As I expected, another stack of Power of the Aspects will go live next Tuesday.  A cursory scan of the fifth circle of hell MMO-C comments today indicates that their cesspool of angry complainers userbase feels the nerf has come — and forgive me for this cliché not-at-all-funny reference; blame them for saying it first — “too soon.”

But is it possible that this timeframe actually makes pretty decent sense based on the short known history of raid-wide nerfs?  Is it possible that the cries from the peanut gallery are just hyperbolic verbal masturbation not actually based on anything?

In order to better illustrate how raid-wide nerfs have been handled in the past, I made a chart — as I am wont to do (click image to view full-size):

The chart shows how many weeks each raid had been released before various levels of nerfs were instated.  For Dragon Soul, I extrapolated a bit based on the 4 week schedule we’ve seen, and the fact that the highest datamined level of the debuff is 35%.  I personally don’t think they’ll go all the way to 35%, but if so, this is likely what it would look like.

So, what does this show us?

In Icecrown Citadel, they came up with the idea of progressively allowing more and more people to see encounters through a raid-wide nerf.  This type of nerf was different from the usual encounter-based adjusting, because it wasn’t meant to address perceived problems with specific mechanics.  Instead, it simply made everything easier in general.

Fast forward to Tier 11, and they adjusted their strategy a bit.  Remember, that this was back in the first months of Cataclysm, when Blizzard had given in to the portion of the community that claimed raiding was “too easy.”  A lot of the following is all wild speculation on my part, of course, but it seems like by the end of that tier, Blizzard had done enough statistical research to come to the conclusion that they had gone too far on the difficulty.  When Firelands released, they did a massive 20% nerf on the previous tier so that the folks who had struggled for months, could finally kill some bosses.  This was only compounded by the fact that 359 gear was suddenly easy to purchase with Justice Points.  It was a rare case of “too much, too late.”

In another series of assumptions on my part, it looks like Blizzard did not want Firelands to present the same roadblock that Tier 11 had been.  After all, by the time they realized their mistake, this new raid would have already begun design under the initial Cataclysm model.  After a mere 12 weeks, they came in with a dramatic nerf:  15% to Shannox, Beth and Ryolith…25% to everyone else.  Another important difference this time was that heroic modes were affected as well.*

The Firelands nerf, in my mind, was to compensate for what Blizzard had already privately deemed to be a failed experiment in harder raiding.  Unfortunately, the drastic nature of such large nerfs only 13 weeks into the raid, was like dropping napalm on a house to get rid of the termites.  It was a miscalculation on their part, if you ask me.

So, here we are.  Dragon Soul is now seeing almost the exact same nerf structure as ICC did.  Also, while it may look like we’re 3 weeks ahead of schedule, one must remember that ICC had a gated start; The Lich King wasn’t available for the first 8 weeks, and the buff came only 4 weeks after that.

The point I’m making, is that it really doesn’t seem like they’ve jumped the gun on nerfing Dragon Soul.  It seems more like they’ve tried a few different things, and come to the conclusion that this method — a slow building nerf that can be removed if players desire — is the best one.  I tend to agree, and expect that this is exactly what we’ll see happen in each and every future raid.

It doesn’t affect the best of the best, who have been done with the tier for quite some time.  It barely affects your average raider, who now simply has more options, and is given the additional potential challenge of trying to “beat the clock”  each tier.  In fact, as seen in a recent MMO-Champion posting — I know, I know, just try to check it out and leave before you’re bitten — there was a pretty decent jump in kills the week before Dragon Soul’s first nerf.  It seems that those who want the highest challenge available are willing to be motivated by upcoming nerfs.

The segment of the population who this affects the most, is people who are legitimately stuck somewhere**.  The net positive for such people, greatly outweighs the potential negatives for people who refuse to exercise their ability to turn off a debuff.

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I have two last thoughts on the subject that I didn’t want breaking up the flow above:

**The notion that LFR is supposed to be some be-all, end-all solution for “seeing content” is a bit silly.  Yes, it’s a fantastic new end-game tool for a casual player who doesn’t have the schedule to dedicate to gearing and wiping in normal-mode progression.  Those folks should love LFR, and should be fine with it being their golden ticket to content.

But it simply isn’t an acceptable solution for a guild who might be stuck at 3/8 bosses.  Clearing LFR is not going to give the same sense of accomplishment that finally downing 4/8 bosses will.

The oft-repeated fallacious retort is, “Well, they should get better then.  Not have ‘welfare epics’ handed out.”  My, response to that?  First off, “Shut the hell up, you self-important twit.”  Secondly, getting the chance to see a larger, more varied range of fights and mechanics is more conducive to “getting better” in the long term than continuing to wipe on one fight that simply isn’t clicking for them.  Another thing that’s not good for “getting better?”  Having morale go so low that the raid group falls apart.  Stop thinking in the short-term.  Let raid groups grow over time, even if it does mean giving them a little help here and there.

*Nerfing heroic modes has been a point of contention for some since they began that trend in Firelands.  I would suggest that this is to ease the divide between normal full-clear guilds and heroic one-boss-down guilds.  Imagine being just good enough to eek out a Deathwing kill when the debuff hits, say…25%.  Now imagine going straight from that into a completely un-nerfed Heroic Morchok.  The jump in difficulty would be pretty damned offputting for such a guild.  In fact, we can see this now in the difference between normal BWD and heroic BWD.

Again, some would suggest that a guild who can’t kill Deathwing without a 25% debuff doesn’t “deserve” the honor of attempting some of the heroic mechanics, and again, I would respond, “Shut the hell up.”

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Tags: Nerfs, Progression, Raiding, Random Thoughts, Twitter Feed