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Trinketed Lifebloom Nerfed on PTR
Published on November 30, 2007 by Phaelia 
Items and Equipment, Patches 
31 Comments
Reports are coming in from players of the current build on the Public Test Realm that the technique of using one or more on-use +Healing trinkets at the start of a Lifebloom stack and then keeping that stack “rolling” past the duration of the on-use effect has been nerfed. Players are saying that the first application of Lifebloom after the effect expires is resetting the +Healing value of their Lifebloom. While this may in fact represent a correction to the creative but unintended use of game mechanics, it is also a “nerf” to a healing technique widely employed by many Druids.
For those who were holding out hope that this change was accidental, it has since been confirmed as intentional by Community Manager Salthem (EU):
Lifebloom: When this ability is refreshed it will take on the strength of the incoming Lifebloom effect, rather than maintain the existing strength.
Edit #1: There seems to be a common misconception that this change will adversely affect all HoTs which can be refreshed before being allowed to expire (ex. Renew, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth). This is not the case, however, as Lifebloom is the only HoT which “stacks up” and thus was the only HoT that was affected by +Healing trinkets in this way. So while this is a reduction of Druid healing output, it affects only a portion of our healing (albeit, what is often the largest portion).
Edit #2: There have some been some excellent (if heated) comments regarding this change made here, of which I am very appreciative. Sheshonk of Duskwood (US) has also posted what seems to be an insightful post on why he is strongly opposed to this change, mechanic correction or not. I think that it’s worth a read, even if you disagree.
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
This is actually a pretty huge nerf. I think most raiding druids used this every fight, all the time. It ups your healing with an average trinket (EotD, Martyr) by 100ish per second per target, and if you also got the ZA trinket for maximum clickage it’s even more of a nerf. Druids already have a hard enough time in the raiding game with Resto not bringing the utility of other healers, one feral druid being pretty much the max and only to buff melee, and Moonkin just being… well, Moonkin. The thing Restos really brought currently was more battle rezzes, innervates and really high healing numbers. With this nerf our effectiveness and usefulness to the raid is also nerfed and the question of bringing Resto Druid #1 over Shaman #4 comes into question even more.
I’m not saying you won’t be able to do content as resto or anything, I’m just saying it’s discouraging to think of how you are legitimately less useful to the raid (given a situation everyone is playing very well, it’s very easy to assume resto druid #1 is way better than paladin #3 and shaman #4 and would be better for that situation.) than another potential healer in the raid slot. I don’t think it’s asking too much or going to far to give Resto and Balance the support bonuses feral, or most other hybrid specs give.
The other problem comes from how you never go, “Oh Golly we have too many paladin/priest/shamans!” Too many PW:S, Prayer of Mendings or Chain Heals just seem silly. But every resto druid beyond #1 lowers the effectiveness of them both. If you’re the lone resto druid you can do some amazing things, if there’s two it’s pretty optimal, I think. Maybe the raid slot would be better filled with another healer, but usually it’s fine. Three? Ehh, too much there. But again, you’d never think three Shamans or Paladins were too much. Most guilds don’t raid with less than three of either, and may have offspec’d versions of them as well.
I guess what I’m getting at is that taking this away, bug or not, really hurts a class that’s already down in the PvE setting.
I’m sincerely worried about Sunwell.
That’s bad news..
If this turns out to be true, I’m sure it won’t be a bug. To be honest it is a bit weird that one can even get naked while refreshing lifebloom (out of combat of course) and still maintain all the healing bonus (not that it would be of any use). Also many fights allow us to keep lifebloom “trinketed” until cooldowns are up again with relative ease after some practice, so one can get about +500 heal during the whole fight which is probably against the initial purpose of the trinkets. Looking at this, the nerf is understandable.
However I think the current mechanics of lifebloom are not that unbalanced. After all keeping lifebloom up on more than one target while doing some other stuff requires some skill, and it makes you refresh it even when it’s not needed anymore (for example if you’re fighting waves of enemies and your tank is at full health when one is done). It also affects “only” one of our spells.
Lifebloom is amazingly mana-efficient, but its HPS, like all HoTs, is relatively low. The greatest impact of this nerf will be on healing speed reduction rather than mana efficiency, something all resto trees will notice. This will increase the chance of shifting out to insta-cast healing touch, even in those cases this chance is nearly 0.
