Blizzard has been teasing us with patch 4.3 information for weeks now, and this last weekend we finely got some class specific information. If you haven't seen it already Blizzard released the T13 set-bonuses for all classes and specs. Here are the new moonkin set-bonuses:

• Balance, 2P -- Insect Swarm increases all damage done by your Starfire, Starsurge, and Wrath spells against that target by 3%.



• Balance, 4P -- Starsurge generates 100% extra Lunar or Solar energy while Eclipse is not active

A Quick Look Back:

Before I give my impressions of the new set-bonuses, I want to take a look back at the T12 set-bonuses as a basis for comparison. Using WrathCalcs and SimulationCraft I took a quick look at the old set bonuses to see how they turned out.

With the 2T12 set-bonus, my estimate was horribly wrong because the Burning Trents didn't behave at all like our Force of Nature trents. As it turned out the Burning Trents just stood around throwing fireballs at the boss and increased our DPS by somewhere between 1.6% and 1.8%. That's not completely horrible, but I think set bonuses should be between 2% and 3% in general.

For the 4T12 set-bonus I'm getting conflicting results from SimulationCraft and WarthCalcs. The SimulationCraft results agree with my original estimate of a 2.1% DPS increase, but WrathCalcs is estimating the DPS increase between 3.3% and 3.5%. I tend to agree with the SimulationCraft numbers and not just because they match my original estimate. Eclipse energy and how it relates to our rotation results in a fairly fuzzy math equation. Because of procs like Shooting Stars and Euphoria we don't always know what type of impact extra energy will have and that makes it difficult to estimate what kind of impact a set bonus like 4T12 will have. In this type of situation, a simulation tool like SimulationCraft has an advantage over a formulation tool like WrathCalcs, because the simulation tool plays through the actual rotation with random events like a player would.

In short, the DPS increase from 2T12 turned out to be worth about around 1.7% and 4T12 DPS increase turned out to be around 2.1%.

2T13 - Insect Swarm Boosting Nukes

The 2T13 set-bonus is a simple, straight forward set bonus. Insect Swarm is a high DPET spell that we want to have up 100% of the time, and the buff includes all three of our nukes that we would use as filler. This makes estimating the impact of this set bonus fairly easy using SimulationCraft and game data.

I looked at several World of Logs parses from several different moonkin using only boss kills from Firelands as my data set. In that data the damage from our three Nukes represented about 50% of the moonkin's overall damage. If we assume that Insect Swarm is up 100% of the time, then this set bonus would result in a 1.4% to 1.5% DPS increase. In Patchwerk style fights that percentage goes up to about 1.8%, but there hasn't been a true Patchwerk style fight since Patchwerk.

It's also, important to note that Insect Swarm isn't going to be up 100% of the time. We can expect to lose a little bit of the buff, because some of the nukes will hit when Insect Swarm slips off the target. So, in reality my original estimate is a little optimistic. The actual DPS increase will probably be a little bit lower between 1.3% and 1.4%. With that in mind I think this set bonus is a little weak, but could easily be fixed by changing the buff to 4% or 5% instead of 3%.

4T13 - Double Energy for Starsurge

My first gut impression of this set-bonus is that I don't like it. I don't like basing my evaluation entirely on a gut reaction, but set-bonuses like this are incredibly hard to evaluate without a tool like SimulationCraft, and unfortunately it has not been updated yet to include the new tier set-bonuses. Here is my reasoning.

I don't have a problem with a set-bonus affecting how we generate energy. The 4T12 set-bonus showed that it can be done effectively with solid results. My concern is that because Starsurge as the driver of this set-bonus, that this set-bonus will just be a weak version of our current 4T12 set bonus and limit overall Moonkin DPS..

The problem with a set-bonus like this is that it's only effective when you are not in Eclipse. Because of Euphoria and the energy caps we are guaranteed to be in Eclipse less then 50% of the time and are only going to be able to take advantage of a set bonus like this for a short period of time during each Eclipse transition. For buffs like Euphoria and the 4T12 set-bonus this is a problem that can be managed, because a moonkin is guaranteed to cast several Starfires or Wraths during the time that Eclipse is down. As a result you can adjust the amount of additional energy generated and guarantee that the buff will have an impact. For Starsurge, this is not true.

