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Tharfor: Lifebloom Change a "Correction"
Published on March 5, 2008 by Phaelia 
Blue, Patches 
23 Comments
We Druids finally received a blue response to our pleas and inquiries about the upcoming nerf to the Lifebloom +Healing coefficient, albeit not the one we have sought. Responding to a thread originating back in February, Community Manager Tharfor (EU) has posted:
It easy to see why people would view this change as a nerf, but the truth is that the coefficient was already artificially inflated.
Resto druids are still very strong at what they do. I notice when I’m raiding with mine that I don’t do very well on the healing meters, but that’s just because of the way that druid healing works.
Are we Druids then to infer that we are not intended to perform well on healing meters, those tools pored over by the most diligent of endgame raiders when making decisions about who needs to improve or even who should be permanently cut from their rosters? This statement is tantamount to telling raid guilds that a Restoration Druid isn’t intended to contribute as meaningfully as other healers. All this despite having less utility than Paladins or Shamans, lacking the raid healing tools of Shamans and Priests, and having all almost all of our "special" contributions (Rebirth, Innervate, MotW, Thorns) provided as well or better by Balance and Feral Druids, the sole exception being Tree of Life aura.
This is the first time I’ve heard that a change was needed to reduce the performance of a class/spec acknowledged to underperform in exactly the same area that the reduction is being applied, and I suspect Tharfor will regret putting his paw in his mouth (his forum avatar is a Night Elf cat). I’ve done my best to try and stay positive about the changes in Patch 2.4, but this feels like a punch in the gut; I’d Lifebloom myself, but it probably wouldn’t even top me off anymore.
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Great. Just what I was hoping to hear. How long have we been the way we are, and now we get “corrected?” More and more I’m wanting to spec back to Feral and level a different healing class.
Honestly, I don’t really see that as what he’s saying, or the consequence of such – the healing aura from Tree of Life is one way in which heavy Resto druids contribute that can’t be replaced with the aid of a Balance or Feral druid.
Fix (v):
1: To repair; mend.
2: To make fast, firm, or stable.
3: (informal) to castrate or spay (an animal, esp. a pet or Druid)
From Blizzard’s special version of Dictionary.com
This is a pathetic excuse for a reason and will only fuel the L2P comments from the undereducated forum trolls. The effectiveness of Lifebloom is already insufficient in BT and Mount Hyjal and will now be less useful in SSC and TK.
How does this make sense? Do they listen to themselves?
“Resto druids are still very strong at what they do. I notice when I’m raiding with mine that I don’t do very well on the healing meters”… HUH!?!
Oh for (%&^%s sake.
“Are we Druids then to infer that we are not intended to perform well on healing meters, those tools pored over by the most diligent of endgame raiders when making decisions about who needs to improve or even who should be permanently cut from their rosters? This statement is tantamount to telling raid guilds that a Restoration Druid isn’t intended to contribute as meaningfully as other healers.”
I’m going to have to cry foul on this one. It **is** very true that different healing classes will perform differently on healing meters. Shaman tend to perform very well (since chain heal has the nice property of bouncing to the lowest absolutely damaged target). Conversely, I’ve noticed that druids perform more poorly…that said, there’s fights our group just plain won’t do without a restoration druid.
There are a number of reasons for this. For instance, any tick of a HoT that goes off when the player is at full health doesn’t show up in the combat log at all (and therefore on the meter either). However, it’s still there, and would help smooth out a damage spike if one occured, for instance. Of course, on any boss with a silence or something else that interrupts healers, this is an essential ability…priests can get part of the way there, but…
If endgame raiders are poring over healing meters to determine who needs improvement, then the fault is with the guild administration. Different healing classes just work differently, and good groups are aware of that and don’t take total healing output as that kind of measure. The healers succeed–as a team, not individuals, mind you–when the raid lives.
That isn’t to say that the Lifebloom nerf is a good thing (although let’s not forget, you’re getting a ton of mana regen!). But I think that your comment isn’t quite as well-founded as you believe.
@Luke – sorry if this seems slightly sarcastic, but “Yay! Mana regen! Now we can show the tanks how our mana bars go up and up while their health goes down and down! Glee!”
