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

Mailbag: Haste Breakpoints

I know it's been a while since I blogged last, I apologize for the lack of content. My real life has been very busy. In WoW, my guild situation has been very unsettled, and I've had a bit of writer's block when trying to come up with blog ideas. Luckily a reader reminded me of a topic that I had meant to tackle, but apparently had forgotten about. So, this week I am reaching into the mailbag and take a look at Haste Breakpoints.

The Question:

From what I understand and have read in several places is that although there are several haste "break points," after the break points haste is still a better stat to have than mastery or crit. Am I misunderstanding the information or is this correct? The "Top" moonkin on the server keeps his haste at 18 percent, right around a break point but currently I have mine a bit higher. Thank You.

Jason E.

What are Haste Breakpoints?

The short answer to this question is a level of Haste rating at which your DoT or HoT gains an extra tick of damage or healing.

You may remember in WotLK, Haste did affect some HoTs and DoTs by reducing the duration of the spell. The spells did the same amount of damage or healing, but did it in a shorter amount of time. This is pretty much the same way that Haste changed Nukes. The problem with this was that by the end of the expansion our haste levels were very high, and the durations of those HoTs and DoTs were nearly cut in half. This caused several problems for both DPSers and healers that I won't get into.

In Cataclysm, Blizzard fixed those issues by changing the way haste affects HoTs and DoTs. Now, at specific levels of haste HoTs and DoTs will gain an extra tick and extend the duration of the spell. This means that the duration of both Moonfire and IS will always be between 17 seconds and 19 seconds long no matter what buffs or how much haste rating you have.

What are the Haste Rating Break Points for Moonfire and Insect Swarm. The table below shows you how much Haste Rating you need to get an extra tick of damage. All of the columns assume you have Moonkin Aura, DI = Dark Intent, NG = Nature's Grace. If a column is blank then you would reach the break point with just the buffs indicated and no additional Haste Rating.

Extra Ticks	Std Buffs	DI	NG	DI&NG
+1	68
+2	1423	1009
+3	2778	2324	746	351
+4	4134	3640	1924	1495
+5	5489	4956	3102	2639
+6	6844	6271	4281	3783
+7	8199	7587	5459	4927

Why Haste Breakpoints are Significant:

The significance of Haste Breakpoints revolves around the Damage per Execution Time (DpET) of your spells. This is the Damage done divided by the time it takes to cast the spell. Since our DoTs are instant the Execution time is the Global Cooldown. Typically Haste affects your DpET by reducing the Execution time of your spell, and small increases in Haste result in small increases in DpET. Haste Breakpoints change this equation. When you reach a haste breakpoint, you not only reduce the cast time of the spell, but you also increase the damage of the spell by adding an additional tick of damage. This causes the DpET of your spells to jump when you reach a Breakpoint, and the output of a single spell cast increases significantly. Also, since your DoTs duration increases at the breakpoint, it means you are casting DoTs less and Nukes more. This should have a small impact on your DPS.

Haste Breakpoints matter most when you don't plan on refreshing the HoT or DoT. This is why healers care about the breakpoints so much. To a healer, it doesn't really matter if the healing happens over 11 or 13 seconds. If time is really important they are likely using a direct heal instead of a HoT. So, healers don't really care about the HPS of a spell, but the HpET can be very significant. When a healer reaches a breakpoint that extra tick means that their HoT heals for more. So they get more output from their spells because they typically don't refresh a HoT on anyone except a tank.

For moonkin, there is a similar situation when we are AoEing groups of adds. Hurricane is quite weak and mana intensive at the moment, and Wild Mushroom has a 10 second cooldown. Therefore, if you expect the adds to live more than 15-18 seconds it's typically best to multi-DoT the adds to do the most damage, and being just over a break point significantly helps in that regard.

Why Haste Breakpoints are Unimportant for Moonkin:

Passing a Haste Breakpoint is definitely a good thing, but it's important to not over value it's impact. Crossing a Breakpoint may be huge for the DpET of a DoT, but it has no special affect on the DPS of a DoT. Yes, an additional tick of a DoT will increase the damage of the spell but it also increases the duration of the spell. As a result the DPS of the spell before and after Breakpoint is virtually the same. You gain a little time by passing a Breakpoint, but the amount of time gain shrinks with each breakpoint you pass and becomes less significant.

The main reason you shouldn't care about Haste Breakpoints is overall stat valuation. Once your hit capped, Haste is the best secondary stat no matter where your stats are relative to the Haste Breakpoints. If your just above a breakpoint, Haste is still better than Crit or Mastery. Therefore it doesn't make any sense to keep your haste at a breakpoint. More Haste is always better if the alternatives are Crit or Mastery. So, to answer Jason E.'s question, there is no reason you or the other moonkin should hold your Haste levels at 18 percent. The only possibility I can think of is that he may switch to resto quite often and uses the same set of gear. In which case he is trying to optimize his gear for both rolls.