As we all know Starsurge is a cooldown based spell. It is also a moonkin's highest DPS nuke, and has significantly higher Damage per Energy then Starfire during Eclipse. This all adds up to the fact that we want to cast Starsurge on cooldown, which may or may not fall with in the small portion of the Eclipse transition where extra energy from Starsurge would be effective. This means that the benefit of the 4T13 set-bonus will be a bit random and inconsistent. It will be possible for us to go through a transition without casting Starsurge while not in Eclipse. It will also be possible for us to go through a transition where we cast two Starsurges while Eclipse is down due to Shooting Stars. I can't guess how this will balance out, but I don't like the lack of consistency.

My 4T13 Thought

While thinking about this new set-bonus I thought of a question for Blizzard. This is the third time Blizzard has used this style of buff where additional energy is only generated when Eclipse is down. Why is Blizzard being so one sided? Why can't a spell consume less energy while in Eclipse as well?

After thinking about it a little while I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, but here is my thought.

There are two benefits to Euphoria and 4T12 buff style. First, is that they increase Eclipse uptime by reducing the number of spells a moonkin needs to cast while Eclipse is down. The second benefit is that it increased Nature's Grace uptime by speeding up the transitions between Eclipse buffs.

My thought is that Blizzard could also increase Moonkin DPS, by reducing the amount of energy consumed while in Eclipse as well as generating more energy while Eclipse is down. For example, instead of having Starsurge generate double energy when Eclipse is down, why not have Starsurge consume only 7 energy while Eclipse is up and generate 23 energy while eclipse is down?

The down side to this suggestion is that it doesn't have the Nature's Grace benefit because Starsurges during Eclipse would cause the Eclipse transition to take longer. That said, I think that the numbers could be balanced to provide a DPS increase equivalent to the 4T13 set-bonus but is more consistent and still based off of Starsurge.

These types of buffs work because they increase the uptime of Eclipse and Nature's Grace by reducing the time it takes to transition between Eclipse buffs. When applied to common spells like Wrath and Starfire it works nicely because they are spells that are used in a consistent pattern.

Legendary Mechanics

Since it was announced that the first legendary of Cataclysm would be a caster weapon people have been asking questions and speculating about it and wondering what the proc would be. When the tool tip became available during 4.2 questions we finally got to see the proc. "Equip: When you deal damage, you have a chance to gain the Wrath of Tarecgosa, duplicating the harmful spell." While this answered one question, it created a thousand others for obvious reasons. Now that we are a month and a half into patch 4.2 the Legendary Staves are starting to come out and we are starting to get some answers. Siiz of Premonition was the first to get one on August 10th, and luckily for us a moonkin Happyjojj was able to get one a day later and has been posting some of the results from his testing of the proc on the European forums. You can find Happyjojj's thread here and Siiz's post is here. Also, I want to say congratulations to Happyjojj and Siiz on completing the legendary and thank you for doing the testing and posting the results.

The Highlights:

• The Basics - As the tooltip says, when you deal damage, the Wrath of Tarecgosa (WoT) proc has a chance to duplicate the harmful spell, but this means different things for Direct Damage spells and DoTs. According to Siiz, when WoT procs on a DD spell the duplicate acts like a completely independent spell and with its own damage calculation. It's possible for casted spell to proc but the duplicate to not and vice versa. DoTs on the other hand do not behave the same way. When WoT procs on a DoT tick it does not refresh the spell. It only duplicates the DoT tick and has the same damage as the original tick.



• The Proc Chance - Happyjojj didn't address this directly but I did look up the log he did while testing on World of Logs. You can see the results in this CompareBot report.
  
  According to Siiz, duplicated DoT's are listed as Wrath of Tarecgosa rather then the spell that caused the proc. In an effort to calculate the moonkin proc rate I divided Happyjojj's Wrath of Tarecgosa hits by their total number of DoT tick. According to that math the proc rate is around 11.2% (38/340=0.11176) give or take a couple percent. It's important to note that this is a fairly small sample and the actual proc rate is probably a percent or two above or below this number. So, please don't go quoting the 11.2% number I quoted as a fact. We need to get more data to say what the proc rate is more definitively.



