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 Blizzard released a druid talent preview for our pleasure. I'm returning my old post on the leaked alpha tree with updated information to correspond with the new preview. So instead of a mass listing, I'll just link you to that old post and talk about what I think in this post.

Cataclysm Talent Writeup

Synergy

Having a bunch of really cool talents is nice, but if they don't play nicely with one another, then they often end up falling by the wayside. Fortunately for us, we seem to have a good deal of synergy going on. There's a compilation of talents that will make the direct damage of Moonfire very heavy. There's a talent adding some snare to our shrooms and trees (upon death, which has some nice PvP implications. A few talents sync up with Eclipse, providing both mana return and increased damage and/or bar movement. Supplying both mana regen and increased damage, Eclipse will continue to be the focal point of the druid rotation.

Moonfire seems to be Blizzard's answer to Moonkin movement issues. I must say, affording us what seems to be appropriate Moonfire spam makes me a little giddy. There are three talents boosting the DD of Moonfire. Improved Moonfire and Blessing of the Grove both increase the DD by a set percent. I don't foresee anyone skipping these talents, as they are both necessary to move down their respective trees. The real clincher here is Wrath of Cenarius. This talent will increase the DD of Moonfire and reduce its mana cost while we move, turning Moonfire into a veritable lazer cannon! This does mean we wont be using the Moonfire Glyph. Consequently, we will want to dump the Starfire Glyph as well. That is, of course, if glyphs don't change (and they will).

Eclipse is clearly our "bread and butter". It (along with non-trivial contributions from other talents) will separate us from any other druid casting spells. With the addition of the Euphoria talent, we will receive a mana refund for reaching Eclipse, increasing our desire to alternate between Eclipses as rapidly as possible. A prerequisite of Euphoria is Dreamstate, so we're going to be picking up some passive regen as well. From what I can tell, mana management might actually be a concern (and I believe it should be), so if you're feeling a little miffed about having to take Dreamstate to get this puppy, rest easy. It might allow you to skimp on points in Moonglow (which would be nice because we want Improved Moonfire).

Did I mention that the mana return on Euphoria isn't even the reason we want to pick it up? Yeah, this talent is a "twofer" as my pappy always used to say. Not only do we get a nice mana refund, but Euphoria packs a significant punch with its increased power generation upon critical strike. I do wonder if it will add the energy on spell impact or spell cast completion. As we all know, Nature's Grace was changed to activate on spell completion due to the travel time on Wrath and given the ability to predict an Eclipse, it would help us know when to switch the spell we were casting.

In addition to Euphoria, there are two other talents that improve Eclipse: the cleverly named Improved Eclipse and Lunar Guidance. It may come as a shock, but Improved Eclipse actually improves Eclipse. Along with increasing the bar movement you will get out of each cast, it provides some ancient philosophy: "The best defense is a good offense." Taking damage (I imagine this mostly in PvP environments but still, damage happens in raids. I suppose it could crit...) will now generate some Eclipse power, allowing you to get the DPS ball rolling again quickly after surviving an onslaught. Lunar Guidance is the talent that ties our new toy, Starsurge, into Eclipse. This talent acts as a push further into your current Eclipse bar. I see imagine this playing an integral part in our rotation. And I noticed that the cooldown happens to be exactly as long as our Eclipse proc. That calls for a thoughtful "Hmmm....." Naturally, I haven't actually got to play with the mechanics, but if Starsurge doesn't scale well and the Eclipse meter moves based on damage (and not a set number upon spell cast/impact), its possible that Starsurge will only hold a temporary spot in our rotation. Notice that Starsurge is not affected by Vengeance, or Nature's Majesty (or Starlight Wrath for that matter). This may be an oversight, but (and particularly in the case of Vengeance) this lack of integration might cause Starsurge to fall behind the damage curve far enough that even a 15 power move might not be worth the cast (and cast time).

Mushrooms and Treants both gain a snare. I'm still disappointed here (in a sense) because I feel as though Blizz promised me a great deal of synergy involving Mushrooms and my other talents. Right now, I'm just not seeing that. Sure the snare component of the Mushrooms is nice for PvP and possibly situational for PvE, but will I really want to be integrating Mushrooms into my rotation when I could use Hurricane with Gale Winds (which I anticipate picking up given the plethora of points we have)? I was hoping that Wild Mushrooms would either apply Earth & Moon, or be augmented by Gale Winds. Without one of those (and possibly both) I really doubt it will be worth casting.

