Three questions:

1. Will the changes to lifebloom make ToL more viable in raids? It seems that lifebloom is edging on overpoweredness due to the healing/mana ratio, especially once the full stack is reached.

2. Will Balance Druids be more desirable in raids with the threat reduction talent? It effectively allows Balance Druids to push their DPS 20% higher. The question would be can current Balance Druids push their DPS any higher without encroaching on cloth items.

3. Is orange really the best color for the horde epic flying form?

The changes to barkskin are also very welcome and perhaps are my favorite change out of the Druid notes.

1. I'd say yes. Rolling lifeblooms will do 450 or more health per second on a reasonably geared druid that's specced for it, and that should definitely help the throughput of trees which is their biggest weakness. The downside of this is that keeping it rolling forces you to remain within the five second rule, but that's what the bangle of endless blessings is there for

I wanna see the math on its healing efficiency

It's also a really nice boost for pvp healing, coupled with the barkskin change. While I'm not going to be in tree form in pvp, having a 3 stack of lifebloom on someone will help protect their other buffs from being purged/dispelled so they're more likely to keep bloodlust or whatever.

(I don't fully understand how purging works with lifebloom so correct me. From what I gather if you have a 3 stack and someone purges you, it'll remove 2 of the stacks and give you one or two 'bloom' heals, I'm not sure how many, but then the last lifebloom will still tick)

2. More viable, but I still don't see them as terribly desirable. Itemization is still very poor outside of the tiered sets and I'm not sure if you really gain in raid dps gain by adding a moonkin over another caster

3. Orange you glad it's not the same model as night elves?

This always confuses me. Reduces all damage taken... by what? To what? I assume it means Barkskin reduces damage taken from A to B where 0 < B < A and B != the current value (10 or 20%?), i.e. Bear Shield Wall? Or B = 0 (which I doubt), i.e. Bear Divine Shield without the aggro drop in PVE?

If I understand it correctly, all damage, magic and physical, will be reduced by 20% for 12 seconds. It's a mini pain suppression on a minute cooldown.

Also, bear & cat form shapeshifting costs reduced from 44% of base mana to 35%.
travel, flight and seal form reduced to 13%
Moonkin is reduced from 28% to 22%

I would be a lot more enthusiastic about the Barkskin change if they allowed it to be cast in Bearform again. It's far too dangerous to shift into caster to use, even if you did you lose a good proportion of the buff through global cooldowns.

Is there something I'm missing here, or can Nature's Grace not possibly be triggered by Cyclone (since it can't crit)?

I'm pretty happy with the change to Barkskin. With a shorter cooldown it's easier to remember to use it, and 3 seconds are negligible. The boost to mangle-damage is of course really neat.

I'm not sure what means though, could someone clarify?

If you've ever been Slowed or had Chilled effects on you, Hamstring, etc, and Charge someone, you hear the FWOOSH of your charge as you ever so slowly glide across the ground towards your rapidly escaping foe. I imagine it'll bypass the slow when charging so the FWOOSH is more apt.

I tried raid healing in ToL and found it very lacking because stuff just hits so damn hard these days. I am not sure that change will be enough.

One problem with the chain lifeblooming is that you blow through mana real fast. If you keep up lifebloom on 3 targets you use 5280 mana per minute in tree form. You will never get out of the 5 second rule and you don't get the balance efficiency talents. And if you chain lifebloom on a single target you might as well spec 34/27 and use healing touch. Higher heal throughput, better clutch healing, and no restrictions on the spells you cast.

Someone please convinve me otherwise because I really like the concept behind ToL.

It would be really interesting to know if this means that stuff like Insect Swarm and Barkskin will gain resists against dispelling or if it only applies to the aggro...

There really isn't room for more then one ToL druid in a raid. You throw him in a main tank group and only keep the lifeblooms rolling on him. It makes no sense to keep other up with it.

My HoT spamming is ALOT more viable with my Dreamstate spec than in ToL spec, I find that odd considering that is the role ToL is ment to be best suited for. However now that they finally buffed it I will renew if instead of just letting it float off, 560/sec combined with rejuvenation will be going for over 2200/3sec for me alone, 2 Druids will be able to pull off around 5000/3sec healing with HoTs alone, heck even on 2-3 people at the same time if needs be, god'damned.

ToL is just flawed because its based on spirit & based on spamming, both counteract each other (spamming=MP5, spirit=casting breaks).
The only way to counteract it would be to give ToL a passive bonus of 15-30% spirit regeneration (intensity x2/x3) while in it.
I get around 30 MP5 for my bangle proc, given that a ToL Druid would have notably higher spirit that would be perhaps 40 MP5 for an extra 15%, something along the lines of 20-25% would just make tree alot more viable as a spirit based chain-caster.

