Hmm... you calculated yourself eclipse is basically 4.25% more dps that is conditional on us changing nukes (and wrath being the more mana consuming nuke out of the two).

On the other hand we got Master Shapeshifter in resto tree that gives *gasp* 4% more damage... active anywhere as loong as you're in moonkin form.

The way the balance tree is now - it's so bloated - you can't even get to Master shapeshifter w/o sacrificing eclipse and some other dps talents in balance.... it's still up in the air - but it sucks how a 3rd tier resto talent outperforms high level balance talanets in terms of dps... and ease of use.

Bingo.spot on

The amount of threat you would be producing with melee attacks in moonkin gear would be next to nil, yes. However, you're overlooking that at range you have to produce >130% aggro to pull and melee only has to produce >110%. If you are riding the threat cap and you run in to melee for mana you will pull aggro just by proximity. Not to mention that lacerate has a very high amount of threat built into it, so using it would be right out of the question, and using a 5 point finishing move in cat would probably take about 15-20 seconds at least to build up combo points. Also, switching into cat or bear and then back into moonkin would cost you almost 1000 mana (untalented at lvl 70 costs).

yeah - I would be satisfied to make moonkin treat spell hit as melee hit (first gripe with melee for mana - you got no +hit... so you will miss 16% of the time, and dodge 5% more - on a 2-handed feral staff wiffing 3 swings = 9 second lost and you got no hits and no mana).

2nd - make it 100% chance to restore mana... let's face it ppm based mana restore sucks.. even thoguh as is right now it's like 80% chance already.

3rd - make it restore MORE. 5 swings from a 3.0 staff = 15 seconds... it should put our mana back to full given the risks involved. Say 2k mana per swing? Value right now is ~200-400 depending on the staff



As for making our feral forms restore mana... I think they are moving away from mana being restored by spirit when in forms (maybe a bug in alpha?)...


I like the general idea, but it would really have to restore a LOT of mana to be worth 1000 mana to shift in cat - run to boss and hit it with crappy hit rate. We shouldn't be at the boss for more than 15 seconds restoring mana....

Yes Apaine, I hope the no spirit mana regen in forms is a bug. But saying that, the unification of spell hit and melee hit on gear as contributing to both (as well as crit) is crucial to having this work, because you will have +3% hit from faerie fire and all your hit on gear will count towoards melee as well.

It is better I think to actually use a melee form rather than swing in moonkin form, especially when the balance build atm has 2/3 of the feral SCHOOL (school not tree) pretty much dead and useless. The only thing off concern is the mana you will have to restore which first has to compensate for the mana you spent shifting, plus give you a sizeable increase.

Can you see why melee on mana can work, but not in it's current form? You need some ability like Avianna's Gift that can only be used once in a while with a cooldown that would generate enough mana to compensate you for shifting and restore the mana you need, it's not something you can drop into form and do. Presumably you will be able to mana on melee in form at any time, but it will not be worth doing it unless Avianna's gift is off cooldown. So you still have a use for mana on melee in moonkin form when Avianna's Gift is on cooldown but it won't be feasible to go to forms without the Gift up.

Really with something like Avianna's Gift you will only be meleeing for mana when the gift is up becasue and seldom without it, with the gift up, your meleeing will grant you mana and your lacerates or combo pts+finisher will get you the charges. Once you've got your charges, which should take you about 10-15secs max, shift out, consume the charges to get a lot of mana back and a damage boost and continue dpsing. Because you can restore mana whiles meleeing, all that meleeing could easily restore the cost of shifting + a little bit more, whiles consuming the Avianna charges would be the main source of mana recovery, say at 80 your mana pool is about 20K, Each Avianna Charge is giving you about 2.5k mana instantly and about 10% more damage over 20secs (per charge).

So in total: Mana on Melee ina bout 15secs can restore say 2.5k mana, then each Avianna Charge about 2.5 k mana (max 5charges), to compensate for damage lost meleeing each charge grants you 15% more spell damage for 20secs ( or you can make it 10% more damage over 30secs) - ability on cooldown for 10 mins.

Like this, it's fun, you get to melee once in a while. Trust me threat wise by the time you run up to the boss, even if you were neck and neck with the tank on aggro, he would have pulled over 20% ahead of you, and use cat form for raids then making sure you do lots of cowering. Remember also, before you do this, you'd likely have used innervate on yourself and pots would be on cooldown, you'd also likely have intensity, otherwise you' be using the gift after 3-4mins into the fight instead of an estimated 7 or 8 mins in.

