In light of the paradigm shift where neither Tailoring or Leatherworking creates Bind on Pickup epics, here’s help deciding between the additional benefits of these two production tradeskills.
~8% Nerf to Lifebloom, Thunderheart Changes
Published on February 20, 2008 by Phaelia 
Patches 
36 Comments
The latest changes to Lifebloom (the coefficient nerf and the changes to Empowered Rejuvenation) went live on the Public Test Realm this afternoon. After some testing, at 1500 +Healing, you can expect to see an 8% nerf to the amount healed per tick by Lifebloom. You can expect a further 0.2% reduction for every 250 +Healing beyond 1500. This is due to a flat 10% nerf to the +Healing coefficient to the HoT portion of Lifebloom.
For those interested, here is the math used to find these values:
At 1617 +Healing and all relevant talents (Gift of Nature and Empowered Rejuvenation), Lifebloom currently ticks for 201 on Live and 185 on Test. To determine the portion of Lifebloom from +Healing, subtract the base tick amount of 43 from the total tick amount on both Live and Test (158 and 142, respectively). Multiply these values by 7 for the number of ticks (you could instead multiply it by 6, but the number of ticks will eventually be divided out again). This comes out to 1108 on Live and 994 on Test. Dividing by the 1617 +Healing, the coefficients are 0.685 and 0.615 respectively. This translates to a 10.3% nerf to the Lifebloom +Healing coefficient for ticks.
Contrary to what many suspected, the nerf was applied to the HoT portion of Lifebloom rather than to its generally more PvP-appropriate direct heal, calling into question why this change is being made to begin with. All other changes to Restoration (increasing returns from drinking, Natural Perfection’s change from 15% to 12% damage reduction, and the set bonus change to 0.2 sec off Regrowth).
Without considering the contributions from Gift of Nature and Empowered Rejuvenation (unlikely to be had by many Balance and Feral-specced Druids) the base coefficient is now 0.468 down from 0.521, representing the same 10.3% reduction to the coefficient. Without the corresponding increases from these two talents, the nerf is slightly more severe: 0.082 at 1500 +Healing vs. 0.080 with talents.
Sioban of Lifebloomer has an analysis of how this change may affect multi-tank healing here.
Falx: how is PTR? is it cool?
Phaelia: Right now it’s a bunch of Druids flying up in the air so they can take fall damage and test how bad our heals were nerfed
For those curious, this nerf does not affect the 88 +Healing bonus to Lifebloom afforded by the [Idol of the Emerald Queen]. We still get the same 7 HP per tick. So if you’re a "glass half full" type of person, the idol actually got a buff. It’s now worth 80 +Healing instead of 72. >.<
In other news, according to a recent post at MMO Champion, the 2.4 belt, bracers, and boots additions to the Druid Tier 6 armor sets have been changed:
- Balance: [Thunderheart Regalia]
- Feral: [Thunderheart Harness]
- Restoration: [Thunderheart Raiment]
All three sets — including the Feral set, interestingly enough — have had points formerly allotted to Stamina redistributed into other stats. I’m guessing that this is to make these items less appealing for PvP than the ones purchased with Battlegrounds Marks and Honor, but it seems a shame to deny Stamina to Bears. The Warrior tanking set retains points allocated to Stamina.
The 15% speed bonus for Feral Arena gear has also been restored (screenshot courtesy MMO Champion).
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
A 10% nerf in our main healing tool… Seems we’re getting back to the dark ages of HT spam.
Can we please strip PvP out the game? That stupid thing is ruining it.
This nerf kinda worries me because I have heard how Resto’s kick butt with things like Lifebloom, but now that is getting the boot it sounds like. I understand the need to worry about arena playablity, but I submit that the majority of players are more PVE oriented than PVP. Heck I’m on a PVP server and I am more worried about how this will effect my raiding options when I get to that level…. jeez
._.
Seriously?
…dammit.
…/no/ stam?
NONE?
I don’t know what Blizzard is thinking. Adding Crit rating, and removing all the stamina? I’m the first to say that Stam Stacking is generally unwarented, but you’ve gotta have /some/.
I currently have absolutely no reason to switch to T6 bracer/belt/boots, except for my 2pc bonus.
…though the ability to have the 4pc bonus and the 2pcT4 is pretty hot.
Contrary to what many suspected, the nerf was applied to the HoT portion of Lifebloom rather than to its generally more PvP-appropriate direct heal
…
Are they nuts? I’m also reading somewhere else that the final “bloom” will also heal for MORE than it does now, so this is a nerf for PvE, and overall buff for PvP (some hard-core PvPers are delighted with this change).
