Moonkin WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 34

Erdluf · 09/18/08, 11:14 AM

Originally Posted by erragal

If you read multiple posts by the class developers, they do not want 'the math to work out'. They want you to make decisions between talents so that there are hard choices to make. The real error with this methodology is shown with Erdluf's math a few pages back: every talent is going to be explored to establish a comparative value, and only the absolute best ones will/should be taken. Even by the people who don't care much about theorycraft, they'll armory up a known balance druid and just copy their spec.

I actually like that they want to make difficult choices for us, but they may not be going about it in a way that will accomplish their goal. I would not expect that 'bloat' to go away, instead it might be better to push for more distinctive choices near the end of the tree. The possibility of two branching talent paths where one is heavily DoT focused and the other nuke focused could give actual playstyle differences while maintaining DPS balance.

That is a pretty good evaluation for the EJ world, where a Moonkin's job is raid buffs and single-target DPS on a tanked target. Nothing else really matters.

Blizz does have a larger audience. I'm almost at the opposite extreme from the raid model. Only about 5% of my playtime is spent in a PvE party, and almost all of that is for 5-mans.

In TBC, as a solo player, I use a 48/0/13 build which looks a lot like the raider's 44/0/17. The only significant difference is CF vs. Subtlety and possibly IFF. In LK, I expect much more difference, especially at 70. I expect to go 58/0/3, with 3/3 Nature's Focus, 3/3 Owlkin Frenzy, 3/3 Brambles, 3/3 CF, 1/1 Typhoon, and 2/2 Gale Winds. Those are 15 talent points which are at best questionable for a level 70 raider.

I expect arena builds (assuming Moonkin is viable for arena at all) to also look substantially different.

Axanor · 09/18/08, 12:08 PM

Originally Posted by Ulthwithian

My concern with the bloat, such as it is, is that it's preventing us from taking our talented 'skills', specifically Starfall and Typhoon. As someone said above, we now have almost no way of taking these talents. This seems very counterintuitive to talent tree design.

Having to 'make choices' is perfectly fine, but not when I might have to change my spec every other run to make sure I cover the right buffs/debuffs. A better 'choice' alternative would be to specialize in Nature or Arcane damage for the Balance tree. Then, you will have made a choice, but that choice once made would change rarely if ever.

Their current implementation is not meeting their stated design goals, IMO.

The tension in a talent tree has normally been between Utility (usually PvP/solo oriented) and pure DPS increases. Which can create interesting decisions. The current WOTLK Fury tree's a great example of the philosophy done well. You can pick up 99% of the talents Fury would want for single-target DPS, but you have to give up the utility abilities to do it. There's tension and trade-offs, but it's not painful or frustrating in the slightest.

erragal · 09/18/08, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by Erdluf

That is a pretty good evaluation for the EJ world, where a Moonkin's job is raid buffs and single-target DPS on a tanked target. Nothing else really matters.

Blizz does have a larger audience. I'm almost at the opposite extreme from the raid model. Only about 5% of my playtime is spent in a PvE party, and almost all of that is for 5-mans.

In TBC, as a solo player, I use a 48/0/13 build which looks a lot like the raider's 44/0/17. The only significant difference is CF vs. Subtlety and possibly IFF. In LK, I expect much more difference, especially at 70. I expect to go 58/0/3, with 3/3 Nature's Focus, 3/3 Owlkin Frenzy, 3/3 Brambles, 3/3 CF, 1/1 Typhoon, and 2/2 Gale Winds. Those are 15 talent points which are at best questionable for a level 70 raider.

I expect arena builds (assuming Moonkin is viable for arena at all) to also look substantially different.

I agree entirely. When I'm leveling up owlkin frenzy and typhoon will be a must, and are much more fun for BG's (The PVP I prefer to play, and spend most of my non-raid time doing.) I don't think it's a bad thing that there are distinct builds for small group and pvp play within the balance tree, it allows those who focus on different aspects to feel distinctive and customized.

I'm still a casual player at heart; I just enjoy the numbers, theorycraft, gear decisions, and teamwork involved in the raiding game too much. Just being able to aoe grind (And even tank) effectively is such an awesome new ability to play with that pure raiders have no concern for. I really look forward to being able to run 5-mans that are somewhat challenging and have actual upgrades in them, as I've always enjoyed that setting the most.

Hopefully with the new 10-man progression path you'll get more opportunities to spend in a PVE setting if you're interested!

Axanor: I don't feel any of the decisions we have to make right now are painful or frustating right now, outside of the Gale Winds or no Gale Winds one. Which is a decision between increased aoe utility or not. I suppose I just don't feel that upset if I can't get EVERY dps increase, as long as I'm picking the best talents for my focus.

