I thought I was having a nice Friday afternoon, and so I said to myself, “Self, why don’t we read a little Elitist Jerks forums before we leave work?” Good idea, right? Not so much. Here’s a little jewel, quoted from the European forums of all places, for your reading pleasure:
• Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.
Fortunately, my leafy friends have already been at work, and GC has made some responses. Here is the discussion–it’s actually quite instructive and I feel like I learned a little bit after reading the whole thing. The surprise, actually, is how constructive the community is being–sucking up, I guess, versus Ghostcrawler’s uncharacteristically snarky attitude. GC seems to think we have all been triumphing over an OP Lifebloom and just waiting on a nerf. In my experience, that’s just not the case.
Why Oh Why Did this Happen to Us?
The stated reason for the efficiency nerf to Lifebloom is, quite simply, to de-incentivize stacking the spell on multiple tanks. Unfortunately, the nerf targets single tank stacking as well. From the math, it becomes horribly inefficient to refresh Lifebloom after the initial triple stack. In the future–especially in a mana-scarce environment–we will need to manage both the bloom and the roll, instead of now just worrying about the roll.
Most posters believe that the bloom of Lifebloom will be mostly overheal. I concur. There are many situations where my Lifebloom blooms. Sometimes I refresh too early, but sometimes, well, I’m too late. The “too late” problem is exponentially more likely to occur in busy fights with lots of movement or sources of damage. Yes, I know, I’m a bad druid. I use Grid to display my current Hots, but I’m not running a big splashy HoT timer like I used to in BC. I can tell you that the bloom of my Lifeblooms tends to wash out at around 1% of my effective heal in any given fight.
Who’s Facerolling Lifebloom Now?
This nerf really puzzles me. Are any of you, dear readers, topping healing meters by rolling on multiple tanks? That used to be me–back in Hyjal. Most of the current fights are either one-tank only, see me raid healing, or require so much movement (Sarth 3D) that facerolling LB gets to be impossible. I used to love stacking LB on 4 tanks–it felt dynamic, and the contribution of the heals was large enough in proportion to the tanks’ health that I felt like I was doing something. Now, not so much. The proportion of the tank’s total health that a triple-stacked LB is able to heal has decreased, such that Lifebloom looks like it’s not doing anything. I’ve spent some time looking at my WWS v. my guildies, especially when another druid outperforms me on the same assignment. It looks like right now Lifebloom is doing a decent job raid healing, but it’s usually not triple-stacked or rolled. It’s doing a lot of healing on tanks, but Regrowth is doing even more.
Maybe Ulduar is Hyjal 2.0 with four tanks in play. That’s the only setup I can imagine where this change would be absolutely necessary in order to keep resto druids from having a distinct advantage over other healers. That’s bad–a lot of guilds choose their number of tanks based on content, and right now you need a maximum of three. I wonder where everyone’s going to find their fourth?
Goodbye, Lifebloom?
The saddest thing about this change is that it adds yet another thing for druids to time perfectly. I’m in the fair category at perfect timing–I’m more into using my HoTs as a set-it-and-forget-it type heal. As such, Rejuvenation is my favorite spell, and if there’s a silver lining here, it’s that I’m about to actually be rewarded for casting it instead of kicking for using it. Right now, Rejuvenation is a poor bet–it’s going to get overhealed, and in the current environment, the numbers show a single Lifebloom to be more effective as a raid heal due to its faster tick. Presumably, the change to mana regen will be enough to tone down the endless sniping and spamming that goes on now. Right now, it’s very easy to pad the meters by ignoring your healing assignment in favor of whoever’s lowest or taking damage, but in the future I look for tighter assignments to be the norm.
However, my head already hurts contemplating what I believe will be the new use of Lifebloom: stacking on the MT to three and letting it bloom, and then immediately stacking again. It could be all-Loatheb, all the time–we’ll have to refresh our 3-stack selectively in order to time the bloom of Lifebloom to a point where the burst will be needed, or at least we’ll feel compelled to try.
