Starfall was supposively changed so that it doesn’t pull mobs that you’re not in combat with. In reality, if you are not in combat, starfall doesn’t hit anything. If you are in combat, it will still tag any mob in a 40 yard radius. Something went wrong there, I suppose.

But Starfall was also acting very weird in general. On a single target, I could get anywhere between 9 and 16 stars. On two targets, I got up to a total of 29 stars at best. Three targets gave me 40 stars, and everything was just so eratic that it was hard to figure out excactly what was going on. This was obviously a bug, and was hotfixed on thursday. Not a very big suprise.

But now, another hotfix is in the works. I worry about the repercussions of this, and how you guys will react. Let’s keep it short and simple:

• Moonfury (Balance druid mastery) is being changed from 15% to 6% Arcane and Nature damage.

This seems like a pretty nasty hit to our damage. And it is. a 9% reduction to most of our spells (a few of them does not get affected by moonfury’s baseline increase) is a big deal, but judging from my raid with my guild the other day, its probably justified. We were in a decent place before, and with the mastery buff – with no nerf to our other stats – gave us a boost. This change brings us back to where we were, judging from initial math done by people smarter than me, and possibly a little bit past that.

All in all, with the buffs and the nerfs, we should be doing slightly less damage than before the patch. But in the words of Hamlet from Elitist Jerks, we traded in a bit of damage from some nice utility – a permanent 15% damage reduction, and a buff to shrooms.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/157908/incoming-hotfixes

The change to Wild Mushroom does get me quite excited though, even after this hotfix gets applied. Our AOE went from “meh” to “these shrooms are crazy, dudeeeee!”, and I feel that we can suddenly compete with other classes on AOE again, without running out of mana because of hurricane. When we did Halfus heroic on thursday, all I did was dropping shrooms on the pile of mobs, and throwing some DOTs and typhoon in between, and that put me well at the top.

Furthermore, this change also adds a bit of spice to our itemization. After all, mastery is a little bit more fun to play around with than crit, and there is less of a gap between haste and our other secondary stats.

I know it sucks to get nerfed, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. The changes are probably justified, and if Blizzard goes a little too much over board, you can bet that the Wailing of the Forums will change their minds again.

- QQ

UPDATE! Bashiok just posted the following:

“We think we overnerfed Balance. Some smart players have pointed out that Balance’s dps was inflated by a bug with Starfall that we have since fixed. With that in mind, we are changing the Moonfury nerf from 15% to 10% instead of 6%. This will be hotfixed soon™.”

I think that’s great. The general whine from anybody that feels nerfed is “Blizzard never listens to the players”, but clearly that’s not the case. Everything is alright.

Some of the changes to moonkins has already been announced, and they are pretty exciting to say the least. I wanted to take a moment to adress some of the more interesting changes (ei. I won’t be talking about soothe being instant!). Please note that we might still see a lot more changes on the PTR before the patch goes live.

Oh, and before I forget, I’m going to link to a page at the top of my site (way up at the top, in that little grey area, because that’s all I can do – maybe I’ll add a link in the side bar) where I’ll keep a list of PTR changes for this and future patches.

• Total Eclipse now increases bonus damage from Eclipse by 16%, up from 12%. Each point of Mastery now increases the bonus by an additional 2%, up from 1.5%.

Right off the bat, this is a nice little damage increase. We are basicly looking at 4% more damage during eclipse just by logging in, which is a 2-2,5% damage increase. More importantly, this is going to make Mastery more desirable than crit, but probably not as good as haste.

Please keep in mind, as I’ve been saying so far about mastery, this doesn’t make crit bad, it just means that you’ll get more damage from haste and mastery.

• 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%.
  Fungal Growth now has a 100 yards range, up from 30 yards.

Blizzard’s first attempts to fix Wild Mushroom. You will still have to place three shrooms manually, but you can do this while moving, or choose to move right after you target it on the ground. The range increase was greatly needed, and placing shrooms is a bit more forgiving now. The added damage will make shrooms a lot better for AOE. I am still sulking for a glyph that makes Wild Mushroom a bit more attractive in PvE, but a damage and range increase is a good start.

