Thursday, June 18, 2009

3.2 patch notes: holy crap!

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Just came across the 3.2 PTR patch notes.

Let's look at some of the highlights, shall we?

Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.
After literally having my jaw drop and then freaking out a bit, I realized that this is a nice change. Druids will have to get into the habit of using Innervate on themselves sooner rather than later, so as to use it at least twice in one encounter. OR, if you don't need all of the mana that Innervate currently gives you (or, that *two* Innervates will give you post 3.2), you could Innervate yourself once, and then throw out an Innervate on someone else when it's off cooldown. Have you ever had a 7 minute fight where, at the 6 minute mark, you use your Innervate, but don't actually need ALL of it for that last minute? In that case, you could use it at the 2 minute mark, and then put it on your arcane mage buddy next to you at the 5 minute mark. They will love you! Quick side note: the Glyph of Innervate will also be updated to reflect this change: "Glyph of Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds."

Lifebloom: The final heal that occurs when this spell blooms has been reduced by 20% on the base and on the spell power coefficient.
What does this even mean? It means that the final heal of Lifebloom will still stack with the number of LBs we have on the target - it will still bloom for double the amount if we have 2, and triple the amount if we have 3 - but it will overall be reduced by 20%. This means instead of 22k crits for a three stack, we'll see 17.6k crits.

Right now the spell power coefficient for the direct heal of LB is 77.44%, with the talent Empowered Rejuv (source). After 3.2, it will be 57.44%.

I'm guessing this has been put in mainly to help balance resto druids in arenas, which makes a lot of sense. If you get one good LB crit out there, it can essentially restart the fight, especially in 2v2s. As for PvE... well, any nerf is a bummer, but the huge heal at the end of LB is typically overheal anyway. Nerfing it a little bit doesn't drastically plummet our viability in raids. I mean, hey, it never even used to *stack*.

Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%.
The current Empowered Touch talent is one of those HT talents that we rarely take. I'm curious as to why they're adding Nourish in there. It doesn't make the talent any more yummy, because Healing Touch will still have a ridiculously long cast time, and cost a buttload of mana. If you're one of those rare specimens that actually specs for HT, then buffing that talent with a little Nourish buff sure is nice. =)

I suppose that if you have the Glyph of HT - perhaps in place of Glyph of Nourish? - Empowered Touch is a talent that you would definitely take, and having a buff to your speedy Nourish heal is nice.

I mean, it's cool and all, but I don't really get it. I'll think on it and see if I can come up with a better reason as to why they did this.

EDIT: Based on the comments, I'm seeing that people will be definitely taking this talent, and for good reason. In my mind, I was thinking of it as a little bonus to people who already have the talent - rather than a talent that most of us would switch over to get. And if Nourish is a spell you use at all, I would recommend getting this talent. It'll take some points out of Revitalize or Living Seed, say, but I think it's worth it. Kae brought up a good point too: that the buff to Healing Touch that you'll get when taking that talent won't actually be wasted, when you use it with Nature's Swiftness. =)

Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
Whoa. So.... ok. What does this mean? I THINK that it means that if you have something with 20mp5, it will actually end up saying 25 mp5.

Well, that's just dandy for the shaman out there, but it really, really makes us NOT WANT SPIRIT AT ALL. I do NOT want to be rolling on paladin and shammy rings and necks, but if they keep nerfing spirit (with it not affecting out of 5s regen as much, and not affecting innervate at all) and buffing mp5, that's what's going to happen. If they're going to keep going down this road, I would hope that they increase the mana regened from spirit a bit, or buff Improved Tree of Life to give us a better spirit to spell power ratio.

Well, wait a second. Buffing Imp ToL would make spirit more desirable for us, but it would also skyrocket our spell power pretty high, which would in turn, make us pretty imba. Maybe Blizzard can buff the amount of spell power we get from spirit, but then nerf our spell power a little bit in some other way - so that spirit is still something we'll want, but we don't end up with 3k spell powerlol.

And the other question is, do we really NEED that mana regen from the mp5 gear? This change will buff that gear, but only from a mana regen standpoint, and if we don't need the mana regen, then it's a moot point. It's not like it said "Mana regeneration: Now gives you 1 spell power for every 1 mp5 on a piece of gear" or something crazy like that.

Now I'm rambling. Later on (and especially once I get on the PTR) I'll do some math and compare some gear to see if this will really end up being a problem.

Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment.
The buff you get will still last for 15 seconds, however, instead of ticking 15 times for a total of 3.75% mana gained, it will tick 3 times for a total of 3% mana gained. In a 25 man raid, replenishment is up pretty much all the time, especially if you have low mana (it only affects 10 people in range who have the least amount of mana - so if you have low mana and are in range, you'll probably get the buff. It's like a smart heal, only it's for your mana bar, not your health bar).

