Patch Notes: Starfire & Wrath Buffed - 4T11 Nerfed

This change was announced late Friday, so I'm sure most of you have already seen it. Just in case you have not, this is what you missed.

• Starfire damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
• Wrath damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
• 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 (listed at the top of the druid class section). (src)

The current live version of 4T11 is very strong. So much so that there was some talk that it might be best to ignore the T12 set and stick with T11. I don't think that would have been worth while in the long run, but clearly it's a situation Blizzard wants to avoid after the 2T8 issues we had in WotLK. The question is how effective is this change?

I've tried to look at this change from a couple of different angles and it looks like the results are favorable. First, I looked at the WoL parses of five different moonkin over a series of fights to see what a 23% damage increase would do to the parse results. When I applied a straight 23% buff to Starfire and Wrath it increased the total damage of the parses between 5.16% and 7.77%. That is a pretty wide margin and a significant portion of the variation seems to be due to the presence of Dark Intent, which fights are included, and player skill. This of course doesn't account for the nerf to 4T11, but I think it's obvious that 23% buff is a significant increase.

I also tried to compare the change using WrathCalcs. Hamlet has created a version that takes these new changes into account and I compared the results I got from the PTR version to the current live version using the same set of gear, glyphs, and rotation. When I compared the two versions of WrathCalcs I saw a 3.01% buff to overall DPS from these changes. EJ poster Berthold also ran the changes through SimulationCraft and had favorable results. Using standard glyphs and rotations, SimulationCraft showed the change to be worth a 2.13% buff. If you changed a few changes he showed a 4.87% buff.

All and all it's clear that this is a positive change from a purely mathematical point of view. However, it's also a great change from a quality of life point of view. This will simplify a few things while we wait to pick up our T12 set pieces. For example, using Starfall around the start of Eclipse will no longer be a DPS loss due to losing Astral Alignment charges to Starfall hits. In short, this change not only buffs the overall damage of a moonkin but it also simplifies the moonkin rotation a little bit which I think is a good thing. However, there are a few ripple effects from this change that we should consider.

The Glyph Impact:

Of the Prime Glyphs, Glyph of Insect Swarm and Glyph of Moonfire will still be the two dominate glyphs, but these buffs will change the debate about the third glyph a little. Glyph of Starsurge will still be the best Glyph when you have multiple targets and can cast Starfall on cooldown. In fact, Glyph of Starsurge is probably buffed a small amount because we no longer have to worry about using it during Astral Alignment, and it can get more of a buff from Lunar Eclipse.

The changes occur in Single target fights and in fights where Starfall is unlikely to be cast on cooldown. In 4.1, many of the top moonkin preferred Glyph of Starfire in these situations because it allowed us to cast Moonfire just once per Eclipse transition and most if not all of our MF/SF dots would be buffed by Eclipse. However, a buff to Wrath is also a buff to the Glyph of Wrath, and according to the calculations I did with WrathCalcs, in T12 level gear the Glyph of Wrath moved ahead of Glyph of Starsurge in these single target situations.

In my opinion this is a happy side effect, because it's another simplification of the Moonkin rotation which I think is a little overly complicated at the moment. Not using Glyph of Starsurge should make it a little easier to track and reapply DoTs, because the dot durations should stay aligned.

Is Starsurge Worth it?

I hadn't considered this possibility when I first read the change, but some observant people wondered how this change would Starsurge and our over all cast priority. In patch 4.1 we saw a significant nerf to Starsurge. In patch, 4.2 it looks like we are going to see a significant buff to our other nukes. On top of that, the 4T12 set bonus, diminishes Starsurge in terms of Damage per Energy. Considering all of this together you have to wonder if Starsurge is worth it in 4.2 raiding.
Hamlet has already made a great post on Elitist Jerks considering this question. What Hamlet says is that from a damage perspective Starsurge is still a strong spell. Starsurge has "the damage of a Starfire in the cast time of a Wrath," Therefore it's still stronger then both of the other spells from a damage perspective. When you consider Energy production and usage Starsurge is still favorable in all situations up until you have the 4T12 set bonus.

Once you get 4T12 the situation gets a little more complicated. With the 4T12 set bonus Starsurge will generate slightly less Energy per Second then Wrath or Starfire outside of Eclipse. As a result there are some situation where casting a Starsurge could extend the down time of Eclipse longer then necessary. However, as Hamlet indicates, this shouldn't be a big concern. The chance that Starsurge will extend your Eclipse down time is fairly small, and the mental math you would have to do to determine when Starsurge isn't advantageous is pretty complicated. Therefore, it's probably best to simplify your rotation and just cast Starsurge on cooldown as we do currently.

Other Concerns: Lunar Shower

The new changes do not impact the debate over skipping Lunar Shower in patch 4.2 at all but I want to take another look at it since we are getting pretty close to the patch being released.

In case you've forgotten when 4.2 is released "while under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy." This change has lead to many people questioning if we should spec into Lunar Shower at all. I honestly thought we would see another change to Lunar Shower before 4.2 is released, because I don't think this is a question Blizzard wants to leave up to the player. However, since we've seen no change in the month since this patch note was announced and all indications are pointing to 4.2 being ready for release, it's a question that we players are going to half to answer.

From my point of view, there aren't a whole lot of positives for specing into Lunar Shower when 4.2 goes live. On a movement heavy fight it can still be a significant source of DPS. Yes, it will cause you to use up your Eclipse power and move out of Eclipse more quickly, but that is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it will also allow you to move into Solar Eclipse. Unfortunately that highlights the problem that Moonfire's energy generation is asymetric. Moonfire will generate Solar energy when your out of Eclipse and moving towards Solar, but generates no energy when out of Eclipse and moving towards Lunar.

However, the problem with skipping Lunar Shower is that there aren't any good alternative talents. Even when we do spec into Lunar Shower we still have 6 points to spend on optional talents that provide minor DPS gains, mana or utility. From my perspective, I don't have a big need for additional talent points to pick up utility.

In the end I think speccing into Lunar Shower is going to depend heavily on what fight is being worked on currently. If there is a fight that encourages a significant amount of multi-dotting with low movement, then you will see a lot of people getting out of Lunar Shower so they don't consume Eclipse with their Moonfire casts. However, outside of a big multi-dot fight, I don't see a reason to spec out of it. On single target fights without much movement Lunar Shower shouldn't have any significant impact, but none of the other available talents would either. On a fight with heavy movement Moonfire spam may be very beneficial.

Lunar Shower Details

Update - I added a section on the possibility of skipping the Lunar Shower Talent all together.

Yesterday, I posted about the data mined info showing that Moonfire/Sunfire would now generate energy if you were buffed with Lunar Shower, and guessed that it was a replacement of last weeks patch notes indicating all DoTs would generate energy. That has now been confirmed. Here is the official patch note.

• Insect Swarm now generates 8 Lunar Energy for Balance druids.
• Moonfire now generates 8 Solar Power for Balance druids.
• Sunfire now generates 8 Lunar Energy for Balance druids.
• Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. 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).

Since this is what I assumed was being implemented my comments yesterday about how this would affect our rotation still stands. Single target fights should see little impact. Even dual target fights won't see a lot of impact if you time the refreshes correctly. Mostly this takes away a tool for us to delay an eclipse transition using Lunar Shower and Moonfire/Sunfire. Oddly enough this should nerf the elite players but have a smaller impact on the more average players. That said there are two interesting parts to this patch note.

Delaying Eclipse: One of the main criticisms of the old patch notes was that it took away the ability for players to delay eclipse transitions by using Lunar Shower and Moonfire. I find it interesting Blizzard addressed this concern directly. They said:

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).

