There's two ways I see the iMKA proc happening. A: The proc lasts 10s as stated, but has a long (30s or 45s) internal cooldown for each affected person. Averages out to be somewhere around 20% constant haste, which may still be a little over the top. B: The proc affects only one cast but lasts 10s to give you time to react (Like NG). Internal cooldown is short, ala 10s, maybe even 6 like iLotP.

I'm sure we'll get updated spreadsheets/tools telling how to spec for raids.

My thoughts on a battleground spec: 56/0/15

The full balance tree has 76 points.

The points in Balance to skip:

Improved Natures Grasp (4) Same as today, 1 point in Nature's Grasp is almost always enough.
Vengeance (5) Improved Moonkin Form means I value getting a crit much more than doing a lot of damage with a crit. Going to be sad that my boom gets smaller though.
IFF (3): BoP gives all the hit you need for PvP, costs only 2 points, and is passive.
WoC (5): Very little SF, and less Wrath since we have a few new spells.
Eclipse (3): Again, you need more SF to make this desirable.

If it turns out that you don't have mana issues, you might decide to move points from Moonglow into Vengeance or WoC (the choice will probably depend on what our gear/scaling looks like at 80).

Your choices?

I'm really wondering now if Moonglow is worth it for raiding. There are so many damn talents to take, and I wonder now if you can survive without it. Its certainly possible.

Strange. I never saw the talents "legitimately" being "leaked" into any major website. The fact is everything on this thread is technically against NDA. I'm not sure what you consider a major site but neither WoR nor mmo-champion and other big wow news sites have any information about alpha other than the fact that friend&family alpha has started. None of this information is supposed to be available to general public. It wouldn't be much of a leaked info if it didn't go against NDA. For all you know this talent maybe 4-5 patches old in the Alpha.

No, I don't own neither versions of the Alpha WotLK so i'm not technically breaking any NDA.

As far as the discussion is concerned, we are just discussing the rumors of wotlk, so all I'm suggesting is that instead of speculating whether it does or does not affect dmg/healing items, just assume that it does affect it for the sake of theorycrafting level 80 build (which is what people seem to be doing anyway).

edit: deleted for duplicate post.

It depends. Even now, at the highest level of gear, it's very difficult to run out of mana if your group is stacked right. WotLK looks to be continuing the trend.

Spi: WotLK Information Wiki: WotLK Alpha Official Wiki

Early on a version of the client was 'leaked' (all signs point to this being intentional, as AoC came out the same day) from the Blizzard official site and datamined. This is where we got the talent descriptions, new spell info, etc, and the info was posted at the above link. It's got the most up-to-date info that we can get without resorting to talking to people that are actually in the alpha, or downloading a sandbox, which break the rules. Unfortunately, none of the info talks about how the talent affects damage gear, as it's all implementation at that point, and we'd need to see characters from the alpha itself. That said, it's a moot point. The debuff alone makes the talent worth taking, so we don't really need to know more until we can see for ourselves and update the sheets.

I imagine Master Shapeshifter (or at least Natural) will be almost required for PvP, so there's no great reason not to pick up Intensity on the way, though.

Yeah I suppose you're right, however if the PvP gear does have spirit on it, you would basically shift Dreamstate into Intensity here.
War Pirate :: Talent tree Druid

For all of you wondering about itemization I have to say one thing - there won't be any :P

Blizard has stated a couple times now they'd like to compress the itemization where multiple classes would consider the item as desirable. We got a taste of this in recent patches - pally ret tree steamlines to be compatibile with existing warrior dps gear, and druid feral talents relying on AP instead on STR to make rogue gear more appealing. They fail currently, since AGI for ferals >>>>> any AP boosts from rogue drops, hence feral dps cats typically stack AGI.

The talent in balance tree allowing 20% more dmg from +healing looks to me as a way to make a healing leather work for moonkins. Since with +20% bonus a healing items becomes equivalent +dmg in terms of ilvl (if you make calculations, gladiator's healing gravel will have same +dmg as the +dmg gladiator 1-hander).

This nudges balance tree into sharing gear with our resto tree bark users. Their itemization is well known unfortunately. It overflows with +healing (good - cause it gets converted to +dmg), haste and spirit (good as moonkins need mana regen, unfortunately it makes intensity mandatory). Resto gear lacks +hit. This is covered with talents - we get +7% hit from 5 talent points total and rest can be covered by rings/neck. Bigger issue is - resto gear completely lacks +crit, making some moonkin abilities that proc from crits kinda meh. Eclipse is meant to artificially increase our crit for main nuke.. but how is that gonna work who knows.

Bigger point I am making is what will blizzard do to prevent us and shadow priests from simply capitalizing on the +20% healing-> damage talent, and just shoot for +dmg/healing cloth.

They could lock us out of cloth armor, or they could just make all +dmg/healing gear into +dmg gear. No lock/mage would complain - and it would make spriests and druids stay away from that gear completely.