This is more of an irritable piece. Where is the arrow from Moonkin to Improved Moonkin? Can I blow points in Improved Moonkin? If I ever have to answer an email or tell asking me why a player's raid isn't benefiting from Improved Moonkin and I look up that player and they don't have Moonkin for some asinine reason, I will commence shooting little bunnies. And each little bunny will report to the good lord that their lives were forfeited because of the worst question ever asked in WoW. I'll even teach the little bunnies the name of the transgressor so the Good Lord can dole out more appropriate punishment. /rant off

Well that's all for now folks! More to come as more comes out!

Uninspired graphically, to say the least, although the character sheet seems to have a few more bells and whistles. Also the terrain in the background seems quite well rendered. Maybe it's time to stop playing this game in greyscale wireframes... The Eclipse Meter (tucked under the character frame) seems like the progress bar for capping PvP objects. It's fairly safe to say that I wasn't expecting anything grandiose from the meter itself, so this is not a shock. It does meet the basic requirements of the meter, showing the progress relative to both Eclipse types and highlighting an Eclipse when it has been reached (look at Solar there). Now on to the more important issue: Mechanics.

The New Eclipse

The damage done by your Wrath is increased when you reach 100 Solar Power, and the damage done by your Starfire is increased when you reach 100 Lunar Power. Effect will last for 15 sec. Mastery increases the damage done by your Wrath and Starfire when you gain Eclipse.

This is the word on the web from mmo-champion. While I understand this is an Alpha build, and folks, you really shouldn't take what I say all to seriously, I am going to react to this. I'm sick in bed and have nothing else to do but type, read, or watch youtube, so that spells luck for you! Rel's ramblings on Alpha!

Control

This new Eclipse mechanism offers a tad more control over when we proc the next 15 seconds of boosted power. Smo posed the question of how this was any different than our current version given that we could prevent an Eclipse proc by switching to the spell whose Eclipse was on cooldown. At first, this got me. I know it is a huge DPS loss to prevent an Eclipse proc, but how was this new mechanic any different. Then it hit me: You could guarantee an Eclipse proc after you stopped moving with the new system. You could not do this with the old system.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that the Eclipse Meter ranges from +100 Lunar Power to +100 Solar Power. Also, let us assume that we are on our way to proccing a Solar Eclipse. Now, we know movement is coming up in 5 seconds and we are at 95 Solar Power. Casting another Starfire could conceivably push us into a Solar Eclipse and cause us to waste portions of the buff while moving. Here is where we find a measure of control we did not have previously. We can opt to cast a few Wraths and so long as this doesn't bump our Eclipse Meter down to <85, we will be able to proc Eclipse with one spell after we stop moving. Starsurge (with talents) will generate 15 Power, allowing us to reach 100 Solar Power and proc our Solar Eclipse.

Currently, we could switch spells, just like in the previous example, to avoid proccing the next Eclipse. Then, when we stopped moving, we would resume casting Starfire in order to try and proc Eclipse. Now here's the difference. We might not crit on that spell cast. No Eclipse. We might not crit on the next spell cast. Still no Eclipse. Hell we might not crit until the 5th Starfire and there's 10+ seconds wasted without an Eclipse proc. The current mechanic is reliant upon RNG. The new mechanic can be manipulated so that it is not. In my opinion, that is a small win.

Scaling Damage

There are some movements you just can't predict. Fire on the Beasts. Orbs on the Twins. Goo on Putricide. Slimes on Rotface. The list goes on and on. It is entirely feasible that we have procced an Eclipse and we lose valuable time moving. If the Eclipse Meter moves based on damage done, this will also slow our next Eclipse Proc. I am rather disappointed that this is not a sliding damage modifier or even a damage modifying step function, giving us plateaus of damage increase within certain ranges of Eclipse Power. The proc based nature of Eclipse will still penalize us while moving (although it looks like Moonfire Spam is back to fill that DPS void). I'm hoping to see a change here, but the mastery bonuses seem like a place where Blizz started the redesign so I'm not sure I will see any change.

TL:DR

The new Eclipse Meter, while graphically uninspiring, offers the player more control over when they receive the Eclipse buff, allowing them to make greater use of the procs. However, the proc based nature of Eclipse will still impose a penalty on players when unpredictable movement occurs. All in all, it seems a good start but I would like to see it refined a little more into a sliding damage modifier instead of a proc based ability.