Blizzard's basically telling us they hear the concern but tough. We will have to deal with it because that is the activity they didn't like.

I know some people won't like the answer, but you have to like the direct way they addressed the concern.

Movement Stacking: The other interesting thing I saw in the patch note is that there is no mention of Lunar Shower Stacking with movement like in the current tool tip. This is a suggestion Hamlet made to the developers and it sounds like they have taken them up on the idea. Instead it sounds like Lunar shower will stack with multiple applications of Moonfire.

If I'm not reading to much into the patch note this is a bit of a nerf to our movement DPS, because it will take longer to stack Lunar Shower. However, I doubt it's all that significant. Movement generally isn't that long anyway and not it's not a huge part of our DPS total.

Edit - Skipping the Lunar Shower Talent

Now that Lunar Shower is being redesigned many people are asking, can we skip Lunar Shower the Talent?

This is in no way conclusive or scientific, but I tried to do a little backwords math using a WoL parse for Imsupersdw of Method. He is obviously one of the elite moonkin players out there and has the overall number 2 ranking on heroic Maloriak. I used this parse to back into some numbers.

To give it a best case senario I assumed that ever Moonfire and Sunfire cast was done with a full stack of Lunar Shower. If that was true then the Lunar Shower buff was responcible for 2.0% of is overall damage on the fight. However, the real impact is obviously less then that since there is impossible for him to have a full stack of Lunar shower for all of those casts. In fact, his Lunar Shower uptime was 45%. I did the same math for his Chimeron kill and found that Lunar Shower was worth at most 1% of his DPS, with a 25% uptime on Lunar Shower.

This says to me that the Lunar Shower buff doesn't have a big impact on DPS, since it's worth at most 2.0% on the optimal fight for one of the best moonkins in the world. It has to be worth significantly less on an average fight my an average player.

If Patch 4.2 went live today, I could see dropping Lunar Shower entirely since it would make our lives a little easier without a huge drop in DPS.

That said, I wouldn't expect this to go live as is. The forums have been very busy talking about the possibility of dropping Lunar Shower from the talent build and I'm sure Blizzard has seen it. The entire purpose of this change is to prevent us from staying in Eclipse and doing Multi DoD AoE and Moonfire spam. Blizzard won't want their efforts to be avoided. I expect we will see another change that will bake some DPS into Lunar Shower and make it a Mandetory Talent.


Other Changes:
The lunar shower change was the big thing but there are a couple of other little changes that you may be interested in.

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

My guess is this is being done to standardize the spell damage Debuff across classes. Warlocks and Death Knights could already spread their Earth and Moon like Debuffs in an AoE fashion. This just brings moonkin up to that level. I doubt it will have a big impact on the game but it could be a big boost for the 10man groups that rely on a moonkin to spread the spell damage debuff.

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

Good quality of life changes that will be welcomed by many.

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.

Patch Notes: Starsurge Nerf?

I assume most of you have seen the 4.1 PTR patch notes that came out on Tuesday and saw this little gem.

Starsurge damage has been reduced by 20%.

I was pretty surprised by this note, and judging from the email I've gotten it seems like many of you were also. I've done some rough calculations using SimulationCraft, WrathCalcs and World of Logs Data, and I estimate this change to be about a 3% decrease to Moonkin DPS. To say the least this sucks, but all nerfs suck. The question that I would like answered now is: Why?

Overpowered DPS:

When questioning a nerf the first consideration should always be if the class or spec is over powered. Personally, I haven't felt overpowered, but I have had a bit of a rough time raiding since the release of Cataclysm. Therefore, I might not have the best perspective. However, I also haven't heard any QQ about Moonkin DPS from other classes. So, my gut reaction is that Moonkin are not overpowered, but lets look at some numbers to see if we can see a different story.

SimulationCraft: The first place I wanted to look was SimulationCraft. I wanted to see how Moonkin ranked against the other caster specs. I ran simulations for each of the main caster specs using the BiS profiles at a 372 gear level provided by SimulationCraft.

SimulationCraft	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
Gear 372 ilvl	26,580	26,187	27,951	27,276	28,307

I realize that the profiles I used are not necessarily like comparing apples to apples, but I assume that the SimulationCraft coders know what they are doing and that these are reasonable. With that in mind I don't see a case Moonkin being overpowered in these numbers. All 5 specs are relatively close together and the Balance spec is towards the bottom of the pack.

World of Logs: SimulationCraft is great in theory, but doesn't really represent what happens when a human is pushing the buttons. So lets take a look at some WoL info.

At the bottom of this post, I've listed some ranking info from World of Logs. I've included the #1 and #200 ranked parse of each spec for every 25man Normal mode fight available in T11 raiding. I pulled the data on 03/03/11.

For the record, I fully understand that this data does not accurately represent the WoW playing population as a whole. This data is skewed by favorable RNG, and represents a tiny portion of the population. My guess is that Blizzard has much better data and sees a more complete picture, but this is the only thing that is available to me.

The results varied significantly depending on the fight. Moonkin DPS was close to the top on several fights, but was towards the bottom on others. Valiona & Theralion was the only fight I saw where significantly ahead of other classes on a consistent basis and Shadow Priests are right there with us.

DPS Conclusions: Looking at this data it's obvious Moonkin aren't weak, but I think it would be hard to argue that we are systematically better then the other classes. At the very least I don't think it warns a 3% nerf.

While Moonkin come out a head on some fights, we fall behind on others. It was my understanding Blizzard expected that some fights would be better for some classes, and that is ok. Therefore, I don't see a problem with how the DPS is currently distributed, because it's not consistent or overwhelming.

In my opinion Moonkin are not overpowered, and I would be surprised if that is the reason behind the nerf.

Why Starsurge?:

I also keep asking myself, why nerf Starsurge? If they thought Moonkin were to high, then Moonfury is a much better tool then Starsurge. They've already nerfed moonkin with it once, and have shown that they don't have a problem going below the current level of 10%. Since they focused on a single spell that makes me think there is a specific problem they are trying to solve rather then a general issue like to much DPS.

To Much Synergy: Since I only play PvE, I of course start to think of reasons why would Starsurge be a problem in PvE. The only thing I could think of is that they underestimated the amount of Synergy there would be between DoTs, Shooting Stars, and Starsurge. Some of the best WoL parses I looked at were moonkin maintaining DoTs on multiple targets and getting an large number of Shooting Stars procs.

It's possible that Blizzard might want to calm that relationship down, but I have a hard time believing that. Even if there is more synergy between those abilities then Blizzard expected, I don't think it's resulted in a DPS imbalance. Then I remembered, the main reason why we can never have nice things.

PvP Burst: To much Synergy might be the right answer, but I applied it to the wrong area of play. Blizzard has been trying to limit Burst DPS in PvP for years. They don't want players to go from full to dead in a very short period of time. With Starsurge and Shooting Stars a moonkin can put out a lot of DPS in a every short period of time with a little help from RNG.

As any many of you know I don't PvP, so I don't know if this is really happening in game, but it sounds possible. If I had to guess, I would say Starsurge is getting nerfed because Blizzard believes it's too powerful in PvP.

TL-DR:

Getting nerfed sucks, and I think most of us were surprised by the Starsurge nerf when we saw it. After looking at the DPS data that is available to players I highly doubt that Moonkin are over powered and need to be brought down for pure DPS reasons. Even if that was the case I doubt Blizzard would do so by nerfing Starsurge. Moonfury is a much better tool to raise or lower DPS if that type of action is needed.

