I think a larger concern with that type of change would be inflating the PVP value for restos far too much. It would make their dots scale extremely well and that's obviously part of their balance concerns. Adding something that would only be useful for deep balance like Starfall/FoN duration would probably be much more likely to happen.

The inflating dot concern wasn't really an issue until spellpower as resto druids had significantly less +dmg than balance druids. Now that is no longer the case.

I'm thinking the talent should be changed all together. Maybe +1/2/...5% spellpower (at 2k +dmg it would give us +100 spell power).

Of course this is all just wish and hopes.

First off thank you for all the theorycrafting and testing that all those have done so far. It's been extremely interesting reading. One thing that I have noticed is that all of this theorycrafting and build testing is done based on raiding. I understand that, in the end, this is one of the most important things to focus on for a class since this is where you will be spending the majority of your time.

My question, however, concerns a leveling build. I've attempted to search through this topic along with the forum in general but have not found any recent discussion around what talent builds and spells people plan on using to leveling with. This will also be the first time leveling as a Boomkin. Right now I am resto with almost full s4 healing gear which I will be using to start out leveling with. That means lots of spell power but not much crit.

The build I have though of starting out with is here. Most of the time I will be leveling with my warrior buddy so I skipped Owlkin Frenzy for now in favor of Nature's Focus since he will be taking the hits more often than not. I also went to OoC to try and increase the grind time without needing a drink. From here I planned on going with either Intensity or Master Shapeshifter depending on how mana issues were. From there I wasn't quite sure where to go. Celestial Focus seemed nice for the extra haste, but then Genesis and Nature's Splendor would help when having to heal my warrior buddy.

As for spell rotation, I figure the normal thing would be to throw up IS for iIS then just wrath until dead. If I was the one pulling and had time I could start out with a SF, but my guess is that we'll just be grinding through stuff without the need for it.

Any comments or suggestions from those who have played Boomkin more or have been leveling on the PTR/Beta? Thanks in advance!

For levelling, you want to do an AOE build, even if you're paired with a warrior.

I'd go with something like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

As you level, fill out earth and moon, wrath of cenarius, lunar guidance, and master shapeshifter, and grab starfall.


Make sure you have thorns up, put a hot on yourself (nature's splendor is good for this) if need be, shift to moonkin, pull a few mobs with insect swarm, wait for owlkin frenzy to proc (it doesn't take long) and hurricane everything down. By yourself you should be able to kill everything in a single hurricane, and typhoon if anything remains standing.

When paired with another person just pull as much as is possible and have them use whatever aoe they have, including things like whirlwind.

I managed to get on the PTR now. I tested Shadowmeld on single world mobs.
I doted mobs with MF and IS. As soon as shadowmeld is used all DoTs are cancelled on the mob. The mob leaves and will not aggro again when you get out of shadowmeld. You can leave shadowmeld immediately after the mob is out of aggro range.
If the mob is still in combat when you return from Shadowmeld (e.g. another grp member or your treants attacked) you will be as well back in combat with him. Due to a missing threat mod I could not check with how much threat you return.

It seems Munorion is right.

If this works in the same way with mob groups and bosses, it will be indeed useable as lifesaver.
In my opinion this also would allow to act as puller, very similar to a hunter.

Hi, I've been reading this forum for a while.
I'm curious, what professions are going to be the best in exp for PvE moonkin?

I'm likely sticking with LWing/Enchanting because they're both competitive with JC'ing, and I already have them leveled. All of the crafting professions provide very similar bonuses to spell power at this point except tailoring (Which gives embroideries which seem better for PVP)

Herbalism also provides some very powerful benefits due to the Fire Seed consumable. If you use it on every cooldown it's worth an average of 33 spell damage during a fight, and could be worth significantly more if used during bloodlusts/eclipse procs. You also get the benefit of a non-scaling burst heal that's usable in moonkin form, something that does have some PVE utility. I've seriously considered dropping LWing for herbalism just due to it being comparable while also allowing you to make money very easily. And if rolling our moonfire is left in, it's immediately more powerful than all the other professions. It does require more farming to maintain, so if you don't enjoy picking herbs it may not be a good choice.

when leveling up, I found having intensity, OOC, AND dreamstate all very beneficial to my uptime. I rarely had to drink unless it was intense battling.

