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9014 Nerfs and Ghostcrawler Responds to Resto Concerns
Published on September 30, 2008 by Phaelia 
Blue, Spells and Talents 
55 Comments
- 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.
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| 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
Great post. I obviously don’t know enough about Resto to fully understand the implications of these changes just by looking at patch notes. I find your explanations helpful, so that I understand what is going on with the other trees of my class.
That said I do have one disagreement. You said:
“I’m disheartened that Blizzard finds it acceptable for our 51-point talent and 80th level spell to be ’situational.’”
and
“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.”
First off, welcome to the land of the moonkin where situational talents are the norm. Before Moonkin form, Hurricane was the 31 point talent, and it sucked. When BC came out our 41 point talent was Force of Nature. Yes it is fun and can do some significant damage if used correctly, but it is the in many cases they are killed by AoE damage and are useless on quite a few boss fights. Now in Wrath of the Lich King, we get Starfall. Another cool ability but has some distinct limitations. Is it AoE or single target? Its actually both, but not great for either.
Looking at some of my other level 70s I have to mention Dispersion on the Priest Shadow tree. Probably the most situational talent ever. If your getting beat on you uses it. At this point I have no intention of picking it up.
I can’t speak for all classes and haven’t reviewed all of the trees, but situational talents are not hurting just healers.
These nerfs and situational talents sting I know, but I think a some of it may come from the fact that resto’s have been fairly well designed in the past. Swiftmend is a great 31 point talent and Tree of Life is a spec defining talent at 41.
I also think blizzard is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel a little when it comes to new spells. There is only so much you can do with durations, cast times, mana costs, and all of the things that go into designing a spell.
Graylos last blog post..Warglaive Drama a Hoax
“You’re fine, Nothing to see here…your tears are candy nom nom nom”
I have to go clean up now. I spit my soda up trying not to laugh.
I wholeheartedly agree on almost all of your points. However, it seems to me that, generally speaking, most of the pinnacle talents for any given tree are rather situational, or outright undesirable in some cases, to include the current 41 pt. talents on Live. Just thinking of our current talent trees, both Force of Nature and Tree of Life are situational talents, and the same goes for the top tier talents of almost every other talent tree and class.
The problem with Wild Growth isn’t that it is situational, but that it is almost entirely worthless, as it currently stands. I’m going to have the ability to save my party by wrecking my mana pool to return them less than 5% of their health each over the next few seconds? Presumably at a point when they are all in immediate danger of dying to some area effect? I’m sorry, but that makes no sense.
“I’m disheartened that Blizzard finds it acceptable for our 51-point talent and 80th level spell to be ’situational.’”
Check out the feral 51pt talent. From a tanking perspective, it’s as situational as it gets.
In general, I look to players like Matticus who are going in and healing Naxx in mostly blues, and still doing just fine in beta. If the sky truly was falling, I think that sending undergeared blues into 25-man Naxx would certainly be a futile effort, but they’re getting by.
I think if you look at all the class changes by themselves the changes look bad - nerf nerf nerf for a lot of us (I’m losing 1/3 or my armor - that’s scary too!) But you’re looking at them through eyes that are only used to seeing Burning Crusade….. WotLK is set to be a whole different game, and I think that instead of collectively freaking out, we all need to wait and see how our classes actually play in beta.
So in the end I’m trying to say “chill out” and “it’ll be okay”. Blizzard has done an excellent job at balancing such a complex game for a long time - and I think they’ll nail this in the end too.
Karthiss last blog post..WotLK Talents/Spec Updated
@Graylo - Just to give a little feedback, friend of mine plays a shadow priest and found his longevity absolutely demolished on the PTR - the mana regen from Dispersion is the main reason he picked it up, at least for initial testing. I’m not a SP, so I can’t really say anything there, but 36% mana every 3 minutes can’t be too bad - what else are you getting in its place?
In response to the initlal post, GC’s recent responses have disgusted me. Someone mentioned that it’s like banging their head against a brick wall trying to make themselves heard, while the person on the other side has their fingers stuck in their ears yelling, “La la la la la!” It’s apparent that they want to make Nourish a good spell - a primary, non-situational spell, even, but for some reason they just can’t figure out how to do it aside from nerfing everythign else in our toolbox.
They gave a lot of either fun or useful abilities to almost all specs in WotLK. Either they did or they’ve been adding them - a lot of tanking abilities come to mind. Meanwhile, I’ve seen healers in general getting those abilities either nerfed or removed, and it’s not just resto. Shamans have mana issues, our heals are just getting butchered, and Paladins are Paladins. I sure hope priests are doing fine, because everyone I’ve spoken to lately does not plan on healing in WotLK unless things change. No, the sky isn’t falling, but it’s enough to make most of the healers I know extremely bitter.
Concerned, as always, is what I am. I trust Blizzard a decent amount when it comes to the end of PvE balancing, and I’m pretty sure they’ll throw some changes around in the end. I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.
Class dilution in the name of balance. Blah.
I vote Phaelia as Druid Queen!
@ Karthiss- While I agree that Blizzard does their best, and I agree they do a good job overall, their track record when it comes to class balancing for expansions is pretty spotty. Lets also keep in mind that many of the things that were broken or weak at the launch of BC are still so, after going on 2 years now.
