Dreamstate and moonglow should hopefully be enough to keep you with enough mana for 3.0 raiding. Remember that the enemies have had their health reduced by 30% so you don't need a huge amount of longevity.
For levelling I recommend getting all of the AOE talents and doing 5 pulls when possible while questing.
I have read the very insightfull discussion here, and must say I'm impressed. I was wondering if anybody has a spec for the next patch. A raiding singe target spec un till Wrath comes out. I always have a SP sometimes have a shami and don't need a lot of AOE. Also does anybody have a leveling utility mission 5 man speck. Thanks in adavance sorry if i derailed you all and for my spelling.
I actually got asked this in a PM last week. My take on it was about this:
Raiding: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. You're going to want 5/5 E&M, which means a maximum of one point in Master Shapeshifter, which isn't worth dropping an extra 5 points past Furor for. Last 6 points (iIS, iFF) are movable a bit, depending on whether iFF works with any FF on the target and whether Eclipse is a useful talent to take.
Leveling: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Adding Natural Shapeshifter because you'll be doing a lot of form-swapping while leveling, mostly so you can heal yourself. I dropped a lot of the group utility talents, because getting a 5-man in Wrath is going to be mostly based on whether you can DPS and CC, and we can. Brambles because you're going to get beat on a lot, and it's nice to have the trees do more damage when you need to pop them. Haste is king while leveling. The difference between a spell that does 30% of a mobs life and a spell that does 31% is nil. You're still going to cast 3 times, so minor damage increases aren't useful (though major ones are), while anything that makes kills faster is a huge benefit. Anything that relies on DoTs is similarly not wonderful. You're going to Moonfire to pull, or to get its DD, but the DoT effect isn't a consideration. As you level, fill out Moonglow and Gale Winds, Improved Mark, Master SS. This should give you some decent AoE ability when you get a chance.
I would assume from the discussions here that going forward from 70, to include the weeks before the release, that with the two leveling builds presented by Adoriele that our best glyphs will be Glyph of Moonfire [Glyph of Moonfire] and Glyph of Starfire [Glyph of Starfire] ? Minors don't appear to have much more than convenience factor so I was leaning towards Thorns and Unburdened Rebirth.
I am converting from Restoration to Balance, from my setup on beta which I copied a few weeks ago this starts me off with 1k unbuffed damage which I suspect may be too low and little crit (do not have that current number handy). From outward appearances because of how fast our Wrath can cast I don't understand the value in haste for us. If our talents bounce us off the GCD as previous indicators are then would my focus be critical and spellpower?
Another assumption I have is, solo targets Starfire + Moonfire + Wrath till dead in 3.0? Otherwise pull, wait for frenzy and Starfall them? Any need for roots except during Elites, which would be SF + Roots + MF + SF/Wrath till dead? With the glyph I don't see Roots breaking on the MF hit.
Last edited by ZeroWashu : 10/06/08 at 4:21 PM.
Reason: I don't know how to link properly to wowhead's wotlk db
I would assume from the discussions here that going forward from 70, to include the weeks before the release, that with the two leveling builds presented by Adoriele that our best glyphs will be Glyph of Moonfire [Glyph of Moonfire] and Glyph of Starfire [Glyph of Starfire] ? Minors don't appear to have much more than convenience factor so I was leaning towards Thorns and Unburdened Rebirth.
I am converting from Restoration to Balance, from my setup on beta which I copied a few weeks ago this starts me off with 1k unbuffed damage which I suspect may be too low and little crit (do not have that current number handy). From outward appearances because of how fast our Wrath can cast I don't understand the value in haste for us. If our talents bounce us off the GCD as previous indicators are then would my focus be critical and spellpower?
Another assumption I have is, solo targets Starfire + Moonfire + Wrath till dead in 3.0? Otherwise pull, wait for frenzy and Starfall them? Any need for roots except during Elites, which would be SF + Roots + MF + SF/Wrath till dead? With the glyph I don't see Roots breaking on the MF hit.
