Nevermind my suspicious character then, i checked the source after i posted. It seems blizzard just put an intern on getting those notes together instead. Missing tons of info can be explained, but putting redundant info or plain wrong info into the notes?
I for one welcome our new wrath spamming moonkin overlords.
I'm glad to read the damage from Barkskin can cause Daze. Oops.
Wrath-spam is correct
If your SF and Wrath are at 30% crit (~ 20% crit in caster + moonkin + raven idol + 4% crit talent), looking at level 70 spells:
Nature's Grace change boosts Wrath DPS by 10%. That is enough that Wrath will almost always be higher DPS than SF, or at least very competitive, even with CoE+T5.
If you raid with 10k mana and get 200 mana back on every crit (I have no idea what the proc rate will be, so be optimistic), average mana cost for SF and Wrath both drop by 60. That is a 26% boost to Wraths DPM, and a 18% boost to SF's DPM. New Wrath's DPM becomes greater than current SF DPM, but would still be about 15% behind the new SF in efficiency.
Eclipse starts to look pretty good. With Wrath already having high DPS, 10% extra damage is sweet. Ignoring Eclipse or any tier bonus, but including CoE, SF will have about 90% of the DPS of Wrath. During the period where Eclipse gives you the SF bonus, SF will jump to about 98% of Wrath DPS, but will be about 37% more efficient than Wrath.
(I was using 1200 +spell, 30% crit, 10k mana, moonglow, 13% Arcane curse, Vengeance, WoC, Nature's Grace for all these calculations, and assuming every crit gives 2% mana back).
Correct me if this was already known, but I believe I'm eagle-eyed enough to have spotted it already! From looking at the new talent trees on MMOC...
Improved Moonkin Form: Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 8 seconds. This effect has a 30 second cooldown.
Correct me if this was already known, but I believe I'm eagle-eyed enough to have spotted it already! From looking at the new talent trees on MMOC...
Improved Moonkin Form: Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 8 seconds. This effect has a 30 second cooldown.
If this is new, then it's quite a severe change.
It means 3/3 improved moonkin aura will mean about 3.6% average haste to the party, assuming casters, on average, get a crit 2.5 to 5 seconds after the cooldown is done.
That is enough haste that you have to spend those talent points (or at least 1 or 2 or them), but certainly not awe-inspiring.
They definitely addressed the moonkin raid mana concerns.
Between the crit mana regen in moonkin form, and omen of clarity clearcasting...we'll be full of mana.
Of course, the wrath changes almost neccesitate spending points on eclipse and constructing a weaving rotation. The problem we run into now, is there really are too many neccessary PVE talents. OoC is now 100% needed. You can't not take it, especially considering IFF and moonfire can trigger it as well. Too many opportunities for free spells.
The haste aura change seems reasonable and sensible, assuming the 30 second cooldown is for each individual, it combines well with the crit aura to create significant party-based buffs for a high-powered caster group.
I can't wait for wotlk. Everything that I've ever wanted for this spec is now here. I get to have aoe utility, mana regen, and awesome party caster support. I'm ready for the expansion, now. Just clean up the talent point costs, please
I'm glad to read the damage from Barkskin can cause Daze. Oops.
Wrath-spam is correct
If your SF and Wrath are at 30% crit (~ 20% crit in caster + moonkin + raven idol + 4% crit talent), looking at level 70 spells:
Nature's Grace change boosts Wrath DPS by 10%. That is enough that Wrath will almost always be higher DPS than SF, or at least very competitive, even with CoE+T5.
If you raid with 10k mana and get 200 mana back on every crit (I have no idea what the proc rate will be, so be optimistic), average mana cost for SF and Wrath both drop by 60. That is a 26% boost to Wraths DPM, and a 18% boost to SF's DPM. New Wrath's DPM becomes greater than current SF DPM, but would still be about 15% behind the new SF in efficiency.
Eclipse starts to look pretty good. With Wrath already having high DPS, 10% extra damage is sweet. Ignoring Eclipse or any tier bonus, but including CoE, SF will have about 90% of the DPS of Wrath. During the period where Eclipse gives you the SF bonus, SF will jump to about 98% of Wrath DPS, but will be about 37% more efficient than Wrath.
(I was using 1200 +spell, 30% crit, 10k mana, moonglow, 13% Arcane curse, Vengeance, WoC, Nature's Grace for all these calculations, and assuming every crit gives 2% mana back).
Were you counting OoC as well? Wrath has the advantage of giving you more chances to proc that as well when the cooldown on it is up. And potentially using the OoC proc on a starfire would be even more mana efficient in terms of a rotation, as well. You might be able to do a rotation where you use every ooc on a starfire for the chance to proc wrath eclipse?
