Blizzard added a couple last minute balance changes before the restart. Nothing major, but in keeping with Blizzard's tendency to make changes to encounters the week after their release:

Bornakk

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Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=

2/8

• Sindragosa's Mystic Buffet will now pulse every 6 six seconds, up from 5 seconds. In the normal 10 player encounter the debuff increase has also been slightly reduced.
• In the Toravon encounter, the effect of the Whiteout debuff has been reduced. Additionally, the damage done by Frozen Orbs has been reduced.

These changes aren't going to do much to change either encounter, but they should help players that were struggling to reset Sindragosa's Mystic Buffet debuff in time. Lessening the effect of the debuff in 10 player mode was probably also a wise move, as the fight seemed slightly over-tuned for players in a 'strict' 10 player raid. Then again, one could definitely say that about the Lich King as well and he hasn't been changed.. yet!

The effect of the change to Toravon will really depend on how much of a nerf was applied to the Frozen Orb damage and Whiteout. I know that this fight was giving a lot of trouble to pick-up raiders, Vault of Archavon's seemingly intended audience, so it wouldn't be a huge surprise if these nerfs lowered the difficulty of the fight to trivial.

Daelo elaborates on Limited Attempts changes:

Daelo

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Q: If you extend your raid lockout this week, will you still lose attempts on Normal after the hotfix?

A: No.

Q: If you run completely out of attempts on Heroic, will the wing bosses and Lich King no longer respawn, even if the difficulty is switched to Normal?

A: YES. So leave an attempt left if you wish to kill them on Normal. I'll try and correct this in a future update.

Q: Why is the counter still visible in Normal?

A: The hotfix being applied just stops the counter decrementing, and nothing more.

A bit of something for everyone here: upper end guilds attempting hard modes but worried about how many attempts they should leave for normal modes can stop worrying. It looks like you can use all your attempts but one then toggle off hardmode, and clear the rest of the instance. For everyone else, the limited attempt mechanics will now only affect hardmode Putricide, Blood Queen, Sindragosa, and The Lich King, so they will not affect the vast majority of the player base.

For more information and discussion hit up the thread on the official forums, Daelo seems to be fairly active there so if you have any additional questions about the new mechanics that would be the place to ask!