Balanced Undergrowth

4.1 PTR Restoration Druid Changes, New Efflorescence Animation

Posted on March 17, 2011 by . Patches

There are some nice changes coming to restoration druids in 4.1, most of which I’m pretty excited about.

Posted by Blizzard via Battle.net.
  • Efflorescence has been redesigned. It creates a healing zone at the feet of a Swiftmend target, but this healing zone now restores health equal to 4/8/12% of the amount healed by Swiftmend to the three most injured targets within 8 yards, every 1 second for 7 seconds. This periodic effect now also benefits from spell haste, but the individual ticks cannot be critical effects. In addition, Living Seed is no longer a prerequisite talent for Efflorescence.
  • Efflorescence has a new spell effect.
  • Malfurion’s Gift now reduces the cooldown of Tranquility by 2.5/5 minutes.
  • Druids now innately have 100% pushback protection from damage while channeling Tranquility.
  • Lifebloom’s bloom effect has been reduced by 20%.

First is the Efflorescence change. I believe this will be a moderate boost to the healing done by Efflorescence, as well as a huge increase to its overall effectiveness in saving lives. I recall reading before I made this post that it will heal six targets, but it appears the notes now say only three targets. So that was a little disappointing, but it should still be an efficiency boost over what it is now because it is a smart heal. I have not had time to test it on the PTR, I’ve been pretty busy, but I plan on being pleasantly surprised once I have the time to test it. Finally, Efflorescence now has a new ground effect, which I also like quite a bit. You can see a video of it below.

Next up is the addition to Malfurion’s Gift talent to also decrease the cooldown of our Tranquility spell. This is a pretty big deal, as Tranquility can pump out a lot of healing when used in the right situations. This change should allow us to us it twice on most fights, especially on the most difficult fights where it really shines. I also think this is Blizzards solution to druids not having a nice healing cooldown like priests and paladins. I would have liked a slightly lower cooldown even, but I won’t argue too much with 5 minutes! We’ll also now be immune to push back while taking damage and channeling Tranquility, which means no more hoping Barkskin is off cooldown when you have to pop Tranquility during heavy raid wide damage. Another one of those little things that will make quite the difference.

Lastly, I believe the Lifebloom change was largely targeted at PvP. Though I can see it having a minor affect on my PvE healing. I will sometimes let my Lifebloom bloom on the tank if they’re at low health when the duration is about to expire. Though overall it won’t be a huge game breaker, as I don’t have to do that often.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the changes that are coming, I just hope I can get on the PTR some more to test out Efflorescence.

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