nero

Greetings, I come with a question!

Has anyone been able to test out the new change to the Wyrmhide sets on the PTR? For those of you who do not know what i am referring to;
I am very much interested in the proc rate of this 4 piece bonus if anyone has any clues about it ^^

Thanksyou!

 

nero

I got bored and went PTR searching

Did tests with between 50 and 100 wraths casted and got figures that were between 7/100 and 14/100 (procs). Averaged out to be about 9.5% proc rate, so it's quite possible its a 10% proc rating.

 

Tower

Kinda makes me want to try the rogue/boomkin 2v2, particularly with a halfcast gem.

 

woeye

Can't wait to get my druid to 70 and get rid of my shaman ;-)

 

Thorakk

about that....

 

Chucifer

On the topic of Moonkins, does anyone know if there is a point at which haste is better than spellcrit or if that is ever the case for PvP Moonkins?

 

Pandadrood

I wouldn't think spell haste would be terribly useful in PVP because you'd be gimping other stats too much.

What I'm interested is priority for stats in PVP as far as spell damage and crit goes.

I'm guessing Spell damage>crit but I could be wrong. With massive amounts of resil and the low crit on most Moonkin gear it seems like Nature's Grace won't be procing very much and would make spell damage much more useful.

 

nero

The MSD has been nerfed from a 10 second buff Half cast to a 3 second buff 20% faster cast speed. Pretty useless
In other news, my friend who was testing had a Quag's eye and natures grace combined with the proc at one stage, it produced a sub 1 second Starfire. I think it was about .8 seconds. Unreal

Spell damage > crit definitely, But i am really interested in playing restokin with four piece moonkin arena gear in 2.4 . I worked out some figures and i would only lose 100 healing, no change in stats, and gain 3% spell crit and 130 damage :>

 

Herrera

If you play resto, your spot will be reserved just for that, healing. Assume the above post of 10% proc for the bonus, you would have to cast 10 Wraths just go gain a 1.5sec faster Starfire (which with resto spec, wouldnt turn the tides). Also means you probably weren't healing and your team is taking heavy damage. If they're not, then you're better off with a Moonkin build anyway, since you're not needed to heal a lot (case being you're in a heavy CC team or the like).

The bonus is nice, but for a Moonkin. Let's hope they change the resto bonus to something more useful.

 

Chucifer

With Season 3 gear (set pieces, not Vindicator's) you're looking at alot more crit than Season 1 or 2. Since the innate Spellcrit on S1 and S2 gear was non existent, stacking Spelldamage was indeed the way to go. However, some successful Boomkins are looking at using Season 2 Veteran's Silk gear for additional Spellcrit. Unfortunately, the Vindicator's Silk has class restrictions on it. Furthermore, I believe that the game mechanics are such that if an ability was going to result in a crit, but did not actually crit due to resilience, Nature's Grace (NG) would still proc, so Spellcrit really isnt a dead stat.

That said, I believe that the limiting factor with Wrathspam in PvP (spammable attack leading to NG procs), is essentially that the cast time for Wrath (and Entangling Roots and Cyclone) matches the GCD, so even with a NG proc, youre still looking at waiting 1.5 seconds until your next spammable spell. With the introduction of Spellhaste lowering the GCD, I'm assuming that Spellcrit gets relationally better as well because the GCD can get closer to the cast time of a NG'd spell, resulting in faster damage/control output.

I assume that the same correlation would be true for Starfire as well, especially with the chance to proc both NG and the new 4 piece set bonus for some stupid fast Starfires.

So really, the question becomes: Is there a point at which Spellcrit should be sacrificed for Spellhaste?

 

◊ Merrack

That's not quite the way resilience works. If you have abilities that trigger on you critting, but resilience "takes away" a crit, you don't trigger the abilities. On the other hand, "chance on getting crit" abilities have an X% chance (where X is your resilience's crit-reduction) to proc on normal hits against you.

Questions? Answers.

 

Chucifer

Sorry, my bad on that resilience function. Coming back to Crit vs. Haste, the amount of haste attainable through non set pieces is pretty much limited to MH/BT/SP gear which doesnt provide much (if at all) decrease in GCD. T6 Belt, Bracer, new PvP cloak, new Battlemaster trinket and new haste ring provide less than a 0.2 second decrease in GCD at the cost of Resilience, Spellcrit and Spelldamage.

Ah well, it was a nice thought.

 

Kalitse

Is there any documentation about the change to the MSD? I can't find anything about it on the PTR patch notes.

Side question as this is the only thread dealing with Balance druids that I could find...