/sarcasm off
So should we do Healing Touch with our lovely mana regen? Hmm. 3.5 seconds to get off…yeeeeeeeah. Gimped pallies much.
“I notice when I’m raiding with mine that I don’t do very well on the healing meters, but that’s just because of the way that druid healing works.”
WHAT?! I was topping healing meters everywhere from kara to hyjal, so WTF?
Maybe its just that he has no idea about druids and how they work?
Yeah, give us more spell haste, maybe we will start doing better… right…
I’m probably the only druid that thinks the nerf is fine. LB is too good, or the other spells too bad.
As for healing meters, I’ve had little trouble topping them. I do think that when 3xLB isn’t worth it anymore, that we have no spot in a raid, however the nerf is too small for that. For me (part time resto/feral/boomkin) it’s a 3% overall nerf.
Is this that big of a surprise? LB is pretty damn powerful you have to admit. My guildies always joke to nerf drood. For druids who will never raid more than The Eye, restos are still pretty powerful and given their arsenal there are few challenges for us until very very end game. I am JUST getting used to swiftmend for to help out with spike damage after spending all of pre-kara never touching it. Outside of raiding I usually top the charts with BG healing, help gimped PUGS in blues go through Heroics and do great soloing. What’s not to love?
@Luke: You bring up some really excellent points with regard to the usefulness of a HoT vs. a direct heal. However, couldn’t a pre-cast Prayer of Mending or remaining charge from a Chain Heal fulfill essentially the same purpose? Many people play with addons that notify them just before a silencing effect, and while I agree that Druid HoTs are ainly the best means of countering damage during a Silence, it feels very much like a support role rather than a necessary one. And a support role that unfortunately is being nerfed.
I can almost understand Tharfor saying that “that’s just the way Druids are” because, as you mention, all of our wasted overhealing isn’t factored into meters. But with the exception of rolling stacks on tanks (whose increased efficiency makes this “overhealing” negligible and the spike mitigation makes it worth it), our overhealing is still wasted. Blizzard gave us all these tools that cause us to heal so much slower than other healers — and even added abilities to other healers that allow them to overheal our HoTs without even thinking! As an example, I watched my healing on Morogrim last night. Once it was again safe to help raid heal after the Earthquake effect, I would throw 3 Lifeblooms on raidmates. In the same amount of time, I’d watch yellow Chain Heals flash around the raid and heal my same targets, effectively making that effort a waste. I’m beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to target those raidmates at medium to full health just to avoid the healing from Chain Heal/Prayer of Mending.
And if our role is truly to be tank damage mitigation (i.e., we are not intended to be suited to the role of raid healing), what does it say that the core ability linked to this is being reduced in effectiveness? I’ve read people say “there’s a problem when LB is 80%+ of your healing” but I don’t think they’ve ever looked at SHAMAN healing. It’s somehow not a problem that Chain Heal’s incredibleness makes it comprise 80-90% of their healing? Reducing our coefficient while simultaneously making spell haste “beneficial” to us does nothing to aid us in terms of tank healing (I’ve never had the need to roll on 4 people at once, let alone 5, unless you count one wacky Fury Warrior who likes to “tank” the first 6 seconds of every fight). The only potentially saving grace of the whole debacle is that increased mana regeneration will make Regrowth a more viable choice. But if that is the intention, are we really being nerfed so that we will be forced to add Regrowth — a heal oft-disparaged for its high mana cost and weak heal over time — to our tank healing rotation?
His ‘topping the meters’ part was likely a reference to the fact that his HoTs get overhealed by the other healers.. which is part the downside to being a restoration druid. I see nothing to get your knickers in a knot over there.
Regrowth will be the next spell to get nerfed. Hopefully it won’t happen before the next expansion and Druids don’t go around posting things like this all over the place.
2/27 23:42:22.597 SPELL_CAST_START,Yakub,Regrowth
2/27 23:42:23.255 SPELL_PERIODIC_HEAL,Yakub,Mindrot,Regrowth,559
2/27 23:42:24.900 SPELL_HEAL,Yakub,Vulturex,Regrowth,4669,crit
oops
Looks like they won’t change the nerf…… /insert sad face….
