News from the PTR: Lifebloom Nerfed!
Change is now Live on the PTR, Coefficient reduced by 10% effectiveness reduced by 8%
Right now with 2058 healing on the PTR, my Lifebloom is ticking for for 231. With Maxed out Empowered Rejuvenation, Gift of Nature and Idol of the Emerald Queen Equipped On Live my Lifebloom ticks for 252. Looks like approximately a 10% reduction to the base coefficient bringing it down from 52% to 47%. This results in an 8% reduction in effectiveness. Its a sad day 
Well the celebration of Druids after the original patch notes where released has come to an abrupt end (source).
Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
Along with
Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
To be honest, I couldn’t care less about the Natural Perfection change. Its a mixed nerf/buff. We will take 3% more damage, but the effect will not be spam dispelled as it is now.
What I am concerned about is the Lifebloom change. . Right now the coefficient is approximately 52%, 72% with the Empowered Rejuvenation talent. On the PTR the new coefficient is 47%.
Lifebloom has become the signature spell of raiding Restoration Druids. It saddens me that the spell that accounts for 90-95% of my healing on raids is being changed due to PVP. Now this isn’t the first pve change we’ve seen made for pvp, but in my opinion its one of the most devastating.
It just frustrates me to no end that a change is being made to my most effective spell because of an aspect of the game I play casually. Now I know many PVP’ers are rejoicing because that is the aspect of the game they take seriously but I if a change needed to be made for the sake of PVP, Lifebloom needn’t be a part of that change. We have plenty of PVP oriented talents and abilities that could be adjusted that would in no way effect the play of PVE Druids.
Blizzard had the luxury with Resto Druids to make that separation due to the amount of abilities we have that only effect our PVP playstyle, and they didn’t take advantage of it.
6 Responses to “News from the PTR: Lifebloom Nerfed!”
skarrde said:
Feb 20, 2008, 00, Feb
Once again the QQ’s win out. ooh poor me can’t handle takin on a druid.
Brelaine said:
Feb 20, 2008, 07, Feb
Its sad. I understand some Druid oriented changes. One class should not be so dominant in one bracket. BUT If anything, I was hoping they would give the other healer classes some love!
skarrde said:
Feb 21, 2008, 20, Feb
Ok been doin some thinkin about this nerf to LB and am wondering if it might be a blessing in disguise. Here is how my logic works
One of the biggest problems with being a resto druid is that we have no real way of dumping aggro correct? Well when we let LB bloom it considers the heal to be done by the person on the recieving end and hence they get the healing aggro from it. Now I am not sure how they calculate aggro but I imagine it is a 3 sec or 1 sec calculation and so when we are healing by x amount(LBx3) we get the amount of aggro you would get off of that single tick spread across however many mobs are in the pull. If we let LB bloom then the aggro would be generated by a large amount of Heal and that gets dumped on the tank.
Now what is the main reason we use LB? Because it is very mana efficient. It is better to have 3 stacks up constantly because you only need to cast 1 per 7s to keep it at full stack. Now with the MP5 getting better with 2.4 it isn’t quite as critical in that we generate it faster and so can afford to allow LB to bloom and then recast it on the tank. Imagine if they had it that Swiftmend caused LB to bloom even then we could choose when it would hit and allow us to “heal” when it is absolutely needed.
So here is wut I am thinking cast LBx3 and keep it stacked for 3 casts or so then let it bloom to dump aggro and rebuild it up. This would allow us to handle aggro and still keep those in the party healed.
Just some thoughts please pick apart as needed.
Jinvasha said:
Mar 5, 2008, 11, Mar
@Skarrde: While this is an optimistic viewpoint to take, consider this:
The writer of Mooonfire!(http://frostmage.net/index.php/in-which-i-swear-mildly-sorry/) has about twice the epics that I do, and their lifebloom is healing for 172 hp per tick. If I’m not mistaken, the threat generated from healing is half of healing done before buffs like salvation are taken into account; therefore the total TPS of the lifebloom should be about 85. As a bear tank with comparatively fewer epics, I can generate anywhere between 400-1000 TPS depending on how lucky I get with crits and clearcasting. Threat is more of a problem for people using the very big heals, like that paladin whose holy light just crit on you for 7k, whereas HoTs are very threat-friendly in the way that they spread the healing load out over time.
Personally, this is going to make off-healing harder for me, although just how much remains to be seen. Going to post on this topic in my blog fairly soon, after I’ve had more time to gather viewpoints of various people and crunch some numbers of my own.
Dendrek said:
Aug 29, 2008, 14, Aug
I love lifebloom. As a BT raider with his eye on SWP, I know how effective LB can be in it’s BC-form. It often accounts for as much as 80% of my total healing (usually no less than 60%, unless Regrowth is more effective for a given boss fight), and with few exceptions I am almost always #1 on the Healing Done list (beating out CoH Priests and CH Shammies on most boss and trash pulls). But I’m honestly not that depressed by the change that is being made. I assume the other changes that are being made will make up for it.
Here’s my thinking: Lifebloom’s GCD is being reduced from 1.5 secs to 1 sec with Gift of the Earthmother for deep Resto druids. Its duration is also being increased from 7 seconds to 8 seconds with Glyph of Lifebloom (assuming this will be available to non-inscriptionists). Depending on the druid’s play-style, the way lifebloom works in BC allows for either 4LBs to be stacked (with no other spells being cast), 3LB + 1Rejuve, 3LB + 1Regrowth, 2LB + 2 Rejuve, or 2LB + 1Rejuve + 1Regrowth, assuming the druid is using every GCD to cast a spell while maintaining his/her lifeblooms. In WotLK, the druid will have the option to maintain up to 7 LBs at a time or replace any number of those with a lot of other spells. This may actually result in a much greater amount of healing output than we currently produce.
If Blizz had kept the effectiveness of LB the same in WotLK, druids would probably produce twice as much healing output as any other healing class, while also being able to stay on-par with aoe healing. Instead, we may still be able to do that, but now with added benefits, such as being able to refund mana/rage/energy/runes with Rejuvenation using the talent Replenish, heal for 30% more on a crit casting Swiftmend/Regrowth/Nourish/HT with the talent Living Seed, AoE heal with Flourish, and do not forget that with Master Shapeshifter and Improved Tree of Life, our overall healing output will be much higher (potentially countering the lowered efficiency of LB).
I’m excited about what we’re getting in WotLK, and the “nerf” on LB isn’t enough to bring me down.