Here’s a recap:

• Force of Nature is no longer on global cooldown and summons a single Treant. The Treant no longer has a control bar, immediately uses its special abilities on the Druid’s current target, and accumulates 1 charge every 20 seconds up to a maximum of 3 charges.  Balance Force of Nature will cast entangling roots before casting Wrath.
• Glyph of Solar Beam changed to Glyph of Omens: While you are not in an Eclipse, the following abilities now grant 10 Solar or Lunar Energy: Entangling Roots, Cyclone, Faerie Fire, Faerie Swarm, Mass Entanglement, Typhoon, Disorienting Roar, Ursol’s Vortex, and Mighty Bash.

One small note:

It seems that Force of Nature gets crazy at high values of haste (9.5k+), when the meta gem or Nature’s Grace proc.  At those high values of haste, the trees begin to walk around and cast entangling roots and not cast as many Wrath as they are supposed to.  (Possibly GCD capped?).  Slippykins has discussed this in the MMO-Champion forum post here.

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• Tranquility now targets 12 raid members (up from 5) each time it heals when used in a 25-player instance. This change also applies to players using the Symbiosis version of Tranquility.

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• Force of Nature is no longer on global cooldown and summons a single Treant. The Treant no longer has a control bar, immediately uses its special abilities on the Druid’s current target, and accumulates 1 charge every 20 seconds up to a maximum of 3 charges.

• Restoration version of the Treant now casts Swiftmend on the Druid’s target when summoned. This version of Swiftmend does not require or consume a heal-over-time effect on the target.

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While you are not in an Eclipse, the following abilities now grant 10 Solar or Lunar Energy: Entangling Roots, Cyclone, Faerie Fire, Faerie Swarm, Mass Entanglement, Typhoon, Disorienting Roar, Ursol’s Vortex, and Mighty Bash.

This has already changed once, Solar Beam was removed, so it could likely change again.  Using Faerie Fire/Swarm while on the run will obviously be a help for movement DPS.

Also, treants were modified to cast an instant spell on summon to help avoid the summon lag.  Resto druids were given swiftmend which seems great, however balance druids were given… entangling roots.  Which does nothing for PvE.  Hopefully they’ll re-think this and give us some sort of PvE boon.  (Shooting stars proc, perhaps?)

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It’s now confirmed that patch 5.2 arrives tomorrow.  Let’s take a look at what’s changed:

• Displacer Beast has been redesigned. It now triggers Cat Form and grants 50% increased movement speed for 4 seconds after teleporting, and no longer activates Prowl.
• The healing granted by Cenarion Ward when a target takes damage has been increased by 100%.
• Revive and Mark of the Wild now cost 55% less mana.
• Faerie Swarm can now snare more than one target at a time.
• Mass Entanglement now has a 30-second cooldown (was 2 minutes).
• Typhoon now has a 30-second cooldown (was 20 seconds).
• The Treants summoned by Force of Nature now deal more damage and healing, and the Force of Nature tooltip will report the capabilities of these summoned pets.
• Soul of the Forest
  • Balance: Now generates 40 Lunar or Solar energy upon leaving Eclipse.
• Nature’s Vigil now has a 90-second cooldown (was 3 minutes), and now increases damage and healing done by 10% (was 20%).
• Wrath damage has been increased by 9%.
• Starfire damage has been increased by 9%.
• Starsurge damage has been increased by 9%.
• Starfall will no longer strike targets that are affected by crowd control effects.

All in all, we didn’t see that many changes.  The Soul of the Forest ‘buff’ really wasn’t much of a buff, and Incarnation should still win out in most if not all fights. The only major PvE change was the nerf to Nature’s Vigil, which is going to make HotW the go-to talent in non-burst window fights.  Force of Nature treants still suck.

The damage increase to Starfire/Wrath/Starsurge are a bandaid fix to our actual problem (movement and aoe).  The Starfall change was a change that was SUPPOSED to go into effect back in Wrath of the Lich King (but never did, despite it making the patch notes).

A few interesting notes to look at (that didn’t make the patch notes) are the Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen and the Sinister Primal Diamond.

Here’s some comments from Ghostcrawler regarding both.  A change was made specifically to the balance druid proc rate for the Unerring Vision which brought it down to par with the other trinkets.

Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen – 0.50 RealPPM on damage/absorb from harmful spells and periodic spells. No ICD. Proc rate multiplied by 0.00 for non-caster specs. Proc rate multiplied by 0.5 for Balance Druids. Proc rate multiplied by 0.25 against player controlled units. Proc rate multiplied by 1/(1.15^((528-ItemLevel)/15) for the various Item Level versions of the trinket.

Sinister Primal Diamond – 1.18 base RealPPM on damage/absorb of harmful or periodic spell. No ICD.
- That base proc rate is multiplied by an additional coefficient:
0.761 Arcane
0.302 Fire Mage
1.387 Frost Mage
0.625 Affliction
0.598 Demonology
0.509 Destruction
1.891 Elemental
1.872 Moonkin
0.933 Shadow
Anyone Else: 1.000

The Unerring Vision will not be the end-all be-all of trinkets now, however the rather high proc rate for Balance Druids with the meta gem is rather curious. Ghostcrawler has updated the values, which still aren’t horrible.