Just to avoid the confusion: The change to Fungal Growth is just to make sure that if you place down your treants and run away, they will still drop the snare when they die.

• Moonfire and Sunfire now costs 9% of base mana, down from 18% of base mana.

A minor correction to our mana usage. 3,3k mana for a moonfire, where insect swarm is only 1,5k mana is a bit steep.

• The Shooting Stars buff duration has been increased to 12 seconds, up from 8 seconds.

This might seem trivial, but this is actually a pretty neat change. Have you ever been in an encounter where you get frequent stuns, see Shooting Stars proc, and then disappear before you get out of the stun? This will get you back in the game fast after a stun, provided that you have your DOTs up and a little luck. It won’t break the game, but it’s a cute little change afterwards.

• Balance of Power now increases spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 50/100% of any spirit gained from item or effects. (Old – Just 50/100% of your Spirit)

As far as I know, spirit from food and the like did not increase your hit rating. I didn’t bother to test this though.

• Typhoon now deals nature damage to target in front of the caster within 30 yards.
• Soothe is now instant cast, down from 1.5 sec cast.

So?

• Glyph of Wrath now increases damage done by Wrath by 10% and no longer requires Insect Swarm on the target.

This change is probably most interesting to PvP’ers. I don’t generally shoot many wraths without IS being up already – not to mention the fact that I’m not using Glyph of Wrath.

–

There you have it folks, the PTR changes so far. More might be on their way, but aside from Wild Mushrooms, I quite like our current situation in Cataclysm. Damage is fine, rotations are well balanced and we are not a force to be ignored.

- QQ

Since Blizzard has acknowledged that Wild Mushrooms needs to be “fixed”, I decided it was prudent to write down my thoughts on the spell, and how we can change it.

Troubles with shrooms (aka Why shrooms suck)

• Has to be manually placed with the mouse three times for maximum effect
• Must be detonated manually when target(s) are right on top of of the mushrooms
• Has a very small range and moving mobs have a high chance of getting out of range

In some situations, it is beneficial to be able to place Wild Mushroom ahead of time. If you know that a group of mobs is going to be in a specific spot, then you can make sure they are greeted by a couple of shrooms for quick and easy damage. This works quite well in PvP as well, as a tactical tool to protect flags, bases and choke points.

But while placing the shrooms manually might have its benefits in some cases, there are plenty where it does not. Because of the delay from placing the mushrooms and actually detonating them, enemies can easely avoid them by sidestepping for half a second. That is, if you manage to place the targeting reticule quickly enough.

Obviously, Wild Mushrooms can’t have a 30 yard range. That would be too powerful with any amount of damage from them. But with the current mechanics – or rather, limitations – of Wild Mushroom, they are rarely worth using compared to more conventional damage and crowd control abilities.

Let us compare the mushrooms to a hunter trap. Both can be placed at a distance, but while the hunter trap detonates when it is hit by an enemy, Wild Mushroom must be triggered in the one second it takes for a monster or character to run over it. If a group of mob triggers a hunter trap, they will all be hit by it, but if a Wild Mushroom is triggered near a group of mobs, only those very close to the mushroom will be affected by the damage.

Add to that the actual damage that Wild Mushroom can produce, and they are hard to compare against a hunter trap – an instant cast trap versus manually placing three mushrooms over the course of three seconds and then having to carefully time the detonation.

Proposed solutions

With all this, I feel that the damage from Wild Mushroom, compared to the restrictions through gameplay that the spell has, doesn’t quite match. I feel that at least one of the variables, possibly two, has to be changed: Damage, range, targeting system, detonation.

