Blizzard Explains Why Phase 3 Content Is Nerfed in TBC Classic

• Author: Pride
• Date: January 7, 2022
• Updated: January 7, 2022
• Expansion: TBC Classic

There has been a lot of buzz on the topic of the tier 6 raids in phase 3 every since players discovered that we are getting the nerfed versions of that content right away. Players had become used to take on the pre-nerfed versions of content at first, and then have it nerfed shortly before the next phase’s content is released, giving everyone a chance to clear it in time. Thus the fact that Blizzard deviated from this fan-loved formula generated a lot of controversy.

It took a post from hunter player and WoW Community Council member Sixxfury on Blizzard’s WoW Community Council forum to finally get a concrete and detailed response from Blizzard on this topic.

Simply put, Aggrend says that the developers did a thorough investigation of patch data between patches 2.1 (the original launch of the Black Temple raid) and 2.4.3 (the final patch of TBC) and did not discover substantial enough changes to warrant an interesting “pre-nerf” difficulty version of these raids.

He goes on to add that out of the multiple changes that did happen, most were bug fixes, and the few instances of mechanical changes, like to the Mother Shahraz and Archimonde fights, were fairly minor. Tier 4 and tier 5 content meanwhile saw significantly more substantial changes between patches 2.0 and 2.1, which is why they decided to do separate pre-nerf and post-nerf versions for those raids.

He finally reaffirmed that the Sunwell Plateau raid of phase 5 – commonly lauded as the best and most difficult raid of The Burning Crusade – will have pre-nerf and post-nerf states just like previous raids did, as there were significant changes made to it over time.

However, most of the changes made to Sunwell Plateau came with the 3.0.2 patch, which was the Wrath of the Lich King “pre-patch”, wherein players had access to WotLK spells & talents and the content was changed to give everyone a chance to clear it before it was made obsolete following the release of the new expansion.

So whether Blizzard considers those changes part of the “post-nerf” version of Sunwell Plateau is a very interesting question. Every single raid was nerfed during that patch, meaning there might be second “post-nerf” version for other raids. Or will the post-nerf version of Sunwell Plateau coincide with the Wrath of the Lich King Classic pre-patch? Only time will tell.

What are your thoughts? Are you satisfied with Blizzard’s explanation for why phase 3 content is coming in its nerfed state to begin with, or would you have preferred that they nerf it later, even if the nerfs aren’t as major as to previous raids? Let us know in the comments below!