A few Posts to keep us Up-To-Date!

Well, Murmurs decided to make a post on the TMR forums and WoW forums asking for all raiding moonkin to show their parses. No matter how great or small in damage you dealt, he wanted to see it. There was a good reason for this, he wanted to try and find out if moonkin damage is to low. Instead we got a few blue responses to our plea!

Hello again.

I am here this time to make a plea, to beg, to grovel, and to pray for a change.

There is a significant portion of the Balance Druid community that is not happy. I cannot pretend to speak for all of them, merely those whom I know and read posts, blogs, and e-mails from, but given the small representation of our spec in all environments, I would venture to guess that I know a good enough amount.

But, I digress, I come here to beg for some communication, for some understanding, and, hopefully, for some dialogue. And I am not begging GC or any other developer, I am begging the Druid community - and the entire WoW community at that.

There are some Balance Druids that are of the mind set that Balance Druid DPS is too low, there are some that think we are just fine. It's a massive disconnect within the community where it's beginning to become difficult to discern what's real and what isn't.

So, what I want are numbers and information. I want to see reports of any kind of any variable of DPS. I want to see reports of Druids failing, or them succeeding. I want to know their rotations, their specs, their raid buffs, their gear, everything and anything.

There are an infinite number of ways to tweak or adjust Balance Druid DPS should it need to be, but without knowing if things need to change, then suggestions can't be made and the developers can't really know. Yes, Blizzard has their own tools, yes they probably, certainly know the situation better than anyone, but I want to know too.

If we can weed through all of the data, then perhaps we can come to a definite conclusion.

So, talk to me; I'm listening.

----------Response
We think Balance dps is a little low on live, but changing Improved Moonkin Form to 30% Spirit to Spellpower in 3.1.2 should be something like a 5% spellpower boost to raid-buffed druids, which should be around a 5% dps increase. YMMV.

Also keep in mind that the Ulduar fights are pretty diverse. Fights like XT are a dream for melee, especially rogues and cats.

Please honor the spirit (rimshot) of the OP's thread though and confine this discussion to that topic and not try and switch gears to other druid issues or other class issues just because I posted here. :)

-----------Response 2
doesn't affect the base dmg of spells. Unless you're increasing those by 5% too

I'm sorry but I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Are you worried about the damage done by Moonkin wearing no gear and no buffs? Usually when players are concerned about low PvE dps, it's an end-game raiding concern. Hardly anything affects the base damage of spells except the spell rank.

------------Response 3
As I've said a few times, it's pretty tricky to calculate "real" dps in Ulduar because there are so few Patchwerk-like fights. That is actually to some extent by design because it gets players to focus more on "How do I maximize my dps on this fight?" rather than "What's my dps?" But it does make estimating who is high or low tricky for both you and us. It's awesome you are taking names, and I'll attribute that to knowing how to gear and play your class. We do worry that the Scorch change hurt Balance and Elemental since we ended up partially compensating the mages.

The basic design problem for Balance, as I know you know, comes down to Wrath and Stafire just being very similar spells. One is always going to win out by virtue of damage or cast time. Eclipse was our attempt to make which one wins more dynamic. I think it accomplishes that, but I think it's also fair to say that there aren't a ton of druids who are in love with the talent. Or maybe it's more fair to say that there are druids who just can't stand it. It's also not swell that the talent has driven many druids to mods to help manage it.

We're not going to give you a rotation that ends up being something like SF, Wrath, SF, Wrath or even SF x4, Wrath x4. We just think that's too boring and ultimately bad for the game. You can argue that you like Balance because it's very predictable and macro-able, but it should be clear that we view that as a problem.

I'm in total hand-waving, brainstorm mode here. This is not a design we have cooking that we're all ready to implement, but imagine Eclipse worked something like this: Every Starfire you cast has a 20% cumulative chance of making your next Wrath do 30% more damage. So after SF1, the chance is 20%, but after SF5 the chance is 100%. That encourages you to swap spells somewhat randomly, but less random than the system we have now. The goal is to have something where you sometimes switch after SF 3 and sometimes after SF 5. Good druids would always switch at the right time and those who are still trying to maximize their potential could get better about switching at the right time. You could also have a system where every SF has a chance of making Wrath slightly better, with a stack on that effect, so that at some point it's the right time to switch. Don't feel the need to point out how you could game this system -- I spent all of 2 minutes coming up with it. If and when we decide to change it, we'd put far more work into the design.

--------------------------------More responses

Personally I'm beginning to disagree with measuring by this method. If every class is going to do the same dps on patchwerk, what happens when we fight a real boss? Some specs lose a lot more dps than others by moving, and you have to question what worth some specs have in a real encounter...