What are the tried and true team comps with Balance druids in them?

I've run with an elemental shammy and an SL/SL lock -> we got to 1700 but stopped for personal reasons.

 

Herrera

With the upcoming nerfs to resto, I'm most likely going Balance once S4 hits. I'm thinking of warrior/BM hunter/balance/dpriest/hpala, or maybe elemental swap for the hunter. I believe that if played well, this team can be quite good. Elemental brings some sweet buffs, but it's also more easily locked down than a BM hunter. I'll prolly decide on which player I find more skillful.
But I'm interested in some already established 5v5 teams with a balance druid. Probably someone with 2k experience can enlighten us?

Totem of the Crusader
Tools: Earth Totem
Increases mounted speed of all party members by 20% while in range of the totem.

 

sprintlphie

I was full balance s2 and ran war, elemental sham, balance druid, hpriest,hpally. We were able to get it to slightly over 2k before the team broke up. Our weakness was teams with mages.

After I finished my s3 resto set this season, I decided to go back to moonkin.

I'm currently running a 5s setup with War, mm hunter, balance druid(myself), disc priest, and hpally. We are slightly over 2k about 2074 currently. I've been experimenting with different specs with this lineup. 48/0/13, 34/11/27 (resto gear) and 13/11/27(resto gear). This setup has its pros and cons, but its definitely not as strong as a 2345 setup. Full balance, I play like mage, help dps but cc most of the time. With resto spec, 3 healer setup ( very boring setup imo ) With the nerfs to mana burn next patch this setup wouldnt even be viable anymore. I've been trying more hybrid spec recently and it also has its ups and downs. Good thing is that we can help heal if needed. However, if im helping with heals, we basically become a 3 healer setup but with weaker heals. If I help dps, my dps is way weaker than being full balance. 800 dmg with barely any crits on wrath =\. Good thing is being versatile on doing anything. Being hybrid is mainly for its NS against burst team. One good counterspell on our pally while his bubble is down is GG for one of our class if we play against a good 2345 or 4 dps team.

By being 48/0/13, our strat would be to split dps by applying MS on 2 targets and I would assist one person. Once someone gets low I would cyclone their primary healer (usually pally) and try to finish them off. Does this strat always work? Nope, it really depends on how the other teams play. We're still trying to figure out a better strat in the meantime.

If they are on our priest I would cyclone two of their dps to negate their dmg. I find myself choosing most of the time whether to CC or try to cast that extra wrath to try to finish our target. We don't have an instant interupt as shamans or mages. If I'm being focused, all I'm able to do is IS,MF and cyclone.

Overall, I feel like the balance druid in 5s is very mediocore. We are able to do alot of things, dd, cc, tank melee in moonkin, and even heal if needed. Most of the time I'm not able to do everything because of the global cooldowns. If we get an instant RANGED interupt then it would improve our class alot. Only thing we can do now is switch to cat and maim. With that, it's not instant, takes alot of mana, plus its melee. Warstomp (race permitted) is probably our best atm lol. Bad thing about moonkin's is that our burst isn't the best even if we were free casting. It's because the low amount of crit that the arena gear provides which isn't even comparable to shamans, mages, or locks.

It would be great to hear other people's experience in 5s. I always do research on armory to see what lineup the top moonkin players run and its usually a 4 dps team.

 

Kaber

With Freedom and Dispels I think BM is an inferior Arena spec. It's nice for burst teams where you need to drop someone (and avoid being dropped) in the first 15-20 seconds of a Battle, but beyond that it becomes a weak MM with a 2 minute cooldown. Marksman brings much more utility and pure personal DPS that does not rely on keeping a 6k health, zero resilience pet alive at all times to use their key abilities. BM is a great anti-melee and dueling spec, the unfortunate thing is that once he uses Bestial Wrath, he's basically shit outta luck for the next two minutes. It comes down to timers - and for 5s, Marksman has more of them available at any given time. To be perfectly honest, you may find Cyclone being your one and only dependable CC on that team to be lackluster when facing 2345 teams.

 

Tyjet

I'm not a big fan of spell crit, I used to have 10 spell crit gemmed in my moonkin arena gear, but now that has gone down to 0. In my opinion, it's more useful having lots of magic dmg to give huge wrath hits and powerful dots/hots. Remember that crit damage is mitigated by resilience, normal hits are not mitigated by resilience at all!

Spell haste for balance arena; this is something I've been debating for a long time. With gems, trinket, cloak, I'd be at about 100 passive haste with over 1020 magic dmg. How much would this reduce global cooldown by? As this is the main reason I'd go for haste. Most of my time as moonkin I spend spamming instant cast moves.

