I have to say I like this idea. Although this would make talent bloat more important if they were to add a new talent at the higher end tiers of the balance tree. But it would be interesting to play with the numbers here.

The thing to also keep into consideration is if they want a class like a druid or shaman to be able to be, lets say, top 5 dps and top 5 healer by just switching spec, no gear switch at all. It's a scary thought for other classes I believe, one that I don't think developers wants to head towards to.

There's really no way around that with the gear consolidation. The point to keep in mind is that while the gear will be similarly useful for both specs, you're not necessarily going to want to gem the same way (Chaotic Metagem for healing?). Top healing performance will also require a different glyph loadout. Rings, trinkets, and enchants can also end up being different.

Right now I haven't seen any indication that there is going to be leatherworker only leg enchants for casters, so I've been considering switching to Inscription simply to take advantage of the extra glyph slot for the rejuv and/or HT glyph. The HT glyph can be particularly strong for balance if you can spare points on reducing the base cast time of HT, allowing for a fairly viable raid touch up healing spell without respeccing.

I do believe that tailoring or potentially Blacksmithing could end up being the best min-max profession for us. Especially if there are extremely competitive BOP Weaponsmith caster weapons (I saw at least one already, but I've seen no raid drops to compare it with) to go with the additional sockets.

From the beta video I saw, the Moonkin regen could proc off of Hurricane crits. Even on a boss fight with just one target, you'd still get 10 stars on him, with a 30% crit chance, you gain 6% total mana for 36% base mana which would about even out the cost at 20,000 mana. Even if there was just one add, you'd regen mana off the spell.

I can't see something like this (or any AoE) proccing it staying in game for very long, AoE is supposed to be mana intensive.

Perhaps our aoe niche is that we are going to be the most mana-efficient aoe class? They've significantly pushed the aoe utility of the balance tree with talents and new abilities, why not give us some strong aoe mana efficiency. I do agree that it seems particularly powerful (Moreso with the no-cooldown hurricane as opposed to the every 3 minute Starfall)

Regarding aoe: Is there any indication if Gale Winds also boosts the damage cap of hurricane? And does anyone know what the cap for hurricane is at 80?

If all they did was make less 'quest greens throw ways' then they wasted a whole lot of effort on a little. Once people are doing 5/10/25 mans, arena or honor purchases they will be only be looting\buying best in class for instance\boss level and nothing else. Maybe some resto like you (your armory says resto) will take a crit leather for a week or so until the correctly itemized gear drops but that is all. Then it is Bank, de or vendor just like it is now, same gear bloat. If what you say is true, I'll probably endup having a complete offhealing set just like i do now.

I hope you are wrong, otherwise there will be zero gear bloat reductions among Boomkin\resto\priest\mage\locks. Look at ferals, from all their QQ they are going to have to make due with rogue gear even when tanking. Look at enhance Shammies, they gave them a talent to convert INT into AP just so they could better share Hunter loots. Int into AP is more crazy than Spirit into crit IMO.

No point in looking at my current spec and gear to attack my point of view, that's offspec for allowing my guild to raid through the summer and lack of healers. I am a moonkin normally, as the gloves enchants/gems show, and am looking at this from a pure dps point of view.

I'm not saying it won't happen or I'm against it, but i don't think such has been shown yet in Blizzards intentions. Of course we don't have many 80 or epic items to judge from yet.
I don't think the feral and enhance examples are usable, both have globally the same focus than the people they will share gear with. Bears will get some more armor through talents and maybe a boost in health too, the same as enhance get Int->AP. But tanks threat is moving a lot towards dps, and hunters and enhance shamans are both dps classes too. That's not quite comparable to healing vs dps in my opinion.

As to healing/caster gear in beta, for a first I don't see the "all the dps gear has spirit on it". There are a lot of items with intelligence, stamina and spellpower + crit/hit/haste. Also it's not surprising to see that most of the blue gear currently only has one "bonus" stat (spirit, haste, hit, crit), that's similar to how the bonus appeared on lvl 70 gear too, ie only one and then several when going up the item level scale.
If they wanted resto and moonkins to share gear, they would convert spirit to hit, not to crit, since that's the only stat that has no use to one of the specs.

That being said, it's only my theory and i could be completely wrong too. But i don't think they'll be able to have full sets of best in slot healer items also be best in slot caster items, and that's where i derive my conclusions from.