As for normal spell rotation:
starfire + moonfire, starfire again if mob was far away, otherwise wrath'd (especially if eclipse (trying it out) procced).

Serrah's Star has been one of the best trinkets I've found while leveling up. I use it along side my skull of guldan

Interesting, I never would have thought of an AoE build. Have you enjoyed leveling with it? When leveling my pally I went prot for a bit to AoE grind but with the amount of casters and the distance separating mobs I found it to be much more difficult, and much less enjoyable, when questing.

Does the mob distribution and type (caster vs. melee) allow for AoE more easily during questing in WoLK or is this more for finding a good group of melee mobs and grinding them forever similar to a prot pally. Personally I enjoy questing much more than grinding mobs. Would you still recommend this build for a questing specific style of play?

It depends entirely on location. There are areas where there exist maybe 1 mob per 100 square yards (YAY) and then there are areas where you lucky get 1 mob per 1000 square yards.

Also you have terrain / multiple level issues.

Certain quests require high powered single target dps. Some quests require killing 500 million things waiting for one to drop something.

For PURE grinding, aoe spec would be great as you would just find a single place that suits your purpose and grind your heart away.

For questing, I strongly recommend something that is versatile and allows you to adapt to any situation (this may also include pvp if you're on a pvp server).

Mining:
500 health, barely not useless for raiding.

Skinning:
25 Crit rating, also barely not useless.

Herbalism:
Erragal covered this one.

Alchemy:
Mixology gives ~23 spellpower with a [Flask of Blinding Light]
Mercurial Alchemist Stone - Item - World of Warcraft would be the best Stone for us, though its value depends on how good other trinkets are at 80. Likely going to be upgradable, though.

Blacksmithing:
Two added personal sockets to.. I think gloves and belt are the personal ones. With Blue gems, this is worth 38 spellpower. Noteworthy is that the sockets have no color, and do not count toward socket bonuses, meaning that even if you have no blue sockets, using blue/purple/green gems in these slots will still activate Chaotic diamonds, while still alowing you to get socket bonuses. Also, rumors have BS getting a second meta slot, which catapults the benefit greatly, but this isn't in the beta yet.

Engi:
Compare Greensight Gogs - Item - World of Warcraft to Heroes' Dreamwalker Cover - Item - World of Warcraft (T7-10). +20 Crit, +2 Spellpower, -36 Hit, -5 Int. Number-wise, it's on par, but not as well-itemized, which is saying something since HDW isn't perfectly-itemized either. So it'll be good for the first tier of raiding if you confine yourself to 10-mans.

Leatherworking:
70 Spellpower enchant to bracers. Considering the non-LW enchant is 23 spellpower, this is a 47 spellpower benefit.

Tailoring:
Lightweave Embroidery - Spell - World of Warcraft gives 1000-1200 damage as a 50% proc, 45s internal CD. Generously, it's about 25 DPS, do not expect it to scale with spellpower, though it's unsure. Darkglow Embroidery - Spell - World of Warcraft restores 300 mana, 35% proc chance, 90s internal CD. Amounts to about 17 MP5. Not terribly worthwhile considering our mana situation, but it's there.

Jewelcrafting:
This is the big one. First, access to JC-only gems, of which we're interested in Quick Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft, Rigid Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft, Runed Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft, and perhaps Smooth Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft, Solid Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft, Sparkling Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft, Brilliant Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft, or Lustrous Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft situationally. These have an interesting uniqueness. You can equip any 3 of them, or 3 of the same, or similar, just no more than 3 Dragon's Eyes total. Each is worth 9 spellpower/7 Rating/7 stats/3 MP5 over their EPIC counterparts, or about 27 spellpower total assuming all Runed. They also fill all color sockets which confers a few benefits. First, is that you can satisfy the blue gem requirements for the Chaotic diamond while using a 'red' or 'yellow' gem, without having to waste stat points on Stam, or MP5, or Spirit. Assuming you use three Runeds, this jumps to 67 spellpower benefit over using Glowing gems to activate your meta. They also fit any socket, so if you have 3 blue sockets on your gear, you can bump the value to 87 spellpower.

Second, you have access to JC-only trinkets. Each has two sockets, which is a change from TBC, and as far as anyone knows they are the only socketable trinkets in the game. We're interested in Figurine - Twilight Serpent - Item - World of Warcraft and Figurine - Sapphire Owl - Item - World of Warcraft. Likely not as good as what you'll get in Naxx, but they're blue and level 75 required, and likely to be upgraded at some point.