• Duplicate Nuke Energy - When Wrath of Tarecgosa procs off of moonkin nukes the WoT procs will generate lunar or solar energy. For example, if you proc when casting a Starfire that generates 20 energy, the WoT proc will generate at least 20 energy also. It is unclear if the WoT proc can benefit from Euphoria, but Happyjojj has confirmed that the original and duplicate cost do not necessarily generate the same amount of energy.
  
  My Thought: This is huge! Getting duplicate casts is significant enough as it is, but generating energy with the duplicate casts makes this proc even more amazing. It basically makes the proc behave like a haste buff without the mana consumption. Moonkin that are able to get the staff will transition between Eclipses even quicker. This will allow for more Eclipse buffed DoTs and greater Nature's Grace uptime. I'm jealous.



• Moonfire and Lunar Shower - When WoT procs on the Direct Damage portion of Moonfire, the duplicate Moonfire will not stack Lunar Shower or generate energy.
  
  My Thought: I know a lot of moonkin don't use Lunar Shower regularly anymore, but I'm happy that it works this way. Having the duplicates stack LS in movement heavy situations would be helpful, but I think that is the exception rather then the rule. Most movement is usually done in fairly short bursts and probably insignificant when compared to the possibility of having MF generating energy when you don't want it to due to WoT procs.



• Wild Mushroom - Each mushroom that is placed is treated as an individual spell, but if a mush room is duplicated it is duplicated for all the targets hit by that mushroom. For example, if three mushrooms are placed and each mushroom can hit three targets, normally you would see a total of nine hits. If one of those mushrooms procs WoT then you would see a total of 12 hits.
  
  My Thought: I'm not surprised by this. I'm sure some people would rather that it duplicated all of the Mushrooms placed, but it probably doesn't matter mathematically. Yes the damage of an individual mushroom will be less then if all three were duplicated, but you are probably three times as likely to get a proc with each of the mushrooms treated as individual spells.



• Starsurge and Shooting Stars - Duplicate Starsurge casts will consume a Shooting Stars proc that occurs while you are casting Starsurge, but will not put Starsurge on cooldown. To put it another way, in rare occasions your Starsurge casts with Shooting stars will not be instant casts.
  
  My Thought: This is the one negative I saw from Happyjojj's testing. It sucks but it should be rare enough that it isn't significant.



• Hurricane - Damage from Hurricane behaves like a DoT when it comes to Wrath of Tarecgosa, and when it procs for a Hurricane tick it duplicates the damage for all targets hit by the tick.
  
  My Thought: Hurricane isn't used that often by moonkin anymore and probably isn't mathematically significant either way, but this is nice to know.

Thanks Again:

Once again, I just wanted to say a quick thanks to Happyjojj and Siiz for doing the testing and posting their results on the forums and in World of Logs.

The Pre-4.2 Blog Post

All signs point to the Firelands being released next week. Therefore it's probably a good time to take a look back and remind everyone what's coming with the new patch and to update my guides.

Lunar Shower:

• While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath)

After 4.2 Lunar Shower will still increase your Movement DPS potential, but it how has the above caveat attached. There has been a lot of talk about this change, so I won't make a big detailed comment.

This change has turned Lunar Shower into a "blah" talent. On movement heavy fights having the moving DPS will be nice despite the asymmetric way it generates power. On multi target fights it definitely makes sense to drop Lunar shower to make multi-doting easier. However, I suspect that most fights will fall between those two possibilities and won't have much of an impact one way or the other. At this point I am not planning to spec out of it, because I don't have a better way to spend those points. That said, I will drop it in a heart beat for any fight that favors multi-doting.

Nuke Buffs and 4T11 Nerf:

• The 4-piece Balance druid tier 11 PvE set bonus, Astral Alignment, now provides a total of 15% critical strike chance with 3 charges, decreasing by 5% per charge, instead of 99% decreasing by 33% per charge. This change was made because the set bonus proved so valuable it was not possible to upgrade out of the set into tier 12. To compensate, changes have been made to Starfire and Wrath.
• Starfire damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
• Wrath damage has been increased by approximately 23%.

