Ol' Grumpy and the Dragon Soul nerf
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 19th 2012 at 4:00PM
- The Raid Finder is head and shoulders above normal mode raiding in terms of popularity. 35% of level 85 players have completed Raid Finder vs. 4% completing normal mode; that's a huge, huge shift. Keep in mind that Blizzard has more exacting statistics available internally, but this serves as an indicator of a trend.
- Fewer than 200,000 players have finished normal mode Dragon Soul. I'll admit, I found this shocking. With the exception of Ultraxion and Madness, I found Dragon Soul to be undertuned and figured many more players would have completed the raid than this. One commenter on Twitter even blasted me for my elitism, when I had been under the impression I'm a fairly middle-of-the-road raider. These numbers bear that out.
- Over 1 million players have finished Dragon Soul in the Raid Finder. Both this statistic and the preceding one are as of the end of December 2011. But how ever they've changed and how ever the more precise Blizzard statistics play out, this is still a very strong indicator that normal mode Dragon Soul isn't the cakewalk some of us thought it was, myself included to some extent.
- Almost 800,000 players finished normal Firelands, and the majority of them did so after the nerf to Firelands. I think this fairly well speaks for itself.
The waveform of raiding collapses
What I take from all of this is that Blizzard is smarter than I am. The devs have got a long way to go to be more irascible than me, but if they say they're seeing a lot of guilds hitting a roadblock in normal mode, I believe them. It's tempting to reply that that's what the Raid Finder is for -- and I know I did so myself -- but I think we're missing the point with respect to Raid Finder and difficulty levels. Normal mode raiding isn't meant to be where the true tests of player skill are found; that's what heroic modes are for. Normal mode raiding is meant to be the normal level of difficulty for a coordinated group. It's meant neither to be easy nor to be particularly difficult.
The reason the Raid Finder is less challenging is not entirely so players with less time to min-max and work on strats can see the content. It's also because it has to absorb the stresses of raiding with a complete pickup group lacking voice communication, without being able to assume the group will have all the tools a normal raiding guild brings to bear.
Therefore, it's actually counterproductive to bring up the Raid Finder when discussing this normal/heroic mode progressive nerf. This is a move designed to benefit existing raid groups that are, in fact, banging their heads against Dragon Soul and not progressing. These groups exist -- and in fact, they're the majority of guilds raiding Dragon Soul right now.
Those of us who are working on heroic content may not be able to see this clearly. We rolled into Dragon Soul in 391 gear, worked our way through, and moved on. We didn't hit Ultraxion and stop. We didn't hit Blackthorn and stop. And we're less than 4% of the playerbase. Even if you just consider the 800,000 players who finished Firelands, only a quarter of them are done with normal Dragon Soul. This means when players make comments like "Dragon Soul is easier than Firelands," they're not at all supported by the statistics. As many people had completed Firelands pre-nerf as have now completed Dragon Soul. Pre-nerf Firelands was, statistically speaking, on par with and not harder than Dragon Soul is right now.
The Raid Finder: Not a panacea for all ills
This means that for the purposes of discussing these changes, not only does the Raid Finder have no real bearing on them (because the people raiding Dragon Soul on normal are the ones having trouble progressing, not the Raid Finder groups), but the idea that Dragon Soul is somehow already an easy raid needs to be dispelled. Like it or not, the 200,000 of us who have completed it and moved on to heroics are not relevant. We're a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase. We've done the content and moved on.
This change is for people who haven't moved forward but who want to. Not only are they paying the same money we are, and not only are there more of them (at least four times as many, based on Firelands progression), but they have an implicit expectation based on their Firelands experience to be able to complete this content. In many cases, the roadblock fights they're hitting are gear checks they can't get past. This is because they don't play like we do.
It isn't how I play the game, I admit. It took me a lot of gentle prodding to realize that my spending literally hours trying to work out a valid fury gearing strategy was in fact unusual. I enjoy that kind of thing, but not everyone does or should have to just because I do. Telling established groups of friends who have been promised all expansion long that Cataclysm would allow them to raid in just that fashion that they have to go with a Raid Finder PUG if they can't progress is untenable. It's a return to the days when there was real raiding and kid's table raiding, which most of them thought they'd finally escaped.
