I had to smile at that comment, although I am forced to read the forum to see if anything worthwhile is added, but then now the NDA is lefted, MMO champion and WoR do a pretty good job of catching the blue responses.

Don't seem to see that many requests for information or quality feedback from balance druid players. Shame though, when this happens I wonder if they think everyone is satisfied with the status quo.

Anyway, maybe someone can explain to me why it is now necessary to change NG with the wrath cast time upped to 2.5 secs? I was under the impression the complaint against the talent was only because it was causing the short cast time spell was clipping too easily wit that proc. Now that it's modified is there a need to change it to be based off haste rating than overall haste? Wouldn't overall haste be better for scaling?

NG is now the only ability crit procced for balance. The eclipse change seems to primarily remove the randomness of eclipse not really address movement at all. The crit dependency drops drastically and haste as the second mastery now becomes the main focus. This I feel is good for gear, most resto gear will have haste and spirit on it, so good haste scaling is a good thing, but bear in mind that now, NG procs would be less frequent. The TBR note I hope means they may change what causes it to proc from crit to something else rather than change from overall haste to haste rating.

Finally regarding gear. I'm not looking forward to sharing neck/back/fingers with healers for rolls, especially in 25 mans, which would likely mean competing with 10 players for a slot incl shadow priests and ele shaman, which is why I hope that one would be able to reach the hit cap with spirit wrists/waist & feet, leaving neck/back/fingers to be largely crit/haste based, sharing that with mages and locks.

Ideally I'd like:
4/5 Tier leather for balance to have crit/haste
1/5 tier to be spirit/haste
wrist/waist/feet (leather) spirit/haste
neck/back/fingers crit/haste

we can toy with weapons & off hands to buff up which ever stats need plugging. This all depends on what hit rating would be required at 85, but hopefully one would need no more than 3-4 maybe max 5 to use spirit, really really don't want to roll with healers on neck/back/fingers. Weapons won't be fun either so I think I'd rather roll with mages/locks on the none sword drops. We shall see.

It's possible that we may not need Nature's Grace to change since they increased wrath's cast time.

I posted a lot about resto & moonkin on the Alpha/Beta forums when we had new info to work with. My problem at this point is that the wrath's cast time is the only real substantial change they've made in the last month or so for balance druids. I can only talk about Eclipse and moonfire so many times before I just feel super redundant. When there is a new build to test, I'll be all over posting new comments and suggestions on the forums.

Balance doesn't feel like it has a good PvE rotation yet, and I'm hoping that we get changes to pull together something that feels more fun & interesting.

For those who haven't yet read this, I strongly suggest it. This pretty much puts any discussion almost dead in the water until further information is released.

Cataclysm Class & Mastery Systems Update

A brief synopsis would be that they are making trees 31 points, back to their original size from vanilla. When you reach level 10, you choose your specialization and that rewards you with an iconic ability from that tree (probably Eclipse or possibly Moonkin Form for us) as well as passive bonuses for that specific tree that cannot be gained in any other way. Furthermore, you won't be able to put talents into another tree until you have put 31 into your specific role and they are reducing the total number of talent points to 41 (just like in vanilla).

This basically throws out the entire Mastery system they have been building up until now. "Mastey" won't scale with talents anymore. It's just a simple, you choose X spec, you get Y buffs, and that's it. As far as what happens to the Mastery stat and the class specific bonuses:

So if I'm reading this right, Eclipse is likely to be our level 75 Mastery passive. In order for that to be the case, they will have to dump a lot of the talents which are related to Eclipse (since you won't even have access to the ability until lvl 75). I also don't think Moonkin Form will end up being our lvl 10 unique ability either simply because of the armor bonus it provides being plate-quality, which is something that you only have access to after lvl 40.

Enough pandering though. Until we have more information about this wide sweeping changes, there's not a lot to discuss.

Remember there were 51 points in vanilla.

Saying is throws out the Mastery system is hasty, they're just changing the window dressing. Before this change, every single Moonkin spec would have 51+ points in the tree and get the max bonus to all Masteries, yes? Now we'll have "Balance" selected as our sub-class and automatically get the max (or constant) Masteries. Nothing changes at the top level.

At the very least they will have to alter their approach to Eclipse. Talents like Euphoria and Lunar Guidance aren't even relevant without Eclipse, which is likely not to be available until level 75. If talents are intended to be more "interesting" or "fun" then I have a hard time buying into the fact that we will have any that boost an ability we don't gain until level 75. They have been taking a very hard look at the leveling process this time around.

The other alternative is that they could make Eclipse into the "active" ability given to Balance Druids at level 10, but then what becomes of our Mastery bonus? How would Eclipse even be considered active anyway? Furthermore, what will they do with it if it's not effected by Mastery?

In either scenario, they'll forced to make sweeping changes and take a second look at Eclipse.

Make it an active ability. Press button to convert your stored lunar or solar energy into a damage buff for a short period of time. 10s cooldown, 15s duration. I really doubt this would happen, as it would be a huge paradigm shift for Eclipse, removes the ability for it to be affected by Mastery stat (unless they make an exception for Balance Druids), and the most obvious active ability for Balance is Moonkin Form since it's so iconic (though it's really just a passive ability).