Just, no. No no no. I don't mean to be dismissive, but I absolutely hate the idea of melee for mana, especially going into bear form and stacking lacerate. It is an unwieldy mechanic that everyone will hate. Also, boosting the DPS of our nukes to compensate for the massive loss of damage while lacerating will run into PvP balancing issues. Overall it feels in no way intuitive. It pisses me off just thinking about into bear form to get back my mana on a fight like Brutallus. That is the kind of mechanic that Blizzard has been trying to force on druids for a while (balanced weapons, omen of clarity, melee moonkin) that has contributed it to being a broken spec.

Yes, yes, yes it's not necessarily a case of blizzard trying to shove it down our throats than it's a case that it's an integral part of our class. The Feral school is the largest of the three schools and melee is a part of the class. Mages have different magics for frost, fire and arcane which all deal with spell casting, druids have balance, feral and restoration, trainable abilities in all schools never should become obsolete, they aren't for any class but balance druids with some abilities, because each school abilities are part of what makes the class what it is, not just one school. Te druid has a slightly different issue than the mage because if you specialise in one school, like spell dps casting, you have 2 schools that aren't naturally related to it's role because unlike shaman & paladins all your abilities are role abilities and not buffs or utilities like totems, seals/blessings are.

So in order to on the one hand, be able to carry out your role properly and not become an empty class, you have to find someway of using your other two schools. The healing school is pretty obvious because restoring health is something that is quite useful for you if you're taking damage or for a friend, so it needs nothing special. However no longer is it a case in wow that a ranged class would seriously benefit from being able to melee or vice versa, wow has evolved from that and because of that Shaman lost the chief source of their early wow pvp "imbaness" and druids (at least balance) have been left with a rather meaningless school or a school for which over half is pretty much redundant. Understand this is really unique in wow, no other class build ends up not having use for half of one of it's other schools, the most that becomes useless is maybe 1 ability or 2, (Take Shadow priest and Smite.


Blizzard must therefore create a way for melee to have some meaning or some use to the balance druid because the balance druid is a caster that does have some melee to it. It doesn't have to be anything major because I think they've sorted out pretty much all it needs for casting.. however there is still the worry or lack of decent utilisation fo the whole class. As a balance druid I would love to actually have a reason to melee, So whiles you hate even the thought, I love it. That's why I play a druid, I can easily play warlock or mage or priest to be completely void of melee, I expect a balance druid to be all about casting, but have small spot somewhere to do a bit of meleeing. I don't want to have to go to a feral form all the time or as part of most of my fights. No, just once in a while. I consider needing to top up your mana towards a long 10+ min fight as not a regular occurence, a boss fight comes once in a while during my play time, so this sort of mechanic properly used would be brilliant. What you are probably not getting is that, I like you think the way it is right now is a bit silly and impractical, maybe that's why you're so adverse to it, because in it's current form it's a big NO, just no. But it has the makings of the thing that can finally complete the build.

I'm so happy with WotLK for balance druids, it seems that all the issues outstanding from a spell casting point of view have been addressed, so it has all it needs for castiging without feeling like the lesser caster amongst it's peers. Great. However do realise if you count the active abilities it uses, it still utilises about half of what mages/locks use in terms of it's class. So you don't need to make a big thing out fof it, just provide a good focus or way to have melee play some role. For e.g. with Avianna's Gift I described, you should never need to melee for mana in solo or pvp, unless you wanted to use it and you could if you didn't fancy buying water to drink up. In raids also it would only be in boss fights after exhausting innervate and pots.
Anyway... for WotLK, spell casting has been fixed more or less (provide the mana problem isn't huge), CC restriction lifted, AoE ineptitude addressed by giving initial buurst aoe damage and aoe utility.. Good job. Decent pvE utility provided too, something in total which makes raids look up and count you rather than include you not to hurt your feelings. Spell casting is good.

The only thing with regard to WotLK now is the bloatedness of the tree, and the small issue of the usefulness of Eclipse versus Master Shapeshifter. My conclusion is Eclipse should be buffed so it is clearly better than Master Shapeshifter and any 20+ balance talent, in fact any balance damage talent should be clearly better. My suggestion for eclipse. Add a mana reduction for moonfire to the Wrath Eclipse, and if possible add an Insect Swarm boost to the effect of the Starfire Eclipse. Boost what they do by 2-5% so it's 12 or 15% damage or crit, instead of 10.