Enchanting:
19 spellpower to each ring for a total of 38 spellpower. We can't use wands, and I doubt they'll be adding Ench-only idols. Sadly, they seem to have removed the Haste ring enchants.

Inscription:
The extra glyph slot seems to have been removed as well, which is fine since most classes never really needed to choose between multiple glyphs anyway. If it comes back, you'll likely use the extra slot for the Innervate glyph, since IS, MF, and SF glyphs are mostly mandatory. Instead, Scribes get shoulder enchants. Comparing Master's Inscription of the Storm - Spell - World of Warcraft to Greater Inscription of the Storm - Item - World of Warcraft we get an extra 37 spellpower.

Comparing, Jewelcrafting is going to provide by far the most benefit. Not just in straight-up stats, but in the ability to somewhat ignore socket colors for bonuses. If Blacksmithing ends up getting the second meta slot, it would easily be the second profession to take, though my guess is that they're going to shy from that because Mages with Blacksmithing is kinda . Leatherworking provides the best straight-stat benefit, and Alchemy is next, since we'll likely see a new raiding flask come out, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Mixology benefit be 37-38 spellpower for us. This would make Alch, Ench, Inscription, and BS (assuming no second meta) approximately equal in benefit. Tailoring brings up the rear of the crafting professions, as ~38 Spellpower is going to be worth about double the value of 25 DPS. Engi gets decent benefit to start raiding with, then drops out early.

A last note, other than resist sets (and Engi helms), there have been no craftable epic BoP patterns seen yet. I imagine this is intentional, though unfortunate.

Aye, it's pretty devastating just how powerful JC is, though if each gem were unique along with the 3-DE-only rule, it might be a little more in line. We'd want the extra 9 spellpower, 7 hit, and 7 haste, get an extra 20 spellpower from socketing the Runed in a blue slot, then maybe another 10 haste/hit from doing the same in a second slot. Then, realistically, we wouldn't be socketing a blue in any of the others anyway, so we don't gain anything but a single socket bonus, and that's only if it has a single blue slot we're not already subbing. I mean, I could double-check against the T7-25 gear list I created for the sheet's baseline, but it's situational. So that's, what, 29 spellpower, 17 haste/hit, 7 hit/haste, and a possible socket bonus on the order of 7-8 stats or rating? It's not too terrible now that I think about it. About 48 itemization points, compared to 32 for the other professions, and on-par with socketing epic gems in the two Blacksmith-only slots. So about 1.5 times as good, ignoring the trinkets, which may or may not get upgraded.

Also, consider how much the perks are really worth. Tailoring is ~25 DPS. The 38 SP perks are about 43 DPS in a IS, SFxN, MF rider rotation, and JC/BS is about 65 DPS. That's ~.65%, ~1.13%, and ~1.71% DPS respectively (depending on how you use your sockets with JC/BS). Upgrading from a 38SP benefit to JC/BS is only a ~.57% increase in DPS, nothing worth screaming about. And this is at fully T7-25 levels. Add another tier, and we'll see a significant drop in the difference between the specs, and all of this is going to be lost in the noise between day-to-day performance. It really isn't too huge of an issue to worry about. So much so that I'm likely going to be dropping Ench for Mining, because although 500 health is almost useless in a raid scenario, the personal benefit of being able to level JC without relying on the AH, and even being able to turn a profit from it, is worth more to me than another <1% DPS in a raiding scenario.

Plus with JC you get the benefit of two crafting professions anyway Realistically that's why I like herbalism: I can make money, provide my own flask materials, and get equal or better min-max performance simultaneously. I also really like the mini health potion perk. Without drums and no BoP patterns in sight, leatherworking seems very generic to me. I'm just operating on the assumption herbalism consumables are not once per fight, they feel very balanced considering you have to spend a lot of time farming to use them on every boss fight.

I have a moonkin in Beta, and I equiped all the crit PvP gear. My mana regen went from a bit more then 200 while casting to 72. I did a bunch of skirmish arena and found myself going /oom within the first 2 minutes of battle (if I could survive the burst from a rogue or ret). I have all the mana regen talents I think most standard raiding specs will have from the resto tree. In the spirit gear, I could almost never run out of mana but I could also never kill anything that could heal (no crit means no burst). In my opinion in PvP, druids will no longer be able to have a hybrid spec for good healing and mana regen from the balance tree and so when we spec more into balance, we either get spirit gear at the expense of burst or spec crit at the expense of mana regen.

