Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Cata Build 12759 and Blue Posts

I am late on my second half to my rotation post. Real life as smacked me lately and I wanted to get a comment out about the recent beta build first.

This is another small patch as far as moonkin changes go. I was a little concerned at first because we haven't had any really changes in a while. However, after a little thought my concern went away. Here are the changes as reported by MMO Champion.

Blue Post: Moonkin Form

We've had a lot of discussions about Moonkin form, as you might guess. We know opinions range among the player base from "cut it" to "make me stay in my adorable form all the time." At first we were trying to make it more of an option, so that cuddly-hating Balance druids could choose the spec without the shapeshift. After much discussion though, we're going to go back to a Balance druid = Moonkin Form design. We'll put some more damage into the Moonkin Form.
First, of all this comment is the primary reason why my concern went away. This comment makes it sound like moonkin have been at a bit of a cross roads recently and Blizzard was debating what to do. Obviously it's going to be hard to make big changes to a class if you don't know what some of those big changes are. I expect to see more action in the next build or two.

I've largely tried to stay out of the Moonkin Form debate, because I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other. I liked Moonkin form when I first started playing in TBC. It was new to me, and there were so few moonkin around that it was distinctive. Now that we are at the end of WotLK those comments no longer hold true. I've looked at this form for over 3 years and there are moonkin everywhere now. It's safe to say that I am bored with the form, but I don't really care what I look like as long as the spec's DPS is competitive.

That said, I do hope they update the forms. Looking at the same form for 3 years is boring, but that is not my issue. Multiple moonkin in a guild seems to becoming more likely all the time, yet I am used to being the only one. Therefore, it is a little strange to see a twin. It's not a big deal, but I would like to look different then the other moonkin in a raid (if there is one).

Soothe Animal:

Soothe Animal is now named Soothe - Soothes the target, dispelling all enrage effects.
I won't hold it against you if you forgot this spell was in your spell book. Heck, I won't hold it against you if you never even trained it before. I'm not sure I've ever cast it in my 3+ years of WoW.

This is a good change. It takes a useless spell and gives it a use. It also gives druids a little utility that they didn't have before, but I think moonkin will feel the brunt of the added utility. I'll admit that it makes me a little nervous, since I've never had to dispel a not party target before. If you are in the same boat as I am you may want to familiarize yourself with mouse over macros.

Heart of the Wild:

Heart of the Wild now increases your maximum mana by 5/10/15% instead of increasing your Intellect by 2/4/6%.
I think Heart of the Wild just fell of a lot of Cata specs. Losing the Intellect boost and therefore damage boost is a big hit from a moonkin perspective, but you may still see it on some builds.

It's hard to say if moonkin will want it or not because we don't really know what the mana situation is yet. Also, the size of our mana pool doesn't have as big of an impact on our mana regen as it did in WotLK. Replenishment is still based on the mana pool, but moonkin got most of their mana from mana on crit which is no longer in game.

Note: There is also a blue post staying that this and Furor are switching places. I don't think this affects if the talent will be picked up though.

Master Shapeshifter:

Master Shapeshifter bonus increased from 2% to 4% for all forms.
Not a huge surprise for me. This just brings it up to the current live level, and I had always questioned if it was really 2% or if that was just old text for having just one point in the talent. My big concern here is the Natural Shapeshifter requirement that has always been a part of Master Shapeshifter. Hopefully they will get rid of the requirement or at least reduce the points needed for Natural Shapeshifter.

Relics Changed to Stat Sticks:

My feelings are a little mixed on this subject. Many of the moonkin idols like [Idol of the Shooting Star] and [Idol of the Crying Wind] have been pretty weak. Then you have some awesome idols like [Idol of the Lunar Eclipse]. This change seems to be both a buff and a nerf.

Here is a picture created by MMO Champion with all of the 264 ilevel relics converted into Cataclysm Stat sticks. The converted Idol of the Lunar Eclipse has 77 stam, 51 int, 34 crit, 34 haste, and a red socket. When I compare this to a few of the 264 ilevel wands in game this conversion seems fair if not generous.

On the positive side, we shouldn't have to deal with any more completely useless idols like the Idol of the Crying Wind, they will be easy to evaluate, and we should never have to use an idol that is a tier or two down from our current ilevel. On the negative side, we will probably never have an overly good idol like the Idol of the Lunar Eclipse. Some people will also miss the uniqueness of the idols, but I thought that their affects were pretty boring most of the time.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

I hate the new talent tree it seems like we lose more fun talents then we gain.

I love Brambles, Nature’s Reach, Imp Insect swarm, Imp FF.
WTF did they do to Balance of Power, I hate that for PVP I have to waste 3/3 in Perseverance at least make it 1 point or batter yet bake it in to something else.

I’m really not liking this at all, it just doesn’t feel like you have a lot of room for creativity when specing for PVP. I guessing they will fix this with glyphs which would be cheaper and easier then respecing I just hope that you won’t need raiding glphys and that way you can use them to get effects like brambles or natures reach. It would be nice if they were just about utility and not damage.

This is what I’m thinking for spec so far.
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=15v_o3YK.9uf.druid

Fantasma said...

I was initially bummed about the change to idols.

Then I remembered that I have every single idol that I've ever picked up for every single spec just sitting in my bank because I couldn't bring myself to delete them. =)

Hana said...

Overall I think the idol change is for the best. I'll miss the nifty ones, but I won't miss the bad ones like Crying Wind.

I actually did use Soothe Animal in a raid before. It was when my guild was trying for the timed bear mount in Zul'Aman. Soothe Animal let us skip a pull and buy ourselves another minute or two by skipping trash we no longer had to fight.

Erdluf said...

I hope you smacked real-life right back!

For MSS, you'll now also have to put two points into BotG or HotW. If you didn't want either of those, that means MSS costs six talent points for 4% damage. We've seen worse, but it is still bad.

I'm also wondering about spell range. MMO shows ours at 30 (and no N Reach), and some Mage stuff at 40. That is a pretty big difference.

Anonymous said...

Mmm, Soothe Animal for Bear Runs in ZA. Pretty much the only time I've ever used it. I don't necessarily see myself using this new Soothe either unless hunters are taken out of the game. I seem to shake my head in confusion more and more with these builds.

-Rueful

Valartha said...

I'm looking forward to the new Soothe, actually... I rarely have a hunter or rogue in the groups I raid with, so being able to dispel an enrage myself would be extremely useful.

I do understand that I'm likely to be in a very small minority as far as raid composition goes, but it's where I'm coming from nonetheless.

Anonymous said...

I had an idea about getting additional buffs from dots.

What if when you had your eclipse up it would increase the amount of stack of insect swarm or moonfire but each stack does less damage i.e. each starfire has a chance to add an addition moonfire dot but at 50 percent stacks 3 times but the thrid one does 25 percent, and same with insect swarm.

I would like to see something like that. would actually give you a reason to pay more attention to our dots.

Anonymous said...

I would like them to let Moonkins gear show while we're in form. That would be awesome. They do it with the cows so why not us. Other-than that, I just hope they keep us relevant in raids. Otherwise we'll be the outcasts again.