Do developers even play WoW?
/cry
They got to be joking… The ~80 amount I ll lose was the difference that I got by getting T4+ from just crafted/kara gear… We are talking about A LOT less healing… It is prolly what makes my healing adequate for T5 content… Now I ll have to struggle again to get the job done… GG
And 100% of agi as +healing with Nurturing Instict? WTF were they thinking?
You can then spec feral, through in your healing gear and be able to outheal everything while still being capable of killing efficiently, unlike restos who now can only burn down their opponents…
I seriously hate arena and whatever it brought to the game… Damn slackers ruinning the game for some quick and easy epixx…
That 8% nerf isn’t that huge in pve, you gonna recover it easily with new items and raiding gear.
Btw how change on empowered rejuvenation affects to final heal of lifebloom?
If you don’t like pvp dont play it, ppl that only plays pvp isn’t for easy epix, since its not ez mode reach 2k rating in arenas. Ppl that plays pvp is cause they enjoy much more do this than spent whole night raiding. And i hope that blizzard make something to incentive more the world pvp conquering zones or stuff like that, not needed to be epics.
Just went to PTR to test it out.
From 950rolling LB with trinkets down to <700again
with a 13/11/37 spec, 2176+heal, my lifebloom dropped from 249/tick to 229/tick, loosing 90HPS basicly.
The final bloom is 1810 tho(empowered rejuv now affecting it)
I really dont know why blizzard nerfs our PVE healing that much(we werent top tier in pve anyway), and buffing the final healing value, which is more the pvp part of it(its nice to have in PVE, but seldomly make the difference with CH and CoH flying around.
We needed PVP nerf, sure, but thats not the way to do it imo.
And i am still crying when i see my HT 0.25 faster
(((8
@Mormegil: I’d have to pump my 1764 healing to around to 2000 to get my old LB back, source of 80% of my healing made. So I’d have to fly from my guild’s 5/6 3/4 straight to Illidan for that. How easy is that?
@Ammeli: seems the PvP set bonus got changed back to the old one, movement speed increase.
@hokuto: You are sure? so far the only thing is saw getting changed back was that the feral set got 15% back on travel form(was bear and cat only on PTR before, making cat faster than travel)
Tanking warriors do nothing but tank. Putting any other stat than stamina on their set would make no sense, and they wouldn’t ever wear the PvP pieces. Prot warriors can’t DPS.
Feral druids are far better rounded and can DPS if they change gear.
“Feral druids are far better rounded and can DPS if they change gear”
What does that have to do with their tanking set? they can’t dps in their tank gear.
Feral does not mean tanking only. It means ‘Feral’, as in, tanking OR DPS in animal forms. The Feral bracers, belt and boots do not automatically have to have stamina on them, especially when many feral tanks DO use the PvP pieces. (Most feral druids only require 415 defense due to talents and will wear the high stamina PvP pieces instead) Unlike a druid, a protection warrior is not suitable for any other role, and furthermore does not use pvp pieces outside of the shield (which is a very good shield overall) on a regular basis unless he simply cannot find a piece of gear for that slot.
I’ll go on to point out that no pieces of Thunderheart have defense on them, indicating that the set is intended to be multi-purpose, and that feral tanks are expected to wear other gear to be dedicated tanks. Frankly, Thunderheart is not a dedicated tanking set. You’ll need defense or resilience from other gear to tank, probably rings, trinkets and necks.
Frankly, it seems like Blizzard wants to push druid tanks to PvP. Not sure why, but as it stands, Thunderheart is not a good tanking set.
I would be very surprised if the tank version of the gear remains without stamina..
I think the point is, the warrior tank sets do not make for viable PvP gear – just as the PvP set does not make reliable tank gear. While the gladiator shoulders and shield are arguably better than anything up to Gruul for warrior tanks, the rest of the pvp gear just doesn’t have anything worthwhile for tanking short of mass stam (which you get at the expense of losing your 490 def.)
Not to mention Prot Spec (as opposed to Feral) in PvP is semi-useful at best w/ a one stun on an 8 sec cooldown and shield bash for silence. Feral can at least do *decent* DPS. As a prot warrior in AV, w/ tanking Galv and Drek, I get maybe 20k dmg done total (yes, that is w/ stance dancing.) (as opposed to my lock, which can get into the 300-400k) =(
I think ultimately, what Blizz is trying to do is make PvE gear more focused on PvE. I’m not saying I agree w/ the nerf – in fact, far from it. In end game when bosses hit like trucks, you need all the stam you can get. It even gimps some of the bear tanks in my guild, but I just think they’re attempting to “balance” the game a little more when it comes to end-game gear viability in PvP.