Still - then they are left with designing a +healing cloth, +healing leather with virtually same stats, and no other difference except armor type.... now guess what - tree form got +360% armor buff from gear as well. It is not entirely unreasonable for blizzard to design just cloth drops and make druids take them too (no more leather +healing gear since it's identical to cloth priest drops). This of course fares badly for moonkins - since we actually get to use that armor - but it's just my speculation blizzard may consolidate gear TOO much.

Healing Shamans and pallies are facing same issue - their gear stats is identical save for armor difference (+heal/crit/mp5). It would make sense of just designing mail gear and making pallies use that with some sort of talent to increase armor.

I suspect the treeform +armor talent is someone's idea of PvP/dungeon viability. Raiding resto druids have no use for their armor anyways. I'd also be pretty sure that the +20% healing-as-damage talents for shadow priests and moonkin will not apply to caster gear (either they'll change it to be just +damage or they'll just make it not work on such items). This won't really push shadow priests away from such gear - it's not like we do any healing 99% of the time, and the caster gear will have as much +damage as the healing gear - but it will make wearing healing gear an option.

Resto druids have gained at least one more on-crit mechanic so you may see notable amounts of crit on healing leather (actually I'd be almost sure that you will, though depending on how it compares the resto druids may complain about it).

I suspect that there will still be shadow priest and moonkin tier sets (and hopefully those pieces will have a lot of spell hit) but that we will be expected to use healing items in many non-set slots.

Looking at Improved Moonkin aura begs the question, what is Spell Haste?. And what spell haste is the talent referring to? Afterall it could be your spell haste rating that is doubled and not your casting speed. So does the spell haste refer to?

1. If it is your main casting speed and not your rating, then given that it has an internal cooldown of about 10-20secs max, i think it's the Powered ability balance druids have been waiting for, the eye catcher that can make them to raids what Shadow Priests and Elemental Shaman are now once you've added the other buffs so far revealed in the tree off course. If, if it had onloy a 0-5sec cooldown it would be a bit overpowered with the current stats we can get.

BUT, this is the big BUT, we do not know how encounters have scaled, every class is reporting many abilites getting on average a 30-35% power increase in the base ranks, some like our thorns are getting 500% but that was because it wasn't modified even in the burning crusade and has two expansions to scale for. Thorns really should hurt, it's a buff in pvp, priests/palas should want to remove. Some unique abilities are getting more than the average of 35% depending on how blizzard and has felt they need to be buffed. But it is all pointing at change on how much we rely on gear or certain gear stats, and maybe an indication as to what is needed in encounters. What I'm saying is that it may seem well overpowered now, but would suitably powered in a level 80 environment.

It could be that crit on gear really is going to reduce or become more scarce, or it could be that with the encounters in hand, you're going to need that on more.

2. If it is your spell haste rating, then with respect to current level 70 gear, the ability would be extremely poor. But again it maybe that haste rating plays a much bigger roll in WotLK, and makes it on lots of gear with larger effects than current. So many things could happen so there is little point getting upset or too excited.

At the end of the day, we have too little information. What Balance druids do need though is a Powerful and meaningful incentive to have them along, both in terms of buffs to groups and in terms of the role they play for casters and at casting.

As it looks so far, balance druids will have a more meaningful contribution to raids and groups and would be considered as valuable a member to the raid as any other class and build of caster, on par. This is where it is not at the moment.

WotLK -
Buffs:
Major- Imp Moonkin Aura
Minor- Moonkin Aura, Nature's Fury, Improved Faerie Fire
Other- Mark of the Wild [75% increse],Thorns [500% increse]

Utilities: Combat rez, Innervate
DPS caster role: Damage, AoE utility through mitigation (can also aoe tank), off-healing
CC - roots, cyclone, hibernate

Currently in TBC, we have: Roots, Thorns, not useful in any ;ater game scenario: Imp FF marginally useful, Mark of the Wild that is bieng dubbed Mark of the Mild for it's mildness, and Moonkin aura the only saving grace. With the additions to AoE, roots indoors, Imp Moonkin aura, and better scaled MotW/Thorns

AoE is a casting role, mages and warlocks have high dps in that role, balance druids have utility through Hurricane and Typhoon to make up for not quite as high dps.

CC is caster role, but nothing here that distinguishes it from any other caster, the fact that it has it is good.

A couple of points. First, the language on the Alpha version of talents is nowhere near as precise as retail content (or, heck, even Beta stuff). It's not possible to judge more than the general effect from its wording at this time. Second, in order for your theory to work, it would require scattering small to moderate amounts of Haste all over caster gear, starting from level 45 or so. Blizzard has normally made it their policy in the past for talents to always be useful (or at least able to be used) from the moment you take them. Please note that I do consider this within the realm of possibility, but only barely.

