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

It’s official.  We’re heroic raiders.  The sheer speed at which we’re able to down normal bosses means we need to start working on heroics or we simply won’t have anything to do on our second raid night each week.

So, Thursday is now:

THE HEROIC DRAGON SOUL RAID NIGHT EXTRAVAGANZAPALOOZA!

So, instead of the old method of tearing through early bosses the first night and wiping on a later boss the second, we’ll basically flip it.  This Thursday, we’ll work on H-Morchok, and then on Sunday — whether we successfully downed him or not — we’ll move on and clear the rest of the raid.

As far as being prepared for the heroic fights, it’s certainly good if folks can watch a video or two in preparation.  Also, a good gear level to strive for in order to join the heroic fights is around 391.  Most of our regular raiders have surpassed that already, so we’re definitely good to go.

Also, I recently sold off all the crafting mats we had saved up in the guild bank.  The total take was 76,000 gold, so I sent a tenth of that to each of the folks who have been regularly raiding in this tier.  It made me realize that we can probably handle crafting mats better in the future, so here’s what we’re going to do with them come Tier 15 (presumably Tier 14 will use mats from MoP’s heroic dungeons, à la Frozen/Chaos Orbs):

• At the beginning of the tier, our raiders will do a /roll to determine crafting mat priority, much like we did to determine a raiding order.  As an example, imagine the following scenario, where Darth would have first priority on crafting mats:  1)  Darthworgen rolled a 99  2)  Bamshackles rolled an 87  3)  Malkoran rolled an 85, etc.
• We will also take into account the patterns which have dropped for our raid.  So, back to the example above, assume we’ve collected enough mats for a piece, but we haven’t seen any plate patterns yet.  If we have received a Cloth DPS pattern, Bam would get the first set of crafting mats, even though he was second on the list.
• Duplicate patterns will be sold, as long as a reliable guild crafter has already learned it.  Also, any time we have nobody interested in making any crafted pieces, crafting materials will simply be sold.

The idea here is that we can better keep track of who even wants to make crafted items in the first place…that way, excess materials can be sold earlier — instead of sitting around waiting for us to make a decision — which will make us more money in the long run.  That way, the next time I send out random gold, it can hopefully be for even larger amounts.

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Tags: Guild Relations, Heroic Raiding, Progression

Look at that goddamned alliteration!  Nothing gets me more excited about the letter M than downing the last boss of a tier.

Ahem…

• We can be sincerely proud of our efforts this tier.  We cleared the whole raid in a mere 10 weeks.  I won’t bother you with a new chart so soon after the last one, but if you really need one, just scroll down, grab a purple sharpie, and draw a horizontal line from our Spine kill over to the end of the X-axis.
• I’ve started looking for some strategies on Heroic Morchok.  The more I look into it, the less I think he’ll pose much of a problem to us.  Don’t tell anyone because this is a secret, but…if we have the right kind of group on Thursday, I just may try to sucker everyone into working on him instead of waiting a week.  As always, Icy Veins has a wonderful guide you can check out.
• Random factoid:  In the fight’s first incarnations on the PTR, Heroic Morchok’s twin was not called Kohcrom.  He was called “Even Morchok.”  I’m still upset they changed that.
• I’d like to give a quick shoutout and special thanks to Locoman, who was technically supposed to raid last night.  He sat out so we could have the dreaded “normal raid configuration” for our first Madness attempts, and so everyone who had worked so hard to get us there could partake.  Hopefully we’ll be able to get him in to kill some giant dragon heads to make it up to him.

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Tags: /cheer, Achievements, Heroic Raiding, Patch 4.3, Progression, Raiding

We’re going in for our first attempts on Madness of Deathwing on Sunday night, so let’s get prepared, all.

1) It turns out Thisby was correct, and that we may want to adjust the platform order slightly from the LFR strategy.  Instead of Ysera>Nozdormu>Alestraza, we’ll go Ysera>Alestraza>Nozdormu.  This means we’ll have to single target the Blistering Tentacles on the 3rd platform, but that we won’t have to let any Elementium Bolts land until the fourth.

