Dragonsoul Nerfs Incoming

So, this week Blizzard announced that an initial round of nerfs to the Dragonsoul normal and heroic raid difficulties will be implemented starting Jan 31st. The nerfs will be implemented in the form of a 5% reduction in health and damage done for all bosses. They also stated that this nerf could grow in 5% increments going forward as Blizzard sees fit.

If you read the official forums, or just peruse the blue posts like I do, you get the sense that these nerfs are rather controversial, and let's face it ... they always are. It seems that this time around, many people thought that the introduction of the Raid Finder and it's easier-than-normal-mode difficulty meant that there was a tier of content catered towards players of various skill levels and therefore there wouldn't be any need for nerfs.

Unfortunately, that's just wrong. The truth of the matter is, there are not enough super hard-core players in World of Warcraft for Blizzard to justify creating an entire difficulty setting just for them, at least not in the long run. You see, Blizzard really does understand how important it is to have this truly epic, if stupid-difficult content in the game when the new content is released. That last part is key. They want best in the world guilds to compete to get world-first kills on these ultra-hard raid encounters. It's just a good thing for the community as a whole. That being said, once the world-firsts or even world 100ths are out of the way, there will come a time when not many guilds are progressing through this kind of content. Now, here is where the average forum troll will tell you that guilds that try to progress and fail are just being bad and not putting in the effort, they need to learn to play, etc. This simply isn't the issue at all.

The problem is that most guilds, regardless of whether they are raiding 10-man or 25-man content, have a limited number of members and most of those members do not have more than one heroic-raid-ready character. This doesn't hold true for the super hard-core race-to-world-first type guilds. Those guilds have many many extra players and players with multiple geared characters because at their level it's super easy to recruit. Many of these players are also extremely dedicated, and spend an inordinate amount of time playing the game and prepping multiple characters for the hardest content imaginable. As such, best-in-the-world guilds have nearly unlimited flexibility in terms of raid composition in addition to raw talent and a level of dedication that most players would find counter-productive to living an normal life.

So, that being said, I'd like to talk about my guild, and our situation. My guild is made up primarily of two semi-autonomous 10-man raid groups. Each group has a roster of about 12 players, and most of those players, again, have one primary character that they spend a majority of their time playing so it out-gears all of their other characters. By definition that means we're never going to claim a world-first. Even a realm first would be quite the achievement. However, we're not just down-right terrible players or anything. We can recognize a fight where we get to it and say, "Man, this would be a lot easier with 3 mages and a Warrior tank," but we can't simply throw that raid group together. We just have to make do with what we have. Like most guilds, we cleared through normal Dragonsoul within the first couple of weeks, but are having limited success moving on to heroic content. (Currently 2/8 heroic at the time of this writing) This is why I am looking forward to the nerf. I think it will give us the boost we need to progress.

I guess the point I wish more people would understand is that heroic modes are tuned the way they are at release for a very specific subset of wow players - and I have absolutely no problem with that. It's vital to the community that it be that way. However, there comes a time after release that those players for whom that content was tuned have done all they can do, and it's time to open it up to more average guilds who want a challenge above that of normal mode - but don't have the flexibility and resources of a best-in-the-world guild. That's all Blizzard is really doing, and I think more people should recognize it and be more supportive.