Swapping weapons for bigger innervates will also lose some attractive if our “spirit weapons” provide less healing bonus (as in my case).
Finally, I’ll specially miss the added fun of using these trinkets. Less stress, fewer buttons to press.
Bad, bad news.
I never used this technique so I really wont miss it. I seem to always be tasked with healing the raid. Yes, there are a few tank and spank fights where I can just focus on MT healing and yes I do keep a rolling LB/reuv going on these occasions but I never thought to myself “This would be much better with +500 more healing”. I just cant tear my bangle of endless blessings out of its slot. I use an Alchemist stone (for raids only) in the other for obvious reasons. I could see this being beneficial for a druid who is under geared for the encounter but is not really needed otherwise.
Well, that’s true, for those druids assigned to group healing it’s not such a big deal
Problem is many full-restoration druids (if not most of them) are assigned to tanks (I’m one of those who believe that’s what we do best), and those trinkets can make a difference.
When healing the rest of the raid lifebloom is just another spell you use, since you don’t really stack/refresh it much, so yeah, I totally agree with you. In that case there are probably a lot of better trinkets to wear.
Anyway, I’m already looking for substitutes.
People above already put it best, so I won’t rehash the potential outrage/disappointment/etc.
Couple of thoughts
A) I can see why theory-crafting-wise they would make this change; it does violate the spirit of the on-use trinkets having a limited durability. Still, it seems to be mistaking the forest for the trees. Errr, no pun intended.
2) I have a hard enough time convincing my guild that the effective boost to tank HP that a tree brings is worth the loss in spike responsiveness (most notably in ZA) This might actually convince me to go dreamtouch spec or finish leveling my priest.
iii) Have there been complaints about trees being too powerful? From anyone? Ever? It’s not like it’s a free ride keeping lifebloom ‘artificially’ boosted, it’s tricky keeping those GCDs in line.
8/2) Talk about taking away the single trick/difficulty/balancing act that trees have
0101) Does this mean getting a big heal proc mid-lifebloom would immediately increase the lifebloom triple-tick? If so that might be a very tiny silver lining.
Re: replacements for the boost trinkets
Obviously the bangle becomes even more precious. Ribbon of Sacrifice has a nice base heal, might be worth a second look. Really the big winner would be Living Root of the Wildheart, as suddenly the random 326 heal proc would be useful/entertaining, if unreliable.
Sad for some fights; but all in all; I only used one +healing trinket. I can’t put my blue dragon card down.
>> This is actually a pretty huge nerf.
Only if you suck at healing.
>> I think most raiding druids used this every fight, all the time.
Nope. 90% of the time, I forget to use this. And when I do, I often end up missing a beat and Lifebloom expires on me. These days, I use it purely to pad the healing meters. ^_^
No druid, /ever/, should have been dependent on this. I see it as a fix, not a nerf.
Druids aren’t the only class that is able to exploit these sorts of mechanics with on-use trinkets/abilities (shaman can do it when casting Earth Shield, and I believe mages can do it with rolling Ignites as well), they just receive the most visible benefit from it. Assuming they’re making the correction across the board to remove an unintended loophole, I think this is a good thing. If druid healing is lacking afterwards (and I doubt it will be), I’m certain they will make other changes to compensate.
@Akia
Harsh words, one could say the same for you for not adding an easy 100-400HPS to yourself all the time and thereby benefiting the entire raid for the entirety of TBC… one COULD say.
I don’t get the “raid heal” thing. Most fights only have one tank. It’s very easy to keep a lifebloom and maybe a rejuv on said tank WHILE healing the raid as well.
My apologies if they seemed harsh. My nerves get riled up when I see people crying or complaining when something is more a fix than a nerf. Everybody that uses this exploit has always known it was an exploit. There is no way it couldn’t have been. I saw the first comment, first sentence, immediately saying we’re going to be hurt hard, I got a little defensive.
This isn’t going to affect druids nearly as hard as some claim.
As for the extra 100-400hps. I might add, again, this was an exploit that people voluntary exploited. Because of this, I used it in pure sport and never replied on it as a primary means for healing. The current functionality was never meant to be. Any druid knows this. So no druid, in theory, should be affected by this. And my skill? My guild can testify to my skills. I have no need validate it.