Players are understandably concerned regarding their class, since it is quite possible that this may be the state of affairs for several months, even perhaps until the next expansion. For examples, consider OoC resurrection and Entangling Roots’ “outdoors only” clause. Both have been concerns forever, since prior to TBC, and are only being addressed now.
I don’t want to wait for my favorite class and spec to be viable a few months after expansion, as was the case with TBC. I want it to be at least viable from the start, even desirable.
Good post, I did the following post on the druid forums today
you can see the tread over at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10539070858&sid=1 But the point being that, we are not going to be HoT healers come wrath, ghostcrawler can say that all he wants, but it not going to make it true if they keep on killing our HoTs I foresee us a direct healers come wrath with all the changes I am seeing and reading about.
i’m so disgusted with all of this. i’ve stopped posting on the beta forum completely.
i feel they wanted to nerf all healing across the board, proabably for pvp reasons, which just angers me so much more.
i’m afraid i’m going to feel weak and ineffective in the xpac and with out 2 new spells being “situational,” all i have to look forward to are bogus proc effects like seed, ooc, replenish. screw that and screw them.
I keep thinking that my next Resto build will include Moonkin form.
Amradorns last blog post..Druids and 8982
The second I started following your coverage of wrath-resto stuff, Phaelia, I foresaw the rebirth (ha!) of the Dreamstate healer. It’s going to dominate resto druids, imho. If mana regen weren’t hurt so badly so far with the beta, I’d drop feral (and I’m a MT raiding druid on my server) and go Dreamstate. Rerolling is definitely on horizon, I fear.
@Karthis: The problem with the current expansion is that the GM’s had an excelent view of a certain subset of classes. They posted listing what they saw as problems for ferals and after much testing and discussion tweaked them to something reasonable. Tanking has changed immensly (and according to many tanks to something awesome and fun). DPS has remained the same game, but with a variety of new tools and configurations. Healing … has NOT been subject to this.
The purpose of the dps and tanking changes was so that the tanks and DPS could be interchangeable. They wanted you to take “your friends” as opposed to a class with a niche.
I don’t object! This is a great idea!
However although we (as healers) have been nerfed in similar ways, we are NOT given this as a final goal. We are to stay niched, separated and segregated, and on any aoe containing instances druids/pallies are to be overlooked. Again.
Is the sky falling? I’m not sure. Sunwell taught me that I made some bad class choices. I was hoping with all the big talk about class interchangeability, and all the changes that hit initially this would be the case, but up-front we were told as healers this is neither the goal nor the reality.
That is why healing is NOT a different game at 80. Its the same game, with new numbers. Its also why we are frustrated. The level of feedback and community interaction that everyone received has not been given to us.
What I’m seeing is this: There is no inter-class discussion, and there is no community leader to lead this discussion. I’ve seen over a dozen posts that say ‘we have a problem’ but without ‘here are some suggested solutions’ the blues ignore them. We need someone to set up a post that engenders discussion and then keep editing the top post to gather the community’s views. It is sorely lacking. On our beta druid forums we have shamans (who are in bad shape) coming to give us hugs and support. That should tell you how bad things are.
If there can be something more structured than a few voices here and there howling in pain maybe we can see some progress. I’ve talked to my guildmates and I’ve got a moonkin slot for our raids, which is a real shame. I didn’t want to hang up my leaves - but the truth of the matter is I don’t want to ever wipe thinking ‘if only I were a priest I wouldn’t have let them down’.
“We nerfed Lifebloom because it was just too good.”
This is such a load of crap. The truth is that it’s easier for Blizzard to maintain this ‘urban legend’ that Lifebloom is OP’d in pve than having to admit failure and accept that it’s impossible to balance pve & pvp (most especially 2v2) without one of them taking a huge hit and thereby become unplayable.
If Lifebloom was so game-breakingly OP’d, then why don’t you see raid leaders stacking Druids in Sunwell? Simple answer… it’s not. All Resto Druids do themselves and their brothers & sisters a great disservice by allowing this myth to be perpetuated.
Did You see what GC posted in the Shaman beta forums…
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10539070151&pageNo=1&sid=2000#0
—-
As you have already seen, we made several changes to Enhancement to attempt to bring their damage down. In our most recent tests, Enhancement was much too high. I can see this comes as a surprise to some of you, but almost all specs think their damage is too low right now, and those that know they are too high tend to keep quiet.
As a message to players of all classes, remember this is beta, and it’s an iterative process. We have to be allowed to make the changes we need to make. Lately we have seen many posts (from every class) by players who are frustrated either with specific class changes, with bugs that should have been easily fixed in their opinion, or with the design churn in general. I urge you again that if it causes you too much angst to participate in a beta, you probably should wait for the whole package of changes to go live.
We have tried to be more open to feedback this time around and engage in some amount of discussion with the community. We are very, very, very grateful for your feedback and bug reports, and for your participation in the beta in general. When you get your hands on Wrath, you’ll know that you helped make it great.
But I can see from some of the posts in this and other forums that some players seem to confuse making suggestions with voting for the changes we’ll make. This may sound harsh, but this isn’t a democracy. It’s important that the developers make what we think are the right decisions for the game in order to live up to the very large expectations that our customers expect from Blizzard.
At the risk of sounding more patronizing than I intend, please chill.
