Moonkin Arena set in 2.4

nero · 02/15/08, 7:37 AM

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;

4-piece bonus on Balance-spec Arena and PvP sets has been changed to "Your Wrath casts have a chance to reduce the cast time on your next Starfire by 1.5 sec." (Was a 15% increase to the outdoor movement speed before)

I am very much interested in the proc rate of this 4 piece bonus if anyone has any clues about it ^^

Thanksyou!

nero · 02/15/08, 10:15 AM

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 · 02/15/08, 10:32 AM

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

woeye · 02/15/08, 10:51 AM

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

Thorakk · 02/15/08, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by Tower

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

about that....

Chucifer · 02/15/08, 3:30 PM

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 · 02/15/08, 6:45 PM

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 · 02/15/08, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by Tower

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

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 · 02/16/08, 8:08 PM

Originally Posted by 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 :>

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 · 02/19/08, 6:16 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 02/19/08, 10:23 PM

Originally Posted by Chucifer

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

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.

Chucifer · 02/20/08, 2:21 PM

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 · 03/11/08, 7:05 PM

Originally Posted by 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

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 · 03/12/08, 6:03 AM

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?

sprintlphie · 03/14/08, 3:15 PM

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.