I used to be within the top three of the healing meters in SSC and since TK i’ve been slipping to shamans slowly but surely
I have over 2000 plus heal and tons of mana and mana regen but can’t make it over 4th position on healing meters with all our shammys now in full T6, and all have the staff of argus, 2 other droods in my guild also have full T6 and still finish either 3rd or below me.
I am lucky in knowing that our guild understands how to read meters, it is merely a tool to see if someone of similar stats and class is way below his other team mates, the percentage is really what you should look at, lets say u have a druid at 13% of healing and another one with similar gear at 6% then you know the person at 6% is doing something wrong or just slacking off /cruising.
In general, if your healing target doesnt die and ur within 2-3% of of the top 5 healers, then you did your job well.
We only want to be number one because of personal competition… which is healthy in a guild to help progression…
Is there a good way to quote in Blogger, does anyone know?
“@Luke: You bring up some really excellent points with regard to the usefulness of a HoT vs. a direct heal. However, couldn’t a pre-cast Prayer of Mending or remaining charge from a Chain Heal fulfill essentially the same purpose? Many people play with addons that notify them just before a silencing effect, and while I agree that Druid HoTs are ainly the best means of countering damage during a Silence, it feels very much like a support role rather than a necessary one. And a support role that unfortunately is being nerfed.”
I can cast Prayer of Mending once every 10 seconds. It’s worthwhile; it heals for a thousand or two, puts threat on the tank (yay!), and smooths stuff out. I also have Renew, which on my holy priest (which is my main) ticks for 900 or so. Conversely, you guys can put three HoTs (and one stacked to three!) on the tank if you need to; that’s always the best way to smooth spike damage, and druids do more of it than anyone else. It’s a very necessary role, contributes to the desirability of restoration druids in raids, and doesn’t show up well on healing meters. That’s my primary point. Yes, that’s being nerfed by 8%. That’s not nearly enough to make a restoration druid no longer desirable in those situations, and basically every zone has a major damage spike fight.
Also, it’s not just to counter silences, although that was my initial example. Any fight with large damage spikes where the healers may end up being stuck in reaction mode and may not be able to keep up is where restoration druids shine. Some of those are announced by BigWigs or Deadly Boss Mods (I’m the one in my raid group responsible for calling them in Vent), but many are not predictable.
“And if our role is truly to be tank damage mitigation (i.e., we are not intended to be suited to the role of raid healing), what does it say that the core ability linked to this is being reduced in effectiveness?”
My response was very limited in scope; I was only crying foul regarding your statement about druids and healing meters. I wasn’t attempting to make a statement regarding the nerf in general. I’m a healer (and a heal lead) myself; any nerf to any heal class is a nerf to the team as a whole.
I don’t really know the logic behind why Blizzard does what they do. I’ve seen them both buff and nerf various classes. I don’t play a tree so I don’t have a as good of an understanding of what an 8% nerf to Lifeblooom means as you do; it sounds like it reduces your overall healing by about 7%. I’m not saying that’s a good thing; rather, I’m trying to force and honest, overall evaluation regarding the value that various classes bring to raids that may or may not show up on the heal meter…and I guess I just don’t think that an 8% nerf to Lifebloom destroys druid viability.
As an aside, when I play a heal lead role (which is most of the time), I regularly assign druids to raid healing, which I think they excel at also. I generally will give that job to a shaman, then a druid, then a priest, then a paladin, but it varies by who I have and how many of each, what other needs are, etc. etc.–point being, as a class, with all other things equal, I view druids as the second-best class for general raid healing.
“it is merely a tool to see if someone of similar stats and class is way below his other team mates, the percentage is really what you should look at, lets say u have a druid at 13% of healing and another one with similar gear at 6% then you know the person at 6% is doing something wrong or just slacking off /cruising.”
@Falina: Or they were assigned different jobs. Only foolish guilds put all of their healers on free for all. If a fight requires three tanks, and healer A is on one, and healer B is on the other, and they take different amounts of damage (or in different ways), then the heal meter readings could be very different.
Similarly, tank healing and raid healing will often yield different spots on the healing meter by their nature. Which is which will vary by instance/bosses/etc.