2) I’ve been looking hard, and I can’t find any real differences in mechanics from the LFR version.  Everything does more damage, obviously, so executing correctly will become important, but there at least won’t be anything new for us to learn.

3) Icy Veins, as always, has a great written guide for the fight, with separate sections for Tanks, Healers and DPS if you want to see what matters most to you:  http://www.icy-veins.com/madness-of-deathwing-detailed-strategy

As Rych suggested might happen…I’ve an updated graph for you!  Let’s try and add another line to it on Sunday!

(Click to see full size.)

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Tags: /cheer, Achievements, Charts and Graphs, Grats!, Progression, Raiding

Everyone’s waiting, so no time to say anything clever.

Spine of Deathwing ~ 2/9

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Tags: /cheer, Progression, Raiding

So, I was just checking up on the guild’s achievements, and I realized that there are really only 5 race/class combos that we’re still fairly far from obtaining in order to unlock our 8th guild bank tab.  Am I sure exactly what we’d do with an 8th guild bank tab?  Hell no.  Do I want one anyway?  You bet your ass.

So, I figured I’d do what I can to help out the situation.  Since I’m sitting on all that glyph money (dollar dollar bill, y’all), I’m going to offer a prize to the first person who who reaches level 85 — with Honored guild reputation — on the following combinations:

• Dwarf Priest
• Worgen Warrior
• Night Elf Rogue
• Gnome Warlock
• Gnome Rogue

The prize will be 5,000 gold and 3 Weekly Quest points, because, hey…those might be worth something some day.  The offer expires when Mists of Pandaria releases, so if you’d like to get in on this action, be sure to do it before May 29th…you know…to be safe.

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Tags: Achievements, Fabulous Prizes, Guild Relations

Holy shit, guys…Autty and I did way, way, way too much partying this last week.  I miss you all, though, so I’m looking forward to actually logging on to see you all tonight.  I expect welcoming gifts, obviously.  Straight up gold is always nice, although I wouldn’t turn down a gift card to Swords and Things, either.  Hell, I’ll tell you what…help me kill this dragon’s back this week and we’ll call it even?

• It sounds like things went well while I was gone.  Just want to let you all know I’m proud of how much we’ve come together as a team to overcome problems that might have led to a zero-raid-night in previous months.
• I don’t have much else to say since I was gone.  So, uh…how about them Golden Globe awards?  That Ricky Gervais is really something, right?  No?  Oh.  Ok.
• I promise I’ll tell you all about our weekend.  Photos might take a while to surface because they’re not all…appropriate…

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Tags: /cheer, Guild Relations

As many of you know, I will be missing from the 18th through the 22nd, as Autty and I head out to Vegas to hit up the AVN parties with the lovely Sasha Sweet. Because of this, I will not be around for this week’s raids. I know, I know, but life’s a tradeoff, so try not to feel too bad for me.

In any case, Blackhorn is down! I wish we had a video of that sloppy and hilarious kill but I assume — without having watched it, since YouTube is blocked at work — that it was something like this, except with a few more dead bodies strewn around:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8IVASo0umU

In case you’re curious, I’ve updated the guild’s progression chart to include our Blackhorn kill, and also made it more accurate overall and added Tier 10 (click to view full-size):

Look how much better we keep getting!  I’m proud of you all, so keep it up.

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Tags: AVN, Progression, Raiding, rogl

Get ready first for the worst “screenshot” ever, because after that comes the best.  Brace yourself.

Ultraxion – 12/18

Warmaster Blackhorn ~ 1/15

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Tags: /cheer, Achievements, Patch 4.3, Progression, Raiding

Guys, look at this.  It deserves its own blog post:

Dragon Soul

• Warmaster Blackhorn
  • The visual warning for Twilight Elites’ Blade Rush should be easier to see.

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