Yesterday, we finally got Lich King down on heroic again after the patch. The first few weeks were sketchy, with people trying hard to get used to their new rotation, and it meant going from one-shotting Lich King to many, many wipes.

I must admit, I had my issues with my rotation as well. It’s hard to get used to the new rotation, when it’s so easy to fall back into old habits. I got a feeling, though, that its finally beginning to sit, but with only two raid days a week these days, I don’t excactly get a lot of practice.

The patch brought a lot of bugs and weird quirks, though, and I feel like I should address those.

Eclipse delay

As you might have noticed, there is a slight delay from casting a spell that should push you into eclipse, and when it actually does it. This is most clearly evident on lunar eclipses, because of wraths travel time. But it also seems to happen on many solar eclipses.

To get around this, I begin casting a wrath/starfire, counting on eclipse to kick in before the cast is over. That usually covers it up nicely, but I have seen instances, especially on proccing lunar eclipse, where I can go several seconds after the cast that should proc eclipse, before it actually kicks in. It is slightly annoying, because I get the feeling that I can’t completely trust my eclipse procs, and I have to compensate by either waiting, or casting starfire until the eclipse proc shows.

Of course, this could be due to any number of reasons. Addons, latency, some weird quirks on the boss. In the end I decided that it’s not really a huge case at present time. I’m still rocking the meters, and one cast gone wrong is not the end of the world. The issue will either be resolved in Cataclysm, or we will find a decent way to deal with it.

Hasted DOTs and Nature’s Grace

If you look at your DOTs, they look like they change the frequency of their ticks whenever your haste value changes. Unfortunately, it seems like this is just a tooltip bug, and the DOT will only tick as fast as whatever haste you had when it was casted.

This causes a few problems, as we would generally want to have our most powerful DOTs hasted by Nature’s Grace. I am guessing that DOTs should scale with haste as it changed, but that is simply not the case. Fortunately, sunfire and insect swarm are generally very close in damage, and on our lunar eclipses, insect swarm can proc Nature’s Grace for us, and that haste can benefit our eclipsed moonfire.

Still, I would like this to be fixed before we start raiding in Cataclysm. As with the eclipse delay, it is not something that I am terribly worried about, as our damage is more than fine these days. The differences are rather minimal, after all.

Combat ress

There seem to be a nasty, undocumented bug with combat resses. I had heard about it, but hadn’t experienced it myself until yesterday. On trying to combat ress, a little feral druid suddenly got the message “You can no longer ressurect in combat”.

Now, Blizzard aired some thoughts on limiting the amount of combat resses per match. None of this is confirmed by a blue poster, but it seems silly that they would do that and still increase the cooldown of our Rebirth to 30 minutes. What’s more currious is that when our feral druid couldn’t combat ress, another druid could. On some fights, we got it after using one combat ress, and on other fights, we used three resses with no problem.

When the problem happened to me, we had just pulled Lich King, and a paladin skillfully pulled aggro and died. We were no more than 20 seconds into the fight, so suffice to say, we hadn’t used any in that fight. What’s more currious is that when I pressed my combat ress outside of combat, like when running back after a wipe, I still got the bug, despite the fact that I wasn’t targeting anyone.

It is certianly a weird bug, and if Blizzard did try to mess with the amount of combat resses, I think they should revert to the previous system and keep the cooldown at 30 minutes, or add the restriction but keep the cooldown on 10 minutes. It can’t really be both.

Grumpy gryphons

Oh, and it’s not like this is a druid specific problem, but what is up with those damn gryphons from the graveyards? Heck, I’d rather run from the ICC graveyard than having to slowly drift through the nether air!

- QQ

Some of the changes are basic tweaks to the modifiers, but Blizzard has also introduced some really interesting new talents. I’m going to run through them and try to percieve how these changes will affect our future gameplay.

Please keep in mind that we are still working on a beta. Blizzard are trying new things out, which we should give them credit for, but further tweaks and changes might still be needed before Cataclysm is released.

Wild Mushroom changes

Basic tweaks, nothing really exciting there. Before, when Wild Mushroom went boom, it now goes BOOM, with 400% more base damage. The range on their detonation has been reduced to 10 yards, which is probably fine. We are able to spread out our Shrooms quite far and cover a large area, and simply by having 3 of them to place, we are offered a lot of strategic options.

Starsurge

Now grants 15 energy instead of 10. We were wishing for something like this, because it seemed like a spell made up by pure solar and lunar energy should probably have some sort of key placement in our rotation, and at least generate a substancial amount of eclipse power.

Euphoria

The first part of Euphoria has been changed, and I am really liking this change. It now gives us a 24% chance to gain double eclipse power when we are not in eclipse. This means that the time we spend inside eclipse will be longer than the time we spend outside of eclipse. It is a bit static, though, but it should still give us a higher eclipse-to-normal ratio.

Earth and Moon

Just a tweak. I know it’s a nerf, but we really don’t know how this will impact us at level 85, and it’s probably alright.

Genesis

I actually thought that Genesis was fine as it was, but it has now been changed to a simple increase in the duration of our DOTs. This is fine, because longer DOTs mean more damage, and when DOTs scale with haste as well anyways, it can only be beneficial. The numbers might have to be tweaked, but we can’t run around with 2 minute insect swarms, after all.

Nature’s Grace

Is now called Nature’s Torment – it took me a few moments to figure this out, since it was listed as “Nature’s Grace”. NT gives you 15% spell haste after casting IS or MF for a whooping 15 seconds. This effect has a 1 minute cooldown, however the cooldown will be cleared whenever we get eclipse.

