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.

“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.

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.

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.

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 ^_^).

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.

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!)