Looking at Lunar Guidance nerf, one does wonder if all the other classes that have a similar talent boosting spell damage from gear based on intellect are also getting a similar nerf. If not, it does not bode well, and makes you wonder why. Do not be surprised though if balance druids panic, the tree has been notoriously left unfinished and not compensated for in the past, well frankly since release really... 1.8 saw a poor tree barely improved. 2.0 as well it seemed it was more a rush and catch up job because although damage and regen were made viable, well you couldn't say balance druids were on the same level as the other dps caster.

Finally WotLK details start trickling out and it looks like for the first time since release proper attention has been paid to balance and not just hasty fixes, but because it's alpha and it could all go up in smoke leaving broken hopes and a still incomplete dps caster. One should not get too excited as it's alpha, but everything that has appeared seems exciting because it finally has all the missing elements the build has been craving for form a spell caster view for along time...so any nerfs even though in alpha that aren't repeated across the board will be bound to cause some creased brows, because what balance druids do not want is to go into the 3rd expansion still a second rate caster.

The only other thing I hope for is that the other druid abilities yet to be revealed are as exciting and fun. WoW balance druids need to come out in a memorable way, like shadow priests did in classic wow. This would probably mean "flavour of the month" but I don't think any balance druid will shun that, after 4 years in the shadows.

All I can say is don't panic, despite the tendency to do so, I'm sure they are still messing around with a lot of stuff, trying to sort out itemisation and it's impact, hence why you've seen many spirit based talents arise, it could signal a change in many things, and Lunar Guidance may very well not be th eonly dmg/heal boost on intellect to be nerfed.

I do hope everything on the tree now does stay there but requiring about 5-10 less points and more buffs not nerfs will follow, but hey, who says I can't wish?

I agree. I would love balance druids become new "shadow priests". Shunned and laughed at in Original WoW, in BC they became the "stars" of the raid with their mana regen.

But even then, during last 8 months when haste gear became more popular, Spriests fell behind on dps charts just because their damage doesn't scale...

But what ability would it take for moonkin to debiut in this way?

Indeed Apaine, and it's looking good for shadow priests, as their new changes are addressing all the issues that higher level itemisation T6 onwards caused and redresses every major issue they had in pvp that saw a dip in their supremacy.

The balance abilities were looking quite good for pvE, and I thought the Improved Moonkin Aura was finally the one to do it, even though the original description beggered belief. The new value of 20% while still good no longer makes it the ability that makes em stand up and take note, but it is now in line with other TBC abilities with the current value. This is also curious mas I would expert defining abilities to seem overpowered for TBC, seeing that WotLK.

Infected wounds in the Feral tree I think was it's defining ability, and it was pvp focused, as Feral druids don't have the same viability issues/ "least needed of the role" complex to them. It was arena that the biggest deficiency was most apparent, whiles PvE needed smaller tweaks which it seems to be getting.

Let's just hope that there are no more nerfs, and that any changes that come would be an improvement on what has already been released from the Alpha. Let's hope things get better and not worse, but we'll see.

Did you notice that almost every other spec and class that had changes got nerfs but also got some alternative improvements whiles balance just got nerfs largely? Let's hope next build is better news.

It's the alpha. It's really not worth worrying about every buff and nerf - there's going to be a lot of them from here until live.

20% spell haste is enormous. If that's not enough for a "stand and take note" ability I'm not sure what is. (Don't compare it with the initial 100% version - that was ludicrous and everyone knew it.)

Blizzard noticed that shadow priests were quite broken in TBC and they're addressing that by making them more like normal classes - reducing their over-the-top utility while buffing their damage output into line with other hybrids. Which is fine.

Yeah, you're right, it was just a surprise to see a right across the board nerf. Anyway, back to discussion.

Firstly
Owlkin Frenzy I think is in a more useful form now, though the number needs to be tweaked, I'm thinking it should be given a much higher proc rate now the haste has been removed. I would wish for a 25/50/75% chance to gain immunity to casting and a 5/10/15% chance to get the 10% damage increase.

If you consider the previous build description with haste, unless you picked Celestial focus, if you were been hit, haste while nice would still have to work casting through pushback unless you only spammed wrath making Celestial Focus essential, either way, what is the use being hasted while being hit if you are constantly interrupted? I'm also thinking that it would be great for AoE casting if you happened to be AoE tanking, 10sec immunity will allow a Hurricane or Tranquility without interruption.