• Increased damage: The damage should be relative to how easy the spell is to work with. Currently it is hard to get a good couple of mushrooms off, but the payoff is very low. With the increased difficulty, there should be an increased damage. And there is absolutely no argument for using Wild Mushroom on a single target boss fight, especially if there is just a little bit of boss movement involved.
• Increased range: I find that anywhere between 5-10 yards on each mushroom is acceptable. With a 3 yard range, you might put down three mushrooms, and not be guaranteed that they will all hit every mob in an AOE pack. Just a slight increase to this could be enough to make the range of the spell unbearable.
• Change of targeting system: This is a change that could possibly be applied to all ground based AOE attacks that feature a targeting reticule. If you have no current target, the game offers you the targeting reticule as always. But if you have a target, the AOE will automaticly be cast with that target in its center. This could apply to mages, warlocks, death knights, hunters and ofcourse moonkins, affecting our Wild Mushroom, but also Force of Nature and Hurricane. Should we want to set up the effect away from our target, we can simply de-select our target and return to using the targeting reticule.
• Automatic detonation: Wild Mushrooms could be set on a timer to detonate automaticly. This suggestion obviously offers some trouble, as this takes away the possibility to trigger Wild Mushroom manually. The automatic detonation could be upon contact with an enemy, as it is with hunter traps, or it could simply be after a few seconds. Automatic detonation would often assure that the mushrooms doesn’t go completely to waste.

In my oppinion, we need a total of three changes to make Wild Mushroom a very fun and enjoyable ability. First, the damage needs to be scaled up a bit. Second, the range should be between 5-10 yards. If they could be placed automaticly on your target, if you have one, that would make this version of Wild Mushrooms good in PvP and decent in PvE.

But in order to fix Wild Mushrooms completely, and make it an absolutely fantasticly fun ability to use, I suggest one more change with the others, that will make it a great addition to PvE, be it single target or AOE:

We need a Glyph of Wild Mushrooms. Something that combines the three mushrooms into one, or even just give us an effect of some grassy, mossy parts on the ground. It needs a longer coolddown and increased damage. It will be dropped on our current target, so that it is useful on a single target boss fight, and the damage it does should be high enough to make us want to use it relatively often. This will basicly turn Wild Mushroom into a single target ability, but one that is placed on the ground, much like a landmine or the like. This ability could easely have a 3 yard radius, to avoid being misused for AOE. We then have the option of going 3x Shrooms for AOE and PvP, or 1x Shroom for single target damage.

Possible names could be Bed of Fungus, Nature’s Retaliation or Qieth’s Angry Patch of Grass (this).

What you can do!

Since I hold no illusions that Ghostcrawler frequents my blog every day to drain my brain of delicious moonkin ideas, I figured it would be a good idea to post this on the official WoW forums. You can find the topic in the comments below, as soon as I’ve posted it. Do me a favor and help keep the topic active. Don’t just bump it with “lulz gief buffz”. Try to show that this is something that the community would like as a whole. And should you, in some weird parallel universe, find that I am wrong in my assumptions, post those too!

I play in Europe, so I can only post this on the European forums. If you are an american (or asian, for that matter!), feel free to post a copy on the US forums – just remember to link back to the European one, and mention in the comments here that you did it, so we don’t spawn 17 Wild Mushroom topics on the US forums!

- QQ

Wait. Sorry. I have to say this. I fall asleep at night dreaming about the day when I can stop making references back to Wrath of the Lich King. I don’t quite feel that we do Cataclysm justice by continuously comparing it to WOTLK. We need to look ahead. Work with what we’ve got. I’ll stop living in nostalgia now!

Cataclysm has changed the way we handle AOE, for better and for worse. I think its time we take a good, long look at our AOE abilities.

Hurricane

Back in Wrrrrr… The current state of hurricane is a bit of a mess. I find myself using it less and less, and whats worse, I find that I am berating myself whenever I do. Hurricane costs a metric shitton of mana, and its hard to consistantly use hurricane with moving mobs and random stuns being thrown about. And lest we forget, hurricane is now also subject to diminishing returns when there are too many mobs, something we haven’t really felt a huge impact off in.. err.. earlier times.

I am more than confident that Hurricane will be a useful spell again, as it scales with haste and becomes more powerful. But at the moment, it takes away such a huge chunk of my mana that I would often rather settle for single target nuke while everybody else AOE’s. I do suppose we are not the only ones with mana issues when it comes to AOE. I find that many casters are holding back on their AOE spells, and leave the massive damage spam to melee classes that has the resources to continue the hurt.