That’s really really neat, because it basicly means that we can decide to get a 15% haste buff for 15 seconds between every single eclipse proc. We might choose to just cast it after we gain eclipse, or we might throw up our DOTs before we get Eclipse (where NT will be on cooldown) then fire away and use our eclipse, and then throw up a DOT when we reach the middle of the meter in order to get to the next eclipse proc sooner. Or, we could use it for quick nuking, throw a DOT and get a massive spell haste.

Lot’s of options for strategies, which is what we like!

Dreamstate

Completely revamed. If we innervate ourselves, we gain an additional 30% mana back. This makes personal innervates extremely powerful. You might think that we don’t need it, but remember that our mana regen is going to be different in Cataclysm. It’s very possible that you will want to use innervate often, and the choice to get a more powerful one is very interesting indeed.

Sunfire

This is a very interesting talent. Whenever solar eclipse is up, moonfire is instead sunfire, which burns for nature damage rather than arcane damage. It seems to be so that we would actually cast moonfire during solar eclipses, and it would probably award Lunar Energy as to help us gain eclipse. I don’t know if something like this is in the works for Insect Swarm as well (Starswarm?), but that probably won’t happen. IS will most likely be up all the time, and with this change, so will Moonfire.

I don’t know what’s up with the naming of this talent. I think it should be renamed to Qiethfire, or maybe The Will of Qieth, as to not give any notion of a refrence to our fellow moonkin blogger (who is called Sunfyyre, though) *wink*

Shooting Stars

New talent, right where we would want some more damage talents. Whenever we deal damage with MF or IS, we have a small chance to remove the cooldown on our Starsurge and have it instant cast. Although it is only a 4% chance, it should happen several times each minute, especially with both of our DOTs rolling on our target all the time. The added bonus to this, is that the more haste we get, the more we are going to proc Shooting Stars, because MF and IS will obviously tick more often.

Overgrowh

I’m sure I called it somewhere – on a blog, or on some forum. A few days ago, I posted that AoE roots would be sort of fun. And while I don’t think that Blizzard are picking my blog for ideas, it does seem like we get the option to superroot. Just imagine the fun we can have with this, rooting everything within 8 yards of our original target. This will probably be more of a PvP talent, but it could still give us a lot of fun times in PvE, if there are any encounters with a lot of trash that needs to be controlled.

Still in the works!

All of these changes are really awesome indeed, and I can’t wait to see what kind of comments comes out from the beta servers. Further tweaks might be needed, so please remember to look at these changes for their concepts, rather than how they apply to our current moonkin life.

- QQ

Talents

A lot of people think that it is a really big deal to lose Nature’s Grace, while I’m sort of nonchalant about it. The whole point of this is that we don’t really know things are going to work out at level 85, but we must expect that anything taken away from us is balanced out at max level. And to be fair, Nature’s Grace was a double edged sword: In Wrath, we needed a high uptime of Nature’s Grace, as well as the capabilities to keep it active. If it wasn’t, it was a huge damage loss. In Cataclysm, we lose a lot of crit (from Lunar Eclipse) and that would make Nature’s Grace a rarer buff, and a very unstable one at that. As long as it’s balanced, though, I don’t really have a problem giving it up.

Other talent changes include a change to Balance of Power. The extra hit is removed, but the talent still converts spirit to hit at a 1:1 ratio – that’s fine, we’re probably going to be swimming in spirit and hit gear anyways, until we start reforging our items. Lunar Shower was changed so that it is only the direct damage component that is increased.

Tier 11

What’s much more interesting is the sneak peak of our tier 11 bonuses. 2pt11 is rather standard, 5% more crit on moonfire and insect swarm. If you remember our tier 7 pieces, they upped the damage of our insect swarm as well. Looking across the board, these bonuses seem to be pretty close in terms of damage increase and what kind of spell they affect. Please remember that MF and IS will play a lot bigger part of our damage in Cataclysm, with them being affected by haste and crit as well.

The 4pt11 bonus is really interesting though. Each time we proc eclipse, we get 99% more chance to crit with our spells. One crit and the bonus is reduced to 66%. Two crits, and we’re down to only an additional 33% chance to crit. This basicly means that we can almost expect crits with our first couple of spells after an eclipse, but not always. If we have a lot of crit, say, like we have now, 99% extra crit is going to be wasted. You can consider if that crit would have gone though without the extra crit buff. But we won’t be having so much crit in the beginning of the expansion and with a promise that our 2nd and 3rd casts will probably crit, we can start playing around with that.

Obviously, with this in mind, you would want to be sure to cast some really powerful spells. You could use it to proc eclipse and then fire off a massive starsurge crit, or start racking up those starfires. How this all affects our DOTs, I can’t begin to say, but it would be pretty awesome if it meant that casting a DOT right after proccing eclipse would cause the DOT to have the 99% chance to crit for the full duration.

We’re all going to die!

Last but not least, it is time to pack up your fur lined plate armor – it looks like we’ll be going home soon! 4.0.1 has been deployed on the PTR servers, and allows you to play around with the class changes (but not much else). If you remember from previous expansions, the 2.0 and 3.0 patch was usually deployed a few months before the expansions came out, so that we could get used to our new spells. This is the case with Cataclysm as well, and in a few weeks we might see 4.0 being deployed on the live servers.

Ofcourse, everything will be a complete mess at that point. Some classes are going to be insanely powerful at level 80 – maybe it’s us, maybe it’s someone else. You won’t really be able to call out for balance until we get to level 85. Ultimately, you should be better off than you are now, so you can continue doing your raids and the like, while playing with your new talents.

What this all means is that we are getting dangerously close to the end of the world as we know it. Blizzard are probably gunning for a pre-christmas release for Cataclysm, and with 4.0 on the PTR, we can’t be far off. I think that we will have 4.0 on the live servers in about 2-4 weeks, and then 1-2 months after that, we’ll be invaded by dragons and lava.