As for the “raid heal” thing; actually, more and more fights are having multiple tanks. Even as low as Kara. Most fights, aside from Prince, has more than one person you need to keep alive at once. Honestly, Prince is the only high end encounter I know where it’s really just a tank and spank. Every other one I’ve done, mind you we’re just starting SSC and dabbled in TK, have been multi-tank encounters.
And my role, in raids, is actually HoTs on everybody. Our paladin is normally assigned to the tank and I just HoT everybody, including the tank. Because of the nature of our spells, we’re best on multiple targets, instead of focused on one.
@Draezele
Yeah, it affects all healing effects that allowed renewing, that also includes our rejuv and regrowth heals. I don’t know shamans too well (yet) but as long as they had a HoT type heal, it would affect them, too. This will also affect priest renew.
Not the end of the world. When I was undergeared I definitely relied on trinketing my stack so that I could actually heal through instances well enough to get better gear. The question is will the stack value jump back up if we trinket and refresh a stack for the duration of the effect.
Ultimately, most fights force you to drop the stack anyways. The only place I really liked trinketing my stack was on Hyjal waves – and it’s not really necessary. But yeah, most fights involve some kind of a forced run away, target switch, aoe silence, whatever effect anyway.
Side note: I don’t know anyone stupid enough to refresh rejuv/regrowth, even to keep the trinket effect going, that would just be horrifically inefficient. I’m hoping I read that wrong. =(
I believe you didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but please be more careful choosing your words. Whenever “you suck” appears in a forum (even with a conditional), someone’s asking for trouble
Just because you don’t use certain techniques that might improve the amount of healing you do but you don’t like or just doesn’t fit your playstyle (hey, we’ve already seen it happens!), it doesn’t mean they’re worthless. Of course we cannot depend on this, just as we cannot depend on having a 30 healing enchantment on our bracers or the proc chance of spellsurge. That should be obvious as we’re not talking about losing abilities, but about losing some power in one of those abilities we got.
Fact is that, whenever you have to keep lifebloom stacked on one or more targets, it is more efficient to have this kind of trinkets active. You may like or not, but that’s how it is.
Now, do we need to do so? Of course not. If your party, including you, is good enough, you’re correctly geared, etc, this won’t make a difference. If your party sucks, this won’t fix it either. I’m not exagerating when I say you don’t even need healing gear in order to heal, it’s just you’ll be lowering your effectiveness so much your raid mates may/will choose someone else over you. If your healing skill/gear suffices, you may not want to go further, but some of us want every bit of extra power.
Is this change fair? Well, probably it is! As I said, it’s weird as it is now. But that’s as true as the fact that many druids will see their healing power reduced, whether we call it a nerf or a fix. You shouldn’t make comments about other people’s skill just because it doesn’t affect the way YOU heal. That doesn’t mean you’re a better healer (nor the other way around!
)
About the rest of HoTs, I don’t think this applies. I suspect whenever you cast rejuvenation (or any other HoT/DoT) on a target, the new spell bonus is reapplied as well. I have to admit I’ve never bothered to check it as I assumed this would be its behaviour. Lifebloom could be unique on this; after all it used to get heal bonus from the first application only until patch dunnowhich where they changed it. Has anyone around tested it so we can share some first-hand info?
Aaaaand yes, I agree, most fights require more than one tank. Even when clearing trash
@Akia: A real quick correction. This change will not affect any other HoTs aside from Lifebloom as Rejuvenation, Regrowth, and Renew do not “roll” in the same way that Lifebloom does. So really, this is only a direct nerf/bug correction affecting Druids and only to a portion (albeit, likely the largest portion) of our healing output.
pretty huge nerf, heres a WWS of todays Supremus and Kazrogal, that shows what is possible with only keeping 2x LB up on two tanks and rejuv in between, and i fucked up a couple of LB´s there
http://wowwebstats.com/pxavjmxaceavk?s=4459-5132
http://wowwebstats.com/pcoxn2onw5pju?s=6366-6593
Doh! Oops. I’m quite sorry there. I was under the impression it affected all HoT spells. Nether the less, I was merely mistaken on that.
Ammell, I agree, if druids replied on this exploit, it would be a hugh hit on them. However, this still doesn’t change the fact this is a fix to an exploit and thus not a nerf. And I agree, if I have an absolute great ping rate (lately my ping has been 700 on raids .- ugh!), I can keep Lifebloom and rejuv up on two tanks. And it is possible to shot out an extra in between al that.