The reason, Starsurge is getting nerfed probably has more to do with the spell itself rather then the overall DPS output of Moonkin. The fact of the matter is, Starsurge can unload a lot of DPS in a very short period of time with a little good luck from Shooting Stars. Chances are Starsurge is being nerfed for PvP reasons rather then PvE reasons. With that, there is a little hope. The patch is still in the early stages, and there is plenty of time for Blizzard to buff us in other areas to make up for the nerf.


World of Logs Data:

Magmaw	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	38,895	41,954	35,484	33,087	42,413
Low	29,190	29,290	29,148	26,849	29,345









Omnotron	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	37,232	44,795	38,238	30,271	32,479
Low	27,610	29,945	28,848	23,566	25,548









Chimaeron	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	24,443	24,281	23,804	23,994	23,458
Low	19,023	19,973	20,132	18,730	19,998









Maloriak	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	29,890	32,506	29,421	25,144	27,882
Low	24,849	25,728	24,062	21,853	23,937









Atramedes	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	26,249	24,899	25,230	23,971	25,495
Low	20,374	20,414	21,575	19,815	21,170









Nefarian	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	28,186	26,109	26,890	24,280	25,411
Low	22,180	20,780	23,362	19,811	22,292









Halfus	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	63,666	76,078	63,541	57,206	58,956
Low	45,979	54,027	49,132	42,288	45,325









V&T	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	36,023	30,456	36,457	30,003	32,476
Low	26,427	23,049	27,009	21,353	25,360









Twilight Council	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	28,515	24,259	24,944	22,242	28,530
Low	21,862	18,832	20,673	16,349	19,515









Cho'gall	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	38,610	43,283	27,791	28,221	33,175
Low	22,082	21,359	22,786	19,463	20,967









Conclave	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	24,835	26,194	23,864	22,991	24,751
Low	17,915	18,258	18,325	15,896	18,358









Al'Akir	Balance	Fire	Shadow	Elemental	Destruction
High	27,877	26,730	29,818	25,929	26,247
Low	20,299	20,105	22,033	17,270	20,110

4.0.6 Review

MMO Champion is reporting that patch 4.0.6 will be released tomorrow. Since this patch was released piece by piece over a fairly long time I thought it might be a good idea to go through and remind everyone what is included. Both the gear list and the raid guide have been updated to take the new patch into account.

PvE Changes:

Total Eclipse: Benefit from mastery increased by approximately 33%. This buff sounds bigger then it is. In reality it's a modest DPS increase of 2.5%-3.5%, but it will change the way we gear and reforge because it moves Mastery Rating ahead of Crit Rating in terms of marginal value.

Wild Mushroom: Several changes were made to WM in this patch. It's now instant cast, the radius of detonation was increased, and the damage was increased by 30%. If you haven't been playing with WM already, you better start. It's going to be a big part of any AoE rotation we do, and there are several fights where it will be very nice.

Moonkin Form: Grants 15% damage reduction instead of increased armor, and shapeshifting in or out of this form now breaks roots. I much prefer a 15% damage reduction over the increased armor. Some of you may be a little confused by the shapeshifting section of the blue comment. In short, Blizzard took away the ability for all druids to break roots with shapeshifting, but gave it back to Moonkin and Restos.

Starfall: Will no longer strike targets that are not in combat and will now drop stars at a slightly faster rate. This is primarily a quality of life change that I approve of. I think most of us have been in a situation where we hit Starfall and pull a mob we didn't intend to, or saw our stars wasted on insignificant targets. This should make life a little easier during trash, and should increase our significant DPS during boss fights.

Glyphs: Glyph of Entangling Roots will now reduces the cast time of Entangling Roots by 0.2 seconds, rather than making it instant cast. Glyph of Wrath now increases damage done by Wrath by 10% and no longer requires Insect Swarm on the target. Neither of these changes are huge, but are worth remembering. I loved having GoER for 5mans because it made CCing so easy, but I can see how it could be a problem in PvP. The GoW change shouldn't mean a whole lot since Insect Swarm should have a near 100% uptime, but it should be a small DPS increase for the fights where you use GoW.

Fungal Growth: The duration has been increased to 20 seconds. In addition, it should now be much more responsive when detonating Wild Mushrooms. I wasn't real impressed with Fungal Growth when I played with it because I thought it was fairly short and didn't apply quick enough. This should fix both of those issues.

Shooting Stars: The buff duration has been increased to 12 seconds. A small quality of life change that's probably a bigger deal for PvP and leveling then it is for PvE. If you weren't getting a Starsurge off in 8 seconds you were likely doing something wrong.

Mana Cost Reductions: Moonfire, Sunfire, and Typhoon all had their mana costs cut in half. Obviously it's a positive change but in my experience probably isn't that significant.

Profession and Buff Changes:

Meta Gems: New Meta gem Burning Shadowspirit Diamond will increase Int by 54 as well as increase your Critical Strike damage by 3%. In addition to that, the meta requirement for all 3% crit damage gems has been changed to must have 3 red gems equipped. The Burning Shadowspirit Diamond will be BiS, but will likely be difficult to find right after the patch. I would have a Chaotic ready to use right away and pick up the Burning when it becomes a little more available.

Engineering: The Synapse Springs effect now lasts 10 seconds, down from 12. This reduces the effectiveness quite significantly. The average benefit of the Synapse Springs is now just 80 Int but in reality is likely different when you consider other factors.

Bracer Enchant: New bracer enchants are available, on of which will increase Intellect by 50. This is really a nerf to the leather working profession buff. This means Leatherworking now provides the user with 80 Int instead of the 100 or so that it did before.

Off-Hand Enchant: Superior Intellect now increases Intellect by 40, down from 100. It sucks but I'm not surprised. Giving a 100 Int enchant to the off hand slot was probably a bit overpowered, especially since Staffs didn't have a similar enchant. I still think MH/OH combo is the better way to go, but his nerf evens the playing field a little.

Tailoring: Nothing really changed with tailoring other then some tooltip fixes, but it is the new over budget profession buff. Lightweave Embrodery is providing around 105 Int due to a smaller then expected internal cooldown. I'm not suggesting that everyone should change to it because I bet it will be nerfed, but it is definately the best for now.

Alchemy: New Alchemist's Stones for Agility, Strength, and Intellect have been added. The new Int trinket isn't going to be BiS. It might not even be a good transition item since the Darkmoon Card and Stump of time are so easy to obtain, but I'm sure it can work into your plans some how depending on what your gear needs are.

PvP Changes:
I should really call these non-PvE changes because many of the changes above are significant for PvP as well. These are a few changes that don't really impact PvE but will be significant to some of you.

CC Changes: Entangling Roots, Hibernate, & Nature’s Grasp now have a PvP duration of 8 seconds. I don't PvP much so I'm not sure what the significants of this is, but I think it standardize the CC a little bit across classes.

Set Bonus: The PvP Balance druid 4-piece set bonus effect has been increased to 20 Solar Energy and 13 Lunar Energy, up from 5 and 13. The effect will also now be more intelligent at choosing whether to give the druid Lunar or Solar Energy (it checks the Balance Power to determine which to give depending on which energy is higher at the time). Again, I'm not sure how significant this is, but I sounds like it should be a pretty big help.

Catching Up on 4.0.6

Life has been smacking me around quite a bit lately. Between work, family and raiding I haven't had much time to blog and a ton of information has come out and almost past me by. Well I hope to correct that to day. There is lots of news about patch 4.0.6 that I would like to comment on. Lets get started.

Eclipse:

Total Eclipse (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 33%.