Additionally, has anyone checked what our T7 set bonuses are? I'd appreciate a posting here if so!

Spiry · 09/18/08, 12:54 PM

(2)Your Insect Swarm deals an additional 10% damage

(4)Your Wrath and Starfire spells gain an additional 5% critical strike chance.

• Adoriele · 09/18/08, 1:14 PM

Originally Posted by Spiry

(2)Your Insect Swarm deals an additional 10% damage

(4)Your Wrath and Starfire spells gain an additional 5% critical strike chance.

As an interesting note: with 4T7, Eclipse's Starfire proc, iIS with Moonfire up, and all other relevant crit talents, this puts us at ~60% crit with Starfire with even basic gear.

For added giggles, remember that 4T6 is still possible with 4T7. You wouldn't actually want to (probably), but hey, just saying we can get ~65% crit on our main nuke is interesting enough.

erragal · 09/18/08, 1:19 PM

Originally Posted by Spiry

(2)Your Insect Swarm deals an additional 10% damage

(4)Your Wrath and Starfire spells gain an additional 5% critical strike chance.

Thank you very much Spiry.

Very solid set bonuses, even if they're unoriginal. I imagine they're saving more interesting things for the later tiers. EDIT: As Adoriele pointed out, our crit rate is going to easily be pushing 50-60% after raid buffs just in Tier 7.

Insect Swarm is going to have amazing scaling with the set bonus and the Glyph. If anyone has been running Naxx on Beta, it'd be great to see if the bonuses are multiplicative or additive.

On a non-raid note, it's going to be entertaining taking all the periodic damage talents/buffs/glyphs and dotting everyone up during BG's!

One of the trinkets posted in the mage thread is nearly 600 spell damage proc on offensive spell cast; If it procs at a reasonably controllable rate, that could be extremely instrumental in making rolling moonfires very powerful. Assuming it doesn't lock out activated trinkets, you can wait for the proc at the beginning of the fight then trinket/Destro Pot/Sp Dmg drum and apply your moonfire.

Apparently there's some solid info on Librams out there, I wonder if Idols have been itemized as well (Patches during the work week are terrible!)

spencerthomas · 09/18/08, 6:40 PM

the data mined on wowhead shows two possible options but they both have placeholders.
Idol of the Shooting Star - Item - World of Warcraft
Idol of Worship - Item - World of Warcraft

Shooting Star could be just an increased Moongodess idol.
If we compare the resto idols Idol of Lush Moss - Item - World of Warcraft and Idol of the Emerald Queen - Item - World of Warcraft it went up 265%. If balance gets the same love look at +145 spellpower to Starfire. who knows with the Worship idol, they could make it a Raven Godess-esque idol.

As the beta/PTR has been evolving I have been working on my patch moonkin spec as I will be taking on the role for the guild. Below is my current setup but having trouble testing it.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Above is the setup I've gone with the current iteration on PTR. I'm thinking with all the AE damage being tossed out in Sunwell the Owlkin frenzy would be rather useful, I do wonder how it responds to AE attacks like Felmysts damage aura. With the change to the dummies in Stormwind testing the new Ecplise is kindof impossible ( unless someone knows where they hid the 73 raid boss dummy ). With the 3 raiding moonkin glyphs ( Starfire, IS, and Moonfire ) the burst of a 15s wrath spam would still allow you to create a padding on your moonfire dot timer from your regular starfire rotation. Now instead of MF+SFx4 it will be IS+SF. I cant get a solid idea of the average tick IS should be doing on a raid boss to compare to the DPS of SF itself. Anyone have any rough testing on the DPS of a pure SF vs IS+SF?

• Adoriele · 09/18/08, 7:53 PM

Yeah, I'm also missing the level 70 target dummies, wish they would bring them back. Oh well, they wouldn't have been useful once Wrath hits anyway.

So I'm attaching an updated spreadsheet. Not much more functionality included in the way of rotations, Eclipse still isn't modeled, etc., but it's got the new changes to the various talents in the last patch, plus the change to Replenishment. Yay for now being back in danger of running OOM if you're not careful. I also added support for the Chaotic diamonds, and the T7 set bonuses. Lastly, to the left of the stat input fields is a set of numbers coming off of a complete gearset from T7 25-man raiding, complete with enchants and gems. It's self-picked, but I tried to hit-cap and then go for haste and spell damage, less emphasis on crit and spirit. In any case, it's a decent baseline for gearing until Rawr updates to Wrath.

