Gnolfo

I'm in full agreement I think.

For some context of where I'm coming from. I'm in a casual guild on a casual server: the most progressed guild on either faction just got into BT about 1-2 weeks ago. My own guild is barely into the 25s, clearing gruul and preparing for the others (we were a little overgeared for a guild starting gruul, just because organizing the run was the largest hurdle). We can get the first chest somewhat reliably in ZA (2nd will need some work) and haven't even cleared the place yet. Our core is in agreement that 3, maybe 4 raid nights a week (3-4 hours per raid) is the limit; any more for any individual will become too much for their schedule/etc. Specs aren't enforced (though recruitment is filtered towards what we need and are full on) and the raid schedulers do their best to make sure everyone who involves themselves gets runs, so raid comp is more about fairness to players (after meeting some baseline roles and reqs), and picking person in class A over B type optimizations are verboten. We're just about the model definition of "casual raiders".

And while we're casual, that doesn't mean we aren't capable. I've been a long time lurker of EJ and a lot of theorycraft discussion I see here I also see reflected and equally understood in /g chat. When it comes to raid time we get our act together. We're more erratic schedule wise, have the same 'gear diffusion' problem as mentioned by others, and will do our best to help people out who lag behind or need runs, etc. If a DPSer puts out awful numbers and has junky gear, but is a good person and has the dedication to see it through, we'll help gear them up and work on spec/rotation/etc if need be way way sooner than even considering dropping them and recruiting someone else of their class who performs better. These choices slow us down, and there's many, many many guilds in our same spot.

Sorry, getting away from my points. We want to bust our asses and kill raid bosses the same as hardcore guilds, the difference is how we've chosen to go about it (and i'll admit, we don't really have a competitive drive against other guilds). We know it will take us longer, and by no small factor, and that's acceptable. What's hard to accept is seeing an instance nerfed to speed on the progression. It's not speeding the progression--well, it is, but it's doing more than just that. It's making the encounters easier, lowering the bar, and in the end we're not beating the actual content as designed, we're having a "kiddie pool" version. There's something demeaning in that, and it really spoils things to finally get there, kill boss X, and still know that the boss was an easier version of its former self. We aren't children, we don't need our hands held, and the enjoyment of seeing the content pales in comparison to the enjoyment of beating the content, which is what we are really after. I've got youtube if I really wanted to see some endgame boss fight. That's boring, I want to work at overcoming and killing that boss.

I don't mean to bring a hostile tone, and I hope it's not coming off as such, I'm just trying to emphasize my point. Even in this thread I see the notion that it's perfectly fine to nerf down content so everyone can 'enjoy' it. To give a "in my shoes" parallel, consider if after a world/server first kill of some new boss, they put out a patch the next reset, nerfing the fight down considerably. I'm not talking tweaks like the ones vashj got when everyone discovered what a glitchy random that fight was. I'm talking real, honest nerfs. While nihilum and other bleeding edge guilds can get there first, there's quite a few guilds that aren't far behind and can do it in short order as well. To nerf the fight after the bleeding-edgers have their kill--in order to make it more 'accessible' so that the other guilds "can experience the content too"--would really spoil the fight for a lot of high end guilds, wouldn't it? The point there is those guilds are just as capable of downing the boss in their designed form as nihilum et al. The difference is they just weren't paced as fast as others for it (extra gearing up, getting it learned for everyone, etc). Nerfing the boss will rob them fiercely of a satisfaction that they earned and deserve. My argument is this same principle applies down the line. "casual" raiders for the vast majority don't need or want the bar lowered, our issue is pacing. Prestige for getting there first or early is one thing, and I agree there should be something for it. But there's no prestige for drawing a line that says anyone who hasn't killed boss X by now needs an easier boss.

Now on the other hand, in respect to pacing, I'm *FINE* with speeding up item availability. I really think those sorts of changes are what's needed. Like I laboriously pointed out above, it's not that we can't clear the bar, we just need more time to get there. More badge drops, extra tier token drops, more badge loot, all those are absolutely great in my mind. Our guild loves it, and we're seeing results big time. This accelerates the pacing, but doesn't change the fight mechanics. You can say that we'll be better geared than guilds that came before us, so we had more slack in the fight. That may be true, but what guild doesn't sometimes give pause on a boss until X/Y/Z was geared up a little more? That's just a matter of degree though, and every guild does it, and every guild still needs to have the same baseline levels of coordination and alertness that extra gear won't really solve for you. Unless blizzard starts putting insane quality epics up on 'welfare', all they're doing is speeding the process to gear people up on the content they're beating. And that's exactly what casual raiders need. We'd get there on our own, but the content would be past obsolete at our pacing. The difficulty level isn't the real problem.

Sorry this got lengthy. To summarize, as a casual raider (and there's lots of others in my camp), we don't want to see content getting nerfed, but we do want to see faster gearing up on content that's going to be phased out. We've got more people to gear, we've got less optimized raid compositions, and yeah, we won't be as tight on individual performance. However, when we kill a big raid boss, months and months behind the 'hardcore' raiding guilds, we at least want the satisfaction of knowing we killed the same boss that the big boys had to face.