Sure, the best restos will do that. Others will simply start to play sloppy. My healing, worst case scenario, could go something like this: I’ll cast whatever number of Lifeblooms from 1-3 that I feel like on the MT and then go do other stuff. Sometime later, I’ll get back to my target and say hey! Why don’t I stack on you again, using up a lot of GCDs in the process? Because I didn’t pay attention to timing, my blooms will be 100% overheal, and because the tank didn’t always have 3X Lifebloom as a buffer, he came close to dying a couple of times. And at the end of the fight, there I’ll be, hanging down at the bottom of the meters, standing alone, like the cheese in the Farmer in the Dell song. I’ll end fights wondering if I did anything worthwhile at all, besides, of course, the obligatory Wild Growth cast every time it’s up. Man, I wish I had started working on my shaman like I intended to six weeks ago!
It might be easiest just to take Lifebloom off the bar. After all, there are druids who stopped using it after the last round of nerfs. It might take down my potential effective healing, but it might be worth it just to have a little more breathing room. After all, I decided not to play my Affliction warlock at all in the expansion because her expanded DoT rotation got to be too much to handle. They’ve just made her easier to play by eliminating Siphon Life–now why would they do something to a HoT class that has an opposite effect? However, if I, as a tank healer, take Lifebloom out of my rotation, I miss out on the full bonus to glyphed Nourish, which is shaping up to be 3.1’s prize pig. What’s a poor weepy willow to do?
On Change
I usually like change, but this time it’s a little different. I had to relearn my class for Wrath, and I have to say, I preferred the TBC Lifebloom-heavy healing model. I felt important, and what I did for the tanks seemed dynamic and useful. I learned to work with the limitations on my rotation and my movement–I was good at that. Now that I can do anything, I’m less likely to know what to do! I’m overburdened by choice already. Adding one more thing to manage–and at that, a burst heal that happens 8 to 10 seconds after the original cast and requires three more GCDs to be spent after it–in an already full rotation–just seems daunting.
Time to start playing a Paladin or Shaman.
In all honestly I expect a big change to Shaman heals too. Right now it seems like shamans can just spam chain heals and everything is great.
Maybe I’m just being cranky again but it looks like Blizz is just going to nerf us all across the board. They gave us all these awesome utilities to use in 3.0 and now we’re steamrolling through their content.
Nerfing lifebloom is just bringing me one step closer to throwing in the towel. Iron Council better be pretty darn good tonight.
Cringer: I suspect you’re right. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another change incoming. Blizzard has a nice habit of gradually rolling in changes bit by bit. This is to make sure that one set of changes don’t break the game. If they threw in all the changes at once and the game became extremely buggy, they’d have a hell of a time trying to find the source.
This is another skill nerf. The difference between useless and skilled druid is much bigger than the difference between useless and skilled other healer. The other healers are mostly reactive, one’s HP drops, you cast heal. The difference between the good and the bad priest comes from:
* good one can use different spells, bad one knows only flash heal
* good one cast instantly, bad one clicks tank, clicks spell button with his mouse
The same differences exist for druids but on the top of that we had LBx3. Good druid could roll LBx3 on tanks, bad druid just throw LB randomly. The bloom is 9-10 secs away from cast, except for scripted events (Loatheb, Gluth) you cannot plan it. So bad druid bloomed a lot, overhealed most. Good druid bloomed once, when the boss was down.
The current change is NO change for the bad druid. He cast LB for double cost and receive half (of the double) cost back at bloom. Good druid has double mana cost.
If I wanted to be sarcastic, it’s a priest nerf, since we can no longer give our innervate to a priest 🙂
I think this change is fascinating. Remember, it is currently possible to have a six, nine or even ten second duration lifebloom. Rather than the only option to use lifebloom being to roll it, this opens up a whole world of possibilities for us druids. I can’t wait to try it out. If I had to make a guess, I’d say two-stacked six second duration will become the norm in PvP, while ten second three-stacked will remain popular in PvE.
I’d also expect the Deadly lifebloom Idol (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42578) to become highly sought after.
Also I don’t understand why you think lifebloom is a bad tank heal. I have mine talented and glyphed to ten second duration, with about 2200 spellpower in treeform this gives me about 1200 HPS per tank at the cost of 1 gcd and a trivial amount of mana ever ten seconds, leaving me free to throw around heals as I please in the meantime. This is not the lifebloom of old, certainly, but it’s still extremely powerful.