Wild Mushrooms

Shrooms were supposed to be our new, fancy AOE ability, but try as I might, I am constantly challenged by trying to find a place to put them. They are hard to set up before a pull, because mobs easely move away and out of range of them. Even when you have a stack of mobs in a controlled place, our shrooms might still not hit all of them.

One of the biggest issues I have with the shrooms are their cast time. A shroom for me takes 0,48 seconds to cast, but trigger a global cooldown. Already, that’s half a second wasted on each shroom. Then there is the need to detonate them, and while the detonation doesn’t trigger a cooldown, there is an actual delay before the shrooms bloom. I find it very difficult to get used to.

I would endure the torture of casting mushrooms more, if it wasn’t for the fact that their damage themselves are sort of lackluster. Mobs need to be kept tightly together for the shrooms to hit all of them, and you generally need a lot of targets for shrooms to really be worth it. And even when you do, shrooms are not sustained damage. That does 5.000 damage do on 10 mobs with half a million health, compared to all of the Fan of Knifes and Cleaves going about?

I’ve said it so many times before, and I’ll keep saying it again until some Blue walks by and decides that I’m the most brilliant person in the world: We need a Glyph of Shrooms. It needs to reduce the number of shrooms to one, and increase the damage to 20-30k damage, and the range to, say, 10 yards. It also needs to spawn on our target instead of forcing us to play 3D geometry targeting. Also, please let it kill gnomes instantly. Heck, just let them bloom by themselves, if glyphed, so we don’t have to use 7 clicks to do a tiny bit of damage to our target. Maybe then, it might begin to be fun to use!

Typhoon

I find that I am starting to have a little crush on typhoon. It’s actually not half bad. It is quickly becoming my favourite AOE ability, even if it has a somewhat long cooldown and a glitchy graphic. It’s still rather useless on single target bosses, but if you have just three targets, a typhoon will do more damage than wrath.

And we can’t ignore the fact that Typhoon is instant, so I’d actually almost settle for just hitting two mobs, and be happy with the results. And if you are staring into a roaring mass of 10 mobs, typhoon nearly makes me do my evil laugh.

The best thing about Typhoon, however, is the fact that we can now safely glyph for it with the new glyph system. It suddenly becomes much more versitile, and we have the room to glyph as we want. Knockbacks are generally not good in PvE, but I can safely glyph it away without worrying about using up room that I need for more powerful glyphs, and that makes Typhoon a fun – and useful! – spell to use.

Starfall

I have stopped seeing starfall as an AOE ability because, well, it doesn’t really do any AOE damage anymore. It is a wonderful spell to use, especially when there are many boss fights with more than one target. And the fact that it scales with lunar eclipse just makes it a wonderful little gift to bring out during a fight. Really, no complaints here. Well, maybe it could sort of ignore crowd controlled and un-engaged mobs, but hey, I’m not picky!

–

At the moment, I generally feel like I want to leave the AOE business to other classes. Let the melee have fun, or maybe the warlocks with their lifetap. It’s not like I can’t innervate myself, but 14k hurricanes that aren’t really “all that” doesn’t really do it for me. I’ve used Wild Mushrooms on a few boss fights, but they are generally sitting idly on my action bars. Our most exciting AOE abilities are on long cooldowns and are best used in a “few target setting”.

I’m sure everything will be better. Hurricane will scale with haste and shrooms will eventually be fixed. Until then, I’ll just DOT up mobs with insects and fire, and leave the rest to everybody else.

- QQ

At first glance, Wild Mushrooms are are bit annoying. I dread the time to come where we have to manually place three mushrooms within 3 yards of the boss, and detonate them with another button. But their damage seems to be pretty good on a single target fight, and they seem overly potent on AOE fights, provided they can hit the targets.

But I hold firm to my belief that this is all just a matter of creativity. There has been numerous spells that seemed worthless or silly, only to shine when we realise their full potential. So, lacking any ideas for how Wild Mushroom can be used in the future, I thought it would be a good idea to see how useful they could have been if we had them in the past.

