It’s Okay — They Still Have to Get Out of the Fire!

General, Raiding

I haven’t seen too much of this on the blogosphere this afternoon, which surprises me; usually information like this spreads through all of the sites like wildfire!  That said, this afternoon US forums community manager Bornakk dropped a bombshell on the World of Warcraft community regarding the status of existing Outland raid content.  In a thread title “Existing Raid Content Changes,” he states:

To coincide with the upcoming new talents and mechanic changes for classes in the next patch, we are making some adjustments in existing raid content to provide a smooth transition when the upcoming patch is released. The creatures and bosses in raid dungeons that were introduced in The Burning Crusade will have their health reduced, and most will have their standard melee damage output reduced as well, but their spell and ability damage are not being changed. These changes are being made in all raid dungeons from Karazhan to Sunwell Plateau as well as the outdoor encounters of Doom Lord Kazzak and Doomwalker. On top of this Illidan is also doing his part and will stop casting Shear on players.

I’ve heard supposition that this is Blizzard learning from their pre-The Burning Crusade mistakes.  As many of us may recall, Naxxramas was released shortly prior to the expansion, though only a very small percentage of the community was able to explore the content — much less defeat it.  By nerfing all of the bosses in Outland content, Blizzard is supposedly allowing more people to explore said content.

I have another theory.  The upcoming patch will be introducing the new stat Spellpower, which combines the currently-existing Spell Damage and Bonus Healing into a single number.  Through talents, this stat will then be coverted into the damage and healing with which we are currently familiar.  This is a huge overhaul of game mechanics, the like of which has not been seen since the introduction of Spell Hit into the combat rating system in Patch 2.0 and Expertise replace Weapon Skill in Patch 2.3.

Furthermore, there are other changes to note.  Specific buffs will no longer exist within the game or will not stack as they originally did.  The existence of the debuff Potion Sickness which will prevent players from consuming another potion after using one in combat will change how many encounters are approached.  There is an equivalent debuff for the use of drums called Tinnitus that allows only a single drum to be used during combat.  Sated and Exhausted¹ will prevent chain casting of Bloodlust for the Horde and Heroism for the Alliance respectively.  And, finally, the effective removal of the downranking of spells by making each rank of spell worth the same percentage of base mana will be extremely difficult on those classes that rely heavily on downranking to remain mana efficient — in particular, many classes of healers.

This is going to influence players’ ability to complete content, some of which may already be considered farmed content by these same players.  Rather than go back and individually retool each individual boss encounter in each instance, a change of this magnitude not only reduces the likelihood of this occuring, but may even aid people in seeing content that was originally unreachable.

While striking a balance that neither makes the encounters more difficult or too easy in light of these changes will be very difficult for Blizzard, I believe that this is an appropriate first step.  Of course, with the so-called hardcore raiding community² decrying how Blizzard has trivialized their achievements once again, it’s a little difficult to think coherently.

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