Cataclysm: Tree of Life hobble fail
Warning: long rant. Also: talents aren’t final, etc – but I’m ranting anyway.
And if you’re unlucky enough to be forced to move, if you shift out, you lose your buff for that fight. Gone.
Figure 1: A visual aid!
(I love WoW Model Viewer.)
Keeva
Possibly Related Posts:
- Cataclysm: U cannot has noms.
- Cataclysm: Tier 11 set bonuses
- Cataclysm: official druid form previews
25 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
/agree!
Fine, a cooldown based ability. I knew that the CD could be reduced with talents/glyphs. Still, meh.
However, 50% snare AND we lose the buff when we shapeshift out? *boggle*
I have to say, this more than anything takes away the true essence of being a resto druid: being able to bomb heals on the run.
It being an aura actually would be the best compromise.
I’d almost say, the boost of ToL better be a huge buff to the direct heals, such as casting speed/power. Otherwise, a gimpy tree still throwing HoTs is useless. Essentially, I see it as this: me being a sitting duck better be worth my while.
I think they’ve listened to one of the shamans in my guild, when he says after each fight, “Dam druids.”
PS: Also, great images, as usual.
i lol’d at the dead tree asking for a rezz!
Blizzard is using the snare + the loss of the buff when shifting out as a downside to the massive increase in healing and difference in spells.
it makes it interesting because you have to balance both sides, you got something good but you’ll have take something bad to, in other words when is it worth to sacrefice movements and the Druidish style of shifting around as the situations changes to get an pretty nice increase in healing.
I do admit that minus 50% movement speed is pretty harsh, ok tree’s don’t look like recordbreaking runners but still…
I like the idea of a cooldown that isn’t a ‘good move’ all the time unlike paladin wings, which does not have a downside. I like to think more about using something rather than hitting a button and magicly see bigger numbers on my screen.
I don’t like the fact that they’ve made ToL a cooldown so we’d have an emergency ability when more healing is needed, but with the 50% movement debuff we might do more harm and end up not using it in needed situations cuz we wouldn’t stay alive ourselfs at that time.
Its still early to say anything, and I’m against the whole ToL on cooldown stuff because I love my cwazy twee! but we’ll have to go with what we get.
Moonra´s last blog ..An unknown world…
Yes, one of my main concerns is that we’ve been given an emergency tool, but in many emergency situations, we need to be moving away from the same thing that is hurting the raid.
I like there being a tradeoff too; I didn’t want a straight buff that people would just macro into their rotation; but something that forces us to shift and drop the buff is bad.
If they feel it is too powerful to last 45 seconds, they should design it around a shorter cooldown, not snare us and force us to waste it all the time. I don’t like feeling hassled or ripped off when I heal.
HoT heals are all about preemptive action. powerful cool-down abilities really aren’t that useful to us under most circumstances. Unless the encounters are designed around it, i suspect that I wont use ToL very often. I cant imagine that I will ever want to take a 50% movement debuff in order to over-heal really hard for a few seconds.
See, I think Blizz just needs to start automatically creating macros to go with certain spells. Like:
/cast Tree of Life
/w (every priest in the raid) “Please keep an eye on my shrubby butt, I am slow and will need your life grip to pull me out of the fire that I know I shouldn’t be standing in, kthnx.”
I agree with all your points (I play feral, not resto, though). I’ve followed the resto discussion thoroughly though, and tbh, you guys are really just getting screwed.
It is still alpha, and I hope a lot will change. Honestly, I think the snare will go away, for the exact reasons you state: there are still going to be a ton of fights where you have to get out of the poop. It will be like the original ToL, where the movement impairment was eventually lifted.
I agree that it is a ridiculous double standard. When I am in cat form for DPS, I go in at the beginning of the dungeon, and I never, ever, shift out, unless something goes hideously wrong and I need to try and hero bear it (This is rare).
It will be interesting to see how this whole thing shakes out during the alpha/beta. My guess is they will get a lot of negative feedback once people start to play it, and changes will be made, I also think the 5 min CD (though I think you can get it down to 3.5 with talents?) is a bit long.
Here’s hoping for a ‘medium glyph’ that allows all the restos who love original ToL to keep the form as a toggle.
