So they are here! A return to simplicity and it is simply. . . crappy. The trees come with a caveat: Druids are not as far along as Paladins in development, and as we all know, Paladins get fixed about half-way through an expansion so that's saying something! You can check out the talent trees over at mmo-champion. In lieu of going through talent by talent, I thought I'd just hit the highs and the lows.

Highs

Several talents were removed (obviously) and for the most part I approve. Brambles got the axe, forever putting to ground the Owlkin Frenzy or Brambles debate. Typhoon is baseline now, freeing up some clutter from the tree. I wonder if it will get nerfed to the ground if every druid has access to it. Regardless, I'm glad to see it gone from the tree. I hated wasting a talent point on an ability that I only used on two fights. Nature's Splendor also received the axe, getting built in to the skills by default. Moonkin and imp. Moonkin went missing (and I can't say I'm sad). While I'd rather have Moonkin form as our spec defining ability, I'd also like to see it as an on-use ability. Read more about that below. Celestial Focus got removed and hard coded for choosing the balance tree. Vengeance also got removed and hard coded. That represents a fairly significant change in the school of thought between melee and caster DPS. But then again, melee is now hitting quite a bit harder than they used to. Back in the olden days, the 100% crit was to make up for the fact that melee hit more often but for less while casters did the large damage, large cast time spells.

Lows

Earth and Moon was taken out. I like this talent and will talk more about it below because I put it back in my tree. I feel like tiers 2 and 6 really lack the bang for their relative buck. Tier 2 is just boring and tier 6 probably won't see true use until I decide to PvP or raid. Until then, it's a filler tier. Omen of Clarity is gone too. Granted, it was a mana regen for us. But for ferals, it was a crux and a serious DPS increase. I hope it's trainable, but if it's not, I wonder how ferals will be compensated. However these are just minor annoyances when compared to what I consider the ultimate low. Where are the options Blizzard? I recall a mission statement of sorts that said they wanted to provide us with interesting talent choices. While invariably we will crunch the numbers and determine the best of the best for talents, we ought to have some relatively close choices that we can't pick up. Filling out a tree completely (except for Lunar Justice) and then scrounging a few points in the Restoration tree is a cookie cutter build. Every single raiding Balance Druid will have exactly the same build. Neither interesting or choice.

How Rel Would Do It

This is my redesigned talent tree. I kept Starsurge in the talent tree because I would like to see Moonkin Form as the "defining" ability of the Balance spec. But with an addendum: Make it a usable cooldown like Metamorphosis for warlocks. Clearly it would need to be less powerful (or scale with level).

I fleshed out the top row of Balance to provide more restoration options for advancing in that tree. They can get a full 5 points in the top tier with Genesis and Nature's Majesty, both which benefit them. I moved Lunar Justice to the top tier and reduced it to two points as it is strictly a leveling talent and I believe should be available to a leveling boomkin ASAP.

Given the relative power of Nature's Grace, I moved it to the second tier. I realize it is likely to change, but I still think it should be seated outside of the first tier. Moonglow appears in the second tier still. Both options might be appealing to a Restoration druid, giving them the options they need in the second tier.

In the third tier we find Improved Eclipse, Starsurge, and Balance of Power. Part of me thinks it is too early for Balance of Power, but I don't know what else I would place in this tier if I removed it. I linked Starsurge to Lunar Guidance in the 4^th tier. I also linked Improved Eclipse to Euphoria, just as Blizzard did. I read some people complaining about that link, but it seems not only appropriate, but obvious given the continual buffing of the amount of Eclipse Energy generated by each spell.

The fourth tier brings Lunar Guidance, Solar Beam, and Gale Winds. I actually tied Solar Beam into Lunar Guidance, but I'm 50/50 on untying it. I realize that Solar Beam doesn't seem like a PvE talent in a 25 man raid environment, but given the likely popularity of the 10 man format and all of the preceding dungeons, I think a silence will provide a good chunk of utility to the Balance druid, expanding their possible role.