We are trying to get the game balanced. We feel good about the changes we are making, but if something slips through, or if a balance problem arises that we didn’t anticipate, we’ll get it fixed. If problems arise after Lich King goes live, we’ll get those fixed. With some of the changes we have made to class utility, it is important to try and get every class and spec as close as possible. If someone is too low, we’ll get them adjusted.
We still welcome your feedback on these changes, and it’s totally cool to disagree with us, so long as you can do so in a reasonable and mature manner. The beta forums seem to have taken on a bit of a Wild West mentality lately, and that directly interferes with our ability to get information quickly from the beta participants.
Something we are considering for the future is to have more cross-class discussions so that players of one class can — and will have to — interact more with players of another class. It’s too easy in these endemic conversations for players to rally around a particular idea, such as their dps being too low, and summarily trounce any intruders from other classes who might have an inconvenient opposing point of view.
—-
So it feels like all classes where basically told to shut up and take it.
Amradorns last blog post..Druids and 8982
@Flynx
correct, my guild (may not be a sunwell guild but we are still raiding up into BT/MH) has never said oh we only have 1 resto druid we can not go, but they have said we need more priests, shamans or pallies; even when there is one in the raid already. So if we were so OP why are we not trying to get more resto druids, why does my guild feel that 1 resto druid (me) is good enough for raids? But there is talk of needing more holy priests, resto shamans and holy pallies.
My guild has 3 druids as regular raiders (and one of them is only something like 70% of the time on, so 30% of the time only 2 druids, one resto, one balance and one feral. Gets kind of lonely being one of a few regular raiding druids in the guild. But we never have had to call a raid for a lack of druids, but for a lack of other classes we have had to call raids. Oh so OP we are, not all that needed, but the classes that are not OP can stop a raid from going forth if they are not on.
But it is kind of nice healing leather drops, I pretty much have first shot at it, come patch it will be spell casting leather, so for me gear is easy to come by.
I think the most important thing to remember is, that Blizzard did design the game so far, and it has been a pretty good game to this point, no matter what people claim.
We, the players, may think we know our class better than the designers (which is absurd truly if you think about it). And that is exactly the problem - we are always biased towards our class.
And that is why people always and will keep whining that their class is underpowered, and not balanced with the other classes.
My friendly tip:
Embrace the change and adapt to it. You’ll end enjoying the game much more that way.
Paedoloss last blog post..All Under Heaven - The Next Generation
“I’ve seen over a dozen posts that say ‘we have a problem’ but without ‘here are some suggested solutions’ the blues ignore them.”
I don’t understand why WE have to come up with the right solutions to fix what they break. It’s ridiculous that their PAID devs don’t have the very best ideas.
bahhhh double-hrmph :p
Hep
@Paedolos
No it is not a mistake to think that we know more about the the game than the developers. For one thing, we have experience, and they don’t! The game is centered about the players, and as it now I will not play resto druid in the next expansion simply because the resto druid talents suck donkey balls. I’m not going to repeat the beginning of TBC where resto druids sucked and endgame TBC where we are a joke…
/Balderun
I think there is two silver linings here. First, as a druid we have other options than healing. I recently switched over from being the main healer of my guild after it went under to being able to at least main tank Kara and heroics. I never thought tanking sounded like fun until I tried it. It’s a blast. I still love healing though. But I’ll probably end up taking tank (rogue) gear if I have to chose between that and healing gear for quest rewards in the trip from 70 to 80.
The other silver lining is the ease in which you can re-roll now. Seriously guys. I know it’s an abuse of the system, but you can send your self an invite to another email account, and then roll another two toons. I currently have an alliance warrior that I was working on up to level 32. Been working on him for about a month. Saturday, which is 4 days ago, I sent myself an invite, and rolled a pally on the new account. I made a rouge to pair them up, and since then in about 10 hours /played they are level 28 (a friend of mine runs me through instances with his lvl 70). They will be lvl 60 in about another week or two, and then I’ll use the new account to grant the old warrior I had up to 60. Boom, 3 level 60 characters for the cost of the game, 30 bucks or so (which came with a free month subscription for said new account). No I didn’t buy the two extra months of subscription for the free mount, I’ll just transfer the pally over to my existing account after she is 60.
I love my druid, I loved being boomkin, I loved healing, and I love tanking. But with all the changes going on, I’m checking out some other options. Even if you don’t “recruit your self”, leveling is fast and furious compared to what it used to be.
I have to say, I do feel like they are changing my Treeness in such a basic way that I will have to learn all over again how to play. Not just incorporate a cool new spell or two, or learn how to balance some of the new things, but that I need to completely re-evaluate what my job should be in raids.
The lifebloom nerf wasn’t just a readjustment it was like, WHACK, now its worth half as much.
My husband who is a Survival hunter is also quite despondant over the essential way in which they are killing the new toys.
Blizzard needs to learn how to set low expectations…three months ago I was ecstatic over receiveing an OOC rez, a direct heal, and aoe heal, and wow I will have so many more tools in my toolbox. Now I’m like, holy crap, what exactly is it they want me doing and how bad will I suck while I learn how to do it
Great article Phae! You said it better than I could–though I plan to expand on some of your thoughts in a post of my own! And as a side note, I’ve decided not to reroll–not yet. I’m waiting a little bit before I give up on the broccoli.