Were you counting OoC as well? Wrath has the advantage of giving you more chances to proc that as well when the cooldown on it is up. And potentially using the OoC proc on a starfire would be even more mana efficient in terms of a rotation, as well. You might be able to do a rotation where you use every ooc on a starfire for the chance to proc wrath eclipse?
It's much more complex, that's for sure.
I think that has the same problem as a current strategy of switching to SF when NG procs. By the time you know you have the proc, cancelcast, and start casting SF, you've wasted the 0.5s that NG bought you. Likewise, will it be worth losing 0.5s to save 100 extra mana? I'm not sure.
If you have an expensive spell you'd like to use (Starfall?, Hurricane, Rebirth, maybe even MF) it may be worth that half second of wasted time. My gut feeling is that Starfire isn't expensive enough to justify the move.
If you get OoC from MF, sure, use SF as your next spell instead of Wrath.
Will we be full of mana? OoC may act like a 6% Moonglow. Mana from crits is "chance to proc on crit". Until we know the proc rate, we don't know how much mana we'll be getting.
A series of wrath crits will be a freaking machine gun, especially since it sounds like the global cooldown will be able to go under one second when you have nature's grace up.
I think that has the same problem as a current strategy of switching to SF when NG procs. By the time you know you have the proc, cancelcast, and start casting SF, you've wasted the 0.5s that NG bought you. Likewise, will it be worth losing 0.5s to save 100 extra mana? I'm not sure.
If you have an expensive spell you'd like to use (Starfall?, Hurricane, Rebirth, maybe even MF) it may be worth that half second of wasted time. My gut feeling is that Starfire isn't expensive enough to justify the move.
If you get OoC from MF, sure, use SF as your next spell instead of Wrath.
Will we be full of mana? OoC may act like a 6% Moonglow. Mana from crits is "chance to proc on crit". Until we know the proc rate, we don't know how much mana we'll be getting.
Well you can use the powerauras mod to indicate when you trigger that before the spell actually hits, since crit is determined on cast, not on impact. I know it works for NG, I don't use it since there's no value to a rotation at the moment.
I would hope the chance is 50% or higher, otherwise it's going to be so random as to be frustrating and unpredictable as a form of mana gain. But i'm looking at our mana concerns as a combination of all the talents, not just one in particular. With spirit likely to appear on every piece of our gear, innervate should be a full mana bar or more, with only the cost of a GCD.
Lets not forget new set bonuses on tier gear, as well. Can't wait to see what they come up with (Strangely enough our T6 set bonus will be significantly better with our WotLK talents).
EDIT: Will OoC really allow for free rebirths or hurricanes? I'd love to be able to wait for an OoC proc to cast rebirth, such a huge deal.
One worry I've had is that in some encounters there could be an insane level of boss debuffing received from us chain casting hurricane. It's ridiculously mana inefficient, but no other ability provides that amount of melee speed reduction, particularly if we were given multiple innervates and a shadow priest.
Just a thought that I haven't seen brought up yet with the loss of the cooldown.
EDIT: Take a look at the new shaman Elemental oath talent: Party only 2% mana cost reduction/critical damage increase, stacking up to 3 times. That's an additional 6% mana cost reduction for a well designed caster party.
Last edited by erragal : 07/18/08 at 2:09 PM.
Reason: Addition
Looking at the talent trees on Wowhead, I've come to the conclusion that we have several talents that you can probably go without maxing out.
For Earth and Moon, you probably don't need to have it be a 100% chance to apply the debuff. You can probably max it out pretty quickly with wrath even if it's 60% or so.
Same with improved moonkin form. Since it has a 30 second cooldown, you can probably do fine with it proccing off 66% of crits instead of 100% and not lose very much uptime.
Finally eclipse with a 2 minute cooldown means you don't need 60% of your crits to proc it, 40% would probably be fine.
This is assuming you're strapped tight for talent points which you likely will be.
Well you can use the powerauras mod to indicate when you trigger that before the spell actually hits, since crit is determined on cast, not on impact. I know it works for NG, I don't use it since there's no value to a rotation at the moment.
Still doesn't work : the NG proc might be up as soon as the spell is cast, but your next spellcast should be queued before the current one is cast in order to benefit from the spellqueuing system and neutralize latency somewhat.
Still doesn't work : the NG proc might be up as soon as the spell is cast, but your next spellcast should be queued before the current one is cast in order to benefit from the spellqueuing system and neutralize latency somewhat.
I actually forgot about that when I mentioned it; this was the reason I rejected using it as well. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that you never actually 'finish' a cast, when you're not in the game doing the chain casting. :/
As for not maxing out talents: You run into some barriers here for sure. Eclipse, I definitely agree does not need to be maxed with the huge cooldown. I also agree on the ramp up time for E&M not needing 100% application, but mathematically that could lead to significant loss of overall raid dps if it takes 10-15 seconds longer to apply.
