Benita

Stings might be unusable due to debuff issues. Problem is that alot of classes gain extra raid debuffs or some old become better. Add to that the return of one affliction lock per raid and you run into serious trouble with the 40 debuff cap.

Stormstrike does affect those as far as i know, also the wind serpent pet eats stormstrike charges. Im not 100% sure if it works on nature dots like the current ISB for shadow dots though (buffing and not eating charges).

Im always a bit confused by the selective choices of comparing auras and totems. If anything you can only compare the total group/raid buffs. One thing is sure, if totems go raidwide and moonkin/lotp auras stay groupwide, there will still be viability and group building issues, which i wouldve liked to see gone with this rework for raid utility.

 

Apaine

What strikes me as good, is that the returns from moonkin's mana for crit talent are in absolute % based from total mana, NOT from the spell cast.

So, Starfall in aoe situation assuming decent ~30% spell crit is bound to crit a lot... is that supposed to be moonkin's second innervate?

Also, since it's based on absolute mana pool, the bigger mana pool we have, the better... Stacking and gemming for int might be an option if gear allows (I doubt it). More int = more max mana = more mana returned more often since it also raises crit. No other talent had that connection. All other classes return 100% or 60% of mana cost. Moonkin version will allow for mana gains in pvp by spamming rank one moonfires or starfall... funny.... maybe needs a bit of tweaking before release hits.






There will be viablilty, but if the current haste stacking mechanics stay, our great moonkin haste aura looses 50% of it's potency. With 10% constant haste shaman totem that is raidwide, getting extra 10% conditional on crit might not be enough....

 

Spiry

I'd like to point out the difference between Wrath of Air Totem and Totem of Wrath. One is a shaman trained ability that resto shaman will drop (not having another air totem to drop for themselves, and enhance will have windfury) and the other is the totem that specialist elemental shaman have and are brought to the raid for (on top of dps of course...).

 

Benita

This seems like apples and oranges to me. Would you compare MotW to PW:F or AI? Obviously the buffs are stronger/weaker and largely unrelated. The same goes for the Wrath of Air totem and the Improved Moonkin Aura.

You disregard 5% crit, the new flametongue totem, mana spring, bloodlust, group or raid wide effect on these and dps increasing raiddebuffs like IFF or Earth and Moon. Buffs are just not comparable like that, which is a good thing.

 

Apaine

Benita - well not really apples and oranges.... They get awsome buffs, we get awsome buffs.. but this one awsome buff will only get 50% of the intended effect in raids based on current haste stacking.

5% crit is now and we are loved for it already.... 20% haste would be awsome if it was really.. you know... 20% haste increase, not extra 10% haste on top of a steady 10% haste the wrath of air provides. It's still an increase.. but as I said - 50% of intended effect. Still better than ret pallies that will probably get 0% of their haste aura effect.

Spiry - It makes no difference who drops the totems as long as they are raid wide 30yd beacons. Resto shaman typically only cast their water totem line, and save gcd's for healing, but I agree, he can cast wrath of air too. And I never mentioned the Totem of wrath.. why are you mentioning it?

We will most likely earn our raid spot solely by giving 3% +hit to the raid from imp FF. From the looks of it, hit rating cap will be non-trivial in wotlk and most +hit is coming from talents and castable buffs, not gear. Ele shamans with totem of wrath will earn it too. Would love to see the itemization of lvl 80 dungeons to see if they got any +hit on gear.....

 

Spiry

It may be me but as I've been reading these boards, a lot of people seem to think that Wrath of Air is only castable by elemental shaman. Even if this is not their intention, it seems that way. However, Totem of Wrath IS only castable by elemental shaman and is the totem you should be using when comparing elemental shaman to moonkin druids, not the Wrath of Air totem, which, as I mentioned before, is baseline.