That said, I wouldn't mind at all if that's the way the talent panned out. It would bring an interesting itemization balance question within the class itself (Haste v. Crit balancing act), and similar ones to anyone who can expect to be within the aura. Plus it would be possible to seriously abuse it at top-end gear levels, where we will likely see 400+ haste rating on gear. Keep in mind that, unlike the more common Cast rate interpretation, yours would push the GCD down as well.

ok, the new patch notes are out. and there are a few nerfs.

Improved Moonkin Aura gives 20% spell haste it seems, not 100%.
Nature's Fury no longer gives the 20% conversion of +healing to damage: [so we lose the scaling damage talent that every caster class semes to get].
Starfall has the additional damage range reduced to 5 yards
Starfall is now added to Celestial Focus, Focuse Starlight, Vengeance and Moonglow
Lunar Guidance is nerfed by 50%
Owlkin Frenzy changed to "Immune to Pushback" instead of giving haste.

Nothing done about the bloating that I can see.

Balance nerfed across the board. They should really combine a few more talents. Was it necessary to nerf so much though?

20% haste is still amazingly good.

Post 687 from the mage WotLK discussion shows our spell mana cost increases as compared to current spells.
[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion

Looks like starfire is getting 50% mana increase for their last rank - which is in line with mage's increases. Warlocks are getting 70% mana increases, and shamans are getting 120% mana increases...

Given that we are getting no new mana regen talents, the spirit based mana regen will probably be very important in the expansion. Too bad in order to use it, we have to have minimum 13 points in Resto.

Nature's Fury: New effect: Your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of applying the Nature's Fury debuff on the target. The Nature's Fury debuff increases Nature and Arcane damage done to the target by 2/4/6%. Lasts 12 sec. Stacks up to 3 times. No longer convert bonus healing into spell damage.

You forgot that.

18% constant increase to arcane and nature damage on the target. That's not a nerf at all. And everyone knew Improved Moonkin Aura was overpowered as written, lets be reasonable. I'm not sure about the Lunar Guidance nerf, but it is probably directly related to the huge buff to Nature's Fury.


EDIT: The reports say Shadow Priests lost the 20% healing to damage conversion as well. So they decided to go in a different direction, most likely.

Erragal, that text can't be right. it has 2 point-scaling numbers, one of which has 5 points while the other has 3. So no dice. I believe Lhivera dug it up and said it's still just 2% per stack.

As for the rest of it, I have to admit that the original set was WAY overpowered. I was expecting this, and now most of it is much more reasonable. Moonkin Aura being 20% cast speed can now (remotely) be considered as just a static aura. It will still result in Starfire shots approaching the GCD off a crit, and with some haste gear it's going to be reasonable to see it go under 1.5 seconds. Owlkin Frenzy is now better for its intended PvP purpose, and Starfall being added to the scaling talents is a very good thing (even if the range got halved... which is, again, reasonable for that kind of effect).

Halving Lunar Guidance stings, though. I'll admit that having a 24% spellpower conversion from Int would be just a wee bit OP when Int numbers are looking to be at 600+ (144 spellpower from 3 talent points), but still.

I agree the nature's fury looks a bit fishy, but I'm more saddened about the 20% loss from healing items.

I would actually love to have unified armor set between resto and moonkin specs, and somehow restricted access to cloth. Let's face it, we're moonkins, we're supposed to wear leather items, and we're supposed to have 14-17k armor in the bird form to defend in pvp.

Looks like the Eclipse proc is getting a 2min internal cooldown, which plants it very firmly in the 'Only for PvP' area.

WotLK Information Wiki: Patch Changes

i think shadowpriests will more probably be seeing better use of the spirit stats also given the enw version

Twisted Faith (new) - Increases your Shadow damage by 6/12/18/24/30% of your total Spirit, and your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 1/2/3/4/5% for each of your Shadow damage over time effects on the target.

That's true, but given that spirit mana regen formula will finally be the same for all classes, and we have talented access to 30% spirit regen while casting, and innervate (which gets very powerfull with higher spirit - hallo "on use" spirit trinkets) spirit for us will play larger role too (at least it should).

As for Eclipse.. I don't understand this talent. In raids wrath is too mana intensive, and it doesn't get raid bonuses from CoE the way moonfire and starfire does.

The changes in nature's fury give 6% (currently... hoping it will be bigger - 10% wouldn't hurt) bonus to nature and arcane... but since it should stack with CoS, it will still make us cast arcane spells in preference.

What I don't get from what was posted is, why would they nerf Lunar guidance from 24% to 12%... yet introduce a talent for Spriest giving them 30% benefit from spirit. Spirit can be stacked as much as int can. It's currently useless for dps purposes, that's why nobody does it - but if it becomes usefull, getting 500-600 spirit is possible for cloth. Holy priests have it right now for mana regen alone.

Numbers are going to be tweaked a lot. Worrying about them now is kinda pointless. Better to look at the big picture and what they're trying to achieve.

I'm guessing that the attempt to make DPS and Healers use the same gear just didn't work out. Which is just as well, as Cloth is fine for PvE.