Firelands was a pretty excellent tier, it wasn’t quite Tier 11 but considering T11 was the best raid content any MMO has released in 12 years I can’t really blame them for that. The real issue I have with the nerfs is that they were way early, trying to get a spike of returning subs before Q3 ends. Now we got 3 more months of sleepwalk.

When my guild was working on heroic Rag, the challenge I laid out for myself was to learn how to cutter suplex. We were facing a particularly difficult challenge on that fight, and me learning how to contribute made it so that we could actually survive that portion of the fight and make it through. Now I don’t have to do anything special. I can go the extra mile and try to do those things and try to break previous numbers, but that doesn’t make us more likely to win anymore. We’ll win regardless, my being particularly skilled and pulling off extra things notwithstanding.

I’m disappointed that I don’t have to even bother to try in order to beat heroic content. That sort of thing was for normals week.

One problem with it is that raiding is a team sport, while you’re mostly limited to setting personal goals. Some people raid to experience the lore, some for their fellow raiders, some for the challenge, and some for the loot, but you’re all working towards the same goal, and it works. If you try to put your own restrictions on the entire raid, you’re almost guaranteed to be at odds with multiple groups of people. For example, I know many *individuals* wanted to turn off the ICC buff, but I’ve only heard of very, very few guilds that actually did.

That said, I think your “not getting hit by brushfire” concept, or similar variations, is a great one. Just because the content gets easier, from nerfs or farming them over time, doesn’t mean you can’t continue to improve. I know I’ve ranked on fights where I could have played better outside of my dps rotation, and during progression, that will matter 10x more than a tiny bit of dps.

Instead of asking healers to dps or be bored, maybe try having your tank try to rank as high as possible. As he fishes for vengeance for extra AP and prioritizes dps stats over mitigation, there’s bound to be more healing needed. Their goal can be seeing how many slots the tank can swap out for dps pieces.

Also, Bingo. Using the raid frame as a cardsheet, the tanks try to get 5 people in a row killed.

It’s easy to get into the mentality that there’s nowhere further you can reach to or improve, but it’s just not true.

This, this, a thousand times this. Same goes fer other buggers’ perceptions of “hard” too.

Tuesday was interesting, as our mage for the legendary just got his 25 embers last week, so we spent nearly the first two hours of the raid night just getting him through to the first stage. We’d get the boss stuff done, then just wipe to get it done faster. We had… oh, 75 minutes left and romped through the first five bosses in that time, it was insanely fast. Part of me is disappointed they nerfed that much so quickly, so we won’t have the chance to see Ragnaros as originally intended, but honestly, I won’t miss the stress of mastering the more difficult fight, either. With bouncing back from a hailstorm a few weeks ago that took out both our cars and a window, and supporting my Father during his cancer treatment, life has enough stress, don’t you think?

Wow is for fun, something we all need to remember more often than we do. I love the challenge of mastering new content as much as anyone, but honestly, a year from now, what I will remember most is that wonderful “We Did It!” moment, not the grump that the content was nerfed just as we got to the last boss. yes, I am definitely the ‘half-full’ type of person. Part of it is I don’t see the point of complaining about something beyond our control, but rather, adjusting to it as best we can.

So, we’ll all adjust, and we’ll go on.