3.3 Patch notes

3.3 Patch notes

There isn’t much to report on the patch notes thus far for resto druids, but there are a few changes that peaked my interest.

“Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects”

GotE might be the most controversial and misunderstood druid talent in the resto tree, but with this change in 3.3, it may now be a no-brainer talent. Five talent points get you a 10% spell haste buff along with a 10% shorter GCD on lifebloom. The “haste cap” may be a thing of the past, but improved haste on all our spells is a giant buff to raiding trees. Is there any down side here?

“Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation: This glyph allows for the druid’s haste to reduce the time between the periodic healing effects of Rejuvenation.”

This is an interesting proposition, especially with the four set bonus allowing Rejuv ticks to crit, but is it better than the other major glyphs? Personally, I’m a swiftmend whore who likes to have that button armed for as long as possible. From a strictly raid healing view, however, it does sound like a powerful glyph to run with.

“Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.”

Wow. Just, wow. Basically every druid, in every raid, will have a battle rez up for every encounter. Should we revist the Rebirth glyph and think of our B-Rez as a 100% hp heal? That’s probably going a bit overboard, but still.

“Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.”

Blizzard is doing a little house cleaning here. This will have no effect on level 80 raiding druids, but it’s clear from this and other patch notes that Blizzard is revisiting the leveling process, attempting to make it as efficient as possible. Is this continued movement toward easy mode proof that rumors of Cataclysm being the final chapter in WoW are being realized?

“Nature's Grace: The tooltip now correctly indicates that it will not be activated from periodic spell critical strikes.”

More house cleaning.

“Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.”

Now, with the Improved Tranquility talent, you’ll be able to cast this party heal every 3.2 minutes. Will we be rethinking our raid group set up in 3.3 to allow this heal to effect tanks and melee? I think the mana cost on this channeled spell still makes it an inefficient heal in a raid environment, but it will be interesting to see if some druids are able to make it work.

“Knockbacks no longer dismount players. If on a flying mount, you will be knocked back a short distance before being able to resume flying.”

Hallelujah. There’s nothing more bush league than a fail laser turkey flying around ice crown trying to make toons fall to their deaths by typhooning them off their flying mounts. I’m glad to see Blizzard is making that a thing of the past.

And finally…

The totally revamped dungeon system makes looking for a group as simple as joining a BG. As if the new heroic dungeon emblem system didn’t make gearing up easy enough, you can now queue yourself up to earn those emblems with the click of a button. I’ll save my rant on this topic for another day, but it’s clear Blizzard wants the path to end game completion to be as quick and convenient as possible. Here are some of the highlights…

“Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance.”

“Players can choose the Random Dungeon option.”

“The Heroic Wrath of the Lich King Daily Random Dungeon option will award two Emblems of Frost no more than once a day.”

“The normal Wrath of the Lich King Daily Random Dungeon option will award two Emblems of Triumph no more than once a day.”

“Continuing to complete Wrath of the Lich King Heroic instances using the Daily Random Dungeon option will award players two additional Emblems of Triumph each time.”

“Random Dungeon rewards will be placed in each player’s inventory automatically upon completion of the dungeon (final boss killed). A pop-up notification will display any rewards earned through the Dungeon System.”