Ah nerfs, hated by some, but secretly loved by all.  Dragon Soul has been out for quite some time now, and while our server finally saw its Realm First: Heroic Madness, this content is already feeling dated by most regular raiders.

I think Blizzard is taking the right approach with the difficulty nerfs this time around versus Firelands, which was just horrible.  The big nerfs to tendon health on Spine is quite welcome in my book.  Forcing a challenge solely based on numbers and comp is lazy design.

I look back to T11 and Heroic Nefarian to see how a real heroic mode should be.  Major changes from normal to heroic, multiple phases that are unique (not like spine/madness).  It really felt like a unique fight even if we were fighting recycled baddies for the twentieth time.  Raiding may always have a grinding/practice element to it, but it should challenge folks to think out of the box, develop strategies that work with your comp, tweak and perfect those strats, all leading up to the penultimate nerdgasm at the kill.

Circling back to T13 there has only really been one feel good kill for me and that was Heroic Zon’ozz.  We never used the eventually hotfixed bug, and we ran with more melee than what was deemed the right comp at the time.  That fight, while not terribly mechanic laden had enough in it to make it interesting, coupled with the very tight enrage and very high healing requirements.  That one took me sitting down and really parsing out logs and doing some math with optimizing our positioning and bounces amoung other things.  All that paid off when we finally got our kill, and that did feel pretty damn good.

The rest of these bosses have pretty much fallen over.  Our goal this week was Hagara, and she died night one in around 2 hours.  While I love when people perform the way they should, these bosses just seem uninspired compared to fights in Ulduar (Firefighter), and even some in T11.  While we may be weeks behind, we are a more casual progression raiding group.  We only push 3 nights a week, compared to 4 or 5 nights.  We have also found ourselves revisiting older content for achievements like Sinestra just because it is fun.

So wrapping this diatribe up, the nerfs are good overall I feel.  Timing is right, it does not make a huge difference of the challenge of the fight yet, and 4.3.2 just smoothed over some balance and issues.  This is it until MoP.  3 more heroic bosses for my raid and likely another 5+ months until MoP hits our hands.  My advice, don’t rush it.  The race has long been over and anything at this point does not really give one major bragging rights.  Take some time and go revisit older fights, get those achievements you might have missed.  These things can break up the doldrums of progression this tier and help keep your team interested in WoW and the group.

Oh and yes I will put up Ultraxion and Hagara hard mode guides very soon!