Also gotta say, Warriors only have 1 set of PvP gear. So unless you spec for it (i.e. MS or DW Fury (though arguably more suited for MS)), it’s hardly useful to any tank.
I’m also sad to see my heals get nerfed. =(
I think maybe the main problem is…it doesn’t seem like a lot to people who have never tried healing upper-level raid before. My guild looks at the fact that I can virtually solo-heal Attumen (though my gear is past Kara level) and thinks that I may be “OP.” I try to explain it to ferals who have never healed with lifebloom before, some of whom don’t even have it on their bars and they don’t see the big deal.
Only resto druids and others who actually take the time to look into how we’re being affected actually realize how much of a problem this will be for us. It’s not simply a “lol l2play” situation. You cannot “l2play” over math. If our main healing spell is nerfed to the point of Hokuto’s explanation (and I quote):
“I’d have to pump my 1764 healing to around to 2000 to get my old LB back, source of 80% of my healing made. So I’d have to fly from my guild’s 5/6 3/4 straight to Illidan for that. How easy is that?”
Then how are we to really be viable healers in higher end raids if we need to go to raids above our current content to be able to do them?
That is a huge problem for us restos.
But with the recent buff to mana regeneration (got 55 MP5 while casting out of it) I can change some of my gear and socket differently to get a good 100-150 more +healing while still having more mana regeneration than before. I could keep on healing indefinitely (with potions, drums and Innervate) before, so the better regeneration is something I do not need that much.
For example I can now throw away Spellsurge on my weapon and get 81 +heal. Good that I kept all that gear with good +healing but no mana regen
Doing that, while a bit costly, should take the edge off the nerf.
Also… this is the PTR and Blizzard may still change that to something more sensible (like nerfing Lifebloom only while outside Tree Form or changing a talent far down the resto tree to negate the LB nerf).
It is indeed a shame how blizzard has decided to balance everything around arenas. Personally, I was tired of all the whining about how OP resto druids are in PVP, so I made the decision of a couple of weeks ago to start switching to balance. Sure glad I had already decided that, especially in the wake of the current patch notes.
We have plenty of healers in the guild, so I’m sure the raids won’t miss my (now) lackluster heals with this significant nerf. I’m only at about 900 +dmg, so I still have a ways to go, and while I love resto, I’ll still be respeccing, probably permanently. With the nerf to lifebloom I can probably spam HTs with my balance spec using resto gear and do relatively well.
Matthew Rossi Said:
“I’ll go on to point out that no pieces of Thunderheart have defense on them, indicating that the set is intended to be multi-purpose, and that feral tanks are expected to wear other gear to be dedicated tanks. Frankly, Thunderheart is not a dedicated tanking set. You’ll need defense or resilience from other gear to tank, probably rings, trinkets and necks.”
First you say that it’s multipurpose and then say that Druid tanks should be swapping this gear out to be effective tanks. The implication is that if it is multipurpose we should be swapping it out for Cat gear too, or is it actually Cat gear? If it’s Cat gear, where’s the Bear set?
Druid tanks already swap other gear in and out to get the uncrittability they need as NONE of our Tier sets have Defense or Resilience on them.
If it’s multipurpose it IS intended to be used by tanks as part of their tanking rig…so it needs Stamina. The only time it could get away with sporting no stam is if it is intended as a pure DPS piece. If that’s the case, there needs to be a tanking set, too.
The Stamina change is simply unacceptable for the Feral sets. The number of players who choose bear tanking far outweighs the number who choose Cat Form DPS. PvE-tiered gear SHOULD continue to increase your PvE viability and — for Feral tanks, an important part of that is Stamina. I could care less about mixing S3/T6 as problematic in the Arenas if it means that it will adversely affect Druid tanks. I would say more but Currant is probably going to be posting on the subject and can do so far more intelligently than I.
@Mormegil: I agree 100% with you. People that seriously PvP (1850+, 2000+, 2250+) are not doing it for the “easy” epix. I played all of Season 2 with my husband, and we worked our butts off (granted he was an Arms Warrior so we had a nice combination, but I’m not an especially gifted PvPer). Those players accomplishments shouldn’t be so easily derided nor their chosen outlet of progression looked down upon. If you think T4, T5, T6 raid encounters are dynamic and difficult to master, imagine if those mobs had more abilities, reacted to everything you did, and were controlled by people rather than AI! It’s a much different type of play, but it’s no less legitimate for its differences.