You were talking about reducing the gear bloat. That only works if moonkins and trees use the same items, which only works if those items are "best in slot" at a particular item level. OK, sets will be different anyway, but that's by large not a majority of the armor/trinkets/weapons/... we wear. I say best in slot because even if there's only healing leather gear, there will be cloth caster gear.
By your own argument (spirit not converting to the same ilvl amount of crit), not having intensity, would you take gear with spirit that gives you a bit of crit or gear with crit ? You would aim for the latter one, and you said yourself that this would make the healing gear disenchanting fodder, making the proposed talent useless.

What I've been saying that i don't see the healer/caster gear consolidation as gear uniformisation (ie both specs wanting the exact same gear) but rather as a way to waste less items (ie being able to use the other spec's gear as placeholders). What we've seen from the gear currently available in the beta certainly fits my hypthese better.
And that's why a talent that would promote gear uniformisation seems unlikely to me, unless the differences between tiers in gear are not enough to make T8 healing gear an upgrade over T7 caster gear.

Edit : another argument against gear uniformisation is that to make healing transformed by talent into moonkin gear (ie with "loss" of item level points in the conversion) would clearly be less attractive than cloth caster gear. To make them equivalent would create an imbalance in cloth and leather healing gear.
It does work if you convert item budget points fully from spirit to crit, but then a moonkin with Intensity gets the best of both worlds.

I really can't see any system without caster/healer gear separation working.

Well right now trees get best of both, mana regen and plus healing on the entire raid (in wrath)

BTW i don't think my idea would eliminate bloat, there will always be some, but it would reduce it depending on what other changes they make. Heck some bloat is good otherwise i couldn't make heavy regen set, heavy crit sets and heavy haste sets like i do now. Or like mage\locks make regen sets, mage\lock tanking sets, high burst damage set etc. Early i had a ton of 'large' sets where as now with T5-6 lvl, it is often just a couple pieces being swapped back and forth. Raidwide buffs will reduce this even more. Whereas now i carry gear to swap depending on if i got a Spriest (more haste less regen) and\or an ele shammy (less +hit) on a specific boss fight. Both my groups spriest went on vacation last 2 week and all the casters notice the difference on some of the longer fights. There are still several talents that never worked all that well, like dreamstate being completely overshadowed by intensity (esp after the spirit regen changes) and innervate getting so much more mana regen from spirit vs mp5

Anyway we'll have to wait and see what they do in our 'polish review'.

WoW Forums -> Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

Faerie Fire does not stack with Curse of Recklessness
Earth and Moon does not stack with Curse of Elements/Ebon Plaguebringer

Edit:Nevermind, they changed the buff/debuff behavior of the talents, so my discussion was pointless.

Looks like IS is going to end up a 5% hit debuff (Or Scorpid Sting will be 2%).

This is going to be interesting. Earth and moon allows warlocks to use a damaging curse potentially. No one is going to have any unique buffs anymore, it seems. Other than potentially Totem of Wrath from what I read there as well. Elemental Oath will be giving a non-stacking equivalent of base Moonkin Aura as well. I would suspect we're going to get some form of personal DPS increase now as well, to balance us out.

EDIT: One other interesting thing. If a shadowpriest is in the raid we won't need to use GCD's or even talent points on IFF, so they'll be a DPS increase for us.

With all the changes listed in the blue post everyone is talking about . Looks like the reported 'Polish pass' will be pretty big if not huge.

I can understand why Blizzard is implementing these changes, but I'm a bit sad to see a lot of unique talents go. The previous version of Elemental Oath was a lot more interesting then a flat 5% crit increase. Same goes for Improved Moonkin Aura. Yeah, from a balance point of view, this is of course better now, but it also feels blander.

Another thing is that this might lead to respeccing before each raid based on who's available. If, for example, two shadow priests are in a raid, I can probably dump Improved Faerie Fire and invest the 3 points elsewhere - if there aren't any in the next, I'll take it up again. The same goes for all other classes. One solution to this would be (as Lord Beef suggested in another thread) to tack selfbuffs on to the talents, to make them worth taking in any case.

Well, they stated they're not finished yet, so let's see what the next polishing pass brings!