Yes. This is a tremendously important concept that a lot of players seem to miss. When you only focus on Patchwerk or training dummies or simcraft, you can come up with a number that may be higher or lower than other specs or classes. The problem is that number is meaningless in many other fights. Do you have to move? Do you have to deal with adds? Do you have to swap out gear to improve your health? Do you run OOM? Is your threat too high? Do you need to free NPCs? All of those are "real" considerations on the actual bosses you're trying to kill.

The real questions, which have somewhat frustratingly fuzzy answers, are: Do you justify a raiding slot? Are you pulling your weight? Would your group be better off replacing you? Does the rogue beat you because your class is undertuned or because it's a perfect fight for a rogue (or because you need to L2P)?


A Mechanic that I do like is the instant Fireball proc that Frost Mages get. When that ability procs, they have something like a 10-second window in which they can cast a Fireball instantly. That means that they aren't punished if they have to move, and they have some control over when they consume the buff. (Please note that's ignoring the fact that Frost PvE DPS is terrible right now).

Totally agree that Brain Freeze is a pretty good mechanic. It works though because Frost never wants to use Fireball normally. For Balance, we need to keep both nukes in play. The spec is less fun to play (for me anyway) when Starfire or Wrath clearly wins and you just nuke with that spell.

An ideal rotation, if we can make it work, would be more like SF x 3-6 then Wrath x 3-6, with Insect Swarm, Moonfire and the rest thrown in as needed. The "3-6" means that if you switch at the wrong time, your dps is still decent, but if you switch at the right time, your dps is better. But it can't be a 100% predictable number or there is no learning -- no opportunity to improve your game -- involved.

Update on Teir 8 and Pvp

Fellow Moonkin, I called you all here today to go over the evil that has plagued our feathers for generations! We have been kicked down, spit on, and have yet to receive respect from those who created us. Our creators feel this to be a cruel joke as we squirm with the life that was set before us. Never changing, never allowing freedom from this cage we call a talent tree.

We have put up with the PVP balances they have instated long enough. We have become nothing but a moving target. Nothing but a punch bag for all other classes. We have no survivability and have yet to see any change with it. The one called GhostCrawler claims to be on our side. Yet! He is pure evil. His pincers of hate and deceit follow us around, plucking out of feathers on each turn. Even now, he cackles at our injustice. Creating more pain as he releases what is supposed to be our teir set. A set that upon item level, should be better than what we have; yet is worse than anything we have seen.

We are victim to Random Number Generators. This polarity is terrible and our children's children feel the hate that comes with it! This evil needs to be vanquished! We must stand up and fight! No longer will we stand by and just let this evil crustacean tear our of hearts and feathers, one by one. No, we will fight!

I ask that my brother's and sisters no longer typhoon each other out of the nests, instead, aim all of their abilities at this creature. So in one swoop, we can knock him into a boiling pot of water and have dinner that will satisfy our families for generations to come!




TL;DR

Fix our pvp
Fix our set bonuses
Eclipse is to RNG
Crab Legs are tasty

We will take a stand!

---Response:

I was trying to find a good Balance thread to post in. There are several good ones, but this one made me laugh.

Typhoon -- what we are most likely to do is add a daze effect of some kind. This is what the mage spell Blast Wave does. The daze (it's like a 50% snare) can add a little bit more time to do something before the targets get back on you, such as cast a Cyclone. We might mess with the knockback distance a little, but Typhoon is built differently from many spells, so there may be a limit in what we can do here.

2P Ulduar set bonus -- we increased the Eclipse boost to 15%, which should actually grant a dps increase.

We know many druids still don't like the inherent RNG that Eclipse offers. However, we like mechanics that encourage players to dynamically (meaning if they pay attention) swap which spell they are using. Balance has often had a real tunnel-vision problem of just using the same spell over and over. Even mages do that less these days with all the other procs and cooldowns they can blow at certain times. Eclipse did have some problems, particularly with the Wrath part of the talent not actually doing enough, but we believe those are in a better shape now.

Haste Chatter!

Lets Talk haste!

Since joining my new Guild Reawaken, I finally ran into a person I can chat with ingame about extensive moonkin theorycrafting. He brought up several good points which made me look at what we will be talking about today. Haste!

Moonkins love haste. Its like crack to us, but of course we like other stuff to. Its good to keep both even though (crit and Haste and not over stack one or the other). At the current point in the game, people are at 530-600 haste. Some people may not see how they do it, but others do. These people are also still dishing out some good damage. With Uldar around the corner, we need to start looking at the values again.

For those who don't know..the global cooldown for casters with no haste is 1.5 seconds. Haste can lower your global to 1 second. For Moonkin, 1 second starfires will make baby raptor jesus cry.

The basic haste forumal is as follows:

New Casting Time = (Base Casting Time)/(1 + (% Spell Haste / 100))

At level 80, we need 32.79 points of haste per 1%. A few points to keep in mind are as follows:

Moonkin have 6% haste from talents which: 32.79x6%=196.74

The Haste Cap/Global Cooldown Cap = 1639.5 (for 50%) based off Wow Wiki
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So, lets just say Uldar gear gives us around 700 haste. If we decide to say that bloodlust can be converted into haste, then it would become 987.3 haste rating.

