Cap on Rebirth and Soulstone?

Zarhym just dropped a bomb for us raiders. With Rebirth being restored to a 10 minute timer and Soulstone creation at 15 minutes, the devs have decided to add an additional limit.

You can only use 1 Rebirth or 1 Soulstone per attempt on 10 player raids and any 3 combinations for 25.

The design for combat resurrection effects has changed a good deal for Cataclysm, and we want to make sure players are clear on how spells like Rebirth and Create Soulstone now function. Rebirth has a 10-minute cooldown and Create Soulstone has a 15-minute cooldown. On raid boss encounters, you can only use one of these combat resurrection spells (so one Rebirth or one Soulstone) per attempt for 10-player raids. For 25-player raids you can use three forms of combat resurrection per raid boss attempt (so three of any combination of Rebirth and Soulstone). The count is incremented as soon as a player accepts a resurrection, so one can always choose not to accept if he or she wants someone else to get the resurrection instead. There is no equivalent of the Sated debuff (which tracks Bloodlust/Heroism usage), but you will get an error message if you try to resurrect too many players, and we might add tracking to our raid interface if there is demand for it. Outside of raid content, you can use as many battle resurrections as you have available.

Source

As a GM, I have a few issues with this. I understand the design intent behind it so that we’re not using 8 Druids in raids or anything. As it is, I feel that I’m burning through Rebirths more often then I like but I do enjoy having the safety net that they offer. Ultimately, we need to do better.

My question is what will happen with the Reincarnate from Shaman. I remember Divine Intervention was removed as a form of wipe prevention. I wonder if a Shaman will get exempted or it it will count. The limitation begins when a player accepts the resurrect not when it is cast upon them.

I’m hoping they’ll add a tracking interface to it. I had to use addons like RaidCooldowns to determine which Druids busted their Rebirths and who has theirs available. Ideally, the interface will tell me who used their Rebirth so I know who not to call on when I do need one. Speaking of hope, it seems a bit of a stretch, but I  hope our defensive cooldowns will not be limited in the same manner. Can you imagine only using a certain amount of Hymns or Pain Suppressions and Guardian Spirits per encounter? That would be a big problem.

We’re limited on second chances now if this gets final approval. We really need to pick and choose which players to select for a resurrect.

8 thoughts on “Cap on Rebirth and Soulstone?”

  1. I kind of get the design idea behind this. Soulstones and Rebirth were being abused slightly and PUGs were stacking locks for stones and druids for rebirth. Since no matter what spec you are, you get to use rebirth, it gives you such a wide net with which to catch yourself it almost removes some of the consequence. I think it was a move with the motivation of making sure raids aren’t stacking those classes in order to brute force past learning curves and fights. I saw a lot of groups doing this in the beta for raid testing. They would literally stack druids for half the raid slots because of rebirth.

    Personally I’m not the biggest fan of it, but I can understand the mentality behind it.

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  2. Shaman’s Reincarnate is currently in the lockout as well. Or at least, it was as of last week. Some of our raiders weren’t aware of it and threw a rebirth to the first DPS that went down, and the resto shaman that followed couldn’t use reincarnate.

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  3. Ya the change really hurts those that could use the added flexibility and does not really hurt the top x% that are the ones that always complain about content being too easy.

    I wish the game could just be a game again and not some sort of e-sport that needs to have special limits to keep the hamsters in the wheel longer. I say let the players that burn through content at the expense of all else burn through the content.

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  4. Yeah, as a RL I’m not too happy about this, mostly because of the challenge involved in telling people NOT to use their rezzes unless specifically asked. I really really hope they don’t include shaman reincarnation in the limitation (though for balance reasons they almost have to) because I know I’m gonna be asking my shammies to wait for permission to use it… I can just see the drama llama rearing its ugly head over it.

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  5. I do feel that Shamans (Shamen?) have got very lazy about self-preservation because of Reincarnate. Shamen die so much more often than any class in our raids, and if this forces them to play with more care then I’m all for it.

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  6. I think this just fits in with Blizzard’s recent strategy of removing all class-unique buffs in an attempt to keep raid leaders from being compelled to hand-pick certain classes over others for the same role. If we had unlimited rebirths/soulstones, as a priest I wouldn’t be as useful to the raid as another resto druid, especially since my fortitude buff can be provided by others. With a cap on those in-combat resses, most raids will themselves with the single druid or warlock neccessary to provide the buff (in 10-man) without handpicking those classes over others. I think it’s a good thing, because it’s very frustrating for a skilled player who has spent a lot of time on a character to be asked by his guild to step out or reroll because another player can fill the same role more effectively simply because of the class they chose to create.

    As for the shamans… I’m a little torn. On the one hand, the res they provide could be used in a very tight situation, but on the other hand, since it is self-targettted only, being asked not to use it at all seems like it’s making it useless, and it’s a little insulting to the shamn.

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  7. “We really need to pick and choose which players to select for a resurrect.”

    I see it a little differently. I see it as really needing to pick and choose which players to choose for the raid, so that the wipe situation doesn’t even come into play.

    My old guild was planning on doing 25-man content in Cataclysm, but shortly after hearing that the same loot will drop from both the 10-man and 25-man versions, they decided to trim the fat, and go into Cataclysm with 10 of their best players.

    My point is that Blizzard is almost twisting our arm to say: “You need to take raid encounters seriously”, when the prerogative should be with us as GMs to begin with.

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