The nerf bat falls again!

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so I see in today's patch notes they nerfed Forge of Souls and some of the older instances a little. I welcome some of the changes to the Devourer of Souls because most of his abilities just drag out the fight length and after a few runs just become a grind to kill him.
The UP changes I am not quite sure about, I only just finally cleared this on my main team and really it was not too hard. The boss with the sword was easy and now with only 1 sword spawn it seems like this will be ridiculously easy!
Something that does disappointment as a multiboxer and non-raider is the fact that story line needs people to raid to enjoy it. If Gear Score did not exist I am sure I could get a PuG, but with my realm it is so heavy into GS, people are looking now for 5200 and above to join PuGs which is crazy.
I really think they need to have a 5 man version of this story line as a continuation fron the Halls of Reflection, that to me would make it much more open for non-raiders, which all the changes over the last year/WotlK have been focused on, i.e. the casual player being able to experience all the game content. I know running FoS, PoS and HoR with my wife was very fun with the way the story moved through them, it made the first time runs very rewarding.
Any thoughts?

[Khatovar]

My thoughts on the changes to things like UP are the same vein as yours with Devourer. Once you've done it, it just becomes a timesink. I don't enjoy engaging Sorrowgrave or Shadowseeker, having her on the ground for 5 seconds, up in the air for 15 or whatever, down for 2 up for 15.... especially when my team is mostly melee-range. Nor do I enjoy having to deal with waiting on Skadi {and deal with an extra wave of adds} if I just needed to launch one more harpoon to down him.

It just gets tedious after a while. It doesn't add anything to the challenge, it's just stuff that forces me to sit around and wait.

[KAC]

My thoughts on the changes to things like UP are the same vein as yours with Devourer. Once you've done it, it just becomes a timesink. I don't enjoy engaging Sorrowgrave or Shadowseeker, having her on the ground for 5 seconds, up in the air for 15 or whatever, down for 2 up for 15.... especially when my team is mostly melee-range. Nor do I enjoy having to deal with waiting on Skadi {and deal with an extra wave of adds} if I just needed to launch one more harpoon to down him.

It just gets tedious after a while. It doesn't add anything to the challenge, it's just stuff that forces me to sit around and wait.

They nerfed the devourer? I have only done FoS on normal fighting this guy and he is ridiculously easy anyway. I can do the whole normal instance and kill him in only 19-20 mins. I just zerg brohjamn and dont even worry about his shards healing him and basically run around for the devourer encounter. I sometimes wipe if my slaves lag a bit and get caught in the wailing souls beam attack but other than that my god the instance is a joke and they made it easier...are you kidding me. I logged on about a month ago to check out the new stuff and saw they changed the emblem system around allowing you to get nice items for doing the same lame ass dungeons over and over again. I recently got the acheve for looting 1000 emblems on my tank and my other chars are not far behind. I have all the new triumph gear you can buy with emblems now and just started running the normal icc 5 mans for basically epic gear that is easier to get than anything in the old 5 man heroics. I admit it is hard to determine encounters where you are not just given the kill once you know the right strat it does become pointless which begs the question if you can do it once why should you have to keep doing it for any item thereafter if you are tagged with a win on that boss hell just go to a vendor and buy any of his drops! WoW is fast becoming a game where obtaining better gear,which is the whole point of the game, is getting to be so trivial its not even worth playing anymore. If blizz wants to nerf all the instances so even the dumbest person in the worst group can kill anything they are eventually going to turn a lot of people off by doing this. I don't like playing with kids hence the reason I multibox. I don't need to hear the whining and stupid shit that kids say so I will never raid again and will only 5 man. MY only suggestion would be to make hard modes on 5 man stuff that drop the same crap as the 25 man instances so people like myself have a reason to go through all that contenet to get the best gear and be able to have enough damage to progress to the hard modes to obtain end game gear but I sure as hell wont do it with 24 other people.

[Ellay]

They place things on a high tier in the beginning and then slowly lower the scale so it becomes more and more accessible to the masses. I would note that it seems like they lower the bar much faster than they used to though.

