You're not as good as you think you are*

*Disclaimer: I don't think I'm good at all.

This statement made by Tobold has got to be a joke just to provoke discussion:

The hardcore raiders often talk of raids being all about "skill checks", or even "idiot checks". But if every guild suddenly gets much further in the raid circuit after the nerf, it proves that much of the raid difficulty is strictly numerical. The bosses all still have all of their abilities, they just have 30% less health. So if guild which couldn't kill them before now can kill them, it is hard to argue that these guilds suddenly acquired a lot more skill, or that they were "idiots" before to not be able to kill that boss. One good example for a pure gear check is the first boss in Black Temple, who hits the whole raid for 8,500 damage. If you don't have 8,500 health, there is nothing you could do, you simply need the gear with the stamina that gives you enough health to survive. Of course there are other cases where you can compensate lack of gear by playing better. But I haven't seen any encounter yet which can't be made trivially easy by being much overgeared.

I keep re-reading it and yeah this has to be a joke that he really believes this.

Using a very simplistic example, but I figure one more players would be familiar with. How did we use to defeat General Drakkisath in UBRS at level 60 in blues? We had to have an actual "strategy" that involved first killing the Beast so we had kiting space, then have someone kite him while we killed the guards. You also may have wanted someone to be able to pick up Drakkisath when the tank was conflagged. These things are what I would compare to skill, idiot check.

Later with more gear you skipped the Beast, and just killed them all where they stood. Because you had enough stamina to tank them and enough dps to kill them. You didn't have to do the other things involved. It doesn't prove that you are (or aren't) skilled/idiot.

That's what I meant by all the guilds cheering about Kil'Jaeden kills, and how they went into places and one shot bosses on their first tries. I bet my precious gold if you removed the nerf, put one of these guilds in the same gear competitive guilds had they would fail. Because it does require skill, organization, awareness, attention, etc. all those things that guilds like to believe they have and would be able to do just as well as top guilds if they "just had time and/or gear".

It's not meant to be a slam toward anyone, but I just never imagined anyone in their right mind would face nerfed content and think suddenly they conquered the same thing SK Gaming faced months ago.