@ Luke: I agree, like I said, if your healing assignment lived, you did a good job, the advantage of the druid is that we can and should drop hots on other targets then our assigned one when his state permits it. Meters also vary a lot depending on the amount of damage your target will take, for example the warlock tank during kael’thas or the pally tank for murlocs on morogrim, i used to heal him with another priest and was always topping the chart beacause i ”hotted” the MT between the waves. Off healing goes a long way for progression if you know how to manage it and make sure your main assignment doesnt die.
Putting hots on squishie players once in a while should be part of any drood assignment in my opinion.
@Luke:
I don’t know if I’d call HoTs spike damage management. They are our heals. Those heals are all we really do in a raid as far as healing main tanks. They are not just one aspect of our healing, like you treat Prayer of Mending and Renew, it’s our main core thing. And yet, that healing only happens in the gaps between the tank getting hit and when tank gets back to full health. That… well, it sounds like any other heal, really, but it does not sound like spike management to me. Especially not when those HoTs are doing their most when the tank is consistently less than full on health. If anything is spike management, it’s direct heals, that you can start casting before the tank is actually missing health, and then let land if he actually does get hit that hard or potentially cancel the cast and start again if he isn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I get the idea that, if no one is pre-casting, HoTs will get ticks in while healers are reacting to the damage, but only lifebloom ticks more than once every three seconds. So it might be that only lifebloom ticks (and then only once or twice) before those greater heals and holy lights and Healing Waves come flying in. If a tank at full health takes so much damage that one or two ticks of lifebloom was the only thing holding him to the mortal coil, then I think that’s not a great situation for the raid to be in.
As for raid healing, well, some guilds like to put trees into that role, and it’s not like they do bad, but chain heal does that so much better that I can’t see much reason for a tree there, aside from certain encounters or a lack of resto shamans. Single stack lifebloom is (imo) the best option a tree has for consistantly patching up random raid members, and yet it does a bit over half its healing only after seven seconds have past from when it was cast. That can be a long time to wait when you’re hurting. Meanwhile, a shaman can spend just one more second after the global cooldown to heal three different people, or a paly can cast flash of light on someone to do direct healing in the same amount of time a druid’s lifebloom can be cast and have one tick occur.
And because those HoTs are taking time to work, another healer who’s watching the raid might look at the health deficits and heal someone who already has a lifebloom, essentially wasting the druid’s mana and global cooldown. Sure, two healers can both land a direct heal on someone around the same time, thus overhealing that target, but the window for that happening is significantly smaller.
You mention that you’re trying to force an honest evaluation of what different healers bring to raids, and I full-hearted encourage that, because I believe that as you collect more information about different healers and classes, you’ll see how relatively little trees add to utility and buffs. That’s why an 8% lifebloom nerf will hurt us so much; because healing itself is really all trees have going for us.
@Zenn:
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’ve always seen healers broken into 2 components:
Utility – GotW then nil. So bring 1 resto. And honestly, the difference between imp mark and regular is negligible.
Healing – This can be broken into two categories: quantity & quality. Quantity is pretty self-explanatory. Quality has to do with timing. The nature of our heals is such that with the exception stun/silence mechanics, we have the worst timing among all healers (as you noted, a 1k LB tick before the flash of light’s start landing is negligible, and even that assumes no pre-casting from other classes; we also have more trouble with aggro wipes than any other healing class). If we lack in utility, and we lack in heal quality (aka timing), then we need make up for it with quantity. Good resto druids are able to do that, to an extent (and largely varying by encounter design) presently. An 8% nerf to that ability is very significant. Besides which, it confirms to me the blue post made absolutely no sense.
I’m worried about how this will affect us in heroics. I’m not the best geared druid out there, about 1750 healing, this really is going to hurt me.
Rejoice!
PTR Patch Notes
“Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the [b]final bloom effect[/b] has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control.”
I have also heard people testify that this has been reverted, the tick nerf at least.
Anahka
“I just got off the PTR and i can confirm that the new LB notes actually _replace_ the old ones. My live and PTR LB ticks are same again and the final bloom has been reduced slightly. 1678 on live vs 1636 on the PTR in treeform with 518 spirit and 2027 +healing.”
Commence dancing in the street.
Good news indeed