Erdluf · 09/18/08, 9:13 PM

Originally Posted by Adoriele

So I'm attaching an updated spreadsheet. Not much more functionality included in the way of rotations, Eclipse still isn't modeled, etc.,

Adoriele, I like the format of the spreadsheet. Mine are always an ugly mess.

Some corrections:

1) You included Moonfury in the Starfire Coef calculation (giving 1.32), and then multiplied by Moonfury again in the Starfire average damage calculation. I'd remove Moonfury from the Starfire Coef calculation to fix.

2) Moonfire, it looks like you used the EJ formula for hybrid spells (and may have messed it up). Moonfire coef (on live) gives better answers with the wowwiki formula:

Direct = 1.5/3.5 * (1.5/3.5 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15)) = 14.95%
DoT (4 ticks) = 12/15 * (12/15 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15)) = 52.09%

3) You have Wrath coef with 5/5 WoC as

1.5/3.5 * (1 + .1) = 63%

correct (on live) is

1.5/3.5 + .1 = 67%

4) Insect swarm coef (live) is 76%. That seems to be (12/15) * 95%, where 95% is a penalty because of the IS debuff. It will be interesting to see if that penalty goes away when using the IS glyph.

5) I recommend putting a "lag" entry on the character sheet and then adding it to all cast times. Even 0.05s has a fairly noticable impact when comparing Wrath rotations to SF rotations.

6) To me, the wording on both MS and E&M (the private part) looks more like the LG/WoC wording, than like the wording for Moonfury (or the raid portion of E&M). I suspect they may be multipliers to Spellpower, rather than multipliers to total damage. A related question is whether they multiply (1.04*1.05) or add (4%+5%). Perhaps someone on beta can test by looking at MF or IS dots?

As a very rough 3/3 Eclipse rotation (using SF to proc the Wrath buff. using Nature's Splendor and the SF glyph) the timing looks approximately correct (I was using less haste, less crit, and some lag) for

2*MF 2.5*IS 3.5*SF 19*Wr

with 9 of the wraths getting the Eclipse buff. That was 3 talent points giving about 3% more DPS than a MF IS Wr*10 rotation, but would require a lot more concentration. The "3.5*SF" part of that comes from second or third SF being a crit, then 1 more SF before you notice the crit.

Soultrigger · 09/18/08, 9:40 PM

Since I couldn´t see any updated info on mmo-champion and wowhead seems to be outdated as well, I will post the build 8962 new 10 man druid nuker set: (extracted but itemid and addon itemmagic on beta servers)

Heroes´ Dreamwalker Cover
Head
458 armor
67 stam
65 int
meta socket
red socket
socket bonus: +8 int
Crit Rat 56
Hit Rat 36
SP 85

Heroes´ Dreamwalker Mantle
Shoulder
423 armor
49 stam
51 int
red socket
socket bonus: +4 int
Haste Rat 47
Hit Rat 29
SP 68

Heroes´ Dreamwalker Vestments
Chest
564 armor
67 stam
63 int
red socket
blue socket
socket bonus: +6 haste rating
Crit Rat 54
Haste Rat 52
SP 85

Heroes´ Dreamwalker Trousers
Legs
494 armor
67 stam
65 int
52 spi
red socket
blue socket
socket bonus: +6 hit rating
Crit Rat 52
SP 85

Heroes´ Dreamwalker Gloves
Hand
353 armor
49 stam
51 int
30 spi
red socket
socket bonus: +6 stam
Crit Rat 48
SP 68

Set Bonuses:

2)Your Insect Swarm deals an additional 10% damage

(4)Your Wrath and Starfire spells gain an additional 5% critical strike chance.

(As Spiry pointed out)

• Adoriele · 09/18/08, 10:34 PM

Originally Posted by Erdluf

Adoriele, I like the format of the spreadsheet. Mine are always an ugly mess.

Some corrections:

1) You included Moonfury in the Starfire Coef calculation (giving 1.32), and then multiplied by Moonfury again in the Starfire average damage calculation. I'd remove Moonfury from the Starfire Coef calculation to fix.

2) Moonfire, it looks like you used the EJ formula for hybrid spells (and may have messed it up). Moonfire coef (on live) gives better answers with the wowwiki formula:

Direct = 1.5/3.5 * (1.5/3.5 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15)) = 14.95%
DoT (4 ticks) = 12/15 * (12/15 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15)) = 52.09%

3) You have Wrath coef with 5/5 WoC as

1.5/3.5 * (1 + .1) = 63%

correct (on live) is

1.5/3.5 + .1 = 67%

4) Insect swarm coef (live) is 76%. That seems to be (12/15) * 95%, where 95% is a penalty because of the IS debuff. It will be interesting to see if that penalty goes away when using the IS glyph.