@akia:
actually, it is possible to keep 3 lifeblooms on 3 different tanks(i do so on Gurtokk, Hydross, rogues on voidreaver e.g.), but i have to agree, getting a rejuv running on all 3 of them too, is REALLY hard and depends alot on latency and often lead to naughty words comming out my mouth.
Tho i pretty much found i can do it with some macros, which at least reduces the “brainlag” like
/cast [target=traffkor]Lifebloom
/cast [target=dinown]Lifebloom
/cast [target=lumpus]Lifebloom,
with traffkor/dinown,lumpus being our tanks
and the same 3 macros with: “Rejuvination”, and then basicly just hit macro 1-3, then rejuv on 1st tank, then again 1-3 rejuv on 2nd tank etc. Works “most” of the time, tho a bit higher latency and you are screwed
(btw anybody else feels the changes to the global cooldown, whatever they really might be, helped spamming instants at higher latencies alot faster, i feel like i can decurse multiple people noticably faster)
Surely this isn’t a surprise to druids, it was exploiting the game play mechanics of lifebloom. Tho I imagine if enough resto druids complained you could get the change rolled back.
I’m finding I have more leeway now with the global cooldown and its been somewhat easier to keep lifeblooms ticking lately.
In general I am the only resto druid in the raid. We have a number of ferals but generally it is only me out there shaking my branches. While I do use the trinket+LB technique I do find that because of the nature of the encounters and the need to frequently change targets that I really don’t keep it up and running constantly.
In fact some raids I just ignore it and go with normal lifeblooms and frequently I am still at the top or near the top of the healers.
So it is a shame that we lose a very nice ability which helps encourage there to be more trees in the world I don’t think the actual impact will be game changing. Just annoying.
So here’s what bothers me: If it’s a complicated encounter with tank switching etc. you have two options
A) Keeping trinketed lifeblooms on both tanks, costing you extra mana & GCDs
B) Not trinketing your lifeblooms
This is a trade-off, a complicated question, and frankly a fun one to choose between depending on the encounter.
If it’s a single tank, obviously it’s much easier to keep a trinketed lifebloom up. I don’t see this as a bad thing because trees are terrible at single tank healing and the trinket helps mitigate that somewhat.
The real issue is that rolling lifeblooms should not replace traditional healing. It ticks too fast. Lifebloom needs to be powerful enough where the smoothing effect is useful, but not SO powerful where it replaces the traditional healing mechanic. Personally the solution to me is to switch healing trinkets to behave like +dmg: one at a time. This keeps the stakes high for keeping lifeblooms rolling, complexity = good, while not over-juicing them.
Maybe I over reacted in my first comment, but it does make me angry. I personally hate feral and need every little thing I can get to keep a raid slot for upcoming things like sunwell when the competition’s hot. The fact is, as resto, to a raid environment you pretty much only bring HoTs. Every class/spec brings some sort of utility to the raid besides two: Resto Druids and Rogues.
Rogues, however, by and far do the most damage in the game on any fight they can safely DPS (Most of them). This fact allows them to be very much wanted, and indeed, other classes wanted only to buff them, despite their lack of support utility to the raid. They don’t buff other classes, kicking and wound poison are needed occasionally, but those are things that can be done by other classes. Really, you bring them for their DPS.
Resto Druids are sort of the same thing. You can argue Innervate is nice, but another Mana Tide would be better. You can argue Battle Res, but ferals can res while adding more utility and, besides that, it’s not an overwhelming amount of utility.
Really, the only thing Restos have is a lot of healing output, bug or not, it’s a nerf to the one thing we bring to the raid and the one thing we could arguably do better than other classes. I’m not even going to bring up the fact each additional resto druid you bring over say, one, lowers the individual effectiveness of them both.
It sort of feels like Blizz is kicking us when we’re down more than anything else, and that’s why I’m angry at the whole thing.
Also I liked rolling 3k lifeblooms from Sharaz -> when a robot killed me clearing to Illidari.
Yes, it is an exploit, but one which many raiding resto druids used to justify their spots in raids. To fix it is to nerf druids, even if that is not the explicit intent. Some may not have relied on this, but many others have, and to fix it decreses their chances of getting into raids. Is that fair? I don’t think so, as I don’t believe that this “exploit” caused druids to be overpowered.