- QQ

CHILL!

Already, a lot of angry and confused posts are popping up around the web, from people who think these are the final verions of our talents. It’s not. It’s probably not. Chances are, we are most likely going to see many more changes – maybe. We are still in beta, and there is plenty of time for Blizzard to tweak the trees.

It would appear that my previous assumptions on the talent tree changes were correct. Most, if not all, passive talents have been stripped away, and we will get these as we spec into balance no problem there. No new talents were introduced, although some of the ones we did see was chanegd slightly. Lets take a look at the current status.

Build-a-spec

It is fairly simply to make a balance spec out of these talents. In fact, you can grab everything you want from balance with 31 points in balance, 5 points in resto and then you have 5 points to spend on Lunar Justice, Gale Winds and Owlkin Frenzy. You wanted customization? Well there you have it.

Should I really build a spec, the obvious choice for a PvE setting would be this: Wowtal.com. I would probably spend the last five on Gale Winds and Owlkin Frenzy for PvE, and maybe Lunar Justice for leveling.

I don’t know if Lunar Justice will ever be worth anything in PvE unless it automaticly generates the buff on you, or if it spawns the lunar beam on targets that you have helped kill but didn’t get the killing blow on. Everything else seems to be pretty straight forward choices, and in the current setup, even if you do take the wrong talents, you are not that far off.

Work in progress

I say “Chill”, because I know that people will be very quick to jump to conclutions. But if we take a closer look at some of the talents, you will notice that the tree is still far off from being done.

Nature’s Grace has gotten a spot at the top of the tree. But it is still marked with TBR – To Be Reworked / To Be Removed. In reality, they could keep the current implementation of Nature’s Grace, because with the increased cast time on Wrath, the haste cap seems far, far away. But alas, it will probably undergo some changes, and thats not all that bad either.

Blizzard also let it slip what we will be getting at level 10 when we spec into balance. Starsurge is on this list, yet it is still in the talent trees, which is a clear indicator that something needs to change.

A currious note was the full release from Blizzard, which reads:

Can take on the form of a powerful Moonkin, balancing the power of Arcane and Nature magic to destroy enemies at a distance.

• Starsurge
• Balance Druid (pushback reduction on balance spells)

Now, for some classes, namely those with tanking specs, their mastery is mentioned here. Ours isn’t. There could be several reasons for that. It immediately struck me that the wording they use for moonkin form is very similar to what they have written for restoration druids:

Uses heal-over-time Nature spells to keep allies alive, taking on the form of a tree when the need is most urgent.

• Restoration Druid (pushback reduction on healing spells)

Does this mean that we will have moonkin form as a pushback reducing ability, and not a permanent form, much like restoration druids tree being a use ability on a cooldown? Does it mean that we will get a permanent moonkin form which just has the ability (passive or active) to reduce pushback on spells? Or does this mean that Blizzard simply hasn’t decided yet?

I have previously stated – if not on this blog, then some forum – that I am actually fine with staying in caster form for the majority of the time, if my moonkin form is then worth using. The more special cooldowns we have, the better we can control our DPS together with Bloodlust, haste potions and the like. At the same time, though, I notice that Furor in the restoration tree still mentions Moonkin Form in its list, so this leads me to believe that we are probably still going to be perma-moonkin’ed, and that this is just a matter of wording.

There is no mention of when we will be getting the eclipse meter or the eclipse mastery. I would still venture to say that we will receive the eclipse meter at level 10, but that it just hasn’t made the list, and that we will probably be getting the mastery as we level up. For us 80′ers, it won’t make a difference, really. And for new moonkins, well, you are still much better off now than you were a year ago.

Notice that Omen of Clarity is not on the list at all. And if it were, we surely couldn’t reach it with only 10 points to spare. Omen of Clarity will probably be a trainable skill, which is fine. All druids like this spell. But even if its not, then that doesn’t mean its the end of the world. I mean, all it does is to serve as a mana regen talent, and if mana is covered elsewhere, it’s hardly a gamebreaker.

What I want

Now obviously, we still have to sit tight and wait for the trees to be tweaked. But I can still express my expectations – or demands, if you will – in the hopes that these will become reality:

• More info: This will come.
• More customization: I want to be given choices, even with only 41 point talents. I don’t want to just have to decide between Lunar Justice, Gale Winds and Owlkin Frenzy. I want some other talents that may or may not help me out in different settings, so that I can make a few decisions. Pie versus cake, you know?
• More creativity: Tied together with the bullet above, I really want a reason to spend my extra talent points in feral. Not because I want anything in feral, but because there should be something allowing me to, if I wish to do so. This could be PvP oriented talents for a balance druid for all I care. I am just tired of restoration being the only other tree to sink stuff into, when Feral could have some more “toughness” talents thrown into it, that would benefit a moonkin. I’m not saying I would want this for PvE, but there might be a lot of people that would want it for PvP.

In the end, there is not much news. We still have a ways to go before things are sorted out, and the trees still need a lot of love. So to recite my earlier statement: Chill!

- QQ

If you are a raid leader or class leader of a guild, chances are that you have been given this link by someone who thinks you would benefit to get up to speed when it comes to moonkins. Or maybe you are out searcing for information yourself, to help a fellow guildie to improve his performance. In any case, kudos to you, this is excactly where you need to be.