TL-DR: How I view Haste Breakpoints.

Haste Breakpoints, are a good thing to keep in mind when gearing your toon, but they shouldn't have a huge impact on your gearing choices. The only time they play a really significant roll in your DPS is when you are multi-DoTing adds and don't expect to refresh the DoTs. Plus, Haste Rating is always a better stat than Crit or Mastery. Therefore, it doesn't make any sense to sacrifice Haste for Crit or Mastery even if you just past a break point.

If at all possible I would prefer to be slightly above a Breakpoint than slightly below one, because there are advantages to being above a breakpoint. However, I wouldn't sacrifice anything more than very small amounts of Hit or Int to get there (i.e. 20 points), and I definitely wouldn't hold my haste levels constant until I could reach the next Haste Breakpoint.

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.

Raid Tools: CompareBot

Over the years, I've gotten a lot of emails asking for help. People will send me their parses and ask why Moonkin X is doing better DPS then they are even though Moonkin X is similarly or lesser geared. I want to help these people, but the truth is most of the time it was difficult to find anything significant to point out.

I think most people will agree with me that WoL parses are not easy to interpret. It's not hard to navigate your way around a log, but it can be difficult to pull all of the relevant pieces together to get a fully developed picture of the situation. Tearing a parse a part to find the detail can take an hour or more. As a result most people only go for the low hanging fruit and as a result begin and end their analysis on the Damage Done tab. In the end they get very few answers because they are comparing apples to oranges or don't go deep enough to see what is driving those numbers.

In this post I want to introduce you to a tool that can help you analyze your parses and hopefully give you more information on how to improve your performance. That tool is CompareBot.

How to use CompareBot?

CompareBot is a tool that will summarize up to three parses and present the information in a way that is easy to compare and find discrepancies. The web site provides fairly simple and straight forward instructions on how to make the page work, but there are several different strategies you could use to analyze you performance.

Week to Week Analysis: You can compare yourself to yourself from week to week or from attempt to attempt. This could allow you to evaluate several different DPS strategies, or possibly identify why one attempt went really well while others did not.

The week to week analysis is nice because it limits or eliminates the impact of gear and strategy differences. The downside to this type of analysis is that it's limited by your own ability and imagination. If there is a fundamental flaw in your performance, you are unlikely to identify it by comparing yourself to just yourself.

Internal Peer Analysis: If your guild raids with multiple moonkin comparing yourself to the other moonkin in the raid can be very helpful, especially if they are performing better then you. Internal Peer Analysis is great because it limits the impact of strategy differences and other variables like fight length that can skew the results when comparing different attempts.

Internal Peer Analysis is limited by the ability and dedication of your guild mates and depends on your guild running multiple moonkin. If you're the best moonkin in your guild it could help you identify what they are doing wrong, but could do very little to help you.

External Peer Analysis: The great thing about External Peer Analysis is that the possibilities for review are endless. As long as the moonkin has a parse on WoL you can see how you stack up to them. You can compare yourself to a rival in another guild, or a well known moonkin like myself or Murmurs. Maybe you want to see what makes Lappè so good at Paragon, or find out why a particular moonkin has the number one ranking on WoL for Cho'gall.

This can be very helpful in identifying why the greats are great and where you are different, but you also have to be a little weary of the results. There are a lot of variables that can impact performance that are not easy to identify in a WoL parse. Strategy differences between guilds can have a big impact that won't show up in WoL gear differences can also be very difficult to quantify. The quality of other players in a raid you can have a significant impact on a player's
performance.

What should a Moonkin look for:

In this Link I compare myself to another moonkin in the raid. At first glance Rootcanal appears to be awesome, and I appear to suck. How else would he beat me by 3k DPS? Honestly, that was my first reaction when I saw this comparison. So I dove into it to see where the differences where.

1. Hits per Minute: The number one rule of DPS is to Always Be Casting, because the number one driver of DPS is how much you cast. Therefore, the first thing I would look at is the Hits per Minute of each spell. Looking at the total number of casts can be misleading because it's skewed by fight length, but Hits per Minute is a pretty good indication if someone has excessive amounts of down time between casts.
   
   Ticks per Minute is another good thing to look at for DoTs. Though you should be careful when comparing Ticks per Minute for a moonkin. How you utilize Nature's Grace could have an impact on the numbers you see.
   