Well, Eclipse is probably, if they make it active, the best-fitting ability. It's iconic, unlike Surge (seems to be, from someone who's never seen the spell in action), and ties together both halves of the Balance world - something Force of Nature and Starfall, our other two iconic abilities don't do. I think the only reason it hasn't been considered here before is because Blizzard's seemed pretty opposed to making it something the Player has direct control over in the past.

I was marveling at the simplistic and welcoming change such an implementation of Eclipse could be.

However, I'd honestly think that Starsurge, if done right, is mostly likely to become our iconic ability. It's as you said, the only ability that really melds the two worlds of the Balance druid other than Eclipse. Overhauling Eclipse, as welcome as that would be, seems highly unlikely at this point. It's weird to suggest that because we've never had such a spell in our arsenal before, but when you really think about it there's never been anything iconic about Balance druids other than Moonkin Form before.

Starfall, Typhoon, and Force of Nature are the only active abilities that really come close to that niche but like we've discussed, they are each only apart of one half of the Druid equation. Starsurge straddles that gap best.

I don't. Since Eclipse is such a big part of our efficiency we would need to activate it as ideally as possible, which means having two versions of SF and wrath, one with Eclipse macroed in and one without (also the same for Starsurge). It's doable and the result does indeed allow us to finely control Eclipse, but it's clunky.

News just in: 31 pt Talent Trees

Probably? This indicates to me that the eclipse bar is going to be an additional feature to the 1 active ability and passive ability + passive mastery acquired at level 10, this is simply because earlier on in the thread, one someone suggested moonkin form was the active he said no in a manner that strongly indicated they'd already decided what the balance set was.

Regarding the bar position in the second part of the statement is as I suspected, but had begun to doubt, this is the strongest indication to me that the bar is meant to affect your nature and arcane damage as he said a while back, and it is most likely NYI on the test realm yet, which is why we haven't seen it and had me thinking for a while they may have changed their mind about that. I may be missing something here or reading it wrong, but the bar position affecting your damage seemed one of the more interesting aspects of the new eclipse mechanic. It is the only thing that allows mastery stat to affect you all the time and avoid it only affecting you at an eclipse. So your arcane damage gets larger the closer you get to a lunar eclipse for e.g. and that damage will scale with your mastery stat in addition to the mastery stat increasing the damage at an eclipse.

Besides, I quite like the idea of doing more arcane damage the further along the lunar by I am, and doing more nature damage the further along the solar half. This dynamic makes sense to me when you consider that only starfire, starsurge and wrath would move the bar - it means casting moonfire or popping starfall at a higher lunar power has greater benefit than at lower, makes min-maxing that more interesting for the hardcore player, whereas the bad player would be missing out on this. This may mean that starsurge is the level 10 ability, but I hope not, we'd be well bored if all our main nukes were already trained by level 10

Unless they significantly rework Eclipse, it is meaningless without SF. Currently no SF until 20 in LK (18 in cata beta).

I don't see much benefit in knowing both SF and Wrath at level 10. I expect our iconic ability will be Starsurge (or maybe Typhoon), and we won't see a meaningful Eclipse bar until we learn SF, somewhere around 20.

Obviously this is speculation. SF could be our "iconic" spell, but to feel iconic it needs to be something other than just another nuke. However that "something" can't be too strong, or SF's damage would need to be reduced (and SF's non-eclipse damage is already low).

I could see something like SF applies a 3 second, -20% damage-done (or -20% haste) debuff to its target (bosses immune). That would be comparable to the old 15% chance of a 3s stun, but without the RNG.

Looks like we dont have to wonder anymore.

I think that's what makes the most sense based on everything we've seen so far. Eclipse is only defining mechanic of the spec. Just about anything could be the token activated ability to go along with it.

I'd always been assuming that what they meant by training "mastery" at high level was that you start getting a bonus to your class-specific mastery based on the stat. That seems to be confirmed here. I still don't entirely understand what the point is, if the stat is only going to be on high-level gear anyway.

e: Here are the 3 GC posts from tonight:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker | Omen of Clarity in Cataclysm
MMO-Champion BlueTracker | Cataclysm and Eclipse
MMO-Champion BlueTracker | Moonkn Cataclysm discussion

Importantly, confirming that the Eclipse mechanic is not at all final.

GC said they were not giving paladins divine storm at lvl10, they want AoE attacks to come later, I guess that means Starfall is probably not our activated ability at 10. Typhoon is also kinda AoE-ish guess thats out too. That leaves what? Treants perhaps. They can't call Starsurge iconic can they?

Balance levelling is all about Wrath and Starfire, eclipse does not change that, tho it does add some spice to it.
But adding Starsurge, an ability on a 15sec cooldown which works nicely with eclipse, should add more flavor to leveling, and as the spell, like the class, is a real balance between nature and arcane, it fits nicely.

GC's posts include a lot of hand waving without much substance. He doesn't go into detail about what they want to do with Eclipse, which means he isn't exactly addressing the problems we're bringing up (that it's harsh against movement and is just the old system redressed). To that end, we're kinda left in the dark about what exactly they are going to do.