What does concern me however, is the implications of a combination of lower passive regen, lower returns from innervate, and higher maintainance costs on lifebloom. Druids already are the fastest to oom healer in PvP (especially against warlock teams), and this will only make matters worse. There needs to be some kind of compensation for this, but I honestly can’t think of any way to do this that won’t affect PvE. (In PvE this only means I can snipe heals less, which isn’t really a concern, I only do that out of boredom anyway)
Lifebloom is currently a very good tank heal. However, it doesn’t do as much as it used to in T6 because of the very easy current content. HoTs shine when times are tough.
In its future incarnation, it won’t be a great heal as a rolling 3-stack, as the mana efficiency loss for rolling a 3-stack for the entire fight may kill our mana. If you read through all the maths on the subject, it seems like a druid might be able to sustain the same HPM and BETTER HPS with a rotation of Rejuv, Regrowth, and Nourish on the MT. It remains to be seen. In a fight with an aura that ticks for constant damage, you will still use LB, efficiency be damned. That would be what Hodir seems to be. However, in a bursty fight, you might not anymore. The better way to keep the tank alive while staying in mana and putting in a decent performance on the meters might be to NOT use Lifebloom.
I’m going to have to test it out to see. It may be the case where LB becomes very, very situational, its use tied to the particular fight mechanics. Heck, LB is already a matter of choice. At current, I roll it on one tank only, except on Patchwerk, and throw out others where it seems the best choice. I mostly raid heal with Rejuvenation and Wild Growth–which isn’t the right combo right now–too slow in a spammy world–but probably will be in the future. I’ve always been a max efficiency type player, and that reflects the fact that I did my learning in T5, before 2.3. At this point, spirit was weak, mana regen was tough, and my Innervate when to priests while I chain-potted. It was not always the norm to spend fights rolling LB on 4 tanks–it was more normal to cover 2 tanks, or 1 tank and spot heal in the raid like we do now, but without all the tools or mana regen. This is why I’m Rejuv heavy. It seems like the pendulum is swinging again. If you think back to SSC, some fights were limited by healer mana. A lot of wipes on Morogrim, for example, happened because DPS took too long and the healers ran out of gas. It was the same, to some extent anyway, on Leotheras, because all the time spent running out of tree form and DPSing my inner demon really burned my mana.
I’m not sure what it’s going to be like to be mana-stretched without the ability to chain pot. Heck, I leveled alchemy because my potion consumption was so high and I wanted the alchemy stones to get more out of them.
Its important to put these changes in perspective – they’re on the PTR, so likely to change again before going live.
However, if they do go live, I too feel this is forcing me to relearn my class yet again. Maybe I’ve been lucky – I started playing just after TBC hit, so I had a long period of stability before Blizzard started messing with my healing dynamic. The changes are coming thick and fast now. Was it like this before TBC hit?
I love the dynamics of using HoTs – and especially Lifebloom. I’m hoping this will be the usual case of Blizzard going too far on the PTR as part of their standard testing, and that the end result won’t be what we’re seeing now.
Anelfs last blog post..3.1 Hunter Changes
Come on, stay rational. You’re not supposed to bloom your tank. Thats a horrible waste of mana and gcd’s. You do realise that spending 3 gcd’s instead of 1 to get the bloom is not better healing than just topping up with a nourish? Nor is it lesser mana, even if you get mana back from the bloom. I’m not even going to speak of how impossible it will be to predict 6-9-10 seconds ahead when to bloom it.
I think this change is actually the best nerf it could get. If you want to use lifebloom as a raid heal, it will be excellent, it won’t be more expensive than it is today, and it will still heal better than reju. (faster ticks saves your targets ass faster, less chances of, and loss when, being sniped).
Rolling the 3 stacks will hit your mana pool, sure, you will be far down if you want to roll up 3 tanks. Maintaining them will become more expensive too, yes. But that is not so unjustified. How much HPM do you get from sustained lifebloom rolling today? much much more than what seems right. It’s much better at this today than Reju, and reju is a worse hot, so it should be the most efficient, but it isn’t. This change will bring sustained lifebloom stacks on par with reju in terms of HPM.