Backwards thinking

Pre-pull on every boss – Set up 3x Shrooms in the place where the boss will be tanked. Pop them for a quick damage burst. Being able to set up damage like this is a good way to get started, but if you are only using your shrooms once, the damage contribution will be rather small over a 10 minute fight. Even so, being able to set up damage ahead of time helps out a bit anyways.

Maexxna - Usually roots her targets in two specific locations. Placing shrooms at one of these could mean a quick release from the silky prison. We could place our shrooms ahead of time and simply detonate them without having to turn around, change target, and turn back.

Razorscale - It seems obvious to me that we would use our Shrooms on add fights. On Razorscale, setting them up before the Iron Dwarves come out could help on getting them down faster. And because there is usually ample time after they die (because they were not really that hard to get down in the first place), you could set up the shrooms under Razorscale before she lands.

Deconstructor - There is usually a bit of time from when Deconstructor collapses until his heart pops out. A few seconds to place some shrooms in the path that the bots will take. If they don’t take out the repair bots, they will at the very least severely damage the bomb bot, and possibly blow up the repair bots as well.

Auriaya - The swarm is about to come, set up three shrooms and pop them when they appear. That should put the kitties down nicely.

Freya - Would be rather useful on the Detonating Lashers. There is the issue of range here, but I feel that tanks will probably catch on to the idea of shrooms quite quickly, and try to adjust accordingly.

Northrend Beasts – If you did the first phase of this fight in any way smart, kobolds are killed on top of Gormok. Back when this was hard, you usually wanted a fair bit of DPS on the kobolds, so with at least two targets, and possibly more, the shrooms would do a nice amount of damage.

Faction Champions – Set it up, boom. Need I say more? Okay, there is a lot of healing going on on Faction Champions, but any damage given to a wide range of targets means that their healers are busy doing tiny heals. We had a few DOTs rolling on the pets, because then the pets would need to be healed, and that helped out immensely. Doing a wad of damage on every mob that’s not CC’ed could be quite useful.

Anub’Arak – Since I assume that our shrooms will do more damage than a simple hurricane (because they are constricted by not only having to cast them, but also a cooldown on the detonation), setting a shroom up on each side to hit adds and Anub’Arak would prove a fair bit of damage, helping to get them down.

Lord Marrowgar – We usually stack up behind Marrowgar, so this would be an ample place to put down our shrooms. When people get spiked – provided you’re not “it” – three shrooms could actually clear the spikes quickly.

Lady Deathwhisper – As each wave of adds spawn on either side, they could be greeted by a forest of mushrooms. Now, of course, the adds are generally immune to either physical or magical damage, but only a few seconds after they spawn. Simply detonate before they turn immune for a bit of extra damage.

Gunship - lol

Dreamwalker - Come here, little suppressor. I know where you are going to stand. I know where you are going to die. You get this, right? Right? Put them on the place that the suppressors run to!

Lich King – Man, I would have loved to have Wild Mushroom for Lich King, especially on heroic. The Valkyrs drop down at the same place, and we can hit three valkyrs plus Lich King with three supershrooms. Heck, throw in the talent, and we take away a slow totem or a frost trap. Not to mention that this could potentially be potent against the Vile Spirits, provided that they are close enough to the ground when the blast goes off (this, of course, is completely dependant on how you handle the spirits, but this is just a mere sidenote).

Halion - Fire adds. Need I say more?

Creativity

It really all comes down to figuring out when and where Wild Mushroom becomes useful. There have certainly been a lot of fights in the past, where they could have been helpful, and I am sure that there will be in the future. I am certain that Blizzard haven’t just given us an ability that will whittle away in our spell books – after all, they changed Cower! – and it is just a matter of thinking outside the box. I just wish I didn’t have to target them on the ground.

Still, and I have said this a million times, I am just waiting for Blizzard to announce “Glyph of Wild Mushroom”, turning three shrooms into one, doing more damage than the three combined, and we’re sorted!

In other news

Shooting Stars was hotfixed today. Your proc is no longer consumed if you proc Shooting Stars while casting Starsurge. It will disappear shortly and then reappear after half a second or so, meaning that you can expect to fire away double starsurges for an amazing amount of damage. Awesome!

