Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The new lifebloom is now on the PTR

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EDIT: Originally botched some numbers, because I forgot about ToL aura reducing the cost of LB by 20%. I went back through this post and fixed them all =)

On the PTR, this is what one lifebloom costs:

With 2-piece bonus and in tree form: 733 mana
With 2-piece bonus and not in tree form: 929 mana
Without 2-piece bonus and in tree form: 782 mana
Without 2-piece bonus and not in tree form: 978 mana

/end edit

The Lifebloom change is finally live on the PTR. Unfortunately, it looks to be bugged. When you put Lifeblooms on someone else and they bloom, the 50% mana return is given to the *target*, not you. So it's not quite working as intended.

Regardless, here's a bit of a general update from Ghostcrawler:

In PvE the goal was to make rolling Lifeblooms on tanks more expensive. We didn't nerf the amount healed by the spell. Currently, rolling LBs + Rejuv on a tank can be as much healing as a priest or paladin who is just spamming all of their heals on the tank. That is a totally fine thing for a druid to be able to do. But currently the druid can do all of that on more than one tank AND also add in some raid healing. That is just too good. We're cool with rolling LBs on a tank and raid healing. We're cool rolling LBs on two tanks. But once you are rolling LBs on 2 (or 3!) tanks and have enough mana left over for a lot of other raid heals, then you are just too efficient a healer. I understand not all of you were able to do that. But many players were.

As much as I want to QQ about the lifebloom change, I read this and surprisingly found myself agreeing with Ghostcrawler. We *can* roll LBs on 3 tanks, and rejuv and regrowth people, and absolutely have enough mana left to raid heal. Blizzard is saying that we shouldn't. I think that we *should* have to watch our mana pool more. We should have tighter rotations. We should feel challenged.

However, they say they're cool with us rolling LBs on two tanks, right? Let's do some math and figure out where that leaves us. The mana cost of one Lifebloom right now without the 2 piece bonus is 14% of base mana, which is 489 mana. Let's assume, however, that you have at least 2 pieces of tier gear. The bonus makes one LB = 465 mana. And assuming you're in tree form, it costs 20% less, bringing it down to 367 mana. So on the PTR, one LB will cost 734 mana. Let's say you put three on one tank, as fast as your global cooldowns will let you. That's 2202 mana eaten. You turn to the next tank, and do the same. That's now 4404 mana used. If I have a mana pool of, say, 19k, raid buffed, then I just used over 23% of my total mana pool.

How much mana would it cost to continue to roll these LBs on two tanks?

Let's assume that our GCD is 1.2 seconds. So you start right off the bat with 6 lifeblooms and 4404 mana gone. But you've been regening mana for (6 LBs at 1.2sec each) 7.2 seconds. Personally, I regen 306 mp5 while casting on the PTR. So I've regened 440 mana. Hence, after 7.2 seconds of casting LBs, I have a net loss of (4404 - 440) 3964 mana.

Let's say I cast some other spells around, hence keeping my mana regen in the 306 mp5 stage. Not necessarily full on spam healing, but a rejuv here and there, maybe one regrowth on the tank, or a WG on the melee. Just enough to keep me in my "while casting" mana regen. And every 8 or 9 seconds, I refresh both of those LB stacks. That's two LBs every 9 seconds, so, about 13 total in a minute. Keep in mind that we're not letting them bloom, so we're not getting the 50% mana back. 13 LBs in one minute is a loss of 9529 mana. But we're regening 306 mp5 for 60 seconds, so we've regened a total of 3672 mana in that minute.

That's a net loss of (9529 - 3672) 5857 mana. In one minute. Plus the 3964 mana in the 7.2 seconds before that.

If we roll lifeblooms on two tanks, we will have lost (5857 + 3964) 9821 mana in 67.2 seconds.

That means we'd have just about 49% of a 19k mana pool LEFT for other heals, just from casting Lifeblooms. And I didn't even count the other heals that I was casting around in between the stack refreshers, which would absolutely eat into that 49%.

A Patchwerk fight is typically close to, or over 3 minutes long, depending on how kick-ass your DPS is. If druids roll 3 LBs on each tank and cast any other type of heal, we'll be out of mana WELL before it's done. Plus, our Innervate now only regens us 30-40% of our mana pool.

