Munorion

If matters remain as they are now (largely, I know they're still fiddling with the tree), I think it will become common for hybrids to use the two specs between which they can switch easily (although there hasn't been any news on that front for quite some time, has there?) for two different specs into their primary tree, with different group buffs enabled/disabled.
Right now, you'd need completely different specs for 10 and 25 mans. The first will need to have more of the group buffs in it than the second one. Ironically, while you'd have more talent point available in a 25 man raid for, e.g., AoE talents, those would also be more needed in 10 mans, where you'll have less AoE classes to begin with.

 

Ravenmace

I wouldn't bank to much on the two talent tree idea till it happens, and giving all the other issues they have to deal with and test, forget about it for WotLK debut or maybe even this expansion. One thing you can be certain of is that it will take a different shape to what we are all imagining.

Mentioned in EU forums: Windshock seems great for Shaman, perhaps it would be a good idea for Cower to be made useable in Moonkin form and Tree of Life form: - mana cost and range should be added off course. Perhaps it's worth mentioning this on the beta forums - they might just grant it like they did the 15% cat speed outdoors changed to indoors.

Anyone notice that with the addition of the MF glyph and the IS glyph along with Genesis and Nature's Perfection, given the current bloat you might be able to spec for DoT damage? Without the glyphs I'd have said no, but with the Glyphs combos of Gen/NP/Imp IS - do make a big difference in DoT damage without them.

The question is now we should start comparing what dps is with that path, and what it is like completely without it. But two alternative possible moonkin dps based specs is good news for diversity, although still no where near the amount of diversity I would like to see in a balance druid. If you don't spec for DoTs then your other points aren't really going into direct damage spells are they but likely split between either Hit bonus points, mana regen/conserve points or Gale Winds/Owlkin Frenzy/Brambles pvp orientated buffs.

So it would be good DoT damage or good utility? - this needs to be investigated more thoroughly.

I hope they add a Typhoon Glyph, someone suggested a cyclone effect. That would pleasantly annoy every other player and might be the ticket to pvp arena success, that aside a slow effect to typhoon would benefit both pvE and pvp aoeing immensely and make a 5yrd knockback acceptable given it had a decent duration like 10secs and halved your movement speed dropping 10% every 2 secs.

 

Frenzi

Personally I see the addition of Genesis to give a way for healers to spend points in the Balance tree without being completely wasted in the first tier. For this purpose Genesis works well and I can definitely see many resto's speccing part way into balance for some of the nice benefits in the early tiers.

I have been looking at the different specs I would want for a PvE environment and I have trouble getting everything I need/want without putting 5 pts into Genesis.

This is the spec I am considering at the moment: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...05213005010241

It is quite hard to determine what spec I will take now as it is going to depend heavily on what you raid with, E&M for instance could quite easily be dropped but is probably worth taking to allow your locks to use other curses (I haven't looked at the death knights so I am unsure if they have an alternative).

 

Kaug

Seem to me that Moonkin will be better at the +13% damage to all spells and SPriests better at +spell Hit. I say this because the 'better' debuffer will do so as a 'passive' effect as they cast or attack. For us to cast iFF it takes time casting time so lost dps, misery gets the effect so long as the spells listed are up (not sure how common the Sting armor debuff from hunter pets will be). Same goes for the E&M debuff (depending on how they fix it), we'll be placing it on the mob by just dpsing whereas a lock would have to cast it, losing casting time and not using another curse. I don't know if the other buff\debuff categories have this same effect as i don't follow them as closely. If all\most these effects are similar then there will still be room for min\maxing raids while allowing blizz to tune encounters better, expecting all the buffs to always be available from some source

Hmm, just noticed that the IS and Scorpid Sting's 5% miss debuff are both active casts.

 

Erdluf

Extracted from a TLDR post at The Moonkin Repository • View topic - WotLK: Single target DPS analysis

With no set bonuses, but using SF, MF, and IS glyphs, level 80, 2000 +spell, 10% haste, 35% crit.

Analysis did not include Eclipse, but that is at most a 5% boost to DPS.

Rotation is (SF*5 IS) with a "free" MF ticking in the background (SF glyph).
A rotation of MF IS Wr*10 is about 4% higher DPS but is much more expensive (SF rotation has 40% higher DPM).

Relative value of glyphs and talents, considering only personal single-target DPS:

Ranking things top to bottom in single-target DPS terms. Assumes mana is not an issue.

