Conflicted!
So normally I blather on about something rp looking, but today I’m going to very briefly touch on Bliz’s recent “buff” in ICC that will scale damage so the encounters go more smoothly/quickly. This week saw dps and healing doing five percent more damage (though I don’t think tank threat scaled . . . good times) and it’s supposed to increase in increments of five over time. I figure this is to get everyone OUT of ICC so they can go see the Ruby Dragonshrine raid.
To be blunt, I’m horribly torn about the buff. On one hand I don’t wish the Naxxramas 40 disease on anyone. That dungeon was a piece of art back in vanilla WoW, but it was so tough that only a teeny tiny portion of the player base got to experience all of it. They brought it back for Northrend and scaled the difficulty way down, of course, but there was something to be said for the glory of Naxx 40′s initial difficulty. You needed precise execution in there – it wasn’t the “40 man zerg fest” of any of the previous vanilla content. In short, that dungeon is where people L2P’d.
I guess my problem is . . . I didn’t think ICC was/is THAT hard. Certain encounters were aggravating, to be sure – Rotface was a healer check and the debuff was ridiculous, Festergut was a DPS check – but otherwise there’s a lot of the same old mechanics. ICC’s rule of thumb is Don’t Stand In Shit, and if the standard WoW player hasn’t figured that out yet, they probably haven’t been paying attention for five years (or they’re dim).
I know, I know, in the long run five percent dps increase isn’t such a huge thing, but I was the type of kid that wasn’t keen on scaling papers either, so I think this feels a little bit like cheating. Honestly, it’s the knowledge that ICC will be given a ten percent buff at some point that’s sticking in my craw, with the possibility of it scaling even MORE later on if Bliz feels like it. Too much! Way too much! Oh, and please don’t bother pointing out that you can shut the dps bonus off to keep the content hard. I realize that, and if I had my way I’d probably not take the buff, but I’m odd and I know others will want to saunter in and cakewalk to their epics.
I’m just not one of ‘em.
Filed in Raiding One Response so far
Itanya Blade on 10 Mar 2010 at 2:06 pm #
I read a lot of blogs.
I read a lot of WoW blogs and I have seen this in more than a few.
On the one hand you acknowledge that very few people saw all the end game content in both vanilla and BC. At the same time you also acknowledge that you enjoyed that content. You were one of the blessed few.
You also stress that you do not think ICC is that hard, but I would like to point out that you have seen the top end-game content. I would suggest that what you find so blissfully easy, others do not. That sometimes the difficulties people have are not because they are dim or not paying attention, but because they find these things that come so easily for you much more difficult.
I struggle every raid period to improve. If you think it doesn’t gall to get constantly shown up in DPS by one of the raid tanks on the few nights a month he has to DPS, you’d be wrong. I know my class. I know my rotation. I know how to gem and enchant. I do everything right. Yet I continue lag behind.
What sticks in my craw is the insinuation that because I am willing to use the buff, I am “cakewalking” my way to epics. I work hard, dammit. Damn hard. I’ve said this to a few other of the people in my raid with this same attitude “If I had to use you as my standard, I would quit the game.” There would be no point in trying. I am not going to be that good but that doesn’t ever mean I am not trying.