• Nature’s Splendor now increases the duration of Lifebloom by 2 seconds. (Down from 3)
• Glyph of Regrowth - Increases the healing of your Regrowth spell by 20% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target. (Old - Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.)

The nerf to the [Glyph of Regrowth] was predicted by many, but it still hurts to see one fewer thing we have to look forward to. I still believe that Regrowth will remain superior to Nourish due to its synergy with some great talents, but maybe we’ll see more nerfs to Regrowth to force us into using it. (I hope to have some time to revisit a comparison of direct heals in the next month or so.)

A couple of days ago Class Developer Ghostcrawler responded to the concerns about the current state of Restoration. I’m going to break down what was said to better address each point.

We nerfed Lifebloom because it was just too good. It just healed for incredible amounts at good mana efficiency that other healers would have had trouble matching. It’s much more fun to buff spells than to nerf them, so we try not to let any of them get out of control. But sometimes it happens.

As discussed in my post Ghostcrawler: Healers not to be Interchangeable, I think Blizzard is trying to reduce the tedium of maintaining Lifebloom stacks. Prior to build 9014, it was healing for approximately the same amount over time (HPM), but with weaker ticks due to the increased duration from Nature’s Splendor. This recent change to Nature’s Splendor so that it only adds two seconds to the duration of Lifebloom represents a further decrease in HPM with no change to its HPS. It may be worth noting that you can preserve the pre-9014 HPM value by slotting a [Glyph of Lifebloom].

On a similar note, MeanderingMind commented on the Healers not to be Interchangeable thread with the following:

Nerfing Lifebloom makes sense, it was far too powerful. The problem is that our other HoTs haven’t been buffed to make up the difference. The only increase we’ve seen for the Rejuvenation and Regrowth HoT effects is a talent in Balance. As a result, we’re forced to make up the difference with direct heals. This is the single largest contributor to the general feeling that we’re being shifted away from what we felt was our style and niche.

I still feel that the heavy-handed nerf to Lifebloom is unnecessarily punitive. There should be a nice benefit to maintaining a stack of Lifebloom for long periods of time when the consequences of allowing your stack to bloom are so high (and even higher with the 40% increase in mana cost).

Nourish and Wild Growth are both situational. We actually tried hard not to hand out new healing spells that needed to be put into a normal rotation. Nourish is good to use when healing a tank, either in a 5-man or a raid. It seemed less effective than Regrowth probably because the Regrowth glyph was too generous. Sometimes you can’t wait for that Regrowth tick.

Wild Growth isn’t intended to make you an awesome group healer. Shamans and Priests are awesome group healers, but can’t hot the way a druid can. What Wild Growth is intended to do is let you heal a group when you are the only healer, or heal a group in fights (usually boss fights) where you don’t have an opportunity to distribute HoTs to everyone. Without going into a lot of detail on new bosses in case you’d spoiler averse, there are bosses in Naxx and then the Malygos raid itself where you periodically can’t get a bunch of heals up and yet the raid is still taking damage. Wild Growth is really helpful in those situations.

I’m disheartened that Blizzard finds it acceptable for our 51-point talent and 80th level spell to be “situational.” I do not want something that’s situational at the pinnacle of my talent tree. I want something unique, fun, and useful. MeanderingMind explains it thus:

Druids don’t mind having situational heals. […] The problem with Nourish and Wild Growth is that “situational” doesn’t begin to describe them. Even without the Regrowth Glyph, Nourish is inferior to Regrowth. It heals for less on average, has a roughly equivalent cost after talents (even with HoTs already on the target), doesn’t confer any additional benefits (a Swiftmendable HoT, for example) and runs into GCD issues if you’ve [Nature’s Grace procs]. The only niche it has left to heal are those situations where the heal absolutely must be .5 seconds faster than Regrowth, which is what NS or Swiftmend are for.

Wild Growth’s niche is obvious, it just fails to fill that niche in any meaningful way. Even in a Heroic, its targeting is the cause of consternation and frustration while its cost and healing barely warrant its use. In raids it’s practically a null factor. Blizzard is assuming you have at least one of each healing class in your raids, which means that you can count on the Priests and Shaman to have AoE heals covered. Wild Growth’s niche is effectively non-existent. It is the single most worthless top-tier talent since Lacerate crowned the Hunter’s Survival Tree.

