Doctor's Report: Horridon

Looking at Horridon now, he seems a poor shadow of what the boss once was. The first time we came up against Horridon was pre-nerf, and we grinded ourselves on perfecting and getting down each door. Due to our healing composition, the poison door was particularly annoying if we let -any- of the volleys get through, and so we had to pay attention a lot just to get past the second door without too many stacks. Then the disease from the third door would start stacking and... yeah you get the idea.

So we finally got down Horridon after I think ten or so tries, and this felt fantastic. We were glad that this damn boss went down and now we can focus on Council. Then the first wave of nerfs rolled over Horridon's arena...

We went into the fight the next reset, wondering how much the fight had changed. We then proceeded to oneshot a boss that we had spent ~5 hours progressing on originally. No setup changes, no immense gear difference. One shot, one kill.

This, I believe, is due to a quite common disease called Wrathofthelichkingitis. This is a disease that affects the brain, where people are used to bosses falling over and they get their free epics, so when they don't get free loot from early bosses they cry a bit on the forums and big old Uncle Blizz sorts them out. They move on then, probably to the next boss to whine about that instead.

Unfortunately, the nerfs didn't quite stop there. I'll list them all (quoted directly from WoWPedia's page on Horridon)

• Hotfix (2013-04-10): "
  • Reduced the health of Farraki Wastewalkers, Gurubashi Venom priests, Drakkari Frozen Warlords, and Amani Warbears in the Horridon encounter by 15% in 10-player Normal difficulty.
  • Drakkari Frozen Warlord now deals less damage with Mortal Strike in 10-player Normal difficulty.
  • Risen Drakkari Champions and Warriors now deals less damage with Deadly Plague in 10-player Normal difficulty."
• Hotfix (2013-03-12): "Reduced the health of adds in the Horridon encounter by 15% for 10-player normal mode and 10% for 25-player normal mode."
•  Patch 5.2.0 (2013-03-05): Added.

These changes were completely unnecessary. In the space of  7 days the adds of this fight were rendered a minor inconvenience by most of our raid team. We could destroy all of the adds with little trouble, and they weren't doing enough damage to make our healers panic even once. I don't think I ever used any defensives on the adds themselves after that.

Sadly, this change makes Horridon one of the easiest fights in the instance now, compared to the immensely difficult (compared to Jin'rohk) fight that he was. I hope Blizzard sorts out this problem of designing bosses in  the future, because it really does cut deep when a fight goes from a challenge that you savour for the rest of the reset, to free loot.

/terentw