EDIT: I'm not advocating taking 3/3 in Moonglow. I selected those points because Wowhead won't let me move to the next tier unless I fill the previous one out. We all have our own opinions about whether they should go in Moonglow, Genesis, or Improved Moonfire. Feel free to follow your heart here.

There's a pretty well defined talent tree layout for Balance druids right now. Here it is (clicky to go to wowhead)!

Notice that this talent tree has a 56/0/13 layout, leaving us two points to play with. A quick note on Moonglow: I placed 3 points in here to reach the next tier. Two of those points could go into Improved Moonfire or all three could make their way into Genesis but both of these talents contribute a very small DPS increase after 4T10. In fact, DoTs in general are up for debate, but there might be more on that at a later date.

So now that the staples are covered, what are we to do with our extra two points? Hopefully, by the time I'm done rambling here, you will be able to make a decision! I'll be working my way through the talent tree from top to bottom, so please don't take this as a ranking of any kind.

Brambles

Brambles is a nice utility talent. It provides a two part benefit. Your tanks get a better thorns and you get better treants. This talent shines because it's not really situational. It provides a boost on every boss fight and if you're one of those treant trash druids, it provides a boost there too. The downside here is that your treants are still a little flimsy on some fights that have massive AoE or other uncontrolled damage. On the other hand, you should be placing thorns on your tank for every fight/boss pull.

Owlkin Frenzy

Owlkin Frenzy is a hot topic these days. Let me point out that this used to proc on BQL all the time. That is a thing of the past. Since the term "attacks done to you" can seem a little vague at times, I'm going to do my best to boil it down. In general (yes there are a few exceptions like Coldflame), Owlkin Frenzy will only proc off of direct attacks against your character, not auras or passive damage. This greatly reduces the talents appeal. In an ideal raid setting, you're getting very minimal splash damage from bosses. The uptime for Owlkin Frenzy is low on all fights and (if things go well?) can be zero.

Typhoon

With a reduction in the mana cost to this spell, it has become a little more appealing. Typhoon offers a utility AoE that has some direct impact on fights like Deathbringer Saurfang, where raid composition might dictate that you provide a stun and/or knockback. However, you wouldn't want that knockback on trash fights, presenting somewhat of a financial dilemma in terms of glyphing. It is generally accepted that the knockback on Typhoon has very limited use and most guilds will require you to glyph it to remove the knockback. From my understanding, the daze will still be applied (verify?). It sounds like this spell is gaining more utility in hardmodes, but I haven't reached this content yet, so I can't really say for certain.

Gale Winds

Gale Winds provides a great boost to trash dps, and who doesn't like to see 20k on their dps meter?! Truth be told, I think this would be a hands-down best choice if it also boosted Starfall. Here's to hoping! As it is, it can be a nice compliment to Typhoon and any boss that requires you to handle a bunch of little adds. I personally use Gale Winds on Lady Deathwhisper and Gunship, along with all trash pulls. Much like Owlkin Frenzy, this talent can be very useful or completely useless. The big difference is that you should know ahead of time whether it is going to be useless, allowing you to either switch specs if you run dual Balance, or avoid picking it up altogether.

TL:DR

We have two "floating" points in our standard talent tree and 4 talents that provide mediocre dps or utility boosts. Of the four, Brambles is starting to look the most attractive to me for a single target DPS build. I have a dual Balance spec so I don't have to make the choice between an AoE boost or a single target boost, because I have one spec for each. However, if you only have one spec, then I would definitely take a look at which fights you are having trouble on or which strategies you will be using. If you're going to need to provide some utility on Saurfang or H Lady Deathwhisper, maybe Typhoon and 1 in Gale Winds is the way to go.

Graylo had a funny comment on the choices:

In the end. debating betweein OF and Brambles is like debating which is better between a Pinto or a Yugo. One may be better but they both suck.

I haven't decided if I will change anything yet. But if my guild goes with an AoE strat for heroic LDW then I'm sure the choice will be 2/2 Gale Winds. Though I may put a point in to Typhoon, to free up my other spec for something different.

I felt like an appropriate follow-up to my last article would be to look at the talent responsible for creating such a low soft cap on haste. For a more intimate look at the talent responsible for crit's soft cap, visit Graylo's guest post over at WoW.com

Nature's Grace. The butter to Eclipse's bread. The speed increase associated with this talent adds excitement to the Balance Druid's rotation, allowing a player to rain down massive Starfire bombs upon the heads of his enemies or bring out a Gatling gun of Wrath casts. There really is nothing as exciting as watching a Wrath a second fly out from your druid and wreak havoc. And there's nothing as frustrating as watching that Wrath cast in .6 seconds only to have to wait almost as long as the cast took before you can start firing another.