By and large, DPSers aren’t getting “situational” abilities, and I really feel like there’s a lot of anti-healer discrimination going on at Blizzard right now. As Beta Tester Linden of Murmur (US) puts it, “Everyone’s HP has increased. Boss damage has increased. Other players’ DPS has increased. And our heals have… decreased? Barely increased? […] People like to see big numbers, be they healing numbers or DPS numbers. It’s really disappointing to go 10 levels and two ranks of a spell and end up maybe where you were when you started.” Seriously, who wants to play in an expansion where they feel no more capable? (I have to admit, however, that Revive has greatly improved my 5-man instance experience.)

We think mana efficiency for Resto druids isn’t too bad at the moment. You’ll struggle in situations where you have to throw out a ton of heals quickly (as you should) but recharge when you can afford to take a break. Having someone with Replenishment greatly helps. Remember, we do want you to run out of mana. If we didn’t want mana management to be part of the game, we’d just cut the cost of all your healing spells and call it a day.

What we don’t want is A) your healing to be worse than other healing classes because you run out of mana too fast, or B) the fights to dish out more damage than you could ever have enough mana to heal. If either of those starts to feel like a problem, please speak up. But just running out of mana is going to happen. We aren’t trying to prevent that.

Blizzard fundamentally changed mana regeneration midstream in TBC (Patch 2.4). At the time, I assumed they were intentionally making encounters less dependent upon healer mana and instead more dependent on healer skill and DPS throughput. Just copying my character from live to the beta servers, I noticed a considerable drop in my mana regeneration (down from 754/259 in live to 606/217 in beta). Failing because your healers have run out of mana is a LOT less fun than failing because they aren’t capable healers or because your DPS wasn’t high enough (at least for healers). There are some classes for whom this is not an issue: obviously Ferals, Warriors, Death Knights, and Rogues have essentially limitless energy stores (assuming no Rage starvation). Warlocks can chew on their own arms for mana. That leaves about half the classes (Druids, Priests, Shamans, Mages, Paladins, and Hunters) taken out of the fight if they run out of mana. It’s a lot less obvious when a DPSer runs out of mana or has to switch to a higher DPM/lower DPS rotation, but if a healer can’t heal, things tend to go south quickly. Having encounters balanced around limited healer mana is going to greatly reduce the fun of raiding as a healer.

Ghostcrawler goes on to say that we shouldn’t expect to run into mana regeneration issues in 5-mans to the point that they aren’t doable without one or more Replenishment effects (one of the mana restores provided by Shadow Priests, Retribution Paladins, and Survival Hunters):

The design is you should not need Replenishment to heal a 5-player, even a heroic.

I’d like to hear from any other Resto druids who are going OOM when healing small groups. HoTs, single-target heals like Healing Touch and Nourish, and the occasional group heal should be all you need, even in green gear for normal instances or blues for heroics.

Nearly every mana management benefit given to Restoration Druids in Wrath has been nerfed in one way or another. Let’s review:

• Wild Growth: mana cost increased, amount healed decreased.
• Lifebloom: mana cost increased, amount healed decreased.
• Replenish: amount of mana restored cut in half
• Gift of the Earthmother: mana restore for Nourish and Healing Touch removed
• Improved Tree of Life: mana reduction replaced with Spirit-based bonus to spell power
• Nature’s Splendor: duration increase to Lifebloom reduced (requires recasting sooner)
• Spirit/Intellect-based mana regeneration formula nerfed

On the other hand, we’ve seen the modification of Omen of Clarity so that it procs on healing spells, the addition of [Glyph of Innervate], and increased accessibility of Moonglow. One would think they would be expecting complaints of mana problems instead of pretending they don’t know what we could possibly be talking about.

Image credit to Eggo (thanks!)

Ghostcrawler goes on to give some more Resto niche clarification:

HoTs are your niche. Nothing has changed. We just want to expand your portfolio a bit, because HoTs won’t work in every situation. You’re about HoTs – not just throwing them out, but using them to set up "combos" like Nourish, Replenish and Swiftmend.