So we'd take that and end up with this:

700+ 983.7= 1683.7

Adding a bit more into it, we will add our hidden haste from talents which is 6%..Remember, it takes 32.79 for 1% of haste, so it comes out to 196.74. So even with bloodlust, haste, and your hidden haste; you will have 1880.44 which is 200+ haste over the cap. This will cause clipping issues. Starfire before a crit will be 1.5 seconds. Nature's grace doesn't add itself from what I know if you are already at the cap (due to clipping issues)

So, with our hidden haste, Normal Haste, Bloodlust, and speed potion you would have the following:

196.74+983.7+700+500= 2380.4

Now, that is IF Bloodlust acted like that type of mechanic, but it doesn't.

So lets go on to another part. If your desired casting time is 1.5 seconds (starfire) then:

"desired casting time" = 1.5 seconds, ((3/1.5)-1)*32.79*100

So, you'd need a 3279 haste rating to yank SF down to clip the GCD not 16**

Since the cap on 1 second is 16** from Wow Wiki..we must keep in mind that it would only lower Starfire to a 2 second cast (which we see when we just get bloodlust..and it gets lower with haste pot)

So, going off these stats, A haste pot is still good during a bloodlust. If you are curious...

So to get SF to have a cast of exactly 1 second, it would be 6558 haste, assuming WoWWiki's formula is correct.
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So thank you to all the moonkins at the Repository for sitting down and chatting with me about this math. As well as Badeggplant and Atavus.

IFF and FF? Wah?

I am saying the tooltip, which currently reads:

Your Faerie Fire spell also increases the chance the target will be hit by spell attacks by 3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 3% on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire.

Should probably read:

Your Faerie Fire and Feral Faerie Fire spells also increase the chance the target will be hit by spell attacks by 3%, and increase the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 3% on targets afflicted by your Faerie Fire or Feral Faerie Fire.

One of the issues we are currently discussing is what to do in the case where someone chooses a talent that they end up not using because someone else in the group also has the same buff of equal or greater potency. To be fair though this is not a new problem. Raids always had to manage buffs like Spirit or Kings that were talented. I think groups usually worked around that by just grouping with the same people a lot and making sure someone had the talent. We are seeing a lot more raids pugged these days, and in any case, you often still want the buff when you are soloing. It is something we're discussing.
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So what you are saying is this is definitely how you wanted it to be? I'm a tad bit confused. Feral FF increasing hit as well? Are you ok GC? I'm still slightly confused on what you are trying to say. At first, you made it sound like this was a bug. Now you are saying you want it to work out...but now you need to find a way around people not using it or having it in raids? Yeah, Paladin buffs people spec in to. Its kinda like that I suppose. Or what about me being spec'd IMP Mark and never using it when a resto druid is in raid...does that mean I get something out of it? No, its called being prepared if anything. I also didn't find going 2/5 Nature's Focus to be a problem. I'm not tanking anything so nothing should be hitting me and when I cast wrath, its maybe 1-2 casts for my Eclipse proc.

However, we are still chatting in this thread in regards to what all he is saying. Ways we could make both sides happy. Ghostcrawler originally stated that he wanted us to cast IFF. When you have an Spriest in the raid, you don't care to even look at the button to try and cast. The Spriest has the Hit buff for the raid which is automatically applied. So now, why cast it? Its a dps loss overall for us.

So far a good suggestion is that we originally cast IFF at the start, and then a feral's FF overwrites/refreshes it so it never falls off. That way both sides are happy. Feral's can keep theirs up and we get our long timer on it. What do you all think?

For those wondering, an interesting response came, which holds a lot of truth. It came from our very own Graylo, who runs the blog Graymatter!

Lets assume for a second that a moonkin does receive the 3% crit from FFF or normal FF cast by another druid, without having cast FF on the mob himself. Basically, he is getting 3% crit for free.

Is this that big of an issue?

High end raiding moonkins have been speccing into IFF for a month to get the extra 3% crit. I have looked at my own WWS reports and those of several cutting edge guilds that are in the top 10 or 20 guilds in the world. Most of them seem to have a Moonkin on their roster now (woot!), but none of them are destroying the meters relative to the other DPS classes.

It was my understanding that as a hybrid class we are supposed to be close but still a little behind the more "pure" DPS classes. In my opinion that is where we are.

IFF my not have been intended to work with the FF cast by another player, but if it does, it obviously hasn't upset the balance of the game. Therefore, in my opinion it shouldn't be "fixed".

And hes right. The 3% increase even if we don't cast isn't a major thing and doesn't upset any balance of the game. What are you thoughts?