Unlike Eclipse, many druids do not see a problem with Nature's Grace. They enjoy the faster Starfire casts and adhere to a 400 haste rule so that they never really feel the effect of the downtime because they gimp their stats to stay at 400 haste. In my last post, I looked at the haste soft cap and (hopefully) encouraged people to continue gearing haste after 400, despite its lowered relative worth. In this post, I will look at how Nature's Grace is causing issues with the global cooldown and haste.

Power

Nature's Grace is an extremely powerful talent. Previously, Nature's Grace affected a single cast. Now, the buff persists for 3 seconds, allowing us to cast 3 Wraths or 2 Starfires. While this seems like a buff, and I posted some other peoples thoughts on the matter, I am beginning to wonder if it is not part of the fundamental problem with Moonkin DPS and scaling. As mentioned above, Moonkin currently gear to 400 haste as a priority. At this point, haste takes a dive in its relative value. This is due to clipping the GCD with Wrath while Nature's Grace is active.

I have seen a plethora of ridiculous suggestions lately that include, but are not limited to: Dropping points from Nature's Grace to lower uptime, dropping points from Starlight's Wrath, dropping points from Celestial Focus, or dropping points from Improved Moonkin. All of these suggestions are ludicrous. First, if you did drop the points, where would they go? Our two floater points tend to be placed in one of three places. Gale Winds, Brambles, and Owlkin Frenzy all provide sub optimal DPS boosts. Other options are even worse. Genesis is a complete waste, even with impMoonfire and 2T9. Typhoon is situational at best. Also, dropping a talent that provides stats (as Nature's Grace does) only leads to gearing difficulties or multiple respecs in order to maintain the "right" amount of haste. Don't go down this path. It's a disaster. You would be sacrificing faster Starfire casts for Wrath, a poor trade-off. Another way to think of this situation is to look only at Wrath. Where previously, 400 haste brought Wrath to a GCD cast with Nature's Grace, you would now need more haste (and therefore more itemization points in haste and not crit or spellpower) to reach that same value. At the same time, your Starfire would suffer the same increase in cast time, essentially managing to boost the relative value of haste by cutting out haste boosts from your spec. That's like saying "I really value my left hand after cutting off my right!"

Scaling

Nature's Grace increases your casting speed by 20%. With a long nuke such as Starfire, this bonus is great. Channeled spells also reap great benefit from haste boosts such as this. The only pitfall with such a buff occurs when the spell being cast has a short cast time. There is a minimum of a one second global cooldown that cannot be reduced. Cast times can be reduced past 1 second. So what happens with the extra time between the end of the cast time and the expiration of the GCD? Exactly nothing. This presents a scaling problem similar to the one laid out by Graylo in his article. To quote:

The size of Eclipse not only amplifies other problems but it actually causes other problems as well. The prime example is how moonkin scale with crit rating. A lot of people assume that Eclipse increases the marginal value of crit rating for moonkin because Eclipse procs off of critical strikes. In reality Eclipse hurts the marginal value of crit rating relative to other stats more then it helps. This is due to diminishing returns felt as critical strike chance increases.

To put it in less mathy terms, increasing your critical strike chance increases the DPS of only part of your rotation. If you have a 50% crit chance and cast 100 spells, the 50 spells that would have crit anyway won't crit harder because your crit chance is increased to 51%. So, as you increase your critical strike chance, there are fewer and fewer spells that can be affected by increasing your crit rating. This decreases the marginal value of crit rating. When you have a buff like Lunar Eclipse that increases your crit chance by 40%, the marginal value of crit rating goes down a lot. In fact, the Lunar Eclipse buff is so large, that moonkin are able to cap their critical strike chance with normal ICC 25man gear, thus reducing the marginal value of crit rating to zero for Starfire while Lunar Eclipse is active. This is important, because it means other classes will improve with better gear more quickly then moonkin will.

Likewise, Nature's Grace actually hurts the marginal value of haste, although not in exactly the same way. Given the bottom line of the GCD, any haste that pushes a spell below the GCD no longer benefits that spell. My last article showed that this value with Nature's Grace is 400 haste and without Nature's Grace is around 1100 haste. Putting the Eclipse argument outlined above together with the Nature's Grace argument presented here implies that the only stat that Moonkin's scale fully with is spell power. Both haste and crit suffer from some type of soft cap.

