I got to thinking last night, about how the Icecrown buff is affecting us now it’s progressed into 20%.
In our guild, I’d say we’re at the end of normal mode progression, and ready to get started on hard modes. We went in last night and absolutely roflstomped Putricide and Sindragosa, two bosses I’d previously thought of as pretty tough.
But are we really ready for hard modes, or is it just the 20% extra everything that is giving us that confidence? I know the buff exists for hard modes as well, we’ll be putting out the same numbers in both, but it seems so artificial.
I think that Blizzard knew they would be nerfing Icecrown towards the end of the expansion, just in the same way as they did with Sunwell at the end of BC. Sunwell (as I understand it, I wasn’t there) got nerfed by roughly 30%, which is where the buff in Icecrown will be ending up. What Blizz have chosen to do this time around, however, is to build their nerf into an element of the story, and to euphamise it, buffing us rather than nerfing the content. It’s more fun for players to see themselves putting out bigger numbers against the same bosses, as opposed to putting out the same numbers against weaker opponents. It’s more exciting this way.
I think it’s clever, to do it this way around, but I’d love to see how we fared against the same content without the buff. I think that now we know the fights, and are pretty well geared from them, we wouldn’t have a problem doing them unbuffed.
At the moment it feels a bit like having the sides up at the bowling alley. You can still make mistakes, but it’s next to impossible to throw a total-gutterball. When you take away the chance of failure, is it really as exciting?
As a footnote, I will add that it’s still impossible to overpower the Lich King fight. I foresee full groups of level 85′s, geared out their ass from whatever new raids we’re doing in Cataclysm, going back in to ICC and still wiping repeatedly on him. Numbers don’t matter there, it’s the movement involved that will wipe you. Can you stun and slow the Val’kyrs in time? No? Did you move out for Defile quickly enough? No? Then you’re screwed!
