Monday, March 10, 2008

Lifebloom nerf reversed

In the last patch notes available for the 2.4 PTR, the druid section read:

Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control. Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.

Being primarily a PvE healy druid, I am very happy with this change. The HoT aspect of Lifebloom remains unchanged, while the bloom is nerfed somewhat. As I explained before, the HoT is very important to druid raid healing because we can roll it (meaning, continually refresh a stack with minimal effort) on several tanks, while the final bloom is much less of an issue. This is a much more serious development for druids that are a lot more into PvP. The final bloom is always an issue since players have many different ways of keeping themselves alive and can survive, long enough for that final bloom to be a lifesaver, even though the 200 or so health provided by the HoT every second is not as important. If my reasoning is flawed here, please forgive me; my PvP skills and knowledge is sadly lacking.

The second change is something that I would like to touch on also: the cost of regrowth has been reduced by 20%. Regrowth has long been a bane of the resto druid's mana pool. At a whopping 845 mana, it can chew through a large mana pool in seconds. This change sets the cost at 540 mana if cast while in tree form. This is a HUGE change. The spell suddenly grows a lot more attractive to use in long boss fights when it would normally be overlooked. Phae, over at resto4life (the definitive resto druid blog, check it out if you haven't already) has an interesting analysis of it here:

http://www.resto4life.com/2008/03/09/regrowth-the-new-raid-heal/

Phae makes some rather compelling arguments for using regrowth a LOT more than we currently do. I tend to agree, but don't think we will be scrapping rejuvenation or lifebloom any time soon

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