I am beginning to lose count of how many times I have been contacted by chickens in distress. “My guild sais I’m doing too little damage”, “they say my gear is bad”, “Tya want’s to sacrifice me to the Gods of the Kill”. They ask for help, and many times it is not nessecarely the moonkin that is the problem. The major cause for this is that, with so few moonkins around, its not always easy for other classes to understand how we function. Its easier in guilds where you have three rogues and a handful of mages that can keep each other up to date – most guilds only emply one, maybe two, moonkins, and it is not always certain that these moonkins has the tools they need. Except for guilds that has a caster class master who has actually played moonkins, I get the feeling that very few guilds have any real sort of knowledge about moonkins. I opt to change that!

Why moonkins?

If you have little – or bad – experience with moonkins in your raid, you may argue that you don’t need a moonkin. Well, maybe you don’t. Or maybe you do not know what a moonkin can bring to your raid. A moonkin is first and foremost a support class. We are a freaking buff battery. With just a single moonkin in the raid, you will get:

• +3% hit on spells
• +3% haste
• +5% spell crit
• +13% spell damage
• Minor armor debuff
• And all the other things that a druid can bring!

Here follows another common argument: “Why would I bring a moonkin when I can get these buffs from other classes?”. I’d like to turn that around with “Why would you bring all the other classes when a moonkin can bring them all?”. Fact of the matter is, apart from buffs like Kings and such, most buffs are covered in one way or another by another class. Moonkins have the benefit gathering a lot of support spells for melee and casters alike, and most of the time these buffs and debuffs will be up by default. A moonkin will always ensure that there is a faerie fire on the target, because it increases his hit and crit. He will add the spell damage debuff just by attacking, and the crit and haste comes from just being in moonin form

“So what about damage?”. Short answer is, moonkin damage is fine. The longer answer is a complicated story to get you aquanted with some of the issues a modern moonkin will face. First off, RNG is a bitch, there’s no way around it. Our damage is dependant on a high uptime of eclipse, and with the current eclipse system, there will be times where we are purely out of luck. Even in high end gear, I can experience going a full minute or more without an eclipse proc, and it will hurt my DPS a lot. Eclipse is roughly a 40% damage increase, and the longer we go without, the less DPS we do. For the most time, a new eclipse will go up 3-5 seconds after the last one ended, but there are times when goodwill is all you have to get you going, and it will just not be enough.

Movement is also a big issue. When we move, we lose our 20% personal haste buff, and we also lose the time we should have taken advantage of an eclipse – and it usually takes longer to proc eclipse after you have stopped moving, because you lack the aforementioned haste buff.

All in all, however, moonkins can compete. They will rarely be at the very top of the meters, but then again, neither is 24 other members of the raid. As long as your moonkin is equal to the core of your raid group, everything is fine. Gear, tactics, random events on a fight can all affect your DPS, and it is the same for moonkins.

The applicant

So you got a moonkin application to join your guild, but you have no idea what to look out for. You heard something about caps, but you really have no clue if this moonkin is doing what he’s supposed to. Here is a quick checklist to see if your moonkin has geared correctly. I have added little instance markers so you know which level of raiding this becomes attainable, so you can see if your moonkin is ready – or just about ready – for the kind of raiding you do.

• Pre-Naxx: 263 hit. This is the most important thing for a moonkin.
• Naxx-Ulduar: 401 haste rating. This is the moonkins soft haste cap.
• TOTGC-ICC: 42% crit rating mid combat, the soft crit cap. Unbuffed, this occurs around 32%+ crit, but it differs a bit depending on the intellect/crit rating ratio.

This also translates directly into we prioritize our stats. We aim to be hit capped, ofcourse. Next, we need to reach our soft haste cap, easely obtainable at the end of Naxx, and a must for every single moonkin. Following that, we prioritize crit over haste – if you have a moonkin with 800 haste but 23% crit, something is very wrong, and he needs to be on the lookout for new gear. Once both the soft haste cap and the soft crit cap has been reached, haste and crit is more or less equal, but there is a slight favor to haste.

Check his gems! His gemming should reflect the state of his caps. If he is below the hit cap and the haste cap, he should be using SP/hitorhaste in yellow slots. If he is above the soft haste cap, he should be using SP/crit gems, and when he is above both caps, he should be back at SP/haste gems. Red gem slots should always be pure spell power gems, and he needs two SP/spi gems to activate his meta.

When it comes to talents and glyphs, there is really only one choice: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0tMbuiIscdIVhouZbxczb:uir. You will notice that there are two talent points left out – there is really nothing much he can do with these, other than fillers, but most people put them into Typhoon “just to have it” and then Owlkin Frenzy or Gale Winds. Genesis and Brambles are not really worth anything, and no moonkin since Ulduar has ever had mana problems.

The weakest link

If your guildie moonkin seems to be falling behind, take a moment to consider if there is anything about a particular fight that might cause him to drop behind other DPS. A common mistake is to just look at all DPS for a full fight, and see where he places on the list. This can be a major mistake if there are elements on the fight that offers a lot of splash damage to other classes. Our starfall will splash as well, but it does not compare to that of other classes. Many damage meters will show damage done to a specific source, say, The Lich King, and root out all the useless splash damage done to the ghouls, and this will give a much clearer picture of where the moonkin is. Consider the amount of movement, and leave room for RNG, and you will be off to a good start.

Second, being 12th on the damage meters is not nessecarely bad. You need to look at how he compares to the rest of the raid. Usually, a raid group will have one or two people well ahead of everybody else – the shadowmourne wielders, the rogues trick’ing each other and so on. Being 12th on the meters is not bad, if the raid members from 5-14 is relatively close to each other. This goes for all classes in an equal setting, I suppose. Consider also the level of gear, and what you have them do during a fight – if you have him removing curses and poisons, you will obviously take him away from doing damage.

