Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Patch 3.2: Tier Sets, Idols and Set Bonuses

Since the patch is now on the PTR more information is starting to come out regarding gear and such. You can find all of the items at World of Raids, and probably MMO-Champion. Here is my reaction.

Idols:
I feel a little psychic. In yesterday's post I said I wouldn't be surprised if there was a new idol and it turns out there is.

[Idol of Lunar Fury] - Each time your Moonfire spell deals periodic damage you have a chance to gain 200 Critical Strike Rating for 12 seconds.
My first impression is a positive one. It will be nice to have an idol that affects 90% of our rotation. Of course it all depends on the proc rate.

I've plugged the idol into my model with a couple different proc rates. For reference, here is how the current idols increased the hypothetical DPS: SF Idol = 1.07%, Wrath Idol = 0.46%, & IS Idol = 1.38%.

With a 10% proc rate the new MF idol increased the Model DPS by 1.18%. When I increased the proc rate to 20%, the idol increased my Model DPS by 1.99%.

Now lets remember a couple of things about my model. First, it does not factor in movement and movement will decreased the effective uptime of the idol. Second, my model assumes DoTs are refreshed when they expire, even during Eclipse. Therefore in reality that 1.99% number is a bit high. Therefore, it is my estimation at this point that the proc rate on the Idol of Lunar Fury has to be at least 20% to be usable, but my guess is that it should probably be 25% for it to be a buff over our current idols. I will have to do more math on it in the future to confirm.

Tier Gear:
I've had a couple of worries about the T9 itemization. Would we be stuck having 4 items with Spirit? Would we be flooded with Spell Hit even more? Would the T9 set favor Haste or Crit? After a quick look at the new tier sets one thing is very clear. The T9 stat itemization is far superior to that of T8.

Only 3 of the 5 pieces have Spirit on them, only 2 of the pieces have hit on them, and Crit rating is favored over Haste rating. On top of that our gem sockets and socket bonuses are better then then T8. I haven't had a chance to look at the sets of the other casters but realistically this is about the best we could hope for.

Set Bonuses:
I'm sure my first reaction was the same as most of yours when I saw the 4T9 set bonus. "That sucks." It's obviously worse then 4T7, and there is no way it can compete with 2T8 with the change to Eclipse. If this goes live no moonkin is going to wear 4 pieces of T9 gear.

My second reaction was "This has to be a place holder." Its not uncommon for Blizzard to put old information in tooltips in early versions of the patches. You may remember that early versions of the Idol of the Crying Wind had the same tooltip as as our current SF idol. Since the 4T8 set bonus is so obviously underpowered and an exact copy of the 4T6 set bonus, the 4T9 set bonus has to be a place holder.

The 2T9 set bonus is something that some moonkin have been asking for for a while. I've adapted my model for the set bonus and it says it increases our DPS by 4.07%. For the purposes of comparison, my model says that the 4T8 set bonus is a 2.48% DPS increase. Obviously, 2T9 is an upgrade over 4T8 and is worth the upgrade.

On top of that, this set bonus raises an interesting question. Does this make Improved Moonfire a viable talent again? Currently Improved Moonfire has very little benifit for a raiding Moonkin. The Glyph of Moonfire makes it a marginal talent because your Crit damage is so small and the 10% increase to damage is over powered by the 75% increase you get from the Glyph.

But what if the DoTs can crit? Suddenly that 10% chance to crit seems a lot more interesting. You may have already guessed this but I've plugged this possibility into my model.

Without the 2T9 set bonus, two points invested Improved Moonfire increased my model DPS by about 0.50%. You can see why so many moonkin skip this talent since it provides such a small damage increase for a 2 point investment. If you include 2T9 into the equation the DPS increase goes up to 1.76%. As a general rule of thumb, some people assume that each talent point should be worth about a 1% DPS increase. (I'm not saying this a blizzard rule. Its just one I've seen several places mentioned by other people). So if we hold to that rule then the talent still falls a little behind, but Improved Moonfire will be a more significant talent when combined with 2T9. My guess is that you will see this talent become more popular in the next teir of content.

Side Note:
Several people have said that Balance of Power increases your chance to hit with spells by 6% on the PTR talent trees (up from 4%).

