30% nerf pls I want to use that song on our garrosh kill too.
A thing to consider:
This tier is probably the best tuned in terms of progressive difficulty, *ever*. Sure, for the bleeding edge raiders, the first 8-9 bosses were laughably easy - but for everyone else, they provided a very slight difficulty curve. If you could beat one boss, the one right behind it was only *slightly* harder, and needed maybe a little more gear or practice. The same goes for malkorok onwards, but the difficulty curve does increase by a fair bit between the encounters at that point.
This means that there really is no need for a scaling nerf, because the "brick wall" that it'd help people scale isn't there. The difficulty difference between the bosses are not so huge that you'll be stuck.
You're joking, right? One upgrade this tier has gotten me a 40k dps increase alone. That would be when I replaced a normal thunderforged Primordius' Talisman of Rage with a Flex Evil Eye. In 5.3 I was pulling about 160k as a frost dk. I'm now doing 313k on heroic Malkorok and that's with a 569 ilvl not even being CLOSE to BiS. I don't even have a Thok trinket which would easily be another 40k dps increase alone. If 39 ilvls doubles my dps, I could imagine that 8 ilvls higher would be about a 20% increase in damage.
My bet 10 percent nerf by January with 30 percent nerf by may!
4 difficulty levels, that grant a smooth itemization is enough.
It's because they see item upgrades as fulfilling the same role when it comes to gradually making content easier.
This was never the reason for the end raid nerfs. I don't understand why people keep saying this. Why do you think it changes anything that you have 4 difficulty levels? The idea of the nerfs is to allow progress. Last patches last for a long time and people get bored on the same shit about halfway trough, and the other 5 months they have nothing to do. However, when stuff gets nerfed, people get motivation to go play stuff that they couldn't do before. Flex players who never played normal mode will start pugging normals instead of flex. People who pug normal modes or play with normal mode progress guild can try to clear the entire instance, and even try some heroics. Guilds that progress heroics but don't possess the skills required for full hc clear can try to go for it after it gets nerfed monthly.
The reason for the nerfs is to keep the game interesting for 8-10 months that it will take to get the expansion. Why would you think that having 4 difficulties now keeps you playing this game until next july-september before we get the expansion late again?
I really don't understand the "item upgrade already provide a nerf over time" thing.
If it was like in T14/T15 with upgrade system locked at the start, I could agree.
But now, who the fuck doesn't have 500 valor points tu use when they get a loot?
2/2 is no longer an "upgrade", as someone else in this thread already said it's just like enchant/gems.
When upgrading a weapon from 561 to 580 gives you 30-40k dps, or obtaining any of the amplification/cooldown reduction trinkets gives you a similar power increase, you don't need to nerf the bosses by 5% every month. Our first Garrosh NH kill 7-8 resets ago was scratching the berserk timer with a third intermission, this week we killed him in under 8 minutes and didn't get a single Empowered Adds spawn (boss under 20% after the second intermission). We killed Thok NH before the second kite phase ended.
I hope that one day they will stop doing that shit. We have four difficulties now and plenty of ways to gear up to overcome certain challenges over time. There is really no need to ruin the little challenge this game has left with such ridiculously huge nerfs.
Old tiers getting nerfed, sure. Current tiers getting nerfed, no thanks. Not that it has much impact on me atm.
Stats scaling on gear now is redonk.. The stats gained today from a SoO normal 2/2 upgraded item is so much more than the stats gained from, for example, a ToT normal 2/2 upgrade.. and that's only a tier away. Also you shouldn't be comparing it to enchants and gems, since those have been static most of the expansion.
I know that.
I was comparing them by saying they were all "mandatory" now. Everyone I know who's raiding seriously is fully upgraded, and as soon as they get a new piece of gear it will be instantly upgraded too. So it's not really a "nerf over time" as it's here since the start of SoO.
They won't do it like they did with ICC. If you haven't noticed all previous tiers have been flat nerfed with a minus damage and health of bosses. We won't receive any buffs.
I am betting that since this is the firs tier with Flex raiding, a nerf to norm / heroic will not occur.
People whose gear is getting replaced rapidly will not have 500VP lying around for every item of gear they obtain. You can get enough VP to upgrade 2 items a week. So if you get 4 items a week due to progressing, you will, very soon run dry.
However as soon as people get stuck in the progress, they will stop getting gear upgrades, but will keep accumulating VP to upgrade existing gear. They also have a chance at warforged gear, so even if they are stuck, there are potential upgrades from raid drops.
There are basically two ways of progressing when your group is stuck at a boss:
1) Improve your gear
2) Improve your gameplay
During normal progression, both tend to improve until the boss dies.
The reason nerfs become necessary are when you are faced with a group who already:
1) has all the gear they can get from bosses prior to the one they are stuck at (ie they are no longer able to improve their gear without defeating the boss)
2) have hit their skill cap (ie they simply aren't able to get any better at the game)
Effectively said boss has become too hard for that group in that gear to ever beat (at least not before they give up), and without beating the boss, their gear can never improve. So they become stuck, unable to progress, until they eventually give up.
Now, with item upgrades and warforged, groups stuck on a boss will still see gear improvements for a long time even if they are no longer getting any "new" gear to help in their progression. For most groups who may be stuggling on a boss in spite of having the best items from the bosses before it, an extra 8 ilevels will be a sufficient boost to make the difference.