A full-blown rant was bound to come from this blog eventually
If you don't know exactly what's going on for resto druids on the PTR, I humbly request you head on over to Phaelia's write-up about the Lifebloom nerf. Otherwise, this won't make any sense to you why I am so very, very...disappointed and even a tad angry about what's been happening.
Read it? Good.
This..."fix." Is it even a fix? What are they trying to "fix" with this? What is so broken? Nerfing our heals?! Not only our heals, but the one main heal which comprises upwards of 80% of our healing in end-game? Because of what? Because druids don't sit still long enough for you to hit them with your mace of inflated epeen? And their heals keep ticking while they run away?
Let me explain to you people who don't know.
I am frickin' squishy. If I stand still, I am dead. Five seconds, ten seconds. If I don't get the hell out of dodge, then I am dead and useless. Why else would resto druids be so horribly dead last in 5v5's? We can't mitigate that much damage and we cannot get away.
So, we're being nerfed in 2's and 3's, we're going to be completely wiped off the face of Azeroth in 5's, and, as Hokuto said in the comments on Phaelia's nerf post:
I’d have to pump my 1764 healing to around to 2000 to get my old LB back, source of 80% of my healing made. So I’d have to fly from my guild’s 5/6 3/4 straight to Illidan for that. How easy is that?
Oh, yes, that seems perfectly reasonable, doesn't it?
Some of you may be tempted to say "l2play." Learn to play what exactly? There's a difference between a new game mechanic and a painful, skill-breaking nerf. There is such a reduction in healing as to make resto druids almost unviable. Yes, we can still heal. But as our +healing goes up, the amount Lifebloom takes advantage of goes down. How does this even make sense?
It's probably because of arena. I, personally, love arena, win or lose. I only recently started playing with an arms warr; before I was playing with a prot pally in healing gear, or a feral druid, or an enh shammy. When I play with my arms warr, it's a bit more "serious." He's been patiently training me on what to do and when and how to survive without the costly respeccing out of tree-form pve healing (and no, I don't use tree form in arenas). I don't pretend to know what other healers have to do. I'm not here to make their jobs seem easier. But I know this:
To survive in arenas, I have to know when I can use my different CC's, who I have cycloned recently, who my teammate is hitting, who is healing. I have to be aware that if I cyclone someone right before my warr is going to get off a full-rage execute crit, I can effectively end the match in the other side's favor. I have to figure out if the hunter is BM before I use my nature's grasp, I have to keep both abolish poison and heals up, and I have to know when I can blow my Nature's Swiftness + Healing Touch macro. I have to make sure that while I'm kiting around pillars (something I am not good at yet) my partner is not dying at the same time. I have to know bear form is sometimes necessary but it eats a lot of mana that I don't have the spirit to make up for. I have to hit Shadowmeld (or kitty+prowl for tauren) as soon as I can get out of combat to detarget. Hibernate pets. Faerie Fire rogues. Moonfire and Insect Swarm if I can. Decurse the 'lock curses. Mana burn oshi-bear form. Judgement of Justice keeps me from running away; have to go bear. And in bear I can't heal.
I'm not saying anyone has less to do in arena. I'm not ever going to suggest a good lock will lol-dot-fear. No way. It takes time and patience to get good. I /cry every time before I duel Button, but I do it anyway and each time I live a little bit longer (Button is my GL and a very talented arms warrior). I still need a rogue to duel consistently. But what I'm suggestng is this:
Resto druid is good in 2v2's but it is not lol-hot-run. It requires skill and micro-management. And because some people have mastered this (I do not include myself in their number and I've fought enough resto druids to know it's not that easy for everyone, and that you can be really bad at it) it is now necessary for the QQ on the forums to be embraced? What happened to "less QQ more pewpew"? How about we all work on ways to kill me instead of whining you can't do it right away?
I duelled a rogue last night. I had my pvp gear on, waited for the kidney shot, activated my insignia and nature's grasped him in place, healing myself, keeping abolish poison up, avoiding mobs (this was easy, we were outside Onyxia's lair so my aggro range was small) and running back around to stay in the duel zone, bear bash (I have no feral charge or feral talents of any kind), heal, moonfire, insect swarm. Rinse, repeat. At the end of the match, he told me my tactic was "cheap." As if I was supposed to stand around and let him hit me. What? Why?! That's completely counter-productive to winning. And, you know, survival. At the end he had dealt about 3.5x my health. That's how long it had taken me to kill him. I can bet he would have had as much trouble with a discipline priest or for goodness sakes a resto shaman. He just got thrashed in the face by a holy paladin before we duelled. He wasn't a bad rogue, and he did admit to having trouble in duelling-pvp situations. But the fact that he called me "cheap" simply because I used my class to the best of my knowledge and abilities left a sour taste in my mouth. It was one step away from "QQ nurf dr00ds /whine."
