I think a lot of people don't quite understand what the change to Lifebloom is (as far as the mana returned is concerned), nor do others recognize the usefulness of its bloom as a potentially useful and powerful raid healing device.

The 'base' mana cost of Lifebloom is currently 489 mp.

Read the patch notes carefully: "Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications."

The amount of mana returned is not affected by casting Lifebloom while in Tree of Life, nor is it affected by wearing 2 piece T7. Therefore, Resto druids wearing at least 2 pieces of T7 (and I think it's safe to assume most/all will be wearing at least 4 pieces for the time being with the changes to Nourish) will be refunded MORE than half the cost of Lifebloom when it blooms.

Let's consider the numbers:

Pre-Nerf
Base Cost: 489
In ToL: 391
In ToL with (2) T7: 366

Post-Nerf
Base Cost: 978
In ToL: 782
In ToL with (2) T7: 732

If we let a single stack bloom, we will be refunded half of the spell's base cost: .5*(978) = 489 mana returned. This is significantly more than half the "cost" of Lifebloom for a resto druid. In the case where you casted LB while in ToL with T7, you will be refunded 66% of the spell's cost. The effective cost of Lifebloom in this situation will be 732-489 = 243 mana. This is equivolent to reducing the Pre-Nerf mana cost by about 33% (after ToL and T7 are factored in).

This change won't necessarily make this the most efficient raid heal we have compared to say Rejuvenation or Regrowth, and as others have pointed out, in many/most situations the bloom is unreliable as a raid heal given LB's 10 second duration. However, it seems many people neglect to realize how this spell CAN be useful as a raid heal.

Consider fights like Grobulus, where LB is can be cast on someone who gets the disease knowing that it will bloom just after the debuff expires. This helps a lot to mitigate raid damage and reduces the need to cast a direct heal after the debuff expires. Consider fights like Gluth, Loatheb, and Maexxna, where a timed and predictable event will result in a lot of damage taken (or an opening where a lot of healing needs to be done). Lifebloom's bloom can be very useful if timed effectively on these encounters. The fact is that Blizzard likes to sometimes put preditable raid damage on some encounters that, where timed correctly, Lifeblooms bloom can be very useful.

It's my understanding that EJ is not for QQ posts, so I hope people react to my response contructively. (I'm at work right now, so I can't confirm my numbers. If I made any errors, I'll correct them later.)

[Edit] I did make an error in the original numbers I posted. I said that in ToL and with (2) T7, Pre-Nerf LB would cost 371 mana (I mistakenly calculated it as if ToL's and T7's effects were multiplicative - they're addative). The actual cost of LB Pre-Nerf is 366, and so should be 732 mana Post-Nerf. Sorry to anyone who may have quoted or used the inaccurate numbers I posted.

Arguing against two of my examples doesn't disprove my point. It is indeed a useful raid heal in SOME situations. Gluth may not be guaranteed, but if you start casting a few seconds too early, it's not like you'll have wasted more mana than you can justify using.

I just wish that rather than QQ about this change, more druids would be a little more open minded and consider how it can be implemented in PvE healing.

It won't stop being a tank healing spell unless druids are stubbernly refusing to use it. It now has a more viable use in some raid healing situations.

Yes it does disprove your point. Lifebloom is not a raid healing spell for the reason I and others have said. You gave 4 examples out of which 2 were wrong - have fun spamming lifebloom on raid members hoping to get a bloom at the right time when it costs that much.

Since this is clearly turning into a flame war, I'm going to stop responding after this comment.

"when it costs that much"? Right, because once it blooms, its effective cost was 252 mana. Don't know I can manage that with a 20k mana pool.

I knew I should have editted the mana comment out. Oh well.
Have fun wasting GCD after GCD spamming lifebloom on people at full hp waiting for decimate to hit, only for you to effectively heal 3-4 people with the bloom while paladins cast HL at 1.4 secs for a splash heal of more than that.

Will you guys please learn how to read the full post and not use strawman arguments to counter mine. I never said I spam or would advise spamming LB on every fight, any time raid damage is taken, and for no reason. I said it's useful in some situations.

You don't disprove anything when you take what I say out of context.

(And I guess I lied about not replying again...)