Maybe it should read gives 15/30/45% to grant immunity to casting from pushback and damage increase of 10%. It's cool shadowform now grants 100% immunity from pushback, and whiles this is not quite there, at least there is a 10% damage increase when frenzied.

Or perhaps even better would be to leave it as it is at 5/10/15% but extend the pushback immunity to stuns and interrupts and allow the effect to proc off receiiving spell damage.

Secondly
Improved Nature's Grasp may find more use if, each rank as well as increasing the chance to proc, also gave an additional charge of nature's grasp that would proc an additional entangling root. So at rank 4, you could in theory get 5 roots off. In PvP, they only last 10secs anyway but each additional root could get a further 20% duration penalty, such that the last charge of root has it's duration reduced by 80% of your standard root, in PvE it's more a solo boost, but I'm thinking that would make Imp Nature's Grasp far more appealing.

If they were nice, they'd give it just like that i.e. gaining a root charge per rank in Imp Nature's Grasp having the same proc chance, if a bit meaner, it would probably be worded something like ".increase the chance for your Nature's Grasp to entangle the enemy by 15/30/45/65% and gives your nature's grasp and an additional 1/2/3/4 charges of entangling roots. Each charge has a 5/10/15/20% chance after being hit to proc an additional entangling root on an attacker not already afflicted by roots. Each additional root procced from charges has it's duration reduced by 20% per charge...." Nice? or Overpowered?

Another useful thing Imp Nature's Grasp could cause i n addition to the 100% proc chance of Nature's Grasp, is that it could give on rank 1 the ability to for NG to proc from spell attacks, then per rank, a 5/10/15/20% chance for target's afflicted by your roots to be silenced for 6secs every time they take damage from your roots. Once procced, this effect cannot proc again for 30secs.

Now that roots damage is applied every sec, this could be worth the investment,

Thirdly.
The final improvement I would like to see, is Control of Nature grant cyclone a 0.5/1/1.5sec cast time reduction. Looking for a stronger pvp boost to balance than witnessed so far, and would also be quite useful tool in PvE 5/10-mans to accompany roots indoors would make this better than no interruption. GCD means it's still a 1.5s gap between cyclones, but having it instantly instead I can see helping PvE a lot also, not just pvp, especially in noob groups. Taunts should work through cyclone, but whiles playing a balance druid, helping cout with control, having cyclone on an instant cast is a lot more useful than a 1.5sec cast when reacting to danger. You aggro or your fellow caster does, you can at least cyclone a mob straight off. It is fitting balance druids have a more convenient use of cyclone that does not depend on you being hit. Cyclone is already nerfed in range because other druids can use it, and has that diminishing returns in Pvp AND PvE, for which a 1.5sec cast to last 1.5s is imo quite mean.

They could tie up all the anti push back talents in one, rather scatter wrath pushback in celestial focus, add it to Control of Nature and exchange positions with it in the tree. Celestial Focus could instead perhaps, in addition to the stun reduce your Starfall cooldown and/or have moonfire proc the stun. So Control of Nature reads: Reduces the cast time of your Cyclone spell by 0.5/1/1.5secs and gives a 40/70/100% chance to avoid interruption caused by pushback while casting Entangling roots and a 25/50/75% resist push back on Wrath..."

Uninterruptable Cyclone? Not in this lifetime.

I agree on pushbacks being harsh on Moonkins and bringing Wrath/IS back into raids would be a nice change aswell, i wonder if that will come as a byproduct of destro/affliction fixes.

I just can't see Eclipse being very popular, unless you are currently at a gear level where Wath > SF for DPS, but you want to use SF for mana reasons.

3 Points in Eclipse says that by casting Wrath a few times, I make my SF an average of something less than 2.5% better (over a long fight). In PvP you probably don't use SF enough to spend the talent points.

Compare that to 3 points in Nature's Fury, which is pretty much a full-time, 6% increase to Nature and Arcane for the entire raid.