Anyway, shame there isn't new info, so we could talk more on what we appear to be getting instead of what might be in addition to it.

To the first two bolded quotes: do you realize that the 2nd doesn't follow from the first? Just because we have talent trees that are disparate doesn't mean we have to try to use them. In fact, the OPPOSITE is true. Feral is so different from Balance that it is ridiculous to try and get a balance druid to use feral skills. Hell, Fire and Frost are much more similar, and you don't see a Fire mage using frostbolt or vice versa.

To the 3rd bolded quote: or Blizzard could just remove the caster + melee idea completely.

I have to second Telcon here. Playing as a hybrid was viable back in Vanilla, in entry-level raids. I often ran with a 35/11/5 spec so that I could do anything the raid needed me to. In ZA, I would heal on the Snake boss, act as an AoE tank on the bat boss, and be a feral tank on the Spider boss. This isn't possible anymore, the trees are much more specialized, and any attempt to split your focus results in a raid not wanting you because you aren't needed. They bring melee for melee, healers to heal, and tanks to tank. We're caster DPS, and we need to be awesome at that in order to justify our inclusion. It's perfectly acceptable for us to focus to exclusivity on that.

If the tank is at 100k threat, and I'm at 130k threat, I'm pretty sure I can run into range before he picks up the 19k he needs to hold agro once I'm in melee range. A cower won't make up that difference either.

When was that interview? It seems to match the originally leaked Nature's Fury. but that talent seems to have gone in another direction.

Leaks from the alpha indicate that they decided to take the opposite approach. Instead of us wearing healing gear, there will no longer be such a thing. Everyone wears spellpower gear, heals just get a much larger coefficient (like, 2.5).

The simple fix for melee-for-mana is to allow auto-attack while casting. That is hardly OP, since with caster gear my auto-attack is only 70 DPS (that is with Naturalist, and before armor/dodge/etc). I'd have a little bit more push-back, and much more mana regen (100 MP5 on a tanked target), but only so long as I'm willing to live with melee-range threat limits.

In fights where you weren't threat-limited, you get to boost your DPS a little (maybe 40 from melee, plus whatever you could do with the extra mana). Fights where you aren't threat limited are exactly the fights where you need a boost.

It still wouldn't be a mechanic you'd really want to be using most of the time, but it would help close the gap in those situations where you've fallen behind the raid.

I see no simple fix for making trained feral dps abilities generally useful. I suppose Blizz could make boss fights that alternate long periods of silence with long periods of physical immunity. Moonkin would outperfom pure casters during the silence, and ferals would outperfom pure physical classes during the other phase. Mages and Rogues wouldn't like those fights ... . They could also make fights where the raid needed lots of AoE AP reduction (Demo Roar) at spread-out locations, or needed Bleeds on lots of targets. Short of those kinds of gimmicks, my bear form isn't going to get much use in a raid.

Alright, I shall say a final Word on this: But only because I feel it's very important to the development of the gameplay from a Classes perspective, in particular to the druid. So although this may be a bit long, you need to read this to understand why the need or the fuss. I shall focus more on WotLK here after this.

Explanation
In vanilla wow, nearer it's release anti range and anit-melee aspects were interwoven into the game so that actually being able to do both, was a good advantage, that is why hybrids were perceived as quite powerful, especially in pvp were range classes were weak in melee and had few means of getting away if caught, and melee were weak in range. It's probably why the druid was so utility starved to start with because being able to range and melee was quite the utility itself. However they bled that out of the game because they strengthened many melee classes to cope with that and strengthened many range classes to cope with situations when they were in melee..but notice they did it in a way that would require some skill (not passively). They really forgot to compensate the druid now who quickly fell behind all, and far behind with boosts it needed. These didn't really come properly till TBC, as 1.8 was a bit of a joke for balance, and whiles feral got some nice buffs, it didn't work.

In principal, the fact that melee doesn't work in a ranged class set up is completely arbitrary. It doesn't hav emuch in common not because that is how it is, but because the developers have not designed any bridge or real relationship, especially since the game rules changed. I've shown you a simple way how a connection can be made for a spell caster build like balance with melee. Simple, balance doesn't need to melee at all, at least not for damage, so if you want it to melee, you have to give it a reason that helps spell casting. Mana regen helps spell casting, and mana on melee can easily work if you make it work.