This is the other big change of this patch cycle. In an effort to prevent a Tier 8 situation, Blizzard nerfed the 4T11 set bonus so that players would upgrade their gear in tier 12.

I am a big fan of this change. I didn't like how Astral Alignment complicated our casting rotation and the net result of these changes should be an overall buff. This change also simplifies our glyphing strategies a little bit. Glyph of Starfire is falling to the bottom of the pack. Glyph of Wrath will be best for single target situations and Glyph of Starsurge will be better when Starfall can be fully utilized.

One final thing, I've seen some people question what impact this change will have on how we use Starsurge. As far as I can tell it won't have any impact on Starsurge. At this point I will still be casting Starsurge on Cooldown no matter what phase of my rotation I am in, because Starsurge is still our highest DPET nuke.

Other Changes:

• Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid's maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.
• Glyph of Innervate now causes the druid to gain 10% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds when Innervate is used on a friendly target, in addition to Innervate's base effect.

Blizzard thought that healers were getting to much mana from Innervate so they nerfed Innervate for everyone but the druid casting it. The change to the glyph is intended to be a neutral change where where the druid casting it gets the same mount of mana before and after the patch.

• Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.
• Earth and Moon's duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.

My guess is that this change is being made to make life a little easier on 10mans, and improves moonkin utility a little. I doubt this will have any impact on 25man raiding, but this is a big boost for 10man guilds that don't have a DK or Lock able to apply the spell power debuff.

• Fungal Growth spell visual effect has been updated to be less visually intrusive and more aesthetic.
• Solar Beam has a new spell effect.

The Solar Beam graphic is still a little blinding, but these are two good quality of life changes.

• Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast.
• Entangling Roots and the equivalent spell triggered by Nature's Grasp no longer deal damage.

Another quality of life change designed to help 5man dungeon groups. Should make CCing in raids a little easier as well, but druids aren't major CCers in general.

Gear Guide Updates:

Overall, the updates to the gear guide are what you would expect. I would like to bring your attention to the point for point valuation of Hit Rating/Spirit.

How we value Hit Rating and Spirit is highly dynamic with regards to gear level. Since the amount of hit rating we need is capped at 1743, it's point for point valuation below that cap goes up dramatically as our Int, Haste, Crit, and Mastery increased. Since we are moving from T11 to T12, I am assuming a higher gear level when I evaluate the options and the value of Hit Rating/Spirit increased dramatically. By the end of the tier I expect it will be more valuable then Int on a point for point basis below the cap.

Please keep that in mind while reviewing the list. As always you can't take every item at the top of the list because that valuation is based upon a high valuation of Hit Rating. It is up to you to manage your Hit Cap and to make the right choices to stay as close to it as possible.

Raiding Guide Updates:

The raid guide didn't change all that much, but there were a few changes that needed to be made to accurately reflect the 4.2 raiding environment.

• Talent Section: I now treat Lunar Shower as an optional talent.
• Glyphs: I limited the third Prime Glyph choices to the Glyph of Wrath and Glyph of Starsurge since Glyph of Starfire has fallen behind. I also updated the Major Glyph section to include a few more situational choices.
• Professions: This section was changed to account for the longer internal cooldown on the Lightweave buff. I also was a bit harsh on the Engineering buff and have adjusted my valuation as a result. Finally, I added a small section on the Race choices available to Druids.

Patch 4.1 Review

Patch 4.1 has been on the PTR quite a long time and all indication point to it being released tomorrow. A lot of the various news sites are posting broad reviews of the changes and additions, but I thought you guys might prefer a more focused Moonkin point of view along with my thoughts on some of the more general topics I've seen discussed.

Moonkin DPS Nerfs:

• Starsurge damage has been reduced by 20%.
• Dark Intent: The friendly target of this ability now receives 1% (stacking 3 times to 3%) periodic spell damage and healing bonus instead of 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%). The casting Warlock still receives 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%).