   If you look at the example, Rootcanal and I compare fairly well. He beats me slightly on Wrath and Insect Swarm. There are also very slight differences on Starfire and Starsurge. However, I do a little better with the Moonfire/Sunfire combo spell. I am a little bit behind here, but the difference isn't huge and I doubt it's responsible for the 3k DPS difference.
   
   
2. Eclipse: As we all know Eclipse is drives moonkin DPS, therefore it is the next stop on my comparison. First off, ignore the uptime stat. Having a higher uptime isn't necessarily good, because you could have the buff up but casting a spell that it does not affect. What I would look at is the number of procs per minute. This number could be a little skewed by Euphoria procs, but it's the best indication we have of how well we transition from one Eclipse buff to the other.
   
   On the Buff tab of the comparison you can see that Rootcanal procced eclipse 9 times while I procced it just 8. This suggests that he may have been a little more efficient in his Eclipse Transitions then I was, but it is ever close.
   
   
3. Other Buffs: There are other buffs that can give you a hint as to what happened in a fight as well. Nature's Grace is another good indication of how well you transitioned from one Eclipse to another. Shooting Stars is RNG based, but it can also help to explain a DPS difference. I also like to look at it to compare the uptimes of Shooting Stars. This is a case of where a lower uptime is better because it shows that you are good at keeping Starsurge on cooldown. There also may be fight specific buffs that need to be managed
   
   In this example Rootcanal had Owlkin Frenzy and I didn't . He was also a little better at using Shooting Stars then I was, but for the most part we were about the same.
   

So why did Rootcanal beat me in DPS by 3k DPS? He did cast a tiny bit faster then I did and got an additional Eclipse proc, but I have a hard time believing that those differences resulted in a 3K dps difference.

There are three other reasons why he how performed me on this particular fight.

1. RNG: Look at the crit rates of Wrath and Starfire. My Crit rates were below average. His crit rates were above average. RNG is rarely the problem people like ot make it out to be, but every so often it does raise it's ugly head and bite someone. This is clearly one of those cases, and there is nothing I could have done about it.
   
   
2. Power Generator: He had twice as much uptime on the debuff as I did. It's hard to judge special buffs some times because it may or may not be your fault for not getting them. In this case, we had one spawn during a spread out phase of a fight. He was near it and I was not.
   
   
3. Gear: Honestly, I hate to list gear as a reason, because most of the time gear is used as an excuse to ignore the other reasons for poor performance. That said, it is a factor, and needs to be taken into account.
   

A Word of Caution:

I think you can see how powerful a tool CompareBot can be when used correctly. However, you have to be careful how you use it. Make sure you pick a relatively equal player for comparison. If your guild is 5/12 on normal modes it's may not be a good idea to go and compare yourself to Lappè of Paragon who is 13/13 on hardmodes. In this situation it could be hard to tell if the differences are gear based or performance based. I would also suggest that you use multiple people to compare yourself against.

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.

Two Updates and a Rant

Two Updates:

Ok, The expansion has been out for just under a month and I finally updated both the Gear Guide and the Raiding guide. In the gear guide I added locations for almost everything. The tier pieces were a little tricky since I don't necessarily have specific locations for any of them. That said, every item on the list is linked to it's WoWhead site. If your question isn't answered there then I probably don't have the answer either.

The raid guide is mostly the same. I've decided the mana regen talents are a little more optional then I first thought so I've modified the spec section a little as a result. I made some tweaks to other sections as well, but there is nothing really new that you need to know about if you were familiar with the old version.

As always, if you find a problem in either guide please feel free to let me know either in an email or in the comments of this post.

The Tol Barad Rant:

Update: Obviously my Moonkin/Blogger powers of persuasion are great, because Blizzard applied a hotfix less then 30 minutes after my post. The honor gain from attacking TB has been reduced to 360. The Honor gained from defending TB is still 180. (src)

I'm not sure how this will affect the zone. If I have to guess I think it will return the zone to the way it was at release. The thing to remember is that the fight is balanced with the same number of players on both sides. Therefore you're not going to get more players when you are attacking. You’re not going to get better players when attacking because I think the queue is random.

The only thing you can change by changing the reward is the player’s motivation. People may be more willing to attack with a reward of 360 honor, but they are still limited by the number of people willing to defend. If the defenders are motivated to win then the attackers are likely to lose. So it's a bit of a binary situation. You can either have one side dominate the competition or you can have the two sides trade wins.

I'm sure there will be a little grey area, because the attackers will always be motivated to win, but how the defenders feel may change from battle to battle. Either way this isn't a fix.

---

The problems with Tol Barad are well documented (1 & 2). I completely agree with everything posted to that regard. TB is way to easy to defend and thus limits who had access to the dailies each day if both sides are actively competing to win the zone.

