The new Incarnation could be a problem... more time spent in an eclipse means less Nature's grace uptime.
It's no longer a good cooldown for pvp because you still have to cast and this time without any dmg bonus
6 energy each wrath means we need 16 wrath to exit from the eclipse, double energy while outside means we need 4 more wraths to enter lunar:

20 wraths * 1.5 sec (even more depending on haste) means we spend at least 30 sec casting wrath + 3 sec needed to refresh IS + MF, give us 12sec worth of casting time for 6starfires that generate 10 energy each
Having the Incarnation duration set to 45 sec means we get 2 eclipses, 2 euphoria, 2 nature's grace and 22spells casted under an eclipse effect.

If the effect was only to double the power generation out of eclipse we would have got 3euphoria 100%NG uptime and 17 spells casted under an eclipse effect
Add to that effect the old 20% (maybe too much) or 10% and it's a better cooldown both for PvE and for PvP especially
if used after a lunar eclipse since it would reset the starfall effect and generate things like Lunar-> starfall -> 10 sec to exit from lunar(starfall duration) -> Incarnation -> fast solar eclipse -> no NG uptime lost -> 10-20% more dmg -> fast return to lunar -> 10-20% more dmg for the remaining time of Incarnation -> one more starfall -> Astral Alignment -> lolz 1minute Eclipse uptime with double starfall and +10-20% dmg (now that would be a good burst cd for pvp / pve)

edit: thinking about it, we don't relaly care about NG if we don't need to reach an eclipse, because our dots and nukes are all affected by the eclipse we are in...even though i prefer more NG uptime to cycle faster thru eclipses and get more starfall resets

And here is a preview of Symbiosis, with some example spells that can be gained/given: February 15 Update to Mists Talent Calculator - Forums - World of Warcraft

Really interesting letting Resto cast things like Leap of Faith or Hand of Sac, thereby increasing the number of total cooldowns in the raid.

I'm actually a little intrigued by Dream of Cenarius myself. I hope I'm not being overly optimistic in my interpretation of the third line of the tooltip, but I take that to mean that the damage and healing buffs will be separate.

If that is in fact the case, it might become practical for Resto to throw out a Wrath every 30 sec, mana and healing needs allowing of course, not so much because Wrath would be buffed, but because the next heal would.

I would, however, like to see some of the restrictions lifted on this to make it a more interesting choice for PvE ferals. Allowing this to synergize with Cenarian Ward might compel me to pick it over Renewal as a cat.


In all, my first thought when looking at the latest iteration of Druid talents was that the devs actually have gotten closer to giving each tier some compelling choice. I think it's solid design, no matter how furious it might make me when deciding between +15% speed or feral charge.

My take as a Balance Druid.

Talents
15 - Feline Swiftness
30 - Renewal or Cenarion Ward
45 - Typhoon
60 - Interesting choices here. Sustained DPS vs 2 cooldowns.
75 - Vortex or Bash
90 - Disentanglement (Though I like the idea behind the other two)


Spells and Spec abilities
Eclipse - Provides a damage boost to respective spells. Wrath and Starfire increase the duration of Sunfire and Moonfire. To top it off it includes the Nature's Grace haste effect and Euphoria's mana regeneration when entering an eclipse state. Compressing several talents and glyphs into one ability.

Insect Swarm - We lose a DOT and gain a single target damage increase.

Shooting Stars - Now has a 20% change to proc on Moonfire/Sunfire DOT crits.

Killer Instincts - 100% of Int given as Agi when in bear or cat form.

Celestial Alignment - 15 seconds of gaining the effect of both eclipse states and Moonfire automatically applies Sunfire.

Might of Ursoc - Last Stand for druids.

Starfall - Cooldown automatically reset when entering Lunar Eclipse.


Overall I like the changes they have made. We finally gain a DPS cooldown as a baseline ability. We also gain some new interesting abilities like Might of Ursoc.