- 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

• Wild Mushroom changed, only 3 mushrooms can be placed at one time (Down from 5).
• Cyclone cast time increased to 2 sec. Up from 1.5 sec.
• Faerie Fire now has a 35 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Insect Swarm now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Starfire now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Entangling Roots now has a 35 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Thorns now lasts 20 sec, down from 10 minutes. Damage increased by 1400% (Deals 447 damage instead of 32)
• Moonfire now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Wrath now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Moonkin Form now increases Nature and Arcane spell damage by 10%.
• Starlight Wrath now reduces cast time by 0.15/0.25/0.5 sec. (Up from 0.1/0.2/0.3 sec)

First off, props to the creative way to make us want to stay in moonkin form. Ah well, we don’t really need anything fancy to do that, the “you get more damage here” sign will do the trick.

A lot of our spells have gotten increased range. In our case, it seems like a generic 40 yard range, but this is not the case for all classes! It would seem like some spells, for all classes, are capped at 30 yards where others have a 40 yard range. This is interesting because it means I can nuke a warlock from 40 yards range, but he would have to walk 10 yards to be close enough to cast a fear. Not a bad way to force people to make the decision between nuking, healing or CCing.

Starligth Wrath was buffed, which makes sense, while Wild Mushroom was nerfed to 3 shrooms at any one time. Lets take a moment to write up a long blog post about Shrooms being nerfed, so that we.. wait, nevermind. We don’t know the amount of damage it does, how it plays into our rotation, what glyphs it will have and so on. I guess we’ll just wait and see instead.

Lastly, a very interesting change to thorns: It is now a defensive spell. Defensive in the way of saying “If you touch me, you’re going to hurt!”. It is a fine way to do some extra damage, especially if you are either AOE grinding, tanking a bunch of mobs, or if you are being ganked by a rogue. It is no longer a weak retribution aura, but an offensive defense spell, which should give us a bit of fun.

- 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

Before I continue this post, I want to make it absolutely clear that this is pure speculation. I don’t know whats going on in the Alpha, and I don’t have any information that you don’t. Just so thats covered.

But that doesn’t stop us from guessing a bit. I was thinking the other day, about what kind of glyphs we might see in Cataclysm..

First off, I think its fairly reasonable to think that we wont be rolling with the same glyphs at level 85. Even something as strong as Glyph of Starfall is probably going to be outdated. Anything else would be pretty poor. So far, our glyph choices have been slim pickings: Glyph of Starfire and Moonfire both affect the same spell, and then the choice was down to Glyph of Insect Swarm – a glyph for a weak spell, only a minor part of our damage – or lately, Glyph of Starfall.

Its been bugging me that our glyphs, prior to the Starfall buff, affected something that was only around 10% of our total damage. I mean, buffs are nice and all, but I’d like them to have a bit bitter impact on our damage. The Glyph of Starfall suddenly became quite powerful when they buffed the ability, and thats the kind of thing I want to see. Most of all, I want to see glyphs that has a major impact on how we play, like the frost mage glyph that turns their Water Elemental into a pet, or something along those lines.

What else has there been? Glyph of Wrath reduced our pushback, and Glyph of Hurricane added a slowing effect we don’t need. Then theres Glyph of Monsoon, which also buffs a weak spell. I want to have options. I want to want to re-glyph between figths, and in order to do that, we need something with a bit more juice.

I think it’s fair to assume that we will see Glyphs for all new abilities, and some new ones for old abilities. Lets see what we can come up with!

Glyph of Wild Mushroom

Gives the mushroom a 1 minute duration. During this time, it will pulse every x seconds for y damage.

I’m trying to figure out how Blizzard might make this into something we would want to cast on a single target fight. If it works somewhat like a long DOT or a beacon of sorts, it would be very nice to have around. It would also make for some killer Shroom Parties in Orgrimmar.

Glyph of Starlight Wrath

I have a feeling that Starlight Wrath/Nature’s Torrent will be a big part of our rotation come Cataclysm, probably something we do just before each eclipse. Or even more likely, it will probably generate a lot of Lunar/Solar energy, and be the last push after we put up our DOTs and use other cooldowns. I could imagine a buff being something like:

Increases your damage by x for y seconds after casting Starlight Wrath. Simple as that. But it could also be used to bring back a favourite: For 10 seconds after using Starlight Wrath, your wrath and starfire critical strikes leave a languishing DOT on the target. You know the drill.