5) I recommend putting a "lag" entry on the character sheet and then adding it to all cast times. Even 0.05s has a fairly noticable impact when comparing Wrath rotations to SF rotations.

6) To me, the wording on both MS and E&M (the private part) looks more like the LG/WoC wording, than like the wording for Moonfury (or the raid portion of E&M). I suspect they may be multipliers to Spellpower, rather than multipliers to total damage. A related question is whether they multiply (1.04*1.05) or add (4%+5%). Perhaps someone on beta can test by looking at MF or IS dots?

As a very rough 3/3 Eclipse rotation (using SF to proc the Wrath buff. using Nature's Splendor and the SF glyph) the timing looks approximately correct (I was using less haste, less crit, and some lag) for

2*MF 2.5*IS 3.5*SF 19*Wr

with 9 of the wraths getting the Eclipse buff. That was 3 talent points giving about 3% more DPS than a MF IS Wr*10 rotation, but would require a lot more concentration. The "3.5*SF" part of that comes from second or third SF being a crit, then 1 more SF before you notice the crit.

1.) Ooops. I had it in the Coeff first, then decided to move it to the final to cover the base as well. Looks like I forgot to pull it out of the coeff.

2.)Yeah, I messed up the formula I was trying for. Checking against your numbers, the two are very close, so I'm gonna hold with what I've been using until I can get some better testing in. If you're worried about the ~13% vs ~52%, I'm only counting per tick.

3.) Oops again.

4.) It probably won't. The only things that seem to change coefficients are effects that mention them specifcally.

5.) Lag's incoming. It's probably gonna be in the next one (along with all these fixes), since it's easier to model than rotations.

6.) MS has been confirmed as a straight damage %, not a spellpower bonus (can't remember where), I'm pretty certain E&M will be, too. It's possible that they're additive, though, but I'll until I can confirm it with testing.

I'm likely going to do a very rough model for the rotations in order to get them in ASAP, then flesh them out ala the ones I did in my other sheet once I get the chance.

[edit] What the heck, why not just fix it now? =D

◊ Lorewanderer · 09/19/08, 8:28 AM

Originally Posted by Roywyn

http://elitistjerks.com/824268-post399.html
Includes a macro and an instruction to display the true GCD if a spell cast.
Nothing so far has been able to go below 1.0s.

I just checked with that macro. Wrath crits lower the GCD to 1.0s, not below (wearing plenty of haste gear so it would be sub-1.0 if it were possible).

◊ Pudgeball · 09/19/08, 9:54 AM

Originally Posted by Adoriele

1.) Ooops. I had it in the Coeff first, then decided to move it to the final to cover the base as well. Looks like I forgot to pull it out of the coeff.

2.)Yeah, I messed up the formula I was trying for. Checking against your numbers, the two are very close, so I'm gonna hold with what I've been using until I can get some better testing in. If you're worried about the ~13% vs ~52%, I'm only counting per tick.

3.) Oops again.

4.) It probably won't. The only things that seem to change coefficients are effects that mention them specifcally.

5.) Lag's incoming. It's probably gonna be in the next one (along with all these fixes), since it's easier to model than rotations.

6.) MS has been confirmed as a straight damage %, not a spellpower bonus (can't remember where), I'm pretty certain E&M will be, too. It's possible that they're additive, though, but I'll until I can confirm it with testing.

I'm likely going to do a very rough model for the rotations in order to get them in ASAP, then flesh them out ala the ones I did in my other sheet once I get the chance.

[edit] What the heck, why not just fix it now? =D

Hey Ado, it seems Intensity is giving the same amount of regen no matter how many points you place in it. :o

• Adoriele · 09/19/08, 10:19 AM

Originally Posted by Pudgeball

Hey Ado, it seems Intensity is giving the same amount of regen no matter how many points you place in it. :o

Yeah, I caught that, too (spirit regen formula just got changed for >70). DS was doing the same thing. Here's a fix =D

◊ Pudgeball · 09/19/08, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by Adoriele

Yeah, I caught that, too (spirit regen formula just got changed for >70). DS was doing the same thing. Here's a fix =D

Thanks

I mainly am trying to see what type of mana issues we could be looking at. I am curious how Hurricane stands against the other casters and their AoE ability and how long we can maintain AoEing, and then going back to single target DPS (On a fight like M'uru or Gluth - Not sure if 25 man still has both components).