I pulled this slightly out of context, but it came from Murmurs quite awhile ago. I think it does a good job explaining the interaction of haste, crit, and Nature's Grace. Murmur's is referring to Wrath casts here.

It's odd because haste and Nature's Grace have something of an inverse scaling with each other. In theory, the more crit you have, the less value the Haste from your gear is going to hold because you'll see less time benefiting from it, conversely the more Haste you have, the lower the impact Nature's Grace has on your overall casting time. If you already have 50% Haste, then Nature's Grace is worthless. If you have 100% crit, then Haste is worthless.

Putting the Puzzle Together

Nature's Grace is the cause of the very low haste soft cap. For progression raiders in ICC gear, running with less than 600 haste takes some tricky gearing. As such, we have begun to see a scaling problem with haste on our gear. Recently, we received a buff to Earth & Moon to help us keep pace with other DPS classes, but this is clearly a band-aid.

Likewise, as our crit rating increases, our Nature's Grace uptime increases, decreasing the marginal value of haste further. Additionally, as uptime increases, this talent becomes a larger contributer to our DPS. Changing the talent has the potential to drastically alter Boomkin DPS, so it is understandable that Blizzard is waiting to rework the talent (if they intend to do so).

Looking Forward (TL:DR)

It's probably foolhardy for me to lay out some ideas here, since they will most likely never reach the right eyes, but I wanted to consider some alternatives to what I consider a stat boosting spell. I also understand that mechanics that increase damage done by a flat modifier are pretty lame. It is my hope that if/when a Nature's Grace redesign occurs, it will not be converted to such a talent, as I feel this would be an injustice to our game play and remove the cross-spec utility of the spell. A good talent will retain its usefulness to both specs (resto/balance) and contribute to a dynamic play-style.

I tossed around several ideas that involved charges or complicated mechanics. I wanted to make sure that the talent still maintained a reliance on multiple stats (and yes, this will probably all be moot when Cataclysm hits). I finally settled on a spellpower boost that comes from your haste rating. Without a 20% haste buff, the soft cap rises to ~1100. Given this new (and much higher haste cap) along with the increase of haste priority in gearing, we would begin to see much larger haste values (~800). If all of these conjectures were to become true, then this is what I would propose.


I particularly like the fact that this talent would then scale with gear while not creating any specific soft caps. I did not try to balance the talent with anything more than the briefest of napkin maths, so the 25/50/75% business might be a little funky and need some fine tuning. It has the interesting side effect of increasing the power of the Lunar Eclipse (which as I understand it, is not scaling as well as the Solar Eclipse).

All suggestions aside, I hope we can agree that while Eclipse may be the most obvious focal point for Moonkin rage due to its seemingly RNG nature, Nature's Grace presents a problem that is as fundamentally challenging for the Moonkin rotation. Here's to hoping that Cataclysm holds some changes for us in this department!

If you could change one talent in any of the druid talent trees, what would it be? You could talk about what you want it changed to, or just talk about what makes it a weak talent that should be either changed or replaced in some way.^[1]

This question grabbed my attention and I think it has some merit as a Shared Topic. I noticed Graylo made a post on the idea as well. And curse him for having the time to push this out before mine because I will be echoing his sentiments on many things. Oh well, imitation is the best form of flattery, or so they say.

Improved Moonfire

Improved Moonfire as a talent has been lost for awhile. So much so, that even as a second tier talent, it is often overlooked. It took one of the better set bonuses that we have seen to convince us to even consider the talent. This indicates that the talent needs to be reworked.

So what would I do to it? Scrap the increased critical percentage. As a modifier in PvP it does have some usefulness, but I think even using MF spam to finish off an opponent has lost most of its viability. Lets give this talent the 2T9 bonus. "Moonfire DoTs have a critical strike chance equal to 50/100% of your critical strike percentage. Also increases damage dealt by Moonfire by 5/10%."

I think critting DoTs have been on their way for awhile and this set bonus was a "test run" to see what it would do to our DPS. I also think it's been a good change and one worth keeping in the class for awhile. I considered extending crits to Insect Swarm, but decided against it based on two facts. First, IS is a talent. I really dislike talents that buff talents because I feel like it becomes mandatory to pick up the talent as gameplay was probably balanced around having both. I believe that critting IS would require a reduction in some other portion of the Moonkin arsenal and I'm not interested in walking that path. Second, IS is already glyphed for damage. I believe critting IS would require a re-evaluation of the glyph, reducing the damage increase (circa 20%).