This change benefits these players. It's intended to benefit them and is designed so that a majority of raiders gets the maximum benefit from it. It is the most good to the most people possible. That is why it will be manually monitored and implemented, because if a mere 5% reduction in mob and boss health gets those players past their roadblocks, then it will have done its job. It won't be necessary to implement anything else. In the end, a decision intended to benefit as many as possible is one I can accept, even if I don't personally need it.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
kabshiel Jan 19th 2012 4:09PM
I've come to accept that the vast majority of WoW players are really truly terrible at this game, but that they deserve content too.
Duncan Jan 19th 2012 4:17PM
I hope this post get so dark it creates a black Hole
Shammytime Jan 19th 2012 4:31PM
Bad at this game is such a terrible expression.
I am an avid raider in a progression oriented guild and I such a pvp.
I know good pvpers that just don't get pve rotations and mentalities.
I know fun rpers who would rather not pve or pvp but boy can they tell good stories.
I know soloists who have figured out how to tackle some of the most daunting challenges (extreme hunter soloing, shaman soloing you name they've probably done it) but they are not good at group objectives.
Just because someone is not "good" at an aspect another person considers necessary to be "good" at this game, does not mean that they are not completely amazing in other part of the game.
TL:DR Good is in the eye of the beholder and good =/= fun
jonblaze81 Jan 19th 2012 4:39PM
Way to play into the stereitype of a D-bag wow player. Thanks pal! You make the rest of us look bad to other communities looking in.
Not every wow player has been here since Vanilla. Every player doesn't have the time to go check out askmrrobot, or Ej to find the most optimal gearing, gemming, and enchanting strategies. We were all new players at one time, heck. I personally didn't start wow unti march of 07, well into BC and I was terrible! I had no clue on how to spec, gem, gear etc... and somewhere along the way now, 5 years later I am one of the better players on my server. Am I the best, no. Am I in a top raiding guild, No. But I am one of the veterans who tells the new players where to find mankrik's wife (pre-cata). I tell them about how to find the honor vendor, and to swap to a two handed weapon with high amounts of strength if they want to play a ret pally. I have given rides on my 2 man rocket from org to the raptor vendor in the darkspear village so that the new player could buy a raptor mount.
What have you done to help other players get better? Have you sent them to check out mrrobot? Have you been patient with them as they needed every single item that dropped in Wailing Caverns b/c they didn't know any better? Did you show them where the JC trainer in SMC is?
How about instead of saying how terrible the majority of the players are, why don't you get out there and help them get better instead of hovering around Org or SW on your super duper rare flying mount and insulting those in trade who have the gall to ask which belt is better for them as a enhance shaman? The leather with int or the mail with agi?
If you won't take the time to help others around you improve and we are all so terrible, why are you still here? I hear there is some new mmo out there based off some films from the 70's that is supposedly very popular with elitist d-bags such as yourself.
courtney Jan 19th 2012 4:52PM
lol u mad?
Sqtsquish Jan 19th 2012 5:05PM
"I've come to accept that the vast majority of WoW players are really truly terrible at this game, but that they deserve content too."
I have to agree with the sentiment as bad as it sounds-please hear me out! I play at a level of play that I have come to see is about the upper end of your average raiding guild comfortably, I could push myself harder, but I don't want to. The people who just don't have as much investment in the game, whether it be mentally, or in time, should not have to suffer because some of use set the bars we do for ourselves for others. I think that there are some better ways of handling this, but it isn't MY game, it is Blizz's and we all play the same game- I can't expect everyone to play the same way I do....
guest42 Jan 19th 2012 6:10PM
LFR and raid nerfs is like caddyshack when they opened the pool up to the caddies for 15 mins.
non min/maxers have RP, quests, emotes, pet battles, holidays, 5 man normal dungeons, mini games, BGs, duels, achievments. Now they get to put on Daddy's suit and play 'Im a grownup!' in the raids too.
If I still subscribed to wow i would move to competitive arena because that is the only place left that has an exclusive entry requirement.
dark.rei Jan 19th 2012 5:19PM
Wait, so because I didn't raid, I was a terrible player? In 5-mans I could do the most dps and most interrupts, coordinate with burn phases, not die, use cooldowns wisely, explain to those who do know know what to do how to do it, cc, keep cc up, sacrifice dps to keep the group alive, know my class, know other classes...but because I didn't raid before RF, or my gruid just barely losing to a boss, I am a bad player? Sounds legit.