To be more specific the 12% damage increase from Total Eclipse is being increased to 16%, and the 1.5% increase you get from each point of Mastery is being increased to 2%. This is a decent size buff but not huge. When I hard coded this change into WrathCalcs it increased the DPS by 2.75%. Basically it's a welcome boost but it's not going to move you to the top of the DPS charts in an instant.

Some of you may be wondering how a 33% increase in Total Eclipse can result in just a 2.75% increase. There are two important things to remember. First, This has no impact on the 25% damage increase you get from being balance. It only impacts the Total Eclipse ability you train at level 80. Second, Eclipse only impacts about 50% of our rotation. As a result this increase is watered down by a very large base increase and only impacts a part of our rotation. This is how a 33% increase becomes just a 2.75% buff.

This will change the way we value stats. Currently Crit Rating and Mastery Rating are very similar in value with Crit Rating holding a slight edge. If this change goes live Mastery Rating will be clearly superior. Again, I used WrathCalcs to see how this change would impact stat valuation. Our current set up values Crit at 29% of Int with Mastery being close behind at 28% of Int. After the 4.0.6 patch Crit is still at 29% of Int, but Mastery increases to 36% of Int. Both stats are still well behind Hit Rating and Haste Rating, but will change the way we reforge and possibly slightly change some of our gear choices.

Wild Mushroom:

• Fungal Growth duration has been increased to 20 seconds, up from 10. In addition, it should now be much more responsive when detonating Wild Mushrooms.
• Wild Mushroom is now instant cast, down from 0.5 seconds. In addition, the radius of detonation has been increased to 6 yards, up from 3, and damage done increased by 30%.

I've already commented on WM now being instant cast and the increased radius detonation.

What's new is the change to the WM damage and Fungal Growth. In a prior build they increased WM damage by 15%. At the time I said it's nice but put the reason people don't use WM isn't because it's a weak spell. I have the same opinion now. A 30% increase in damage is even nicer, but it's probably meaningless without good mechanics. The good news is I think the increased radius of WM detonation will fix it's primary problem.

The Fungal Growth changes are very welcome. As I said in my last post I was unimpressed with the talent when I tried to use it. The primary problem I had was that it took to long to spawn and the mobs hit by the detonation were rarely snared by the slow. If they have fixed that issue I may have to give the talent another try.

Shapeshift Change:

Shapeshifts: Entering or leaving a shapeshift no longer cancels root effects. It continues to cancel movement slowing effects.

I think this change took a lot of people by surprise. My guess is that this change is a classic example of why PvP sometimes means we in PvE can't have nice things. Blizzard probably made this change, because they didn't want druids as a whole to have an unlimited CC breaker for PvP. I can see how it might be overpowered. However, I will miss it for PvE.

Other Changes:

Starfall will no longer strike targets that are not in combat and will now drop stars at a slightly faster rate.

A good quality of life change. I think we all been in the situation where we pop Starfall at the wrong time and pull an extra trash pack or something. As a result, I haven't been using a Starfall for anything but boss fights where I know I won't pull adds. It won't have a big impact on our over all performance, but it does give us some peace of mind.

The only thing that makes me a little sad about this change is that I've found Starfall to be helpful with Archeology. When surveying in some of the low level areas. I can pop Starfall and clear out pretty much every mob around me. Obviously, it's not a huge need but I liked it.

Moonkin Form now grants 15% damage reduction instead of increased armor.

Assuming this affects all types of damage, this is an awesome change for PvE and probably PvP as well. The increased armor on a moonkin was always a bit of a strange concept. As a ranged caster we shouldn't be getting meleed often and the armor was usless 99% of the time. Taking 15% less damage is a big improvement. It's not going to save you if you stand in the fire or do a lot of things stupid, but it does give you a greater margin for error and makes you less of burden on healers.

Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect - Permanently enchant bracers to increase Intellect by 50.

I think everyone saw this coming a mile away. Without an enchant like this, leatherworking would be clearly superior to all other professions in raiding buffs. Given how much effort Blizzard has made to equalize professions over the past few years, there was no way that a change like this wasn't going to be made. If you switched to Leatherworking just for the buff. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

Glyph of Entangling Roots redesigned. It now reduces the cast time of Entangling Roots by 0.2 seconds, rather than making it instant cast.

Another example of why how PvE can't have nice things because of PvP. I'm really going to miss this. In this new era of CC, it was very nice to be able to root a target as soon as the pull happened. It made my life easier but I can see why Blizzard is getting rid of it. It's probably a bit over powered in PvP to allow a player to CC on the move. That said, they should get rid of the cooldown as well then.

Meta Gems and Moonkin Changes

Patch 4.0.6 is on the PTR and you can find the patch notes here. This is primarily a clean up patch for all the hot fixes Blizzard has done over the past month, but there are several balancing changes that you guys should be interested it.

Meta Gems:

• Chaotic Meta gems now have a requirement of 3 red gems.
• New meta gems have been added: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Agility/3% critical damage), Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (Strength/3% critical damage), and Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Intellect/3% critical damage). These new recipes are unbound and can drop from any Cataclysm creature. The new meta gems have a requirement of 3 red gems equipped.

First Reaction: "Finally they are fixing the Chaotic Meta Gem."
Second Reaction: "Who cares about the Chaotic Meta Gem?"

This is good news all around, but I'm amused by the new meta requirement. Requiring DPS to socket three red gems is like requiring an active smoker to smoke cigarettes. The requirement is useless because we would have done it anyway. However, that's fine with me. I would rather not have to worry about meeting my meta requirement every time I add a piece of gear. It wasn't a big concern in WotLK either, but now it's not a concern at all.

The addition of the Burning Shadowspirit Diamond and the others is also quite interesting. A guildie of mine commented on the fact that it probably wasn't a good idea to have every single DPS spec want the same meta gem, and apparently Blizzard had the same thought. However, it's not that big of a buff assuming that the Meta bonus on the new gems operates the same way it does on the Chaotic meta gem. Obviously 54 Int is better then 54 Crit, but the true value of the Meta comes from the 3% additional crit damage and everything else is just frosting.

What I find most interesting about these new cuts is how this will affect the economy. Most people will switch to the Chaotic at first because it's widely available, but the advantages of the new gems is obvious. Will the new patterns be so common that the Chaotic is completely abandoned? Could the new patterns be so rare that the new metas will be so expensive to preserve a market for the Chaotics? As a progression raider I will be going for the Burning no matter what the cost assuming it's not astronomical, but I wonder if this is a small return of TBC where everyone was fighting over rare patterns on the AH.

Wild Mushroom Changes:

• Wild Mushroom is now instant cast, down from 0.5 seconds. In addition, the radius of detonation has been increased to 6 yards, up from 3, and damage done increased by 15%.

It's fair to say that Wild Mushroom has been a flop in Cataclysm so far. They are difficult to place. It's difficult to make them affective given their very small radius. Overall they just weren't worth the effort. I've tried to use them in several fights but in most cases they were a waste. The question is will these changes cause people to use them?

Increasing their damage by 15% is nice, but I don't think anyone really thought of them as weak. Increasing their damage probably won't increase the spells usage much on its own. Making the mushrooms instant cast makes it possible to cast them while moving. This could give you something else to do while your running around the room other then spamming Moonfire, but if the mouse is the primary way you move your toon then this will be very difficult to pick up.

The big improvement in this patch is the increased range. Increasing the blast radius from 3 yards to 6 yards quadruples the area affected. This allows for less precise placement and a greater margin of error with out being a full scale AoE spell. Of all the changes this has the most potential to make the Wild Mushroom a useful spell. That said there are some other changes that could be made that I think are both reasonable and and would make the spell more valuable.