Quoting myself: “I think the current mechanics of lifebloom are not that unbalanced”.. now I see I was wrong
I didn’t know there were such huge temporary bonuses at high level raid instances. Even if just for a boss, healing for several k per second is way too much (too bad I won’t get to see it though). It makes more sense to change an arguable behaviour from lifebloom (also avoiding the chance of future exploits) rather than a boss encounter. Don’t worry, we’ll survive 
Also I realise I helped to create some confusion about the possible impact on other HoTs when I said ” 500 heal during the whole fight”, I’m sorry (I was referring to lifebloom only).
Regarding the post of Sheshonk in the official forums, I think it’s a bit pessimistic point of view but indeed worth reading. What shocks me is that he (is it a he? don’t know/remember) hardly uses regrowth, and when he does, it’s downranked.
I believe there’s no need to use lower ranks since 1) the direct healing is low enough (if something overheals that’s the HoT and, lasting for 21 seconds, it’s a nice “just in case”), 2) efficiency is not that bad in ToL form (despite what some old-school druids keep saying) and 3) I don’t want to ruin swiftmend! Most of my healing will be done with lifebloom/rejuvenation anyway, it’s not such a big deal. I like regrowth, I use it relatively often between lifeblooms (max rank when on the tank, and generally on other targets too) and still don’t have mana problems even with a modest MP5. Am I the only one? Do things change that much after SSC?
I thought about answering in the same forum, but after reading some posts like one from the guy mumbling something like “yeah yeah nerf lifebloom, it’s too powerful in arena” (what does this have to do with arena?? does anyone get to keep lifebloom stacked there??) I decided I didn’t wanna be eaten by trolls (stay away from the voodoo!)
Seriously, alot of the people posting here are taking this fix to an extremist point of view. Are you really saying that your guild only brings you because of trinketed lifeblooms? I hardly believe that.
If that is the one and only thing you tell people you can do well, then I am sorry for you.
As someone said on the post in the WoW forums, bugged lifeblooms may be the reason that Rejuvenating Gem is one of, if not the best healing trinket in the game.
However, really what it comes down to is that a trinket with a 20 second benefit lasting over 20 seconds is overpowered. The fact that many resto druids geared themselves around and based their spell rotations off this is utterly and completely irrelevant because, as everyone knew from the beginning, it wasn’t supposed to be like that in the first place.
So now a bunch of druids who took advantage of a bug are crying and whining about a ‘nerf’ that isn’t a nerf…I”m sorry, I just don’t have sympathy for you. Blizzard may have taken away YOUR individual viability since YOU centered your ENTIRE character around it, but that certainly does NOT take away ALL or, let’s just put it all out there, even a small portion of resto druid viability.
YOU made the choice to center your entire character around a bug/fix. That is no one’s fault but your own. This fix only takes viability away from those who depended on a bug for their healing ability and skills.
*shrug* Sometimes our guild has 3 resto druids in raids. I bring alot more to the table than just trinketed lifeblooms, and I have never found myself having to ‘justify’ my raid slot any more than the other healing classes.
@Nulian Yes, after the patch every time you refresh a lifebloom stack it will be re calculated with your current +healing for the spell. On the plus side this means that you will be able to buff up your lifebloom with a use trinket midfight in possible anticipation of a tank taking more damage. While this is still a nurfix (yes i made up that word) it wont be as big of a deal when your lifebloom stack accidently comes off the tank. It’s still not a good thing to let your stack fall off but it will certainly be less paranoia on my part. This allso will open up the druid class trinket, Living Root of the Wildheart up for lifebloom use. So this could be a very good healing trinket post patch with its proc effect. I am not shure how viable it would be in lue of another trinket but i will certainly try it out if i ever get the chance to grab it(or someone else that gets the chance to test it out).
Wether or not this is a nurf or a fix (again i prefur the term nurfix) at the end of the day you just have to move on and re evaluate the trinkets you use. This isen’t the end of use healing trinkets but it certainly opens up the doors to other trinket choices and wether or not a trinket you are using right now or going after is still worth it over another trinket. With a choice between a use and passive healing trinket you will have to take the use healing and divide it by the time the use is not up over the 2 min cooldown period (for a 20 second duration use ability this would be divided by 6). This will be the “ideal” power of the use healing ability on the trinkets now (if you used it every time it was up). Allso keep in mind that passive is healing for the whole fight, a more consistant healing bonus while the use healing will now be more ideal for burst damage encounters (or just padding the healing meters ^_^).
