Tree of Life Aura Bug
 

Last night on Prince Malchezzar, I noticed that my tree of life aura wasn't showing up on the main tank. The tooltip for this states that the aura has a 45 yard range, which should be more than enough to reach the tank if I am able to heal him - which was not the case. I wasn't able to do much testing in the middle of the raid, however I believe that the true range on the tree of life aura is actually somewhere between 20-25 yards. It is hard to tell for sure though because it takes a few seconds to pulse when you are moving, similar to shaman buff totems.

Now, call me crazy, but I think this bug really kills half of the point of the talent - the other half being to reduce the mana cost of HoTs. Most boss fights I really can't stay within 25 yards of the main tank and be expected to heal effectively, it just isn't possible. Given the other multiple draw backs of shifting into tree of life, I think this really needs to be looked at and fixed ASAP. If anyone can do some further testing to discover the exact range, or suggest a way in which proper testing can be done, it would be appreciated.

Edit - Forgive me if this has already been posted, but I couldn't find anything with the search feature. Also I don't think it was appropriate to add to the 2.1 bugs post since I don't think this bug is new to 2.1, but rather something that has become noticeable with the 2.1 change to the visibility of buffs.

Group with a friend. Move to 40 yards, use spells to determine range. Check if aura comes up. Move to 30 yards. Check. Move to 25 yards. Check. Move to 20 yards. Check. It's not rocket surgery.

If you need help determining the ranges sub 30 yards, find yourself a spot with a tiled floor or similar.

Spell database data says 40 yards, btw. There could be complications with trying to heal from exactly 40 yards due to the aura center and edge not corresponding completely with the part of the hitboxes used to check spell range. If I remember correctly, tauren hunters were able to outrange certain spells they should not theoretically be able to due to their large hitbox.

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=34123

Apply Area Aura: Mod Healing (127)
Value: 1
Radius: 40 yards

So yeah, the tooltip is apparently wrong as it only has a 40 yard range. Your quoted range seems completely wrong, but I never did any testing of it myself.

We've been experiencing a rather weird bug with our MT recently:

He isnt recieving any aura/totem buffs untill he (or the person responsible for the aura) does any 'action'. Say in orgri, the aura just fades from him till I throw a heal/buff on him. We've had some lengthy conversations with GMs and they state this is the first time they ever hear from it and will 'pass it on'.

This might be a simular bug?

Well something must be bugged in this case, because I had to move substantially closer to the tank - inching forward four times in roughly 5 yard increments - after finding my max healing range. Somewhere between 25 and 20 yards the aura buff appeared on the main tank.

Are all tiles 5 yards apart, or are there any specific tiles that I should be using for this? All of my spells have either a 40 or 30 yard range so I can't really use those to judge distance accurately.

MT was tanking Prince at the time, and I was healing him quite a bit, so I can be reasonably assured that we were both performing plenty of actions.

The range of auras and totems are generally a bit 'smaller' than the actual range they state. I know that for my auras, despite having the Aura Mastery talent, I need to be closer than max healing range for the aura to affect the tank. It feels more like I need to stand at 35 yards instead of 40 yards. The Shamans I know also report the same issue with totems.

Wouldn't surprise me if the same is true for Trees.

Tiles have varying sizes, but you can figure it out pretty easily. Make your friend stand on the edge of one tile, and move to your maximum heal distance (40 yards discounting hitbox trickery). Count the number of tiles between you, and divide 40 by that. That's approximately how large one tile is.

It may be that the auras are calculated center-to-center and the heals are bounding box to bounding box. Paladins have reported a lot of trouble where they have to run inside a mob to hit it with consecrate yet they're easily in melee range and Avenger's Shield was inside its dead zone; this may work the same way.

I'm fairly certain that the sum of both mine and Kelce's hitboxes isn't 20 yards, if it is you might want to tell him to go on a diet. :)

Perhaps the aura is being treated as having a 40 yard diameter instead of a 40 yard radius? Sounds like that would explain the issue with the range being only 20 yards.

That would be very inconsistent with every other spell in the database.

My guess is it's 40 yards, but hitbox issues can make it closer to 35 in "casting range yards", and the original poster overestimated the problem in the heat of battle.

As easy as this would be to test, I see no reason to drone on about it with such limited circumstantial evidence.

Paladin auras (with the talents) have been like this for some time. If you're absolutely at max healing range, you must take a step or two forward for the person to get your aura, thus negating the advantage of the talents when it puts you in harm's way. I would put the distance for auras somewhere around 35-37 yards if max range is 40.

This.

Makes alot of sense from my playing with different aura classes. It really does seem like it's about that range. Because I've always had to stand alot closer (20-30 ish).

I have, in the past, provided Devotion Aura to the MT on Prince without being in Shadow Nova range (with Aura Mastery), so this cannot be true. (Shadow Nova has a 30 yard range.)