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“Fake” Patch Notes Not So Fake after All
Published on February 19, 2008 by Phaelia 
Blue, Patches 
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Portions of the patch notes reported by MMO-Champion.com as having been leaked early last week have shown up in the latest iteration of the PTR Patch Notes. So far, these changes include the following:
- Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
- Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
- Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by
10/20%5/10% of your Attack Power while in Cat Form.
For those who don’t remember, we may possibly expect to see the following additional changes (in one form or another):
- Cyclone range reduced to 20 yards, down from 30.
- Tree of Life: You may now cast any Restoration spell in this form.
- Improved Tranquility: Now also reduces the mana cost of Tranquility by 10/20%.
- Moonkin Form no longer gains 150% attack power or mana returned from melee hits, but now refunds 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.
- Force of Nature: Treants now have a 15% chance to proc Entangling Roots on the target.
Edit on 2/20: From my PTR testing, it doesn’t appear that any change has yet been made to Empowered Rejuvenation or to the coefficient associated with either the bloom or tick amounts of Lifebloom, so right now it’s a waiting game. If it turns out that the change to Empowered Rejuvenation cancels or mostly cancels out the reduction to the bloom coefficient, it’s possible that the intention is to reduce the effectiveness of PvP-specced Druids — many of whom do not elect to pick up these talents — while minimally impacting PvE raiding Druids. Because while the majority of our Lifebloom healing does come from its rolling component, the bloom is responsible for a good portion of raid healing, as well. (I often throw out a Lifebloom to a DPS or healer if I have the GCD to spare.)
As an aside, I’m also seeing conflicting reports on whether or not the 15% speed boost for Travel Form was once again removed from the Feral Arena sets; the latest screenshots from MMO Champion appear to be indicative that it has been, but it’s possible that the PTR has not yet been updated with their re-inclusion since the Restoration version also appears to be inconsistent with the most recently released information. I’ll be watching the forums and the comments here and will let you know as soon as I hear something more definitive.
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If those changes have been active on the PTR thus far, I haven’t noticed a periodic healing reduction from my Lifeblooms–but I admittedly haven’t been watching the blooms. I also didn’t notice any changes to the Natural Perfection talent; I’ll hop on the PTR after raid and see what’s going on.
hey Phae,
I’ve recently gone resto with my druid, and noticed that Lifebloom is like crack for us. With this in mind, i noticed that a certain talent of ours is being changed to now effect the “bloom” of lifebloom. This makes me wonder of the lesser healing coefficient is just a make up for the redo of the talent. What do you think?
@Runycat: I believe these changes may be “hot off the presses” for tonight’s update. I think someone would have noticed before now since it’s in the updated PTR notes.
@Rethic: Good point! Still, the people reporting on a decreased bloom probably have the Empowered Rejuvenation talent, as well, making it a net decrease and a quite peculiar decision. >.<
“Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat Form.”
Aw, now I’m going to have to rethink my entire “PvP/DPS/Tank” spec. =( I’m already two points short…now I’m four!
According to reports from the same forums, the recent change may not have gone live yet. Although some have reported a slight change in the bloom portion of the spell, others have pointed out that Natural Perfection is still at 1/3/5%.
I wasn’t paying attention to my lifebloom yesterday (Got my character on the PTR), but that was before the change was announced. I will say, the mana regen certainly is nice, but as a druid who always focussed more on regen than most did, if the lifebloom change is great enough I’m going to feel slightly screwed – The regen I geared for will find its way to every druid, making +heal even more valuable. Guess I better get used to resocketing everything I have, heh :p
I can’t believe the nurturing instinct change. Now, I know people have complained about cat’s squishiness, and that is indeed a problem. There’s a thread on the forums somewhere about the 4k AP club, and 3k isn’t exactly hard to reach – is 800 extra healing a bit much? I’m not complaining, and I’m happy for the kitties out there, but when I think about it – just wow, that’s a lot of healing, hehe.
It’s funny, though, they’re not really doing anything to help druids in 5s (Given, I’ve already forgotten the other changes save lacerate and mana regen).
This guy posted some info on the bloom effect
http://www.healerlfg.com/index.php/2008/02/20/news-from-the-ptr-more-resto-druid-changes/
@Twalkins: Better to have more options than not? Or did this change come at the expense of another benefit to Nurturing Instinct?
@Nilanil: I was actually freaking out because my mana regeneration had actually DROPPED when I logged onto the PTR. Then I noticed I had no talents … Oops. And I think we’re probably in the same boat. Free regen out the wazoo means more room for +Healing increases!
@Yunk: My experience was the same when I tested it this morning (I edited this post to reflect that). No changes on the PTR yet! /crosses fingers
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/druidlifebloom/index.html this is petition against lifebloom nerf… guess what, nobody from blizz is ever going to bother with it. Still, it makes you feel like there’s atleast something you can do to save your class.
Hey, every healer is nerfed, save paladins.
Hey, every Drainer is nerfed, save Warlocks.
See a patter here? <.<
@Kaymoo
(I’m the local Paladin QQer..)
From a PvP perspective, I don’t think there is any scope for a nerf to Paladins. We’re shit already (except for 5s). And honestly, although Holy shock has been buffed I doubt it’ll make a difference to the unsuitability of Paladin mechanics for arena pvp (excepting godmode, bop and freedom in 5s of course). Its still on a 15sec cooldown, and its mana cost has been increased – we’ll still be relying on casttime heals to heal through burst, wound poison or ms effects, and thus still be susceptible to interrupts. Turn evil is a logical change, I don’t know why they hadn’t “fixed” it earlier. It will help, I just hope to god it doesn’t break on dmg (SL).