In a bloated tree, I can't see many choosing Eclipse for PvP or PvE. I suppose some will ignore the resto tree entirely (no master shapeshifter or intensity, ouch) and get it, but I think it needs a little more "oomph" to be viable (remove the cooldown?).

Eclipse is pretty decent for PvP. You're forgetting that, by definition, the wrath which procs the SF Eclipse buff will also proc Nature's Grace, and probably will proc iMKA as well, leading to a ~2s SF cast, which isn't horrible. Being in Frenzy would make this un-push-backable. A 10% increased chance to crit on SF would put it close to 33% in-form on even the least-geared Moonkin, which means 3 casts is statistically enough to get the Wrath buff as well, which would be nice for cannoning (making the assumption that the buffs do not share a cooldown. If they do, Eclipse is all but useless).

PvE, it's not worth the points. Any decent PvE build is already point-starved by having to go at least 13 in Resto for Intensity, likely 15 for MS as well. Though this brings up a different question. All signs are pointing to Intellect getting a Stam-like increase (Lower percent from Lunar Guidance being the major tell) in order to prvide better mana regen for all casters. If this goes through, it may be the case that Intensity is no longer necessary for us, as at the levels of int we'll be getting, DS will have better returns.

Instant cyclone? nah - that would be OP.... but there should be something done to make it less likely to getting kicked/bashed while trying to spam wrath into person's face... not to mention simple "run through me - no spell cast" mechanics which are just plain annoying and rely on low latency to be avoided.

How about reducing the wrath cast time by additional 0.5/1 seconds somewhere deep in the tree (so only dedicated moonkins can get it... maybe make that owlkin frenzie proc off getting hit would be a good idea... but make it 0.3/0.7/1 then - so warth still has 0.5 sec cast and it's not instant. Instant wraths on the run would be indeed OP, but a 0.5 sec cast with 70% pushback reduction would be hard to kick (not impossibile), hard to run though and good enough to spam in melee (GCD would still make it a 1.5 sec cast, so in raids / PVP it still would keep it's DPS rating).

Also Nature's grace should reduce GCD by 0.5 seconds as well when that proces.. otherwise it's a broken talent when spamming wrath :/ either that or replace it with something usefull.... mana on crit would be nice... or a voulnerability to specific type of damage on crit (like ISB which made locks so powerfull)....

Depending on the cooldown of this 20% haste buff it is most likely still the ridiculously overpowered "stand up and take note" buff and it is not inline with other abilities. It is still powerful to the point of making a moonkin required in every caster group which is stronger than what shadow priests have now. If the cooldown is around 3 seconds like the tool tip suggests you are still approaching 75% uptime at 30% crit. (1 - .7^4)

Flamingcloud:

The way I read improved moonkin aura talent:

Improved Moonkin Form - "Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 10 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every few seconds." (Balance)

Notice it says "when they crit" - so proc rate is independant on our crit rate, only on the crit rate of the mages/locks/other members of the party. Crit rate of the moonkin is irrelavant. That also means that it should proc at different times on different members... and it lasts for 10 sec... so internal cooldown must be >10 sec... internal cooldown will what may decide if it's usefull or not... anything greater than 45 sec and it's a dumb aura

I'd forgotten about Frenzy, so that helps.

If you are wrath-spamming, you probably lose the nature's grace on your next wrath (unless you /cancelcast which seems to be a waste of DPS).

Note that iMKA also reduces the GC (and increases the DPS) for Wrath. At 70, most PvP moonkin have Wrath DPS > SF DPS (no reliable CoS in PvP). Add 10% crit to SF and its DPS goes up by 6-8%. That may be enough to "catch-up" to Wrath, but not enough to pass it.

If the PvP set bonus remains unchanged, PvP players may continue to use enough SF to make this attractive (10% boost to Wrath for 30s is very nice, after all).

I'd sort of assumed the cooldowns would be shared. If they are separate, it becomes more attractive (although I still don't think I'd take it for PvP). In a 56/0/15, there just seem to be better places to put the points. Maybe 66/0/5 will make sense at high Intelligence levels. In that case (and assuming the cooldowns aren't shared) Eclipse may be viable.

Aye, it really all depends on whether the cooldowns are linked. I should also make a note that I absolutely suck at PvP and generally don't bother with it at all, so all of my work is done from a pure theorycrafting standpoint, with very little practicality. For example, I see no problem with dropping Moonglow or DS from a PvP build, but that may not be incredibly viable in a practical arena match.

