In spite of what some people might think, ICC has not been nerfed. We, the players, have the OPTION of accepting a buff to our health, healing done and damage done. To me that is a big difference.
Am I bovvered?
Saying that though, personally, I’m not that bothered. Why? Because unless you are just on the verge of taking down a boss, 5% won’t make that much of a difference.
In my guild we are currently at an impasse with Festergut 25 as we do not have the required DPS to take him down before he enrages. I’m currently stuck in the basement of the Indian High Commission in London, so cannot check the exact figures but even if we use hypothetical figures I will be able to illustrate my point.
Say you need raid-wide DPS of 135,000 to take him down before he enrages. Say your raid currently manages 100,000. A 5% buff to that would mean that they now do 105,000 DPS – you are still short a very, very large amount of DPS. So even with this buff we aren’t going any further – it’s still going to be the same strategy of farming the first 4 bosses and 10-mans for gear and badges. This change might make us sail through our farm content faster (it is already pretty darn fast), but it won’t really allow us much more progression. At least not in 25-man.
It’s all in the timing
The buff was always going to be too soon for some people (that were ‘in the zone’ with the current difficulty level) and at the same time eagerly received/long overdue for others. Some guilds that are on the verge of downing Lich King will wish they had had just another 2 weeks, so they could have done it “pre-nerf”. But by that time there will be other guilds in their place wanting just another 2 weeks. That line of people will not end until Cataclysm hits.
At the end of the day, noone will be able to tell whether you killed a boss while using the buff or not (unless it shows in combat logs and someone decides to trawl through them). This means that it is your choice as to whether you want to prioritise being able to say that you did an encounter without the buff or whether you want to compete for those rankings.
It makes me think of Larisa’s post of how her guild decided to go into ICC blind – no strategies, no boss mods. They prioritised their internal pride in a job well done over getting bosskills done as quickly as possible to maintain external rankings. Is it more important that you know what you achieved or that others know that you achieved?
I will probably vote for leaving the buff on for our raids. I don’t believe it will make a massive difference, but I see no reason not to use it either. I just want to get things dead – I’m not too fussed if in some people’s eyes that makes me an uber casual raider.
WoW and the Art of Cat Herding 