All in all, a well played, equal geared moonkin does competative damage, certainly enough to warrent them a spot, heck, you can even bring two if they know what to do. They can compare, and even beat, most other casters; Mages, hunters, priests and shamans, although from personal experience, warlocks are slightly ahead – of all ranged classes, though.
If you want to get really “down and dirty” with the kill log, take a look at the damage distribution. Usually, wrath and starfire will be very close, often taking account for 40% of the moonkins total damage each. This leaves around 10% for starfall, and 5% for each of his DOTs. His DOTs will – should – never have a 100% uptime, as he only uses one at a time in a stand still rotation, and the DOTs is mainly only there to buff his wrath and starfire respectively.

Moonkin loot

Your moonkin want’s loot as well. Usually, there is an acceptable leather piece for every slot, but as moonkins share loot with restoration druids, most of them will have spirit and then either crit or haste. While we do get spell power from spirit, it is a very weak stat for us, and we would much rather want items with both haste and crit on them – most of the time, these items are cloth, so if you can spare it, it wont hurt to throw those cloth boots at your moonkin. The leather version of an equal item level is usually 20% less strong than the cloth version, but moonkins generally know that they wont get first dibs at cloth items. This is a problem that occurs in Wrath of the Lich King, but it will promptly evaporate when Cataclysm comes.

Conclution

You should now have the tools you need to ensure that your moonkin has the tools he needs. If you want to dig in deeper, or if you feel that he should have something to read up on, please feel free to point him towards my moonkin guide, which can be found at the top of my site. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

- QQ

And there are mixed feelings about all of these changes. Some people, myself included, are jumping up and down, clapping their hands, wearing their Blizzard fanboy shirts. Other people seem very negative towards all of these changes, filled with an age old mistrust to Blizzard, thinking that no matter what Blizzard does for us, it’s “not going to be enough”.

Blizzard hates druids

By now, we have a fair idea of what direction Blizzard wants to take us. I also think that we need to give Blizzard some credit. Say what you want on their personal preference towards a class, but they are running an amazingly complex game. Even if you feel slightly underpowered in a certain situation, it is astonishing how close most classes are anyways, how talents have a sort of synergy, how classes can work together in a multitude of ways. I’m sure they are not making decisions by rolling a dice, or based on what class they like to play.

I think it’s borderline paranoia when someone sais that Blizzard hates a particular class, and wants to keep that class under the boot. It doesn’t make sense, for why would Blizzard supress 10% of their playerbase? I do understand the massive undertaking it is to make everybody happy. In truth, I think most people feel like their class could need buffs. Their class is underpowered. Everybody else is overpowered. So in truth, we are all more or less equal. Whatever balance issues one class might have over another is minor in the grand scale of things.

What we want

Throughout WOTLK, there has been a lot of concerns from the moonkin community. We have had some challenges throughout the expansion, but nothing that put us too far behind. There have certainly been other classes that has been worse off, namely shadowpriests and shamans, but we have always been able to prove our worth and fill our raid slot. In the end of the expansion, we are still quite capable, and if we are played well, we can even be an invaluable asset to the raid group.

So what do we want? To sum it up in a few bullets:

- Less randomness with our procs
- More cooldowns to play around with
- Less punishment for moving
- Better scaling

What have they done to solve these issues, and is it enough?

The Eclipse system

I think some people have yet to realize just how massive the change to eclipse is. For new players, it actually makes balance just as viable as feral – if not more viable. New players will have the eclipse meter right out of the box, and we can expect that the first 20 levels is going to go a little bit faster with an automated buff to spells.

For raiders, it will mean a complete change in how we approach moonkins. We are now in complete control of our eclipse proc, and know when it will happen. We will no longer have those nasty RNG moments where we fire off wraths for a whole minute and never see an eclipse proc. My wrath has about a 67% chance to crit during raids, and I still get crit droughts. Once Cataclysm comes, this will be a thing of the past.

This is a huge buff to moonkins. We can now plan accordingly during a raid fight, and we can decide when and if we want eclipse to proc. No longer will we get an eclipse just before we have to move, and waste 50% of the duration and no longer will we have periods without eclipse where we are at the mercy of the RNG Gods.

Crit will still play a vital role for our eclipse: Whenever we crit, we generate more Eclipse Energy than a non crit, and as we get more crit, we can get eclipses faster. But crit is no longer the central part of our eclipse, and we are no longer dependant on crit for proccing it.

More cooldowns

Be it for PvP or PvE, we have sort of been lacking stuff to use on a regular basis. We have Typhoon, which is hardly used, Starfall on a 1 minute cooldown and Force of Nature on a 3 minute cooldown. Typhoon can act as an interrupt with travel time, and while starfall is very potent, its easely countered with a stun, and treants can be wasted completely on a fearing, moving target. We now have the means to avoid this.

Solar Beam – an awesome AOE silence – sounds very powerful, and is sure to have some uses in PvE as well. Starsurge is both a stun, a DPS move and a way to further control our eclipse procs. Wild Mushroom becomes both a DPS move, a trap and a snare. We are finally getting what other classes have, means to protect ourselves and to further become more useful in a raid or PvP setting. If you, as a moonkin, cannot already begin to imagine all the wonderful uses we can have from these effects, then something is really amiss. On top of that, we still have barkskin, Nature’s Grasp, Roots, Typhoon and hybrid capabilities that makes us a fearsome fighting force.

