3.1 Resto Druid Tree of Life Change

And suddenly, through the rain soaked skies, a brilliant golden crack split the malevolent clouds and a column of fiery light struck the cold and soaking Druid and the voice of angels spoke:

The Tree of Life talent currently grants bonus healing to group members and reduces the cost of your hots in tree form. We would like to change the talent to say "Reduces the mana cost of all your hots and also lets you go into tree form, which grants bonus healing." In other words, you
would not need to be in ToL to get the cheaper hots (in PvE or PvP) so long as you had the Tol talent. In PvP, you could still use tree form when you wanted to be more tanky but your efficiency would not be so bad when in caster form

Well, it probably didn't happen in such a melodramatic manner, but the devs just (if they follow through with this) gave us a damn nice buff.

This buff, while nice for PvE, is mainly a PvP buff. Why? Well, coming out of Tree form as a PvE Resto Druid is rarely called for and I can only think of just a few times in my WotLK raiding experience where I've intentionally come out of ToL in the middle of a fight: Once was when I was screwing around and trying to see how much kitty damage I could do while specced/geared for resto. The other time was when I cycloned a mind controlled teammate on KT so our DPS could keep working on KT instead of having to spend time cc'ing.

The reason why this buff is mainly a PvP buff is because PvP Resto Druid success comes from the versatility found in the Druid's various forms: Crowd control in Caster/Moonkin form, healing in Tree/Caster form, tanking melee in Tree/Bear form, and escape in Cat and Travel forms...all of which cost mana. Simply put, allowing the Druid to save mana by casting cheaper heals caster means that the Druid can spend more mana utilizing their versatility without being forced to sit in Dried Broccoli form, desperately trying to win the mana war. Stupid Druid tricks are what put Druids in the top spot back in TBC, and this change will give Druids a little bit of a nudge towards the top PvP healer spot, currently occupied by OPaladins.

Unfortunately, this change won't push us nearly as far in 3v3 and 5v5 as it will in 2v2. However, there is always the hope that Blizzard will do something to improve Druid throughput to help us counter burst damage.

Until then, lets hope that the devs are listening and the Lifebloom nerf gets reverted!