The Starsurge nerf caught me a little by surprise when it was first released, but that was because I don't PvP. A lot of people pointed out right a way that this was primarily a PvP Burst nerf. While this change is about a 3% nerf to our overall DPS, I fully expected Blizzard to make up for this nerf somewhere else. Moonkin are doing quite well on DPS, but with the exception of a couple of fights we are not blowing other classes out of the water. As a result I don't see the need or an argument for a general nerf. However, my assumptions were wrong.

• Starlight Wrath now Reduces the cast time of your Wrath and Starfire spells by 0.15/0.25 sec, up from 0.1/0.2 sec.
• Sunfire base damage has been increased by 50%, from 372 to 558.

The two datamined changes above did give us some hope at first, but a closer look showed that they were just tooltip corrections rather then ability buffs.

On top of these changes the Warlock ability Dark Intent is getting nerfed for the target of the buff. This isn't as big of a deal as the Starsurge nerf, since not all of us got Dark Intent, and it isn't resulting in a 3% nerf on most fights even if we did, but it's fair to say that moonkin got smacked around a little in this patch for the first time in a very long time.

All that said there isn't any point to despair and rage-quit if these changes upset you. Our DPS will be smaller then it was before, but it is still very good. It's also important to remember that Blizzard has been much more prompt about making adjustments after a patch recently. The fact that they didn't make a change in the patch could be an indication that they want to see how it will play out on the live server before they make changes. Blizzard could easily buff Moonfury, if moonkin DPS is below where Blizzard thinks it should be after the patch.

Troll 5mans - Recycled Content?

With patch 4.1 the old troll raid instances Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurb are being re-released as super-heroic 5man instances. With this comes the inevitable flood of complaints about how lazy Blizzard is because they are recycling old content. I don't think I've commented on this argument yet, and I want to take a few minutes to try and put some perspective on the argument.

I personally haven't had a big problem with the content they've recycled so far, and I think a lot of the angry players are overlooking what has been recycled and how it was recycled. Let's take a quick look at the history of the recycled content.

• Kael'thas - This is the first example that I can think of and it set off all of the "setback" jokes. In case you didn't know a "dead" Kael'thas was taken from Tempest Keep and added to Magisters' Terrace. Kael had very similar abilities in the two different versions which makes the change seem lazy to hardcore raiders, but there is different perspective as well. First, the quest event that happens after you "kill" Kael'thas it's clear that he's not dead and still interested in doing bad things. Second, he was one of the hardest bossed in TBC. Very few guilds had killed him and even fewer farmed him since you could move on to Hyjal and Black Temple once you got him down. Therefore, most players weren't tired of him because few had even seen him.



• Naxxramas - This probably where Blizzard did the worst job of recycling content. I didn't run Naxx in Vanilla but from what I understand they didn't change the instance much other then to adjust the HP and strength of the boss mechanics. I do think Blizzard did a poor job of balancing this instance, but that doesn't mean it was a bad choice to recycle it. Very few players from vanilla WoW got to see this instance, and it fit very well into the theme of WotLK. I can understand why the hard core raiders from vanilla might be upset, but they represent a small fraction of the player base. There are many other players that were excited to see the content.



• Five-Man Bosses - In WotLK, Blizzard took several 5man bosses and turned them into raid bosses for ToC and ICC. The complaints about these fights are particularly strange to me. First of all, the entire expansion was focused on the Lich King. It's kind his MO to raise dead allies and enemies, make them stronger, and have them fight for him. He was doing that before the original WoW was even released. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that Blizzard had him raise some of the 5man bosses and turned them into raid bosses. On top of that, the 5man fights were very different from the raid fights they became. In my opinion this is a clear example that some players just wanted to complain regardless of the reason.



• Onyxia - From what I understand the Onyxia fight was virtually unchanged from Vanilla WoW to when it was re-released in WotLK. If it was a progression target then I would have been pissed at Blizzard's laziness as well, but it was made pretty clear that she wasn't a progression target. He was re-released as a part of WoW's anniversary, and was completely simple. The progression target was clearly still ToC, and no one spent a lot of time on Onyxia. Again, this one feels like some people just wanted to complain.