First, I would have one mushroom do the same amount of damage as three mushrooms. You could still place three mushrooms if you wanted spread the damage and/or Fungal Growth over a larger area, but the amount of damage done by each individual mushroom would diminish with each mushroom placed. I think this would make the spell easier to use without significantly reducing it's utility.

Second, I would like to see feral druids be able to detonate the mushrooms in feral forms. I don't know how useful this would be because they would obviously be weak in feral gear, but it could be a great tool for a feral tank to pull newly spawned adds and get some burst aggro.

Third, I've been unimpressed with Fungal Growth. It spawns to slowly after the mushrooms have been detonated. I've had several instances where a mob is hit by the explosion but not slowed by fungal growth because they've already ran out of the area before it spawns. Blizzard needs to tighten that mechanic up a little bit. It might be a good idea for the explosion to have a very short duration slow affect as well as the patch on the ground.

Other Druid Changes:

• The Shooting Stars buff duration has been increased to 12 seconds, up from 8 seconds.
• Glyph of Wrath now increases damage done by Wrath by 10% and no longer requires Insect Swarm on the target.

These are helpful changes, but fairly minor. The shooting stars change is more for leveling and PvP in my opinion. As a raider I've rarely not been able to cast Starsurge in the 8 seconds the buff is up. In other forms of play though there is more movement and this makes the talent more useful for people who favor those activities.

From a raid perspective, the Glyph of Wrath change should be a small DPS increase, but not a big one because Insect Swarm should be up on most of your targets. That said, it will be helpful on low health adds where it's not beneficial to put Insect Swarm up and a short cast time spell is favored. However, this may be intended more as a PvP change, since DoTs are dispelled quite frequently in PvP.

Patch 3.3.3: What Now? A look at Glyphs and Rotations.

If you pay attention to the Moonkin related forum threads and websites you have probably noticed quite a bit of debate going on for the past couple of weeks. As you probably remember, with the release of patch 3.3.3, Starfall is getting a very significant buff. This change not only impacts our DPS, but it has also raised a lot of questions about which Glyphs to use, and which spells to cast. In this post I hope to answer some of the questions related to moonkin DPS in a post 3.3.3 world.

Glyphs:

Glyph of Starfall - It may sound strange to some of you, but Glyph of Starfall is the only glyph sure to be use by most Moonkin raiders after 3.3.3. The reason is fairly simple. Before the changes Starfall the Glyph of Starfall wasn't fair behind the Glyph of Insect Swarm. In fact, they were close enough that quite a few moonkin advocated using the Glyph of Starfall, so that Insect Swarm would still provide the hit debuff on the boss despite the small DPS loss.

Since Starfall is getting such a huge buff, being able to cast Starfall 50% more often is an obvious a significant bonus as well. There may be a few situations where the Starfall cooldown doesn't line up well with fight mechanics thus making another Glyph a bigger DPS increase, but those situations will be the exception.

Glyph of Focus - This glyph is actually getting a bit of a nerf in patch 3.3.3. The increased damage to Starfall is getting reduced to 10% from 20%, but given the new power of Starfall it will still be buff when compared to pre-patch moonkin DPS. The big question with the Glyph of Focus is how significant is the range nerf when it is used?

That a really hard question to answer because it is quite subjective, but the range reduction is not as big of a penalty as some of you may think. The Glyph of Focus does reduce the range of the base Starfall from 30 yards to 15 yards, but most moonkin have Nature's Reach fully talented, and this still increases the range of Starfall by 6 yards. Therefore, by using the Glyph of Focus you are reducing the range of your Starfall from 36 yards to 21 yards rather then 18 yards as I and some other people expected.

That said, losing 15 yards on your range may be a big deal, and can be seen as both a pro and a con. As ranged DPS most of us are used to trying to stay at max range to allow room for Melee and healers. Finding the new range will take some adjustment and will be difficult to determine. However, the smaller range can also help you focus your Starfall DPS on desired targets.

Glyph of Insect Swarm - Once considered a standard Raiding glyph, the Glyph of Insect Swarm had started to fall out of favor with high end raiding moonkin even before the buff to Starfall. The reason, is the 3% hit debuff Insect Swarm provides when it is not glyphed. I am not 100% confident in the math, from what I understand it actually translates to about 6% for the tanks, and that can be a big help for some of the very hard hitting heroic bosses in ICC. It is possible for Hunters to provide this debuff also, but it is at a much more significant DPS loss then it is for moonkin.

If you don't need the hit debuff that Insect Swarm provides, then Glyph of Insect Swarm is still a very solid DPS buff and compares well to the other available options.

Glyph of Starfire & Glyph of Moonfire- These two glyphs are so closely tied together that I am going to handle them in the same comment. Both are standard moonkin raiding glyph from the early days of WotLK and center around high Moonfire uptime. The problem with that is that Moonfire has not scaled well with the higher levels of gear. So some moonkin are questioning if Moonfire should even be cast when you are not moving.

The fate of these two glyphs really depends on how often you cast Moonfire. If you are only casting Moonfire while on the move then these two glyphs obviously have significantly less value. Therefore, it is possible that one or both of them could be dropped from your rotation.

My Recommendation:

I've put several different glyph combinations through SimulationCraft. The glyph combination with the highest DPS was IS/Focus/Starfall, but there are several reasons why I am hesitant to use that combination. I have been sold on the value of the hit debuff provided by Insect Swarm therefore I am reluctant to glyph IS and lose the debuff. The Glyph of Focus is still solid glyph at 10%, but the range reduction bothers me a lot. Since most fights require some sort of "spread out" mechanic, reducing my range for a 10% buff on a spell use once a minute seems to be a bigger headache then it is worth.

Therefore, I am recommending a Starfire/Moonfire/Starfall glyph combination. It may not have the highest DPS potential, but it is not fair behind the other options. It has the added benefit of being very similar to our current glyph set up which means it has less of an impact our rotation.

The Rotation:

Along with the glyph debate, there has been a debate going on about which DoTs should be cast and when after patch 3.3.3. As I said before, the Moonkin DoTs do not scale well at the higher levels of gear since haste has very little impact on them and crit has almost none.

This has lead some moonkin to advocate a single DoT rotation when patch 3.3.3 is released. The common suggestion form this camp is that Moonfire should only be cast while moving, and that your casting time should be spent on Nukes or on IS if the hit debuff is needed.

I have tried to plugging in several different rotations into SimulationCraft where the amount you cast Moonfire is limited or dropped all together. The only time I found it was a DPS increase over the current standard was if you used a IS/Focus/Starfall glyph combination. Using the Moonfire/Starfire/Starfall glyph combination I suggested above, Moonfire was still a strong part of the rotation. Therefore, I don't recommend any big change to your rotation. However, if you do decide to drop or limit your DoT usage in the future, just remember that it is always important to cast DoTs while on the move if they are not already on the boss.

TL-DR:

Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of speculation on what the impact of the Starfall buff will be. The fact that Glyph of Starfall becomes a standard raiding glyph is a bit of a no brainer, but there were other serious questions raised about the value of our other glyphs and about he value of your DoTs.

In the end, it is my belief that Glyph of Moonfire and Glyph of Starfire are still the best options for our other two Glyph slots. There are other options that may increase your DPS but they come at a price. Also, since Insect Swarm is valuable for the hit debuff it places on the target, and Moonfire is critical for Glyph of Moonfire and Glyph of Starfall, I do not recommend that either DoT be dropped from the standard Moonkin DPS rotation. That said, I highly recommend that you test out the various options on SimulationCraft on your own.

/facepalm: Patch Issues a Day Early

Update2: Adoriele, the author of Squawk and Awe, posted a comment below that I wanted to highlight.