I will not be raiding this tier (I actually think my subscription is canceled by this point), so be sure to let me know what you think of 5.2!  Leave a comment or reach me on Twitter @SunfyresNest.

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Stommped asked Ghostcrawler why Balance Druids had dynamic-crit on their DoT ticks, whereas every other class had static snapshot values.  Here’s the response:

Good question. We decided to dig into all of the dots and found they worked pretty inconsistently. (Consistency isn’t always critical because it does lead to a certain amount of homogeneity, but too little consistency can just be confusing too.) We made a pass at all of the class dots and made them snapshot crit chance. This will have implications in any simulations out there.

However, this has some implications on the Unerring Vision of Lei Shen trinket. We’re tentatively fine with the idea of you seeing that proc go off, and reapplying DoTs which crit for their whole duration, in most cases. There’s a couple cases where those periodic crits cause other effects, which end up being very powerful. For example, a Balance Druid can now apply Moonfire and Sunfire, and pretty much chain instant Starsurges for 15 sec, many of which are extending that Moonfire and Sunfire, probably out to 20-25 sec. That’s extremely strong, but we’re going to try leaving it alone for now.

This change is going to be a huge DPS increase, especially with the trinket.  Consequently (given it were to proc), it would help alleviate problems with movement DPS.

I was really planning on using this round up to rant about our movement DPS and AoE DPS, and the 9% buff (while welcome) is just a bandaid to our DPS issues and not really solving the problem.  I guess I’ll table that for now.

It is important to note, though, how one person can make positive change for a spec.

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Note this is an initial pass and numbers may vary.  From the PTR forum, Ghostcrawler writes:

I may regret this, because I don’t know that I can capture every one and we iterate on this stuff really rapidly.

We may change a number one day and change it again the next when we look at AE or PvP damage or whatever. If frequent iteration scares you, look away! But in the interest of providing context and helping theorycrafting, I’ll give it a go.DPS Tuning Adjustments-

Arms – Increased Deep Wounds by +100%

Balance – Increased Starfire, Wrath and Starsurge by 9%.

Mind Blast – Increased Mind Blast by 20%. (Yeah I know you have to stop and cast it modulo procs, but I meant in contrast to Mind Flay which makes you really plant.)

I’m glad we do have a buff to our sustained damage, and this will compensate for the nerf to Nature’s Vigil, but it still doesn’t resolve our core issues we have around movement and Nature’s Grace.  We’re too dependent on Nature’s Grace for both our AoE DPS as well as our single target DPS, and utilizing it for our AoE DPS just nerfs our continued single target after.  Unless the plan is just to make us do so much turret DPS we can afford to take the damage loss during movement, but I don’t see that as being the case, at least not with a 9% increase, and that would just make us overpowered on Patchwerk style fights.

Anyways, it’s a start, let’s see where continued passes take us.

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If you’ve been following my Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve stepped down from raiding and canceled my active subscription. Sunfyre’s Nest is about to turn four, and I’m too old to keep spending as many hours as I have killing internet dragons. Unfortunately I’m an “all or nothing” type player, so I can’t really play casually. This won’t affect my blogging, and I’m going to try to actually editorialize more and provide a weekly roll-up of news and opinions from the last week. I will still be an active participant and moderator in the MMO-Champion Druid Forums.

In actual balance druid news, don’t be dismayed that we haven’t seen much PvE balancing in 5.2. In a response to a PTR question, Ghostcrawler stated the following:

This is a legit PvE nerf, but a very, very small one and as I said, we haven’t made any PvE numbers adjustments to anyone yet. This one is easy to fix without PvP risk and it makes a glyph less mandatory for its DPS benefits.

It does appear the Nature’s Vigil was a PvP nerf. Hopefully we will see some sort of change to counter it for PvE.

Also, if you’ve been following the soap opera that is known as Cyclone, it’s now back to 20 yards, with the 2-piece PvP bonus extending it’s range by 5 yards. Ferals will be hit with a 20 second cooldown.

Still haven’t heard why Force of Nature doesn’t scale with Solar Eclipse. Apparently it’s intended.

That’s all I’ve got for this week!

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The cooldown has also been lowered for ferals from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.

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• Cyclone range has been increased to 30 yards (was 20), and it now has a 30-second cooldown for Feral Druids. In addition, it will now share diminishing returns with Banish, Seduction, Bind Elemental, Hex, Freezing Trap, Wyvern Sting, Gouge, Sap, Hibernate, Paralysis, Polymorph, Ring of Frost, Repentance, and Quaking Palm.
• Starfall will no longer strike targets that are affected by crowd control effects.
• Balance/Restoration Druid PvP Gloves: Bonus now increases Cyclone duration by 2 seconds (previously increased Cyclone range by 5 yards).

A few changes came out after this, which haven’t been officially posted:

• Cyclone range was reduced to 25 yards, but now the Balance/Restoration Druid PvP Gloves yet again increase range by 5 yards.

I’m excited if Starfall not breaking CC actually works.

For nostalgia, here’s a hotfix that was applied back on July 1st, 2011:

Starfall is no longer hitting targets that are within 40 yards if they are not in combat with the druid or his/her party/raid members. It is targeting all hostile characters in combat with the druid’s party/raid members, is not hitting Stealth characters, is not breaking crowd control effects, and is not targeting nearby critters.

Maybe now it’ll actually work.

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