I think a lot of druids are in shock that they’re getting more nerfs in this patch than initially announced, but if i look back i can understand it. In a raid environment i could stay at 100% mana with full hots up on one tank. Yes, 100% mana..
I can only concur with your hope for a need of tighter assignments though, to continue to leave druids a chance to shine. We won’t be able to compete if we continue being sniped when we have less chances to snipe back others with our hots.
I think you’re right though that Lifebloom could end up being a lot of overhealing, but then you’ve also got to understand that if bosses start hitting a lot harder then everyone’s going to be doing a lot more overhealing. So, I’m not sure if you can really use that debate.
Furthermore, why so much meter talk in this post? I feel like so much of what this post uses as it’s evidence of issues is the very thing that healers often saying… doesn’t paint a complete picture.
The issue that GC immediately says is in an environment where all healers are going to have less mana efficiency, this change was necessary so that Druids didn’t have an advantage. And, your post just didn’t address this. I get that you’re on tough times, but perhaps everyone is?
Veneretios last blog post..Back to Basics: Clustering
I know I’m focused mostly on druids, but we have been altered in this patch more than paladins or shamans. I think priests are probably going WTF? too, based on the magnitude of their changes. I think priests got some positive things, however, while it’s pretty much bleak for druids.
The buffs are to Nourish (good), Living Seed (excellent) and Revitalize (mediocre).
The nerfs are to Regrowth (minor), OOFSR regen (major), Innervate as a consequence (major), and Lifebloom (major).
As for other classes:
Shamans pretty much unaltered.
Paladins: Divine Plea change, which depending on your perspective is either an HPS nerf or a nerf to mana regen.
Priests: Whole darn slew of things,just like druids. Buffs and nerfs left and right. I’m not sure, but the Rapture nerf might be as big magnitude-wise as Lifebloom.
I would rather have had a cost increase across the board (40-50% with no return) for Lifebloom instead of a play style change–100% increase and 50% back. The “mana back” thing is very awkward. If you read the maths, letting Lifebloom bloom and recasting it is now better HPS and HPM than rolling it. That to me says that letting it bloom is going to be the new expert druid trick, especially if it can be allowed to bloom selectively. What I hate is that we’re being retrained to refresh late instead of early. It will be a huge alteration to my timing, which is something that I mostly count in my head. I don’t roll LB on multiple tanks. That’s just not the way I’m assigned right now. I count off the seconds in my head until the refresh on my main tank target. I like the idea that the penalty for early is less than for late.
I’m worried that what we have is a conjunction of nerfs to regen that will make the smart call taking weird-functioning Lifebloom out of the rotation. If I get better HPS/HPM overall without Lifebloom than with, guess what will happen for me? No more LB except for gimmicky fights where I know its function will be worth an HPS/HPM sacrifice in my rotation. And you know what, I want my signature spell in my rotation for all fights! This feels as weird as going from a Healing Touch-reliant style in classic to a Healing Touch-prohibited style with Tree of Life.
As for meters: they are important. They show general trends, and like it or not (and I don’t), they’re the easiest way to measure healing. I’ve been told by one of my guildies this week–a shadow priest–that he judges healers almost entirely by meters. It’s hard to say he’s wrong, though that kind of reckoning tends to squeeze out healers like Mallet and myself. We’re not actually meter-padders, either of us. If one thing categorizes our style, it’s “support class.” If there’s an unpleasant job, it’s either Matt or me doing it, regardless of the meter impact. So I understand why meters don’t tell the whole story. However, they are so concrete and measurable that I feel like they have to be taken into account. And if one class becomes incapable of posting adequate numbers, I think that’s a problem. That’s why I think all the meters need to take into account damage absorbed by a disc priest’s shield–and right now they don’t.
I’m not worried about losing my own raid spot, but I do think that some druids could lose their positions if Lifebloom X3 on one tank turns out not to be sustainable. I’m not worried about multi-tank rolling. I’m not planning on doing it or assigning it, and I haven’t been since BC. I have to see to evaluate, but it’s very possible that the 100% cost increase is too high to make even a stack on an MT possible for a long fight. If we lose the MT buffer of Lifebloom, druids become less unique as a healer, and some guilds may say, well, why don’t we get a priest or shaman instead?
