Originally Posted by Veneda
See, but that's the whole problem.
Karazhan was nerfed several times to reach its current level. Magtheridon was changed multiple times. Same with Gruul. ZA got it's own pack of nerfs already. SSC/TK - the same. Heroics nerf - check...
Currently in Wow there is no such thing as "fighting the same fight as top guilds did". There is progressing non-direct nerfing of the encounters (by making gear more available for all, adding extra gear from other sources, buffing class talents/abilities) and direct nerfing of the game that is engaged everytime it turns out game content is too limited to the most dedicated players.
In case of my guild we have just recently killed Kael. It's not Kael who was killed by top guilds. It's not even Kael that was killed by most of the guilds that are preparing for Sunwell right now - it is Kael specially prepared for latecomers like us. And it didn't felt any less epic to kill him after 3 weeks of attempts (3 nights per week schedule).
Honestly, I'm pretty sure our guild would not be able to kill Magtheridon in it's early versions. Or it would be odd kill every 5-6 wipes. Same with early Al'ar. I remember vividly how painful early Aran was. I don't mind nerfs at all - I don't lose anything - and I save lot of time and stress related to deal with slow-clickers, flame patch deaths and such.
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Fundamentally there are several types of "nerfs"
1. Class mechanics changes. Although these often make the fight easier (consider the early change of Hunter's Mark to go from 110 ranged AP to 440 ranged AP), they don't feel like "nerfs" because they're across the board - every single person everywhere gets them, and it feels like Blizzard is "fixing" things, and is going to tune new bosses to match the new mechanics. It also feels like a buff to us rather than a nerf to them.
2. Gear improvements. The big ilvl change of epics clearly made things easier, but it didn't feel like a nerf either. And again, now the devs are tuning bosses to this change. And it feels like they learned from an early TBC mistake and we won't see this again.
3. Gear availability. This one really doesn't feel like a nerf - the biggest problem we have as a 3-day a week casual raiding guild is not having time to farm everything. Making badge gear, 3 token drops, etc, just makes us able to farm faster - it doesn't do anything that taking extra time to farm wouldn't do.
4. "Bug fixing", or removing significantly "unfun" parts of encounters. To the best of my knowledge, the only "nerf" that Vashj has had is the removal of her phase 3 MC, which apparently everyone universally hated. Yeah we didn't kill her with it the way Nihilum did, but it doesn't bother me because nobody seemed to like it and it feels so random. There's a period at the very beginning of a boss, during the first few weeks of kills, when Blizzard tunes apparently insufficiently tested bosses to make them better, that doesn't feel like nerfs. It's hard for them to judge the encounter correctly at the start - it takes some time with actual players playing it to get it right - the very first wave doesn't bother me. In addition, this phase sometimes includes buffs to bosses(more often nerfs), which helps it feel like it's "intended". I remember reading about the DPS / click requirements of Mag v1.0 (20 clickers, channelers with ridiculous HP?) It was changed very early to get it to about the level it is now. Or changing Kael phase 1 to have advisors with 50% health. Phase 1 is a joke, it just removes irritation. (And yes I know we haven't gotten Kael down yet - we're close though, and phase 1 *is* a joke)
So those 4 don't feel like nerfs.
5. Actual explicit nerfs, long after the initial tuning pass. Kael 10% hp nerf, Shade of Aran elemental HP nerf(thankfully we got him down before this), Magtheridon 2.4 changes. These don't feel at all (especially Mag) like "tuning the encounter to the right level" changes. These are explicit "we're making this easier for you scrubs who haven't killed him yet". And yeah, we'll still kill Kael, and we'll still feel a sense of accomplishment, but these actually feel like "oh yeah, we're doing it in EZ Mode). I think there's a window where Blizzard changes stuff and it feels like they're "tuning" the fight. But after that window has passed (and Mag has been killable for a long, long time), it feels like a nerf, and it takes a way a bit of accomplishment. If I were forming a guild now and doing Mag after 2.4, that would feel like a gigantic nerf to something tons of guilds on our server have already killed.
#5 feels like a nerf in the way #1-#4 don't, although all of them make the encounters easier.
(Interestingly, Sunwell is reverse nerfed(buffed) for #3. *When* we get Illidan down we'll head there, but we won't have the gear that those who got Illidan down 6 months ago do when they go there, although the 2.4 badge items help)