We have to either outdamage or outbuff:
- Unholy dk's and affliction locks(Our biggest chance I guess, let's hope for bad scaling for them -.-)
- Retri paladins (Mana battery + some other buffs)
- Elemental shamans (Bring totems like wrath of air (still an unique buff) and strength of earth for hunters + heroism/bloodlust + totem of wrath being the best spell dmg buff)
- Shadow Priests (Mana battery)
to get a hope at a spot in 25-mans.

All of the buffs we bring are shared with other classes, so our only selling point would be superior damage in one of the (de)buff brackets. We'll have to wait for the polish pass to theory craft a bit whether this is close to impossible or just impossible.
The fact is we have a lot of raid buffs, which in turn leads to lesser damage. But because of the lesser damage and non-stacking of buffs we'll become worthless in 25-mans as it stands. Could very well be gods in 10-mans though.


We will do good/very good in 10-mans though it seems, if that's any consolation.

I think the change in general is just pure stupid. Replacing class uniqueness with random generated buffs that get stuffed in the trees of class A, B abd C is far from exciting. I get it from their point of view, it's a lot easier to balance fights. But that shouldn't be a reason to remove class uniqueness.

And that goes for every class. Incidentally, the stuff you listed as belonging to Elemental shamans can be provided by any shaman, Elemental, Enhancement or Resto.

I forgot to add totem of wrath, my bad.
As it stands raid leaders will fill the (de)buffs and then go for pure dps for the rest, if a moonkin won't outdo any of the specs I listed in damage/other buffs we'll be skipped for 25-man raids. At the moment it's still guesswork, but it doesn't look too promising. A lot of raid buffs equals lesser dps, lesser dps means you're the first to be skipped if they can fill your (de)buffs with equal alternatives but better dmg.

Most people are speculating that there isn't going to be a DPS advantage for 'pure DPS' classes in raid situations anymore. One of the quotes implied they wanted DPS to be equal across DPS specs assuming equal gear and skill/knowledge. If anything this is going to impact the 'pure' dps classes more. Blizz is consistently stating they want you to be able to bring ANYONE you want to a raid regardless of spec.

But they're still pushing to have one of each class. You want at least one druid for the extremely buffed MotW (and even level 80 thorns). Battle Rez is still strong utility (I saved a Kalecgos kill last night with a fast reaction time ressurection of a tank in the last 10%). You can see this with the keeping of 10% spell crit debuff as a mage only skill. If DPS can be virtually equal across specs, mages have always had the weakest utility (Besides spellsteal gimmick fights). Warlocks have damage curses they can rotate in as their utility is diminished. Rogues are the best interrupting class, but they may need something more as well. Hunters can bring the largest range of utility between their various specs, have misdirect, the best threat control, longest range, and are getting a mana battery talent.

Balance druids have received very significant aoe utility. It's likely enough to push us to the third most powerful aoe class (Barring maybe a holy nova priest with the new mind sear. That also looks pretty strong). The channeled aoe spells are very powerful now, and ours is the strongest at base (Blizzard gets more talents that affect it however). It gets a -50%- damage increase from a talent. It also scales ridiculously well with haste, and currently is effectively mana free (That could change.). And the best burst aoe talent in the game.

Clearly there's going to be some significant personal DPS retuning. I wouldn't be surprised if eclipse is the talent that's used to retune our personal DPS considering it's initial weak state. Another interesting thing is that Stormstrike was not mentioned or addressed at all, it seems primed to become one of those Self-only debuffs like ISB.

The biggest thing that I feel people are lashing out against (Not that you are Pan, just in general) is that no one is unique anymore. In a way we're lucky that we also have a unique character model to go with our spec (So when do we get the winterspring snowkin minor glyph?!)

Wrath starts looking better again. I don't see any Arcane-only damage boosts.

Wrath: 489-551 damage, 11% mana
Starfire: 670-790 damage, 16% mana

At zero-crit, zero-spell, zero-haste:

Wrath is higher DPS and DPM

Scaling:
Spellpower favors Wrath for DPS by a small margin.
Spellpower favors SF for DPM by a very large margin.

Crit:
Crit favors Wrath for DPM (moonkin mana regen).
At low haste levels (and raidwide haste buffs seem to be low now), Crit favors Wrath for DPS. At high haste levels (> 20%), crit favors SF (wrath hurt by 1s GC).

Haste:
Haste, particularly high levels of haste, favor SF (no GC wall).

