Resto Druids haven’t received a whole lot of attention in the last Mists builds, but this most recent one sure changes that. A number of Druids have been concerned that with all the ‘maintenance’ spells we need to cast, we will be GCD capped and it will making healing well difficult. Blizzard seems to have answered, by increasing the duration of both Lifebloom and Harmony considerably. Full build notes can be found on Wowhead. I’ve also posted a slightly abridged version of my feedback on the beta forums.
Lifebloom
Lifebloom: Heals the target for 109315*1 over 15 sec. When Lifebloom expires or is dispelled, the target is instantly healed for ((8150 + $SPN * 0.752) *). This effect can stack up to 3 times on the same target. Duration refreshed each time you cast Healing Touch, Nourish, or Regrowth on the target. Lifebloom can be active only on one target at a time.
Lifebloom will now last 15 seconds, up from 10. The amount of healing per tick should not change any (it now lasts 33% longer and heals for 33% more). At first I was worried about the PVP ramifications of this, but that concern was quickly assuaged when I saw the changes made to the new glyph introduced.
Glyph of Blooming: Increases the bloom heal of your Lifebloom when it expires by 50%, but its duration is reduced by 5 sec and your Healing Touch, Nourish, and Regrowth abilities no longer refresh the duration of Lifebloom.
Not only does this take care of the too-long duration of Lifebloom for PVP, it also got a nice buff by now increasing the amount of the bloom by 50%, rather than 20%.
So, I’m generally happy with the increased duration of Lifebloom. I really didn’t have much of a problem keeping it up at 10 seconds, but the extra time will give raid healing druids a bit more breathing room. This, combined with the older change of having all 3 applications transfer when you change your target make Lifebloom much less cumbersome to use. These are nice quality of life improvements.
Harmony
Mastery: Harmony: Your direct healing is increased by an additional 0% and casting your direct healing spells grants you an additional 0% bonus to periodic healing for 20 sec.
Harmony now lasts 20 seconds, up from 10. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not too thrilled about this change. There are a few reasons for this.
- I don’t understand people’s aversion to using single target spells with a cast time (Nourish, Regrowth, Healing Touch). Yes, Druids are HoT-based, but in my opinion, that doesn’t mean that we should only be casting HoTs. Variety makes things interesting.
- Since Harmony can now be kept up 100% of the time using only Swiftmend it’s going to increase the number of players who think its appropriate to cast nothing but Rejuv in between Swiftmend and Wild Growth cooldowns.
- I really enjoy the mini-game of keeping Harmony and Lifebloom active as close to 100% of the time as possible. I like having to work to make my healing as powerful as possible and plan properly to ensure it is. With 15 seconds on Lifebloom and 20 on Harmony, that’s not going to be much of a challenge.
Honestly, I think that having Harmony be easily sustainable by only casting Swiftmend (which we want to cast close to every cooldown because of all the healing Efflorescence does anyway) trivializes the entire mechanic of having to keep it active. I thought the reason for the 10 second duration was to ensure we cast a direct heal every once in a while, but that no longer applies. They may as well just go all the way and make our Mastery something that is active all the time, like it is for every other class.
Wild Mushrooms
Wild Mushroom: Bloom: Grow a magical mushroom with 3 health at the target location. After 6 sec, the mushroom will become invisible. When triggered by the Druid, all mushrooms will bloom healing all allies within 8 yards for 6074 to 7348. Only 5 mushrooms can be placed at one time.
You can now place 5 mushrooms, up from 3. The range on the heal has been reduced to 8 yards, down from 12. I don’t like the whole concept of Mushrooms as a heal to begin with. I’m not sure what problem these changes are attempting to solve, but it looks like it’s a step in the entirely wrong direction. 5 mushrooms?! When will we ever have time to place 5 mushrooms? That means seven clicks (or button presses) and 5 GCDs in order to set up and then activate the heal. The range reduction is an extra kick to the shins. None of the problems with Wild Mushrooms as a heal have been addressed:
- it takes too long to set them up
- if the raid moves, the mushrooms you’ve set up become useless
- having to target the ground to place them is cumbersome
- the range is (once again) small
At this rate, I don’t see this spell getting a lot of use aside from the Mushrooms we can set up pre-pull. I’ve heard people suggest that we don’t have to use all 5 mushrooms, we could only place 1, or 3, but I don’t put any stock in this. Players want to optimize, they don’t want to cast something that is less powerful than it could be. The days of downranking spells are long over.
Since I don’t want to just complain and not offer any alternatives, here are some of my ideas for fixing the spell.
Option 1:
Grow a magical mushroom on the target player. When triggered by the Druid, all mushrooms will bloom healing all allies within 10 yards for 6074 to 7348. Only 3 mushrooms can be placed at one time.
This would solve all of the problems I have with the spell. Casting the mushrooms on players would solve the issue of awkward ground targeting. I use VuhDo, I like to be able to cast my heals by clicking on raid frames. It also solves the problem of player movement quite nicely. A mushroom on the ground is likely to heal no one if players move. A mushroom on a person will always heal at least one even if they are a dope who goes and stands in a corner by themselves.
Option 2:
Grow a magical mushroom at the target location. After 6 sec, the mushroom will become invisible. When triggered by the Druid, the mushroom will bloom healing all allies within 8 yards for 18022 to 22044. Only 1 mushroom can be placed at one time. 3 second cast time.
This isn’t a perfect solution, but i think it would be an improvement. I’d find having to hard cast 1 mushroom much less cumbersome than having to place 5. The downside would be that you couldn’t spread them out, but spreading them out makes them even more awkward to use anyway and reduces the amount the people in range will be healed.
Tier 14
The new tier set name and bonuses have also been released in the new patch.
Vestments of the Eternal Blossom
2 pieces: Reduces the mana cost of your Rejuvenation spell by 10%.
4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Swiftmend spell by 3 sec.
First, pretty name! The 2-set isn’t an exciting bonus, but I’m sure it will be appreciated in the first raid tier as we’re having mana struggles and getting used to the new mana model. The 4-set is awesome. This looks like a significant increase to our healing output with all the extra Efflorescence healing we’ll be able to do. The only downside is that it will hurt to break this bonus when tier 15 rolls around.
What do you think of the latest changes?
