Dragon Soul Difficulty Changes
During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.
The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.
For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you’re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn’t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we’re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.
We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.
Comments (4,257)
Mok'Nathal
Zul'jin
Wyrmrest Accord
Medivh
Cho'gall
And all the posts i'm reading on this thread so far all i see is people complaining about people complaining. I dont see many posts about people complaining about these changes ... but then again i have'nt read them all. But i dont see what there is to complain about they are given u the option to turn the nerfs off so raiding can still be fun for people who enjoy the challenge. Only thing i would like to see is some kind of achievement for killing the boss's with the buff turned off.
Wyrmrest Accord
The Underbog
Cho'gall
Moon Guard
Undermine
The Underbog
Scarlet Crusade
Stonemaul
Mok'Nathal
Llane
But there are raiders who are out there that love raiding and are GOOD that due to real life commitments cannot commit to guild progression, cant make the raid times , cant sit for 3hours for raid to finish for the night and who cant afford to wait around for a hour for people to show up.....
Are you saying they should never see end game content that they dont deserve to because they have real life expectations to meet? Come on now stop being so dem selfish.
However since they are nerfing it i know its optional but because they are and because people that do have the time to commit to progression work so hard I think they should add special or extra loot for those that defeat it without the buffs titles maybe? a special mount? <<<something for them to still show off and brag about ....
Oh and before you go looking me up this is a alt don't bother
Stormrage
I was under the impression that RAID FINDER was an easier encounter aimed at facilitating the duties of finding a group to raid with. HOWEVER, undeniably, it allows everyone capable of hitting the queue up button the ability to raid the end game raid. Admittedly, at a much easier level of play, but users still get to see end game content and pick up higher quality loot than if they top out at running HOT heroics with their friends/guild. That being said.. if Raidfinder allows everyone (especially those who are casual players) to see the end game content, then why nerf the actual end game raiding content to make it "more accessable" to a larger population?.. The larger population has their raid finder; us raiders have our normal and HM raids. It works for everyone. And Shade, I , similarly to you have RL responsibilities that limit my raiding to 2 nights a week. And I have seen a full 8/8 DS 10 and am working on HM's with the guild. It is possible on a tight schedule, and if you play with equally skilled players, you can clear 8/8 in less time than it takes raidfinder to do 4/8. I do agree btw, that there needs to be extra goodies involved for any team that beats current content without the nerfs. Blizz killed the reward for 25 man raiding and we saw a million 10 man teams pop up when the loot equalled out. Pretty soon we'll be loggin into the game and typing "/loot" and getting HM gear.
Llane
Yes 25m lfr is easy I have tanked it healed it and dpsed it .....what if i find it boring and just wana do 10m but dont have a weekly raid team to go in with 2 nights a week ? I lead a guild for a couple of years so I know all about having to be committed I organized 10 and 25mans I lead them I showed up every raid day on time and then of course as progress the gear rolls in and peoples attitudes grow along with their gear (not all but most do ) I stepped down in the end got tired of peoples leet jerks attitudes you need to remember we all started with nothing .... and to everyone complaining I have a question....since you can either choose to use the buff or not to.....exactly what do you think you are missing out on ?
Btw I do admire all of you who are lucky enough to be on a good raid team and already cleared ......well done and gratz.
I just got back from a 2month break few weeks ago and I will do normal I honestly don't care about the buff I don't care if they use it and I don't care if they don't but 1st I need to find 9 others that at lest have some skill and are willing to die untold times lol. Because I love raiding and will bang my head against a dem wall till it falls I refuse to be beaten.
Anyway Coffinbringr 10 pages later I would just like to say I wish you the best Dude keep up the goodwork
Emerald Dream
Kargath
Ah... hum. I... hm. Stamina sure is great! Err...
Back on topic, I have no way to make raids with my guild. I'm obviously geared for it, I read up on the fights and watch videos, I check EJ to make sure I'm using proper gems, keep up with my enchants (too lazy to get my tinkers right now : /) and yet because of my schedule I'm stuck running HOT heroics over and over again if I want to get any kind of an upgrade. Fun. Thanks blizz, I appreciate you doing this so maybe in the future I can PUG it or something.
Wyrmrest Accord
Though to play on his toon a bit (out of love)... I just remember when the game was hard to the point where you had to gem and chant correctly so that your best performance = downing bosses while psudo trying to gear your best and do the *ok* rotation got you nothing. Some other gamers (Not most) miss or want that from WoW so I expected Heroic Modes to not be touched... sadly they are and I cry that my first H Morchok kill was after getting the Yellow Pages under my !@# to sit at the big boys table (patch/nerf)... i just like to get what I deserve and if I don't deserve to down a boss... it shouldn't happen with a handy-cap :)
Trolltearz Out!
The Underbog
Korgath
Exaggerating to make a point makes the point, pointless.
Trollbane
Area 52
Muradin
Wyrmrest Accord
I know I like to take great pride (not as if there are things not on screen that i don't take the same or more pride from) from completing hard accomplishments in raiding or stats (WoL) and would feel more satisfied if per example... I pugged a Heroic Morchok kill after two trys... that just lessens my accomplishment to me by ten fold compared to ramming my head against Black Temples Illidan fight for weeks until my guild finally downs him. It is just amazing after that and to know that not everyone can get the chance to do it.
Instead, WoW has turned into a campaign of sorts to make sure everyone can do it. Fun though now there is no real large gain of accomplishment - that is a big loss in fun which is what most gamers in WoW face I think.
Dethecus
Nagrand
Illidan
Azjol-Nerub
Medivh
Dragonblight
Gilneas
I've purposefully avoided current raids for the simple reason that I just don't want to deal with the blatant attitude that you "hardcore" people have. It's just a game! Get over yourself. The investment provided by hardcore players is no more valuable to Blizzard than the investment provided by the casual players.
Azjol-Nerub
P.S. We raid 7.5 hours a week and do not require attendance. The only thing we do require is that you do not suck. That being said we do not want the nerf and we cannot turn it off if we want to be able to continue recruitment.
The Forgotten Coast
Wyrmrest Accord
Wyrmrest Accord
Perhaps when dealing with their attitudes you can best understand them, Anthropology ftw.
Uldum
When I heard rogues were getting their own questline to get legendary daggers I though "well hell, they finally gave rogues something nice for a change after all the nerfs and constant ups and downs they've had over the years"
Now, I think for everyone but rogues, there should be new questlines for their own class-specific legendary items that combine raiding skills, solo and group questing skills (and quite possibly some pvp skills) to acquire the legendary weapon. This way it will show that you know somewhat how your class works in different situations and to be able to show off your playstyle skills a bit.
If you feel that setting up a skill guage for the quest and dumbing down the ilvl and stats on the quest is a good idea to accurately guage the skill of the player, then do so, but I would like to see some new art and new proc concepts. Ty for firecats, but I'm sad that the weapon is out-of-date now after trying so long to get it :*P
Nagrand
Arathor