Yeah, SF and MF glyphs are going to be the gold standard in any raid build, 70 or 80. Without the IS glyph, it's not worth casting except for raid utility and, even so, the MF glyph provides more DPS than the IS glyph. And your rotation for leveling is pretty much spot on. Trying to root and spam SF is largely a waste of time. Pulling with SF, though, is good if you can, so you get a chance at the stun proc which will allow you another SF before the mob comes charging at you.
The moonfire and starfire glyphs won't be of much use while leveling. I'd pick up the wrath glyph for 100% pushback immunity when combined with nature's focus.
For minor glyphs I plan on going with thorns and aquatic form (it's convenient in a few places), and rebirth if you get 3 minor at 70. I can't remember if it's 2 minor 2 major at 70, or 3 minor 2 major.
For regular mobs I do starfire then wrath till dead. Moonfire doesn't enter the equation. Or Starfire, starfire, wrath till dead if they're far enough away. Every chance you get though, pull several and hurricane instead. It's a lot faster to kill 5 mobs in the span of a 10 second hurricane than to spend 8 seconds on each.
On a side note, moonkin absolutely destroy heroics. Just about every heroic pull I do wrath about twice, then spam hurricane until the whole pack is dead. Tank threat is absolutely huge right now so it's difficult to pull off of them.
Oh also, celestial focus combined with starfall is amazing. It brings out a LOT of stuns. I think both the star and the star explosion (whatever you want to call it) have a chance to proc the stun.
Leveling: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Adding Natural Shapeshifter because you'll be doing a lot of form-swapping while leveling, mostly so you can heal yourself. I dropped a lot of the group utility talents, because getting a 5-man in Wrath is going to be mostly based on whether you can DPS and CC, and we can. Brambles because you're going to get beat on a lot, and it's nice to have the trees do more damage when you need to pop them. Haste is king while leveling. The difference between a spell that does 30% of a mobs life and a spell that does 31% is nil. You're still going to cast 3 times, so minor damage increases aren't useful (though major ones are), while anything that makes kills faster is a huge benefit. Anything that relies on DoTs is similarly not wonderful. You're going to Moonfire to pull, or to get its DD, but the DoT effect isn't a consideration. As you level, fill out Moonglow and Gale Winds, Improved Mark, Master SS. This should give you some decent AoE ability when you get a chance.
I think that build is reasonable. Instead of maximum grinding speed, I want to emphasize "toughest fight I can solo."
I expect to take Nature's Focus. Frenzy, on average, will take seven hits to proc. That means NF saves 7*.35s > 2s. That is effectively 10% haste on a 20s fight. It also makes an emergency Regrowth (after I blew Barkskin on Hurricane) more plausible.
I want Nature's Splendor. It should make pre-HoTs before a tough pull much more effective (Regrowth/Rejuv/Lifebloom/Moonkin/Starfire/...).
I'll take Insect Swarm (not improved) because it is a good DPS boost on the longer, tougher fights, and can be cast on the run (while moving away from the Nature's Grasp recipient, for instance).
I think Nature's Grace is more (personal) haste than IMkF, so I'll make that switch. I expect to level in PvP gear, so I won't have much spirit.
Finally, I'll take Gale Winds, just for fun.
To get those points I'll be dropping NS, Furor, and IMkF from your build.
I'm going to second Werebeef's suggestion for AoE levelling builds. I did 70-74 with starfire/wrath. Sometime in the middle of 74 I switched over to a spec with Brambles, Celestial Focus and Gale Winds, and my only regret is that the cooldown on starfall is three minutes. You don't even need to use barkskin half of the time because Owlkin Frenzy will be up by the time you get the mobs centered around you.
With the crit rate on hurricane/starfall and liberal use of bandages, I find myself having to drink maybe once every twenty minutes.
My current plan would be to start with Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and add points into resto as I level up. I have a nice set of T6/Sunwell moonkin gear though, so may have a better gear setup than some when I start.
(e) Re:Skeldi's point: I was having a much harder time maintaining mana on single target pulls. Now if I've been stuck on low density mobs and am getting low on mana, I'll run over somewhere I can pull five or so, fire up the AoE, and end up at half mana again.