• Cata 5mans - Yes, Blizzard re-released Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep as heroic instances, but they also completely revamped the fights. The only thing these two instances have in common with the older versions is the map. Not to mention that these were great instances that I am glad to be able to run again.



• Cata Raid Bosses - Since I didn't play Vanilla WoW I didn't kill Nefarian or Ragnaros. I don't know how similar these fights are to their original versions, but I haven't heard of any obvious similarities either. Once again, new fights are new fights no matter the name of the Boss.

I haven't been on the PTR to run the new instances. I don't know how they compare to the original versions, but I'm looking forward to trying them out. ZA was a great raid and it should be fun to get back there and do it again. I never got to do ZG at level 60 so it should be more fun for me as a level 85 dungeon. If they rework them as they did Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep, I don't see how anyone will be disappointed.

Other Changes:

• Gear List Update - With the new five mans comes new gear. I've updated the gear list to reflect these additions. I made some other changes by deleting the blue gear and updating the stat rating.



• Weekly VP for Randoms - Love this change. I typically don't have a lot of time to run randoms during the week. I love the flexibility this provides.



• New Archy Rewards - I'm a little surprised by the amount of attention I've put into Archaeology. None of the new rewards are of any interest to Moonkin, but I'm glad to have a few more projects to get while trying to farm some specific items.



• Bind on Battle.net Account - Since I have changed guilds servers several times lately it's great that we will now be able to send BoA items across servers. I hate that I have toons on my original server that I can't send BoA gear to because I don't have a guild on that server anymore. This is a bit quality of life improvement in my opinion. Apparently I'm confused. A couple of commentors have corrected me to say that the BoAs still will not be transferable across server, which sucks.

Rumination on Gear and other Things

With Blizzard's recent blog post and Q&A on gear I've started to think about the role of gear in this game once again. In my four years of playing the game I've had several thoughts on the importance of gear. When I first started raiding gear was very important to me, but over time I've started to think that gear is over valued and in some cases almost irrelevant.

The Role of Gear in DPS:

Let me ask you this. How many times have you looked at a tier set and thought it was poorly itemized? How many times have you wished it had more of stat X and less of stat Y? I think those types of reactions are common and normal, but I've come to realize that they are useless when looked at from a different perspective. There are really two distinct perspectives that have different goals.

For the player, making gear choices is all about maximizing DPS. How individual pieces of gear are itemized is very important in that context for comparing the options. The itemization determines which piece of gear is better, but as players we are making those choices with in a set framework. Those choices are distinct and very limited.

Blizzard on the other hand is making choices to balance DPS. Their options are almost unlimited. How gear is itemized is just one component of the framework they create. As a result they are not looking to perfect the itemization, they are looking to balance it against other components of the framework.

In short, Blizzard determines the DPS potential of each class, and gear is one of the ways we try and reach that potential as players. This is one of the ways we as players can show our skill. We can show that we know how to pick the best gear even if it isn't itemized with the best stats. As long as the Moonkin DPS potential is similar to that of other DPS specs it doesn't matter if we take gear loaded with Crit or loaded with Haste to get there. We as players just have to know what is the best available option and choose it.

Is Gear Fun?

At the end of the Dev Watercooler post Ghostcrawler asked "Would more universal gear be more fun or less fun?" I want to broaden the question a little bit and ask something simpler. Is gear fun?

In some cases the answer is obviously yes. I've never had a legendary item, but I have a hard time believing that they wouldn't be fun at least at first. There are also some items like Nibelung and Deathbringer's Will that have some built in flavor that I know some people think is fun. These are definitely examples of where gear is or could be fun, but I believe this type of fun to be fleeting. Legendary's are eventually made obsolete, and then are only brought out to brag or for the occasional kill screenshot and flavor items eventually lose their novelty.