They are taking a further look at Wild Growth and Nourish:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10532270254&pageNo=2&sid=2000#39
Ghostcrawler:
We are going to “run the numbers” again on Wild Growth and Nourish. What I mean by that is we’ll do some tests and compare them to similar heals and to other druid spells.
Wild Growth was nerfed pretty hard and I have some confidence that we can bring it up, though probably not as high as it was before. We’ll have to see about Nourish.
We don’t want to mess with Regrowth much more since it is now a button that seems worth pushing. We’re standing by our Lifebloom changes for now. It just felt like the solution to every healing situation that druids encountered. I suspect druids will still use it in its current form, but we’ll see.
Sorry I can’t offer anything more concrete than that. Making promises until I actually see the changes made can be pretty dangerous and just ends up frustrating the community in those situations where we can’t deliver.
–
I am hopeful this will fix things up.
I don’t wanna reroll! But gah, all of this stuff makes me want to switch back to a Priest or go pewpewlazerz with my mage. I just don’t know.
/sadpanda
Edit: but the previous poster at least made me a little hopeful!
@Kelerain what saddens me is he (GC) said “We’re standing by our Lifebloom changes for now” Sorry that does not give me hope, I am not even sure it going to use Lifebloom much come the patch. I am not saying that they have to fully undo the changes. But the changes they made are to much. I agree with the decrees in the amount it healed, yes I admit it healed for way to much for what it should have done, should be 50% to 66% of what it is now on live, but the mana cost now is about right (give or take 20 mana), but they raised the mana cost way out of line for what it heals for (from 170 mana on live in tree form to 264 mana in tree form, heck it is cheaper out of tree form on live now 220). Lifebloom is a way of placing a buffer on the tank when they first take damage and buy time for a real heal to come in (be it a Flash of light, greater heal, or healing wave). Yes druids (and I admit I am one) that abused Lifebloom as using it as a group heal (it did made up about 80% of all my heals)
And I have read that at level 80, a triple stack on Beta is healing for 800 per tick, and the HP of the average tank is up around 30k, that just means Lifebloom is a dead spell come wrath, it will suffer the same fate Healing Touch did in BC. Maybe a few months into Wrath they will come to there senses and undo the overly harsh destruction of the spell.
I think everyone is getting confused by the changes Blizz are making - I sure am. From the perspective of my Paladin and the nerf to Infusion of Light, I’m seeing any hope of actually being competitive in smaller bracket going out the window. Again. What is their problem with healers?
I was shocked to find a few weeks ago that there is a wee clique of dps’ers that have been screaming for substantial nerfs to healing effectiveness in pvp (like 25-50% nerfs) because zomg 2dps finds it too hard in arena. I just couldn’t get it through to them that some people actually ENJOY healing and with the state of the game even with arena on live, a nerf to healing efficacy would make healers completely un-viable. I can guess what forum discussions Blizz HAS been internalising…
As for my druid, I’m equally irritated; this expansion is reeking of poor design and laziness. There just seems to be a lack of creativity in some talent trees. I really hope they sort their rubbish out by launch, I’m really looking forward to wotlk and I don’t want it to be ruined. I’m having too much fun on Warhammer to put up with another two years of holy paladin crapness.
@Balderun
You are assuming that whoever designs a product does not use it?
I suggest ending this discussion as it leads nowhere.
Sure, I am not pleased about each and every change in the game, but I don’t claim I have easy fixes either, nor that Blizzard are doing a bad job.
Final thought - if we were so talented and all knowing, why don’t WE work at Blizzard, hm?
Paedoloss last blog post..All Under Heaven - The Next Generation
Discussions are like fruit, useless while hanging on a tree, you have to pick them to appreciate them. Discussions allow people to share their thoughts and to check their internal feelings with others.
Sure, some people go overboard and turn it into a gothic commiseration party, but being able to discuss things does not automatically make you good at it.
But anyway, all classes are being jo-jo’d right now, and with the patch 3.0 coming in a few weeks (or less) I feel like they have given up on “public beta” and public testing and keep as much as possible under their hat for now, to prevent QQ.
Probably they continue to balance things from patch 3.0 through to the expansion using live data, as well as the current PTR testing.
By the way, time for those “Don’t nerf the trees” logos again? ^_^
Natarumahs last blog post..As we stand today…
GC commented on upcoming resto changes:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10532270254&sid=2000&pageNo=4#72
My thoughts: I am 100% unsurprised to see them make WG and Nourish more palatable, since they were clearly not worth anything previously. Don’t know how useful they are now, but they’re at least closer.
Honestly I have a positive attitude about LB too. That’s mostly based on the assumption that we’ll still be able to heal competitively, and I haven’t seen anything that contradicts that. I wouldn’t mind if LB became slightly more of a choice and less mandatory. But, we’ll see…
ciskos last blog post..Trinkaholic
Well here I was going to say anyone up for a good old fashion protest.. Or a Level 1 druid march to some coastal area where a crab bash will happen.
“Grab a hammer, kill some crabs, save your bushy tree friends!”
but what that news I’m a little happier.
Wow, there’s a whole lot of QQ ging ’round the druid community.
Let’s take a step back and look at this from every other class’s perspective. Druids can: 1) Melee DPS at or near the top of the charts. 2) Ranged DPS effectively 3) Main Tank 4) Primary Heal 5) OT/Melee combo.
