That is all.

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Another beta build was pushed today, and already our tier 90 talents are being nerfed.

• Cenarion Ward now costs 14.8% of Base Mana, down from 22.4%.
• Dream of Cenarius now increases healing done by your next healing spell by 70%, up from 30%. Tranquility is no longer affected.
• Nature’s Vigil now increases all damage and healing done by 20% for 30 sec, down from 30%. Single target spells now damage or heal a nearby target for 25% of the damage/healing done, down from 50%.

Cenarion Ward seems pretty useless to me. It’s an underpowered rejuvenation, and after the change, is slightly cheaper.  It has higher tick values but overall less healing.  I guess a feral may like it because they can cast it in form, but it just seems pretty underpowered.  With the exception of leveling up to 90, I cannot find a use for it over Renewal.

The Dream of Cenarius nerf means there is absolutely no reason for me to use this in PVE.  Tranquility was the only reason I ever would have thought about it.  The only thing I could possibly think of now would be in PVP, given that it affects Renewal.  Might of Ursoc + Renewal heals for a huge chunk of damage, and if you can add 70% to that, you’re pretty much getting a self-Lay on Hands.

The Nature’s Vigil nerf means the overall sustained damage from Nature’s Vigil is only 3.33%, versus ~6% for Heart of the Wild.  Unless you see some sort of burn phase where you get a bonus damage modifier, Nature’s Vigil will seem much less attractive.  I’ll have to see what kind of numbers it pulls with Celestial Alignment + Bloodlust.

Also, the Horde bear form incarnation graphics were datamined as well, courtesy of MMO-Champion:

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MMO-Champion has data-mined a lot of interesting things have been added to beta build 15677.  First off, the druid cat forms now have armor for incarnation.  We can expect the same for moonkin coming along shortly.

(Images credited to MMO-Champion)

Night Elf Cat Form

Tauren Cat Form

As for the spell changes:

• Hurricane now costs 50.3% of Base Mana, down from 75.5% of Base Mana.
• Moonfire base DoT-damage has been increased by 11%.
• Ursol’s Vortex now has a 20 yards range. (Bug Fix)
• Heart of the Wild tooltip clarification: 6% Agility and Intellect bonus applies at all times.
• Nature’s Vigil now only affect single-target healing and damage spells.

The change to Nature’s Vigil is expected, since Mushrooms, Starfall, Hurricane, etc would have made it quite OP.  The mana reduction to Hurricane is nice, although I’m still not sure if I like where the damage is.  We’ll need Recount to really tell.  The Moonfire DoT increase is welcomed, but DoTs are still weaker compared to Cataclysm by a considerable amount in both damage and duration, so I’m still not satisfied.

Other various abilities and talents also had their wording clarified that they can’t be cast in travel or aquatic form.  Basically, if an ability does not specifically specify “in all forms”, it won’t work in either of those two.

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I was bored tonight and decided to play a bit with Force of Nature.  Here’s what I found:

• Treants now scale with the casters haste and crit, but not mastery.
• The melee swings scale better with intellect then Wrath does.  Turning off Wrath causes them to melee for twice as much damage as each Wrath cast.
• Wrath and the melee swing also scale with agility.  They do 2x as much damage if I’m in cat form when they’re out, since I get the int->agi conversion.

I’m not sure what their end goal of Force of Nature is, but right now the Wrath is in horrible shape.  If it were to have the same scaling as melee and also inherit our Eclipse damage, then they might possibly be viable, but I doubt it.

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MMO-Champion has datamined patchnotes for the upcoming beta build, and they reflect the changes promised by Ghostcrawler:

• Aquatic Form, Bear Form, Cat Form, Treant Form, Swift Flight Form, Travel Form now makes you immune to movement impairing effects, instead of movement slowing effects.
• Dream of Cenarius now increases next damaging spell by 70% instead of 30%.
• Heart of the Wild now also increases Agility and Intellect by 6%.
• Nature’s Vigil (New) – Increases all damage and healing done by 30% for 30 sec. While active, all healing spells also damage a nearby enemy target for 50% of the healing done, and all damage spells and abilities also heal a nearby friendly target for 50% of the damage done. 3 min cooldown. Instant.

Do not be worried that Moonkin Form is not in the above list — shapeshifting roots from Moonkin Form was always available.

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Ghostcrawler recently posted in the beta forum regarding level 90 druid talents, here’s what he has to say:

We’re not yet happy with the druid level 90 row. We still like the theme of it playing into the druid’s hybrid nature and we want to reassure you (which I think most of you already know) that druids won’t do lower damage or healing compared to other classes just because some other class has an unambiguous throughput increasing talent at level 90. Classes are balanced around their whole package.

Nonetheless, we want the bottom row of talents to be exciting. In the next (hopefully) build, you’ll see a few changes.

Disentanglement — no longer a talent. Shapeshifting for all druids just breaks roots.

Dream of Cenarius — increases damage spells by 70% (up from 30%).

Heart of the Wild — now also grants 6% passive Agility and Intellect.

Nature’s Vigil — replaces Disentanglement. Increases all damage and healing done by 30% for 30 sec, with a 3 min cooldown. While active, all healing spells also damage a nearby target for 50% of healing done, and all damage spells and abilities also heal a nearby friendly target for 50% of the damage done.Let us know how they feel once you get a chance to try them.

I am happy for these changes, and Nature’s Vigil is the type of talent we’ve been asking for.  Having disentanglement returned baseline for ALL specs (it already was for balance) is also a nice touch.

We now have two throughput increasing talents:  Heart of the Wild, which is a passive 6% intellect boost at all times, or Nature’s Vigil, which is a burst DPS boost.  Depending on the fight will depend which option we go for.  I’m afraid no one will actually take Heart of the Wild for anything BUT the passive stat boost, however.  The rest of the talent could not exist and I doubt anyone would care.

What’s your opinion?

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My apologies for a late post on this, but I have been traveling the last few days and unable to get decent enough internet to update beta on my laptop.

Along with account-wide mounts, Blizzard has deemed fit to allow the moonkin to mount up in form!

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A few small balance druid changes can be found in the upcoming patch, mostly concerning PVP:

• Celestial Focus now affects Starsurge.
• Starfire was listed twice, so it wasn’t removed, just fixed.  Typhon was removed, but as it was instant cast, it was pointless.
• Glyph of Hurricane now affects Astral Storm.
• This would be obvious and the change is expected.

Still no revision on our level 90 talents.  I’m about to launch Occupy Blizzard.  Who’s with me?!

Glyph of Stars received a graphics update… I am quite impressed!

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Beta Build 15650 is being released, and the following has been nerfed:

• Ursol’s Vortex now has a 60 sec cooldown, up from 30 sec cooldown. Now lasts 10 secs, down from 15 secs.

Moonkin can never have anything pretty.

Still no real changes to our level 60 or 90 talents.

Now that the servers are up, I’ve noticed a few undocumented changes:

• Glyph of Stars ‘spark’ effect has been moved to our feet.  It’s not nearly as obvious now.
• There’s no longer charges to Wild Mushroom, but the new placing mechanic exists.  It’s much nicer now.

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I was running around the Jade Forest today, unleashing my Wrath upon critters when I noticed…. my Eclipse bar didn’t move.  Apparently in Mists of Pandaria you’ll no longer be able to charge ze lasers by attacking poor defenseless critters.

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