With the new rank of Thorns and Brambles giving you such a high amount reflected damage, it will be noticeable especially for feral druids, with an estimated reflected damage of over 300 dps. Even if we assume that in WotLK we will have 50% to 100% higher dps numbers than now, it is similar to the situation when Curse of Weakness was changed to reduce melee damage done by 150 damage or so, and it was reverted over the outcry from feral druids about it.

On the other hand, dispel resistance is now gone for everything but HoTs, and that will make it relatively easy to remove thorns in pvp. Actually I wonder how balance will play in PvP then, given that we have quite a few magic effects gaining from it, roots, our DoTs, Innervate, Abolish Poison to name but a few.

I suspect to see more effect from spirit, and that means that their failure to address Intensity still requiring 10 points in resto will mean that balance will continue to feel the most cramped talent tree out there. It has more points to spend in than feral, while the number of required points in resto is still two more than feral, while at the same time not gaining even remotely as much from these required points as does feral. It really is time to move Intensity to the 5 points required position, maybe even the 0 point required stage.

The (now reverted again) change to convert healing into spell power looked like an attempt to make healing gear more viable for grinding when you respec to magic dps. I believe the underlying idea is quite sound, but it would need to have a poison pill for spell damage and healing, like "30% of your surplus +healing over +damage from gear are converted into spell damage".

I still do not know what to make of the idea of Starfall. It is a variant of consecration, it will break crowd control, it is 10K damage + 3K splash damage over 10 seconds, which puts its AoE potential below Hurricane. So far I would say it can be useful for PvP (when you dont have crowd control around) and for soloing stuff where having two nice long CD extra damage abilities you can pop at the same time can make stuff a lot easier. But for raiding it seems rather week.

Starfall is instant. That alone makes it better AoE than Hurricane, by the simple fact that you can do both at the same time.

Indeed, not only that, It gives the immense burst damage AoE that 75% of AoE fights don't last more than 12secs in TBC, though that may change in WotLk. Even with Gale Winds, Mage/Lock AoE damage will still dwarf balance druid hurricane. Starfall does two things, for those 75% AoE, would allow the dps to be right up there with only skillful locks/mages able to top although if it were one of the 15s + ones, we'll dip.

Also if we were AoE tanking, which is quite possible in groups without Protection Paladins or Death Knights, it's better the mobs get glued to us, Hurricane's high threat + Starfire will guarantee that we get clubbered not a clothie, and we're much easier to heal.

Starfire is Arcane magic, so a non-nature aoe is good, with it in most AoE fights will give us almost the same damage output as skilled mages/locks, what we lack for in damage we make up for in utility by possibly doing the AoE tanking ourselves and at least the attack/cast speed debuff from hurricane coupled with letting loose a Typhoon which should reduce the amount of damage the person aoe tanking is taking thanks to it's knockback.

Being instant and high burst damage is what's lovely about starfire, very lovely. The cooldown is annoying, but that's because it's high damage. I won't change it, it has many uses

100% spell haste on crit was ridiculously overpowered, not the 20% that's given now. Improved Moonkin aura is the sort of buff/aura the build's been crying for the "stand up and be counted" buff that has taken forever to come. As others have corrected, the proc is based off the caster’s crit, not the druid’s, and only applies to the group, not the entire raid. It is a powerful tool at 20% and one which is intended for raids to want a moonkin along, moonkins give no mana regen to group, it seems they’re compensation comes in damage. In my opinion, with these changes, i.e. imp moonkin aura, nature’s fury, new thorns damage, new imp FF and the new AoE stuff, raiding moonkins are finally on-par with shadow priests and TBC shaman. I suspect Elemental shaman will get another nuke for WotLK, 1 CC, and a non-totem based AoE to add to their existing 4 aoEs (Magma, Nova, Fire Lord & Chain Lightning).

The roots indoors will help balance druids in 5-mans more, but then as roots won’t play as large a role as polymorph in raids, so it’s more a vital ability for the more casual pVE gamers. It’s looking good. Never have I felt balance druids were equal peers to shadow priests, elemental shaman or mages & warlocks. If someone was picking a class to be a caster, the last he would choose would be balance. Balance druids know what it’s like, so the wrath of the Lich King changes are finally the sort of thing build users have been waiting for since WoW was released and they watched every other dps caster get great upgrades.