Less punishment from movement

If the new eclipse system wasn’t enough of a treat, it seems that Blizzard is aware of what happens when moonkins have to move. We lose Nature’s Grace as well, and we only have some weak DOTs to throw up on the target as we move to another position. This disappears with the return of the Moonfire Spam. Since we will probably be running with different glyphs, the initial damage of Moonfire will play a might larger role than the DOT. We get talents to increase the direct damage from moonfire, and a super special talent that even increases the damage of Moonfire as we move. We will probably not use it very often as we stand still, but it will be an awesome tool for when we do have to move. And don’t forget, should this moonfire cast crit, Nature’s Grace will be up when you stop – although Nature’s Grace is still marked as “To Be Redesigned/To Be Removed”, so we may still see some changes to this talent as well.

Better Scaling

Scaling has been a thorn in the eye for moonkins, namely because our two main nukes stop getting the full benefit of our stats. Our DOTs have been weak because they largely only scaled with spell power, and while crit and haste are still wonderful stats, they lose some value when their respective cap has been reached.

With the change to Eclipse, Starfire does not gain extra crit anymore. Just by this, it is pretty safe to say that we wont ever reach the soft crit cap. Ever. If I had that change right now, I would still be 33% crit away from the soft crit cap, and I doub anything will change in Cataclysm.

Haste is a different matter. If Nature’s Grace is not getting a revamp, our haste cap will still be relatively low. We have lost a lot of haste from generic talents, yet we will gain it from our mastery bonus. But even if our haste cap is relatively low in Cataclysm, we must not forget that haste is suddenly affecting more than just two spells. Even if your wrath is haste capped, you will still benefit from haste on your starfire and on your insect swarm. Insect Swarm, with haste and the ability to crit, will be a much larger part of our DPS in Cataclysm.

And considering that we get a buttload of haste from our Moonkin Mastery, I find it likely that Nature’s Grace will be changed to something else, or removed completely. Just changing Nature’s Grace would move our haste cap much further up, and I think it’s realistic to expect that soft caps is going to be a problem of the past.

What’s the verdict?

I feel like Blizzard has heard our concerns and acted accordingly. They have proposed changes that will make everything less random, they have given us a load of situational skills, they have shown that they are aware of how movement affects our DPS and have taken steps to remove our caps.

What it all boils down to is the end result. What kind of damage will we do? Well, nobody knows yet, which is why I haven’t really talked about it. Fact of the matter is, Blizzard has addressed every major concern that we have had throughout Wrath of the Lich King, and after this, it is just a matter of putting the right numbers on the spells. I don’t know what kind of damage Starfire will do at level 85, and neither do you, but as long as the fundamental problems with the class has been fixed, the numbers are easy enough to fiddle with.

So, long story short: No, Blizzard doesn’t hate druids.

- QQ

Ahead of everybody else is Paragon from Lightnings Blade EU, and I hooked up with their very own moonkin Lappé for a little chat.

- First off, can you tell us your name, how old you are, and how long you have been playing WoW?
My real name is Niko Lappeteläinen – now you can try to pronounce it properly! I am 18 years old and I have been playing World of Warcraft since the summer of ’06, although I did have a break before The Burning Crusade.

- Have you always been playing moonkin/druid?
My main has always been a druid. In The Burning Crusade I was “forced” to play as restoration if I wanted raid spots. When Wrath of the Lich King came, I was able to switch to moonkin.

- What is it that makes you play a moonkin? Why not another caster class?
I’ve always loved to play moonkin, as long as I can get raid spots with that spec. In case I get bored, I have a few alts that I can play. I haven’t really considered rolling a mage or a warlock as a serious main, cause I don’t believe there is nothing a mage can do that a moonkin can’t – except, perhaps, for proper PVP!

- Looking at the grand scale of things, how do you feel moonkins have progressed through the expansions?
I stopped playing around level 57 before The Burning Crusade, so I really can’t remember much of those times, and back in The Burning Crusade, I mainly played as restoration. It was easier to get a raid spot as a moonkin in WOTLK because of our raid buffs.

- How do you think moonkins compare to other DPS classes?
In regards to damage, we’ve always been a bit behind other classes, but never too much. Even if I hate the RNG part of eclipse, I still love it when I get the best possible RNG and top our other casters! Ofcourse, we will have to wait and see what happens once we all begin to wear heroic loot. We might fall a bit behind because of our scaling with soft haste and crit caps.

- What kind of difficulties have you noted with the bosses in Icecrown Citadel?
Actually, there is nothing that has really bugged me in Icecrown Citadel. I think we are quite strong and usefull for every fight. Sindragosa, for example, is a real badass, but that is the same for every caster. For all fights, you just have to figure out how to maximize your DPS without dying, but theres nothing we can’t handle.

- What do you think about the difficulty of the instances and the “casual catering” that people have been complaining about?
Icecrown Citadel on normal is okay for casuals, but the hardmodes are pretty well tuned right now. I’d just wish they would have removed limited attempts earlier and come up with something really hard for the heroic modes that would actually last for couple of weeks.

- What kind of changes would you like to see being made to moonkins?
Short answer would be “More DPS, less RNG”. I’d like to see a change to Nature’s Grace and Eclipse to make them something less dependable on crit.

- If you could take one talent from another class, what would it be?
That would be the old ignite for mages for sure. It would keep stacking up as long as you can keep up your crit streak, so if we add that to eclipse we would be able to reach huge numbers. Languish is similar, but it won’t refresh its duration completely if you lose a crit.

With the old ignite, you could have a tick followed by a crit, and it would retain the full effect, stacking it up to 100.000+ damage ignites! At least, that’s how I think it worked.

Once (and if) they remove eclipse my decision would probably be different, though.

- Are you going to be playing in Cataclysm, and what are you looking forward to?
I will try to play as much as I can, but I am scheduled to go to the army this summer. I am definitely looking forward to seeing what Cataclysm brings to druids.