And even in fights where we have a break in the action - Malygos in between phases, Gothik the Harvester, hell, even the web wrap in Meaxxna - our out of combat mana regen is nerfed through the ground, so that won't help us either.

Conclusion: We're not really going to be able to roll Lifeblooms anymore. It's simply too mana intensive. I think that Blizzard was much too heavy-handed with this change, especially with it being on top of the out of combat mana regen nerf. It's one thing to want druids to be aware of their mana, but it's another to have them run out of mana in 1.5 minutes regardless of how attentive they are in timing their heals.

/sad panda


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9 remarks:

Anonymous said...

So, if we're going to get rid of LBs, is there another idol we should be looking to get? The rubber ducky?

coil said...

For what it's worth (highly debatable), Blizz has said the doubling of mana cost is not 100% final -- they may go with a smaller increase. They want to make it less awesome hpm/hps, but they also claim they *want* druids to roll Lifeblooms... so they can hardly increase the cost to the point that it's no longer viable.

And if they expect you to *only* roll LBs... well, hopefully they'll fix that because it'd be boring as hell. It's a spell designed to be cast once every 7sec, and that's boosted up to 9 by talents & gear... being able to do nothing else would be a pretty sad state of affairs.

I continue to keep faith in Blizzard until changes go live... which I suppose makes me a gullible idiot, given that I'm dating a hunter and still trust them to do the right thing.

Anonymous said...

Great Analysis. Well done.and yes /sad panda indeed. I don't want to jump the gun, as it's still early, but...

**goes to play his Paladin instead**

TAG said...

Very nice post. Even though I don't have a drood, I like reading about anything WoW related. :P Keep up the good job.

Corgii said...

I was trying to stay rather optimistic about this change, but now that I've seen the numbers you crunched out for us (thanks!), I'm a little upset and rather disgruntled...

2.7k mana to get a full 3 stack on a tank...? OUCH. It's a good thing I have a Paladin and Priest in the upper 70s. I don't WANT to switch from druid, but I'm rather concerned that this change will make Druid a lot less fun to play.

Hopefully, as Coil said, Blizzard will rethink their change and perhaps lessen the mana cost.

GC is right though; being able to roll Lifebloom on several tanks AND be able to go about raid healing was far too efficient. Hopefully they can find a happy medium between the two extremes.

Keeva said...

Oh wow, I laughed at the first part.

Can you imagine if that bug was working as intended? We'd be raid healers, period.

Assignments:
Pallies - you're on the tanks.
Priests - you're on the tanks, keep an eye on the raid too.
Shamans - raid healing.
Druids - lifebloom the mages please.

:P

Averna said...

@Sevei - aw, thanks! Glad you like ^^

@corgii - Look at my post again... it's still pretty grim news in general, but not AS grim, because I was a noob and didn't remember that ToL reduces the mana cost of LB by 20%. The numbers are fixed now, and they're *slightly* less cringe-worthy.

@Keeva: I loled. ^^

Anonymous said...

Greetings. I got directed to this post from a discussions at www.plusheal.com. I read your post and while I think your analysis is on the right track.. I have some objections.

Taking the example of Patchwerk, assume it takes 3 minutes and 7.2 seconds. According to your analysis that consumes:
- 4404 mana at the start
- 9529 mana per minute
Your total consumption is about 33K mana (rounded up).

But you get:
- 11,5K mana from 306mp5 over that time
- 9360 mana from Replennishment
- 10000 mana from Innervate (assuming it regens 50% of your manabar)
Total regen: 32K mana.
Net cost: 1K mana.
That leaves you with 19K mana for other spells.

Of course, we're rolling blooms on 3 tanks, so I assume it is a heroic raid. That means you can expect most raidbuffs to be available... which boost your regen notably. I can easily get to 560 mp5 while casting when raidbuffed, but let's take 460 mp5 as a nice mediocre result. In that case you regened:
- 17,2K mana
- 38K mana regen in total
Net cost: -6K Mana (you have a full manabar)
Which leaves you with 26K mana for other spells.

It's a nerf, and a grim one... but not that grim as you make it.

Anonymous said...

Zusterke again.. Just wanted to state that those calculations above are based on a 20K manabar (raidbuffed).