Well I run 2-3 Resto-Druids always. I’ve always liked it because they seem to be amazing scatter healers. Sure when everyone’s nice and clumped up your Shaman and Priest are amazing, but what about all the fights where everyone is everywhere taking unreal amounts of damage. That’s where Druids rule, I think.
I’ll fully admit that that is a huge reason why Druids have been successful for us in the past. I know that it’s going to suck if your mana is pushed though cause I know that Innervate was something I always counted on them giving to someone else not to use on themselves.
Finally though, don’t forgot just how useful Battle Rez is. It makes the learning of encounters sooo much faster than it should be at times.
Why am I saying all this?
I guess cause I can feel the emotion in your post and I really do feel for you. I really don’t look forward to my own Druid team going through it. I’m comforted by the fact that as much as we like to believe that Blizzard screws up a lot… the reality is they really don’t. They do learn and they are learning faster and faster all the time. So, if this nerf is bad, it’ll go away. If it’s acceptable, you’ll learn to move around it and months from now never even remember the world of Lifebloom.
Veneretios last blog post..Back to Basics: Clustering
Whats up with these nerfs and buffs back and fourth every other patch anyway?
Is this something Blizzard think people wants? or are they letting half assed changes go live just to find out it was a mistake two patches later?
I would expect big changes with every new expansion but this is getting rediculious. =/
While there is no doubt that this change will mean that many of us (me included) will have to rethink the way we use Lifebloom, it is worth noting that if you use only singlestacked lifeblooms today, you will actually notice a decrease in total mana cost.
This is due to the fact that the initial cost is reduced by talents/gear, while the refund is not.
This is technically true for multistacks that you leave to bloom, too… but with the changes to the final bloom size, that’s just too complicated for me to calculate. 🙂
Since the WotLK release I used rolling lifebloom solely as a tank heal, rolling it on a tank and an OT at most. Plus I liked casting single lifeblooms on the raid to counter sustained damage (very handy on Sapphiron and Loatheb etc). My healing comes mostly from regrowth and rejuvenation.
Lifebloom becomes a different heal then we are used to, it is better to let it bloom and use your other spells more. Letting the lifebloom bloom gives you more HPS and HPM. That means you will have to spend 3 gcd’s to restack (on a tank) where you would normally just refresh (one GCD) and cast a Nourish and/or a Regrowth. But still it gives you more HPS and HPM to let it bloom! The bloom is very powerfull. While a refresh is very expensive, you will not get the mana return, it gives you less HPM and the same HPS as we have now, we will have to choose depending on the situation. (see my last post under this comment).
Again, we will have to use all of our heals to get the job done, only thing is I am unsure what this job will be. I do feel we are being pushed to Nourish, especially if the new glyph stacks with the T7 4 set bonus.
Raaffs last blog post..LifeBLOOM
Hi Syd and thanks for the heads up – not good news on the surface but I’ve been thinking (probably not a good idea)
Please correct me if I’ve misunderstood this but…
Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled.
Ok so say LB currently costs 500 mana before now it will be 1000 mana
3 x LB = 3000 and then 1000 every 10 secs (in my case)
When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom,
1000 mana half refunded = 500 back ?
so if you HoT the tank as normal and hot another person and let bloom that would reduce the cost by:
2 x LB, letting 1 bloom = 1500 total cost (was 1000) 33% higher
3 x LB, letting 2 bloom = 2000 total cost (was 1500) 25% higher
4 x LB, letting 3 bloom = 2500 total cost (was 2000) 20% higher
I understand that with the timing this actually wouldn’t be the case because you would need the raid HoTs to expire slightly earlier but you get the idea hopefully.
So wouldn’t raid healing with LB start being more useful and maybe taking a quicker bloom might become the norm?
Heya Syd
Just a quick note – Derevka posted a Addon that will take into account the Priests Shield.