Why oh Why, AM I "BOVARD"
But the other question that people are having a hard time getting their hands around is why should it work. This is the most important question. Many very good reasons why. It has to deal with class mechanics, and leads to the question why have any abilities in the first place? In fact why have abilities that do different things? Why not have just one ability that does damage, one that heals etc. Why any variation? Why have 3 spell schools? Then why have a talent tree that boosts each of them? Why have 10 classes and not merely 3 or at most 4 (a tank class, a healing class and a dps class or a melee dps and a spell dps class?) Diversity, it's more interesting. Why give more abilities anyway knowing full well you face more complex balancing issues? It's diversity, that is what's fun. More things to juggle, more to master, different approaches, you like one, you don't like another etc, you have choice. You're bored with one you try another, so you attempt to make all different.

Why make a balance druid have melee incorporated into it? Because it fulfills the philosophy of the class. Balance is all about dps casting, so dps casting becomes a major part. But healing is part of the druid, so healing plays a role, but a small one since that is not what dps casting is about. Rightly so you don't really need to do much healing as balance, but you very occasionally do, and it's helpful, your healing spells are like Fire Mages' arcane spells, they are not vital, but they are useful even if rarely used. It's part of the class make-up and brings diversity. A mage may not have healing or melee, but it has a ton of utility to help it be complete, that's part of it's set up, and each of it's spell schools are different.

The Philosophy of Class Design
Likewise in the same way, balance doesn't need to use melee or healing, neither does a Fire mage need to use frost or arcane, but do you understand how far less rich the class would be without those? Even though he only very occasionally uses his frost spells and his arcane spells? I find that across the board in all the classes of wow, except balance druids, though you specialize in one school through it's talent trees, you trainable abilities in other schools don't become useless they just become very circumstantial, only in a few cases does maybe one ability become completely useless and at most two, and that's only in some classes, except for balance which has a ton of stuff in the feral tree that isn't.

So is this important? Only if you think diversity and variation is fun and more is interesting, even with WotLK that seems to have finally fixed a broken spell casting role for balance druids, even with all our new abilities, it is still a rather thin strand largely forsaking a good bit of an entire school. Does it have to? No! is it impossible to make feral have some meaning for balance since wow has evolved from classic days? off course it is, that's a designers perogative to fx. As far as the whole reason for having diversity is concerned in the first place is why it's important even though it's impact on spell casting will be small. Afterall some of you think because it would never and should never largely impact spell casting in regular way it should be ignored or not bothered with. Here is where I say no, afterall, it is one of the things that marks a druid dps caster different from all the others, even a shaman dps caster, a druid dps caster can melee like a shaman dps caster can, but melee using a form. Shaman don't need a mechanic like mana on melee to make use of their enhancement abilities, because they already have a use for almost ALL their enhancement abilities as elemental. Granted half of those do little for them, however they are still used in groups or parties anyway.

So you make melee have some relevance to a balance druid's playstyle. One that's useful off course and makes sense to use, but not something you do a lot. You very occasionally use healing spells as a balance druid, you should also very occasionally use your melee form's abilities, and what a good excuse to use them if they could give you back mana in a way that would not handicap you but help you?

The Mechanics of Fun
Take mana-regen? why have the need for it in the first place if you can simply get by by merely putting talent points? Yes it's good to have to make some choices, but because it is vital for raiding there really isn't a choice there, besides it's even better to need some amount of skill to get it, rather than just do nothing but preset choice in the game. A warlock needs to mana-tap and/or siphon, consume pet abilites etc to get some mana regen, his mechanic requires some skill and not just a passive ability, I think this is better. Mages are less active but at least they need to make a mana ruby and need to position themselves or time it right in order to evocate without interruption requiring some skill.

