Healing TheoryFollow

It was actually already discussed somewhat in this thread.

Long and the short of it, it makes absolutely no difference to raid healing, because you're getting back the extra mana on the bloom. So you're friend is definitely mistaken there.

The reason to keep a rolling stack of 3 lifeblooms on someone is that the mana cost of applying lifebloom is the same, no matter how many stacks you already have on. If you already have two or three stacks on a person though, the HoT portion of the healing you're getting out of it is (almost) triple the amount you get from casting a lifebloom on someone with no stacks on them.

You're vastly increasing (until 3.1) your healing/mana by keeping it at three stacks.

From what I've heard from my buddy who is our main resto healer Lifebloom has been nerfed in the mana cost, but the final bloom amount has gone up quite a bit.

Don't take this info to heart because it was heresay, but he mentioned that he crit a 3 stack bloom for about 14k. If this is true, well hell yes that makes planning out your blooms amazing healing tactics, especially on fights like loatheb or malygos where you know damage will be taken in a certain time frame.

I think this change has a lot to do with the mana regen changes that blizzard has been doing. I'm sure they're attempting to balance it all out and stay far far away from the days where lifebloom cost usually half of what your in combat mp5 was.

Actually, my understanding is it has nothing to do with pvp, but the fact that it was never intended to be the continuous cheap super HoT that many druids use it as now, and this turns it more in line with it's original intent, a small HoT with a delayed big heal.

To be honest, I've never used LB much. I find it useful for when I know the tank is about to take a big hit (or anyone else for that matter), but those times are fairly rare. I have always been bothered by how people have used the spell, cause it seemed like manipulating the system. Turns out blizz agreed with me. This isn't unusual though. If an ability is being used in a way that seems contrary to its description, expect that it will be tweaked to either encourage or discourage the popular usage. Learn to use it in a more basic manner and these "nerfs" won't have any effect on you. In fact, they might even be buffs (in this case, because of how mana use mechanics works, I will actually spend less overall casting LB then before). Same with the nerf to the not-casting mana regen. I don't do the popular burst of hots followed by waiting for the 6 seconds to pass and regen mana. If I'm in not-casting mode, it's cause people aren't taking hits. In this case, I'm buffed cause I've learned to deal with the mana I regen while casting, which is getting a small buff(in revitalize).

The purpose of Lifebloom by design, was two fold in effectiveness. In PvE, the idea of Lifebloom by design was rolling 3 stacks for HPM throughput to offset the Druid nature of HoT healing. Being a Druid prior to 3.0 meant a pre-emptive nature of healing. By design, Druids would/could bear the brunt of HPM throughput on Tanks efficiently but could not handle directly sustaining tanks. Through gear & stat scaling by Tier 6, Druids found themselves extremely valuable in HPM throughput where you saw most groups directly keeping Druids specifically for mechanics involving direct heal downtime (ie. Silence, movement, etc) and that was our unique flair.

Fast forward to Sunwell, where Druid effectiveness was crushed through RG spamming and HoT inefficiency as gear scaled, hits got larger and Tank health pools become even larger. Long gone were the days of T6 effectiveness.

In PvP, the bloom is the biggest bonus to Lifebloom. PvP deals with spike damage on a much more random nature, so Druid "Oh Snap" buttons lost effectiveness when you have to deal with 3, 4, 5 or more critical hits in a row while trying to keep yourself and your partner up. You're moving (a staple is Druid mobility in both PvP and PvE content)...so you have to rely on instant cast spike healing (standing still to unload a HT is just stupid, and losing the RG HoT leaves the HPM too low to sustain incoming DPS). Come 3.0 (or prior...I don't remember which), the coefficient of Lifebloom was lowered through it's sustained 3 stack roll and the output on the bloom was increased...an absolute PvP buff to deal with PvP right in time to deal with absurd Ret Pally spike damage and the incoming introduction of DK into PvP. I do believe they openly stated this in regards to the LB changes at that time.

And now, here comes 3.1. With Nourish sadly becoming a staple spell and HoT efficiency getting lower and lower, the doubling of LB mana requirement is such a solid PvE nerf and the mana-return of the bloom is such a PvP buff that I cannot imagine anyone seeing it otherwise. RG is no longer the preferred front-end heal it was prior to Nourish, and Nourish is more reliant on a HoT such as Rejuv as a "setup" rather than HPM throughput. With the necessity to weight mana usage (because of the Mana regen changes) and consider the tools shoved down the throats of Druids with the new Nourish spell, LB becomes obsolete in PvE due to the size of tank health pools and incoming damage from raid encounters.

Ghostcrawler argues that LB was OP'd in it's HPM throughput, however he doesn't consider the fact that they forced Nourish down our throats as a RG alternative that turns us into spamming machines for harder content. The concept pre-3.0 for Druid healing was mobility, HPM throughput to buffer the direct healing classes, and with the introduction of Wild Growth, viable healing in Splash/AoE raid situations where we lacked efficiency before.

Edited, Mar 9th 2009 9:43am by Ryneguy