@matt
the whole idea around healing in CC is to not overheal, with the inc in stamina on gear and the whole mana change Blizzard is trying to keep a raid group more ‘damaged’ rather than we have now and heal everyone to 100% asap
if you take a closer look at the new and changed restoration talents you’ll see that a few involve this: healing increased by X% or increases the critical chance of your spell by X% when the targets is at or below 25%.
this could mean that people will drop at low health from time to time and then ToL cooldown could be a welcome gift. this being said I don’t think anyone with a sane mind would give up movement for a healing burst when the group does not need it at all.
when reading Erispere’s reply there might be a ‘medium glyph’ or a minor glyph of some sort that decreases the movement restriction on ToL by X%…
who knows /shrug!
Moonra´s last blog ..An unknown world…
I’m afraid losing ToL form doesn’t bother me one bit.
http://jackinazeroth.blogspot.com/2010/05/ive-got-horrible-confession.html
Functionally, I think PvP makes losing it a good thing. But even aesthetically, I just never liked it.
Timing it will be a challenge, but that issue exists with other cooldown based abilities for other classes. Once you learn fights, you figure out when you can use them.
Jack´s last blog ..Avenyx: Fighting for the Circle
It won’t go live with a 50% snare. It may have some snare, but 50% is really an Alpha number that has to get tweaked down to something more reasonable.
lissanna´s last blog ..What glyph would you want in Cataclysm?
@ Moonra
good point, the changes to healing in Cata may mean that we will be using the burst to fill up the normally red bars in anticipation of a coming dmg spike. I would not mind the long CD if ToL was a very powerful ability that RLs would call for like BL/hero to brace the group for an enrage or spike in dmg.
Looking at ToL that way, lets hope that they ditch the snare so we don’t have to wipe because of RNG fire under the tree before the dmg phase.
Hmm.. maybe with all this extra ‘healing power’ we’ll be auto-healing/avoiding the majority of AoE damage like hunter pets do. It wouldn’t get around your ‘tank tossed out of range’ scenario, but may for the fire scenarios.
This whole ToL thing is depressing. I don’t want to change my main healer but it looks more and more like my tree is headed to retirement.
Hopefully well get the talents before the release so we can play with them some but this is not looking promising.
I’m wondering if Blizz is doing this in the name of class balance? I believe they have stated before that certain classes get the nerf bat in order to try to get players to pick other classes. I don’t know about you guys but there are a ton of resto druid on my server and my guild. On our 25 ICC runs I joke about the forest hanging out at the back of the raid.
So I wonder if Blizz is trying to drive people away from rolling resto-druid.
Your solution to make the buff like dash is a really good one, and it would work perfectly. As to the rooting though, it’s sad how this seems like a “well we need a reason why life grip will be useful and not frowned upon” “I know! Let’s make a class unable to move out of fire so they NEED to be life gripped.”
…also if ToL is a larger model, won’t it be awfully distracting and vision-impairing to see a giant tree being pulled through the air? Hrm.
Rades´s last blog ..How to Use Custom Sounds in WoW
Here’s my theory on the 50% snare, of course based on very little information and lots of guesses. I’m never a fan of getting snared, but I have a guess as to why it may not matter much in a raid situation.
The current raid healing is very binary as Blizzard has said – either you’re full health or you’re dead, and they want us to spend more time half-dead or at least somewhat damaged. This will have to happen on two fronts, I think. First, healing will become more mana-intensive as repeatedly explained. But on the other side of things, raid damage will have to become less as a percentage of health. Currently, if you wait an extra second to heal someone in a fire, you’re already too late. Sure, everyone will have higher Stam stats to give a little padding, but standing in fires may not be quite as lethal either. I believe I’ve read somewhere that the current wipe danger is people dying from not healing fast enough, but the new-old “classic redux” wipe danger could be that too many people standing in fires will strain healer mana too much, leading to an eventual death instead of an instant one.
Based on this philosophy, the general appearance of Ancients as gigantic, magical slow-walking battle-tank ents, and even more surprisingly the addition of DPS buffs in form, etc…. I think we’ll just heal through the fires in ToL instead of avoid them. While our fast yet frail and flammable Treant forms were no match for fires (yikes, alliterate much?), our Ancient forms will likely consider fires a mere nuisance than a death threat and just stomp on through if they have to do so. We’ve already got the Stamina to “tank” fires when needed, and we just got a whole lot better at healing in Ancient form, so just toss a super-rejuv on yourself and you’ll probably be safe enough to start making some headway on healing up all those green bars that have been at 20% for the last 10 or 20 seconds.