GhostWhoWalks Jan 19th 2012 5:19PM
You know, I find something interesting about this comment, because he's not completely wrong. I've been gearing up an alt in Heroics over the past week and, in addition to the healer I sometimes play, the number of people who are just flat-out terrible at the game is staggering. I could tell stories all night: a warlock who did nothing but spam Soul Fire and did a mere 4k DPS (and the irony that, just two years ago, someone running Heroics with 4k DPS would be a fantastic player, is not lost on me). A Death Knight who wiped us on Erudax 5 or 6 times because he kept running around outside the safezone during Shadow Gale. A PvP-geared healer who blew all of his mana during a single trash pull and wasn't even carrying a weapon (he was "working on it"), only in it for the CTA satchel. Another healer who wiped us several times on Daakara because he refused to dispel the bear form's paralysis, insisting that it would be a waste of his time. There are some honestly awful players running around right now. BUT...
...I'm not convinced it's entirely their fault. Yes, they are bad RIGHT NOW. But there doesn't seem to be anyone or anything trying to help them get better, either in the game or among the players. For every horror story I mentioned in the above paragraph, there's another story I could tell about someone who was new to endgame content, or new to their role in a group, or new to a particular dungeon, but with a bit of explanation was still able to complete their task and got a bit more competent as a result. I was running Zul'Gurub as a healer the other day and no one else in the group had ever fought Jin'do before. I took a few minutes before we pulled to explain the different phases and aspects of the fight, what each person needed to do. Yes, we wiped on the first attempt. But once everyone had gotten a taste for what the fight actually looked like and how things happened, we came back and the second attempt was a success. There's also the fact that there is a significant shortage of in-game information describing to players how various abilities perform, how much they're affected by stats, which ones are more important to this spec than that spec, how much DPS more you can do by prioritizing this ability over that one. A very small fraction of us, as described in the article, have the time or the means to get such specific pieces of data. The rest of us have to go to Elitist Jerks or class articles on websites like WoW Insider in order to get this kind of information.
So I'm going to say that, yes, some people who play WoW are just bad at the game, because some people are just idiots. But that's a small fraction of the player-base, about as small as the ones who devote hours and hours to min-maxing and parsing data in preparation for their next Heroic raid. The rest just need a bit of help to better understand the mechanics of the game so that they can learn and improve in a reasonable amount of time, and that responsibility not only falls to Blizzard, to provide the tools for learning and improvement, but also to us, to teach our fellow players what we already know so that they can potentially be just as good as we are.
Scott Jan 19th 2012 5:40PM
@jonblaze
"We were all new players at one time"
Yes we were. But I think the sentiment behind his asinine comment of "ur bad at this game" is that there seems to be a relatively large percentage of players that never evolve from being new players. They don't take the next step, however large or marginal it may be. The characters may be 85, but the playstyle is still around 20ish.
Thallium Jan 19th 2012 5:45PM
I feel like everyone downvoted before reading the "...but they deserve content too."
People who don't raid aren't automatically bad. Just like people who do raid aren't automatically good. I'm ok with people being (much much) better than me. And I'm ok with people being worse than me. And I think they both deserve content because they both put time, money, and effort into the game.
So why do people think OP's a d-bag again?
DaSandman Jan 19th 2012 6:42PM
"People who don't raid aren't automatically bad. Just like people who do raid aren't automatically good."
Wait a sec, I thought the majority (casual) opinion was that raiders are bad? :)
/me hides
DarkWalker Jan 19th 2012 7:03PM
"""There's also the fact that there is a significant shortage of in-game information describing to players how various abilities perform, how much they're affected by stats, which ones are more important to this spec than that spec, how much DPS more you can do by prioritizing this ability over that one."""
Quite true.
One of the biggest failings I see in WoW is an almost complete lack of in-game resources for new players to learn how to really play (plus solo content that is tuned so easy that players never actually have to learn before they start doing group content).
I believe that, should there be some place in game the players could turn to in order to learn how to evaluate stats, see if their gear is proper for their spec or the content they are attempting, learn and train rotations, practice basic dungeon skills such as avoiding the fire and boss attacks, etc, the average player skill would increase quite a bit.
John Jan 19th 2012 8:06PM
kabshiel - you need to go play EVE and be among your own kind.
harr01 Jan 19th 2012 9:02PM
I agree with kabshiel and GhostWhoWalks.
SamLowry Jan 19th 2012 10:58PM
DarkWalker, I've been arguing for a while now that there needs to be a single-player training dungeon where you learn your role with a group of four bots. You would be given frequent breathers with suggestions and perhaps even opportunities to rearrange your talents without penalty and try out training equipment, enchants, gems, etc, that would disappear at the end of the session but perhaps you'd be given quests so you could go out and find real versions of them.