Which isn’t to say that I’m on board with reducing an already struggling PvE effectiveness for the sake of PvP. There HAS to be a better way. And in fact, Blizzard has in the past said that they try to avoid making “sweeping changes”. I’d say the changes to Druids in this patch, especially with regard to the PvP avenue, are pretty sweeping.
@Bellwether: The L2P attitude is really irritating. I could better understand this change if the nature of LB healing didn’t dictate that so much of its HPS is often wasted. Yes, you can deliver a startling amount of HPM with it, and it probably wasn’t intended to be that way at the start. But the fact remains that, due to its lower HPM value, it is most often used as a BUFFER. A Tree can be considered a great addition to a tank’s damage mitigation. They are nerfing this CORE niche that we’ve managed to salvage after faster and faster heals from our compatriots and superior raid healing helped obsolete HT.
@Nocturna: That’s a very insightful point. I hadn’t considered the possibility of regemming my gear to take advantage of the increased innate mana regeneration. If anyone is planning to do so, you should start buying your gems ASAP. The prices are going to skyrocket with the newly released gear in 2.4 and we aren’t likely to be the only ones switching over from MP5 to +Healing gems.
@Goroda: I’m sad to hear you’ve decided to switch over to Balance, of course, but it sounds like you’re enjoying your new spec and playstyle. It also sounds like you had a pretty phenomenal set of gear waiting for you!
Why oh why….
Im just beginning building my T6 set and am already struggling with some bosses in BT due to low stam (8000 unbuffed).
My feeling for a long time (since ZA) is that Blizz wants droods to stop using treeform and moving in the a balance/resto spec, just look at the T6 set bonus: faster swiftmend – HT bonus, show me one person doing end game using HT????
And they are putting haste on our gear instead of spirit….
Crazy idea: create another talent table that could only be used in PVP areas? That would solve a lot of problems.
Bah, I might re-roll with my mage / re-spec oomkin if this keeps on happening.
I am in semi-T6 gear, and I’ve already all been socketed for +heal, not regen. I can’t regem to pick up the over 150 +heal this nerf is equivalent to.
I don’t NEED the extra regen. The regen buff is useless to me. That’s like saying “But you’re getting 16% spell hit on your healing gear.” Uh, that’s nice, I guess, but it doesn’t provide any functional benefit to me.
This nerf is retarded because it wasn’t called for in PvE, and it won’t hurt PvP. The other frustrating thing is, that in the T6 content, especially once you start getting it on farm, being a Tree starts feeling a lot weaker. It’s great when the content is new, and you’re there to smooth things out, but once people’s gear upgrades, and content is familiar, “smoothing things out” is not as needed. And I’ve seen others on EJ and other places express this same sentiment. It becomes harder and harder to feel like you’re pulling your weight on trash-heavy, random-damage heavy encounters in T6, and after your other healers become better geared and more used to the damage done. I can walk into Hyjal, or BT, and do the same thing I’ve always done, and be way down at the bottom of the effective healing that I feel like I’m not even contributing properly. And now the one thing I do is getting nerfed?
Using Regrowth or HT more isn’t a viable strategy; we already didn’t use them much because they were not competitive healing spells. This is senselessly reducing our bread and butter spell by a significant margin, and leaving us without a decent alternative. We will still heal with lifebloom because it will still be the best option we have, but now we will be less effective.
It’s dumb. And it better not ever get off PTR.
I worked the numbers around a little bit and based on your calculations and found that an 8% nerf to the one spell is like a 6% nerf to the class in the first 25 secs of a 3 Tank Fight. For a 3 Tank fight you cast at a minimum of 10 Lifeblooms out of a possible 13 casts (with 1.5 second GCD) that’s 76.9% of your casting on Lifebloom! Why Blizzard? Why!?
Ok been doin some thinkin about this nerf to LB and am wondering if it might be a blessing in disguise. Here is how my logic works
One of the biggest problems with being a resto druid is that we have no real way of dumping aggro correct? Well when we let LB bloom it considers the heal to be done by the person on the recieving end and hence they get the healing aggro from it. Now I am not sure how they calculate aggro but I imagine it is a 3 sec or 1 sec calculation and so when we are healing by x amount(LBx3) we get the amount of aggro you would get off of that single tick spread across however many mobs are in the pull. If we let LB bloom then the aggro would be generated by a large amount of Heal and that gets dumped on the tank.