If you look at it this way, ToL is almost a mana efficiency cooldown. Added healing effectiveness for 45 seconds means you don’t have to waste extra mana using weaker heals during that time. Of course, range issues could still be a challenge, but without it, healing in ToL might be too easy.
Only you can prevent forest fires?
I totally agree with you, Keeva! I hope they remove the snare or at least not make it 50%. When I first read that I was like.
XD
When I read about the snare, this was my basic train of thought:
1. Oh, they’re going back to a snare? That’s kinda crappy. I thought they decided that was a bad idea.
2. Oh well, I guess I can deal with it.
3. Wait – what will happen when we pop it for emergencies, but those emergencies are also the times when we need to run out of fire etc? Yuck.. doesn’t sound like a great emergency tool.. sounds very situational, if today’s fights are anything to go by.
4. Suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
5. Wait.. if we drop the form to run away, does that mean we lose the buff because we can’t shift back in once we get to our safe spot? WTF??!!?!?! <— (this is the point that I got annoyed)
Keeva´s last blog ..Cataclysm: Tree of Life hobble fail 
I like Lunarea’s theory but that depends a lot on the mechanics of the encounter AND how the mana change will work out, I’ll explain.
We do get more stamina which means more hp to take a few ‘oops didn’t saw that coming’ blows. But then Blizzard wants healers to think about what spell to use next so.. being a main healer in my guild, I get really annoyed when someone just takes the dmg they could easely avoid, in CC i’ll be even more annoyed cuz that’s mana that I could’ve saved.
so in the part where we might have enough health to stay in the fire/void/very nasty thing on the floor for a while, we might no have to mana regen to keep taking care of it during the whole encounter. does the boss have an aoe? then the fire might be just to much ‘extra’.
On the other part, Blizzard made the whole fire thing to make people move so it would break rotations or cause a bit of chaos, so i doubt it that the fire damage in CC will be low enough for us to stand in it for a while and then slowely move out.
I don’t think the snare will hold till release, or atleast I hope it doesn’t
Moonra´s last blog ..An unknown world… 
Didn’t realise you were from Oz, but living there myself I know what its like .. especially when a canadian guildy starts complaining because his MS has hit a high at 120 :S which is about half of what I usually sit at.
Suffice to say I agree with what you’ve said on the movement issue its a huge pita, especially since the times you seem to need the extra healing are either im moments where everyones running around like headless chickens .. or the last few moments of a burn down phase and if you just pop a 5 min CD or a 3.5 Min CD just to have to drop it to get away from something .. thats just bad.
But having said that I’m waiting just a bit longer before I look to hard at new ToL vs Current ToL because I’m still upset about them removing it as a perma-form.
Jod´s last blog ..A Lot Of Spells – Good or Bad?
The snare should not go live. And for the bonus effects, it is only 15%. Avenging wrath is at least 20% and does not slow the pally down.
Sure some spells are altered maybe an instant regrowth and lb being put on at 2 applications instead of 1. Unless the mana cost of these spells are reduced also, I can’t see myself throwing out a bunch of these extra heals. And really, instant regrowths for 45s?
I’d rather they just bring back tree form than have these new changes. Of course, tree form is gone forever once cata hits.
[...] at Tree Bark Jacket gives the big fat FAIL STAMP to the Tree of Life Hobble [...]
My problem with the snare its the are giving one of the most mobile healing classes a 50% snare our ability to move and heal is a great attribute for raids i dont see disp preists getting a 50% snare.
I dont see the snare as an equilzer its a major downer!
Biggest drawback is that most ‘tree heals best’ damage is done during times of heavy movement, just at the time we’ll be most tied down by TOL. The TOL will be most useful on stationary phases like Deconstructor’s tantrum. I can see the new TOL being used as often as Tranquility is now. Been a long expansion since I needed to use Tranquility to heal.
I am very sad at treeform as a cooldown. We don’t just lose the form itself but treedance, treecower, treeclap. These always made me smile.
Sounds like a job for LIFE GRIP!!!!!!!
I agree with Tamarin. It depresses me so that they are doing those things to Treeform. My druid have been resto every since level 10 and was my very first healer. How many times do i use Tranquilty in ICC? about once. throughout the whole 12 bosses and that’s only IF a group didn’t get the spore debuff on Festergut during his suck in phase. I just don’t see TOL being used a lot