The worst thing is other druids are supporting this! I don't understand it! It hurts them too. Feral druids embittered by their difficulty in arena standings are actually advocating the nerf. I don't understand it. A nerf for restos != a buff for ferals. It's a nerf for you too. Did you forget you were a hybrid? That being able to utilize all your abilities may be able to help you?
I have almost five full sets of gear. PvE healing, PvP healing, Tank, Cat and Boomkin. I'm missing pieces here and there, but I want to be able to fill any role I'm asked to. I don't want a nerf for ferals or boomkins or restos. I like my class and all aspects of this class. Why must we have all this in-fighting?
/deepbreath
I apologize. I had to get that off my chest. Please direct any and all of my misconceptions and fallacies and passion-induced idiocy into the comment box.
Some of you may be tempted to say "l2play." Learn to play what exactly? There's a difference between a new game mechanic and a painful, skill-breaking nerf. There is such a reduction in healing as to make resto druids almost unviable. Yes, we can still heal. But as our +healing goes up, the amount Lifebloom takes advantage of goes down. How does this even make sense?
It's probably because of arena. I, personally, love arena, win or lose. I only recently started playing with an arms warr; before I was playing with a prot pally in healing gear, or a feral druid, or an enh shammy. When I play with my arms warr, it's a bit more "serious." He's been patiently training me on what to do and when and how to survive without the costly respeccing out of tree-form pve healing (and no, I don't use tree form in arenas). I don't pretend to know what other healers have to do. I'm not here to make their jobs seem easier. But I know this:
To survive in arenas, I have to know when I can use my different CC's, who I have cycloned recently, who my teammate is hitting, who is healing. I have to be aware that if I cyclone someone right before my warr is going to get off a full-rage execute crit, I can effectively end the match in the other side's favor. I have to figure out if the hunter is BM before I use my nature's grasp, I have to keep both abolish poison and heals up, and I have to know when I can blow my Nature's Swiftness + Healing Touch macro. I have to make sure that while I'm kiting around pillars (something I am not good at yet) my partner is not dying at the same time. I have to know bear form is sometimes necessary but it eats a lot of mana that I don't have the spirit to make up for. I have to hit Shadowmeld (or kitty+prowl for tauren) as soon as I can get out of combat to detarget. Hibernate pets. Faerie Fire rogues. Moonfire and Insect Swarm if I can. Decurse the 'lock curses. Mana burn oshi-bear form. Judgement of Justice keeps me from running away; have to go bear. And in bear I can't heal.
I'm not saying anyone has less to do in arena. I'm not ever going to suggest a good lock will lol-dot-fear. No way. It takes time and patience to get good. I /cry every time before I duel Button, but I do it anyway and each time I live a little bit longer (Button is my GL and a very talented arms warrior). I still need a rogue to duel consistently. But what I'm suggestng is this:
Resto druid is good in 2v2's but it is not lol-hot-run. It requires skill and micro-management. And because some people have mastered this (I do not include myself in their number and I've fought enough resto druids to know it's not that easy for everyone, and that you can be really bad at it) it is now necessary for the QQ on the forums to be embraced? What happened to "less QQ more pewpew"? How about we all work on ways to kill me instead of whining you can't do it right away?
I duelled a rogue last night. I had my pvp gear on, waited for the kidney shot, activated my insignia and nature's grasped him in place, healing myself, keeping abolish poison up, avoiding mobs (this was easy, we were outside Onyxia's lair so my aggro range was small) and running back around to stay in the duel zone, bear bash (I have no feral charge or feral talents of any kind), heal, moonfire, insect swarm. Rinse, repeat. At the end of the match, he told me my tactic was "cheap." As if I was supposed to stand around and let him hit me. What? Why?! That's completely counter-productive to winning. And, you know, survival. At the end he had dealt about 3.5x my health. That's how long it had taken me to kill him. I can bet he would have had as much trouble with a discipline priest or for goodness sakes a resto shaman. He just got thrashed in the face by a holy paladin before we duelled. He wasn't a bad rogue, and he did admit to having trouble in duelling-pvp situations. But the fact that he called me "cheap" simply because I used my class to the best of my knowledge and abilities left a sour taste in my mouth. It was one step away from "QQ nurf dr00ds /whine."