Tier five offers Euphoria, Force of Nature, Owlkin Frenzy, and the return of Earth and Moon. I like Earth and Moon, as a talent. I don't need this type of talent to be unique to Boomkins, but I do like the concept. While it does seem rather dull in its description, it offers a personal buff for buffing the raid's DPS. I like talents that encourage you to be a "team player" and reward you for doing so. Euphoria seems to be our mana regen spell now. With Dreamstate, Omen of Clarity, and Intensity gone, Moonglow is about our only mana regen spell remaining. Technically, it's more of a mana saver than a regen talent too. The fact that Euphoria buffs Eclipse while offering mana return is icing on the cake.

Tiers five and six are as Blizzard designed them. I think if Starfall is going to be our 31 point talent, it needs to stay as strong as it is now on Live. Currently, it seems to have lost its splash damage, which I'm ok with. Not much splash damage going on during boss encounters most times anyway. It's hard to pinpoint Fungal Growth's utility as it is NYI. I think this talent may need tweaking (fuse with brambles, imo) in order to appeal to raiders, but we shall see.

So as I mentioned, I went on vacation and Blizzard unleashed a blizzard of announcements about the distant patch and the consequential changes in store for the druids.

First allow me to react with shock. I am flattened by the changes. Flabbergasted, even. See, I’ve posted here about how to maximize druid potential and you may have glimpsed my general unhappiness about the State of the Druid. But I never expected to have some many things changed in one swing. Let us start with what I think is the best thing for Balance Druids: the new idol.

The New Idol

Reports are pouring in that the Idol offers almost 100% uptime. Gosh that sure would be great! I mean read that link! An additional 4.36% crit from your Idol! That is on par with Tier bonuses and frankly, reeks of some type of oversight. Sorry to be Negative Nancy here because I’m usually all about the silver linings, but expect to see that brought down to a lower proc percentage. Graylo tested with 10% and 20% proc rates. I think we’ll settle right in the middle at 15% but would be shocked at any number greater than 35%.
Other than the proc rate being questionable, I like how the Idol is designed. For those of you clipping DoTs, (shame on you) you’ve got even more motivation to let them tick that last tick. This idol benefits our main spells and (I’m getting ahead of myself here) really provides a solid boost to the new twisting Eclipses. This gets a big thumbs up from me, even with a radically lower uptime.

That’s all I’m going put in part one today. I’m going try to push a part out every day to make this a little easier to digest, so I apologize for anyone looking for a massive read on their afternoon break.

A big thanks goes to Murmurs for the Lunar cycle numbers as well as a plethora of formulas so that we could have a comparative Solar cycle. I have incorporated these values into a page of the spreadsheet based on your current gear and your BiS list.

Lunar Rotation Scaling

Percent of Damage: Insect Swarm: 12% Moonfire: 10% Starfire: 50% Wrath: 25% Starfall, Force of Nature, proc effects: 3% (ignored due to complications)

Spell Power - (0.14957948 * .12) + (.10524679 * .10) + (1.1023188 * .50) + (1.1865983 * .25) = 0.876283192

Haste - (0.0113592254 * .12) + (0.00841851174 * .10) + (1.05240836 * .50) + (0.411537562 * .25) = 0.631293529

Crit - (0 * .12) + (0 * .10) + (0.878345459 * .50) + (1.05686234 * .25) = 0.703388314

Spirit - 0.876283192 * (15/100) = 0.131442479

Intellect - (0.275459945 * 0.703388314) + (0.876283192 * (12/100) = 0.298909289

Okay, so, I know what people are thinking "What!? Crit is so not better than Haste for a Lunar Eclipse rotation! You've done something wrong!" Well, I may have done something wrong, but I don't really think I have, and, if anything, I favored Haste more than Crit in my calculations. The out come isn't all that odd though, and does make some sense. Haste is far better than Crit is when casting Starfire, there is no doubting that, however Haste is essentially worthless for Wrath at this point. However, and here's the fun part, the more Crit you get, the lower a percentage Wrath is going to take up in your rotation, thus increasing the portion of Starfire and netting more gain from Haste. I looked at a wide variety of DPS reports in order to construct these percentages, and I'm quite confident that they are accurate. As I recall, the highest Starfire percentage I saw was from a Druid on Hodir where he had 60% Starfire, and 27% Wrath - although he didn't use Starfall nor Force of Nature (which I thought was odd.)

