Due to the 9.0.5. balance changes, most importantly the large nerf to Spirit Shell, progressing Sludgefist in Mythic Castle Nathria became noticably more difficult for my guild since we are using 2 discipline priests. While I think that the Spirit Shell change is healthy for the game, it is very frustrating that such impactful changes are rolled out in the middle of the current raid tier.
I understand that this allows Blizzard to collect further data before the new raid comes out, but it would have been nice to accompany these nerfs with according nerfs to the remaining mythic encounters (like those implemented for Dancing Fever on Council of Blood).
I’m really hoping that the remaining (judging by the history of recent changes boss by boss) balance adjustments for Sludgefist, Stone Legion Generals, and Sire Denathrius are rolled out with the next reset to compensate for the class nerfs (We also have 3-4 hunters whose Wild Spirits will contribute significantly less damage on the SLG add clears due to the 9.0.5. patch).
No need to worry about the add clears for SLG if you have 3-4 hunters, we have one and are doing just fine.
As for the spirit shell, start considering if you can switch your healing cooldowns around, and if this is actually a problem. It can be easy to have the mentality where you default your failures to something outside your own control, so take a hard objective look at your pulls: are your wipes caused by spirit shell being lacking, or something else? From my experience, Sludgefist is about the mechanics above anything else. If you have people breaking chains/soaks going through etc. the problem is not in spirit shell.
Yep, but you did take advantage of their utterly broken spec so far right?
Its a bargain when you hunt the absolute broken specs because they might be balanced?
@Lidlmage: Thank you for the feedback, the info on SLG is good to know.
We’re definitely still progressing Sludgefist mechanically and did not have attempts that wiped purely to healing throughput, but the raid was noticably less healthy than last week even while 5-healing
@Dejarous: I’m not sure what you’re trying to say (EDIT: regarding whether the difficulty of the raid should be increased by class nerfs). The cutting edge achievement certainly suggests that Blizzard considers the current tier progession to be ongoing until the next raid tier is introduced, which I have seen estimated for end of June.
@Rondakungfu: Sure, we did make use of the powerful state of disc priest (without actively recruiting them). Similarly, most other guilds who have completed Castle Nathria have done so for their progression on all bosses, which we won’t be able to for our remaining progession.
If you’re struggling noticably whereas you had no issues before the change then you should just swap to 5 instead of 4 healers, the damage check is not that bad if you’re playing a resonable strat and have competent DPS players.
If you’re already playing 5 healers then just get your healers to play properly.
I made my suggestion in the initial post: Blizzard should bring the encounter adjustments that are likely planned anyways at the same time as the class balance changes. (As that is not possible anymore, I’m advocating for the next reset.)
So because disc got nerfed, the whole raid mechanics must be nerfed ?
Rdruud was on par with disc even before the nerf, others following closely with MW and Hpriest being last. If all healears got nerfed yeah what you say would be ideal
Sludgefist is still ridiculous in heroic. I downed it yesterday in a raid with ailvl of 215 and it was still a hell of a challenge with many wipes. By the last few percent both tanks and all healers were dead with only a few dps left. There’s no way this is tuned for players with 200-205 ilvl like it should be.