SF glyph = 194.1 dps
MF glyph 148.4 dps
Nature’s Grace = 140.4 dps
Force of Nature = 83.3 dps
1 point Stellar Wrath = 69 dps
IS Glyph = 64.4 dps
1 point Vengeance = 49.4 dps
1 point Master Shapeshifter = 45.3 dps
1 point Wrath of Cenarius = 42.7 dps
1 point Balance of Power = 41.6 dps
Insect Swarm = 40 dps
2 points Nature’s Splendor = 39.9 dps (Edit: 2 points needed to get an extra IS tick, analysis assumes no partial ticks).
1 point Moonfury = 37 dps
1 point Lunar Guidance 32.8 dps
1 point Nature’s Majesty 30.5 dps
Starfall = 27.8 dps
1% Haste = 20 dps
1 point Celestial Focus = 20 dps
1 point Nature’s Focus (wrath rotation, 4 pushback/minute) = 18.3 dps
1% crit = 15.3 dps
1 point Improved Insect Swarm = 15.3 dps (SF rotation)
1 point Improved Moonfire = 14.4 dps
1 point Owlkin Frenzy (4 pushbacks/minute) = 7.6 dps
1 point Genesis = 5.6 DPS
1 point Furor = 3.8 DPS
1 +spell = .82 dps

On this scale, 1 point in Brambles is worth about 6.1 DPS if your tank is hit every 3s. (Edit: perhaps another 4-5 DPS increase to FoN).

Edit: Fixed the Nature's Focus number (I had 23 dps before).
Usual caveats apply. These numbers are likely to change.

 

erragal

Some interesting numbers for sure.

A few things really jumped out at me.


1. One percent crit is almost as valuable for DPS as one percent haste, and it brings mana regen along with it.

2. Spell power is far better than every other stat by a huge margin, especially considering the cost of 1% haste rating/critical strike at 80.

3. Master shapeshifter is just as valuable as I felt it was. We're going to be going into resto for that more than anything else (And therefore getting Furor by default along the way.)

4. I wonder if Starfall will be usable in most encounters without shifting position. Having to move in range just to use it would make it a DPS loss (Though you can always shift during GCD's from dot reapplications).

5. This particular analysis didn't include popping all trinkets/potions before your initial moonfire application. (Though we still don't know if the moonfire duration increase also refreshes the damage)

6. There was some speculation in the resto thread about Nature's Splendor and the potential for partial ticks. It's interesting how the SF glyph makes this talent worthless on moonfire.


http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...35213305001051

Looks like our highest ST DPS spec with IFF/CoE debuffing and assuming no mana issues making intensity/OOC irrelevant. This is also assuming eclipse isn't worth the rotation shift at the moment. One of the more interesting decisions your math brings to light, is dropping improved moonfire for improved insect swarm is a DPS increase.

Having a shadow priest in the raid with misery allows this spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...35213005001051


Which is a 34.9 DPS increase at your gear levels/numbers. One thing I could not find was anything taking into account that brambles also buffs tree damage by 5% which is about 4.1 more DPS just multiplying the value you used for FoN by that % increase. That would make brambles worth 10.2 DPS per point if the tank is only getting hit the conservative estimate of every three seconds.

 

Celdhyrean

I'm a bit surprised to see 1point Nature's Splendor come out as high as IS itself, since with a perpetual MF it only affects IS itself in terms of dps. Also from a quick look at your link, regarding IS length, a partial tick has been added at the end of dots/hots so that fractionnal length aren't useless.

(i'll be looking at the maths more in depth after work)

 

Dioneirra

What i would like to know about this base rotation, is it actually know in the meantime (as i understood, at least the Druid Glyphs are mostly implemented and itemized) that the SF Glyph works in this way (i.e. adding continually 3 seconds to a ticking Moonfire while casting Starfire), or is this still speculating based on the Glyph Tooltip?

Looking through the rest of your list, Nature's Splendor seems to be more than i calculated (especially regarding that MF is not influenced by this talent in your assumption). Starfall looking that bad in comparison to Force of Nature? I assume, you calculated it for single target encounters? Still, even so it is disappointing, but somewhat in line with design desicions in other classes. It will be interesting to see if the raid encounters are constructed around the class philosophies, or if the classes have to adapt besides the their given, but maybe not applicable talents and abilities.

 

Steldemian

Where did you see that Misery wiil give 3% spell hit rating?