I have a certain amount of faith in Blizzard, but past experience with this mechanic leads me to believe it might not be much different from the way things are working now. It seems like they're trying to solve the issues with a Balance rotation (like the fact that we don't really have one) all with this one ability. It would be nice if they made the Arcane side feel different from the Nature side of the ball, but that might be asking for too much at this point.

Balance base activated ability is Starsurge. Also gets default spell pushback resistance.

Neither of those really come as a big surprise. Also from the official patch notes it looks as though the Druid trees didn't get as far as the some of the other classes so we can probably expect to see another overhaul within the near future.

Will comment more later, raiding:
WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie

Talents that have been deleted in the current push:

Nature's Majesty
Improved Moonfire
Celestial Focus
Nature's Splendor
Nature's Reach
Brambles
Vengeance
Dreamstate
Lunar Guidance
Moonkin Form
Imp. Moonkin Form
Typhoon

Nature's Focus
Master Shapeshifter
Omen of Clarity

I might not comment on this too heavily--I think it's pretty transitory. Moonkin Form being gone and Starsurge being there is odd, since Starsurge is supposed to be our L10 spell. Vengeance being gone is odd too. Otherwise, they moved a few things around and cut every talent down to a max of 3 points.

The trees tier out pretty awkwardly too.

Yeah, this definitely cannot be a final revision.

As it stands right now you're forced to put points into some combination of Genesis, Lunar Justice, Gale Winds, Fungal Growth and Owlkin Frenzy in order to actually get 31 points into Balance. That just feels awkward all around. Maybe it's because these trees offer nothing new to them. That can be said for quite a lot of talent trees though. In an effort to provide "choices" they seem to have done nothing more than limit them. Some trees barely even have 31 points total. Ours feels awkwardly bloated. Really all they've done is strip the talent tree of any +dmg modifiers and all that's left is this... skeleton.

If they want to add choice they rethink this strategy. There isn't a choice when you have nothing to choose between. If they want to make this concept work, they need to add more talents deeper in the tree that do diverse things. Fungal growth is a great example of a 100% utility talent, but because there's no other talents to choose from [that have any possible PvE impact], you end up picking it up simply because there's nothing else to pick up.

I believe and hope this will be an unprecedented opportunity to give balance druids a meaningful talent tree that is not a restoration's second cousin once removed

I'm proud of blizzard for being bold to do things like this and hope they really make the most of this for this spec. The debate they're having is whether to make moonkin form or starsurge the activation talent. I hope it is moonkin form because the form can be spec defining ability. Which is good and makes it necessary to be more important than it is now. That is do more than a mere 5% crit/haste.

Tbh, since the druid is a shapeshifter and our thing is shapeshifting as opposed to totems for shaman or pets for warlocks, shapeshift should mean more to a balance druid than a shadow priests shadow form or warlocks metamorphosis, and it should be interesting. As it was in previous builds, its boring and really only a cosmetic for the 3 passive buffs it yields.

How about a Moonkin form shapeshift mechanic modified slightly to reflects the nature/arcane balance of magic the form is centerd around now? Giving it an interesting dynamic that is more than a mere buff.

For e.g., shove the crit/haste or part of the ability you get when you pick up the form, but its available in any form. Freeing the form to mean something. For balance druids shifting becomes slightly different from shifting for feral druids or restos. It becomes something you do during combat. Give us a reason to move between caster form and moonkin form during combat.

An easy example is during the eclipses, during a lunar eclipse, damage in Moonkin form will be higher, and during a solar eclipse damage in caster form will be higher. Simple, it means balance druids use both forms, and outside and eclipse you can stay in the form you want. Adding some unique utilities that are very situational to moonkin form make it more meaningful. Make sure they're not rotation required abilities or that makes it compulsory to be in all the time like cat/bear form. Something light but useful in the right situation like a slow fall or a moonslide.

Now you have a dynamic form with some perks you can use when needed. if you don't like the form, you can minimize your time in it, only shifting for lunar eclipses, if you do you can stay mostly in it but you'll have to shift for solar eclipses. Druids shift, its part of the class, and for balance it is exciting.

Some extra incentives for caster form (or nature form) can exist too, and maybe moonkin form can have a trinket like feature, maybe Owlkin Frenzy turned into a 45 sec buff with 5 min cooldown during which a moonkin feels like the empowered caster it should have been all along casting spells like wrath/starfire/starsurge/starfall and cyclone better during that duration.

As you can tell this makes moonkin form not compulsory yet necessary, it makes it meaningfully as a spec defining feature and the way it operates reflects the specs theme portraying the balance between nature and arcane. It gets exciting and the empower ability, the owlkin frenzy stuff makes switching to the form have a powerful feel to it even though you may only use that empower frenzy once every x mins. Well there you have it.

May I just ask all you beta and forum posters this time to give quality feedback and your ideas in the forums, discuss this civilly without any whining, we have sometimes suffered from providing qulaity feedback by having our topics riddled with moans so they get ignored, quality feedback and ideas help make things happen faster.