And I'm guessing the spell haste/global cooldown changes effect shapeshifting?

 

Herrera

100 haste = ~6% cast/GCD reduction or in terms of Wrath = ~1.4sec, Starfire ~2.8sec. Moonkin with 200 haste and 1k spell damage will be some killing machine!

Totem of the Crusader
Tools: Earth Totem
Increases mounted speed of all party members by 20% while in range of the totem.

 

Kalitse

I have very similar experience on my 5s teams. I rarely play more than 10 games a week (not by choice) so I don't have THAT much experience but 'Jack of all trades, Master of none' pretty much describes the Balance specs. I've tried 42/11/8, 46/0/15 and even went resto with the Wyrmhide set to see what all the QQing was about.

42/11/8 gives you the ranged interrupt with feral charge - but it's not instant, it takes the GCD to get off. Problem with the spec is that it is extremely mana inefficient, even after the patch. The most successful 5s team I was on was 4 dps and we only got to 1750. Felguard lock/ele sham/Moonkin/MS war/HPally (the lock changed his spec frequently going from Felguard to SL/SL) and I ran the 46/0/15 spec. ALL of your points ring too true to my liking . I've been used instead of a mage in a 2345 team but the lack of counterspell made it hard to finish off a target.

Compare as we dare, Balance druid to Frost mage;
-For melee we bring roots - mages bring nova and frostbite
-For general CC we bring cyclone - mages bring sheep (interesting though is that druids are the best at CCing druids with hibernate and no immunity to cyclone in any form) Now however, with only a 20yrd range on cyclone and a duration that is almost half and a far less forgiving DR, polymorph is just a better CC. EDIT Then there's counterspell for mages. How many matches have been won or lost by a pally being counterspelled at just the right time?
-For DPS...well even with the 2.4 set bonuses, a Moonkin can't match a shatter combo for pure burst. It has improved mind you.
-For survivability we have great physical dmg mitigation but the only defense we get to magic is from our resists (woo hoo go go MoTW!) and BoP for the 4% spell avoidance - Mages have a few tricks up their sleeve with iceblock, frost barrier, mana shield and blink, heh even Blazing Speed for the weird mage specs. They also have the fire and frost shields vs. some types of spell damage and ice armor helps alot for getting away from melee.
-For lasting power we have Innervate and cheetah to run away and drink - Mages have mana gems and evocation.
*We can heal. Mages can't.

All in all we look almost equal on paper. But in fact it doesn't feel that way. I have a 70 frost mage with under +500 spell dmg and I do surprisingly well compared to my Moonkin in BGs. It feels like I need much less skill and gear to make an impression as a mage than I do as a Moonkin. So if I were on a competitive team, I would rather have a mage than a Balance druid simply because the mage doesn't have to be stellar for it to work but the Moonkin does.

A question was asked earlier about Haste effecting the GCD on shapeshifting - has anyone tested this?

The MSD provides 320 haste for 3 seconds and I've found it more useful when healing than when DPSing. Getting a 3 stack of lifebloom up in about 3.5 seconds is great. But with NG + Wrath of Elune and Focus procced, .8 second Starfires are nice...especially when it stuns

 

portakal

I think a druid's biggest advantage towards a mage would be that he's focused after the mage, presuming that he starts in stealth... in fact, I'm curious, how does our boomkin friends start the games?

 

Tyrnall

Blizzard has shown that they want moonkin to be uncontrolled burst damage. Big crits that you can't force via a talent like elemental mastery or via the shatter mechanic. The new pvp set bonus itself reinforces that - you can be doing 1200-1500 wraths, and then bust out a 2k-2.4k starfire, and even better if those crit.

The problem with this, though, is that controlled burst is *way* more effective in the arenas. Being able to force your target or his partner(s) into a situation is insane. Frost nova forcing a warrior to trinket? Only to eat a sheep? Or whatever scenario you have, that's where the disparity is.

Balance druids need to be *outdamaging* mages in pvp gear in order to compensate for the lack of control...at this point, balance pvp will be made or broken by both the s4 gear's stats, and everyone else's s4 gear stats...I'll be gemming for more damage, for sure...

 

telcontar

I tried a few games as Moonkin/Rogue and Moonkin/Rogue/Lock. In 3s, they always focused the lock; in 2s, I was almost always the focus. (1600-1700 rating) Wearing PvE gear worked well in 3s, but it backfired once we queued for two's. I was starting in stealth and popping out as soon as the rogue. If we do it again, I will wait much longer in stealth, as if I was resto.