Luckily Blizzard sees the problem and had a couple of things to say about it.

The odds are already stacked against the attacking force. In fact, they're stacked in favor of the defense more so than we would like at this point. We're looking to address this in an upcoming patch so that defending Tol Barad doesn't feel like there's virtually no fear of loss.

In line with that design goal, we made this hotfix to ensure winning Tol Barad back for your faction feels much more rewarding.

Hot fix: Tol Barad - Winning as an attacker now rewards players with 1800 Honor Points, up from 180. Winning as a defender still rewards players with 180 Honor Points.

To a lot of you I'm sure this sounds great. Hamlet did a great analysis of what this can mean in if Honor is your primary motivation for contesting Tol Barad. If you are able use it to it's maximum potential you could get a full set of PvP gear very quickly. Since all of the Honor rewards are between 700 and 2,200 Honor, a single win can mean a new piece of gear especially if you can get a few honorable kills along the way.

Here is the problem. I don't care about Honor or PvP gear. I already have over 3,000 honor and don't have a good idea of what to spend it on. I go to Tol Barad for two reasons: Rep and Tol Barad Commendations, and the hot fix makes accumulating both actually harder in my case. That is why I hate the win trading.

To be fair, the situation before the hot fix worked out perfectly for me. Graylo is a Horde toon on a Horde dominated low pop server. I basically had maximum access to Tol Barad and it's dailies. I remember the Alliance having TB only once before the hot fix.

The way my days typically went was I would log on and do the six dailies on Tol Barad itself if I had time before the next battle. Then I would do the six available on Tol Barad Peninsula. Then I would wait to for horde to win TB again and I would do the next set of rotating dailies on Tol Barad. Then I would wait another two hours and do the last set of rotating dailies. I could get all 18 dailies possible with very little effort and in a fairly predictable time frame. That is not true any more and why I hate the current system of win trading.

Adding Insult to Injury:

The funny part about it is I actually tried to defend some after the hot fix was made. I thought that TB might be so imbalanced that the few of us who did value something other then Honor might still be able to win it. Turns how I was wrong, but to make matters worse, I was insulted the entire time I tried to defend.

Those of us that defended were being called noobs, kids, and a variety of other names that aren't all that nice. If Honor was the only motivation for playing TB then I would agree that we were being stupid, but it's not. At least in my case I had a very good reason to try and defend TB and I'm no more of idiot for defending it then they are for throwing it.

That said, I've given up trying to defend TB, because it is obviously pointless currently. However, I find the reaction of the people throwing it funny. What few of them realize is that throwing the match isn't nearly as profitable as they think it is. Hamlet's analysis is completely correct in a theoretical sense. Both sides can get more honor if they cooperate, but when you look at the situation practically there is an issue.

As I said before my server has a huge faction imbalance favoring the Horde. As a result there are a lot more Horde queuing up for TB then there are Alliance, but Blizzard has made sure there is a 1:1 participant balance in the zone. As a result there are a lot of Horde sitting outside every battle. It doesn't matter if we are attacking or defending. This is creating a situation where the Alliance on our server are getting the 1,800 honor every attacking round they want it. The Horde however, are going to miss at least a few round. I've queued up to be an attacker at least 10 times, and been selected only once. I doubt everyone is having my bad luck, but if you are getting in only one of ever ten attacking sessions then your honor gain is pretty much the same as if you defended the zone.

What I understand and what I don't:

Blizzard's hotfix didn't fix the problem and I'm sure Blizzard knows that. It's a temporary fix. I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want to see win trading in game, but accepted it as a necessary evil where the ends justified the means. I don't think Blizzard has a big issue with one side consistently winning the zone, but had a huge problem with one side being consistently locked out of the dailies you gain from winning. Win trading is not be an ideal situation, but at least it guarantees that each side will have relatively equal access to the dailies and the rewards they provide.

What I don't understand is how Blizzard got it so wrong in the first place. I know the Beta is not a great place to test PvP balance since there isn't a whole lot of competitive PvP in the test realms. However, though I have the benefit of hind sight, it seems obvious that having one side needing to attack three targets while another side needs to defend just one is seems obviously imbalanced.

I also don't understand the design behind the rotating dailies. They are obviously designed to be very similar since the three quests for each of the areas are almost identical, but then they are different in a couple of ways that makes the Human quests significantly harder then that of the Demon or Undead areas. Why is the warden so far away from the entrance when compared to the other areas? Why do I need to collect 12 rations, when I only need to pick up 8 shackles or 4 journals? It's probably just my frustration talking, but there seems to be more mobs with faster spawn times in the Human prison as well.