Yes I was just going to butt in with some plinters about arcane mages. I really dont see how gemming for mana durability should always be considered a bad thing. Gearing up for a fight requires a lot of things and each class has their balance. If the only thing that counted was how many +12 damage gems you could cram into yer gear then why make nay sockets but red ones in the first place?

No what makes a good caster is gearing for enoughe stats of everything you need. Mana, stamina, regen, damage, spellhit. Its not just "who has the most spelldamage". And having a casting cycle that you cant sustain is a good thing. Not having any way to use up more mana than you regen means you get lower optimal dps where nukingpower is important. Its being able to adapt to the fight that makes you shine. Anyway I dont know much about how boomkins do in T6 content atm but I do know from the posted list that it sure was no impossible task to hit those 600 int and 400 spirit. Sure its not as easy to gear for as some other classes but boomkins arent the only ones suffering from gearing difficulties. Just take a loot at retridins, heck even mages have a problem since all fire and frost mages get their tier gear littered with spirit that does absolutley nothing for them.

Anyway long story short Im at a gearlevel where its actually a good idea so socket some spirit gems. They give enoughe mana to allow me to buy more damage than a pure damage gem would add over even a relativley short fight. When my high dps rotation is spammable enoughe I can switch to more offensive gemming. But that makes me a good mage isnt my +damage alone. Its me doing my jobb the full duration of any fight.

This thread kinda sucks. Stop bitching at each other. Stop suggesting retarded abilities. Play nice or I'm taking the thread away.

Johnny, if you're in melee range all the time, your party members will be out of range of your moonkin aura most likely. So that's a no-no, basically. As for threat - even if you're between 110 and 129%, the time it would take you to run in should be enough for your tank to get above you again. But then you're back at the "time running is time lost DPSing" point (which is the point locks bring up for lifetap, isn't it - time tapping is time lost DPSing).

As far as I see it, melee for mana is a mechanic that helps you cut down on drinking while soloing and leveling first and foremost, at least right now. If it will become more important at level 80? That depends a lot on, you guessed it, how itemization will turn out to be. If, for example, we get vastly more spirit as compared to now (since we'll share gear with the restos), we might still be just fine with Intensity, a shadow priest and pots.

I agree also, but Ocyr, please don't assume that is what I am trying to effect, improving mana regen is what I am suggesting not getting into a state that mana regen should have to be considered in gear. I went from the talent angle, by listing all talents that count just to give a rough idea of the current state, I do several times acknowledge however that gear will play a role, but I expect druid, shaman and priest dps caster gear to be pretty much the same as healing gear and very similar. They would all have similar spirit, Shadow priests will gain the most from having spirit on the gear it seems than either will, Moonkin's only gain comes from Innervate, provided innervate is used on him, Shaman will gain the least from the spirit lacking an ability or that directly benefits it, but that is not the only reason it has more talents for mana regen. I think taking the use of innervate into account shaman regen will still be more as will priests, the reason is simply because blizzard hasn't looked into mana regen for Moonkin yet, I think when they do, they will add a few more things, and I hope it would be interesting and nice things that are tied into various aspects of the druid class and allow the use of more of our abilities, both balance ones and the feral cores.

Druitt my apologies, I was referring to Ocyr a lot of the time while quoting what you said, apologies for lack of clarity.

and yes Druitt the posts have morphed over time, entirely due to feedback, which for me is an excellent way of demonstrating how feedback can fine tune concepts, it moved from a complex spell, with time limits and frames to merely just switch into cat or bear form and use any special ability to trigger 3 benefits, 1 is 10% mana per hit (up to 50%), the other 40% spell power to you for 6secs per hit (up to 30secs) and the final is 25% spell cost reduction to group for 6secs per hit. Depending on how often it is generally employed a cooldown of anything from 30secs to 10 mins could be slapped on.

Everyone has a different concept of fun, refer to post 141, I think more variation is fun, and using more of my class is, especially if employing such abilities in skillful ways can be quite rewarding.

At the heart of it, I'm simply an enthusiastic player that loves to see things improve, in nice ways too, blizzard have done many nice things, and many issues are tackled for balance druids in WotLK, two still in the dark that could use improvements from talents (not just gear) are mana regen and ofc having use for feral combat core skills, hence having seen an issue, I merely bring to light things I find about it, but never without suggesting ways it can change. None of the ideas are mine in origin, many have suggested them before, I just picked the ones I presented because they were my favourite and from feedback across several forums developed some of them further. So in a sense you can say the druid community thought up Mana on melee and the version of Moonkin Aura you see presented.