Genesis

Raise your hand if you hate Genesis. From a Moonkin point of view, it simply does not deliver. Now yes, I have read the posts about how it's really for Resto and blah blah blah. Here's my problem: There are so few viable options in the second tier that we are forced into the least unattractive option. Nature's Majesty seems a pretty clear must bu what of the other three points? Clearly, Moonglow fills this out nicely, but what if you aren't experiencing mana problems? Where else can you put those points? In order to reach the third tier, you would need to put at least 1 point in Genesis if you didn't want Moonglow. I have Moonglow in my build simply because I wanted to make sure I didn't run out of mana. But in a 25 man, I'm sitting pretty with my mana pool and replenishment.

Fixing Genesis is a whole different beast. I believe it should maintain its viability for Resto Druids so that they can progress down the tree with some type of benefit. I also believe that the talent should offer some viable benefit to Boomkins. Since PvP oriented talents shouldn't really be prevalent until the upper tiers, I suggest a talent that maintains its healing benefits to DoT's and increases the damage and cast time on Wrath.

Wait . . . wha?!? A talent to make a spell . . . slower? Yep. I hate clipping the GCD. I hate having the value of haste reduced because it stops affecting a large percentage of my rotation. I would much rather have the spell seem more like Starfire (since they are fundamentally the same) and get the full benefit of my stats versus firing snotballs every second with no spell queuing and often clipping the GCD.

Resto Tree

While I agree that there are problems in the Resto tree as far as progression down the tree goes, I can't say that I am overly interested in posting fixes to it because I feel like a Resto redesign will mess up what I would say anyway. If you want to see some good ideas on the Resto tree, visit Gray Matter

So with yet another tip of my horns to Murmurs, I'm gonna take a look at eclipse, the RNG, and some of the proposed changes. The original discussion can be found here.

Current Eclipse

The current eclipse mechanism is very RNG dependent. For a lunar cycle, there is a 60% chance that a critical strike Wrath will proc eclipse. Right there are two instances of RNG. Even a solar cycle, which is 100% chance on a Starfire crit, still requires an RNG dependent event.

It is very easy to appear anti-RNG when talking about Eclipse and its current mechanics. Let me be clear that I am NOT anti-RNG. I think that one of the only ways to prove skill within WoW is to show how you react to dynamic situations and RNG dependent buffs/debuffs provide an excellent way to separate the great from the good.

Now that we have that little soapbox behind us, let's continue looking at eclipse. A 30% increase in critical strike chance to Starfire spells or a 30% increase to Wrath damage is the net result of the proc. Now assuming that Starfire and Wrath were doing comparable DPS, then 30% crit ~ 30% damage (with the point going to crit if the RNG loves you or increased damage if the RNG doesn't). So what is wrong with eclipse?

Eclipse provides 15 seconds of this bonus. In a "Stand and Deliver" fashion, this is pretty solid, but it breaks down in high movement situations because the buff doesn't stop ticking down just because we aren't casting. It's not unusual to spam away and once eclipse procs be forced to move in some manner.

So gandering, yes sir, gandering at Murmurs post on the WoW forums, we have the following recommendations:

- Every Starfire you cast has a 20% cumulative chance of making your next Wrath do 30% more damage. So after SF1, the chance is 20%, but after SF5 the chance is 100%.
-Allows for a higher opportunity to benefit from Eclipse procs
-Still completely RNG based and does not promote any true form of skill

Mathematically speaking, this eclipse would be centered around finding the highest probable DPS without doing a 5xStarfire>5xWrath and repeat ad nauseum. This becomes a very standard rotation and I can see the SquawkHard showing a big starfire picture with a number inside of it to count the number of Starfires cast. My brain begins to freeze over a little bit and a small puddle of drool collects around my keyboard as I raid and continually count from 1 to 5 and occasionally refresh my DoTs.

- Every Starfire cast increases Crit chance by 1%, every Wrath cast increase Haste by 1%. Both effects stack and have a duration of 10 to 15 seconds.
-Very simplistic and removes all concept of RNG and gives a flat, predictable bonus instead
-Does not create a very interesting or skilled rotation. Only one 'off choice' spell needs to be cast every 10 to 15 seconds.