◊ Pudgeball · 09/19/08, 11:19 PM

I don't see a point in this Nature's Grace / Splendor change... They need to cut the fat in this tree

Ursanis · 09/20/08, 1:10 AM

At least now splendor may be worth taking for a moonkin and not just for restos. But Grace change is really baffling. I guess they think it had to be made less powerful just because it was moved up in the tree.... I for one always thought it was somewhat underpowered for a 21point anyway.
Makes me imagine a dev sitting there reading responces and saying to himself "Bloat, eh? You ain't seen nuttin yet". >>
And what's up with the wording on splendor?
"Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Rejuvenation spells by 3 sec, your Regrowth spell by 6 sec, and your Lifebloom spell by 3 sec."
Whats the point with an extra second on is and why is lifebloom mentioned separately? Couldn't they just write something like "adds and extra tick on all hots and dots and 2 on regrowth or something?

Erdluf · 09/20/08, 1:24 AM

They've said they're trying to properly budget the talents. Nature's Grace was the most over-budget talent we had (about 7% DPS for 1 talent point). As a three point talent, it is still one of our best places to spend talent points.

Nature's Splendor, as a three point talent, was borderline for Moonkin, but not great (particularly with the SF glyph). As a one point talent it is very good. Some people have said the extra second on IS gives you a 1/2 damage tick. Can someone confirm?

◊ Lorewanderer · 09/20/08, 2:30 AM

Just checked, and it only gives full tics. No half tic on the end of IS.

NG Still reduces the GCD after casting wrath (and only wrath) to a minimum of 1.0s.

Dioneirra · 09/20/08, 3:16 AM

While Nature's Grace indeed was overbudgeted (especially after moving it some tiers down), the tree seems to get once again bloated to a point (through the positioning of the crucial talents), where one can't even make decisions on what to pick (and i thought, Blizzard wanted us to force to choose). Boosting this talent to a 3 pointer, but not addressing other underbudgeted talent like vengeance don't make that much sense. Nature's Splendor looks ok now, i suppose Lifebloom gets more additional ticks because it was nerfed really hard in the last build, and stacking Blooms didn't work at all with this talent. Or maybe it will get only also one in the end, and it was just an oversight.

Kaug · 09/20/08, 4:56 AM

Has anyone with a Beta key determined the rough % proc rate on the moonkin form Crit -> 2% mana return?

Alerian · 09/20/08, 5:06 AM

Originally Posted by Kaug

Has anyone with a Beta key determined the rough % proc rate on the moonkin form Crit -> 2% mana return?

It *should* be 100% of the time that you crit, and it seems to be that way on beta (I haven't checked every crit in my logs to make sure). There are posts in this thread that mention that it does not work on all AoE spells, not sure if that's a bug or intended.

I will agree it's slightly frustrating that we have so many possible places to drop points in our tree, but if my memory serves me, we're still supposedly up for a "polish pass" at some point (or did that happen when they redid the lower part of the tree?), so perhaps things will clear up somewhat in a positive way.

Polishedhead · 09/20/08, 5:13 AM

"Spell critical strikes in this form have a chance to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana."

Is the tooltip incorrect?

Alerian · 09/20/08, 5:47 AM

Originally Posted by Polishedhead

"Spell critical strikes in this form have a chance to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana."

Is the tooltip incorrect?

Just tonight, I've had close to, if not exactly, 100% proc rates on Starfire, Wrath, and Moonfire, and something less than 100 on AoE abilities (it feels like 50% on those, but I'm not sure, too much pumpkin ale). I had been planning on doing more looking into it once they did the retooling of the deeper end of the balance tree.

Celdhyrean · 09/20/08, 6:34 AM

They were talking about changing Vengance to a 1 point talent and compensating with more points on i don't remember which other talent, which wasn't supposed to change anything for moonkins as they were both "mandatory".
I can only hope that this build was caught in the middle of those 2 changes, because while i could defend the bloat up till now, managing to make interesting talent builds (with some hard choices of course, but it did work), this change makes things even more difficult and breaks the flow somewhat.

I'd take moonglow over Nature's Splendor before to reach the fourth tier, helping on mana side and giving full talents. Now you have to take 1/3 Moonglow to reach tier 4 but can go on without filling either Nature's Splendor or Moonglow. It is the same number of points but i don't like the flow of it.
That and I'm down 6% spell cost, which isn't a problem if mana regen is really that good, but since they are trying to tone it down to force us to choose mana/dps i'm not that optimistic about builds without several mana regen talents.

Also, MMO-Champion says aura is now 2% haste, which seems very strange as it's still 3 points and the retribution aura wasn't changed. wowhead calculator still shows 3%, not sure which is right.