Why do I get excited about Normal mode kills? Because that's my focus. Our guild isn't trying to be the best of the best or get all the achievements or get the best gear, we just want to have fun.
So we focus on Normals. We're not good enough that we breeze through Normals either. In Firelands, Shannox took 4 tries. Beth was 20+. Rhyolith was 30+. Baleroc was 10+. Alysrazor was 30+. Staghelm was 10+. These are not small numbers. It took a lot of time and effort to get those kills and they were all very rewarding.
This playstyle works for us because hardmode exists. If everything was one difficulty, then we'd have half the raid be like Normal, a nice, challenging, fun time. The other half would be like Heroic and would be horrific and not-fun. So no. I do NOT agree. In fact, I vehemently disagree. I absolutely want to keep two difficulty modes. In fact, I'm glad they are adding a 3rd through LFR. I do think that they should remove the "must beat Normal first." Specifically to avoid the "not first kill" syndrome.
Sunaseni Sep 20th 2011 2:33PM
A 25% nerf to the later bosses on week one on the round of nerfs just feels TOO SOON. We only had three months of Firelands (during SUMMER, I remind you), so my guild was slow progressing and on Staghelm and working on him and making progress. (Generally wiping on the Orb Phase at 20-30-ish percent). This nerf makes it so we can kill him before the orbs comes out, sort of robbing us of that learning experience of how to deal with them.
If they wanted progressive nerfs, I feel like they should have nerfed the first 3 bosses (Shannox, Beth, and Rhyolith), to give players the chance to at least try Baleroc or Alysrazor as was originally intended. Or if not that, a smaller nerf at first for the later bosses, progressively increasing.
I want a chance to, you know, SEE the content as originally intended. In other words, Blizzard should cater their schedule around mine. Or at least, if that's not possible, a two-lockout warning would have been cool.
luizgustavo3054 Sep 20th 2011 10:56PM
These first 3 bosses have already being nerfed to a fairly easy dps/ healing requirements. Still, people wiped on them. So now they are trivialized for casual guilds.
eze42323 Sep 20th 2011 2:33PM
Not sure what some of you are talking about. We raid 9 hours a week and lost our MT right before 4.2 hit and we're 1/7 HM and have had Rag down for about a month. Got HM Ryo to 15%. We're not hardcore and were progressing just fine. While sure it would help to raid 20 hours compared to 9 you can still progress and have a life. I think there's just a lot of bad players and I miss BC.
Scorfula Sep 20th 2011 2:38PM
I'm unhappy about this nerf. My guild are working on Rag normal and this will cheapen our kill considerably. This nerf is like being told I'm just not good enough to do it the way I was supposed to and yeah, that bothers me.
Should it bother me so much? Probably not. It still does though.
There's some odd kind of sense of entitlement around raiding now that it should be for everyone...Remind me again why raiding should be for everyone? Aren't 5 man heroics tuned to be for players who haven't got the time or skill to raid?
I'm hoping the new LFR difficulty will stop these kinds of blanket nerfs and let me just continue to raid at a difficulty level that's right for my guild, and not with the training wheels on.
Some of like to wipe over and over seeing that little bit of progression every single time. It's not fun if it's not challenging.