I agree also, but Ocyr, please don't assume that is what I am trying to effect, improving mana regen is what I am suggesting not getting into a state that mana regen should have to be considered in gear. I went from the talent angle, by listing all talents that count just to give a rough idea of the current state, I do several times acknowledge however that gear will play a role, but I expect druid, shaman and priest dps caster gear to be pretty much the same as healing gear and very similar. They would all have similar spirit, Shadow priests will gain the most from having spirit on the gear it seems than either will, Moonkin's only gain comes from Innervate, provided innervate is used on him, Shaman will gain the least from the spirit lacking an ability or that directly benefits it, but that is not the only reason it has more talents for mana regen. I think taking the use of innervate into account shaman regen will still be more as will priests, the reason is simply because blizzard hasn't looked into mana regen for Moonkin yet, I think when they do, they will add a few more things, and I hope it would be interesting and nice things that are tied into various aspects of the druid class and allow the use of more of our abilities, both balance ones and the feral cores.

Druitt my apologies, I was referring to Ocyr a lot of the time while quoting what you said, apologies for lack of clarity.

and yes Druitt the posts have morphed over time, entirely due to feedback, which for me is an excellent way of demonstrating how feedback can fine tune concepts, it moved from a complex spell, with time limits and frames to merely just switch into cat or bear form and use any special ability to trigger 3 benefits, 1 is 10% mana per hit (up to 50%), the other 40% spell power to you for 6secs per hit (up to 30secs) and the final is 25% spell cost reduction to group for 6secs per hit. Depending on how often it is generally employed a cooldown of anything from 30secs to 10 mins could be slapped on.

Everyone has a different concept of fun, refer to post 141, I think more variation is fun, and using more of my class is, especially if emplying such abilities in skillful ways can be quite rewarding.

At the heart of it, I'm simply an enthusiastic player that loves to see things improve, in nice ways too, blizzard have done many nice things, and many issues are tackled for balance druids in WotLK, two still in the dark that could use improvements from talents (not just gear) are mana regen and ofc having use for feral combat core skills, hence having seen an issue, I merely bring to light things I find about it, but never without suggesting ways it can change. None of the ideas are mine in origin, many have suggested them before, I just picked the ones I presented because they were my favourite and from feedback across several forums developed some of them further. So in a sense you can say the druid community thought up Mana on melee and the version of Moonkin Aura you see presented.

That is how I see it, especially for people who find it too risky to use in raids, the bore of just churning nukes in solo has more fun because when you're low you can go feral forms, and all you need to do is hit about 5 times, to avoid drinking. Fun because you do use your feral forms and instead of just one ability, you use many (maul, claw , swipe etc), you make a decision which form is better to use, if it's a tough mob, go bear, if not get a damage headstart in cat. You mana pool will last you probably about 5 or 6 mobs with using innervate, and using the treants who's melee also restores mana, then you'll run out, too low to shift, whack in moonkin form first, get enough to shift, shift, get a lot more, do something other than churn nukes out and use other aspects of your class previously unuseable.

Some off course would prefer to drink instead, it is safer to drink, go ahead, most warlocks life tap in solo then bandage, you go to forms instead, or not. In raids, it is riskier, but you can master it, Cycloni made a good post on how the mechanic would work, on post 173, page 7 - have a quick read. I'll just say here that if it proves too difficult to use in raids, you might be better of taking intensity in the resto tree instead. But it can be used, high rewards because of high risks and difficult to master, but how and when you use is entirely up to you, you would get extra mana help from less spell costs on crit, and the treant meleeing, also speccing intensity instead (or as well) would mean you don't have to use it. Those who don't like it don't have to take it, not everyone likes or uses everything that is available to them in their class cores or in their talent tree. Having options though is good, especially when you're ready to try other approaches.

news on more Leaks regarding druids:
is the new dire cat form, and with new skins for both, i must admit, mana on melee talent is looking even more attractive, it would be a shame not to have any real relevant use to use the feral forms or enjoy the new sleek look. But if it does come, I shall find it satisfying and a pleasure to watch as I spend a few seconds meleeing in my new cool looking forms to replenish some of my mana andboost my spell power.

source?

i'm sorry but melee to recover mana is one of the worst ideas for caster i never heard. Are you telling me trees has to run and melee also to recover mana ? stop healing ?

considering most fights in high end content when balance druids may have his spot as decursers or group boosting, just considering stop this to recover mana is crazy.

- If you are as decurser you cant go melee, your duty is being decursing all the time, no switching

- If you are boosting group, cancel aura, go melee ,nerf your dps and raid dps, will made RL kick you from raid

I'm raiding BT atm, when i have SP use more mana to nuke and taking gear with more haste or spell damage, when i lack SP i just go starfire spam, chain pot, and innervate, also using spirit and innervate weapon.


the point is make moonkin form reliable to recover mana due casting, as clearcasting for mages or priest, instead to recover % mana from our AP, also a build with Intensity and Dreamstate will made you viable to recover mana from spirit and intelect ( im using both atm ).