If you are really struggling to heal 25-player raids, or really getting clobbered by other healing specs, let us know. That is not what we have been seeing and hearing.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love the HoTs-based style of healing, and I really enjoy things that set up “combos” where one or more spells and talents can work in synergy with one another. I’ve been having a torrid affair with Swiftmend since it replaced Innervate as our 31-point talent. Unfortunately, it seems like HoTs-based healing – which revolves around maintaining one or more Lifebloom rotations – is getting clobbered in the expansion. Giving us direct heals to make up for this reduction to our primary style of healing does nothing to make me feel like I’m purchasing an “expansion.” It makes me feel like I’m paying money for the privilege of rerolling (figuratively for me, although several blog authors have expressed that they’re considering doing so literally).

Crabcakes, anyone?

Additional Reading

• Give Resto Some Love, Just a Little with feedback from Ghostcrawler
• Restoration Feedback: New Nerf, No Buffs with feedback from Sydera of World of Matticus
• Resto Talents that Don’t Hold Up from beta tester Lisana

Related Posts

• Wild Growth … Grows a Pair *
• Blue: Nourish may be Affected by Wild Growth
• Ghostcrawler: Healers not to be Interchangeable

I am ecstatic to share the following submissions to the “Shift Happens” Tree-Shirts contest! As you may remember, the winner will receive a free copy of a shirt featuring his or her design. ALL contest submitters have my heart-felt appreciation. I know how much work went into these gorgeous creations, and I am so pleased to be able to share them (click on the thumbnails to enlarge the images).

How to Vote for Your Favorite

You can vote for your favorite among the four entries by visiting the main page and using the poll included in the sidebar. Voting will remain available until the end of the week!

And here they are, in alphabetical order:

Eggo’s “Wreath of Forms” Our Tree of Life Form looks quite broccoli-esque in this green silhouette, reigning over a beautiful wreath of multi-hued leaves and surrounded by both cat and bear paws. Silhouettes of our other forms, including Moonkin and Travel Forms appear on either side of the design, and pretty swirls give it a lovely symmetry! Thank you, Eggo!

Leigh Ann’s “A Happy Death” At left is the entry submitted by Leigh Ann, featuring a Tree of Life who is surprisingly happy to have been chopped in half. Maybe she’s looking on the bright side of all the recent nerfs! Featuring a stylized version of our Tree Form with autumnal, geometric leaves, Leigh Ann’s submission is both colorful and cheerful! Now if only we could persuade Blizzard to let us complete our death animations Tree of Life Form instead of being automatically shifted into Night Elf form! Thanks, Leigh Ann!

Rhoelyn’s “Comic ‘Strip’” Below is the entry submitted by Rhoelyn, author of Points of Convergence. It features a most unfortunate Male Night Elf who, while cheerfully going about the business of appreciating Nature, discovers he’s developed an allergy to purple flowers! The results are … well … revealing! And may I say, RAWR! Azeroth definitely needs more male Night Elves! Much appreciated, Rhoelyn.

Tesh’s “Druid Amalgam” This entry comes from Tesh, author of the blog Tish Tosh Tesh. It features a character illustration that’s an amalgam of almost all of the Druid’s shapeshift forms. With two wings from both Epic Flight Forms, arms from Dire Bear and Night Elf Cat Form, a head from both Night Elf and Tauren Moonkin Forms, a belly and tail from Travel Form, and legs that clearly “stem” (wonka wonka) from both races’ Tree of Life Form, this piece nicely (and beautifully) sums up the many roles that a Druid can perform. Thank you, Tesh!

Additional Submissions

In addition to the three entries above, there were two submissions that I received but couldn’t include. I’m sharing them both here, though, because I really appreciate the work that went into them! Thank you!

