In case you didn't see it, Val'anyr is getting a nice jump in stats.Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings: This item's stats and level have been increased to match the power level of healer weapons coming from the Coliseum 25-person normal difficulty instance. In addition, each time Val'anyr is equipped, Blessing of Ancient Kings will be placed on a 45-second cooldown before it can occur.
Now, I've been to the healer forums, and there's an interesting thread there all about Val'anyr. It's a long-standing thread, having been started from before we even knew what its stats were, but jumping to the end brings forward some interesting information, some I didn't even know about while I sat there dreaming the impossible dream of owning something orange and beautiful. Check out what some forum-goers had to say:
A theoretical maximum 4% increase (that will in reality be much, much less) on a Legendary item is simply unacceptable, if that is the only "selling point" of the item.
And I will state again, for emphasis, that Val'anyr isn't bad.... It's just not legendary. If this was a drop off of Yogg or Algalon, I would probably wet myself over it. However, as a legendary, it truly fails.
How nice it would have been to have this discussion with the devs before people started getting shards. The period of silence when we ALREADY KNEW the proc ages ago, when people already had concerns, before people started getting shards, would have been a much better time to open this up for discussion.
-Sopheea, Suramar
ive tested this and my lifeboom "blooms" are not adding to the shield or even refreshing its duration. Lifebloom "bloom" give NOTHING along with full overhealing HoTs. It makes the weapon very lackluster for druids.
-Smittens, Anetheron
Renew itself is not putting up a shield at the start of the HoT. Fully overhealing ticks aren't putting up a shield, but ticks that partially heal are shielding for the full value of the tick (heal_amount*0.15).
-Ferrante, Kel'thuzad
What truly makes the thread, and the title of this post, is the following conversation:
Hell, if given the choice between this Mace and a Toaster Oven I would go with the Toaster Oven...
-Zowi, Bonechewer
If it was a Toaster Oven from Blizzard, chances are it wouldn't actually toast. When you read the product manuals that say that the Toaster Oven only heats up to slightly above room temperature, and ask Blizzard, "Are you sure this thing will actually toast?" they will tell you, "Don't worry, trust us... It will toast."
When you finally get your shiny new toaster oven and try it out, you'll contact them to let them know your Toaster Oven isn't working, and they'll ignore you for 3 months. Then they'll announce that internal testing has shown that the Toaster Oven was not putting out enough heat, so they have raised the temperature by 40%, but to compensate, they had to make the Toaster Oven smaller, so now you cannot fit a piece of bread in it.
Luckily, by the time that happens, you will most likely have bought yourself a different Toaster Oven at Wal-Mart, and will be enjoying delicious toast.
-Sopheea, Suramar
It seems a lot like Blizzard has a really tough time with their healers. Underpowered Legendaries (given in the middle of an expansion, not at the end) with wonky procs that don't work like they should, tier bonuses that pigeon-hole casters and constant reworkings of spells give this feeling of displacement. I want to be effective. I want to understand my class. I want to understand my gear and my spells, but the tools keep changing and the directions are misleading. My instruction manual's got half its pages torn out and they keep sending me amended versions.
Lifebloom's all mixed up with no place to go. Many Druids have stopped using it almost entirely except for OOC mana returns and in the rare, rare event of Main Tank assignment. Rejuvenation is the spell of the day and with T8(.5) bonus it's incredibly handy and spammable.
Since I started healing less with Lifebloom, started relying less on the bloom, and just have the spell down to two boss fights exclusively (using it's burst with predictable raid damage only) my effective heals shot up.
-Nastia, Aggramar
Lifebloom has been dead since the ridiculous 'rebate' change. it's less than 10% of my overall healing done in a raid situation, and only going down. Viva la Rejuvenation.
-Kahmun, Fenris
Before I had been worried about Nourish, but now I'm not so sure I shouldn't be worried about Rejuvenation instead. It's an odd feeling to think that Blizzard doesn't know how to handle its own creations, but these shenanigans can't keep me from wondering what will happen next.
16 comments:
The rejuv nerf is coming. They don't like it when we use one of our spells a whole lot!
the problem with trusting the forums is that everyone just comes there to say bad things about Blizzard. Most people on the forums are there because they aren't in game, so they tend to be the ones who are unhappy about something... and so you aren't going to see many "I <3 Blizzard, please make more toaster ovens" threads.
I wasn't overly impressed with Val'anyr back when its stats were first announced, so I didn't cry at all when our GL's announced our healing shammy would be the first recipient. This buffing helps a little, but still, it doesnt change the sights I have set on Rapture, the staff that drops off Iron Council-25. :)
But my biggest concern with the Ulduar gear is the drop in levels of spirit it has. Blizz has chosen to go after our regen by putting less Spirit in our gear, which completely sucks. Any spellpower gains I have gotten have been balanced by losses to my mana regen. So, while I have some Ulduar gear, I am watching anything that drops with a high degree of suspicion and my Naxx gear with the better regen is kept quite handy.
My guess is that Rejuv will indeed be getting some kind of nerf before too long. I also had a crazy dream that in order to try and get back at us healers that Blizz will do something like double or triple the amount of aggro generated through overhealing or something to the effect of threat actually becoming an issue for us. Crazy, I know.