So, what this comes down to really is what you want to excel at. Not having burst, but lots of mana regen (kodohide set) will be helpful for 5's and getting crit for burst but no mana regen (wyrmhide set) will work more for 2's.

Well that's how it is even in live, full balance is a burst/control class that doesn't do well against drain teams or most double healer teams period unless you can drop someone fast. When I do get to arena, I don't win fights that last more than two minutes. Rogues shouldn't be able to burst you safely with thorns, barkskin and high armor...ret is extremely dangerous because they hit slow and most of their damage ignores armor.

I wonder if they have moonkin form set up to still return mana if you would crit but the crit was nullified due to the opponents resilience similar to other talents that can be totally nullified in PVP because of that. PVP spec wise you're almost certainly going to need OoC from resto which is ok because you want full subtlety for PVP as well. You can still get burst from the 4-piece balance set and wearing mana regen offset pieces, due to the high burst damage of sub 1.5 second starfires.

Eh? And yeah, part of the dropping Ench for me is that I never got the eternium rod made, so I can't even do any of the new enchants without a significant investment, which I'm less likely to do now (boy was that a shock to realize when I finally got enough mats to do my first enchant >.<).

Eh, I originally got Enchanting for the [Smoking Heart of the Mountain], back when it was required for almost every Druid who had any ideas of tanking at all. Since TBC, I just haven't been able to sell my enchants at all, and though they'll be AHable soon enough, it's just not worth it to me anymore compared to being able to fuel my own JCing, the which has become a more fun profession. I like not having to look for someone to enchant for me, but since I never got most of the great enchants, it was a dubious benefit anyway (of course, I say this only having two rare BC gem patterns =P).

I definitely enjoyed levelling with it, and did it while questing not grinding.

There are certainly a lot of areas where you need single target damage, but you're not really lacking there with an aoe build. The idea is to be able to kill the pack with a single hurricane, so the aoe talents and improved thorns really help out there.

Most areas you can grab about 3 mobs to kill at a time, some areas many more and you really notice a difference in killing speed.

Called it:

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Profession Benefit Review, post 29. New spellpower flask is 125 spellpower, benefit from Mixology is 37 spellpower.

Also, I'm uploading the next rev of the sheet. This one sees all spammy rotations implemented, rough though they may be. I take a couple shortcuts to get a general sense, rather than flesh out all the probabilities a full workup would require. No surprise, using the MF, SF, and IS Glyph, you're getting the best returns from IS, SFxN, MF rider rotation. Best DPS by ~70 using Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft, highest DPM, and about average on MP5 requirements post-active-regen. Oddly, the second-best DPS rotation is also the cheapest to maintain: Starfire Spam with a MF Rider.

Beginning support for talent benefit numbers. All rotations have Starlight Wrath, OoC, E&M, and Master Shapeshifter implemented, and some rotations (though not MF, IS, SFxN, unfortunately) have more. To view benefits in the character sheet window, choose a rotation in the rotation window. Or, alternatively, you can choose to show all and you'll see the benefit of each talent for each rotation (this mucks with the character sheet display, though, as I use a sum as a shortcut). "UNIMP" means just that, I haven't implemented that talent's benefit yet. Some, like Furor or Lunar Guidance, will probably take a while to implement.

Lastly, note that these benefits are calculated with an eye toward the raid benefit as well. For example, if you have no Unholy DK or CoE, Earth and Moon will show a much larger benefit than it will when you select one of the other raid-wide spell damage debuffs. Make sure you make your raid as accurate as possible to get valid results.

[edit] For what it's worth, I'm seeing Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft as the baseline DPS spec, with 8 points left over to fudge around for raid synergy or personal benefit.

Patch 9014 Balance changes:

* Starfall - Now has a 30 yard range. Instant cast.
* Nature's Splendor - Now increases the duration of your Insect Swarm by 2.0 sec (down from 3.0)
* Typhoon - Rank 4 now does 1010 Nature damage (formerly bugged at 1 damage).

Thanks for the updated spreadsheet. I pretty much agree with your baseline spec, although I think Nature's Splendor will be very difficult to pass up in any balance build at 80.

hasn't starfall always been instant?