I agree with Dendrek that this change does incline lifebloom more towards raid healing that it was before. Does it mean that we will regularly use it in such a role? No. I don't think that just because the situational scope of it as a raid heal is very narrow makes it a bad raid heal; it just makes it a bad raid heal in 90% of situations. People who use this method effectively can alleviate at least some of the initial brunt of heavy raid damage. This could very well be one of the techniques that separates good resto druids from great ones.

Firstly, I believe you are confusing a Strawman argument with a weak argument, source. As to the the argument, I think that just because you can find time to throw out some preemptive lifeblooms in preparation for some kind of predictable damage doesn't mean that you are overstocking healers, because the nature of druid healing allows one to find the time to maneuver while hots tick. I think it is false thinking to assume that if you aren't forced to chain cast that you are obviously not being worked hard enough. In fact, with mana regen changes stacked on top of the lifebloom efficiency nerf, I feel we will soon find that we will have to learn when to not cast when we can afford to in order to take advantage of noncasting regen, paticularly in Ulduar. I think it is a mistake to disparage possible healing techniques that are efficient, such as this one. Just because there are few fights which currently do not have many situations where this method is ideal doesn't mean that at least some of the 14 bosses in the new content will not. It isn't particularly strong or massively effective, but I have suspicions that mana pool usage will be a huge focus of Ulduar content.

This discussion needs to return to justifying the LB mana increase. LB was never that insanely efficient or high in HPS compared to other healers.

Druid @2800 SP: LBx3 ~=1450 HPS. LB = 370 mana, so 1450 x 10 / 370 = 39 HPM
Pally @2300 SP: HL ~= 16K avg, 8K for BoL + 8K for HL glyph = 32K / 700 = 45 HPM (HL ~= 700 mana after all buffs+illum)

Now, compare these two heals in detail.
* one has a 3 GCD start up cost + mana penalty
* one constrains cast cycles to avoid the mana penalty when dropping the stack
* one has 0 benefit and yet still an MP5 cost when the target is taking minimal damage
* one arguably only achieves close to 80-90% efficiency of that stated HPM due to early refreshes
* one scales perfectly in high random peak burst damage, one can only be employed successfully in tank healing

I'm obviously not arguing that LB is bad, but to suggest it's so far unbalanced is misrepresentation in the extreme. Unless they have an unannounced change planned, this change makes very little sense in combination with the other proposed 3.1 changes.

Just for clarity here. LB with the mana change will be less efficient than a single Holy Light on a single target (ignoring the holy light glyph and Beacon).

Edit:
I also think that if blizzard moves druids away from HoT stacking/rolling they've removed the only remaining 'flavor' in the healing classes.

As things currently are, it's possible to roll full hots on 2 or more tanks and raid heal with WG/RJ/Nourish/Regrowth (or whatever the druid opts to use when healing the raid) and rarely ever intentionally take breaks for OO5SR regen and still have mana (and for many, not even need to innervate) by the end of the fight.

The spirit nerf alone would probably not have been enough to counter this level of efficiency.

Heart of the Wild and Savage Defense does hurt me allot.

From live to ptr I lost (unbuffed):
3.5k HP
6.1k Armor

I had to check that I really had the talents right for tanking.
We may have been a bit to good on live but this is silly.
I have 5k AP in tank gear unbuffed so I would get a shield when and if I crit for 1250.
I had 34.7k armor and 37.2k hp on live.
I have 28.6k armor and 34.7k hp on ptr.

If a boss hit me for 50k on live I would have 24.2k hp left, on ptr 19.8k.
That is almost 5k hp less, that is a huge nerf and it require me to crit.

All values except the ones I have on live and ptr are theoretical. I also assumed that the following was true:
%Reduction = (Armor / ([467.5 * Enemy_Level] + Armor - 22167.5)) * 100
Damage reduction from savage defense is 25% of my AP removed after armor mitigation.

With all this said I think savage defense is one of the only ways blizzard can go with druids. By reducing our armor we will gain more then before when we get more armor due to the diminishing returns. But the armor reduction is to big compared to savage defense. On the 50k hitting boss I will take almost 1k more damage after the patch if I have not critted, if I critted it would be almost 700 more damage taken.
All number are theoretical and I have not tried it in any raid on the ptr. But the numbers looks bad for us.
I hope I messed the math up.