Ghostcrawler graced the WotLK Beta forums over the weekend and had this to say regarding Improved Moonkin Form: (link)
"The plan is for it to go raid wide.
Given the talents avaiable to deep Balance, I hope it's obvious that we are trying to make the Moonkin a very competitive spellcaster. Some of the concerns from BC (e.g. running out of mana, lack of AE or CC, not enough group synergy) should be aleviated by now."
This is pretty big news for moonkin. I have been wondering if Moonkin Aura would go raid wide. Since most other buffs are now raid wide it only makes sense. Why would you bring a moonkin who can buff one party when you can bringa shaman who will buff the entire raid.
I have to agree with Ghostcrawler, in that Blizzard has addressed a lot of our traditional issues. Our mana regen is good, we have a repeatable (but somewhat underpowered) AoE, indoor CC, and improved raid viability. I think most long time moonkin will agree that these are good changed that address our main Pre-WotLK issues.
However, I am still nervously awaiting the Balance Revision that sounds to be almost complete. What are they going to do with Earth and Moon? Are they going to do anything to improve Eclipse? Are they going to do something to reduce the bloat in the balance tree? Stay tuned. As soon as I know something, you will see it here.
Those concerns were one's raised in classic WoW which they 'fixed' in TBC with melee for mana & dreamstate, cyclone and improved damage on hurricane.
ReplyDeleteThat the developers think they're still concerns (and they are) tends to suggest their idea of a fix leaves a lot to be desired.
I'll wait for the 'polish pass' too but I found it depressing that our issues haven't really changed since 1.8
I think blizzard has done a lot to try and improve moonkin, but I don't think they have ever sat down and said, where do we want moonkin to be relative to other classes and put them there.
ReplyDeleteAll of the moonkin updates have either been small and indirect (like the changes to mana regen) or done when they are changing all classes quite abit (like at each expansion.)
I think that they may be fixing our current problems but I don't know how many more they are creating by making whole sale changes to other classes. I worry that the changes they are making only bring us up to par with BC specs. What happens when all of the mage changes go live? There haven't been as many warlock changes but they could still push them way ahead.
I just don't know where we are going to be on the desirablity list. I was really excited before I heard that some buffs won't stack. Now I am back worried. I will wait for the polish pass also, but I seriously hope that it is more then minor changes.