This idea turns eclipse from a proc into a ramping DPS talent. First you lay on your haste effect and then you lay on your crit effect and you cast your spell of choice (likely Starfire since you'll reap both a haste benefit and a crit benefit while wrath might do some GCD clipping) with one of the other spell every 8 or so seconds to refresh your stack. I agree that the idea is a solid and dependable solution to the perceived RNG problem but it removes all need for skill. Thus is another place where an addon like SquawkHard would rule your rotation. I find this to be vastly different than the feral druid priority that requires keeping up buffs and debuffs that all have different cooldowns/requirements. Their rotation is a balancing act and the good players are easily separated from the bad players. I think a change of this style would only create a plateau of Balance druids.

The only hope that I see for this change is making it impossible to maintain both stacks completely thereby forcing people to choose between running sub optimal stacks or picking one stack over the other.

- Change Eclipse to be based on 'charges' instead of a timed debuff allotting a specific number of casts to be effected by the proc.
-Increases the opportunity to benefit from Eclipse
-Does little to remove the major RNG factor of Eclipse, though it does lessen it -Removes Haste scaling from Eclipse
-Would still have to have some form of time limit to prevent 'chaining' Eclipse or buffing pre-fight

Believe it or not, I really like the idea because it gives the player control. Gone would be the days of a movement wrecked Eclipse proc. It also preserves the unpredictability of the moonkin rotation. I agree with the thought that there needs to be a time limit on this buff and that it should be in excess of the time needed to cast the spell. There is always the option of starting the cooldown when the buff is either used up or expires. This will encourage druids to use it immediately but not penalize them for having to succumb to fight mechanics.

- Change Wrath's portion of Eclipse to be 100% chance on Crit instead of 60%.
-Removes the larger portion of Eclipse's RNG
-Still does little to help with mobility to making use of Eclipse

I hate to be the naysayer here, but the reason that the Wrath chance is 60% is because a Wrath cast time is less than a Starfire cast time. Now, ignoring the first cast proc, this means that you would have more chances to crit with Wrath than you would with Starfire. This would tip the scales back in the direction of the Lunar cycle and you'd see every Moonkin doing exactly the same thing. Blizzard has made it clear that they don't want to encourage this type of blind dopplegangering within a class/spec.

- Change Eclipse to be two separate 'on use' abilities that share a 30 second cooldown with each other
-Removes the concept of 'spell twisting'
-Allows for the best use of Eclipse buffs

So while this provides the most "user control" it again eliminates any randomness from the druid rotation. In fact, we become uni-dimensional. Pick your spell and subsequent DoT(s). Cast said spell repeatedly. Pop eclipse when most approriate. Replace keyboard from having hit 3 or 4 so many times that they no longer work.

-Change Eclipse to work like Arcane Blast and/or Missle Barage.

Ok, this is backed by Foofy (if I'm reading that correctly). Before I do a review of this I am going to need to see a little more information on it.

- Change Eclipse to add a stackable buff to Starfire and Wrath - such as each Wrath Crit increases Starfire's chance to Crit by X%. The effects don't have a shared cooldown, thus the two are theoretically chained together
- Allows for better use of Eclipse procs
- Less RNG dependent
- Promotes spell twisting
- Has the possibility to be abused in un-intended ways (although I don't think this is a major concern)

Ok, so this was my baby and I'm pretty biased to it, but lets just pretend I'm not and that I am taking as objective a stance as I can. I suggested this adaptation because it still contains the RNG factor based on your crit. It would be 100% on crit for application and in this case, you needn't worry that wrath casts faster than starfire because you'll want to have both buffs rolling. Here's the catch: You may not be able to do that all the time. In terms of gearing, I feel that this also encourages the best balance of crit/haste because you will be using both spells copiously. I agree with the un-intended abuse as it might be possible to stack crit high enough to run both buffs all the time. I feel that doing so would cause you to sacrifice so many other stats that even with both buffs rolling, your dps would be sub-par.

In the end, I feel like we've had some good ideas thrown forth by the community and I hope that GC continues reading past the silly banter people feel the need to throw into constructive threads. If you have an idea but are afraid of GC and the megalithic WoW forums, feel free to leave a comment and I'll post it over there for you.

On an unrelated gear note, I have updated my BiS spreadsheet with some new stuff and a nifty new set of dropdowns on the BiS page to make gear changes easier!