Just wanted to give people a heads-up, there's a quick fix in the works for SAA. It's a kinda ugly hack, and I'm not sure about the performance difference in using it, so I'm waiting until I get confirmation that a.) it works, and b.) it doesn't lock up your computer before I release it. The fix was written by another party, as well, so I'll want to get his permission before I post it places (or let him do it).

After the fix, SAA will still work exactly as it has before - no split Eclipse bars, trinket bars still somewhat borked, depending on what trinkets you're using. All the fix does is change from triggering Eclipse bars off of the Combat Log to triggering off of the UNIT_AURA event.

And there was much rejoicing.

Even if this does work, I will probably still try and look for another option. I like Squawk and Awe, but we can't really expect Adoriele to maintain it if he doesn't have an account. It would be nice to have several options so we are not running around the night before a patch trying to figure somethign out.

Update1:

Lissanna over at Restokin.com apparently did some testing on the PTR to see if any of the addons worked. You can find her post here.

In short, she has found only 3 addons that track the Eclipse buff successfully on the PTR, and only one addon that tracks the cooldown successfully on the PTR. At the moment the our best bet seems to be working with two Addons: ClassTimer and ClassTimer Eclipse.

I'll be honest. I am a little skeptical. I have never worked with either addon. Plus, neither addon has been updated recently. I hope it works. If any of you have experiance with either of these addons, or finds another one that is confirmed to work, please post it in the comments or send me an email.

Power Auras: I wanted to make a quick note on this addon. I haven't tested it, but according to Wisprunner you can track the different buffs by using Druid_Ability_Eclipse for Lunar and Druid_Ability_EclipseOrange for Solar. He has a long post about his addons here.

I don't know if this will work after the patch. I also don't think it will manage the Eclipse Cooldowns, but it may be a temporary solution.


Original Post:

Clean words cannot express the frustration I am feeling at this moment. All the reports say that Patch 3.3 is being released tomorrow. I really wanted to kill Heroic Anub before the patch was dropped. We were very close to getting the kill. With thirty minutes left in our raid I thought we had a chance. Then it happened.

Our virtual world came crashing down before our eyes. Some of us couldn't release from our bodies. The ones that could release could not zone in to ToGC. Our last 30 minutes flashed away before our eyes. I'm so frustrated I could punch babies.

Squawk and Awe:

In other news, don't expect Squawk and Awe to work for you after the patch, and don't expect it to be updated anytime soon. Apparently the change to Eclipse that broke WiseEclipse is also breaking Squawk and Awe. Plus the developer of Squawk and Awe currently does not have an account and is not planning to do the rewrite that would be necessary to make it work. So we need to look for other options.

I don't have any good alternatives at the moment, but there are a couple of things I'm looking at. The first is Power Auras. You can configure it to show you both buffs. It's handy for me because I already use Power Auras for multiple things, I don't think it can measure the cooldowns as well. The second option is Quartz: Proc Module. Its an expansion of Quartz: Eclipse Module. I don't know if it will work after the patch, but I wasn't real pleased with it after I tested it today in-game. The big problem I had with it was that the bars were tiny and I couldn't change them in any way. Therefore they were impossible to notice.

If anyone has a good solution please post it in the comments.

Patch Notes: Eclipse Buffed

Eclipse now increases damage done by Wrath by 40% (up from 30%) and the critical chance of Starfire by 40% (up from 30%)

First Impression:

When I first saw this change I was disappointed. Like many moonkin I don't want to see so much of our DPS to Eclipse. Given the excellent comments made by Murmurs on the forums, and the appearance that Ghostcrawler was receptive to those arguments, I thought they would go another route.

That said, I though the buff was adequate. Given the analysis I had done on 2T8 in the past I knew it was a significant buff right a way, but probably not over powered. I figured this would help us maintain the status quo.

Second Impression:

After I thought about it, I decided this change made a lot of sense from Blizzards point of view. First and foremost, it requires very little testing. All they are really doing is making the piece of 2T8 we lost permanent. We've basically been testing this change for the last 5 months since 3.2 came out. Since, this is supposed to be the last content patch before the expansion, you know Blizzard doesn't want to make any big or risky changes. This is probably the safest choice they could have made.

From my perspective, I still don't like that so much of our DPS is tied to Eclipse. However, it is comforting to have a fairly good idea of how this will impact Moonkin DPS.

My Analysis:

In my last post I said that the nerf to 2T8 and WiseEclipse would result in a 4.1% - 4.6% DPS loss if nothing else changed. I also said that if you could immediately upgrade to 4T9 the DPS loss would be in the 2.6% - 3.1% range.

I updated my simulator for the updated Eclipse and ran it with both 2T8 and 4T9. Once again I used my own stats as a starting point. If you are unable to upgrade to 4T9 right away then these three changes are still a net nerf of about 1.0%. I'm not really surprised by that. WiseEclipse was a pretty big DPS boost, and having just 2% additional crit chance is not going to make up for that.

However, if you're a progression raider that has been farming ToC and working on ToGC Trophies are probably widely available right now. If you are able to upgrade to 4T9 the day the patch drops then the combined changes will result in a net buff of about 1.24% according to my simulator.

Patch Notes: Nerf, Nerf, Buff

Blizzard released a minor update to patch 3.3 to the PTR and it has three changes that will impact Moonkin. None of them are really huge, but I'm sure there will be some inflated opinions about them floating around the forums. Lets take a look.

Nerf:

Item - Druid T8 Balance 2P Bonus - Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 7%. (Down from 15%)

We knew 2T8 was over powered when they changed the way Eclipse worked in Patch 3.2. Many of us expected a nerf then, but it has persisted and dominated a lot of the recent Moonkin discussions. As much as I hate to see moonkin nerfed in anyway this one was needed. Every day there are several posts asking if 2T8 or 4T9 is better on the official forums and some of the theorycrafters on EJ are speculating that it might be best to use 2T8 well into ICC. Well that discussion is effectively ended.

I've valued 2T8 as a 6% DPS increase in the past. Others have valued it a little bit higher. Either way, this nerf will cut it more then in half and bring it in line with most of our set bonuses. The stat upgrades from T9 and T10 will guarantee that the higher tiers of gear will be upgrades.

Ultimately this nerf doesn't really worry me much. If your going to be raiding ICC this will have very little impact on you since you will have better gear available. This just makes sure you want to make the shift.

Nerf:

Eclipse: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cooldown for each type of Eclipse.

Good bye WiseEclipse. You served us well and we will miss you.

For those of you that may be confused, this changes is aimed directly at the addon WiseEclipse that allows us to change proc Eclipse. With this change it is basically useless. Once again this change is expected by a lot of people. Even when I first posted on WiseEclipse I said it felt a little dirty and exploitish.

Unfortunately it was a real DPS increase. Therefore this nerf is a litter more tangible then the one above.

Buff:

Item - Druid T10 Balance 4P Bonus - Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 7% of your spell's damage over 4 sec. (Up from 5%)

This may not sound like much but it is actually a pretty significant buff. I did some quick napkin math using a 50% crit chance. If the set bonus increased your crit damage by 5% the total DPS increase would have been around 3.38%. At a 7% crit damage increase this set bonus will increase DPS by about 4.73%. This combined with the nerf to 2T8 will probably mean that 4T10 is the best available set bonus for Moonkin in WotLK.

TL:DR

All in all, I'm sure there will be some people that are very upset by these changes. I disagree.

The Eclipse change sucks a little because it was a straight DPS increase, but it was kind of shady in the way it did it. No one should be surprised that it was changed.

