Treeeeeee In Da Wiiiiiind

Preface: This post isn’t about Wrath of the Lich King, or how current beta talents will effect classes, after release. That is something that will be hot fixed, refined, adjusted, and tweaked frequently until we even hit 80. This is about the effects of the content patch (3.0) going live in current content in current gear.

It’s Not You, It’s Not Me, It’s US.
I have hated seeing the struggle between healing classes with every beta build released. So much competition over who got nerfed worse, whose being ignored the most, who the devs hate the most. The fact is, these things hurt on a far more personal level. We can’t control who our favorite character is going to be. It just happens. for me, it’s my druid. Every barky inch of her. I love her to bits, she is what makes the game fun for me. So when I see things that reduce her effectiveness in a role I love playing. It stings. Alot. It sucks the wind right out of my leaves. So, I understand when a pally, or shaman,or priest feels this way. We don’t want sympathy for our class. It’s not about classes. It’s about this person behind the keyboard that is watching their fun slip away. We should all be sticking together and supporting each other, not snarking on cross class beta forums about “HAHA Druids got knocked down” or “Insert Class Here were nerfed more than you QQ Less!!”

Is It Live? Or Is It Memorex?

I’m not worried about being weaker in wrath. Yes alot is worked out during beta, but even more gets fixed, hotfixed, patched in, reworked after things go live after release. We saw this with BC. Both good, and bad. Besides that, we’ll be in wrath gear soon after release, in dungeons tuned to the changes to the classes. I’m worried about how this content patch, however short the duration between it’s release and WOTLK release is will effect us in the current content. After all, not everyone is “done” yet. I’ve bounced between live and beta to compare my druid’s healing. It doesn’t look good for her. She’s only in Kara gear, and still a couple blues. Her bonus healing goes from 1720 unbuffed, to 965 unbuffed when converted to spellpower.

* It is unlikely you’d see alot of resto druids with 5/5 Naturalist. The glyph is possible as an “oh crap” button. But healing touch is a rather expensive spell (531(?) mana in beta), and not a normal part of the arsenal. This could change however with its availability in tree form.

I understand that with even just the glyph I can cast HT twice in around the time it takes to cast just one now, and costs just a little more than the current mana. Effectively giving me the same heal, IF I use the glyph.

Lifebloom, as has been discussed, is now less healing per tick, and more mana to cast. But lasts 10 seconds if you can reach the talent in balance.

The point is, I’m worried. I’m worried that players in gear that is on the lower end of the raiding game are going to feel more pain than we thought.  To get alot of the healing talents to help take the edge off, I have to sacrifice what few DPS talents I have. I would rather instead of full talent changes while we’re still in BC content, we see the new trainable spells, the achievements, and inscription etc, and not see our talent trees change until the content actually does. Sure, it may only be a month between patch day and wrath. But that doesn’t make being a weaker healer, or any other class for that time any less saddening.

You Got Your PVP In My PVE!

Another good point I’ve seen on forums is the fact that so many of the nerfs to druids, and others has been a side effect of the increase in PvP being stuffed into the game. Arena’s especially. And now, WOTLK has an entire PVP zone. Personally I don’t like PvP. It bothers me now when I need to do it to get pieces of gear I’m having bad luck with (Chess, you can cough up those boots any time now!!). So, it bothers me when PVE is so  affected by something being overpowered in PVP.  On my wishlist…a way to lessen these spells in PVP only, and in PVE leave them unchanged.  Virtually impossible, but a girl can dream right?

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