Last edited by Lorewanderer : 10/06/08 at 6:32 PM.
I've hit 75, and I am having more troubles keeping up mana (doesn't feel as infinite as it was before) with intensity, OOC, 1 point dreamstate, and 1 point moonglow, and it just doesn't hold up.
In grinding, in 5 mans (with no replenishment, and sometimes only mana spring), I am finding myself more and more frequently drinking.
Currently running with ~280 spirit and 590 int (mostly T6 and very few quest items).
Originally Posted by Lorewanderer
With the crit rate on hurricane/starfall and liberal use of bandages, I find myself having to drink maybe once every twenty minutes.
This is what I've found I've had to do to sustain any kind of mana usage.
I also had some talent questions for patch next week and have spent the better part of the last 6 weeks getting intimately acquainted with Balance as I am rolling that spec for WoTLK and figured on starting at patch.
Some of the talent specs suggested somewhat concern me (3.0.2) mostly because they aren't taking the new raid buff changes into account and aren't really hitting on staple spell rotations that go with them. I say this because I have been going over specs and gear (BT/MH quality I have collected) and find myself naturally riding up to the hit cap w/o accounting for Misery or the Elemental Shaman I will undoubtly be grouped with. 4% hit which is going to be wasted stats that I can't get rid of unless I untalent them. And hell, maybe if Misery isn't dependable, I could iFF myself or just swap on some +hit weapons.
Aside from that, putting a RAWR file together on a balance build is semi-trying as it seems to be suggesting I take mp5, understand that no mana = no dps. Just not sure how bad mana regen will be at the new 70 this coming Tuesday in a 10 minute fight (even with bosses losing 30% HP). I can't manage to stuff OoC or Intensity into a current level 70 build due to need for E&M, thus I'm wondering if Dreamstate will hold up to be enough. Sure there is PTR but I'm not intimate with raiding Balance just yet.
What spell rotation are we recommending? I was thinking MF, SF x4 for regular rotation when 3.0 comes out and using the following spec.
I may move the point out of IS if I end up freeing up a point in BoP (due to much natural spell hit present in raid and me being at 16%+ in my current Moonkin set / spec) as well and go for extra damage on Hurricane via Gale Winds since AoE is a big theme for MH/BT. I figure that IS scales horribly if I nail down enough haste and that MF is the only DoT worth casting because it is associated with NG procs, my idol, and the 2xT6 bonus. Plus hunters have the SS covered for 3% avoidance.
How about all the retro-gear changes, any thoughts on that and what might be best in class for a few weeks? Anyone going to cannibilize healer type gear? Someone was saying the Memento was going to be converted to Spell Power and I have heard the healing cape off Illidan is #2 in game for some casters?
As far as leveling builds, anti-pushback as previously indicated is king. I might just level Feral though for better downtime and easier grouping as I go up, mostly due to tank shortages previously experienced when BC released, and scoop up anything that drops for Balance raiding in Naxx.
Anyone got any opinions on any of this?, I do enjoy reading this forum and bouncing some thoughts off everyone.
Anyone got any opinions on any of this?, I do enjoy reading this forum and bouncing some thoughts off everyone.
editted: for clarity
Furor is not a great talent. You pick it up if you're moving further into resto but 5 points for 10% intellect isn't a great investment. Moonglow is far superior for helping you with mana issues
I actually got asked this in a PM last week. My take on it was about this:
Raiding: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. You're going to want 5/5 E&M, which means a maximum of one point in Master Shapeshifter, which isn't worth dropping an extra 5 points past Furor for. Last 6 points (iIS, iFF) are movable a bit, depending on whether iFF works with any FF on the target and whether Eclipse is a useful talent to take.
I notice your sample build doesn't include any regen talents, no intensity and no Dreamstate. Is mana regen while raiding that good after the 3.0 patch?
Also, if you're going to go so deep into the Balance tree why not have the last point in starfall?
