i've thought a lot about the nerfs, and I think I may see why they're doing it.

In 4.3 we will see the release of the Looking for Raid tool. If you're not aware, raids entered through the Looking for Raid will actually be easier than the normal raid and provide a lower ilevel reward.

That being said, I believe the nerf to current tier (Firelands) content is to reduce the barrier of entry for raiding. It would be rather foolish to require a player to gear up in normal modes in firelands (still challenging for some that have done very little raiding) in order to progress to the 'new content' using the Looking for Raid tool and have less of a challenge within that raid (Dragon Soul-EZ Mode)

They have historically nerfed old content when it becomes old, but now they're doing it early to give everyone a chance to go through Firelands, get some gear and be ready for the new Looking for Raid tool.

For the first question, it really boils down to how soon they can have the expansion ready. If they plan to launch it next Spring/Summer, then probably nothing additional. If they can't, they might wedge in something smaller, like Ruby Sanctum.

As far as I know (and honestly I could be wrong), Blizzard has stated that this is the last patch of this exapansion, meaning this is it. It's gonna be 4.3 then Expansion.

It changes, but most of the time there's a nerf before the end of an expansion. BC had a huge nerf to all bosses on top of spec buffs and ICC had a mounting buff for players.

And now blizz has decided that every time a new tier comes out, it gets nerfed before the new-er tier gets released so we can experience the content. Though with the raid finder, I don't think it'll be too much of a problem anymore.

So in the end, they're just trying different things, though I think this is the best for people who aren't interested in progression, since there are pugs who will still want to go to T11, and now T12, even if the newer tier is out, instead of waiting till 5.0 when everyone is complaining that WoW is boring.

I believe I read an interview or blue post that said definitively that 4.3 and Deathwing will be the final raid. It sounds like once they get that out, they want to put full resources into the next expansion and not monkey around with a filler raid. They will probably nerf it a bit before the next expansion release to get more people killing him. Or, they may just leave it alone and let the new LFR feature do that work.

Realistically, Xpacks are finished a year after they are announced. I'm sure there will be a filler raid, and much boredom with Dragon Soul, before we see any Pandas.

Realistically, in the past, yes. However, Blizzard has said numerous times that they want smaller, more frequent expansions. So we could see a new one less than a year after announce.

Oh and one other question I forgot. Is the raid finder going to be similar to the dungeon finder in that it randomly pairs together enough people of a certain role to fulfill a certain dungeon? With a lot of peoples comments on how much this is going to fail with random group compositions I feel like this is how they see it. I think it would be more effective to have a raid leader apply that he is doing X raid and looking for people who can fulfill these roles, and maybe even have additional requirements to suit the needs of his raid. People could then apply to join this raid with a message explaining that they can do x and x role, do so much dps, counter this mechanic etc... If it was more along this design I think it could work out very well and be pretty much the same as a regular PuG just cross server and with less consequences.