No other class even comes close to what we can do. We are OP. We have been for quite some time. The Nerf Bat sucks, but we really did own BC. This is in all aspects of the game. PVP Arenas - we are annoying un-CC-able hot based healers with feral charge and amazing CC. PVP BG’s - we are the best flag runners (OK maybe Pallies and the BoF/BoP deal can argue the point), as well as allowing for traditional run and gun pvp gameplay. PVE - see above, and specifically: We Don’t Run Out of Mana While Healing all the tanks with a single macro. This is OP, sorry to my fellow trees, but it is. The nerf was coming, and seriously overdue.
I want the WotLK abilities RIGHT NOW, so I can get into H MgT and tell KT to piss off. As it stands right now, I can’t heal that fight on normal. It’s impossible to lifebloom heal through all 5 people taking that much AOE. How is having a fight that we cannot win without seriously overgearing not borked?
As it stands right now, a Druid healer can bind their lifebloom macro to every key but the directional buttons, innervate, and rebirth - and still be awesome in raids. How is that not a broken mechanic?
Blizzard addressed the “e-sport” complaints by moving feral charge down the feral tree, and making lifebloom less mana efficient. But this change was needed for PVE as well, so stop blaming a playstyle you don’t like for needed nerfs.
They gave us an AOE that is not mana efficient in the least. Welcome to CoH-town, droods! I have my innervate, what does a priest have? This fixes the 5-man issue without stealing from our fellow healers niches. (So does the OOC rez).
They gave us a ‘direct’ heal for “flash heal” situations. Yes, regrowth is a “better” spell, but that’s not the point - they are best utilized in completely different situations. Topping off a DPS that got an AOE tick, for instance. The only issue is that our “flash” heal assuredly needs a mana efficiency check, but that’s it.
Come on, it’s not all bad. I admit, I’m leveling my hunter to 80 first, but that’s just so I have an 80 to farm gold for Jephaer (Medivh). Buck up, druids, the world tree is not coming to an end. I can’t wait for 3.0.2 so I can test out the new stuff in content I know, preparing for the raids of the future.
@the1jeffy
You call use overpower but can’t heal MgT::sigh::
@ WYNN
Yes, because when someone disagrees with you, please call into question their credibility, instead of rebutting the idea. That always works.
The fact the druids have trouble healing MgT is a fairly accepted flaw in the encounter. Pallies have troubles there, too. Unless, as I said, if you care to look up, the druid (or pally) seriously overgears the zone. I was in Kara purples and some T4 at the time. Which, is enough gear to heal a similarly geared grup in every other heroic. Then along comes regular MgT and burns my leaves. I haven’t been back since the original few attempts at the zone, and that was pre-nerf. A T5/T6 druid with enough haste won’t have problems, and I believe I have the gear for it now. But the idea of content I don’t have the tools for, or the idea of a 5-man that requires that high of a gear level just peels my bark.
But hey, what do I know, I guess I’m not a “real” druid. Whatever that is.
I raid up to Mag and done Heroic MrT many times, I’ve never seen the a raid call because of lack of druid healers. The change to Ptr kills my healing, no chain potting and can’t keep up rolling lifeblooms. To me and other that’s a big deal sorry I was so harsh.
Cisco: “Honestly I have a positive attitude about LB too.”
Thank you. I also realized last night that the scaling in terms of HPM is silly good now, if you add 3 seconds to hit 9, and the glyph to hit 10, you could be getting near the 200% of +heal (on the old formula, * 1.88 for the new or so). I am tempted to investigate scaling. I’m kinda tempted to wait though, since Phaelia is so much better at it than I am ^.^
@Eggo:
I understand that you are upset by this, and concerned for your class. That said, there is no need for such hostility. Ghostcrawler is a real person who is trying their best, and communicating more with the player community that I’ve seen from blizzard in the past. I really appreciate their efforts. Also keep in mind how difficult game development is. We already have a game that surpasses the vast majority of other games in quality in it’s beta state. Cut the developers some slack, and be sure to give positive and constructive feedback. It’ll get us a LOT farther in the end.
@~the1jeffy
First thing, the fact that “through a simple respec” a druid can change roles should stop being used as an argument to each and every druid nerf. Leveling a character to 70 takes little to no time nowadays. As people say, “the game *starts* at 70″. Even though you can “just respec”, you still need to gear yourself through each and every raid, spend money on enchanting and gemming, learn the mechanics of the new class.. basically the same things if you have another character. And people that are concerned about end-game raiding *do* have alts, or have no problems leveling one. Yes, that makes druids great subs, but I don’t play to be the priest’s/warrior’s/mage’s/etc. sub. I play people to want me in raids, at least based on skills. Given the fact that Blizzard doesn’t share the same ideas as me, all druid specs are *intentionally* created to be little (but still enough to be felt) sub-par to the “pure” classes. Which automatically puts me under the min/max axe.
Second, if you think that rolling lifeblooms is the way to resto healing.. I went to BT last week and after all that “lifeblooms are OP” talks, I decided to make a test. I did nothing but roll lifeblooms on the 4 tanks. Result? A third of the healing of the number one priest/shaman, way back on the meters. Another test, this time a bear run at ZA, the bear boss - perfect druid situation, the two tanks only getting damage almost constantly, so my overhealing was lower than 5%. Even though both me and the tanks were overgeared for the encounter, a priest still managed to beat me through just spamming flash heals on top of my HoTs.