So it's more fun to be able to have to use some skill to do something (like mana regen), 2)It is also good that you still have a use for your secondary schools' trained abilities and not just to leave anyone of them abandoned. 3) It's good to have more elements that make you unique especially ones that are part of your class' philosophy. Being the best at this game should be more about mastering your class and not merely getting overloaded gear. Granted part of the challenge is getting the right gear for you and figuring out what that means, that is a passive element, the active element is mastering playing your class in whatever school you've specified, and to be a true master you should need to master ALL aspects of your class a good designer should make it necessary that regardless of what school you specialize in, to truly master your class, you must incorporate all your abilities, each must have some use in some situation. Off course your specialised school's abilities will see the lion share of use, but it's mastering your other abilities in a way that helps your chosen school that truly makes you a master. So a designer to make his product more entertaining and fun must give some use for all your trainable abilities to you in each of your specs.

This is exactly what blizzard has done for all the classes. The only one that is failing here is in particular the balance druid. Face it, the feral druid uses all the druid abilities around except wrath and starfire [Hurricane, thorns, cyclone, roots, nature's grasp, innervate, all healing spells, MotW, OOC, Tranquility, Moonfire], those are the only 2 that you could say are obsolete to feral. If feral gear attack power boosted spell damage, just like a fire mages gear boosts both his arcane and frost schools, i'm sure you would find it useful on extremely rare occasion even to lob a wrath or starfire, but very rare. However for feral it's not too bad, it's only 2 abilities. For the shadow priest, it's only one. The rogue and hunter have some use at some time for ALL their abilities, as does a warrior and a warlock, and shaman and a mage, and a paladin.

Translating this into the Balance Druid's Mechanic
Although the use of feral forms would only be an occasional / rare-ish occurence for the balance druid, it would still be necessary in some situations, in the case of something like Avianna's Gift + melee on mana, it would be on long boss fights, or in pvE solo when you don't have water after long continuous nuking or in pvp arena after long battles. Regenning the mana in this fashion though rarely used will be needed when it is, bringing you more diversity, and making your mana regen something that requires skill.

Conclusion - It really is very Important
I do hope you actually see how important this all is. In TBC, balance build was not a good caster even though it had DPS it could do. All it had was nuking, it was rubbish at AoEing, it's CCing was useless, and it had the smallest contribution in terms of casting utility and buffs to give the raid than any other dps caster. Nice it may have been for having big crits, but it was a crap dps caster. WotLK alpha so far has finally made it a decent dps caster comparable to other dps casters, but that is not all that is needed. Now that they have finally sorted out dps casting by giving it good utility (aoe-utility niche role, CCing & off healing) good buffs (iMkA, MAura, NF, imp FF & IS) , and dps now it's time to make it complete as a druid by giving feral roles some relevance.

Balance, you are eloquent, but it doesn't make up for the inherent poor concepts of the point you're making, it simply obfuscates. The trees are there because, as a druid, we have three roles we can fill. This does not mean that we should make use of all three at the same time, as that's not how the game works. It's akin to telling a Fire mage to use Frostbolt simply because he has it. It doesn't work that way. Frost is a very PvP-oriented tree, and Fire is a very PvE-oriented tree. They have their purposes, and they do not mix beyond the minor talent points you spend in one or the other for the utility, i.e. Icy Veins. Rogues face a similar issue, where Subtlety is a PvP tree. Combat rogues don't use Ghostly Strike or Hemo, because it's not their purpose. A Destro Lock doesn't use their Succubus on the boss (though that's usually because it's dead). An Enhance Shammy doesn't fire off Lightning Bolts, or heal. An Arms warrior doesn't try and taunt the boss.

We have trees because they're used to define what we are, not for diversity. Arms warriors are melee DPS, not tanks. Moonkins are caster DPS, not melee, and if our DPS is lacking, or we don't have enough mana, it's because the implementation of the talents isn't good enough, or more likely PEBKAC. It's not trying to tell us that we need to go melee for mana. That's not 'diversity'. That's poor planning.

Again. Guilds don't recruit Balance druids for offhealing anymore. They used to, and then we patched to 2.0 and the game changed. You can't fit a half-DPS half-healer into the raid. It's not worth it when you could more-easily swap in a full-DPS for Brutallus, and a full-healer for Felmyst. We're not recruited to offtank, either, beyond gimmicks. Our role, our only role, is to cast spells that make bad guys hurt.

There was another interview where Blizzard have said they want to unify the gear so you don't have a specific pieces of gear good for only one class (or one spec withing a class) and noone else. It is done to reduce the "wasted gear" we got now. (like a druid piece drops when there is no druid in party).

Good news for us? Well, there was no balance leather in itemization, we always took cloth in pve and pvp leather for pvp, so there isn't any. I wonder what the new talents and itemization will look for us. But based on that I am saying they will *probably* give us resto leather - to combine the gear requirements of two specs.

