We Knew It Was Coming

The nerf has arrived.  And I had to laugh.

Sure, we were expecting a nerf, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite this big.  Perhaps there would be a 10% reduction of boss health or damage.  Perhaps enrage timers would be lengthened or a particular ability would be changed.

But 15-25% reduction on health and damage for normal bosses?  Wow.

I was amused to see Alysrazor's tornadoes would be moving more slowly on normal difficulty.  Now that I know what I'm doing on that encounter, they do not scare me, but I know they were still a challenge for some people, especially those with slower connections.  Now that they've been slowed, we may have more of a challenge not catching up to them when we're following them, rather than worrying if they are catching up to us!  (No feathers, perhaps, or use feathers and stay in caster form . . .)  And, of course, anyone who does manage to fall to a tornado will most likely find themselves mercilessly teased . . .

I was also amused to see Wrath of Ragnaros in Stage 1 of the normal mode Ragnaros fight will only knock targets up, not back.  That really is rather funny.  While I understand how this does make the fight easier, as I have seen people knocked into void zones when the timing was wrong, the nerf ends up making it a minor annoyance, instead of a real obstacle to overcome.  To be honest, however, I don't think it was one of our larger obstacles.  Add control was a much larger issue.

Heroic bosses, aside from Ragnaros, have had their health and damage reduced by 15%.  Obviously, this will work to our advantage, as we're just starting out at the Heroic level.  (We pulled Shannox at Heroic level a few times, just to get the feel of it.)  The other features I mentioned above have been unchanged in Heroic, so people are still expected to exercise some forethought and skill when working their way through those fights.

It would have been nice to work on tackling the Heroic bosses pre-nerf, but at this point, we'll just have to be satisfied with knowing we downed Ragnaros in regular difficulty before the nerf.  Like it or not, the game moves on.