Hiu’s “Shifting Man”	Riverwish’s “Squished Gnome”
Reader Hiu submitted the above image featuring a Resto-inspired figure changing shape and with intricate vines on both sides. Unfortunately, the figure that comprises the center piece of the design wasn’t sampled in such a way that it would print, and I worry that the vines are too intricate for Spreadshirt’s print techniques. Thank you, Hiu!	Riverwish of Skullcrusher (EU) submitted the above image which features an unlucky, green-haired gnome being crushed by the very bear bottom intended to protect her! I had to decline this entry because I’m trying to keep Tree-Shirts somewhat Restoration inspired. After all I wouldn’t want to step on BBB’s paws! Thank you, Riverwish!

Related Posts

• Community Watch
• "Shift Happens" Contest and Community Spotlight
• Runy and Phae Get Their Nethers in a Twist

Edit: Apparently this bug was corrected last night. Poopy!

Beta testers are reporting a bug with Rank 5 of Typhoon whereby it costs no mana to cast and isn’t activating the global cooldown. This means that it can be spammed indefinitely (say, by binding it to your mouse wheel) and chain cast to achieve up to 100K DPS. You can imagine what kind of havoc this is wreaking on the PvP premade server (Rank 5 only becomes available at level 80). Druids are reportedly soloing raid bosses, heroic instances, and more!

I believe there is a bug with rank 5. The others seem to work correctly.

Here’s a video from Kahakai of Northrend (US), depicting the bugged behavior:

Note that there is no animation currently associated with the spell. As funny as the DPS is by itself, listening to the insane Omen of Clarity procs is pretty amusing, as well.

From Beta Tester Serawyn of Lich King (US):

DK: “HAW HAW! Stupid little Boomkin thinks he can kill me!”
Boomkin: *snufflehoot* “Stop making fun of me guys! I could get PvP tactics any day now!”
Pally: “Hahahahaha! Stupid Boomkin…”
*Boomkin clenches fists* “Shut UP!” *fwooshfwooshfwfwfwfwoooooosh*
Boomkin: “I killed them… I killed all of them… And I’m not dead! And there aren’t even any Warlocks or Rogues on my team!” *stares at hands and grins*

Moonkin should enjoy their day in the sun (moon?) as I’m sure this bug will be corrected soon. If you happen to be playing a level 80 Moonkin on one of the beta servers, be sure to kill some DKs! I’m sure they’ll get us back later.

Related Posts

• Omen of Clarity
• Indoor Roots Possible in WotLK
• Downranking Rebirth to Save Money

Blizzard Developer Ghostcrawler responded at length to the well-articulated concerns of Beta Tester Talruum of Lich King (US). Talruum’s generally PvP-oriented points included:

1. Druids currently struggle with group-wide damage because we don’t have an accessible group heal (one without a long cooldown) and are limited by our global cooldowns when casting HoTs. Flourish solved that problem but has since been nerfed into uselessness.
2. In PvP, Druids have difficulty healing themselves and party members through burst damage. This is one of the reasons that Druids are so reliant upon the ability to kite (read: to avoid damage) since it removes them from insta-gib range and gives their heals over time … time to be effective.
3. Nourish was clearly intended as the Druid’s answer to Flash Heal, a spell designed to be high HPS, low HPM. Unfortunately, it is usurped quite handily by the superior Regrowth partly because of the design of Nourish and partly because of the amazing [Glyph of Regrowth].

Whether you agree with the points above (given their obvious PvP-slant, I’m sure there will be a number of detractors), Talruum’s post and subsequent player discussion sparked a number of lengthy responses from Blizzard Developer Ghostcrawler, the first of which was:

Would Regrowth >> Nourish without the Regrowth glyph?

The response was generally “yes,” due to the fact that Regrowth benefits from 50% additional crit 5/5 from Improved Regrowth (leading to easily acquirable Nature’s Grace and Living Seed procs) as well as setting the target up for a Swiftmend if necessary. It also benefits from the mana cost reductions of Moonglow and Tree of Life while Nourish does not.

Fearful of an impending nerf to what is regarded by many as “our last good heal,” Beta tester Tauraran of Murmur argues that Regrowth shouldn’t be nerfed in order to improve Nourish, because Nourish simply isn’t “worth saving”:

Please do not feel like you’re required to nerf every spell we have in order to make Nourish work. As it stands, simply removing the glyph really wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to nerf Improved Regrowth and/or Nature’s Grace to ultimately make Regrowth less effective and desirable (in addition to getting rid of a very cool glyph). Then, you’d have to remove the HT glyph, or nerf Empowered Touch, or both, because glyphed HT would still be out performing Nourish.