My suggestion as i wrote in Blizzard forums is change Moonkin form ability to recover mana.

from the druid forums on wotlk info, and it's a very reliable source. It's looking quite juicy.

Oh and balancemoon good luck in re-explaining the idea of mana on melee to the new guys. As for me I think it's a great idea, the issues regarding it are not as much of a stumbling block as first time readers may think if you give it more consideration than in passing, a lot of time and discussion has been poured into this, and most are in favour. The thing is because it's such an abstract idea, I think explaining it is hard as most won't get it, how it can work or why it needs to be straight away. I say this due to the fact that nine out of ten times (myself included) initial reaction ws "WTF??!" and after re-looking and thinking more about it actually turned out to make a lot of sense.

Anyway, we don't have much to talk about tbh, it's pretty exciting stuff for balance, and striaght forward, we need more examples of gear to really start making decent calculations and many more of us need to have a feel around too. The only real issue remaining seems to be that of mana, and use of feral abilities, might as well talk about that and ways to improve balance until we get more substantial info.

There is also this rumour that Moonkin form might be getting new skins for WOtLK, one of which would be the Keeper of the Grove/Dryad form, and the other would be Drakonid form, apparently the lore is that Moonkin or Kin of the Moon do not only apply to the Owlkin, but to the Cenarius and his Ilk, and the Chimera who are also dragon kin. Whether true or not, the thought of having a Keeper of the Grove skin or a Drakonid skin is just as exciting as new Dire cat and Dire Bear form skins

He doesn't have to re-explain the ideea, I've been reading this thread sience the first day it appeared on the forum just cba to post untill now. Just because you love the ideea doesn't mean it's a good or that it could work. Feral ablilities are as much use to you as a moonkin as all other ablities in the game for it's class.

You say most are in favor? I'd like to see what you mean by that and who are these "most" you're talking about.

Just an observation: This would not be an improvement. An improvement would be giving us a clearcasting talent, or upping the regen on dreamstate, or lowering the ilvl cost of spirit and putting it on all our gear (Not haphazardly where 5/8 T6 has spirit and the other 3 has MP5). If there's a lot of spirit on all of our gear, innervate will be able to fill us to full from 0 every time, regardless of mana pool. Already in live I can innervate in my resto gear and have too much mana even while chain casting. A more interesting talent idea would be a long cooldown preparation style talent that refreshed starfall/typhoon/innervate/FoN cooldowns. That's obviously way too strong for a hybrid class, but it's at least more fitting of ranged DPS/raid utility focus of the spec.

I don't understand this push to 'use feral abilities' as balance. If I enjoy the feral playstyle, I can pay 50 gold and play it.

Complaining about having to go 13 or 15 points into resto to be effective in raids, isn't helping. Most hybrid style classes have significant reasons to go into their other trees for around the same number of points.
There's definitely a little bit of bloat in the balance tree, but a lot of it could be solved just by making moonfury a 2 point talent.

What 'more expensive' rotations are you talking about? We have 4 DPS spells, one of which scales horribly and is best dropped by early T5 (unless your tanks want you to put it up for them), and one of which gains little benefit from raid buffs. Realistically, you're talking about Starfire spam, and possibly adding in Moonfire, and once you're into T6, there's no reason to drop Moonfire, as you're not going to run out of mana if you're smart about preparing for it. There may be a magic combination of Haste and Damage above which a rotation that doesn't include MF will give more DPS, but it's realistically unattainable. So we have, effectively, one rotation. Yeah, you can add Wrath, but not really. You'd be spending more mana, and most likely losing DPS for it.

Realistically, we're in a bad spot, yes. Looking at a Warlock, we give less group benefit (passively, we grant our aura, which is a less-than 5% increase in DPS to five casters, including ourselves. They grant 10% spell damage to most casters, raid-wide. This alone leads me to suspect our Aura will be raid-wide in LK, but I'm not ready to hinge everything on it yet), and do less DPS. I'm sure that this is why, in anything other than a min-max raid scenario, we're not widely accepted, and even then we're only grudgingly brought to raids. Of course, I'm also sure Warlocks will be brought more into line in the expansion, but this isn't a warlock thread. Compared to mages, we bring greater passive benefit to counter our lower DPS, and our passive benefit compared to an Ele Shaman is comparable, and our DPS, at least at the raid level I've seen, is also comparable.

I believe that the improvement to our aura will greatly increase our worth (I'm in the "Windfury for Casters" camp on this). The best way to effect a change to bring us the rest of the way would simply be to raise our base DPS. Nature's Fury does this very well, and it remains to be seen whether Eclipse will be even useful in a raid scenario (mostly, as I've stated before, hinging on whether Nature's Fury stacks with CoE and Stormstrike. If it stacks with CoE, we're back where we were before NF in terms of relative benefit between SF and Wrath. If not, Wrath may be pulled out of the all-but-useless-in-raids area it lives in now).