So, who is having an easier time? Me, trying to keep an eye on the whole situation, keeping tact with my HoTs to throw a Regrowth here, Rejuv there, Swiftmend where necessary.. Or a priest who can just buttonmash CoH or even worse, a shaman with CH? But I live with the fact that they will always have an advantage over me even without putting the same effort and concentration as I do. Because they.. uhmm.. kinda need me. Not because they can’t live without me, but because I allow sub-par healers to be viable in a hectic healing environment, I allow for those tenths of the seconds distraction without the tanks dying and it all going macaroni. My teammates know they can rest assured - there’s a lifebloom already ticking and my Swiftmend/NSHT is gonna save the day.
Now LB has been taken away from us. And that is our only viable HoT in a raid environment. Rejuv is a nice addition but mostly because of Swiftmend. Ticking every 3 seconds, that’s 2 flash heals per priest that can land in the meantime. LB is the one ticking each second. If they give back the previous healing but keep the mana as it is (or nerf it further), we might even see 2 trees (two tanks per tree) taken in raids, and they won’t need to keep mashing 1-2-3-4 simply because there won’t be enough mana. But currently, LB is nothing. So we won’t LB or will do it just for the good ol’ times. I am gonna be healing like a priest. And then.. why take even one druid when min/max-wise priests/paladins are now gonna be better in.. everything? So they can “play with their friends”. No, sir, a like working in a team of dedicated players so we get stuff done. The friendship thing is inbetween pulls, once the boss has aggroed everything is business.
And, by the way, I have been healing H MgT from ~1100 +healing upwards.. It is supposed to be harder than the first half of Karazhan. At least it was, pre-nerf. Now I am too overgeared to judge. Kael has never given me trouble (if you don’t count the first wipes due to me being a bad air swimmer), and the instance is *designed* to be a healer’s hell. But no, even though most fight are easier with CoH/CH, they are not undoable with a similarly geared druid. WG changes won’t make it cakewalk if you can’t do it now on regular.
And me and Wynn are not putting you down, just saying that if druids were so OP, you wouldn’t have had troubles in a regular 70 instance with such gear.
I really don’t think that anyone here genuinely believes Blizzard is out to get Druids, or has absolutely no idea how the class works. That doesn’t make any logical sense, rationally.
However, Blizzard is not perfect, and for better or worse, the intent the developers have for the abilities they come up with do not always mesh well with reality.
Sometimes, it seems as though it takes months, even years, for Blizzard to realize when something is not effective, or is not working in line with what was intended, or is causing an imbalance that makes a particular class or spec generally undesirable (i.e. Ret. Paladins, Balance Druids, Demonology Warlocks, etc.). Ideally, a developer at Blizzard would not want his/her hours of work to result in something that no one uses because it is accurately viewed as worthless, irrelevant, no fun, or just plain subpar in relation to other things.
The sooner we make it known that there may be a problem, the sooner Blizzard may acknowledge this, and be able to fix the problem, perhaps even completely averting any problem at all.
@Kelerain
I am not that concerned with the HPM of LB than the HPS. No druid can say that the mana nerf was not needed, I was regularly giving my Innervate to priests and chain-potting/drumming to high heaven. But the idea of PvE LB is to provide a buffer, or that’s how I look at things. I am not in the beta so I can’t theorycraft, but more knowledgable people have said that with gear on par with the raid LB ticks for basically the same amount as with T6 gear. Roughly, 1000 on a 35k tank, with boss hits going above the 10k bracket. Suddenly, my trademark spell feels like a Renew (not to mention that WG at 80 heals as much as a Renew at 70). Why in the seven hells would I put so much effort in it, even with the 10 seconds duration? I am back to single tank healing and that’s about how far my new “powers” stretch.
Well, if that’s what Blizzard wants.. let it be it. I -will- get the new xpac at least for the content, but probably stop playing after the 10th progression guild that says “sorry, we don’t need trees”. (yeah, I got the GTFO of my current guild after an argument with the GM’s.. how can I call her.. girl?) I will try and relearn my spec.. again. Or go kitty scratch-scratch. Problem is.. I love healing. I really do.
Kelerain - Two years of playing a raiding priest has made me both witty and bitter. I just didn’t want to see the druid become my old priest with lolwell (31) holy nova (31) and divine spirit (31) had my share of I don’t want that talents. But yes they have a hard job I wouldn’t want it. Foresight and open communication is key and Ghostcrawler is doing a good job of it but hes broken my heart once this week. That is what makes him a fun target, plus hes a crab and we are bushy-tree-kind the sexual over tone and puns are endless.
Internet is serious business I on the other hand am not
Most of the comments have said what I have said so far, but let me comment on the talent trees of my other two lvl 70s.
The first is a paladin. The 51-pointer in Protection is VITAL. It’s going to be one of the defining skills of prot paladins. It’s a 6-second attack that hits three targets and will essentially replace consecrate on groups of 3 or less. It will be used every cooldown. The 51-point ret talent is similar. It is also an AE that will still be used every cool down even on single-targets.
The other is an elemental shaman. The last form of thunderstorm I read is an instant-cast spell that actually restores mana witha 45-second cooldown. I expect it to be used on every cooldown unless you have absolutely no mana issues.