 

Erdluf

Thanks for the comments guys. Some thoughts:

This may be a low +spell level for raiding. I used +2000 (buffed) for "entry" level raiding. I know Roywyn on the mage forums has been using +3000, but I believe he is more interested in examinng end-game scaling. At higher +spell levels, haste will become more valuable.

For Nature's Splendor, I haven't seen confirmation of partial ticks, so I excluded them. Without partial ticks only the second point of NS is actually valuable (it gives you the extra IS tick). So the value I have listed for NS is really for TWO points of NS. I'll update the post.

If there is a partial tick, my rotation is clipping it. I think that will still make sense, but some number crunching could be worthwhile.

Even though Nature's Splendor doesn't help MF in my analysis, I think it may be important for people using the MF+SF glyphs. If you ever have to stop casting SF (CC, threat, movement, ...), NS gives you a bit more breathing room without needing to re-cast MF. On the other hand, MF is one of the few things you can cast while moving, so maybe this won't be important.

I threw in the Brambles number as an afterthought and forget to include its impact on FoN, so yes, I undervalued it.

Values for FoN and Starfall are very situational. I assumed about 20k damage from FoN, and 10k damage from single-target Starfall. FoN damage depends on a lot of factors. I don't know if even Blizzard has a good feel for what the top rank of Starfall will actually do.

The low ranking for Improved Moonfire surprised me too. My MF never crits (and never gives Nature's Grace), so that aspect of Improved Moonfire was lost.

Edit: Removed incorrect statement about IS duration affecting SF crit due to IIS. SF crit is based on MF dot.

 

Dioneirra

Take a look at the latest WotLK build, Misery has become a 3 point talent applying a debuff (through the same spells as before) with 1% spellhit bonus per point. Also see the Blue Post regarding Debuff Categorization (Increased Spell Hit Chance Taken Debuff: Improved Faerie Fire, Misery).

 

erragal

I did have one question: When you did the calculations of Genesis and Improved Moonfire, did you look at them as additive or multiplicative with the Glyph/Moonfury/Master Shapeshifter?

On a similar note, this was obviously done with no raid debuffs taken into account. Is it plausible the multiplicative effect of 13% spell damage debuff on top of the other scaling effects would push Improved Moonfire above Improved Insect Swarm?

Your work has definitely pointed this out as one of our closest fulcrums to spend talent points, considering how close the value was. I believe the biggest negative to Improved Moonfire is that the 10% applies to the direct damage AND the dot, so we're only getting about 25% of the benefit of the talent overall (Since the crit is functionally irrelevant as we should only ever cast moonfire once in a perfect situation.)

I do find it very interesting that we have to choose between a highest single target DPS spec, and a best AOE spec. With every DPS class able to provide functional AoE, the designers have really had the door oepned for aoe intensive raid encounters. We have the potential to be the third highest AoE DPS class, with the highest burst aoe ability. The points just aren't there in a single target DPS build to take typhoon and gale winds, however.

I personally feel resto druids may end up the better choice for providing 3/3 brambles to tanks. Their spell power may even be higher than ours (Not needing to gear for hit, or even much haste) if it does scale on the casters spell power, making it even better for them. If it does scale reasonably, we also may end up pre-trinketing thorns like resto shaman do for earth shield in PVP.

 

Erdluf

I had Improved Moonfire additive with Moonfury. I assumed all other %damage buffs were multipliers, but it is certainly possible that MS will be additive also.

I think the 13% raid debuff will be a 13% boost to any Moonkin rotation. If A > B, then 1.13*A > 1.13*B, and the relative order will not change.

We will have intersting choices to make between AoE, Raid Buffs/Debufs, Mana, and single-target DPS. Intelligent decisions will need to be based on the encounters, and I just don't have that information yet.

 

erragal

I actually really like the choices we have available, it certainly doesn't feel as much like bloat anymore. There's still going to be that camp of individuals that want to be able to spec 71 points in their tree (Though technically we can do that, it just might not be the most effective), or feel like they should be able to get every DPS talent without making a tough decision.

My biggest contention would be that some talents need to be adjusted a bit to be a bit closer in line so there's not quite a hard line best choice. Maybe a buff to genesis (2% per point for damage dots?). Nature's Splendor could increase the duration of Faerie Fire as well. Not having a good wrath DPS glyph anywhere comparable to the Starfire one is part of reason eclipse feels so lackluster.

