Results tagged “druids” from Bitter Roots

What is the Lifebloom nerf?

The HoT portion (that we keep up on tanks to stop them from going ker-splat) is being nerfed, so that we don't get as much benefit from +healing gear.  Lifebloom is used a lot in PVP, but I find that I let it tick out for the end heal rather than worry about keep it stacked, so this is going to hurt the PVE game much more than making druids less "uber" in PVP.  Which, let's face it, this is probably about.

How will this affect my game?  Well, if lifebloom doesn't tick for as much, it's gonna be harder to keep multiple tanks up or even one.  Less lifebloom = more swiftmen and regrowth needed to keep topping up the tank = more mana usage.  The big appeal for playing or raiding with a druid are their HoTs.  We can't even out-of-combat rez!  If our HoTs are nerfed, we cry!

Lifebloom nerf on Resto4Life  

And on Lifebloomer

Bloggers against the lifebloom nerf! 

Update:  New WoW Insider article on this issue by one of our fellow druid bloggers:

Community Speaks on Lifebloom Nerf 

I spent some time on Yolana yesterday, tanking Arcatraz.  We were in there for a mage friend but I walked out with the chestpiece of the bold.  It was pretty cool though, because I went in with Airbringer, Megawatt and Daelin and a priest that we found on the LFG channel.  I've been having really good luck with PUGs lately.  When Mega and I came out of Kara on Thursday I was asked to tank an Old Hillsbrad run, and that was an amazing group.  Then not long after Yol hit 70 I went to Botanica with one friend and three PUG'ers, and that was GREAT. 

I've found that putting together a PUG on a tank feels better to me.  As a tank you have a lot of control over the group... generally you're the one marking things, you do the pulling (unless you have an over-enthusiastic DPS/CC'er) and so you're setting the pace.  As a healer you just kinda stay behind the rest and drink a lot, hoping the tank doesn't pull when you're on 10% mana. 

I then spent some time with Megawatt on his newly-respecced level 65 resto druid.  He'd been levelling with his wife who plays a holy priest, so he has pretty much no healing gear right now.  I forsee many instance runs this week.  I spent a happy half an hour or so going over the theories and practices of healing as a resto druid (lifebloom, lifebloom, lifebloom, rejuv, regrowth, lifebloom, repeat until sick). 

Once he gets this character to 70, he'll join me and a few of our other friends in having the "Holy Trio" of characters - a tank, a DPS and a healer.

I've mentioned before, but I really love having the three characters.  It also works incredibly well when we want to do an instance, because we can fill in those three roles between us and then take pretty much anyone for the other two spots.  Admosmori also has a healer and is working on a tank, and so are a few of my other friends.  Admittedly, sometimes it leads to alt-itis where the individual characters suffer because you're spreading the time too thin, but I think around 3 is the magic number. 

Of course, I'm aiming to get my currently-63 warlock up to 70 at some point soonish, just because I want to rock the raiding damage meters, but we won't talk about that right now.