In both cases the class gets a skill that really defines them as a spec and puts their spec ahead off off-specs trying to fill their niche. Swiftmend was somewhat like that, making 31-resto much more powerful and helping us with what druids would otherwise lack. However, our 51-point talents really don’t bring much to the table and that makes me sad. The state of druids these days is making me contemplate leveling my shaman as a healer/DPS instead so I can take advantage of the OP elemental.
Who said a druid could melee near the top of charts? What are you smoking? That’s been an issue with feral since they stepped into SSC or beyond, with the gap only widening as gear level improved. Boomkin DPS was also not exactly stellar.
By the way, Shamans could bind all their keys to chain heal and still be “awesome” in raids. Priests could almost do the same with CoH, and Paladins are close to similar since they only have two buttons to be pressing to begin with. Jezza already commented on more of the resto things you brought up - Lifebloom may be our bread and butter but it, in no way, is the only spell we cast frequently. It’s a myth - it’s a myth that we don’t do anything but roll our face across lifebloom macros. Of course I won’t run out of mana if all I do is cast lifebloom every 6 seconds - that won’t keep up the tank, though. It’s been brought up so many times that the majority of guilds - especially progression ones - that are able to pick and choose their members for raids only take one tree druid. This is not because trees suck but rather because of chain heal and circle of healing. That’s (almost) it.
Wild Growth was horribly inefficient. Innervate’s not really a good justification. HoTs are supposed to have high efficiency to begin with, and longevity is supposed to be a strong part of our class even without innervate. That they encourage innervates to be given to other classes (just check the glyph) means they shouldn’t balance heals too much around us getting our own.
Also, no one runs out of mana anymore. No healer, except for perhaps a priest that is doing nothing but CoH spam, drains themselves dry if they’re thinking. Chain potting tends to solve the majority of issues, and I end plenty of fights without innervating any healer.
We didn’t really own BC in any way whatsoever, except for a couple of seasons in 2v2 and 3v3. Feral did not own BC - they offtanked well and could tank. Just talk to some boomkins to get their perspective on their BC performance. I can’t believe the ‘you can do all these roles so just sit back and take it’ argument is still floating around. From a PvE perspective, we were reasonable healers with a myth surrounding us that lifebloom ticked for 2300 a second and cost 50 mana. The lifebloom nerf was cultivated by this urban legend, and because PvP complained about their precious 2v2. If they want to raise the mana cost - fine. Makes sense since it’s going to be a longer duration spell - but the HPS should not be less than it is at 70. Period.
@ Jezzabell
I hardly think performance on a meter has anything to do with it. I don’t heal to ‘beat’ the other healers, I work as a heal team. Right now, why stack druid healers? You just need one for lifebloom on the tanks. With the new stuff, you’ll still have the “Keep HOTs on the tanks,” spot, and another druid can have the, “Top off the melee,” spot, instead of that going to a priest or shammie. Yes, our BC bread/butter is going away. We are getting other things to compensate, and all the healing classes are crying about mana efficiency for now.
And yes the fact that our class can meet/beat the pure classes at each and every role is a huge testament to our overall OPness, no matter how you try to whisk it under the rug. Yes, it doesn’t justify every nerf. But I didn’t use it to justify the nerfs, just to put it in wider perspective.
You said you haven’t play tested the new change, and neither have I. I mentioned above that I want 3.0.2 right now, so that if it’s busted, we can get it fixed before the expansion.
As an aside, and to deflect more people attacking me for not being able to heal MgT (because they see it as a weakness). This was pre-nerf. This was with a crew that was farming Gruul. We wiped repeatedly on Kael until we brough in our priest, and CoH won they day. After a few more runs (probably 5 in all), I just gave it up as a lost cause. My HOTs just didn’t have the punch to heal through all the AOE. If yours did at that gear level, good for you. My experience was otherwise. For a highpoint of my career (to counter the lowpoint), my group beat Najentus our first trip to BT, after 7 attempts. For healing cred, that aint too shabby. Not trying to toot my horn or flex my leetness or something. I’m just trying to point out that I’m not a complete idiot, as it seems my post is leading some to believe.
If your boomkins or ferals are meeting/exceeding their parent classes, they’re either exceptional or your other players aren’t so hot. Or both.
the1jeffy go on Ptr that what I did and try to keep rolling lifeblooms on a few people, the mana cost hurts.
@the1jeffy, Heroic MgT is not hard at all; I did it fully the first day it came out. You failed because you forgot that we have other heals. You are what Blizzard is looking at when they say Druids rely too much on Lifebloom. Try using tranquility, great for the second boss when he overloads. Try Regrowth, great for the 4th boss as it is a big burst heal. Yes, it is 2 seconds long but for 4k it’s good. Of course I assume your groups DPS does not suck, but if they do, and don’t burn the shield on Kael fast enough and interrupt the pyroblast then NO healer and I mean NO healer can heal for the amount of damage that pyroblast will do, 40k or more on a tank with only 20k HP is unhealable, also regrowth is a great spell to use when you are healing a lock tank, be it in Leo or on Keal (in TK not Keal in MgT) Regrowth is a nice spell even on live, try pulling it out of your spell book and using it.
Edit by Phaelia: Please try not to be so confrontational.