Alternativly they could add a JoW ontop of the BoL effect onto ToL, so whenever healing spells are cast on someone with the aura, they get <x> mana back, would help mana issues on all healers and reduce the need for mana pots etc.

The problem with that is that most of your lifebloom ticks will result in overheal as the tank is usually topped off whenever possible. Granted, the lifebloom ticks are a nice extra buffer and the ToL aura is nifty, but unless the boss prevents heals I don't see a dedicated HoTter for the MT as a valueable investment. A dreamstate druid can still keep hots on the tank while providing additional big heals for the spike damage that usually kills tanks.

4. Will I finally be able to use barkskin in tree form?

I'm fairly happy with ToL right now, buffing Lifebloom makes it even better for me. However, when I asked my guild whether they wanted me to use the tree or invest the points to get dreamstate, they said that ToL would work great since we had an abundance of paladins and priests to provide direct healing. Now with the paladin nerf that's incoming, we'll see if that sentiment will change.

The Paladin nerf means they will just have to think about healing instead of spamming FoL the whole fight and taking the occasional pot, the role they once had will now be taken by HoTs thanks to the awsome power of lifebloom.

Having HoTs as the primary role on 'topping the tank up' gives them alot more potential because before it was completly negated by just having Paladins instead.

Paladins, Priests, & Shamans will still be there healing the tank as normal despite whatever changes there may be, and for Paladins before, the ToL bonus was more than likely wasted as overhealing so yeah..

I was doubtful but it appears they actually did give some significant armor increases to several items of interest to us. Good thread on the WoW druid forum here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...94074506&sid=1

Taken from that thread, a few examples:

Considering the substantial amount of +armor that the heavy clefthoof set got, and the stats that it had to give up to stay balanced, I'm kind of tempted to dig into how the whole ilvl/ivalue system works and figure out how just about how much armor I could shove into an item.

Personally, speaking on behalf of my own tanking druid, I'm somewhat happy with the changes that the Clefthoof set got, it seems much more desireable now for fights where I absolutely *need* the extra stamina (and now armor!), but it seems that for your everyday tanking, you'd still want to go with the other options that present now lower longetivity, but infinitely better threat generation.

I've been switching over to more dodge as opposed to agility recently. I'm now deciding whether or not I should continue on that same path or switch back to my full heavy clefthoof set. At the moment, I'm using 2/3 of them, but I was going to drop the pants for the legs off of Netherspite once they drop. As of right now, I'm sitting at 14k health, 18k armor, and 31.2% dodge or so with just mark of the wild. Thoughts?

What do you mean by 'switching over to more dodge as opposed to agility' ?
Do you mean, dodge rating over raw agility?

If that's what you meant, it strikes me as an odd decision, since as far as I know, you need 19 (18.9 rounded up) Dodge Rating to get a 1% Dodge increment, but only need around the neighbourhood of 15agility to get the same dodge effect, while also providing a small boost to armor and your crit rate.

Also, your armor value stands out as being lower than of the average druid. A ~30% free pass on every attack is nice, but you just seem to lack the cushion to fall back on during those bad spikes.

I would work on boosting your armor value to around 23-24k, and not worry so much if you had to drop 5-6% dodge to get it.

Druids in 25man raids take about 20% more dmg than prot warriors of the same gear lvl. you need that much more health to just be a viable choice to help out. less survivability is not what you should go for. sta+armor shines on phys dmg spike encounters with maybe even stuns on top, thats why alot of tanking in the beginning (High king) was done with druids instead of warriors. Increase in max healing is done easily (bring another healer), increase in survivability harder.

Keep the clefthoof set for those encounters, get pvp (or now maybe t4) sets for secondary tanking (trash, 5mans). The aggro is insane due to high agi (got 1.4k ap, 27% crit, 20k ac, 14.3k hp in "tanking gear" bearform, unbuffed!) and being able to switch to cat and dps is maybe the biggest advantage feral druids have over prot warriors.

edit: oh yeah, stats>>>>>>>>all for druids agi>ratings, str>ap

No, I meant agility over armor. Sorry for the confusing wording. I would never choose dodge rating over agility. That'd be just plain lunacy. And for druids, 11.89 or so agility = one dodge. We have the best agility to dodge formula in the game at the moment. And hitting 23-24k armor is not currently an option for me. To hit that high of an armor count, you're losing out on a lot of other types of avoidance. 23-24k was very viable before the armor nerf, but since then, it isn't. With the buffing to armor counts on various pieces in the upcoming patch, it'll become closer to viable again. I guess the question is: is it better to have that extra bit of armor for the consistent reduction, or more avoidance to possibly avoid very deadly crushings?