 

Erdluf

In my PvP gear (rougly S1/S2 level) I'd need four MF's (92 mana) or more (targets have high resil) to generate a proc for about 170 mana. That is 80 net mana, but it kept me in the fsr for 6 more seconds. Since my "outside" mp5 is more than 100 above my "inside" regen, it just doesn't seem like a good strategy. The 60 damage my 4 MF's do is less than one successful dagger swing (and in the current MK, successful dagger swings are worth about 100 mp5).

I think that if you get low on mana and you are fighting a mana-drainer, you best hope will lie in a feral form (CC/run/drink).

For any kind of sustained DPS, the new MK regen will be superior (especially if it keeps a 100% proc rate). For heavy mana-drain situations, it will be inferior.

Having said that, I'd be surprised if I have more than a dozen HK's that I wouldn't have gotten without melee-for-mana. Generating 1K more mana during wrath spam would have been more useful, overall.

I just don't see occasional procs for 300 mana drawing the kind of "tweak" attention that Cyclone/HoT/Cheetah have received.

 

Soultrigger

About stacking, well, I dont see how it wont stack. I mean, we don´t stack personal buffs, but it is a aura, it is not personal, it is a totem, it is not personal. Pretty much as drums or bloodlust/heroism. What doesn´t stack there?? Abusive personal talents, such as Icy Veins, Power Infusion, and so on, but these only affect the character, as the other affects the group/raid. Either way, they might change it all together and make it all stack, who knows?? But, just to remember you, 20% haste on top of 10% haste, just makes it even more valuable.

Edit: post fixed by Apaine just below this one. Thanks, I remembered it the other way around, lol.

 

Apaine

It seems you did not read the patch changes when this came out back in march. It is not the personal buffs that are affected. It's precisely the non-personal that are in question:

Quoting from World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.4.0 (2008-03-25) patch notes:
So icy veins will stack with bloodlust. One is self one is non-self.

What won't stack is bloodlust + drums. Both buffs are non-self (affect whole party). Or Power infusion + drums / bloodlust. Unlike icy veins, power infusion is target able, so non-self.

The change was done mostly to prevent stacking drums + bloodlust, but this is precisely same issue now - aura (non-self) + totem (also non-self).

Right now in game you can still stack self haste buffs easily. Or mix self and 1 non-self haste as well. Examples include troll berzerking + icy veins + drums or bloodlust. Perfectly viable.

 

Erdluf

Back-of-the-envelope comparison of 70 raiding currently (44/0/17) and with WotLK (assuming new tree/abilities before leveling past 70 is possible). I'm using 61/0/0, Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft since I can't see how to put 12 or more into resto for an improvement. This is concentrating on single-target, long fights.

Speccing brambles (for treants) means thorns damage goes up by about 18, so 9 more raid DPS (and 13 more TPS).

Assuming Brambles boost all treant damage (not just base damage), if your treants previously did 8000 per cast, they'll now do 9200 per cast, boosting your overall dps by 8.

Talents now give you 30% threat reduction, up from 16%.

At 600 int, your +spell drops by 78 (lunar guidance nerf). That hurts your DPS by 4% or so.

Nature's grace affects the GC, meaning Wrath DPS is about the same as SF DPS. That, combined with Eclipse, is good for a 3% DPS boost.

Moonkin mana regen will run 100 MP5 (more during Wrath-phase of Eclipse). That more than makes up for the loss of Intensity.

Improved Moonkin form is worth 3% haste to your party (assumes haste stacks with totem/drums).

IFF allows casters to trade Hit for +Spell. Should be about a 2.3% boost to caster DPS.

Earth and Moon is a 6% boost to Arcane and Nature (poison?) damage. Perhaps a 1% boost to raid DPS.

Guessing that single-target Starfall does about 1k more damage than Wrath, that increases your average DPS by 6.

Overall, your personal DPS increases by about 11% (ignoring improved buffs from others in your raid), your mana situation is slightly better, your threat situation is much better, and your buff/debuff benefit to the rest of the raid has about doubled.