@~the1jeffy (yeah, if I had a beta account, I’d be giving my opinions there. WTB beta key?)
Point by point.
Meters matter for two things. One, this is the only way non-healers can grade you. And Raid Leaders will grade you on that and it will be justified. Because two, if you are not able to provide a reasonable amount of HPS, fast and correctly, (because that is what meters show - whose heals did the most good) you are not needed. You might be a great healer but if everybody else overwrites you, you are not needed, you are a waste of a raid spot and better bring another DPS/healer/tank that will ease the fight. I don’t mind being low on the meters in TBC because that means I was too busy providing that life-saving buffer. But if my buffer ain’t enough to make a difference (*ahem* 1k HPS at 35k HP tanks?) then it is not needed. Ergo, I am switching to tank/spot healing. Which is not that bad if not for the typical “druids have to be subpar to pure classes” Blizz statement. Also, a buff to WG and Nourish doesn’t mean a buff to out HoTs. LB is still useless and Rejuvenation will always fail as a buffer HoT due to 3 sec ticks. Last on this point - I am not complaining about mana efficiency. I am actually happy about those “problems” if they allow healers to be selected more on mana conservation skill than “how fast can you push YOUR 90% heals spell macro”.
Point two. “And yes the fact that our class can meet/beat the pure classes at each and every role is a huge testament to our overall OPness”. I just told you that we can’t meet, even less beat the pure classes if player skill is equal. I am not usually a forum junkie so I can’t provide a link, but GC himself said that the target DPS of the boomkin is 10-20% below that of “pure” caster classes. Which, personally, I find unjust because of previously stated reasons (not to mention that druid specs have really complex mechanics due to our forms).
Third. They test on the beta, not on live realms. Feedback from 3.0.2 will be even more whiny due to less stimulated for constructive feedback population. And imagine all the “noise” on forums with literally a million people whining.
Actually, due to druids having the strongest HoTs (come on, give that to Priests now too?), KT should be really easy on you. Beginning is all about DPS downing the Phoenix right. The levitate phase might be problematic but a Rejuv/LB combo on each of the party members should keep them alive till landing (and you can do that while swimming, mobility ftw! Can a CoH priest do it? Nope.) If someone gets in trouble, just Swiftmend them. After that you can choose either to Regrowth everybody to full health or be lazy and pop Tranquility. Rinse and repeat till DPS finish him off. See? A fight where we use all our healing spells (NSHT too, if you get in trouble).
@Graylo: I don’t mean that no one else’s talents are situational. Just that, by and large, most 51-point talents aren’t. Most would probably agree that a talent that is usable more often is a lot more fun and engaging than one that’s just situational. You do make a great point about our 31- and 41-point talents. I’d just like to see the trend of fun and spec-defining talents continue!
@Yggdrasil: Well, I don’t think that Blizzard intended for Tree of Life to be as situational as it has come to be regarded. I believe they didn’t realize what a handicap that speed increase would be and thought it merely “flavor” since the Tree looks kinda grumpy.
@Karthis: I am surprised that you consider Berserk to be so situational. It might look like it’s only going to be useful on trash pulls or the rare multi-mob boss encounter, but it also removes the GCD on Mangle for 15 seconds. That’s potentially some crazy threat, especially if you’re getting smashed (and dodging getting smashed) and generating rage like you’d expect to for a boss fight. *Enrage* *Berserk* *MANGLE MANGLE MANGLE* *RAWR* *???* *Profit*
Also, you would probably be surprised at how “chill” the above post was given how I was feeling yesterday morning.
@Nilianil: I was in agreement with you about GC not listening … until this morning. I’m so happy that it feels like they DID listen to some of the … more sane forum posts. And it’s nice to see Nourish tweaked so that it can better stand on its own two feet without having to nerf everything else in comparison.
@Wynn: Druid Queen? I’m not sure if that’s a real title. What about “Gnarly Old Oak”? Haha … I’m gnarly. Oh god, that’s got to be a new blog byline …
@Drun: That new thread luckily garnered a very positive response.
Thank you for posting it.
@R4L: Don’t underestimate Living Seed and Omen of Clarity. I’ve actually found both mechanics to be pretty fun (plus OOC just sounds awesome). I just wish there were some talent that made Nourish proc LS as often as I can rely on Regrowth.
@Amradorn: NOoooooooooOOOoooooOOOOOOoooooooo… Interestingly, the changes to our Improved Auras so that Spirit grants Spell Power means that a Boomkin gets extra spell power … but only when they lose access to heals, and a Tree gets extra spell power … but only when they lose access to nukes. I actually think that’s a really clever mechanic that further sets the two apart (and has the added benefit of allowing them to share Spirit/Spell Power leather). P.S. Thanks for sharing that post from the Shaman forums; I hadn’t seen it, and it was very interesting.
@Lheaf: You aren’t the only one considering a Dreamstate build. To do that now, you would sink the 28 points into Balance, leaving you with 43 to spend in Restoration. That’s still enough to pick up ToL and either 2 points in IToL or Living Seed (which of the two you chose would probably be based on whether you used Regrowth as your primary direct heal). That’s actually not too shabby, but it depends on how useful WG ends up being after its recent improvements. Don’t reroll!
@Zaira: I found the beta forums initially to be very pleasant. As the number of voices grew, however, they became more and more ca