- Are you going to change to troll in Cataclysm?
If it’s a huge DPS benefit, then I probably will, but I would rather not. We will have to see what kind of changes they bring with the new tauren racials as well, if they follow through with that.

- How does hardcore raiding effect your real life?
It’s not really “hardcore” raiding. It’s hardcore for just a few weeks, until we beat the content, but it’s not really that hard. Once we beat the encounters, it doesn’t take that long to clear the instances, and we go back to a much more casual raiding schedule.

- What is your favourite dungeon of all times?
I always prefer the one that holds the hardest difficulty level – so right now, I enjoy ICC the most. I don’t hold any favourites with all of the old stuff – if someone asks me to join, I’ll probably go!

- Finally, if Mumins were a playable class, would you switch to it?
Definitely – they’ll probably get better racials than taurens!

To catch up on Paragon’s progression in Icecrown Citadel, check out http://www.paragon-wow.com!

But it’s not all bad. I know I have scorned haste quite a lot in the past, but I have had a bit of change of heart after hearing a few arguments and checking through logs. But how do we go about handling haste and crit in ICC?

Why haste ISN’T bad:

Previously, I would have said that I would much rather stack crit over it’s soft haste cap than haste. Crit gives us faster eclipse procs, more wrath crits and helps our Languish from 4pt10. But haste is actually not too shabby either, because:

- Refreshing dots will drop your NG, putting your wrath cast time back to ~1,2.
- Simply running for 2+ seconds will mostly drop NG.
- Non-crit streaks on wrath (they are there, we all have them) will drop NG.
- Faster eclipse procs after lunar eclipse.
- The obvious, faster starfires = more damage.

That’s not to say that crit isn’t good. I will also be trying to get as much crit as I can, but my aim with my Better In Slot list is to pump up both my haste and crit to ridiculous amounts, and limit the amount of spirit I have.

But how do I compare stats then?!

Same as always. Up until 400 haste rating, haste is still what you would prefer. Then, up until you see a point where your crit is at 42% raid buffed and with your idol running, crit will probably be what you want to go for. At this point, crit and haste are worth more or less the same.

To put it in another language:

Pre haste cap: Hit > SP > Haste > Crit
Pre crit cap: Hit > SP > Crit > Haste
Post caps: Hit > SP > Crit = Haste

You might find yourself swimming in hit rating as you switch your gear – I certainly am. Hit over hit cap doesn’t really do anything for you, so you may consider taking a point from Balance of Power and put it into whatever else you want. I maxed out Owlkin Frenzy for a bit of a laugh. You can do this when you have 315 hit rating or more (as horde). Just remember to spec back once you reduce your hit. In my Better In Slot list, I am just 5 hit rating over the cap.

So, how are we doing?

I thought that with our stats only benefiting half of our spells, we would see moonkins creep further down the damage meters. In truth, I haven’t really seen this yet, other than on fights with a lot of movement – but I can’t blame the stats on that. A few months ago, 7k-ish DPS was pretty good on TOTGC25 fights in my guild, and I was at a comfortable place on the meters. I’m surprised to see how much my own DPS has increased, just over the last few weeks.

We went to TOTGC25 after our holiday break, and I was suddenly doing 8-9k DPS in the beginning of Northrend Beasts. My Jaraxxus DPS peaked at 8,9k DPS in the first minute, and ended on a good 8,1k DPS. And I am still wanting plenty of upgrades in ICC.

I think we’re still doing pretty damn well!

- QQ

MMO-champion released a lot of items from 3.3 and I thought it would be a fine time to take a look at what the next patch has to offer us. We have a new idol, a pretty tier 10 armor set, and a bunch of items from the new Emblem of Frost. There are a lot of mixed oppinions on the new items, and I’d like to try and dwelve into them a bit more.

Tier 10 stats and bonuses

At first glance, the stats on Tier 10 are quite nice. If we go from ilevel 245 to lowest ilevel (251) of the Lasherweave Regalia, which is what you will initially buy from emblems of frost, we are stood to gain over 200 crit rating, but only 66 haste. This is going from 5 pieces to 5 pieces, ofcourse.

This is great because we are losing a lot of crit on our starfire when we finally let go of 2pt8, and we don’t really want that much more haste. If we only gain about 66 haste, we can probably work around it. I am not yet sure if we go for full crit gear by this point and are able to stay at 400 haste, or if we will start stacking haste to benefit starfire – because we have no other choice.

The tier 10 bonuses however, are not very exciting. I did some quick napkin math on the way home the other day, and bearing in mind that my math skills are equal to a fourth grader, I am not very impressed. I did these calculations from my current gear, and even assuming that I had 2pt8. I used a combat log from a Decontructor Hard mode kill on 25 man, because that fight is generally the one I prefer for any damage calculations and comparasons.

See the attached image. If my calculations are even remotely correct, we are looking at a 3,75% damage increase from 2 pieces, and a 2,9% damage increase from 4 pieces. Keep in mind that we will have more crit on our wraths due to gear, and that we will probably do faster starfires aswell because we can’t avoid the haste, so the bonuses might work differently on live, but at the moment they feel quite weak compared to what other classes are getting, or even our previous bonuses: 2pt8 and 2pt9 in particular.

At least there is no spirit on our tier items, and the hit is practically the same!

Idol of the Lunar Eclipse

Our new tier 10 idol is interesting. This generated a lot of grief right off the start, but I don’t feel that it is justified. Right off the bat, the increase we got from our Idol of Lunar Fury was a huge jump from our +spellpower to starfire idol. All our other idols, for wrath and the insect swarm, are quite lackluster, and the starfire idol only benefits one spell. Going from spellpower to a HUGE crit bonus is very nice. So if our next tier isn’t as big, I am not very fussed.