I must agree with the Lifebloom comments. Even though I don't heal terribly often, and I don't have a single piece of T8 in my Resto set, I only find myself casting it now if I'm assigned to main tank heal or if I'm terribly bored and know I have more mana than I'll need. This basically boils down to only using it on T7 content and below, and not using it at all on progression content.
What a change from the TBC healing days when 90% of my time was spent refreshing Lifebloom stacks. I'm using Rejuvenation and Wild Growth almost exclusively now.
Are these lifebloom comments and whatnot in respect to hardmodes? Or just general content, farmed Ulduar/learning normal modes? I've found personally that rolling lifeblooms on one tank during hardmodes (like Thorim or Hodir, I heard from another resto who rolls them on Council) is, while not something I'd totally rely on and don't cry if it blooms, definitely helpful for the other healers who are healing the tank. Hodir25 with 3 healers, Lifebloom seemed useful. To me at least. =o
@Aeriovre - as far as I've heard, most top guilds use their restos for raid healing, especially during hardmodes. Rejuvenation on so many people, plus WG, Swiftmend and the rare nourish make restos king in this respect. I use Lifebloom a lot, but in my guild where there are three or four tree druids, I'm more often assigned on the main tank, and never during hardmodes.
I honestly feel that the only way they can make this game a challenge is to constantly tax healers. Instead of finding ways to make us use everything we have, they put restrictions on it, which only work until we find a way to progress with them in place. SO they resort to restricting even more. It's not just priests and druids with their spirit. It's every healer. I think the way they try to force us to accept certain stats at the expense of other just to get new gear is a lack of creativity on their part.
The really sad part is, I could find a way to heal with a band-aid, some gum, and a popsicle stick. What does that say?
@Vey - you're really good at making splints, imo. ;P
Thanks for the response, Bell. I asked because, well. When we did Hodir25 hard mode, we dropped down to 3 healers ,a shaman, myself, and a priest. At least initially, I had gotten a 3stack up there but during the craziness of Frozen Blows and whatnot, I lost sight of watching those timers. I don't know how often I refreshed Lifebloom after that point, but later that night I was talked to about the lack of use. (I started healing seriously when Wrath came out so never got into the prime "LB is King" mentality, and really never gave it much of a shot after I learned about the nerf to its mana.) If I'm in the right about not using it, I'd like to turn and have evidence proving so (aside from an, Oopsie on my part). Do you have any links to places you find this information? I'll be hitting up Elitest Jerks and possibly MMO forums and just shooting out some questions for those hardcore, hardmode healing druids out there.
@Aerivore - The best I have is this response given about "How would you go about healing Hard-mode Hodir in 25 man" give to an applicant of my server's top Alliance-side raiding guild. His response was:
"From a healer's point of view the relatively speedy nature of this encounter works to reduce endurance length mana issues so we can concentrate on picking up the slack of the absent healers by healing hard and fast. I would make sure There were the absolute maximum number of rejuvenations out of the raid before frozen blows. Frozen blows is the real issue here so as soon as it hits I would use barkskin (if its up) to reduce my own damage and hit WG > swiftmend if there is anyone in danger (considering tank first) and then utilizing nourish to get up those most in danger as fast as possible. After frozen blows I make sure everyone is topped and re-rejuv the tank. While hotting raid with rejuv I would throw out LB whenever clearcasting was up. Also I would make sure to be away from the ranged DPS so as not to take the storm cloud bonus off them. The only time I would go near them is if I was the buff giver at the time. There should literally not be a single moment of this encounter when I am not casting."
-Thedoctorr, Dark Iron
Other healers, not just druids, of the same raiding level have all agreed this is the best strategy. Lifebloom in these instances is just an OOC proc use, for gaining some mana back. Other heals are more powerful, much better on timing, are subject to Swiftmend and aren't as mana-intensive.
Thanks again, Bell. I found a few more links on your site, to the WoW forum thread and your own topic on Lifebloom 3.1 and its comments I'll be sifting through. I'll try to get a hold of the other druid I run with (who, while not pro lifebloom himself, still feels it's useful on, say, Thorim or Hodir or whenever we're cutting our healing count and upping the DPS). Thanks a ton for your responses.
@ Bell- the best!
@ Aerivore- Now, granted, I'm not doing hard modes, but keeping a rolling lifebloom and never letting it bloom, actually seems like a giant waste of mana. The whole point of the LB design now is to let it bloom. Otherwise you'll go oom trying to keep the stacks up.
@Samantha - Rolling Lifeblooms can be manageable and a great heal IF:
1) You are rolling them on one target.
2) You are not doing much else but keeping HoTs up on that one target, plus a swiftmend or Nourish here and there.
3) Manage OOC procs.
Basically, rolling Lifeblooms is totally doable so long as you're assigned to the main tank. I do it all the time, but raid healing is a no-go.
@Samantha: 'course, the bloom is so nice. I love seeing 22k crits on my paladin tank. ^^ But, there are specific instances where it can be nice. I just wanted to know if people were still using it at all, ever, in a rolling situation. There are times when we were told to do so, other times I did it of my own accord because I knew my mana was fine. But I love seeing responses. =D
I agree that Rejuv is king now, with it being fat too cheap for what it returns, even more so now I have both the idol and spark of hope, spamming it on every member during frozen blows and tantrum makes healing those quick AOE situations so much easier. Looking at my recount its like my HoTs were having a birthday party and lifebloom wasn't invited, only gatecrashing right at the bottom of the table when it found out what was going on.
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