 

Benita

I dont think it will work like this unversally in wotlk, otherwise the new retadin aura was designed for complete redundancy (3% raidwide haste) and bloodlust got a serious nurf with the WF totem change (which sounds believable though). Or is there a difference between "increases speed" and "% based haste"?

On a different napkin math note:
10 int gem=11 int with kings=165 mana=6mp5 with dreamstate and critting 1.5 times per 5sec
On top of that of course also the max mana gain, 1.1 spellpower and 0.12 crit (which again is more regen). Great mana regen stat or the greatest mana regen stat?

Apart from that its also buffing the spirit regen, but it might be better to skip intensity and OoC for the bit extra damage you get of the talent points and gem for int. Plays absolutely against gear consolidation with resto leather though.

 

Druitt

I've read that there's a limit of 20% +haste in WotLK, so non-self buffs will stack, but just not exceed 20%. Otherwise, it would seem to me that many raid members would enjoy enormous haste ratings nearly full-time. (It would also depend on whether buffs add a generic haste -- casting and melee -- or not. Things are changing in that area as well.)

 

Celdhyrean

Saraya pointed out that Hurricane now can crit but does not proc mana gain. Starfall will very probably be the same.

 

Apaine

Yay for inconsistent spells then. One spell crit counts, while another doesn't? That doesn't sound like blizzard to me. At least until now there was no precedence for this with other mana gaining talents.

I am also leery about pally 3% haste aura being completely overshadowed by the totem. It might be exception, since it is such a small increase comparatively to totems...

Or they could lift the whole restriction alltogether, allowing drums + bloodlust again - very thing they tried to avoid.


Druitt suggested that non-self buffs would stack to max total of 20%. Well, windfury totem is 20% haste for melee already, so where does that place poor ret palladins with their paltry 3% haste aura? In the rubbish bin again.
And even for casters - that would not change anything. 10% constant haste from shaman's wrath of air, and 20% haste when a caster crits from our aura. Net gain from our aura is only 10%. Only time our aura is any good is when there is no shaman in the raid.... something is wrong with that picture.

 

erragal

Well if our mana is going to be sustainable without intensity, wouldn't it still be worth it to go for Master Shapeshifter? 12 points instead of 15, to get our 4% spell damage back (Which taking a totall arbitrary 1700 spell damage as T7 with buffs , is worth 68 spell damage). That begs another question: is it 4% spell power boost, or is it 4% total spell damage? If it's the latter there's no way you could ever not take that talent, in a pve or pvp build. Any beta Moonkin have a chance to test it yet?

 

Erdluf

I was doing a build for 70. Earth and Moon is a 6% DPS boost to yourself, and 1 or 2 others in the raid. Master Shapeshifter is a 4% boost, just to yourself.

You could go 49/0/12, getting 2/2 MS and 4/5 Earth and Moon. That would most likely up your personal DPS. It would mean that E&M would fall off a little bit more often, and take a bit longer to reapply.

However to get 4/5 E&M with only 49 points in balance, you have to lose some other DPS/Mana talents (5 points I think). That means Dreamstate + 2 points in Moonglow, or something which is a direct hit to DPS (might be a small hit like FoN, but that only frees one point).

 

Soultrigger

I wanted to keep all the mana regen talents, so I am going to try this one probably: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Unless E&M rebuff gets too unreliable, than I might change dreamstate to it if I dont need dreamstate, or even get eclipse. (I am not sure eclipse is that great).

 

erragal

Yea, I didn't realize you were building just for 70. Definitely agree on the 61/0/0 build for at 70 raid with the current talents, especially considering the new mana regen on crit. I'd imagine as long as you still have 4 piece T6, Starfire is going to be your best dps still, and be even more mana efficient with the 5% additional crit. Of course, eclipse throws such a huge variable into those plans. I hope the future set bonuses affect both nuke spells now that we have a talent that encourages a rotation.

Sorry for the confusion there.