I wish they would have changed our mastery to also increase damage outside of Eclipse but I guess they like our massive swings in DPS. I am curious as to the change in Shooting Stars. At first glance it feels like a PvP nerf.



It seems they want us to play the utility role more and switch roles (at least temporarily). Killer instincts and two of the three level 90 talents are based on role switching. This will probably be helpful in PvP but not as much in raids.

Another thing I noticed, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Displacer Beast used to be up to 20 yards in a random direction and now says "up to 20 yards forward." This was a needed change imo. I don't mind not knowing exactly how far I'll blink, but as long as I can aim myself in a specific direction, this becomes a much more appealing mobility talent.

It's still under your control. Just hold off on entering Eclipse if it's going to be that big of a deal. It's not a random proc like the old Eclipse design used to be (which is what we complained about to begin with).

I would also like to point out the peculiar way that Blizzard chose to reduce the power of Solar cleave. Insect Swarm boosts the damage of all our spells on the target, but we can only have it on one target at a time. This puts the burden on us to maintain a debuff that does nothing but buff our damage, which they wanted to stray away from; however, the intent is that in so doing, only one target can receive the full fury of our damage output. All other incidental targets take the unbuffed damage. I would've preferred a more passive way of doing things instead of giving us an Inquisition-style button to press, but it works quite well for the stated goal of reducing the power of multi-dotting.

I believe what Panthros is trying to say is:

The problem:
Cast IS > Procs NG > IS does not benefit from NG (which is why IS is always cast first)
Cast MF/SF > benefits from NG

What is desired:
Cast IS or MF/SF > Procs NG > IS/MF/SF benefit from NG

Without another DoT to cast, we'd have to cast MF/SF twice (first to proc NG then another to benefit from it). However, it seems that entering Eclipse automatically gives you NG so perhaps this isn't a problem anymore - in reference to the "Eclipse (passive)" gained at level 10 in the new MoP model. Two things:

1) Could this imply that resto won't have NG anymore?
2) Does MF/SF not proc NG anymore? For those cases where we'd stay in Eclipse and just try to multi-DoT.

They are making Eclipse much stronger (20% at level 10, 20% at level 80, + 2.5%/point of Mastery). If that sticks around, along with the shorter non-Eclipse periods, Balance spells outside of Eclipse are going to have to be extremely weak.

Actually, the base Eclipse is down from current (25%->20%), and the 20% at level 80 is the base 8 mastery. So we get less base Eclipse damage, but our scaling is improved (2%->2.5%). This actually makes mastery competitive with haste, and in certain conditions, appears to make it better than haste. In addition, my previous statement in this post was wrong; I had said that we would get more Eclipse uptime. That appears to be incorrect, and the Eclipse uptimes sim to be slightly down from live. I also just reread the new Shooting Stars and it is 20% chance on dot crit, which would result in a proc chance that is similar to that on live, but should improve crit scaling very slightly.

EDIT: nevermind, old change I missed awhile ago.

The cycle will be shorter, for sure; rotation durations are considerably down from live due to the Starsurge energy change and not as many dot casts, and Nature's Grace uptimes are correspondingly way up. However, your post seems to assume two things: 1) That Moonfire and Sunfire dots are not mutually exclusive, and 2) that the dot will dynamically update its damage when we enter Eclipse. Neither is true on live, and in the interest of a conservative estimation, I currently have the simulator programmed to cast Sunfire when you hit Solar and Moonfire when you hit Lunar. If my assumptions hold, then 20% raid-buffed crit chance will result in a proc rate essentially half of that on live.

Edit: As for Euphoria, I agree that it'd be nice, but I think Blizzard has it limited that way in order to provide a measure of determinism to the Eclipse cycle. You don't want to be stuck casting a Starfire when Solar just procced, as that is a huge waste of damage. However, upping the limit from 35 to 55 energy would work perfectly well.