Pushback:
With CF, Wrath is better (.3s/1.5s is better than 1s/3s). Without CF, SF is better.

As always, lag favors SF.

E&M
Wrath is slightly better for maintaining E&M (more casts = more E&M uptime).

Glyphs:
SF glyph is awesome (assuming glyph applies to Starfire), particularly when combined with MF glyph. Wrath glyph is boring. Need to crunch numbers to see if this is enough to kill Wrath.

Eclipse:
The Eclipse buff for Wrath is a bit better than the one for SF (at least if you have mana). If you don't have the mana to maintain Wrath, you may still want to use it during Eclipse procs.

Wrath as a best-dps spell will make mana much more valuable.

I would like to reiterate this, and expand on it. We're still in Beta. We have not received our polish pass. There have been a LOT of changes recently. There is no reason to expect that the way things are now is the way they will continue to be. Blizzard has always pushed SF as the main DPS spell, and if the numbers don't support that yet, I'm pretty sure Blizzard will change things until they do.

Let me say it again. Theorycrafting, right now, based on current numbers but future raid compositions, buffs, and debuffs, is USELESS. Until we have seen a more finalized version of what our spells are going to do at 80 in a raid scenario, please keep theorycrafting to things like the particular mechanics of talents and spells, rather than the numbers. Everything else is a waste of time.

summary of 29/08 announced moonkin changes for reference within this forum:

buff changes:
Improved Moonkin Aura: Grants 3% haste of all types. --> a clear NERF
Improved Faerie Fire: No longer benefits melee and ranged hit chance, only spell hit. ---> much worser then before
Earth and Moon: Increases spell damage taken from all schools by 13% on the target. ---> odd wording, but effect is much bigger now. They substituted the old triggered buff by passive one with great damage increase. Is this our new unique buff?

buff stacking - no or only partial stacking within the following groups of buffs!
Armor Debuff (Minor): Faerie Fire, Sting (Hunter pet), Curse of Recklessness
Spell Critical Strike Chance Buff: Moonkin Aura, Elemental Oath
Increased Spell Hit Chance Taken Debuff: Improved Faerie Fire, Misery
Percentage Haste Increase (All Types): Improved Moonkin Aura, Swift Retribution
Melee Hit Chance Reduction Debuff: Insect Swarm, Scorpid Sting
Stat Add Buff: Mark of the Wild (will not stack with others!)

source: WoW Forums -> Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking


Sorry Adorielle, but I need to disagree that exact theorycrafting isnt useful at this point of time.
It is probably a lot of work and the many calculations will get invalid with the next patch but...

it results in basic models that can help to prove whether a certain talent/spell/buff is getting better or worser. Such models deliver strong arguments, objective and comprehensive arguments for a discussion with developers!

I think many agree if I say: Balance druids are NOT on par with other specs. Our interest during WotLK Beta is: Bring them on par!

Driving such a discussion by us is especially important because of the huge number of changes which happen at the same time. If we do not come up with justified statements at best based on numbers we will not be heared by the developers.

Frankly, I am deeply concerned that with all the above mentioned changes Moonkin will be disfavored again in 25man PVE raids. In the first moment when I saw the changes of today I had the impression Moonkin will have even less viability in the future then now.
Anyone else that share this "feeling"?
Is there someone who can tell us in numbers what the change of Imp Moonkin Aura means?

Besides all number crunching, I feel this change is bad...
Blizzard is going to abandon the class concept in favor of a role concept which only consist of 4 roles: healers/tanks/melee dps/caster dps. Surely with some gimmicks - but less unique. Future character viability is determined by fitting to one of these roles. I doubt that they will create more diversity in 25man raids. At least they will create more uniformity in terms of abilities.

I feel that the uniqueness of each class and synergy effects between classes will fade forever.

Taken further, if there if the following 3 are in the raid:
- an affliction lock or unholy DK
- a shadow priest
- a ret paladin

We don't have to spec any of our raid buff talents, and can get a completly self serving spec like: 55/0/16

Note that Furor in that build is based upon the change posted here:

WoW Forums -> Energy Regen Change - Intended?

I didn't realize that the new furor means no wasted points in resto whatsoever. Very nice.

I do find it somewhat odd that they said that they may have given moonkins too much mana, and then they add a 10% intellect talent. I wonder what else they have up their sleeves