Nourish is not currently doing something that Resto druids can’t do. It seems like a nice heal for the offensive specs, but we just don’t need it. In the end, it’s just a 1.5 second cast heal. It doesn’t do anything interesting, aside from interact with HoTs in the most bland way possible. It could reset HoT durations, or cause HoTs to jump to nearby targets, or have some sort of RNG chance to do something cool (resto druids are somewhat lacking in the random RNG department >.>), or ANYTHING that Flash of Light cannot currently accomplish… and then it might be worth fighting for.

Beta Tester Nerothyn (US) goes onto to propose an interesting change to the current dynamic of Nourish whereby casting it would actually increase the duration of Regrowth and Rejuvenation by 3 seconds or the duration of Lifebloom by 1 second. I’m personally a little reticent about anything that arbitrarily messes with the duration of my Lifebloom spell since it could end up being confusing when maintaining a rotation (ex. having two Lifeblooms set to expire simultaneously because you cast Nourish), I do like the idea of it boosting the duration of our non-stacking, non-cyclical HoTs. As Nerothyn says, “Even the name makes sense since it’s ‘Nourishing’ your current HoTs to help them live longer.”

In response to fear that Regrowth will be nerfed to make Nourish a more attractive spell, Ghostcrawler goes on to say:

We don’t want to hurt Regrowth, because it is nice to finally see it being used a lot. My fear is that the glyph is making it a lot better than Nourish.

Ideally, and I don’t know if we can get them all to this stage, glyphs should be an option that changes the way you play your character, not just free talent points. In some cases, they are going to feel like buffs. It would be cool, for example, if the Regrowth glyphs let some Resto druids focus more on Regrowth while others used different spells. The Regrowth glyph is just so good, on top of the Regrowth talent, that it may be a non-decision to use which also ends up making Nourish useless.

Ideally you should want to use Regrowth and Nourish on some occasions. Flourish, Rejuv, Swiftmend and Lifebloom already have pretty decent niches. If glyphing for Regrowth makes you lean towards that spell, awesome. I just think the case at the moment is every druid will have that glyph and use Regrowth as a generic heal-all spell.

We’re not going to touch the Regrowth talent or other synergistic talents, at least not to solve this problem.

It’s safe to assume that we should anticipate the removal or adjustment of the currently highly desired [Glyph of Regrowth]. This is depressing given all of the nerfs we’ve been hit with lately. One can only hope improvements will be made in other areas to reduce the sting.

Nerothyn goes on to make the excellent point that Regrowth and Nourish already fulfill so similar a role (a fast-casting, high HP heal) that players will inevitably choose whichever is better and abandon the other. This goes back to his original call for fundamentally changing or replacing the spell we get at level 80: “Bottom-line is that Nourish needs to be changed. And not made into a better direct heal. It needs to be tweaked to make it a compliment to Regrowth instead of a replacement for it.”

The conversation is then more or less taken in a different direction by Beta Tester Arenis of Lich King (US) who asks, “Are healers being designed to be as interchangeable as tanks? Is it not going to matter what healer you bring any more than it matters which tank?” Surprisingly, this prompts the following response from Ghostcrawler:

No, that isn’t the goal. The reason is largely because encounters are designed such that you already want to take more healers on a raid than you have available specs. What I mean is that almost every 25 player will have Holy paladins, Holy priests, Resto shamans and Resto druids. And maybe a Disc priest too. Even a 10 man will have 2-3 healers, and most likely they will be different classes. That’s a different situation than the tank is in. There are very many raid encounters that require one tank while almost none that require one healer. By and large, I think we’ve done a decent job in giving healers niches, but that strategy hasn’t worked for tanks (and won’t really work for dps either).

