You're kidding me, right?

I think because we're all rolling around in Icecrown Citadel, we've kinda forgotten how bad Blizzard nerfing has become. Or maybe buffing would be the right term. Because they technically didn't nerf ICC. They just buffed us.
How many times did they up the ICC buff damage increase/healing absorption? I think it was 3 times. It now sits at a very comfortable 30%.

Thirty percent actually is a big difference. It what's makes all those dpsers do no lower than about 6k+, makes tanks have health we didn't expect to see until Cataclysm, and makes it so Shamans don't get one shotted with our pathetic health pool.

As far as evening the playing field between casual and hardcore raider, I'd say this buff does the job. And it's a fair thing to want to do. Blizzard earns more moolah for making us all happy.

Blizzard does make multiple levels of difficulties available. Hardmodes. Love them, hate them, they are what makes the game worthwhile for the hardcore gamer. The buff can also be disabled to make you truly understand what your gearscore really means.

But honestly, I think ICC really made me rethink what a raid is these days. The other day my guild ventured into 10man Ulduar for some hardmodes. We did Freya (with all three elders) and Mimiron (Firefight).
Doing those, and also remembering what raids used to be pre-ICC was quite the wake up call.

Granted we were doing hardmodes, so more fire, more big scary things to look out for. But the basic mechanic of the fight was there, and unless my guild really really did suck back in the day, I was remembering some very interesting, difficult, but even fun raiding strategies.

As a healer, if I told you Mimiron was my favorite fight, I'm sure most of you would be like, "You're kidding me, right?"
Its a tough fight, and its healing intensive.
But I loved it. I liked feeling like I was working for something.
That is what ICC is missing for me.

Granted, the Lich King is actually a difficult fight. Defile can suck it. But the rest of ICC is a joke. When the ICC buff was only 5%, or even 15% (maybe? I'm not completely sure) ICC was still a challenge. A Mark of Blood would still go out in Saurfang. Festergut was still a DPS race.

Now its a PuG's walk in the park. Being able to down more then 7/12 in a PuG is just plain...amazing. It was unheard of in Ulduar. At first I thought it was changing realms; Argent Dawn is vastly superior to Undermine. But then after running Ulduar the other night, it became apparent that it was more than just that.

It's Blizzard, upping the buff while easing up on the raid itself. And while there's nothing wrong with making raids more accessible to casual gamers, and they do gain some kudos back by making the difficulties levels adjustable, there's definitely a sense of loss; at least for those of us who notice and don't care.

I think it places some players in a sense of security. Woohoo, my 5k gs can pull off 7k dps against Saurfang. In reality, that's probably not what you can really do. Same for both healers and tanks.
It definitely allows for a larger margin of error.

Now, you might ask, Who cares? I guess, in reality, none of this really matters.
The only reason I care stemmed from running hardmode Mimiron. Firefight is definitely no walk in the park. I remember back when my guild downed a boss in Ulduar or even Naxx, and it was a big deal. Now, its just something handed to us by Blizzard.