Once they begin evening out the exact numbers between the classes, one thing that definitely is going to need to be theorycrafted: Is the DPS increase from the IS swarm glyph more than that of a hunter switching to a damage sting (Or no sting at all?). I suspect it isn't, making that glyph dubious at best for raid-level content. I'm excited to see what they do with eclipse, however.

EDIT: Not always the best thing to hear, but many of the changes to our talents and the baking of heal power into the actual spells, has massively buffed our healing potential. We're far and away the most powerful healer of the hybrid DPS specs. This has more PVP implications than anything else.

 

Munorion

The danger with this amount of choice is that we'll end up in the situation that (apparently) paladins in SWP are in now. Respec before every raid or even boss encounter depending on what is needed most. With the difference that we won't spec between the three "base" roles of our class (DPS, tanking, healing) but between sub-specs (AoE, raidbuffs, single target DPS). However, Blizz said themselves that they're not finished with the tree yet; that and non-existent knowledge about WotLK raiding makes speculation still a bit moot at this point.

 

PsyBomb

hmmm, I'm really wondering atm if Moonglow or Dreamstate will be better overall, once we start seeing Naxx intellect levels and taking the new Furor into account.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Dioneirra

Actually, i would suggest that right now we are the most effective Hybrid Healers without respec too. Due to the need to spec at least a small amount in restoration, and the tree design after the first three tiers (only efficiency and 'help button' afterwards) we are quite capable to switch without wait from one duty to another. The itemization of balance druid gear (quite some regeneration in form of MP/5 and spirit, a lot of crit, haste as very favorable balance stat) often even our balance gear is more than sufficent to fully replace a dead healer in a heroic or small scale raid. When putting on healing gear (which surely most of us collect out of habit, interest in diversity or to protect it from sharding after the only raid tree gets his loot) we are fully capable to play an offensive healer in DPS intensive encounters with several phases and not much needed healing in some phases (RoS as a famous example). Of course our healing style differs from that of a tree, but still, i do not have problems healing a heroic in balance spec, which i do like, as it points to us being a true hybrid spec. I do have problems to do the same with other classes, the closest i can achieve are elemental shamans, but even there are a lot of defining talents in deeper resto.

Oh, and there still is some bloat. It is not very visible, but take for example 4+5/5 of Earth and Moon. These two could easily be called bloat points, because all they do is ensuring that the debuff is up earlier, they do not justify their need otherwise. There are other talents, which seems outdated in point range (at least when compared to other classes, we still do have some seemingly unecessary 5 pointer instead of 3 pointers), but overall the redesign of the lower tiers already has made some impact in possible choices. Which is fine, because right now nearly every Moonkin is identical in talent choices.

What i am really looking for in WotLK is how the sharing of raid debuffs between participating players will be handled. While some classes get their points for raid buffs for free after spending all necessary 'own dps/healing' points and still having points left (retribution paladin as a nice example), other have to make sacrifices. The same is true for debuff application. For example Shadow Priests apply Misery (if the spec for this talent) as part of their normal rotation. Balance Druid will have to insert Faerie Fire for the same effect, a spell which is not part of most rotations. Will raid leaders account for this situation? Or will Moonkins purposely not spec in the raid buffs? The alternative choices are much more interesting than today.

 

Panoramixe

I'm kind of interested in a wrath rotation with the insect swarm glyph and improved insect swarm. Mana-wise it won't be that much worse than a starfire rotation due to the new moonkin aura combined with a faster cast time, but perhaps it's better dps-wise than a straight starfire spamming build with the MF glyph.

I'm not considering the -5% hit here, it's usefulness is debatable.

 

dedmonwakeen

SimulationCraft updated based upon latest Beta news. In some cases this means that it does not match current Beta push:
(1) Some talents are implemented as described rather than how they are working (or not working as the case may be)
(2) Some of the "homogenization" has hit yet, but it was implemented anyway: Judgement of Wisdom, Earth and Moon, etc
(3) Blue posts have stated that Mind Flay is getting completely retuned. My implementation matches that of Arcane Missiles.

I've also added support for Google Charts..... Click through below for sample output in the link below.

It's worth noting:

(1) When I include an Enhancement Shaman in the raid, Wrath has dmg-per-execute-time on par with Starfire..... even though the spell priority list is constructed to generate the Starfire buff with minimal Wrath calls.