Feral druids will get rogue gear (this is confirmed). Their Survival of the fittest was buffed from 3% to 6% to compensate for lack of defence on rogue gear. So ferals don't need defence at all to protect from crits. Lack of armor on rogue gear is compensated by the fact that mobs won't crush anymore - so no need for astronomical armor bears currently have.

Last time I checked well geared resto druids are *swimming* in mana just from spirit and innervate alone. Since spirit formulas are getting reworked so *everyone* will have same formula and get unified use out of +spi items, we might see similar improvement just from that. Unfortunately that would require intensity as a must talent to take.

Only funny part to me was the removal of 20% healing to damage talents.... what do they have in mind for our gear??? All I can say for certain is we *will* have to share it with someone :/.

Hey, guys! This ability we get in content we can't see or test is less powerful than this other ability that someone else gets that we also can't see or test! If I could actually see or test these abilities, I might be able to see why this isn't an issue, but I can't, so I'm going to cry foul!

Seriously, this sort of fear-mongering has no place here. We already know we're going to do less DPS than a warlock at a given gear level because of our RDPS benefits from iMKA. Please focus on the IDEAS behind the talents, and let Blizzard fudge the numbers until balance occurs, i.e. noting that a 2-min cooldown on an Eclipse proc is a bit excessive and won't cause us to weave spells given the amount of talent points necessary for minimal DPS increase. Save the whining for the official forums.

Corrections to starfire:

Starfire-

540-636 Starfire R8
9% crit
7% hit
3s cast time +20% haste effect after crit + 0.5 sec reduction after crit (which is done after haste reduction).
131% dmg from talents/buffs (with 13% curse of shadows, 5% misery, 6% Natures Fury, 4% from eclipse or Master Shapeshifter. Doesnt count Lunar Guidance or Owlkin Frenzy). You forgot master shapeshifter or eclipse (can't really take both at same time, but both roughly increase dps by 4% each)
120% Spelldamage multiplier - From Wrath of the Centarus talent
200% critical damage



Incinerate-

555-642 Incinerate R2 (with Immolate up)
8% crit
5% hit
2.25s cast time
157% dmg from tlnts/bfs (13% curse of elements, 5% misery, 15% scorch, 15% sac'ed imp. Does not count Kindling Soul or Molten Core) Even if you take the buffs to be multiplicative this is what I'm getting... where did you get 173%?
97% Spelldamage multiplier - With Shadow and Flame talent
210% critical damage


I am including our party buffs into our Starfire, because we will always have them, while lock not in our party won't. Notice how our lower gain from party buffs is offset by higher spell damage multipliers on our spells?
And if he's in our party, then he's gaining from our abilities, so there is a clear reason to have us in the raid.

7% hit means we can gear for lower +hit from gear and higher +spell damage or +crit.... a lock can't unless he's guaranteed to see a moonkin on his raids to give him +3% hit debuff.

Also you forgot the mana values... with warlocks incinerate going up by 80% mana cost, while our starfire ~50% cost. With no new rank of lifetap, they'll have to loose more time lifetapping for mana. Assuming our mana problems get fixed this puts us in good dps standing.

To me the numbers say that a moonkin should outdps a warlock, as long as warlock doesn't have access to our buffs (different party). Warlock will top dps meters when in our party though. and this is how it should be.

Besides notice - for us - we are getting large dps boosts with new talents.. but warlocks? every talents below shadow and flame offers minimal damage increase. Torture is a joke. Kindling soul and Molten core depends on spirit... not a primary warlock stat. (they take -5% to spirit +15% to sta talent in demo always).

For Min/Maxing - there is little reason to have more than 2 or 3 locks in a raid. Their ISB 15% debuff no longer helps dots. You'll need them for CoS and CoE. There will be plenty of reason to have one moonkin and one ele shaman per caster dps group. And depending on if aura activates on heal criticals, you might want one in healing group too.

And since my guild typically runs 1 tank/melee group, 2 caster dps groups, 2 healing groups composition (8 healers + 2 spriests typically). There is room for at least 2 moonkins in this setup.

With improved roots and cyclone no longer having diminishing returns in PvE, we have a viable CC in raids as well. Something warlocks don't have - but mages do. Sheep still > Roots but by not that much.

