3.1 Fears laid to rest?
There certainly was rustling among The Trees prior to 3.1, as a howling wind swept across the WOW landscape bringing with it the scariest of all beasts… change! The horror! Or was it?
The biggest fears of PVE Resto Druids for 3.1 were probably the nerf to spirit based mana regen and the revamping of Lifebloom. Let’s look at them one at a time.
People were really nervous about the spirit based mana nerf. I mean, really nervous. I can see why. We’ve been programmed forever to know that spirit is our bread and butter. We stack it over everything else, and we do it for two reasons. The primary reason to stack spirit for resto druids is mana regeneration. Our mana regeneration mechanic is based heavily upon the amount of spirit on our gear. Less spirit = slower mana regen. We can’t heal if we can’t heal (sorry, that was apparently me channeling Yogi Berra). While spirit also gives us a spell power bonus when in tree form, this bonus was not affected at all by the 3.1 changes to spirit, so the alarm was completely based upon fears over mana regen.
Now, based upon my own experience and reports I’ve seen elsewhere, the spirit based mana regen nerf in 3.1 was not the horror show anticipated by many. In fact, for druids, I would venture to guess that it has hardly been noticed at all in many situations. The developers were mostly intending to curtail healers’ ability to hold back on casting to dip into the fast mana regen rate that kicks in once one has not cast for 5 seconds or longer, and said as much. Druids didn’t rely on this mechanic, generally speaking, during their regular casting cycle. We are pretty much constantly casting. If you don’t believe me, run Recount for a raid night and take a look at the activity report. I am at the top of that report about 90% of the time, and don’t think I’ve ever seen myself out of the top 3. I think that the druids who get hit hardest by this nerf will be the ones who are reckless in casting through a long, difficult boss fight. If you run oom, use a potion, run oom, innervate yourself, and run oom, you can pretty much consider yourself out for the rest of the fight. Because it’s the regen when you are not casting that has changed so drastically in this patch.
In addition, your Innervate won’t act like dad’s gas card any more, filling your tank from empty to full at no cost to you. You’ll either need to buff that spell with a glyphto add some oomph, manage your mana better, or just plain run out.
The upshot of this is that for most pre-Ulduar encounters, which are widely recognized to be pretty non-taxing generally, there shouldn’t be much recognizable difference at all for geared players. I’m wondering, and haven’t seen any information yet, as to whether this is the case for players who are not raiding and aren’t rocking full epics, so if any of those players read this and want to comment, I’d love to know what your experience is with the spirit changes post-patch.
Speaking for myself, the biggest impacts (in fact, the only impacts) I’ve seen from the mana changes are in the amount of mana returned by my own Innervate, and in the snail’s pace of mana regen between pulls. But it has not at all been a concern to me in an “omg I feel like I should cast now but I’m not sure I won’t need the mana more down the road” kind of way. Instead, I’m just trying to stay cognizant of the HPS and throughput of my spells and make good choices along the way. I’ve raided 2 nights in 25 Naxx, 1 night in 10 Ulduar, and 1 night in 25 Ulduar and have yet to find myself below about 40% mana.
The other big change that we were dreading, of course, was the doubling of the mana cost of Lifebloom. This change had me very nervous going into 3.1, as I’m sure was the case for many another druid out there. I was so worried about this, in fact, that my first couple of healing attempts were pretty crappy, as I wobbled around trying to decide whether or not to cast it at all. In the end, though, I think that this was a very manageable change for most druids.
While the mana cost for casting doubled, making rolling Lifebloom on more than one tanks for anything but a short period of time too costly to sustain, I think that many of us might welcome this change and the relief of not having it be an expectation for us. Does anyone else remember trying to roll on 3 or even 4 targets in BC? /shudder! That was just NO WAY to live! We are still able to roll on a target quite comfortably in my experience, with the added bonus that the bloom of this stack can be a ginormous heal (timing issues aside). In my opinion, the added bloom healing, along with other benefits such as the increases to nourish and nourish crits, have kept us very competitive. If anything, there is a greater challenge on our healing leads, who must be more creative in their healing assignments now that they can’t count on us to keep a rolling buffer on multiple tanks.
Again, I think that there is a possibility that lesser geared or lower level druids are hit harder by this change than raiding druids who are geared to the teeth are. Isn’t that always the case? I haven’t yet seen them crying out for mercy, but I am wondering how they are fairing out there in the trenches.