Now, where we have needed to give healers more tools is in the 5-player case, and possibly PvP. The same tools are useful in unusual encounters, say a Loatheb where you can’t heal often, or a Void Reaver, where the paladin has to run around. A Holy paladin who is great at flashing heals on a MT can’t do that in heroic Nexus and expect to keep everyone alive. A druid can’t just keep rolling Lifeblooms up and keep everyone alive. Wild Growth is great in those situations. It’s probably not going to compete with Chain Heal, but it doesn’t really have to. It just gives you another tool in your box.

The part about it not being necessary to make all healers universally interchangeable more or less makes sense. The part about Wild Growth being “another tool in my box” makes me want to spit acorns, though (PTUI)! Honestly, if my 51-point talent is going to be arbitrarily handicapped to avoid encroaching on another class’s niche (like AoE healing for Shamans and Priests), I’d prefer something that’s a superlative of what I am supposed to be good at instead. Something like a new heal over time, maybe with an interesting dynamic. Something fun and exciting, not something lame and watered down. As it is, Groves of Druids are going to be shying away from dipping too deeply into Restoration, picking up more talents from Balance because what awaits us at the bottom of our primary tree is so lackluster.

Beta Tester Nessis of Lich King (US) challenges Ghostcrawler’s assertion that Druids (along with other healers) should continue to fulfill a distinct niche: “Tell us what those niches are? Efficient heals that take time to heal that will be overwritten? Obviously that’s not the case anymore.”

I’m struggling with this myself. At the start of Wrath, I believed that Druids would become more or less the premier tank healers, a role comprised of the following:

• Maintaining Lifebloom rotations on 1-3 individuals (since nerfed to be both less effective and less efficient) but less tedious than before thanks to a 1.0 GCD from the original Gift of the Earthmother
• Feeding the tank “threat-building” fuel in the form of Rage, Mana, or Runic Power restored from Replenish, giving us a good reason to keep a Rejuvenation on the tank, a prospect made less tedious by the addition of the [Glyph of Swiftmend].
• Nourish: a direct heal with significant efficiency bonuses when cast on someone with one or more heals over time (i.e., tanks of all flavors). If you remember, the original incarnation of Gift of the Earthmother also included the effect, “causes your Healing Touch and Nourish spells to refund 5% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target” making this spell an attractive efficiency choice.
• Flourish: a powerful AoE heal over time with a 15-yard radius that would have been ideal for casting on a tank and allowing the “overflow” to heal beleaguered melee.

As of build 8932, Lifebloom has lower throughput, significantly decreasing the HPS buffer it provides. The restoration effect of Replenish has been cut in half. Nourish is no longer affected by Gift of the Earthmother, ostensibly in an effort to make Restoration Druids run out of mana more easily. And Flourish has been gutted and transformed into Devs-Gone-Wild – I mean – Wild Growth, a spell widely regarded as not worth the database column used to store its spellpower coefficient. (Luckily, Wild Growth is now affected by the GCD-reduction from Gift of the Earthmother so we can “get the HoT on more people faster” – LOLOLOLOLOLOL!! I’m not bitter.)

So what’s left? A powerful Regrowth spell benefitting from great synergies among several talents and a Glyph we’re now lead to believe will be nerfed. And a new Restoration ability, Nourish, we don’t even gain access to until level 80 only to discover it’s no better than the spell we acquired at level 12.

Commentary on the Great Lifebloom Nerf (of Build 8962)

No, not the other one we saw earlier in beta. And not the one earlier this year that was subsequently repealed because they recognized that it would spell the end of the raiding Restoration Druid in TBC. The one last week that was even worse. Yeah, that one.

I’ve more or less come to terms with what I believe to be the reasoning behind the Lifebloom nerf. As painful and unfair as it feels, I believe that the decision to reduce its effective healing while simultaneously increasing its mana cost came as a result of the addition of Nature’s Splendor, an easily accessible Balance talent that increases Lifebloom duration by 3 seconds. I believe this talent and the Lifebloom nerf were intended to do several things:

