4.2 patch notes and T12

So we have preliminary info out for patch 4.2 and the details of what our T12 bonus will be. Is there anything nice for druids? Well, lets have a quick look 🙂

4.2 Druid Changes

• Glyph of Innervate now causes the druid to gain 10% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds when Innervate is used on a friendly target, in addition to Innervate’s base effect. This could be interesting, as the wording now says friendly target, which would obviously include yourself meaning that you would gain 30% of you max mana instead of 20%. If this is the case, then it will be very good, if not, then given the changes to innervate itself (see below), the glyph will probably become rather redundant.
• Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid’s maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast. Hmm, while personally this won’t bother me much, I can see a lot of druids being affected, especially those who Innervate swap with other druids or who have no mana issues and give their innervate away to other people. Seeing as how the days of druids simply being batteries for priests are long over, I don’t really see why this change was necessary, already most of our non-healing cooldowns only affect us (Barkskin, Nature’s grasp and so on) and now they are going to basically make it pointless to cast innverate on anyone except yourself.

Tier 12 Set Bonus’s

Fire is the theme here, which may not be good around trees but it’s what Blizz are going for with firelands 🙂

• 2 Piece – Your periodic healing from Lifebloom has a 40% chance to restore 1% of your base mana each time it heals a target.
• 4 Piece – When your Lifebloom blooms, it instantly heals up to 2 nearby injured targets for the same amount.

Initially these don’t seem too exciting at all and certainly the two piece is similar to all other healers set bonus. Frankly though, I don’t give a rat’s ass how similar the bonus is – the important point is whether or not it is good for us.

The two piece mana regen bonus is not too bad, along with OoC procs it means that rolling LB will be even more mana efficient and has the potential to regen 1% everytime it ticks (unlikely, but possible). If there is no kind of ICD regarding it, then it becomes even more awesome in ToL when you are rolling over lots of people. If you roll it on 10 people, then the average would be 4% mana returned every tick and possibly as high as 10%. Obviously, if it can only happen once every 2 secs or something then it isn’t so great, but atm its looking good especially usually even casual raiders (such as myself) can get a two piece.

The four piece initially looks pretty bad, as with all the changes to LB (such as even moving now refreshes it and its bloom is 20% lower) they seem to be pushing us towards permanently rolling it and never letting it bloom. However, again in ToL it becomes so much more powerful. Pop tree just before big incoming AoE and then LB everyone up, even just one stack. Then watch as everyone suddenly gets an average of 3 heals (their own bloom plus bonus from 2 others), this combined with lower CD tranq, buffed eff and glyphed WG in ToL means you are easily saturate a raid with AoE healing. The only downside is that the LB will take time to bloom so you have to be on the ball and anticipate the damage rather than reacting to it after the event. But hey, we’re druids, HoTs are all about preparation and anticipation rather than reaction 🙂

Overall, things not looking too bad, certainly from my perspective anyway, some more hardcore raiders (or those in 25mans) may disagree, if so, feel free to comment 🙂

Kat