If something like this had existed 5 years ago I wouldn't have given up on my main in frustration because I couldn't understand why my holy-specced pally took so long to kill things. (And he was holy only because it was the first tab, I knew from previous games just how important being able to heal yourself is, and I figured I'd eventually have enough points to fill up the remaining two tabs.)
terph Jan 20th 2012 12:18AM
DarkWalker:
Absolutely agree with the solo content being far too easy. We used to bemoan this in my old F&F guild. Half of them couldn't play for beans but had lots of maxed level characters and didn't understand why we wanted them to work on stuff. You will never learn your class fighting boars and 1-2 shotting them. You need challenge and you need to understand how certain mechanics work.
And I am sure I would have missed a lot about game mechanics had I not started playing with a group who was incredibly anal about mechanics because they always had to 3 man dungeons in the past. They made me learn everything from the second I was big enough to come with them. Wanting to succeed with such good players made me look up the finer points of my class online. Things that weren't explained in game, like hit and expertise caps and why they matter. But not everyone has that experience. A lot of people just fire up their game, stumble around and manage to win. It works, so why would they think they need to improve?
Ballmung Jan 20th 2012 2:17AM
There are no bad players. Just bad choices in spells used and attitudes displayed in a given situation. You can fix a bad spell choice in any situation, be it pvp or pve. I myself adore dungeon runs and the new raid finder. I'm even tanking more now than ever before and loving it. My guild mates however, while they are willing to be dragged into a raid finder run or two and down Deathwing, love pvp a bit more. They aren't bad by any means though. They asked me what they needed to know for the fights and did it. We downed every boss the first time. Bad attitudes however are something that can really suck the fun out of things. Like the tanks you get partnered with who want all the attention and be "main tank". There is no main tank really anymore. Even in raid finder you have the second tank to share the burden of getting your teeth knocked in. Oddly warrior tanks suffer this delusion the most and are rather a pain to put up with. However the best tanks I've partnered with have been warriors but they also knew how to share the damage.
Since I don't like posting twice I'll mention here that maybe raid finder is TOO easy. Morchok doesn't stack his debuff enough to make switching that relevant. The ball on Zon'ozz doesn't even need anyone to bounce it around since it goes to the boss after 10 stacks. The slimes normal worries about are often disputed over actually mattering in raid finder on Yor'sahj. Ultraxion and Blackthorn are actually fine since wipes DO exists on them. I'm actually disappointed doing a barrel roll isn't needed on the Spine of Deathwing. And on Madness a decent group of dps can down the limb below 50% before cataclysm even starts. I'm not complaining about it being too easy and maybe I just need to switch to normal but that's the thing. Raid finder almost feels too simplistic and anyone shifting to normal has to learn to do things CORRECTLY in order to succeed. In fact that could be one of the few failures of raid finder in terms of its intentions. If it was supposed to also serve as a tool to prepare for harder modes, it doesn't work if mechanics can go by the wayside and be ignored.
TL;DR: The only bad players are the ones with bad attitudes and we can fix anything else. Tanks need to learn to share when another tank is present and everyone wins. And it's possible raid finder is over tuned since you can ignore entire mechanics and still profit so switching to normal becomes a hassle.
Still TL;DR: Players like kabshiel are the real bads and either raid finder is broken or we the players broke it.
Aika Jan 20th 2012 3:19AM
kabshiel makes a valid point with a sardonic twist. It's the sort of thing I can imagine a Blizzard designer saying in an unguarded moment. Not sure why people are downvoting him.
byronius_prime Jan 20th 2012 6:34AM
@John
Did you ask EVE players whether they want him? I'm playing EVE and I've never met a player who was unwilling to help a newbie around. Sure, there are scammers/pirates(which is fully allowed, and puts off some people) but the game is so big, you might never meet one if you so desire.
Personally I think the problem is the game doesn't educate you around such things. A new player - one without friends already in the game, wouldn't know EJ, MrRobot, maxdps, tankspot, etc. And frankly while these sites are awesome - one shouldn't need them to play the game at an acceptable level. The game should have built-in help for new players. A training dungeon as others said, would be excellent - I wouldn't have to teach my buddy how to tank (and his awful, even if I'm babysitting him hehe). It would be nice if we had that kind of thing, perhaps make it so that players can pitch in along with the bots, to provide advice, help out etc.
Another idea, would be to implement recount/omen in some way in the base game. I've found that when people have a metric by which they're judged, they strive harder. If you show the numbers to these "baddies" as kabshiel calls them - they might strive harder, if they see they're at the bottom.