Now what is the main reason we use LB? Because it is very mana efficient. It is better to have 3 stacks up constantly because you only need to cast 1 per 7s to keep it at full stack. Now with the MP5 getting better with 2.4 it isn’t quite as critical in that we generate it faster and so can afford to allow LB to bloom and then recast it on the tank. Imagine if they had it that Swiftmend caused LB to bloom even then we could choose when it would hit and allow us to “heal” when it is absolutely needed.
So here is wut I am thinking cast LBx3 and keep it stacked for 3 casts or so then let it bloom to dump aggro and rebuild it up. This would allow us to handle aggro and still keep those in the party healed.
Just some thoughts please pick apart as needed.
It’s lovely how you manage to see the glass half-full even when there’s no water in it ;D
I’ve never had aggro problems except during those aggro-sensitive moments (Morogrim, Hydross..). There’s no need to “dump” lifebloom because of threat issues. The only time I do that is while tank is pulling (you time lifebloom so it “ticks” mostly while target’s with full health, then tank gets hit and ta-da, bloom). Besides, re-stacking takes 3 additional seconds over a single application, you can’t do that in a reasonable amount of a time with, say, 3 tanks. Too long spell rotations.
On the other hand, if we’re supposed to raid-heal with single-application lifeblooms, let’s think about this: we don’t use Healing Touch because other healers get there first. Imagine what happens if we have to heal with a delay of 7 seconds..
No, thanks
If you have 4*T5, that PvP Idol (extra heal on bloom) and the 2.4 change to the final bloom it should make for some impressive blooms. But when do we need those? On Raid healing lifebloom is just too slow and will get overhealed at least 50% of the time or the target simply dies in AOE intensive fights. And even if the bloom gets to count it will be overhealing for a significant amount. Simple as that.
The only time I’ve drawn aggro in a raid environment was with a 6k swiftmend-crit just after Leotheras switched forms. Stupid me
The lifebloom tick on the other hand starts healing 1s after you cast it so it will usually tick once or twice at least (not to mention stacking it on a tank). Any decrease in the tick’s +heal value will hurt my healing a lot, as there’s almost no fight where I’m not running at least one stack on the tank.
Personally, I’ve had enough and will most likely respec moonkin if the changes go through. They’re not gamebraking, mind you, they’re just another slap in our faces for no reason at all and I’ve had enough of that already.
Remember me telling you “change your gear to go for more +healing and less mana regeneration?”
Well, I’ve done the math now. Currently I have 1646 +healing and 196 MP5 while casting, and my LB ticks for 222 (on a target with tree aura). On PTR I have 251 MP5 while casting and LB ticks for 205.
In order to get where I was I’d need around 180 +healing more.
I can change 5 sockets from +9 healing/2 MP5 to +18 healing without losing socket bonuses and change my weapon enchant to +81 healing (from Spellsurge).
Also I can change my helmet from T4 to the piece dropping in ZA. But this will break my 2-piece set bonus AND I will lose the meta gem (12 int + chance on mana regen). Also the T4 piece has 10 MP5 on it. All in all I will have to give up 60-65 MP5 which is more than I will gain with 2.4.
Damn.
As skarrde said, you might want to reconsider how bad the nerf is. I’m not happy with any kind of nerf to my favorite class but don’t be entirely put out by it.
Don’t look at it as an aggro Dump for you, think of it as an aggro Gain for you tank. It will allow dps to open up a bit harder making encounters shorter. Priests only have a wimpy PoM that doesn’t hit hard and is on a cooldown. You might see love equal to that of Hunters with their Misdirection.
Healing threat is calculated based on effective healing done, overhealing doesn’t contribute. So, if your LB bloom is all overhealing, which, it usually is, even on a tank, it’s not going to be much of an aggro dump (even in the indirect way you mean). Unless you coordinated with all your other raid healers and said “ok guys, my LB is about to bloom, no one heal the tank for 2 seconds.”
Also, a bigger bloom makes LB LESS useful in AOE pulls, because, come on, the last thing your mage or lock wants is MORE threat than they are already producing.
Pretty much, this is a PvP buff and a PvE nerf, which makes absolutely no sense. This, in conjunction with the T6 and arena gear changes makes me thing that Blizz Devs really don’t understand how the druid class works.
@Mage: I’m afraid that the aggro mechanic doesn’t work the way you think it does. Druids roll their HoTs on tanks, and it’s rare that the bloom actually occurs. If anything, this will make Lifebloom WORSE for raid healing since it’s going to tip the aggro scales in favor of DPSers (more threat given to them for the bloom effect which is increasing). Eluial hits it right on the nose.