• Make it feel less tedious to maintain rolling Lifebloom on 1-3 tanks while giving Druids increased flexibility to cast spells other than Lifebloom and simultaneously making the spell too expensive to set up rotations of 4 or more people (which many Druids regard as an obnoxiously boring playstyle). By extending its duration and lowering the GCD while simultaneously reducing the amount it ticks for, they’re ensuring it doesn’t become too efficient (unfortunately resulting in an HPS decrease).
• Increasing the duration of Lifebloom would make it easier for the “HoT and hide” style of Arena healing easier and more effective since the Druid could potentially duck out of line of sight for longer stretches of time while her HoTs continued to heal her partner. By reducing the HPS throughput of the spell, a Druid can’t rely as much on “set it and forget it” healing.
• Increasing the duration also makes the spell an (even) less attractive choice for raid healing as the final bloom of the spell only occurs ten seconds after casting the spell, at which point your target is likely already healed to full by one or more of the non-targeted heals (Prayer of Mending, Chain Heal, or Circle of Healing). I think Blizzard wanted to encourage the use of other spells – such as Regrowth or Nourish – for this purpose.
• Increasing the mana cost of Lifebloom has ensured that, while we may not have to cast it as often, we’re still paying the same amount of mana over time to maintain our stacks (42% increase in duration, 40% increase in cost).

An extremely efficient spell that heals for next to nothing has little value (and an extremely inefficient spell that heals for next to nothing – i.e., Wild Growth – has even less).

If things remain as they are now, come Wrath of the Lich King, I will feel like I’ve taken one step forward (hooray Revive and raid-wide Gift of the Wild!) and two steps back with a Lifebloom that costs more and heals for far less than it did before I installed the “expansion.” Instead of feeling like I have something to look forward to – with the notable exceptions of a fabulous new hairdo, some nice healing-oriented additions to my non-healing tree, and a more heavily armored me – I feel like we’ve been told to hop on the treadmill and try to get back to the level of effectiveness we saw in TBC. But hey, at least we’re not snared anymore.

Further Reading

• Resto feedback (long, blue please read) with commentary from Ghostcrawler
• R.I.P Flourish - 17/09/2008 with commentary from Koraa

Related Posts

• Blue: Nourish may be Affected by Wild Growth
• 9014 Nerfs and Ghostcrawler Responds to Resto Concerns
• Wild Growth … Grows a Pair *

Today, I’d like to share a couple of neat macros sent in by a couple of readers. These have actually been sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks due to slackerliness, but they’re no less awesome for it!

Vreenash’s Wipe Recovery Macro

This macro was submitted by Vreenash of Dragonblight (US) and can aid in the use of Rebirth as a method of wipe recovery (as opposed to wipe prevention) by notifying the lucky recipient of your combat rez that they should wait until it’s safe to accept the rez:

#showtooltip Rebirth
/stopmacro [nohelp,nodead]
/p =/\= %t has been given wipe protection =/\=
/script SendChatMessage("!!!DO NOT ACCEPT REZ YET!!! You have been give Battle Rez for party wipe recovery", "WHISPER", nil, UnitName("target"))
/cast Rebirth

It may be worth noting that there was a time that I was unable to use Rebirth on a group mate without the dialog poofing if everyone in the party died. Vreenash confirms, however, that she’s successfully employed this macro as a form of wipe recovery, so give it a try!

Tildir’s Cower Macro

Tildir of Moonglade (US) points out that, with Wrath’s change to Furor, a Restoration Druid with 1 point in the ability will instantly gain 20 Energy when shifting into Cat Form. Conveniently, 20 Energy is all that is required by the Cat Form ability, Cower:

This ability permanently reduces your threat by 3474 at Rank 6. The only downside is that it requires you to be within melee range of your target. Nonetheless, it could be useful if used when a mob rockets toward you, especially if the new and improved Shadowmeld is on cooldown.

#showtooltip Cower
/cancelform [stance:5]
/cast [nostance] Cat Form
/castsequence Cower, Tree of Life

The above macro will pull you out of Tree of Life and switch you into Cat Form if you’re in caster form the first time it’s pressed. The second press will activate Cower, and the third will switch back into Tree of Life.

Thank you to both Vreenash and Tildir! I’m a huge fan of macros like the ones listed above!

Related Posts

• Downranking Rebirth to Save Money
• Macros for Reagent-Driven Spells
• /cancelform to Work like /dismount in Patch 2.3