Well, PTR testers are saying that this is a typo, and I'm not surprised. I had a hard time believing it, because I see no other reason for this change other then a general boost to Moonkin DPS. On top of that there was no mention of it in the pre-release patch notes. While it would have been nice, there is no real need for a change of this type.

16 comments:

Daez said...

I was pretty excited to see the 2t9 bonus, though I really hope you're correct in placeholder status of the 4t9 bonus.

As for the balance of power part... people may be confusing the change to the amount of spell damage taken with the amount of spell hit given. On the ptr, it does say this:

Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.

But it makes no mention of changing our hit %. The tooltip on the PTR does say 3/6% but I'm pretty sure it's a typo.

Thanks for the math on the idol... I'm looking forward to getting my paws on it; think you could do some comparison between that and the IS idol by chance? I haven't messed with that one much of yet (seemed kinda useless) but... I'm not good at the numbers part so I figure I'll leave that to those of you who are. Heh!

Anonymous said...

Does your model assume that the MF crits proc NG? Someone on the WoW forums apparently tested this on the ptr and they don't, which is somewhat disappointing, and I hope that gets changed.

Also, the new idol looks fantastic... can't wait to get that!

Unknown said...

I really tought 2PC T9 was something ridiculous, glad to see i was wrong and that im not the only one thinking that the 4PC is a Placeholder..., because the current bonus worries me..., probably 2PC T8 and 2PC T9 will be the trend of its like that...

Wonder if the crit chance will be based on some % of your crit rating maybe..., it would be nice and it would make a very nice use of the idol too, pushing moonfire even more...

What about Nature Grace? will the new MF Crits proc this also?

rinku said...

copypasteing what I commented on the previous post about testing the new idol.

fight length 14 min 30 seconds.
Blessing of the Moon Goddess uptime 14min 25 seconds.

270 dot ticks
BotMG refreshed 206 times.

procrate would seem to be REALLY (75%? ) high so hopefully their goal is that this is passive buff if one just bothers to keep moonfire up.

Anonymous said...

yes I can confirm that the proccrate of the idol is very high at the moment. (i've done no empirical tests) but i can say with an active mf-dot at the target you'll always have the procc up.

TLDR:
proccrate more than 50%
no internal CD - procc refreshes before it's over

Anonymous said...

more PTR testing:

mf crit proccs no Nature Grace but gives mana back (bug or working as intended ?)

can't say anything about the new eclipse disign because it doesn't work at the moment

Anonymous said...

Will the new MF Idol be a badge purchase?

God, I hope so. There really isn't much else to use our badge's on.

Anonymous said...

Use your badges for epic gems =P

Tilde said...

I can't imagine they'll leave the proc rate at around 75%. It's surely just that high to make sure it's almost always up for testing purposes right now.

Don't get your hopes up :P

Unknown said...

Yes, the idol will be available for 3.2 badges, or so states MMO.

Anonymous said...

Hey I've been on the ptr. I tested out the new Idol "Idol of Lunar Fury" and it proc's 3-5 times per moonfire. from what I can see if you have moonfire up you get the buff.

Unknown said...

Maybe its also an idea to consider The PvP Idols now, the Furious Gladiator's Idol of Steadfastness will be easily available next season for example, and even the season7 one might be available to a fair amount of moonkins.
101 spellpower is not too shabby, allthough I think the uptime will be too low.
If the new PvE idol stays the way it is on the ptr, that will be best by far ofc.

ChraxGarona said...

I can see the balance of power change if it were "as written" being a positive one. I could then just put 1 point in it and use the other somewhere else. Over-hit-capping is a big problem with a lot of us.

Anonymous said...

LOL at our 4 set bonus 3% crit to wrath and starfire?

Ben said...

I think you forget though that Wrath becomes much more valuable with the change to Eclipse, which is why the bonus was expanded to include Wrath. The 5pct crit bonus on tier 7 would be too inflated and OP considering the new Eclipse.

Antonio Guilherme said...

excuse me, I know that PvP is not the main point of your blog, altough I appreciate its PvE info, but can you indicate me any other blogs that are focused on that?
It's hard enough to do some PvP the way things are, even more w/o help

thanks!