I didn’t really provide any substantial commentary on this change when I posted this announcement, partially because I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it. However, after doing some reading — both here and in the lion’s den that is the Druid class forums — I’ve been able to shore up my own feelings on the matter.
First, let me say that I do not and have never double trinketed a Lifebloom. (Yes, I know. Please don’t hate me. I don’t suck that much, do I? Hello..?) I found maintaining multiple triple stacks too stressful when I had to worry with losing my Healing bonuses, so I merrily mapped my EotM to my Lifebloom key, equipped my Bangle in my other slot (for the additional mana regen when Innervating) and healed away with little regard for when my bonus healing effect or Lifebloom accidentally faded. I’m not in a hardcore raiding guild. While some people (including Sheshonk) state their guild’s progress in terms of near-indecipherable fractions, I express mine in terms of number of gold spent repairing in SSC. ^_^ In such an environment, the degree of optimization represented by double trinket stacking is simply unnecessary.
Therefore, I will be mostly unaffected by this change. It is not a strategy that I have incorporated into my playstyle, even if I do derive occasional benefits from keeping a stack or two rolling on 1-2 tanks. That said, I can appreciate the concerns raised by players like Sheshonk who see their already tenuous positions in their progression-oriented guilds’ raids being further threatened. As some have stated, a high HPS value (partially due to the use of these trinkets) is one of the few niches that can be specifically fulfilled by a Restoration Druid.
Given the questionable value of ToL aura relative to the effects provided by others, a Restoration Druid brings nothing that’s unique to the table that cannot be otherwise provided by our Balance or Feral brethren (Mark of the Wild, Rebirth, or an Innervate that is far more freely given than that of a healer). Contrast any of these abilities (including the Tree Aura for the sake of argument), and there is virtually no reason to bring more than one Restoration Druid to a raid if you look at your raid composition from a purely optimization standpoint. Paladin Blessings and even Shaman Totems make these two healers a more attractive addition, even past the first of each that’s invited. Holy Priests can often contribute Divine Spirit, though admittedly they have their own set of issues and many have opted for the currently more raid-oriented Shadow build. I digress, however. Should Restoration Druids lose the one item they bring to the table that helps to offset the benefits afforded by other healers, they suddenly become “last resort” raid members. Do you think that the serious raiding guilds who have been advertising “LF Resto Druid” will continue to do so if our HPS falls 10-15%? I, for one, doubt that they will.
Please understand that I am not arguing against this change on the principle of it somehow being illogical or unfair. I agree with most that an effect that was intended to be active for 15 seconds should not instead be used for 3 minutes. However, with such a heavy hit to our primary niche, Restoration Druids need some form of utility compensation to ensure that we continue to be afforded raid spots among the most competitive endgame guilds. And any benefit that this affords to ME in my “low end” raiding guild is just gravy. =)
To be honest, this whole scenario smacks to me of the current argument used by Blue to justify the Restoration Druid’s lack of a viable Resurrection spell. “If we gave you a standard rez, you would be too desirable and no one would have any reason to bring any other healer.” While not being able to rez has no effect on our raid utility (except in 10-man), Druids’ primary strength is their HoTs. Nerf our HoTs and we fall below the threshhold of equivalent utility and continue to be punished for the perception that we, even with 61 points invested in Restoration, can tank Kael’Thelas and Wrath for 2k.
@Bigtoy
Re: Living Root of the Wildheart
In my testing and use of this trinket, I’ve never seen it proc from Lifebloom. If this has changed and someone can confirm that it procs from LB now, it’d be nice to know. Once I determined it didn’t work for the spell I cast 80% of the time, I said “lame” and hucked it into the bank never to leave.
Re: Doubletrinket Nerf
I’m a little divided on this. I’m not in a Illidan guild, but I’m at least “hardcore” enough to express my accomplishments in fractions, and I don’t double trinket. Mostly because I don’t have the right trinkets.
So on the one hand, I dislike any nerfs to healing as a general rule — it’s one of the more high stress jobs people can do in an MMO, and I don’t like it when anyone on the healing team gets their effectiveness reduced. On the other hand, I don’t use it so I know that healing trees are plenty effective without it. I don’t think it will be the end of the world, but I do think that it is taking something away from us that we used to have — something that people made roster, gear, spec, etc. decisions around.
