WotLK Update: Beta Build 8820

Wow. Two posts in one day.

Anyway, I checked the build updates on MMO-Champion and looked at the beta forums hand found a couple of Moonkin things to comment on.

Talent Changes:

* Celestial Focus (Tier 4) reduces the casting time lost when damaged by 25/50/70% when casting wrath. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
* Control of Nature (Tier 2) reduces casting time lost when damaged by 40/70/100% while casting Entangling Roots and Cyclone. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)

Nothing really earth shattering. The developers hinted at changes to these types of talents when they made the change to spell-push back.

From my PvE standpoint it probably won't have a huge impact. It is probably a bigger change for PvP, with the old talent push back would have been a lot more random and spikey. This change it will smooth it out and all wraths will cast in 1.8 seconds if your getting beat on. In my opinion consistancy is good, so I like this change.

PvP Gear Released:

They've released a lot of the PvP gear available from Arena and BGs. Here are some links: Honor and Arena.

As you probably know, I'm not a big PvPer, but the PvP moonkin I have seen on the forums seem fairly pleased with all of the crit on the gear. Oddly enough, the set bonuses are exactly the same as the current PvP sets. However, this isn't the reason I'm posting this info.

Check out the names on the items. I have heard moonkin called a lot of things, but I think it's funny that Blizzard is calling us "Nuker's." I don't know why it amuses me but it does. Of course, these names aren't the final names, and it is a good description of our role. It just struck me a little funny.

Blue Post:

There is a new moonkin related Blue post on the Beta Forums. Don't get excited. You can find the thread here.

Ashthra posted a fairly good summary of some of the talents causing our bloat issue. She primarily talks about the redundancy in our push-back talents, mana regen talents, and damage talents.

Koraa, a class designer, decided to grace the thread with his blue letters. While I like the attention from a Blizzard employee I find his response worrisome. He said:

"Currently working on a polish pass of the Balance tree. Get ready for more bloat! "

I may be reading into the statement to much, but it has me worried for a couple of reasons.

1) "Polish Pass" - While moonkin have had some very nice changes in some of the lower tiers of the tree, the top three tiers leave a lot to be desired. Eclipse, is almost useless. PvPers say that Typhoon doesn't work, Gail Winds will be ignored due to bloat, and Starfall seems very situational at best. Earth and Moon needs work also but Koraa already said they were going to relook at it.

I guess my question is, what does he mean by "polish pass?" Is it that they have done a lot of work on the tree and need to "polish" it before they release it to a beta build? The other possibility is, are they happy where the current tree beta build and are just want to make some small changes to "polish" it? The former would be great, but for some reason I suspect it is the later.

2) "Get ready for more bloat! " - This has to be a joke, but I'm not sure that it is. Koraa's prior comments on bloat made it seem that they wanted players to make choices and were not really interested in reducing the bloat. My worry is that he is hinting that the changes to Earth and Moon are going to make the Bloat worse. Most moonkin currently plan on putting only 3 points into E&M. If they improve the talent to where 5 points is desirable, I don't know where I will take the points from.

I keep telling myself this has to be a joke. Otherwise its just mean.