Right now, I get about 275 mp5 from replenishment. After this goes live, I'll get about 220. It's definitely a nerf, but I don't think it will be crippling.

Some other random highlights!

-You can now gain experience in Battlegrounds. o.O But it's not an end to twinks - you can actually elect to *turn off* experience gains. This will turn off ALL xp gains. To turn it back on, you have to check in with some NPC somewhere and pay 10g.

-WSG ends automatically after 20 minutes. If no one has gotten a flag, it's a tie. If each team has gotten the same number of flags, then the team that captured the first flag wins. If a team has gotten more flags than the other team, then that team wins. So basically, if the other team gets the first flag, your team is screwed unless you can get 2 flags in the time remaining. Huh.

-For the mages: "Arcane Blast: Mana cost reduced by 12%." Woot! So maybe those arcane mages won't need our Innervate, after all. =)

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An Obsidian Raptor Hatchling non-combat pet can be bought from some dude in Dalaran. Cute! Please don't eat my face off.

-"Vendor prices will be listed on items whether or not players are at a vendor." Neat!

- Potions now stack to 20, not 5. Also neat!

- Rewards (from the Argent Tourney) include a mounted squire that can periodically run bank, mail or vendor errands for the player.

=O


ERRANDS? I can send my pet boy to do MORE work for me? Thank god. He was getting lazy.

Wanna know what's going on with priests? Check out Fuyu's blog post here. Wanna know what's going on with healadins? Check out Tal's blog post here.

I'll keep you all updated as more 3.2 changes come in. Hopefully we'll be able to get onto the PTR soon!

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10 remarks:

Keeva said...

FINALLY the potion stacking change!!!

Andy said...

T-T Why do they keep picking on Lifebloom? It used to be such a nice little spell.

I really hope they remove it from the Nature's splendor talent so that we can get to the bloom faster.

coil said...

The Innervate change is also a PvP nerf... the average arena match isn't going to last long enough to get a second Innervate off, which means the benefit of the spell in arenas has been effectively cut in half.

Aertimus said...

My opinion on the new Empowered Touch: They knew it sucked and that no end game resto druid puts points there (unless its the one last 'I'll put it... here' point.)

LOTS of druids use nourish. Some love it for raid healing (Toss out WG, top off the one's it hits with nourish - not me, but I hear its done a lot.) I have a tank spec thats all about nourish spam.

Well now I HAVE to get this talent for my tank spec. Blizz just made that talent a must have for two schools of druid healers.

So I guess I'm glad I can pick it up for my tank healing. Maybe it will be that little extra I need to push my tank healing up to my normal raid healing amounts.

Brian said...

I don't get Averna's comment on the empowered touch change. It seems like a nice buff to nourish, and any druids who use nourish a lot of the time (like me!) will want to take the talent. It's MUCH more yummy for those of us who use nourish, but wouldn't touch HT with a 10-foot pole.

Averna said...

@Aert and Brian: I guess it's a matter of whether we want to give up points in say, Living Seed, or Nature's Grace. I think I was looking at the talent as a slight buff for those people that take it already, and not from the view point of people who would take it now because it's so awesome.

I mean, I used Nourish sometimes as my top heal, so yes, I'll take it. =) Just hadn't really though it through enough, I guess =)

Ryan said...

Averna you are a hot tree! lol

Kae said...

I am a rare specimen that put points in empowered touch without using HT for anything other than a NS+HT heal. I use it practically every cooldown, and the 40% boost to the heal's power has been nice. I still have both revitalize and living seed: I gave up a point in GotEM (for 4/5) instead. As a ten-man raider, I can't just sit back and figure someone else will save that dieing player's life with a shield/guardian spirit! The one other healer in the raid may be on cooldown :)

The addition of nourish will be nice for me, since I do use nourish much more often than NS+HT (due to the cooldown).


YAY RAPTOR PETS! We should be safe with them in treeform :D Unless someone gets unlucky and gets a vegetarian raptor...

Author said...

There will also be mount changes
lvl 20's can purchase 60% speed for 5g training 1g mount cost.
Lvl 40's can purchase 100% speed for 50g training 5/10g mount cost.
Lvl 60's can purchase flying (flying will be >>150%<< air 60% land) for 500g training and 50g mount cost.
All training/mounts will now be affected by rep.

jeffo said...

I've always felt that my squire should be able to provide extra bag space -- that's what squires are for!