 

Munorion

I'm generally puzzled by the relative strength of totems compared to auras as it is. Is the fact that shamans have to actively cast it so severe that it justifies them being about three times stronger (just considering Wrath of Air and Improved Moonkin aura here, and assuming the earlier quoted value of about 3.6% haste for the latter)? What other drawbacks do totems have that auras don't?

 

Vishie

I'm fairly new to Theorycraft, so someone correct my numbers if I've made an incorrect assumption, but it looks like the Beta change to Moonkin aura regen actually makes Wrath our most efficient nuke, due to the better scaling of the proc with Wrath's lower cost. I ran a few gear levels:

assuming 1100 sd, 20% crit in form, 10k mana:

wrath: (445 + .738 * 1100) * 1.24 / (201 - .24*.02*10000)
starfire: (646 + 1.32 * 1100) * 1.24 / 337 - .24*.02*10000)
starfire (t6): (646 + 1.32 * 1100) * 1.29 / (337 - .29*.02*10000)

wrath: 1558 / 153 = 10.18 dpm
starfire: 2601 / 289 = 9.00 dpm
starfire (t6): 2706 / 279 = 9.70 dpm

With 30% crit, it starts getting ugly for Starfire:
wrath: (445 + .738 * 1100) * 1.34 / (201 - .34*.02*10000)
starfire: (646 + 1.32 * 1100) * 1.34 / (337 - .34*.02*10000)

wrath: 1684.1 / 133 = 12.66 dpm
starfire: 2811.3 / 269 = 10.45 dpm
(not even going to bother with the t6 bonus on this one, Wrath scales far better dpm-wise with crit. The t6 bonus won't make much of a dent)

At 1400 spell damage, things start leveling out, but only with the t6 bonus:
wrath: (445 + .738 * 1400) * 1.24 / (201 - .24*.02*10000)
starfire: (646 + 1.32 * 1400) * 1.24 / (337 - .24*.02*10000)
starfire(t6): (646 + 1.32 * 1400) * 1.29 / (337 - .29*.02*10000)

wrath: 1833 / 153 = 11.98 dpm
starfire: 3092.6 / 289 = 10.70 dpm
starfire (t6): 3217 / 279 = 11.53 dpm

Starfire doesn't make a whole lot of progress with more spell damage. More crit and a larger mana pool benefit wrath significantly more. Eclipse procs will benefit Starfire a lot more than Wrath, since Starfire gets more crit = more mana back. The only wildcard is OoC. OoC will certainly benefit Starfire more, in its current proc per minute form, it will give a higher percentage of free Starfires than free Wraths. I'm not sure how to model that in the calculations, and it's also haste dependent. which I've tried to leave out. 3 variables is enough to work with

 

Egonor

Totems, 1) Don't move with the group 2) Cost Mana & Time 3) Has a time limit 4) Is limited by a shaman's ability(but not too much).

 

kilka

Not sure if anyone else noticed, but the eu site has the "official" talent calculator up.

World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

Looks like a lot of talents were changed, and imp moonkin aura seems to have had the 30 second cooldown shorted down to "a few seconds"


edit: After looking at the calculator some more, it seems to just be outdated. Tree of life still has the 360% armor bonus. So we may not see the 30 second removed....yet anyways.

 

Panoramixe

I was just checking out the official beta calculators and they just look wrong. Lower resto tiers not adjusted, nature's fuy isn't renamed yet, moonkin aura not adjusted yet and several tooltips still show the alpha versions ( like IMKA). I think it is just a mistake by Blizzard, otherwise they are contradicting their own beta patch notes.

 

Ellerain

Talent calculator stats may differ from those seen in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, as they may reflect more current information.

Which, basically, means on-site calculators are useless at best, misleading at worst.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my job here is done!

 

Erdluf

I think talented Wrath is 232 mana, not 201 mana, so your Wrath DPM numbers are too high.

For a raid you should assume CoE (10% or 13% boost to Arcane damage) so your SF DPM numbers are too low.

I think WotLK will make New Wrath better than old SF, but still not as good as new SF, unless you have very high crit rates.