Off course bad numbers for icd or shared cooldowns could turn many a promising talent we see to worthless, so no one is rejoicing tilll these hit live at Christmas or Summer (if you're optimistic).
Yeah they did, but then again, druids had to shift out to remove that curse, and it was mitigating almost all of the druid's dps. I don't think it is the same at all for thorns. Thorns should have scaled long before TBC was released, but was overlooked. It is making up for 2 expansions of neglect. Imagine when TBC had that 1000%+ increase in stamina and Thorns damage was still in the back of beyond. Suffice it to say, Thorns should hurt, not be neglected, this is the sort of damage it needs, I'd say the base spell damage at 141 reflection is even too low for level 80, given that only melee strikes are affected, making dual wielding rogues/shaman/warriors the only ones in pvp this is useful against unless you spec brambles. Working against spells would have been nice, and although I'd like more damage to thorns, the fact that it is finally scaling is great.

The old CoW gave a 75%+ reduction to feral druids, the thorns has nowhere near that ridiculous affect on anything given that level 80 you can expect an extra 5k on your health, and judging by how every damage spell has got at least a 35% damage increase, substantially more than in TBC, I expect a stamina rise of closer to the 10K mark, making 141 thorns not laughable, but again not all that unless you pick up brambles.

In PvP against skilled rogues it's always been nasty for balance druids, I see owlkin frenzy, brambled Thorns being much appreciated. Now if Owlkin frenzy gave immunity to either interrupt or stun, (both would be OP at 15% proc rate), that would be great.

Moonkin utility would be on par, with the others not through the roof: You forget that at the moment Moonkin utility is abyssmal compared to what else other dps casters bring both to groups/raids and caster management. I take the moonkin when I've got all the spaces filled as the cherry on the cake rather than part of the cake which is how I view shadow priests, elemental shaman, mages and warlocks. We could simply count the amount of different abilities each class talent tree brings to a raid, and you will see the problem blizzard has finally noticed. Balance druids are nice to have, but if you had a choice between taken a balance druid , a shadow priest or elemental shaman in that last spot given no others were in the raid, you would never pick a balance druid. I would never pick the balance druid (if all were in equivalent gear and equally skilled), whiles powerful, and useable in raids, it is not at the same level as others utility or effectiveness where it stands right now.

It has Thorns, MotW and Entangling roots all but useless PvE wise ( you take em if you have em, but you certianly don't invite for em)
Follow this with IS/Imp FF which are better and useable if mild
Then there is Moonkin aura, Innervate, Combat rez.

Want us to count the non-dps caster related buffs from shadow priests and elemental shaman? They triple the above and are more useable.

Leaving what for casting? Hmm..atm, 5% crit aura. That's it.

WotLK -->Thorns useful, MotW serious, Roots a tool
Casting gets: Moonkin Aura, Imp FF, Imp Moonkin Aura (the really cool one) and finally Nature's Fury at 6%, though small, nice.

This is a lot healthier than before and on par with what others have.
Shaman: 100+ Spell damage, 3% hit/crit, mana regen, health regen, blood lust and a Wave of utilities that fill the page.
Shadow priests: 10% shadow damage, 5% all damage, 5% shadow crit, Mana regen, health regen, Stamina buff, shadow protection, OOC rez, DR shield, Fade, now dispersion, the list goes on.

I could go on and list stuff for mages and warlocks if you keep this up, the evidence is plain for all to see. You don't see groups or raids being halted because there isn't a balance druid around, but you see them halted for mages, locks, shadow priests being absent, and while you don't see them halted for Elemental Shaman either, again in TBC I would prefer 1 elemental shaman to my raid as opposed to 1 balance druid, not even a tough choice.