Must admit my guild is still clearing Hyjal and BT so AOE is still on my mind
I think what he's trying to say is happening is this:
With no NG:
Wrath Cast Time: 1.5 sec
Global Cooldown: 1.5 sec
With NG:
Wrath Cast Time: 1.0 sec
Global Cooldown: 1.5 sec <--should be reduced to 1.0 sec as well but isn't for him for some reason
If thats what he's saying is happening, then it is indeed a bug that happens under certain circumstances. Which specific circumstances would have to be tested further.
That is what I was trying to say.
I used the macro referenced earlier by Adoriele. In correlation with the visual factors I mentioned the macro listed the GCD as being at 1.456 seconds when it should have been 1 second. It isn't wholly consistent, but I believe that the closer you are to perfect chain casting the more frequently the problem arises. I would posit that if it were possible to cast Wrath exactly every GCD that 100% of all casts would experience the problem.
Exactly why this is the case I'm not sure. There's obviously a difference between how the code deals with NG and the GCD for Wrath and how it deals with Wrath's cast time. What that difference is I can't say.
Since it's many pages back, here's the macro:
/run hooksecurefunc("CooldownFrame_SetTimer", function(_, start, duration, enable) if start > 0 and enable > 0 then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(duration) end end)
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
Here is what we're inclined to do about Balance. It isn't a done deal yet because we just talked about it and didn't make the actual changes yet, so it's possible we'll hit a snag (though I don't see why).
Moonfury and Earth and Moon down to 3 ranks from 5, but keeping the same overall benefit. That buys you 4 extra talent points to get more utility or fun talents.
We are also going to buff Eclipse's damage a little so that you feel you're paid back for the extra proc-watching (and so I won't feel so lonely when I tell you I think it's fun).
We're going to leave the Starfire glyph as is for now, since one of the reasons we added it was to buy you back some brain time if you were watching Eclipse too much.
The treant health is still something on the list to look at too. I suspect it just hasn't scaled well.
As an epilogue, here are our feelings on bloat. The problem with the Balance tree was that druids had to spend nearly all their points just on pure damage. It's hard to justify giving up damage for utility, PvP or fun talents in a raid scenario. Ideally you should be trading those talents off against each other ,not against your damage (or healing or mitigation).
Bloat (in our dictionary) does not mean there are more talents you want than you can afford. That's a *good* thing. If there were a bunch of talents you'd never ever get, now *that* would be a problem. As a contrast, we don't think Feral is bloated -- or rather in this case we bloated it on purpose so that you couldn't be the best cat in the world and the best bear in the world with the same spec.
Furthermore, don't expect us to be ripping up every other talent tree in the game at this stage. We will continue to change talent effects before Lich King ships, but don't expect a lot more massive rejuggling of the trees themselves. The dual-spec feature will shine more light on talent design (more on that at Blizzcon) and we'll have a better idea of what we want to do with trees when that goes live. Some talent trees are nice and lean, and some probably have some points we could trim here and there.
4 points ! Finally I'm going to be able to take some of the new end-tree talents (besides E&M), it did feel strange that most builds would purposefully ignore all the new talents.
I think Eclipse is still going to suck unless they can manage to stetch the cast time on Wrath, model it maybe after Pyroblast on Eclipse procs, that would be fun.
I do appreciate the extra points we will get. Maybe this will allow me to stretch more points into resto to help with mana management and I suspect others will do the same which doesn't solve opening up some of the talents at the bottom of the tree very well, still won't have a positive feeling for this until getting some raiding at 70(patch) and 80.
Updating my specs with the new data. Particularly, the change to E&M allows you to take full Master Shapeshifter (at 70) if you wish, which I have. These are done with the assumption that, at 3/3, both E&M and Moonfury read exactly as they do now with 5/5.
Level 70 raiding:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. 3 points in Eclipse can be placed in iIS, iFF, etc. as necessary. Though it seems like they're really trying to make Eclipse worthwhile.
Leveling:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Completely DoTless build, with nice added AoE utility. On leveling, grab Master Shapeshifter back first, then Intensity, Nature's Grace, and a couple meh points left over, in any order. Maybe Eclipse to hope for the Wrath proc when you pull with SF.