I would never drop a point from IMA. Not only for your own dps, but for the other casters you want it to trigger on the first crit after the cooldown is up, every time. You don't want there to be a chance to chain three crits in a row with no proc, then not have a crit for a few casts...and be 20 seconds after the CD is up and still not have a proc. Far too unreliable at that point.
On talent point limitations: it may just come down to having to know EXACTLY how much mana we'll need for the raid encounters, and dropping specific points out of dreamstate (The most controllable small amount of mana regen) until you're at that threshold.
On talent point limitations: it may just come down to having to know EXACTLY how much mana we'll need for the raid encounters, and dropping specific points out of dreamstate (The most controllable small amount of mana regen) until you're at that threshold.
Yeah, that's my thought as well. DS and Intensity are powerful/required now, but that's in a world without OoC and the new form. We may just not need that much passive regen once Lich King hits.
On talent point limitations: it may just come down to having to know EXACTLY how much mana we'll need for the raid encounters, and dropping specific points out of dreamstate (The most controllable small amount of mana regen) until you're at that threshold.
Well, between Moonkin aura and OoC, you should be able to drop some points from either Dreamstate or Intensity. It seems to me that since the new talents will increase the value of crit (more mana back) and Intellect (more crits, and more mana back on a crit), that we'll end up stacking int quite a bit. Depending on how the numbers turn out, Dreamstate might actually be more favorable than Intensity. It will certainly be interesting to see what the stats on level 80 raiding gear will look like.
It seems to me that since the new talents will increase the value of crit (more mana back) and Intellect (more crits, and more mana back on a crit), that we'll end up stacking int quite a bit. Depending on how the numbers turn out, Dreamstate might actually be more favorable than Intensity. It will certainly be interesting to see what the stats on level 80 raiding gear will look like.
While I agree that crit and intellect are certainly more valuable than they have ever been before, it's nowhere near enough to surpass the value of spirit (If only due to innervate). You also have to look at itemization: the way gear is designed it's almost impossible to stack intellect. Perhaps if there were spell damage/intellect gems with sizable amounts of int on them, there might be a way for it to be more valuable than haste or pure spell damage. You also have to remember that with the spirit formula, each bit of intel makes your spirit that much more valuable. It definitely encourages a balanced approach to base statistics.
I can't wait to see if the combination of the proc on crit talents, and the additional amount of raid buffed haste will bring haste and crit rating closer together in dps values. It seems like spell damage is going to be the real number one stat though, even more than it already is.
You also have to look at itemization: the way gear is designed it's almost impossible to stack intellect.
Well, that's how it is right now (and even that's not quite true, from the mage class threads I gather that arcane mages like to stack intellect heavily). We don't know anything about gear at 80 yet. Although I tend to agree with you - the fact that they seem to be aiming for Balance and Resto to use the same gear is probably an indication that we'll run around with a fair amount of spirit.
Edit:
I'd guess this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft would be one possible raiding build, with possible point swaps between Earth and Moon and Intensity.
Air Totem of Wrath = 10% flat spell haste all the time:
Imp Moonkin Aura = 20% haste for 8 secs on crit, with 30 secs cooldown
Air Totem of Wrath >> iMkAura (wotlk balance feature ability)
disappointed really.
Also I noticed THorns no longer gives the dazed effect, and Thorns damage is nerfed by half, to 73 at final rank, whiles Retribution Aura sits nicely at 129. Also pala spell damage affects Ret Aura, but druid spell damage does not affect Thorns.. i mean.. come on. Off coruse Ret Aura dose more damage after Ret talent boost
The concept of Thorns is that they should hurt. When viewing the alpha's 141 damage then adding brambles effect to it, it was a nice buff for balance druids, I thought yes, now Thorns really hurt, but the nerf is pretty hard, feels very gimmicky again.
I was sad to see Treant damage also nerfed to 15% but that I could have lived with given that they do a lot of damage and are boosted by spell power already. but. Imp Moonkin Aura nerf was un-necessary, so was the Thorns damage nerf - most certainly in light of Wrath of Air Totem and Retribution Aura.
Aside from that, I'm glad Moonkin Aura gives mana back, no need to spec to intensity now, and omen of clarity will proc for spells. I still hope mana on melee for feral forms will be given, because with this new mana feature, at least non of you who disagree with it will mind because you wouldn't need it or have to use it raids.
Balance: Not everyone has to have the same damage, the same utility, and the same survivability. It would be much fairer to say that everyone should have the same (damage + utility + survivability).