I’m also sure that there will be druids out there who disagree with me about the impact of these nerfs. To them I would say this. If you are struggling, try to analyze things that might help you to lessen the impact of the changes on your healing. Consider carefully your talents, gems, glyphs, enchants, and spell rotations. Experiment. Do not be afraid to make changes. Do not be afraid of trying strategies that will fail. While Blizzard may have “broken” your personal healing set up of all wonderful greatness, they have not broken your class. There are ways that you can adapt and make this manageable for yourself, you just have to be willing to seek them out, to educate yourself, to try new things, and to move on. Perhaps the game is fun when you are lolhealing your way through with one eye on the screen and paring your fingernails. Personally, I think the funnest things about the game are learning to overcome challenges. Whether challenges come to you in visual, pixelated forms such as raid bosses, or in the form of class mechanics that you must dissect and relearn to fully realize your highest potential, challenges are fun! The challenges to druid healing presented by patch 3.1 are far from insurmountable. If you’re not enjoying them, if you don’t enjoy being challenged, I suggest you try something more along the lines of tic tac toe.
There are 10 Comments to "3.1 Fears laid to rest?"
From my experience so far in Ulduar, there is a TON of raid damage flying around on just about every boss in the zone. To date, that only time that I’ve felt mana constrained at all is the night I forgot to change out of my moonkin gear while raiding. I would have to agree with you that so far t the changes to mana don’t seem to be as catastrophic as we were all predicting going into the patch. So far, I’ve been pleased with my output. I do utilize my innervate for myself more than I did pre-3.1, and I do chug a pot more than I used to, but I have yet to be smack flat out of mana after any of our encounters. =)
p.s. Your picture made me giggle!
Beruthiel’s last blog post..3.1 – Thoughts on the First Week Post Patch
sounds like your experiences with 3.1 are pretty much on par with mine, Ber. Not so much to worry about, after all. Now, of course, I get nervous that Blizz will catch onto that fact and look for other ways to nerf us! lol!
I just wrote a big ramble about Priests being nerfed in a sideways kinda way…but then realized that I was rambling and this wasn’t a Priest blog. So:
Seen any of that Black Jelly yet?
lol Hummy let me know if you need me to make some black jelly for you!
Level 73 Druid here.
No mana problems in Utgarde Keep but everyone in my party was very strong.
Getting the snowpups as a Boomkin (dual spec rox) my mana got pretty low as I was kinda reckless around the den mothers.
But, no complaints at all or any new fears that my healing experiences will suffer from the current patch.
scare, thanks so much for giving some feedback. It’s really encouraging for me to hear from you that at your level you’re not having trouble healing, either!
I have raided two nights in Ulduar10 (wipefest but still) and once in Naxx10 (not cleared, but oh well) since the patch changes. I admit I was a bit sceptic and nervous I suppose about the regen changes, but after these runs I don’t feel the regen has impacted me. Like you said yourself, I barely find myself with little activity but am in fact pretty much non-stop casting.
As for Lifebloom, I pretty much only used it during Loatheb during these raids. Sadly I can’t show you a wws report, but throughout the entire raid the other resto druid in our group was favoring Lifebloom. It was his #1 heal. As far I was able to keep track, he always had it stacked at 3. His overhealing done with it was a staggering 78-80%. It may be worhty to mention this was an alt and he might’ve been unaware of recent resto druid changes, but even so … I think that’s quite a hefty amount of OH.
With the Innervate glyph I regen about 70-75% of my mana unbuffed. Before, I used to have trouble making sure none of the Innervate ticks were wasted. That’s a clear difference. Frankly though, the only real issue I have with this is how long it takes to regen after switching between my dual specs and having to actually drink inbetween deaths/wipes.
Keldara, that’s some great feedback. Did you always hold back so much on Lifebloom, or is that new for you? I was holding back at first but realized I didn’t need to, so long as I wasn’t trying to roll on more than one tank, and now use it pretty much like I always did, except I now make a decision on whether to roll or bloom based on the tank’s level of damage, whereas in the past for me it was just roll, roll, roll.
I have definitely had to change my style of healing. I run mostly heroics and PvP (half blues, half epics) with 2-pc tier LB bonus. I used to throw around lifeblooms without concern… and virtually never used regrowth, just instant cast heals. Now I almost always start out a pull with regrowth on the tank, followed by rejuv, and sparingly applying lifebloom being sure to never roll a 3-stack before it runs out. Keeping a regrowth hot on the tank makes up pretty well to break the rolling 3 LB habit. It’s not terrible but it’s not as much fun as it was.
Interesting, Mental. I wonder if things won’t look up for you as you replace more of your blues with epics. Also, have you looked at your gems, enchants, talents? Perhaps you might find more mana buffing out there that will help you to get back into the rhythm that you found more enjoyable before the patch?