The 2T8 change is long overdue, and it isn't really a nerf if you're raiding ICC. The T10 set bonuses may not be as good as the old 2T8 but the additional stats would have closed the gap. This nerf just insures that we will upgrade our gear.

The 4T10 change is nice, and more significant then it appears. I would also like to see them change the 2T10 set bonus to something a little more significant, but I doubt that will happen.

Tier 10 Set Stats

Apparently there was a new PTR patch pushed out yesterday, and MMO-Champion had been hard at work squeezing all of the goodness out of it for us to read. The big thing that was added was quite a bit of loot from from the 5-man, the raids, and the Tier loot.

My first reaction:

WOW!!!!

Here are the links to the ilvl 251 and ilvl 264 gear.

Before you get really excited, I want to make one disclaimer. Data mined info is Data mined. It is not currently in game. It has not been confirmed by Blizzard. It is quite possible that these were released in error and will be changed in future PTR releases.

That said, I'm still giddy. I don't know how it compares to the other classes because I don't understand them well enough, but here are a few quick things you will notice.

1. Not a single drop of Spirit anywhere on the Tier set.



2. Gem Sockets: 5 Red, 2 Yellow, 1 Meta



3. Socket Bonuses: All Spell Power

My Second Reaction:

After taking a step back and thinking about it, this makes sense for a couple of reasons.

• At Blizzcon, it was announced that Spirit would become primarily a healer stat in 4.0, and would have little or no value to caster DPS. If history is any guide, the players that are able to pick up these sets will likely wear them will into Cataclysm. When I first started raiding Naxx last November, I still had most of my Tier 6 gear on, because the quest rewards were inferior, and the heroic loot were side grades for the most part. The lack of spirit here will make these items more useful in the expansion.



• Blizzard has been saying for a long time that they are saving the best gear for last. They didn't want the earlier sets to be perfectly itemized, otherwise the final sets would just be unexciting numerical upgrades. To some extent, this shows that Blizzard knows what we like and is capable of producing it if the situation calls for it.

So, Blizzard is killing two birds with one stone here. Not only do they create some kick ass tier sets, but they are preparing the players for the next expansion.

In the midst of all this praise I do want to express one concern. Every piece of the tier sets has Crit Rating on it, two pieces have Hit Rating, and the other three have Haste Rating. Don't get me wrong, I love Crit Rating, but with the current Moonkin design I would like a better balance of Haste and Crit. This itemization will probably push us more in the direction of Haste gear for our non tier pieces.

Other Gear:

At this point it is hard to evaluate all of the other gear available. This is obviously an incomplete list. Please don't start asking when my New gear lists will be available. Cowtarus has volunteered to compile all of the information for me again, but it will take time and won't be final until the patch is released.

I do have two small observations that I don't like though. The upgradeable rep ring that a lot of people are excited about is a Hit ring. That is not necessarily bad, but I would rather it didn't have hit to allow for a little more flexibility. The other issue I have is with the quest rewards from the Quel'delar questline. Those weapons are very nice, but from a Moonkin standpoint they are lacking. The great caster DPS weapon is a sword that is un usable by druids, priests or shaman. There is a spell mace, but it has Mp5 on it. I think making the sword a dagger would have made a lot more sense.

Toon Update:

LoE killed Algalon 25 last night for a server second. Again, it's not as big of a deal as the guild that were able to kill him before ToC was released, but I'm still very happy. We have officially killed every boss in Ulduar, and Yogg+0 is the only hard mode we have not completed. I don't know if we will work on that one or not. I would like to get it down at some point, but completing ToGC is a much bigger goal at this point. Plus, If we can master Anub relatively soon, we will have time to go back and clean up some of those achievements in Ulduar.

Patch 3.3: Relics

This will be a short post, but after looking at the latest info MMO-Champion there are a couple of things I want to comment on.

T10 Balance Druid Relic - The periodic damage from your Insect Swarm and Moonfire spells grants 44 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

At first glance I was pretty unimpressed due to it's similarity to the T9 idol. Lets take a quick look at it for comparison.

[Idol of Lunar Fury] - Each time your Moonfire spell deals periodic damage, you have a chance to gain 200 critical strike rating for 12 sec.

The two idols buff your crit chance by a similar amount and both are based upon a DoT you put up. So, my first reaction was "Don't I already have this idol?" My second reaction a little more honest. While these two idols are very similar it is important to note the differences.

The first difference is obvious. The T9 idol grants 200 Crit Rating. The T10 idol grants 220 Crit Rating when fully stacked. If you assume a 100% uptime of both idols then this is a 10% buff to the idol slot. That's not that bad of a buff going from one tier to the next.

The second difference is something a lot of people will ignore.The T10 idol will have a higher buff uptime. The T9 idol buff has a 70%-90% proc chance and a 12 second duration. It's so high that most players and theorycrafters assume that it has 100% uptime. That's not a bad assumption, but in real life the idol's uptime will be less.

Since the buff is proc based there is always the possibility that bad luck will strike and it doesn't proc for an extended period of time. Also, there are times when casting DoTs is not in your best interest. At these times your giving the buff an opportunity to slip off.

The T10 idol on other hand is not proc based and has a 15 second duration. If you cast both DoTs the buff should be fully stacked within 8 seconds. Since Moonfire has at least a 15 second duration, as long as your cast a DoT every 27 seconds the stack will be maintained.

TL:DR - The T10 idol is not sexy and it isn't something your going to see a bunch of moonkin going nuts over. However, the buff is a little bit bigger then the T9 idol and it will be easier to maintain the buff. Therefore, this is a clear upgrade, despite my first reaction.

Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Great chance. If you've read my blog for along time you may remember that I thought that the Rebirth cooldown should have been reduced to 15minutes instead of 20 back in the early days of BC. Reducing it to 10 minutes is even better then my suggestion.

The big problem with the 20 minute cooldown is that if you use it in one attempt you don't have it for the next 2 or 3. Hopefully, with this change it will now be up for almost every attempt. This does make me wonder about soul stone though. They should reduce it's cooldown also.

UI Change: Any party member may mark raid targets.

Oh god, please don't let this go through. I can see the advantages for this change. The leader of the party is not always the best person to mark targets. This is especially true in 5mans when you can't make someone an assistant. I see the issue, but I also see the headache this could cause.

First, Addons like DBM and Big Wiggs like to use the icons to mark people that get buffs or debuffs. Most of the time that is fine and it doesn't matter that 25 different mods are trying to mark those people. However, there have been times in my raids were those marks were distracting and we want to turn them off. If you've ever tried to get 25 people to PvP flag in an instance, I think you'll understand how hard it will be to get 25 people to turn off a part of DBM so that the targets aren't marked.

Second, you always have to worry about people getting silly and changing the marks as a joke or on accident. There are some responsibilities that should be left up to the leader of a group. I think this is one of them.

The Scotty Principle

I am not a big Star Trek fan but there is one episode of The Next Generation that has always stuck out for me. It is the episode called Relics where the crew finds an old Federation ship wrecked and abandoned. When they examine the ship they find that the teleporters are still active and holding an aged Scotty from the original Star Trek in stasis.

To be honest, I had to look most of that up on Wikipedia to remember what happened, but there is one scene in the episode that has always made me laugh. As usual there is sort of problem that needs solving and Geordi La Forge has an idea of how to fix it, and tells the captain it will take 2 or 3 hours. When Geordi and Scotty get back to Engineering, Scotty asks Geordi, "How long will it really take you?" Geordi says, "2 or 3 hours."

Scotty's response is shock and he says "You told him how long it would actually take you? How do you expect to be considered a Miracle worker if you tell them how long it will really take."

The moral of this story is that, if you lower expectations, it's much easier to please your audience.