With WotLK, hah, it will depend on what other classes are available, the encounter we're going for but largely simply who was playing and not because one build was clearly superior to another.
Come on dude, balance druids don't even have a continuous AoE to speak off, no-anti caster ability like silence/spell lock. Main CC spell has a stupid indoor restriction, come on dude

Balance is looking competitive in WotLK, I still don't think these changes are enough for raids to go "must get a balance druid in here at least" ... which is what a lot tend to do for Warlocks and Mages and Shadow Priests. Frankly I've seen 25-mans go without a single druid of any spec, even a warrior of any spec, but never seen one go without a Mage or Warlock funny that huh.

I try to get at least a mage, a lock, a shaman in the raid, good to have a druid too and a hunter, a paladin too, certianly a priest, although I think groups are more reluctant to go without a shadow priest than they are without a holy priest. So far, mage, warlock, shaman and shadow priest in my sphere of raiding have been dead essentials. Seeing that balance druids aren't giving back any mana, whiles I think WotLK would make them on par with the others, I still don't think they will join the mage/warlock/shadow priest demand, but they'd be a lot more difficult than now to leave out.

A 3 second CD moonkin aura would single handedly be better than all of that. Comparing their 12 benefits to your 4 is all fine and good but if the aura(the thing that makes you want more than 1x moonkin) is giving +20-22% dps it seems pretty silly. After the first spriest all you get is a 2% VT for 150-200mp5 and some group healing, their days at 2-3 per raid are gone unless their individual dps is near warlock/mage.

Lets be honest here, balance druids in live right now are only a fraction away from being an automatic 1x every raid already.

One thing that springs to mind as a possibility about the aura is that it may only apply to the next spell cast - every time you crit, you gain 20% haste on the next spell cast within 10 seconds, and once you cast that spell you lose the buff.

it could, but that would be kinda naf tbh, making it 20% is still suitably powered and makes it the "come grab me" ability balance druids have craved so long when added to the smaller buffs being given. I reckon 20% with an icd of 13 or 15 seecs.

I think Flamingcloud has got it wrong if he interprets the few seconds to mean few seconds after cast, making it quite impressive. I suspect "few seconds" meant a few seconds after the effect has ended so if 3-5 secs, it means 2-5secs after 10secs has elapsed giving it an internal cooldown of 12-15s, which sounds about right, Bear in mind that crit is not such a heavily pursued stat, even by those that benefit much from it.

A sweet group set up would be Balance druid+Ele Shaman+Fire Mage+Dest Warlock+ Arcane mage: Other casters in the raid could be Frost Mage & Affliction lock, Shadow Priest. Frost Mage is recommended must have if a Death Knight is in your group, and if you could only take 2 mages with a DK in the group, you'd probably ditch the Arcane mage.

Anyway, if it was a caster heavy fight, easy to see 2 groups of casters: Interesting that we never consider taking more than one of elemental shaman & balance druid in a raid even if we needed 12 casters, unless the players present were better geared/skilled than their mage/lock equivalent. WotLK won't change that either. Atm Shadow priests x2 are quite welcome, maybe the nerf to the group mana regen would redress the balance.

Group A: Elemental Shaman, Frost Mage, Lock, Affic Lock, Shadow Priest
Group B: Balance Druid, Fire Mage, Dest Lock, Arcane Mage, Demo Lock

Unless it canges, I think brambles will be mandatory (at least for one Mk in the raid). Brambles alone will give tanks an extra 100 tps for every melee mob.

In PvP, Brambles+Thorns will be murder (until dispelled) against rogues and cats. It also boost FoN damage, so if at level 70 in PvP they were giving you 200 dps, that will suddenly jump to 350 dps (same gear, still at level 70).

Considering Frenzy, people may start dropping Control of Nature.

Depending on the buffs the other casters get, if the improved moonkin aura results in more than an average 5% extra haste per caster in the group, it will be problematic.

5% extra crit and 5% extra haste would amount to roughly a 7% to 8% dps boost for the other group members, so it would mean that the personal dps of the moonkin would only need to be 60% to 65% of the rest of the group to justify including one. That would already come pretty close to the buff the first shadow priest would give to the raid, and it would become problematic.

An average of 20% extra haste would be so overpowered that the moonkin could be in greens and still justify a spot in a T10 raid, though, it would mean the moonkin would only need to do 10% to 20% of the personal dps of the rest of the group members to be included. It would be less powerful if 40% haste from gear will become the norm, as 60% haste to 40% haste is only a 14% improvement, though