The worst thing is other druids are supporting this! I don't understand it! It hurts them too. Feral druids embittered by their difficulty in arena standings are actually advocating the nerf. I don't understand it. A nerf for restos != a buff for ferals. It's a nerf for you too. Did you forget you were a hybrid? That being able to utilize all your abilities may be able to help you?
I have almost five full sets of gear. PvE healing, PvP healing, Tank, Cat and Boomkin. I'm missing pieces here and there, but I want to be able to fill any role I'm asked to. I don't want a nerf for ferals or boomkins or restos. I like my class and all aspects of this class. Why must we have all this in-fighting?
/deepbreath
I apologize. I had to get that off my chest. Please direct any and all of my misconceptions and fallacies and passion-induced idiocy into the comment box.
13 comments:
I agree with that 100%, all of it. Speaking as someone who is not a druid, this is an annoying, maddening, NONSENSICAL change. RARGH.
Nerf whiners, IMO.
The more I read about this, the more angry I get. I'm essentially being nerfed back to the healing level I was at on my first or second Kara run.
And it's not like Druids can afford to lose any more raid utility in PvE.
Bad, bad call.
Nerfs mainly come up in the game because terrible people come up with excuses instead of answers.
Just to make sure I'm reading correctly, the ticks are for less but the bloom is enhanced?
PVP likes this because of the dispel factor? Is that right?
If the bloom is enhanced, that means more Global Threat for the tank so DPS can pewpew harder right?
XD Half full, mage, half full.
Yes, the bloom would give the tank extra threat, but in raiding, it's a pretty neglegable amount. As well, resto druids usually don't have blooming as part of their rotation. They try to keep lifebloom "rolling", so their targets never lose the 3stack.
so druids need to start a bloom rotation? I know that something like that takes thought, but still, let it bloom.
@ tego - lawl. Really, that's funny. The point of a druid is to normalize a tank's health; to mitigate some of the damage they're taking from a boss with constantly ticking HoTs. If you let a Lifebloom bloom, your HoT vanishes, and the tank starts taking more damage while you build your HoT back up. And a stack of 3 blooms for as much as a stack of 1; using the mana to bloom a stack of 3 is wasteful and only stacking one is too little, too late.
Note: My comments in no way support the nerf. I merely want to explain to you the "other side".
The reason so many people complained and why your friend called you "cheap" was that it is just so frustrating fighting a good Resto/Feral.
You go from one moment of being CC'ed to the next moment of being CC'ed. No class in Arena shuts me down as well.
You finally come out of the rotation and your partner is dead, and you are left to deal with an angry Arms Warrior.
You want to scream or punch your computer. So you go to forums and rant and QQ.
For all the "it's just on the PTR, it might change", I find that very rarely to be the case.
I hope my Druids can adjust to this without me having to splat too many times. (Prot Paladin, but Heal in Arena)
@honors code - I understand the frustration, but you know what's funny? This actually in some ways helps us in Arena. They increased the amount of heal in the bloom, supposedly to counteract the less heal in the ticks. Bloom is not used in PvE so it's a huge nerf; in PvP though, we get bloom from purges, spell steals, and just running away in bear form without refreshing the stack.
We can possibly become even more problematic in arenas with this change.
You see the problem?
@bell
Sounds like the Law of Unintened Consequences.
I've got to believe that the decision makers at Blizzard can't be so out of touch to try to nerf Druids in PVP, but end up nerfing Druids in PVE and buffing then for PVP.
@honors code - I'd like to think that too, but that brief foray into stamina-less feral gear (though thankfully reversed) has me wondering if Blizzard even understands the class they created. Oo It scares me.
Look at the changes proposed for warlock's Life Tap, where in PVE it will get worse and worse the better the warlock's gear is. The changes do not pass the laugh test.
I can only hope they realize how stupid they are before 2.4 hits.
Don't forget that when a DK removes lifebloom, it DOESN'T trigger the bloom effect...
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