The ICC buff is very divisive, and there seem to be two sets of players: one group which doesn’t want the buff (at least not this early) and the other group which wants the buff on Dec 5th. Although there can be many reasons as to why a player would fall into one group or the other, it largely boils down to this: a lot of the people who don’t want the buff yet are against it because it essentially ruins progression by making the kills significantly easier and less meaningful. A lot of the people who want the buff want to be able to more easily defeat heroic bosses and collect heroic loot.
Those who want to experience progression on the most difficult classic boss to date likely want to kill H LK with no buff. Those who want a buff likely would be even happier if the buff came in right away at 30% as this would make it even easier to clear heroic ICC and collect loot. A 5% ramping buff isn’t the ideal solution for either group. If the buff is scheduled to increase by 5% every two weeks beginning on Dec 5, that means the buff will hit 30% on Feb 13. The solution that would be a compromise between the two groups would be to delay the buff and simply drop it in at its full 30% at an earlier date than the 30% buff is currently scheduled to go out - sometime around Jan 16 or whenever Ruby Sanctum goes live (supposedly early January). This gives more time to the group that wants to progress with no buff, and more time with the full buff to the group that wants to cruise through H ICC, benefitting both groups. It would be four weeks earlier than we would have gotten the full buff, and means we would have had just over 3 months of unnerfed ICC. For context, we had almost exactly 3 months of unnerfed SSC/TK and 3.5 months of unnerfed SWP and both of those raids only had one difficulty, meaning players couldn’t just play an easier difficulty if they were struggling with progression like they can in ICC. Ulduar still hasn’t been nerfed at all and it’s been out for 10 months. It’s too early to implement a buff (which ultimately acts as a nerf) when ICC won’t have even been out for 2 months yet, and it has by far the hardest boss in the game to date, requiring more progression hours.
To provide data that there is indeed a large part of the playerbase who is interested in progression, looking at Warcraft Logs, about 2,300 raid teams/guilds (or about 25% of all raid teams on WCL) are 11/12H - that’s a significant chunk of the playerbase who are currently progressing on H LK, and that number will only rise in the coming weeks. Sure, not all of them will kill H LK before the buff goes live, but I’d bet most of them would like to at least have the chance to keep trying. It’s unlikely many of these guilds simply wanted to get to 11/12H and then not try to continue progressing on H LK. Even a 5% buff completely ends meaningful progression in ICC.
For those who will inevitably respond to this and say you can turn off the buff if you want to, the reality is that it simply won’t happen. It’s near impossible to get 25 players to agree on anything, and “go find another guild or group of players who want to turn it off then” is not a reasonable solution. Ending progression on the pinnacle raid of the expansion after less than two months is incredibly premature, and it’s nonsensical to have the shortest progression phase in classic yet for the most difficult boss. Blizzard, please reconsider the timing of and way the ICC buff is released.
They did. They decided people like the OP and people crying over the optional buffs are morons not worth listening to. To hell wit the minority. Enjoy the buff
If people are looking to finish their progression then turn off the buff.
Then turn it off, this can all be solved by just turning off the buff.
Too bad for them, its coming at 5% increments.
Then people dont actually care about finishing their progression without the buff. If they did then they would just turn off the buff. So its got to be something else. Something like gatekeeping or they just wont want other people to get it done that are in a worse spot than them.
Like why care about other people? I dont care about the 1st or the 5th guild to down the LK on heroic or normal. Did you accomplish what you wanted? Who cares if Jimmy had the buff? I dont, but apparently other people do for some reason.
Nothing he says is gate keeping. His ask is to delay it a bit so his guild can finish. It’s a legit ask. Clearing a raid within a patch or a phases timeline is a very different feeling than after. There is no gate keeping here.
The lot of you who keep on spouting “just turn off the buff”, someone must have really done a number on you folks with gatekeeping paranoia. It’s that or eEither you really really can’t wait any longer for the buffs to clear it, feel inferior and don’t like it, or something else. What gives? I’m genuinely curious.
Yes, let’s hold up everyone else so his guild can finish. Totally reasonable.
The phase hasn’t changed. The raid with the buff turned off on the 5th is exactly the same as it was on the 4th.
There absolutely is.
Those asking for the buffs to be delayed are the ones who feel inferior. Do the raid with the buff on or off. I don’t care because your raid group doesn’t affect me.
That is gatekeeping. The guild is trying to prevent anyone else having the buff even if the guild knows it can turn off the buff throughout the rest of WOTLK if it wanted to.
I never said you were inferior or they were superior. I frankly don’t care. Whether i agreed or not, you used to talk sense coherently. Now some gatekeeping disease has knocked you upside the head and you’re relegated to quoting pieces of posts with one liners.
If you’re going to choose the role of one of my favorite individuals on these boards when he was the pre-beta troll, you gotta do better than this.
I guess at a very small scale yes it could be seen as gatekeeping. But i’d imagine people would be screaming about gatekeeping if it was something much larger? I mean, is the buff that important to you folks where you need it right away? We’re only talking about a matter of a week or two right? Has this fear of gatekeeping reached such a point where people are flipping out over a couple weeks? Think about it.
Edit: Pro LFD or Anti LFD, it could be seen as way to gatekeep. But to compare that against a couple weeks of what they’re asking? That’s nothing. Unless you’re saying that without the full duration of the buff, you’ll be unable to clear the content, that’s another story. But i highly doubt that would be the case for any brain dead guild.
There’s no rush, as Cata won’t come out for at least 4+ more months
People are far too impatient these days & also too greedy, it’s really not fun to play with
