So, this post is more for my own benefit of ranting. Blizzard seems to have largely thrown the towel in on the forums and doesn’t really moderate it or read it anymore. But I’m nearly 31 and need practice for old-man grumbling.
Anywho… Most people agree boosting and RMT are bad for the game. A smaller majority think dungeon farming should be nerfed. These recent changes work to reduce the effectiveness of both. However, the method used was sloppy, inefficient, and caused far too much collateral damage for the normal player base. While it is unlikely to be rolled back, no change of such a drastic scale should be made in a vacuum. Especially as further nerfs are likely because bots have found workarounds for most of the nerfs.
Firstly: The XP penalty. If it’s going to kick in so aggressively, the level range of vanilla dungeons needs to be tightened. In retail, this was done in Cata. If the current boost nerfs for XP are to apply, it should be done early for Wrath Classic.
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A level 25 in SFK (the level of the final boss) effectively negates anyone in the group getting xp from the first half of the dungeon (where the mobs are as low as level 18).
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Maraudon is likewise bad, with a level 52 (not unusual for Princess, and only one level higher) negating XP for both outer wings.
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Don’t even get me started on Uldaman (mobs from 35 to 47!)
Etc.
Secondly: If the intent is to limit gold farming in dungeons, it’s not working. Botters have found workarounds and continue to farm in dungeons. Wrath introduced nerfs to the value of gold drops from various raid bosses (most notably Ony) to keep them from be farmed for gold.
If the intent of the boosts nerfs is also to stop solo gold farming in old dungeons, a simpler and more direct solution is to nerf the gold dropped by dungeon mobs for Vanilla/TBC dungeons. It will make it less profitable to farm, while level-appropriate players will still see value in running it for XP, gear, and quests. Otherwise further disruptive changes will need to be made.
Lastly: These changes are affecting the legitimate use of CC in dungeons with normal-sized pulls. Since the main problem is kiting and AoEing large packs of mobs at once, I would suggest the more disruptive changes regarding CC immunity and mob pathing be tied not to time in combat, but number of active mobs in-combat.
Level appropriate groups are not going to be doing massive pulls without wiping anyways. I would say pulling more than 15-20 mobs at once should trigger the CC immunity even faster, but less than that should trigger it slower or not at all (perhaps with code toggles to ignore specific enemies from the count, such as Rookery Whelps that do not even drop loot). It will also prevent the CC immunity from inadvertently kicking in when chain pulling smaller groups in sequence, as tanks are wont to do.