This may seem like a random story, but I wonder if Blizzard is trying to use this process to manage their player's reactions. Lets face it, the only way they could make a majority of the player base happy in one shot would be to make bonuses and buffs that are so clearly awesome that everyone loves them immediately. That may sound nice to players but it is a slippery slope. Players will always expect the new bonus to be better than the last one. If you give into that desire then you run into issues with stat inflation.

So, how do you keep the players happy, prevent inflation, and still provide interesting buffs that provide a decent buff? You lower expectations.

With a set bonus you give them something you know is worse than what you intend. That way when they complain you buff it to what you really intended. The players still may not be completely happy with it but it's better than what you originally showed them, and you give off the illusion of taking player concern into account.

I'm not saying Blizzard does this, but it makes me wonder when I see a set bonus so clearly bad like the original version of 4T10 and then a quick buff within 24 hours.

The New Set Bonuses:

2 Piece Tier 10: When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 15% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 seconds. (Changed from 10%)

There were a lot of different valuations thrown around yesterday regarding this set bonus. Most of them valued it as about a 2%-2.5% dps increase. I think those estimates are a little optimistic, but let's assume they are in the ball park. A 50% increase to the buff would make the estimated DPS increase 3%-3.75%.

I still think these estimations are a little high, but they are definitely in the ball park of what I think a set bonus should provide. I still don't like the fact that it is another random proc that we must rely on for DPS, but that doesn't look like it is going to change. In short, I am happy with this buff at the moment.

4 Piece Tier 10: Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 5% of your spell's damage over 4 seconds.

This is much better than the original set bonus, but there are some questions about how it will impact our DPS.

How will the extra damage be applied and how often? We know that is applied over 4 seconds, but is it every second? Every 2 seconds? This is important because we cast spells faster than every 4 seconds. We can cast Wrath almost every second, and it is quite possible to have two crits in a row. Does the second crit over write the first? What if the first crit was a Starfire crit with more damage than the second crit which was from Wrath?

These are very important questions when trying to determine the value of this buff. Especially when it comes to Lunar Eclipse where some people will have close to 85% - 90% crit chance. Will this set bonus be useless in that situation?

I have done some napkin math to try and put a value on it. Assuming that the dots don't overwrite each other, a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is equipped, and the caster has a very high crit chance around 45%-55%, this buff would increase the damage of Starfire and Wrath between 3% and 3.5%. Assuming that these two nukes make up about 80% of our DPS , this set bonus would increase Moonkin DPS by 2.5%-3%.

There are some other considerations that I've excluded to make the math easier, but I think this is a good estimate of the value, and probably a little optimistic. If my napkin valuation is correct then it is a little lower than I would like. I thing the set bonus should be worth between 3.5%-4%, but that is just my opinion. One thing, that can't be argued is that it is a whole lot better than the original 4T10, and that may have been Blizzard's goal all along.

(Edited by Flamedor)

Patch 3.3: Tier 10 Set Bonuses

/sigh... Here we go again.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, MMO-Champion has pulled apart the latest PTR build and found the Tier 10 set bonuses. You can find them here.

One of the themes for Moonkin in WotLK has been to fight against sub par Set Bonuses. The tier 7 bonuses were satisfactory for the most part, and everyone loves 2T9. However, it has been a bumpy road other than that. The 2 piece T8 use to buff Eclipse by 6% instead of the 15% it is now. The 4T8 set bonus was bugged and we had to fight to get it fixed. The 4T9 set bonus bordered on insultingly bad as just a 3% increase to crit chance for Wrath and Starfire, but was upgraded to a 4% damage buff for both spells. Given this history, I guess it is fitting that we have issues with the Tier 10 set bonus. The good news is that Blizzard has reviewed our bonuses in the past and made changes. Hopefully, Tier 10 won't be different.

One last thing. It is important to remember that data mined information is data mined. While much of it is usually correct, there are plenty of examples where the data mined info included out of date info or info that is just plain wrong. It is quite possible that Blizzard has something else planned but is not currently included in the patch build.

4 Piece Tier 10: Reduces the cooldown on your Eclipse talent by 6000.

I'm talking about this one first because it is the most troubling. Obviously, we can't take the number 6000 seriously because you can't reduce Eclipse by 6000. That said, it is still an obviously bad set bonus. The set bonus could be that Eclipse has no cooldown and it would still be obviously bad.

To highlight the issue I have to ask only one question. Since 3.2, when has the Eclipse cooldown ever been a limiting issue?

Sure, with the use of WiseEclipse the Eclipse cooldown can be slighly limiting, and it would probably be benifical to cancel Solar Eclipse to reproc Lunar Eclipse during Bloodlust/Heroism. However, those are either rare or very minor situations.

The reason this is a bad set bonus is obvious once you consider some facts.

1. The Eclipse buff lasts 15 seconds. The Eclipse cooldown is 30 seconds. Even if you chain proc the Eclipse buffs, the two buffs combined would eat up the 30 second cooldown. This isn't entirely true if you use an addon like WiseEclipse, but I have a hard time believing that Blizzard would build a set bonus around an addon that most users think is a little shady.
   
   
2. Math that I and many others have done shows that the two Eclipse buffs are very similar in value a majority of the time. Therefore there is no real value in using one over the other in most situation.

If there is no reason for you to force one Eclipse to proc over the other, and there is no way you would proc Eclipse more quickly naturally, then it is obviously not a buff.

I haven't done any math on it but the best way to modifiy this buff in my opinion is to have it extend the Eclipse buff rather than reduce the cooldown. I'm pulling numbers off the top of my head, but if it extended Eclipse's length to 20 or 25 seconds instead of 15, then it would increase the uptime of the buff and it would work better with other buffs like Heroism and on use trinkets.

2 Piece Tier 10: When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 10% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 sec.

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure how Omen of Clarity works. Historically, it has had a speed based proc chance that may or may not be impacted by haste. The proc rate is reportedly based around 2 procs per minute. WoWWiki has a report that says it has about a 6% proc rate. To find out the real impact I will have to look at some logs but let's assume for a second that it procs 2 times per minute. Let's also assume that the procs don't over lap.

If these two assumptions are true then the buff would be up for 12 seconds per minute or 20% of the time. Therefore, if fully utilized then this set bonus would buff your Arcane and Nature Damage by 2% on average (10%*20%). In actuality it will be less than that, because part of the buff will not be effective since damage is calculated at the end of the cast .

Another big question is how this buff would be applied? Is it additive or multiplicative?

Historically, buffs that affect specific spells, like Moonfury, are additive. Global buffs, like Earth and Moon, are multiplicative. It's hard to tell which one this buff will be since it specifies schools of damage, but it covers everything we could cast.

It's important to ask, because it will have an impact on the value of the buff. A multiplicative buff of 10% is a 10% buff to damage. An additive buff of 10% will be worth less due to the way it combines with other buffs. Improved Moonfire is a great example of where a 10% buff can get completely lost and overshadowed by a larger buff.

I can't make a firm statement on this set bonus yet, because I don't understand all of the parts completely. However, I will say this. It does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I don't like the fact that it is based upon a talent that we don't necessarily need since there are some moonkin dropping OoC. I don't like the fact that it is another random proc for a spec that is already swimming in random procs. I don't like that the buff is only 6 seconds and could easily get swallowed up by movement or a delay in fight mechanics. It could be great, but it doesn't feel right.

Tier 10 Art:

I don't usually comment on the art of the game, but take a look at this picture.


I haven't decided if I like it, but it is definitely interesting. It's kind of like a demonic tree. This image was taken from MMO-Champion.

(Edited by Flamedor)