As a multiboxer who doesn't raid anymore like I used to I definitely feel the same way about wanting a progressive story mode that group sized instead of requiring a raid. Looks like the only way to enjoy that content for the new expansion to come out so you can clear through it.

[zenga]

If Gear Score did not exist I am sure I could get a PuG, but with my realm it is so heavy into GS, people are looking now for 5200 and above to join PuGs which is crazy.
...
Any thoughts?

As a matter of fact on my server i heard similar voices. Random people telling me it was hard to get a spot in a raid group. While i don't have any desire to start raiding soon, i just passed their names to eachother. Those guys started with their own raid group, all people who are undergeared according to gs, and there seems to be more of them than people that actually do raid. So far it seems to be a success, though i can imagine their learningcurve is higher. Might be an idea for you ...

[Fursphere]

GS has nothing to do with player skill, apptitude, or "learning curve".

[Littleburst]

I wonder why they dont make the RPstuff in COT skippable....

[crowdx]

GS is totally rubbish, my wife's toon is only at early 4k GS and yet she puts out the same dps as my mage which is several 100 above her. When I am in Dalaran I see so many toons with over 5k GS and yet none of my current toons have hit 5k even though they are fully epiced with most of their slots filled with item levels 219 or above.
As someone said before, (might have been here) people are filling slots with high gear score items just to get the magical number required and then swapping those items out when the raid starts.
A good example is Sundial of the Exiled, really good trinket which has a lowish GS but is a really nice trinket with good crit and high proc on the spell boost.
A nerf I would like to see would be the annoying HoS timed fight, I know it is more for a MB than regular players but that fight is a pain

[Khemikal]

Blizz has admitted that they will slowly nerf stuff. They want the old(er) content to not be a huge drag on your time. They want you to be spending time in the new dungeons/instances anyway. The less time you spend messing around in lesser content (5mans) the more time you spend in the raid instances.

While gear is easier to obtain now, realize you are still not going to get the newest/best gear from running 5mans. The quicker someone can get their T8/9 they quicker Blizzard can get that toon into the new content. That is all the new emblem mobel does. Imagine if you could have run Strat/Scholo/BRS for emblems that bought T2 back when Naxx came out. Would it make it easier to get into Naxx so you could see the content? Yes. Infact it would almost allow you to get into Naxx on multiple endgame characters. Again, exactly what Blizzard wants. So, gear does come faster which allows you to do the newest instances, it is not however a charity case to give you the best gear in game. You still have to raid to get that.

As for GS, I wish Blizz would have never made the ilvl visible to the player, or even public knowledge. Simply taking this out would make it so much harder for there to be a universal 'guide' as to what a player can/can't do.

Look at me, I got carried through T9 10-man content with my friends one day and got handed everything I want, my GS is over 9000, I can do anything in game. Oh yeah, I've only been playing for 2 days, got WoW for my 12th birthday. <--- This is what not having GS would prevent. No more unskilled/immature 12 yr olds saying they deserve a spot because of their GS.

[zenga]

Look at me, I got carried through T9 10-man content with my friends one day and got handed everything I want, my GS is over 9000, I can do anything in game. Oh yeah, I've only been playing for 2 days, got WoW for my 12th birthday. <--- This is what not having GS would prevent. No more unskilled/immature 12 yr olds saying they deserve a spot because of their GS.

What's wrong with a 12y old saying that? In the end it comes from a 12y old kid .... and he is probably playing with less worries than most of the adults do. I was warned by others that there are many younger people playing wow. I knew that upon signing up, accept it and deal with it. The least of my worries is what others say/think nor how they play. If a kid has fun using gs then let him have his fun, just don't use it yourself.

Gearscore in the end does what's in it's name: score your gear. If a certain category of players pays too much attention to your gear instead of your abilities, then just don't do business with them. It's like people who only look at a cars horse power to determine if it's any good.

I think my point is that i don't understand why gs seems to make so people upset :P