Do not read this as me saying, or even the data suggesting, that Druids using a Lunar Rotation go out and stack crit and toss out all of their Haste. That isn't the case. Druid should always stack to 400 Haste before anything no matter what rotation they are going to use (and these numbers assume that you already have Wrath Haste capped) - at that point you probably want to focus on getting Crit. Trinkets that have an on-use Haste effect (Haste procs too, although be warry of those as a proc during Wrath spam is sadness and you'd get more out of Crit or Spell Power procs then) and Potions of Speed are still your friend. As is Power Infusion.

Solar Rotation Scaling

Percent of Damage:
Insect Swarm: 11%
Moonfire: 7%
Starfire: 32%
Wrath: 46%
Starfall, Force of Nature, proc effects: 3% (ignored due to complications)

Over 400 Haste

Spell Power: 0.877493361
Haste: 0.433181487
Crit: 0.506081945
Spirit: 0.263248008
Int: 0.244704508

Under 400 Haste

Spell Power: 0.87437463
Haste: 0.737575344
Crit: 0.552895115
Spirit: 0.262312392
Int: 0.257225415

Ok, so my synopsis right now is that this wont hold much weight. First, I used Mumurs' theoretical druid to calculate this so that the stats would be relative to his stats. 30% crit, 15% haste, 2700 spellpower. Reading this, we see that under the haste cap, we still benefit most from haste. Once we hit the soft haste cap, crit takes over. Spell power continues to reign supreme (and did so through some very large numbers of haste/crit/SP).

When I ran the calculations for my BiS geared druid, I got some different weights but the rankings stayed mostly constant. I put together one of the highest SP sets I could as well and found that in these instances, crit and haste began to overtake spell power. That said, the high spell power set performed poorly within my DPS model and I would highly recommend against seeking such a thing. Spell power is built in to all of our items with the possible exception of trinkets. You shouldn't actively seek the highest spell power piece, but instead search for the best "secondary" stats on the item. In many cases, the highest spell power piece was NOT the best performing piece given either my weights, Graylo's weights, or Murmurs weights. I'd like to give a nod to Kiliani too, for putting together some very nice dps gear sets. Unfortunately, I could not run his weights because I did not have them.

TL:DR

1. Hit till capped.
2. Spellpower is greater than all =]
3. Haste till ~400 then Crit
4. Int~Spi
5. Going too high on haste with a solar rotation causes clipping during the wrath portion of your rotation. This is akin to lost dps.

EDIT: This workbook is constantly being updated and I will (hopefully) soon have a user friendly version to bring you full of dropdown selection menus, automated importing of the selected item's stats, and creamy goodness. If you think I missed an item (and I know i did) send me a message or leave me a comment. I'll add it in!

I have been working on modeling this DPS spreadsheet for a little bit now. The long and short of this is that this is an alpha release of this. I'm stuck seeing this as I want to see it. So what I need from any interested reader is a review of it. What buffs/debuffs are missing in my dps calculations? The percentages for the rotation came from my own WWS reports on uptime of DoTs and spellcasts all normalized to 100%. Treants and starfall were ignored. Along with this are some other proposed BiS and some musings on NG uptime. If you don't have a pretty good knowledge of excel, you may not want to tinker with this. PS, this is a total clutter. It needs to have all the names cleaned up and much much more. I'm looking for content at the moment, not succinctness nor aesthetics. Thanks!

Moonkin Spreadsheet

I do realize there is a spreadsheet out there called WrathCalcs. I built this to try to get a better understanding of how to model moonkin damage (and thereby choose stats). It is not intended to correct or compete with WrathCalcs in any way.

Hello, and welcome to my little blog! If you've stumbled here by accident, feel free to browse around and. . . oh look! This is the first post! I guess there's not much else to see but while this project is under construction, I will continue to put up new posts.

So a little about myself: I am a balance druid in one of the top guilds on Malfurion. We just downed Yogg-Saron and are about to engage the hard modes of all the Ulduar bosses. I'm one of those nosy types that likes to know why things work the way they do. I'm also a perfectionist so I try to maximize my characters abilities and functions in a raid. I currently use a solar rotation for the majority of the boss fights.

You're likely to find my musings on the balance druids' role in raids and PvP (to a much lesser extent) as well as some mild theory crafting about best-in-slot gear and maximizing DPS. I hope this place will be useful to some but be warned, it serves best as a place for me to jot down my often misguided thoughts about how WoW works.