Glyph of Force of Nature

Turns your Force of Nature into a permanent pet, but spawns only one Treant at a time.

Come on, it’s bound to happen. Mages probably wont use their level 80 frost glyph in level 85, so it leaves room for a little pet class, should we choose to. It could even have a cool stance system, as a tank, DPS and a healer. Nothing that could substitute any real class, but something along the lines of tank pets for hunters, a DPS mode with melee swings and a healer type that chugs around some HOTs.å

Glyph of Frenzied Insect Swarm

Gives your Insect Swarm a chance to cause the target to Frenzy, leaving it volunerable to your attacks for 10 seconds.

I’d like to see Insect Swarm play a bigger role for us in Cataclysm. I mean, think about it, spawning a swarm of Bees is cool, isn’t it? And if I had a hundred bees buzzing around me, I’d be pretty frantic too. It could merely be a small 5 second buff, but it would be nice to have IS bring more to the table.

Glyph of…

What do you think?

Surely, these seem like rather interesting and creative changes. We can only muse about how they will play out once Cataclysm goes live, so in the meantime, lets take an in depth look at the changes.

Please refer to my previous post for a list of all changes.

Eclipse

This is a very interesting change. Right off the bat, it means that we will not suffer nearly as much from moving as we do currently. This mechanic is very similar to the stacking suggestion I made somewhere: When you cast a nature spell, you gain a stack of lunar eclipse and vice versa.

The easiest way to look at this is to consider Starfire and Wrath a 100% damage spell. If you cast a starfire, the next will do, say, 90% damage, the next 80%, 70% and so on. At some point you decide that you do not want to cast starfire anymore – probably when your moonfire runs out – and you switch to wrath. Your first wrath will be buffed to do, say, 150% more damage. The next will do 145% damage, then 140% and so on. I am going to assume that it takes roughly two wraths to move the meter the same distance as one starfire does.

If you are just spamming these abilities, the net damage will be the same over any length of fight – much like an mage that does nothing but spam Arcane Missiles. Thats fine, because the spells will probably be normalized, where we right now need eclipse to be up to do comparable damage, but now we will do it right off the bat. Where this system can really shine is when you are able to plan ahead. How can we use this to our benefit?

You know that bloodlust is coming in 10 seconds. You spam a lot of wraths, making your starfires really powerful. When bloodlust comes, you can throw some very fast, very big starfires. I am not sure how this will effect the meter – it would obviously deplete the meter faster, but I would think that Blizzard has a way around this. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that our spells cannot go below 100% damage – so once your meter is at the middle, your starfires will still do 100%, but the wrath buff will stack up. This allows you to still take full advantage of bloodlust, with a big burst at the beginning, and then spamming normal damage starfire for the remaining duration. This also means that we end each bloodlust with a very powerful wrath, which we then switch over to afterwards. If Blizzard DOES allow our starfire/wrath to go below 100%, then they will need to find a way to compensate for this.

When you have to move, you can spam instant cast spells to stack up whatever eclipse type you prefer. It will give you a lot of control when you get to know a fight. This change actually makes movement much less of a trouble than before, because we are compensated for the movement by getting more powerful spells when we stand still.

Eclipse Mastery

How Eclipse Mastery will play out is very hard to tell. The simplest way to implement this is to simply make the additional bonus stronger. It might make the eclipse meter longer, so we are able to stack it further to one side if we wish, although that would make us switch spells less. It might stack up the buff faster, but that would probably mean that our current buff depletes faster. I am probably going to have to go with the first suggestion made, and assume that spells can be buffed, say, 50% in either direction, and the more mastery we have, the higher will this scale go. If it takes 10 starfires to buff wrath to 150% damage, then more mastery could make 10 starfires buff wrath to 175% damage.