As for Warlocks, am I correct in understanding that while the base spell of Drain Mana was buffed, there is no longer (or a substantially less) spell dmg coefficient for the spell?
As for druids, I wish Blizz would do away with their nerf bat. They need to actually put some effort in, stop listening to “nerf x” QQers and find constructive ways to balance the healing classes, and indeed the role of healing in pvp in general.
Does anyone else feel that Blizz has sacrificed the soul of this game in pursuit of PvP balance? Making whole-sale changes that don’t so much reflect the flavour of the class? E.g. adding a mortal strike effect to x dps class to increase efficacy in the post resilience, high hp and healer centric pvp world?
And seems like resilience is their vehicle for pushing through balancing changes. While I guess its a good thing, somehow it seems like they’re taking the easy option so as to not have to actually balance pvp properly. Remains to be seen, but I’m still dubious as to whether the drain effect of resilience will make pvp gear the first choice for successful pvp paladins. Its great for the classes for whom resilience-based gear is the best option, but yea get the feeling I’ll still be shafted given that I don’t (can’t afford the time/commitment) raid. I could go on and on and on…but this is a druid blog and I’ve ranted enough already
@Vulpix: What an interesting idea. I’d never seen IPetitions before. It’s pretty neat except for the annoying solicitation of a donation that makes you wonder if your signature was actually accepted!
@Kaymoo: Paladins have actually been nerfed at least twice, once for Illumination and once for Blessing of Freedom. I find it really irritating that it’s often the overpoweredness of Warriors that results in a nerf to the classes who happen to be synergistic with them.
@Lovemace: What a very insightful set of comments. You certainly have no reason to be shy about sharing a Paladin’s outlook here, even if it is a Druid blog. =) I think that the Turn Evil change is definitely a step in the right direction, but I’m afraid that without a corresponding reduction of the spell resistance on Fel Hunters, it’s not going to accomplish as much as was intended (Paladins really need a way to protect themselves from perma-Silence, especially since it doesn’t suffer from the DR that it should). I’m curious what percent of the time TE will actually work on a Fel Hunter; I know trying to Root or Cyclone one is frequently an act of futility!
I managed to get copied to PTR.
Live:
http://www.kamileon.net/wow/Live_lifebloom.jpg
PTR:
http://www.kamileon.net/wow/PTR_Lifebloom.jpg
Reports are saying the coefficient has been reduced 8%, with some variation in the thread due to how it’s being calculated.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4665465789&sid=1&pageNo=1
I’m well into the point where chain heal is beginning to perform very well, and supposedly it only gets more powerful as the content increases. It might not seem like a huge deal to people when they only quote one lifebloom stack, but with 4 stacks druids are losing anywhere from 2-300 HPS.
To be quite frank, it was completely uncalled for in PvE, as very high end resto druids already have work cut out for them to stay competitive. All the mana change is going to end up doing is encourage people to cast regrowth more often, as most people already gemmed pure +healing anyway – Funny that they don’t seem to get the notion that, very often, I don’t have that 2 seconds to spare. If I do…it’ll be after I finish refreshing the stacks on the tanks.
Hi Phae,
Although fel hunters have very high magical resistance, as I understand it at this point in time there is no holy resist in the game. While Paladins (and priests) may get a “resist” show in their combat log, these are spell misses – hense why spell pen is a waste of time for shockadins
If there was holy resistance in the game, I doubt that you’d ever see a holy paladin unload on a warlock pet. Holy shock and Exorcism are pretty mana-intensive, and if they had a chance to partial or full resist it wouldn’t be worth it – its not fantastic dmg as it is. So thankfully thats one thing we don’t have to worry about!
The biggest thing about the Turn Evil change is that now when vsing a lock we will be able to get out of combat for a longer period than the “bridge jump” currently buys us to drink (not that you should be letting the pet live that long anyway, at least in 2s).
However, with these new water changes I honestly think Paladins were set to suffer the most. With terrible regen on pvp gear, BoW dispellable, and no reliable way to cc pets to get out of combat (hammer is a joke – as magical and a stun, it can both miss and resist), we need drinking more than anyone in that once we’re out of mana we’re very definately out – and in the current drain-dominant state of the game, we get out of mana very fast (bg9 seems to be over-populated with hunters atm – and hunters find paladins dee-licious).
Priests have the pet and fear (and good regen), druids have innervate (albeit dispellable too), great mobility, and root and cyclone (albeit resistable), and shamans have the new form of water shield (zomgwtf-regen).
Often all we can grab is a couple of ticks at a time, and now thats pretty much worthless!
One the other point, once again I don’t really understand Blizzard’s logic – they wish to nerf druids in pvp, yet nerf the pve-strong element of lifebloom. Go figure :s
@Kaera and Nilanil: Hey, thanks for updating me, guys! =) I actually sped home from work yesterday to get onto the test realm myself to do the same analysis. Looks like we were all on the same page. I was alt tabbed out and kept hearing the “CAW CAW” noises of Druids around me turning into birds so they could take damage and heal themselves. Quite the depressing atmosphere.
@Lovemace: I’m so happy to hear that Fel Hunters will FINALLY have a reasonable counter. And how appropriate that it would come from a Paladin! Great analysis of regeneration issues of the four healers. It sounds like they may have taken the Illumination nerf too far. Then again, Illumination wouldn’t really help in terms of reactive mana regeneration after being the victim of drains. >.<