Also, if you're going to compare items, you should compare _all_ of it. E.g., talented:
Retribution Aura
129 Holy damage reflected on each hit on anyone affected by the Aura (your number)
+2% damage to everyone affected by the Aura
+3% melee haste to everyone affected by the Aura
+3% ranged haste to everyone affected by the Aura
+3% spell haste to everyone affected by the Aura
Moonkin Aura
+5% spell crit to everyone affected by the Aura
20% spell haste for 8 seconds for someone affected by the Aura when he crits with a spell (30s cooldown)
Which of the two is better? Most people would probably say that Retribution Aura is better, but at least all the relevant data is there. Your post only gives part of the equation.
While we have a patch note that says Retribution Aura's damage will be increased by spell damage, we do not have a patch stating something similar for Thorns. That does not, however, mean that Thorns will not be getting increased damage, as the patch notes are stated as being incomplete.
As for mana-on-melee... they got rid of it. If you want it, hey great, but I'd like a million dollars. Wishes, however unfortunate, aren't fishes.
hmm... i wasn't comparing Moonkin Aura with retribution Aura,
I was comparing Improved Moonkin Aura, with Air Totem of Wrath, .. we are looking for greater viability in WotLK, i was initially quite excited about balance primarily because of Improved Moonkin Aura being a great buff.
I was happy when i read beta Air Totem of Wrath gave a flat 10% spell haste, thinking it was good upgrade from 101 spell damage, and taking other buffs that shaman have into account, they shouldn't envy Imp Moonkin Aura,
well, then I read what became of improved Moonkin aura, with a 30 sec cooldown on it, it is far less effective than AIr Totem of Wrath, giving you 20% haste for 8 secs when you crit with the cooldown makes 16 secs in more than over 1 min compared to 10% haste all the time a BC ability that ALL shaman can give can beat hands down an enhanced aura for a dedicated spell caster meant to be the hallmark buff of the build for the new expansions,. It reminds me of when they nerfed the Moonfire Idol the 30sec cooldown ruined it for an entire patch.
Okay, improved moonkin aura is fine, it is exactly how it should be, it should be a lot worse than Air totem of wrath, and balance shouldn't really have had it like it was in alpha, that was just way way too much, as it is now, it is nice, a mild buff, in line with other mild features like Thorns and Mark of the Mild, i mean Wild. Balance is not supposed to be a main line build, it's a complimentary build, the sort you throw in when you need one extra, anything really decent needs to be trimmed back a little.
Certainly everything in the patch notes are included in there... what's more, the new changes to ret pallies look like they will also get 3% permanent haste to spells and melee from their (raidwide maybe?) aura.
Also interesting comparison -
typhoon 20 yd range, 5 yd knockback, 20 CD
thunder 10 yd range, 20 yd knockdown, 45 CD
20 yd knockdown = long flight time.... might be more effective than priest mind control for clearing bridges.. especially if lava or void is below. eots anyone?
a typhoon that lasts 4 seconds (and can knock back up to 4 times ) would be fun.. but is not gonna happen.
But currently it looks like:
thunder - a true get off me button on shortish CD (2 times per encounter maybe?)
typhoon - an aoe interrupt at best? rogue on top of you will only be 5 yds further.... he might not even have to burn sprint to be back on top. Might provide enough breather to get off cyclone w/o a chance of being kicked.... maybe.
exactly, it's so frustrating, we really need thorns to have that daze effect on it, I mean it's the whole package that would have helped us against melee:
the thing is, without anti-interrupt, it[s tough, you need a more reliable daze source effect than 2min cooldown treants and barkskin. Thorns is ideal. Thorns should hurt also
having that nerf to thorns damage does not bode well for pvp, neither does having it removed from receiving the daze effect.
tbh, i can tolerate typhoon as it is, and even no daze with thorns if they added anti-interrupt to some degree in Owlkin frenzy, but Thorns damage should really go back
The real question i see here is, which auras/totems will go raid wide and which wont. If the feral and balance aura effects stay party wide they are quiet underwhelming compared to totems and now auras. Id rather see a slight nurf to those, as already implemented with the IMA and see it raidwide. Only problem with this is that i dont see the pure dps classes to ever catch up to this amount of raid synergy.
exactly, it's so frustrating, we really need thorns to have that daze effect on it, I mean it's the whole package that would have helped us against melee:
the thing is, without anti-interrupt, it[s tough, you need a more reliable daze source effect than 2min cooldown treants and barkskin. Thorns is ideal. Thorns should hurt also
having that nerf to thorns damage does not bode well for pvp, neither does having it removed from receiving the daze effect.
tbh, i can tolerate typhoon as it is, and even no daze with thorns if they added anti-interrupt to some degree in Owlkin frenzy, but Thorns damage should really go back
Your focus sounds like PvP. Most of the others focus purely on PvE. None of the above is valueable for PvE.
07/18/08, 10:43 AM
) would be fun.. but is not gonna happen.
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