Nature’s Torrent

I am not sure what to think of this. It will probably be a big hitting spell, although I am not sure if it is instant or not. It will do a different type of damage depending on how your eclipse meter is looking, and it is probably something we will want to use everytime it is off cooldown. If it didn’t do very much damage, it would have to be instant, so we could quickly move the meter, but my money is on a big hitter that we use once we are done casting one type of spell, do a large amount of damage, and then switch to the other nuke.

From this, our rotation would probably look something like this:
Moonfire, Starfire until full solar eclipse, Nature’s Torrent, Insect Swarm, wrath until full lunar eclipse, Nature’s Torrent, Moonfire, repeat.

Wild Mushroom

This is a very currious ability. I am not sure what to make of it. It seems like Blizzard wants to give us more options to do AOE damage. But for some reason, Blizzard thinks that it is fine to do on a single target fight as well, probably when it is buffed by eclipse. I think of it somewhat like warlock’s Seed of Corruption, although it doesn’t require damage to explode.

We can probably only have one mushroom up at the same time. Casting it again will probably simply detonate it ahead of time, which is the only reason I can come up with to why we have the ability to explode it at will. If we simply plant it in a pack of mobs, or near the boss, it probably wont explode before it turns invisible, but if we detonate before it turns invisible, it might blow up right away. But if we can simply detonate it right when we spawn it, the damage would have to be comparable to starfire and wrath, because otherwise we wouldn’t use it on a single target unless we are moving around. It is probably nature damage, and would affect our eclipse meter as well.

I must be honest, this ability confuses me a little bit, but once we get more information on it, and are able to brood over the posibilities more, a way of using this will probably arise. In any case, it sounds like a fun little “proximity mine”, and I am sure that PvP’ers will love to set up traps in BG’s and arenas.

What about DOTs?

Unfortately, it doesn’t appear from the preview that our DOTs will be affected by crit and haste, is other classes are. HOTs are surely affected, but it may be that Blizzard hasn’t decided on it yet. I still think that DOTs will be part of our rotation, and we will probably cast them with a fully charged eclipse meter to get the most out of them. The way they scale with spell power will just have to be corrected a bit.

Stampeding Roar

I sort of feel like I should mention this ability. There is nothing stopping us from switching into bear or cat form to cast this on our raid members, or we could even use it if we have to move a long distance, like if you are far away from the spore meeting point on Festergut, or if Sindragosa pulls you in for a Blistering Cold just before you wanted to reset your stack. As always, I am sure that we will find a way to use this ability, at least in some fights.

Unanswered Questions

There are a lot of “What about”‘s and “What If”‘s hanging in the air, but we must keep in mind that this is probably not every change that is coming with Cataclysm. Preview is preview, one might say, and there are still months before we will actually see Cataclysm. Some of the things I wonder about are:

• Starfall – Will each star hitting the target count as one cast, or will the stars have a set damage depending on the eclipse meter when they were cast? They are obviously arcane, so they would favor a full lunar eclipse meter.
• Treants – Are they nature? Will their damage depend on the state of the eclipse meter?
• Typhoon – Assuming that this is a nature spell, is this just going to be a weak version of Nature’s Torrent that we use when we move about?
• Hurricane – Much like Starfall, will this count as one movement on the eclipse meter, or will each hit change it? That could make AOE look something like Hurricane > Mushroom > Hurricane > Mushroom. Although, Hurricane is nature as well, isn’t it?
• Eclipse – A guildie of mine mentioned that the change to Eclipse sounds a bit like a meter that Goblin Shamans have in Warhammer Online. But in this version, you can supposively stack the meter up to five, and the next cast resets the meter completely. I wouldn’t like this idea very much. I would much rather have it that spells could not go below 100% damage, and that the Eclipse meter works as a scale that moves in one direction or the other.
• Will there be a change to Nature’s Grace or Wrath, to allow Wrath to scale better with haste? Obviously, we will need more haste, because we will get less haste per haste rating, but we seem to get a lot of haste just by spending talents in the balance tree.

Lots of information, lots of answers, lots of things to theorycraft about. It is currently 4:30 AM. I have pneumonia, I am very tired, and my head is buzzing with ideas. Give it some time to settle in, and lets see what the future brings.

What do you think about the changes?

- QQ