Level 80 raiding:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Eclipse, iIS, iFF are your mobile points here. Brambles may be a better idea than one of them, unsure on that. Would definitely be more fun.
Level 70 raiding:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. 3 points in Eclipse can be placed in iIS, iFF, etc. as necessary. Though it seems like they're really trying to make Eclipse worthwhile.
What would be the mana efficiency for this build? I mean, what would be the buffs the raid and I should be using to skip all the mana regen talents?
So is Eclipse is changing to simply add more damage than it does now? If so would it be worth risking having a prebuffed moonfire fall off to add some wrath spam? Perhaps we can take advantage of it with something akin to IS, SFxN, Wrathx?? when Eclipse(Wrath) procs in the hopes of getting Eclipse(SF) to proc. I'm assuming it would have to be a movement light fight, and MF would need many seconds left to avoid having MF fall off. I'm also assuming we'll need to see Blizzard's new numbers before we can make any real decisions regarding the talent.
What was the viability of this playstyle before the announced update to the talent? It wasn't discussed as much as it was dismissed as simply inferior to IS, SFxN with a MF rider. How much less DPS was it? Or was it fairly close, but dismissed because it was more complex?
I really want this talent to work because it seems like it would add a bit of fun to moonkin raid rotations; moreso than simple SF spam anyway.
Whoops! Yeah, that would be a good place, or Brambles, or Moonglow, or DS, or Intensity. Really, the changes kind of solved our bloat problems, giving us much more meaningful choices between fun and regen, without having to skimp on the DPS talents.
As for what you should be expecting to be able to run with the level 70 build, I'm a bit unsure on that. A large portion of the stat budget in Wrath begins to shift toward Int. I.E. as a T5.5-geared Moonkin I have 545 Int buffed right now. A T7-25-geared Moonkin in Wrath can expect ~850, almost double, and a "tier" or so before the equivalent raiding point (i.e. a more valid comparison would be comparing myself to T8-25 gear). This means almost double the regen from Moonkin Form, Replenishment, and JoW, and our mana costs definitely aren't doubling to compensate, they're dramatically less. Now that I think about it, I might be able to easily adjust for level 70 mana costs, damage, etc. Give me a couple hours, I'll see what I can do (busy at work). Should be able to find out just how much regen we can expect without needing to dip into actual regen talents (Moonkin Form doesn't count =P).
Been looking around for a number on the haste "breakpoint", anyone have an estimate?
Calculations to that end haven't been done yet. It's still better than Crit for DPS, largely because of the difference in conversion ratios, but the margin will be less because we're going from expecting no pre-gear Haste to expecting about 11% pre-gear Haste.
I've got the sheet updated for level 70 raiding. Remember to put 5 points in E&M or Moonfury still if you're going to max them out. Without knowing how they're going to break up those talents yet, I decided not to readjust to 3/3. That means you should end up with 65 points spent instead of 61. If you change your level, you will need to reconfigure some of your buffs, namely most things in the "Buffs" list on the right side. The drop-downs change when you change levels, but it doesn't force a change in the actual values until you reselect.
As for regen:
IS, SFxN, MF Rider costs about 722 MP5 before any mana return procs (Moonkin Form, OoC, JoW). These are the values for various mana regen abilities:
JoW*: 222.48 MP5
Moonkin Form: 176.77 MP5
Replenishment: 144 MP5
Intensity: 105.18 MP5
Dreamstate: 62.68 MP5
Moonglow: 60.57 MP5
Mana Spring: 62 MP5
BoW: 57 MP5
OoC: 28.98 MP5
*JoW data based on SF Spam instead of the rotation, as I don't have it available in the rotation sheet. It'll be a little less.