So, lets take a look at normal gear. A year and a half ago, I wrote a post on why I thought Hit Rating was a sexy stat. In that post I argued for the choice that the Hit Cap created. I like evaluating the options and making a choice. As I said before, the choices we make are one of the things that can separate the good players from the bad players, but I'm not a big fan of the choices currently being offered by Blizzard.
In some cases our choices are very limited like in the case of Bracers and Boots. For other slots we are overflowing with choices like in the Ring and Trinket slots. On top of that we have reforging which makes the choices we do have even more complicated, and the random loot from Throne of the Four Winds is very frustrating in my opinion. I think the gear decision can be fun, but I find Blizzard's current model to not be a lot of fun because it's imbalanced and overwhelming at times.

Can gear be fun enough to support the game?

As I said above, I think gear can be fun, but I don't think gear can be fun enough to drive the game. Personally, when I look back on my past as a raider, I never think about the night that I got a nice new piece of gear. I think back to the first kills and the achievements we gained.

Ultimately gear is a means to an end. Gear may be fun to some extent, but its real value is that it helps us achieve the things that are really the core of this game's fun. No one who has raided for an extended period of time raids for gear alone. The people who do raid for gear alone get bored or flame out because some gear choice didn't go their way. So, while I believe gear has the potential to provide some fun in this game, I think it’s fleeting. The real fun of this game comes from other sources like the encounters that are provided and the interaction we have with other players.

The Gear Conclusion:

So, to circle back to Ghostcrawler's questions, would more universal gear be more fun? My answer to that question is yes, if you can maintain a health level of choice. The problem with moonkin gearing at the point is that Blizzard has made only a halfway conversion to universal stats. As moonkin we are interested in both Spirit items and Hit items and that overly complicates the choice. It also puts us in a bit of a tug of war between the Cloth DPS and the healers. The Clothies say "don't take our Hit items because you can use Spirit," and the healers say "don't take our Spirit items because you can use Hit."

I think competition for gear as a consideration is a little irrelevant as well. Yes, it sucks when 8 people want the same item, but in the long run it doesn't matter. In most cases we will be killing these bosses for weeks if not months or we moving on to content with better gear. Eventually you will get all the gear you want or better in the long run. More specialized gear on the other hand means more sharding which is never good for the guild.

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There were a couple of other things that popped up over the past week that I wanted to talk about quickly.

Call to Arms

I have to say I love this idea. I've heard a couple of people discounting it as "lets give free loot to tanks" or that it's just going to cause an influx of bad tanks like this joke from the Daily Blink. I find these predictions to be a bit pessimistic and callous.

The problem with the current system is that there are two many ways to manage the system. Guilded tanks usually ask in guild if anyone wants a run before entering the queue to help guildies and to work with known players. Some tanks will also sell their time and instant queue in trade chat for extra gain. This means that when a DPSer enters the queue, he has a lot of people jumping ahead of him in line because the tanks rarely enter the queue alone. Giving tanks a reason to queue alone should cause the line to move faster for those people who don't queue with a tank.

And yes, the Call to Arms will attract a lot of new and bad tanks. It may be painful in the short run but it will be good in the long run. Some of the new tanks will learn to be effective tanks. Not only will this shorten queue times, but it will also make raiding easier since raider leaders should have more tanking and possibly healing options when roster options are low.

Sunfire

I'm sure some of you saw this change in the MMO-Champion data mining:

Sunfire base damage has been increased by 50%, from 372 to 558.

I don't like to comment to heavily on data mined info since it rarely gives a completely accurate view of what the real change is. However, like most of you I have been waiting on some sort of buff to make up for the nerf to Starsurge.

I find this change to be a bit strange. If we assume that this is a real change, and that the spell coefficient is similarly increased by 50%, then this is a decent buff. I looked at a couple of logs with single targets and Sunfire made for about 6% to 7% of the damage in most of the cases. A 50% increase should make up for the 3% to 3.5% DPS we are losing from the Starsurge nerf. When you consider multi-DoT fights like the twin dragons then it should be even more.

That said I don't like the fact that it makes Sunfire better then an Eclipsed Moonfire. If Sunfire is better then Moonfire it will obviously have some rotation impacts. It will renew questions of when should we renew our DoTs and should we refresh them early during Solar Eclipse. I would prefer if both Moonfire and Sunfire were buffed the same way or that Blizzard would do a more global buff like increasing Moonfury.