Indeed Apaine.

Is incinerate the destro warlock's main nuke? I thought their talents were giving them some nice alternations between Shadowbolt/Corruption and Incinerate/Immolate.

Well shouldn't we be comparing Shadowbolt and Starfire?

Anyway, Locks didn't have a dps problem did they. They were outperforming us hands down, bringing better utility in ALL areas off casting:
DPS, CC, AoE, anti-spell. spell utility, spell buffs - if anything balance druids needed to gain some ground.

---First, as long as you have the numbers from each spell, you can build a program like dr.boom to "test" this information. The Incinerate spell gets a higher damage range than Starfire when Immolate is up on the target, is a 0.75s faster cast, and gets a higher critical strike damage multiplier and chance to crit.

---Second, the numbers I got are broken down like this...

Starfire-

Starfire (Rank 10): 505.05 mana (talented), 661 to 779 arcane damage.

4% crit - From Focused Starlight. Regardless of moonkin aura, shaman totems, or imp judge crusader, the the base talent increase is 4%. The other buffs are party-versal. Locks get 4% more base crit.

4% hit- From Balance of Power. I am not including Imp FF because I assume most ppl will STILL not take that talent given it will decrease your overall dps by around 4% in a 10 min fight by refreshing it every 40s and activating your 1.5s GCD and you need those points for other more important talents. AND Imp FF is a universal buff that locks will be using too...so the base is 4%.

3s cast time- With the reduction from Starlight Wrath. All other reductions are from procs and subject to change. You can get an average by using a number generator if you would like....

158% dmg from talents/buffs- With 10% moonfury, 20% wrath of cenarius, 4% master shapeshifter, 13% curse of shadows, 5% misery, 6% Natures Fury. Doesnt count Lunar Guidance or Owlkin Frenzy. Eclipse is a proc and i said using non-proc information.

200% critical damage- From Vengeance.


Incinerate-

Incinerate (Rank 4)- 584.25 mana (talented), 727 to 845 fire damage. (with Immolate up)

8%crit - 5% Devastation, 3% from Backlash.

5% hit- Cataclysm

2.25s cast time- 10% cast time reduction from Emberstorm.

149.43% dmg from tlnts/bfs- From 13% curse of elements, 5% misery, 15% scorch, 15% sac'ed imp, 10% emberstorm, 20% shadow and flame. Does not count Kindling Soul or Molten Core. The 173% was a mistype...I meant 163%, but I didn't take into account the 2.5s cast time and the resulting decreased coefficient. Thanks for correcting it.

210% critical damage- 100% Ruin and 10% Eternal Flames


---Third, lets not forget the new spell rotation for warlocks....
1xImmo, FacerollxIncinerate. Incinerate will now auto-refresh Immo so locks are back to a 1 spell rotation.

Moonkins still get....
1xMF, 3xSF with no auto-refresh


---Fourth, I am not sure where Apaine got these numbers....
A R8 talented Starfire costs 336.7 mana. A R2 Incinerate costs 337.25 mana.

Got the numbers from page 2 or 3 of mage discussing for WotLK on these forums. They were QQing about their new fireball costs when compared to warlocks and druids. They were specifically mentioning shadowbolts and starfire though.

Personally I wouldn't be trying to combine the shadow and flame and wrath of centarus with other buffs - all other buffs / debuffs increase TOTAL damage of incinerate/starfire while shadow and flame and centarus only increases the +spell damage contribution. But I'll take the number's at face value - it seems like starfire is winning on the big number's front.

I would still put 5% crit from moonkin aura at very least to starfire... because let's face it - while imp FF we might or might not take, moonkin form EVERYONE this deep in balance will take. And fact it's a group buff only goes in our favour - warlocks got no group buffs, we do. You are intentionally comparing full breath of warlock dps increasing talents for incinerate and you're picking and choosing which talents to include in starfire... It's like comparing ele shamans dps is lower and not taking into account 101 damage and 3% crit/hit just cause these can affect 4 more people in the group.

Group buffing classes should never outperform classes without those buffs on solo dps or you end up at the current mage/lock situation. In fact the support class should only be better in total raiddps gained, otherwise there would be no incentive to bring him again (current moonkin situation).

It's tricky, but comparing nukes or meters is not a valid way to evaluate the raiddps gains. If anything it's alot of guesstimates or trial and error work.