Secondly, I think people are underestimating just what kind of potential the new idol has. The Idol of Lunar Fury has a chance to proc, and even though its quite high, it is not up all the time. Even in the best of circumstances, it will fall off once in a while. In the Deconstructor combat log I linked above, I had an uptime of 90%. This means that we only really get 90% out of the idol. That turns 200 crit rating into 180. The Idol of the Lunar Eclipse will stack up really fast, and it will refresh itself on every single tick of either insect swarm or moonfire. I think its safe to assume, then, that it will have a near 100% uptime, and the times it falls off, would make Lunar Fury fall off anyways.

So if we go from 180 crit rating (with a 90% uptime) to 220 crit rating (with a 100% uptime), then that is a 22% increase in damage. These are very soft numbers, and I believe our uptime on other fights are lower than 90%, so the new idol is a very nice increase for us.

Emblem of Frost items

It seems that every armor class gets a chest, gloves and a waist. The leather chest has only haste on it (aswell as spirits), and I am not too keen on that. The cloth version, however, has haste and crit, so we have some interesting options for balancing out our stats. The trinket offered to casters is very disappointing. I dont think we will ever need to look for 152 hit, but there is bound to be some interesting items in Icecrown anyways.

Unfortunately we have not yet heard any news from Blizzard regarding Nature’s Grace, other than Ghostcrawlers blue post ages ago. How these bonuses and the lack of changes will affect us is still unkown, but I will remain moderately sceptical for the time being.

- QQ

And it doesn’t really seem fair that I always bitch and moan without actually giving some suggestions for what could be changed. I can’t rightfully complain about what I have without saying that I want. So i started to think about what could fix our problems and add a bit more.. bling to our playstyle. Treants are nice, but they are not a massive part of our playstyle. We can do without, and when we decide to summon them, their damage is medicore at best. Starfall is fun and unique, especially on AOE packs, but it lacks the damage and general awesomeness on a bossfight.

It would have to be something that can fill the gap where we need it. Something that would benefit equally from haste and crit, especially when crit and haste are meeting some nasty soft caps. It could be a long cast spell, a channeled spell like Mind Flay, or a skill that modifies something we already have.

Nature’s Grace

My first notion would to change Nature’s Grace. Its a nice spell, but it hinders us at higher levels. If we didn’t have the haste from Nature’s Grace, haste would be a much more beneficial stat for us. Wrath wouldn’t be at GCD, but if Nature’s Grace added a constant damage increase equal to the haste, it would allow us to get more haste for wrath, which would also benefit starfire. It could be something simple as a 10% damage increase for 3 seconds after a crit, or an ability that stacks on crits, and on the third crit your spell would do double damage. That would be fun! Imagine the utility in PvP, and imagine what this would do to starfire. It would obviously not include crits from moonfire and starfire, and it would still have to be balanced. I’m not looking for a buff, I’m looking for a fix that will allow us to continue to scale in the future.

It would be very easy to fix us by changing Nature’s Grace. Removing the haste from that would allow us the full benefit from Bloodlust, even while spamming wrath, and it would raise our haste cap so we can be a bit more casual with our haste.

But if I can’t have that, I can certainly dream:

Hadoken

[singlepic id=52 w=320 h=240 float=right]I’ve always fancied the idea of a moonfire going horisontal. Like the Hadoken from the Blue Mage from 8 Bit Theatre. It just seems so moonkinly with the white energy beam. A 3 second channeled, 10 yard beam of pure light, ripping through the air, blasting the enemy away. If this was a channeled spell, it could act just like mind flay, and we could cast it during Bloodlust when we would normally get nothing from Solar Eclipse anyways. But this idea lacks the bonus to the general rotation. If you would only use it during bloodlust, then it would be used once every fight. Also, the white beam of power would probably not sit well with.. pretty much anyone not casting it.

Image is taken from 8 Bit Theatre.

Stars Grace

[singlepic id=63 w=320 h=240 float=right]If we have to make it easy for the developers, maybe we can use something already in the game and modify it for our needs. A 51 point talent that casts a beam of light, like we see from the moonkins on Hodir or those little lanterns from the Moonglade event. This could do numerous things for us. The most interesting thing I can come up with, would be if it extended our current eclipse by 15, or even 30, seconds (taking note of the bloodlust issue again). It would benefit us outside of Bloodlust aswell: If we simply want to continue our lunar eclipse for another 15 seconds because we need some big numbers, or if we are on a Loatheb-like fight where we would want to have as much time under solar eclipse as possible. It would be fun to do, and we would get a bit of bling from the pillar of light coming down during the duration.

Image is from Andrige’s Moonkin skin pack.

Chaos moonkin

[singlepic id=48 w=320 h=240 float=right]One thing that really floats my boat is the idea of an enrage kind of ability, like Beastial Wrath. We can certianly play a lot with what bonuses this ability would do, but it would basicly ensure that we get a damage bonus when we want it. Currently, we are under the (Nature’s) grace of eclipse to ensure any form of damage increase, and we can do nothing, except for sprouting some friends and calling down some stars, for a minor damage increase.

The chaos moonkin would have a damage buff and some awesome graphics, sort of like when a warlock uses his metamorphisis. Green flames and dark shadows gliding all around us, along with a general damage bonus and something fun – our spells doing 30% more damage as dots (ala T10) or something else that would be a general increase to our damage for a short period of time. We could make Typhoon a baseline skill (yeah, who takes it for raiding anyways?), move Starfall up to where Typhoon used to be, and place this little beauty at the bottom of our talent tree for some serious fun.

The image is just a quick photoshop of how I imagine a Chaos Moonkin could look.

What do you think? What would you like to see?

- QQ