Patch 2.3 observations.

First off I have not been on the PTR. So these observations are only from what I've read in the patch notes and what I've seen on websites.

To be honest I am not all that excited about what is in the actual patch notes. From a druid perspective there are no unexpected or dramatic changes.

Selected Patch Notes:
Druids:

• Cure Poison and Abolish Poison are now usable in Tree of Life Form.
• Remove Curse is now usable in Moonkin Form.
• Force of Nature: This ability will no longer automatically break stealth on victims in its casting area. Nearby stealthed characters may still be attacked if they are too close to the summoned Treants.
• Intensity (Restoration) increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration.
• Rebirth cooldown reduced to 20 minutes, from 30 minutes.

These are the changes that I feel really affect me and none of them are that dramatic. Here are my thoughts.

• The best change is the increase to Intensity by far, but mana hasn't been a huge issue. However, with some of the new gear that I will talk about later this could be a big help.
• The ability to Remove Curse and Abolish Poison in forms only makes sense. Trees are healers and moonkin are a form of a mage so this change probably should have happend a long time ago.
• The Force of Nature is interesting and gives me some possibilities for PvP but I'm not sure it is that useful.
• The Rebirth Cooldown change is good, but I would have like to seen it go down to 15 minutes. The way I see it the B-Rez cooldown is to keep you from using it more than once in the same fight, which I completely agree with. The 20 minute cooldown is better but I think a 15 cooldown would make it available every attempt and still not be able to use it twice since most fights seem to have a 10 minute enrage.

Priests:

• Chastise (NEW) is now available to Dwarf and Draenei priests at level 20. Chastise causes Holy damage and incapacitates the target for 2 seconds.
• Fear Ward is now available to all priests at level 20. Duration reduced to 3 minutes, cooldown increased to 3 minutes.

I don't raid with Graypal obviously, and probably won't raid him much anytime soon. So I can't really judge a lot of the Priest changes. However, I hate the change to Fear Ward. I don't mind that all priests have it, but giving it a 3 minute cooldown makes it almost useless. This means that you can't do Nightbane with anything other than a Warrior Tank unless you have 4 priests. This probably doesn't have a big affect on 25 mans because they will generally have 3 or 4 priests as least.

Loot Changes:
While I am not all that excited about the patch notes, I am very excited about the new loot from Zul'Aman and badge turn ins. Blue posts on the WoW forums have said that Moonkin itemization will be increased with patch 2.3 and I am surprised at the quality of some of the things I have seen so far. I have only seen one piece of boss loot hand it was a cloth healing chest, but the Badge of Justice loot is available. World of Raids seems to have the best list of new loot.

World of Raids didn't have any Moonkin legs in there badge loot but there were 7 other leather caster items. A couple of quick observations:

• None of the new Moonkin gear has Spirit. I think this will be ok but it makes me a little leery. This will nerf my Innervate a little if I use it on my self, but hopefully the improved Intensity will make up for the lost mana regen from spirit.
• 6 of the 7 pieces I saw had gem sockets. This is great considering how little socketable leather caster gear there is hot their now.
• If you compare the new items to my current gear, most of the new gear is better including my T4 pieces. In fact when comparing my T5 shoulders the Badge shoulders, my T5 shoulders are only slightly better.
• It will be interesting to see what these items are like when the patch goes live. To be honest I think a lot of these items are overpowered and will probably be nerfed unless they decide to buff the Tier equipment.

Idols: This is the only part of the new loot that I am not happy with. Here is the new moonkin idol.
[Idol of the Unseen Moon]: Your Moonfire ability has a chance to grant up to 140 spell damage and healing for 10 seconds. - From a Raiding stand point this is useless. I rarely use moonfire in raid and it would have to proc 100% of the time to be useful. When you compare it to other options it doesn't hold up. [Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess] give you 55 spell damage per cast of starfire. I think this will easily better than the new idol. I hope that a Zul'Aman boss drops something better or I am going to be disappointed.

Anyway, I will post more when I find more about the patch.

Toon Update:
Graylo - The guild has made some attempts on both Fathom-Lord and Tidewalker. We are making progress but have not downed either of them. Hopefully we will get one of them soon.

Graypal - Worked with him in Searing Gorge a little and got him up to level 51.