This is taken directly from his Blog “Tales of a Priest” @ http://www.talesofapriest.com
Discipline Priest AddOn, DiscRecount. (http://www.wowhead.com/?forums&topic=68238&p=725586) This mod is developed by Para11ax, who essentially modified Recount to be able to add Aegis mitigation and Power Word: Shield to effective healing. This mod replaces your existing Recount, and provides a fairly accurate way to see how much mitigation a Disc Priest can actually provide.
I’m entirely befuddled as to why Blizz thought resto druids needed such an overhaul. Are we completely demolishing PvE meters? I mean, we’re good, but we’re not hands down, far and away good. It just seems odd that they would suddently implement such a huge change.
@ Kia, the main increase in mana cost comes from having to restack LB on the tank after you’ve let it bloom. In general this makes running lifeblooms in a stack higher than one very unattractive because being able to spread the initial mana cost of a three stack over a long period of time by refreshing over and over was what made the spell efficient in the first place. After this change you’ll have the option of refreshing, which carries a huge cost, or blooming and restacking, which carries an even bigger cost.
But I’d like to reiterate that tough I think we’ll be fine in PvE, in PvP this efficiency nerf is going to hurt badly. Just hotting up myself and a teammate, which is standard against rogue teams for instance, will use without exaggerating half my mana bar.
The way I see it, reliance on replenishment in PvE causes guaranteed problems for druids and priests in PvP, but that’s a topic for another time.
personaly why not rename druids , seems the so-called HoT specialists are well running outta decent HoTs ,Oh wait we got nourish and regrowth which as large heals and only really decent heal we got left , im defo rerolling balance or possibly a decent large-heal class like a pally
@ Tarqon
Thanks for your reply and I do understand that keeping 3 stacks of LB on the tank (never letting it bloom) will be at double the current mana cost.
I was just thinking that if you used LB to heal 1 raid member for each renewal on the tank then because of getting 50% mana back on the bloom then it would make the tank renewal cheaper
Top up LB on tank costs 1000 mana
Heal 1 Raid member 1000 mana
2000 total mana spent (double current cost)
BUT the raid members blooms and gives 500 mana back
Total spent on 2 LBs = 1500 mana
1500 / 2 = 750 mana to top up tank (and 750 for the raid member) Still more expensive but not as bad as it first seems.
Because of timing, GCD, lag, bloom you wouldn’t get the benefit on every renewal but depending on how much you raid healed with LB the cost would not just be a pain and simple “double the cost” as is suggested.
Thanks
Change is part of the game. I understand that.
All classes get roughed up sometimes when these changes happen to them.
I also understand that.
It just seems that our big three this go around:
The mana regen / spirit change
The regrowth crit talent change
The life bloom change
comes with little to no plus side.
Oh wait! We can now cast thorns without shifting.
Trees are being pruned for doing their job too well.
I get that, but there has to be a balance. Take something away, give something in return.
They are taking away a playstyle that we have been honing since BC and we are given;
A reworked nourish that is interesting and fun?
A changing of known weak talents?
New skins for our characters (that we have been promised for years) that looks half as good as the mobs we face?
No.
We get to cast thorns in tree form.
wheee.
Let us cast roots in tree form too, that would at least be something….for more PvP or bad pulls when you need to sort mobs out though
/sigh
These changes that I keep hearing about are making me disappointed I got my warlock to 80 and am now leveling my druid. I still don’t understand what everyone’s complaint about the Affliction rotation is. It gives me something to do and also taxes my brain from falling into that dps tunnel mode. Granted this could come from playing a Ret Paladin, where I had very few buttons to push all on cooldowns. At least with my lock, I’m constantly on my mental toes trying to figure out what the next spell to cast is. I love all my DoT’s and will be severely disappointed when they nerf the rotation. Yay, for having less buttons to push and more time to shadow bolt spam.
But back to the point, I wanted to play a healing class and considering the fact that I loved playing my warlock so much I figured a druid would be my best bet for healing. Now I’m looking at nerfs to their healing and mechanic changes before I can even get to 80 and learn everything. The way this is looking, I should just wait to even touch healing until 3.1 comes out so that I start on a fresh note and stick with boomkin. /shrug I just wish that Blizzard would make up its mind as to what they want to do with this game. Having to learn the class mechanics every time a major patch comes out is beginning to get frustrating.