On a mysterious, third hand I’m having a harder time swallowing this because it was apparently ok all this time that druids were doing it. To the best of my knowledge, it was never stated as something unintended, as an exploit of a mechanic unforeseen. It was also not something that was I saw regarded as broken or overpowered in implementation. I understand how continuing getting benefit from trinkets past their duration as broken stands up to reason. But the actual end-result of Druids double-trinketing on some-not-all fights wasn’t putting other healers out of a job. It wasn’t making people really bring more druids than they would have. Ferals weren’t being forced to respec tree to take advantage of it. Trees weren’t a defacto god of healing in raids to the exclusion of other classes and specs. (To track closer to where paladins were before their crit-regen was nerfed.)
Healing as a tree in raids is fairly complex, but once you master the pattern of lifebloom timers, it becomes incredibly easy, and very mundane. We don’t have to depend on either reactive or proactive healing like other classes do. The changing situation around us affects us far less than our peers. Regardless of the mechanics of a fight, we always have our lifebloom timers. Being blessed with low latency, I can roll Lifeblooms on 4 targets. I can put out an incredible amount of healing (more, if I used trinkets) and provide a great health buffer that no one else can. And I pay for this effectiveness with my monotonous style of timer-based healing. (Not damage-based.) But what I do doesn’t negate anyone else. I still need other people to direct heal where I can’t. And so I feel this change diminishes what Druids are capable of providing, and it diminishes what we free other healers up to do for the raid.
Kaera: I actually don’t have a living root, I’ve been absent EVERY time it’s dropped. Looking at wowhead with 3% proc rate, someone calculated that it averages to +73 healing casting 30 times/minute. So maybe it’s not as good as I had thought, though it would be interesting to see how random +heal would interact with the new mechanics. I’m surprised that it doesn’t proc off casting lifeblooms though, is that confirmed?
I take back what I said earlier: it’s a lame nerf and it makes me unhappy, but I’ll get over it. Lifebloom stacking is still pretty good. I just regret getting two activated +heal trinkets now though… I’ll never remember to use them (or if I do remember I’ll always think I should save them for a better time…)
/wave
“Regarding the post of Sheshonk in the official forums, I think it’s a bit pessimistic point of view but indeed worth reading. What shocks me is that he (is it a he? don’t know/remember) hardly uses regrowth, and when he does, it’s downranked.”
I use top rank Regrowth, it will usually make up 3% of my total healing on boss fights. One of the people that replied suggested using a down ranked regrowth to make up for the loss of hps on the tank. Anyways, hoping for a blue response so I can go back to lurking.
Maybe I’ll read through all the responses in a bit, but one point that I didn’t see when skimming – it’s now viable for us to use a high int weapon when beginning a raid encounter. The LB refresh will up it to our true heal shortly thereafter. Further, I swap weapons for spellsurge when the internal cooldown is over. I no longer risk stacking LBs while this lower heal weapon is up (although I do guarantee temporarily reduced healing while I’m waiting for the proc).
Also, seems like there are a lot of statements about this being an obvious exploit. I don’t think it was. I viewed LB as a continuous HoT by it’s nature (since it’s maintaining an existing stack, not refreshing for a new stack). use effects apply to the spells entire duration for all spells (dots and hots maintain heal/dmg until you cast a new spell which replaces the hot/dot, or it expires). You might argue differently, but it is by no means “clear” or “obvious” that maintaining/refreshing a LB stack is an equivalent case of overwriting or creating a new HOT. So please, stop assuming that everyone shares your own subjective view to those who claim otherwise.
And for those of you who say it’s effect is insignificant or irrelevant, well that’s just ignorant. For those of us who maintained this throughout a fight it clearly had an impact. I do fine healing. I can finish top 3 on any fight through SSC and on 3/4 TK bosses. I’m sure I will still be decent without being able to maintain trinkets. But I will undoubtedly be not as good, and the effect will be noticeable. So don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.
P.S. I actually farmed Ysondre for the 350 use trinket, and wasted a item return on my vendored Oshu’Gun Relic so I could better stack use heal. Blizzard generally announces when something is an exploit and such behaviour is punisheable (eg. MCing a Smith to kill VR in 53 seconds). Maybe it wasn’t feasible to punish this one, but they certainly haven’t been ignorant of LB stacking this entire time. This either was previously not recognized as an exploit, or else fixing it was not a priority. If they changed their mind, I’d like to know why. If it wasn’t a priority, they should still have let us know it was coming eventually.