You're going to have BoW, Mana Spring, Moonkin, Replenishment, and JoW(likely, if what we see currently is a bug), and one point in Moonglow, which totals 682.25 MP5. The difference of ~40 MP5 is enough that, if you Innervate yourself only once, and use a Super Mana Pot, you'll last 2000s, or >30 minutes. If JoW's current behavior is now a bug, its value greatly diminishes (to almost 0). If we assume it's 0, we still last about 360s, or 6 minutes. This is larger than the cooldown on Innervate, so we very closely approximate infinite mana in that scenario. It's close enough, though, that dropping an extra point in another regen talent (Intensity) wouldn't be a horrible idea, but it brings us fairly close to where we're at in our current situation (pre-3.0), but with much higher DPS.
Adoriele's calculations are also very conservative as they do not inclue any potential mana tides (Now raid wide) or water elemental mana regen. Putting even one mana tide into the equation destroys any need for intensity or dreamstate even assuming 0 Mp5 from judgement of wisdom.
Personally I feel we should take points in intensity before we switch to mana pots, as the DPS value of using the new destro pots for your initial moonfire or while under bloodlust is significant while the talents you'd be gaining with those intensity points are likely AOE/utility with our extra four points as opposed to ST dps increases.
Been looking around for a number on the haste "breakpoint", anyone have an estimate?
In BC@70, with no SF idol, zero lag:
SF DPS = (588+1.2*spell)*(1+haste/1577)*other_stuff
If you have zero haste (raid buffed), 12 spell == 10 haste when you are at 1402+spell.
For 3.0@70, the 588 changes to 891. Plugging that in 12 spell == 10 haste when you are at 1150 +spell (that is raid buffed), so haste is much more valuable. Every % of "extra" haste that you have from talents or raid buffs would rase that value by about 16.
@80, the formula is
(1120+1.2*spell)*(1+haste/3279)
For zero haste, the 12 spell=10 haste (I haven't looked at the 80 gems yet) would hold right at 3000 spellpower (and zero haste).
However, you will have at least 6% haste (just from talents) which pushes that boundary up to 3300 spellpower. I think that means that you won't gem for haste until sometime after the Naxx level.
Edit: These values are for pure SF spam. +spell is much more MF/IS friendly than is Haste. Haste is much more FF friendly. In BC, Wrath favors Haste. I'm much less certain of that in LK (I haven't run those numbers).
For leveling i'm thing of starting with this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Note i tend to level solo for the most part. So i want to be self reliant and have as little downtime as possible, with as many pass dps buffs as possible, (IOW talents that need X up on target are bad as i'll rarely be casting FF for example while soloing)
My thinking is that
Balance
-E&M is +18% damage on mobs is King!. 13 debuff plus 5 from talent itself (assuming this isn't nerfed to 3 to match point investment), leaving only 13 extra for resto. Better than MSS @70 imo
-2pts in iMF could go to Lunar guidance to further reduce mana down time
-3pts in OwlFren could be moved to dreamstate (again to reduce downtime) or iIS or iFF for 5 mans
-Nature's Splendor is mostly for fighting elites and other mobs that are A. Immune to Roots and Cyclone B. will require i mix dps and heals to solo them. Longer DOTs\HOTs leaves more time to wrath
Resto
-Intensity to reduce downtime a TON and more useful than MSS @70, my next 2 points would probably go MSS
-Nature's Focus, anti-pushback on ER, wrath, regrowth and HT will be nice vs elites
Feral- JK what moonkin would put points in here
I've spent a small amount of time on PTR (no beta key) and I've been able to clear all the trash to the first 2 bosses in SL solo with very few deaths, mostly as i was learning\experimenting. Root one, out range that one if he is a ranged, dps one or two down. If low CC a mob to heal self and\or shadowmeld to break combat once all dots\roots are gone to mana up and finish the rest. For the Felguard dudes, who are immune to roots and Cyclone, i've been hots\dots+wrathing in caster form and just whittling them down, though i need innervate to be up to outlast them. BS helps if they get some crits and you need to HS or Regrowth. Again if i get in trouble Shadowmeld is great to leave combat once all the dots are down. Making sure all dots are down took some getting used to, but i'm sure it will become second nature over time
What do y'all think
Edit oops left 2 in Nature's Reach, don't need reduced aggro while leveling so that could go somewhere else too
10/06/08, 3:38 PM
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