(2) The mana pool never got down low enough to trigger Innervate. The mana consumption and gain was at a steady-state using this build.

Mana gain distribution:

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Erdluf

Guessing that base mana will be 3500-3700. I'll use 3500.
1000 Int, 2000 +spell, 10% haste, 35% crit, 100ms lag. Moonkin regen every crit. All the single-target DPS talents except for Eclipse, MS and E&M. I will use Moonglow. Partial ticks from Nature's Splendor. MF/IS/SF glyphs.

IS
Damage = (1050+.76*2000)*1.05*1.3*7.8/6 = 4560
Cast time = 1.46s
Mana = 8%*3500 = 280

MF
Damage = ((441+.15*2000)*1.45*0.1+(800+2000*.52)*5.2/4*1.75)*1.05*1.2 = 5410
Cast time = 1.46s
Mana = 21%*3500*91%-45%*2%*18500 = 502

Wrath
Damage = (520+(2/3.5+0.1)*2000)*1.03*1.1*1.39 = 2934
Cast time = 1.32s
Mana = 11%*3500*91%-39%*2%*18500 = 206

SF
Damage =(730+1.2*2000)*1.1*1.42 = 4889
Add in "free" MF DoT: Damage = 5903
Cast time = 2.64s
Mana = 16%*3500*91%-42%*2%*18500 = 354

Rotations:
IS SF*5 with free MF DoT.
Damage = 35610
Time = 14.65s (Note, partial IS tick is clipped)
DPS = 2295
Mana = 2051
DPM = 16.4
MP5 = 700

MF IS Wr*10
Damage = 39308
Time = 16.15s
DPS = 2434 (+6% from SF rotation)
Mana = 2843
DPM = 13.8 (-16%)
MP5 = 880 (+26%)

Mana regen contributions
Moonkin form (SF rotation) = 53.1 MP5 (this was rolled into the DPM numbers)
Moonkin form (Wrath rotation) = 99,7 MP5 (ditto)
1 point Moonglow (SF rotation) = 28.7 MP5 (ditto)
1 point Moonglow (Wrath rotation) = 42.6 MP5 (ditto)
Dreamstate = 40+30+30 MP5
1 Point Intensity (@600 spirit) = 67.6 MP5
OOC (SF rotation) = 33.7 MP5
OOC (Wr rotation) = 34.6 MP5

For OOC I assume 6% proc, 10s internal cooldown. I have seen reports that the internal cooldown is now gone, but I'm not sure.
Also, OOC for the SF rotation would get you out of the 5sr for about 0.2s every minute. The contribution from that is about 2 MP5 (which is included in the 33.7 MP5 value).

I find it interesting that the SF rotation is so efficient that it makes Dreamstate better than Moonglow.

 

Panoramixe

Thanks Erdluf, that's quite interesting. The two rotations are really close together in power and mana usage, this gives eclipse a bit more potential if the cd gets lowered.
I'm not sure, however, we'll have anywhere near 600 spirit in a raiding environment in WoTLK. It seems we'll have no spirit at all on the gear that's designed for our spec.

 

erragal

We may end up better off taking 'resto' pieces anyway. Most of the gear with spirit and no critical strike, have a higher base spell power as well. Using Erdluf's math as Spell power being worth .82 DPS and 1% crit being worth 15.3 DPS, we can find out that 2.48 crit rating is equal to one spell power in DPS. But that's disregarding that every point of spell power increases the value of any crit you already possess, and assuming 2000 spell power. So if a piece of 'resto' gear has 12 more spell power, the 'balance' piece needs 30 spell crit rating just to break even at these numbers.

Of course we don't seem to need spirit/intensity either. What we really want is haste and massive amounts of spell power. EDIT: After being hit capped of course.

 

Septus

At a glance, those numbers(especially with much lower spirit), make me think that an all-balance build, with moonglow and dreamstate, would be perfectly manageable for mana, and would then allow you to take both group buffs and get owlkin frenzy, at the loss of 4% damage from master shapeshifter.

 

Munorion

dedmonwakeen, could you re-do the build using another calculator maybe? When I click your link, I get an obviously broken build (it has 2/5 points in Rend and Tear and 3/1 points in Berserk, for example - without any other points in feral).

 

dedmonwakeen

My apologies.... I did not realize that Blizzard had finally updated their official talent calculator.

There is a new version (r212) with proper talent link parsing and (more importantly) support for the new/changed talents.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft