Gray Matter

My MoP Wish List - Part 1: A Gem Overhaul

2012-01-24T13:26:00.003-06:00

Quick Note: This is part one of three(ish) posts I am planning on making regarding what I would like to see happen/change in the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion. I say three(ish) posts, because what I had originally planned to be just one post has grown in to four so far. Last weeks post on the current epic gem situation grew out of his idea, and became too big not to be it's own post. Today’s post was also meant to be apart of another post but grew to big as well. Who knows, maybe this idea will keep me posting into March.

With the Mists of Pandaria expansion getting closer I've been thinking a lot about what I would like to see in it from multiple points of view. While we already know more about MoP then we have known about the other expansions at this point in their development, we are also still at a very early stage and have an opportunity to shape it's development, with some good suggestions. So, that's what I'm trying to do in general with these posts. Not all of the suggestions are serious or incredibly significant. At least one of them doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening, but the are things I would like to see. So, on to part 1.

A Gem Overhaul:

Last week, I made a post about how I felt the Cataclysm implementation of epic gems has been a failure, and it looks like I am not alone in that sentiment. In that post I made several suggestions that Blizzard could implement to ease the situation, but none of them addressed what I consider to be the biggest underlying cause of the situation. The unbalanced demand for the different gem types, due to how the gems are currently organized by color. One of the changes I would like to see in Mop is for Blizzard to reorganize the system to make the other gems more desirable. Here are a few scenarios thought of or heard from others:

Current Scenario:

Red	Yellow	Blue
Intellect	Mastery	Stam
Agility	Haste	Spirit
Strength	Crit	Hit
Parry	Resilience	Spell Pen
Expertise	Dodge

I'm listing the current scenario, because despite it's flaws, it also has some significant advantages.
The advantage of this system is that it isolates the primary stats from most of the secondary stats. It's actually very smartly designed, from a stat accessibility point of view. Think of every Primary/Secondary stat combination a player might want and almost all of them are possible in this scenario. Parry is fine as a red because DPS don't want it. Spirit and Spell Pen are fine as blue because tanks won't want those. The only accessibility issue you could have with this design is that melee can't realistically gem for Expertise in this system and tanks can't gem for hit, both of which I think are minor points.

As I said last week, the main problem with this scenario is that it creates a huge imbalance in demand for the different gems. 90+% of the players in the game want red gems, and the other gems are at best situationally desirable.

Suggestion #1: Gem Redistribution

Red	Yellow	Blue
Intellect	Agility	Strength
Hit	Mastery	Spirit
Crit	Resilience	Stam
Parry	Dodge	Spell Pen
Expertise		Haste

The advantage to this scenario is that it keeps primary stat gems in the game and it spreads them around the different colors to create a more balanced demand. The red gems will still be the most popular since there will likely be more Int users in any group then there are Agi or Str users, but the green and blue gem type drops won't be the trash that they are today.

Unfortunately this scenario has a huge problem. It blocks a lot of Primary/Secondary stat combinations that players will want. Just one example is that Mages and Warlocks would be giving up a lot to gem Hit since it shares a gem color with Int. While it would balance out the demand for the gem types, I think this is to high a price to pay.

Suggestion #2: No Primary Stats

Red	Yellow	Blue
Haste	Mastery	Spirit
Parry	Resilience	Hit
Expertise	Dodge	Spell Pen
		Crit

As Rohan suggested in the comments of my last post, it might be a good idea to eliminate primary stats from the system all together. Currently, primary stats are universally every players first choice when trying to pick a gem or enchant for their gear. How players value secondary stats is much more diverse however. Some prefer haste and others want mastery. If implemented this suggestion should lead to more balanced demand because of the more diverse interest in secondary stats. That said, I'm sure there will still be favorites and least favorites, but hopefully it wouldn't be as extreme as the current situation.

The down side to this suggestion is what it means for profession bonuses. The profession bonus for both Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing is based upon gems, and altering which gems are available will have an impact on which professions are most desirable. However, this concern is manageable. The JC only gems could still provide primary stats and the BS gem sockets could be converted to enchants that provide a set amount of stats rather then a socket to be defined by the user.

Suggestion #3: No Pure Secondary Stats

Red	Orange	Yellow	Green	Blue	Purple
Intellect	Int/Crit	Agility	Agi/Hit	Strength	Stam/Parry
	Int/Mastery		Str/Hit	Stam	Stam/Exp
	Int/haste		Stam/Dodge		Int/Spirit
	Int/Resil		Agi/Resil		Int/Hit
	Int/Spell Pen		Agi/Exp		Str/Resil

This is by far my most radical suggestion, but I have to ask the question. What's the point of having pure secondary stat gems anyway? As far as I know almost no one uses them, because the primary stats are so much better. So here's the radical suggestion: Get rid of them.

The table above gives you and idea of that I'm thinking about, but by no means includes all the combinations that would be necessary. Each of the Primary stats would have it's own primary color gem, with Strength and Stamina sharing blue. The hybrid gem colors would provide two stats just like they do now, but they would always be a combination of a primary stat and a secondary stat, and the secondary stat wouldn't be tied to a particular color like they are now (ie: Resilience =/= Yellow). Also, if having no pure secondary stat gems is a real deal breaker, who says you can't have pure stat gems in hybrid gem color.

The advantage of this system is that it should broaden the demand for the different types of gems and should allow for every primary/secondary combination desired by players.

The disadvantage to this system is that it is less intuitive than the current system and since it's a fairly radical change, it may confuse a lot of players. I also worry that it may not broaden the demand for other gems enough. Reds would still easily be the most popular gems with blues and yellows coming in second and third. The hybrid gems on the other hand could still lag significantly behind.

TL-DR:

While the current gem structure has it's advantages, it's led to an extremely lopsided market for gems in WoW where Reds are valued significantly more then all of the others. There are several ways that Blizzard could modify the system so that the gem valuations are more balanced across the different types.

1. Blizzard could just reassign a lot of the gem types to different colors but this would cause situations where some players couldn't get a hybrid gem combination that they found desirable.

2. Blizzard could also remove primary stats from the gem structure and reassign some of the secondary stats to different colors. This should balance the demand for gems, but would cause issues with profession bonuses.

3. In a fairly radical move, Blizzard could also eliminate pure secondary stats gems because very few people use them anyway. This would allow Blizzard to create hybrid gems that weren't as reliant on gem color and could allow for all the combinations a player might want.

Epic Gems in Cata = A Failure

2012-01-20T16:20:00.004-06:00

Quick Announcement: I'm trying to be more active on twitter. If you want to follow me, my ID is @graylo.

Last night my guild killed Heroic Hagara for the second time and not one, but two [Girdle of the Grotesque] dropped. As I'm sure most of you know, this is the BiS moonkin belt, and I was quite happy when I was awarded one of them. Then I had a revelation.

The GotG has two Red sockets and gains a prismatic socket once you apply the belt buckle. Since it is a BiS item I would expect it to be gemmed with epic quality gems even if they are a bit expensive, because I'm not going to replace it. Then I have to consider the reality of the situation.

The mean price of Queen's Ruby's on my server is 7,000g. Sure the price varies a little bit, but even the lowest I've seen them on my server is still 5,500g and that is in no way common. In short, I have to spend at least 16,500g just to gem my belt the way it should. You can buy epic items for less then that.

It's clear to me that the current system is broken. So, how did we get here, and how can we fix it?

A Quick History:

In The Burning Crusade (when the JC profession was introduced) epic gems were mined from special mining nodes in the Black Temple and Mount Hyjal raid instances. Eventually they could be purchased with badges.

Pros:

It supplied epic gems directly to the main group of players interested in having epic gems: hardcore progression raiders.

Allowed the guild to allocate gems based upon need.

Cons:

PvPers had extremely limited access to the epic gems, and but they were pretty much required at the higher levels of competition
Aquiring the gems was a 25man effort, but single players could cause havoc with ninja looting and favoritism

In Wrath of the Lich King, epic gems were prospected from uncommon ores. Alchemists could also transmute superior gems in to epic gems once a day with some additional mats.
Pros:

Epic gems were highly accessible for all players.

Players controlled both the supply and demand sides of the gem market.

Cons:

Epic gems were so accessible that it crippled the market for blue quality gems.

T
his is pure speculation but here is what I think happened. In TBC, Blizzard introduced epic gems as a reward for high progression, but in the end weren't accessible enough. First, things first the guilds who mined them horded them for their own needs. On top of that, obtaining the gems was a 25man effort, but one or two people cause big problems by ninja mining the nodes or a GM playing favorites with the gems. There were other issues as well, but I think all of them revolve around the epic gems not being accessible enough.

So in WotLK, Blizzard created an entirely new system that was completely driven by the ingame economy. Players determined the supply by mining/prospecting ore or doing transmutes, and as a result Epic gems were probably too accessible in Blizzards mind. During WotLK, epic gems were fairly cheap. Players completely regemmed gear within a week or two of their introduction and the market for blue quality gems was crippled. As a result Blizzard felt the need to create a new system for Cata which leads us to......

The Current Problem:

The current problem can easily be broken into two sections: Supply and Demand.

Demand side:
The problem with gem demand, is that it is heavily skewed towards red gems at the moment. DPS and Healing are the two most common roles played in the game at the moment and almost all of them favor the stats provided by red gems (Int, Str, & Agi). On top of that, Blizzard likes to give players their best stats in the last tier of an expansion. As a result, the T13 year, has significantly more red sockets then previous tiers which reduces the demand for hybrid gem colors like purple and orange.

In short, 90% of the players in a raid want red gems, but only 17% of them will get one on average (assuming the distribution is equal). As a result, red gems are extremely expensive, but the other five gems are relatively cheap. Here are the mean prices on my server as an example.

Red	Blue	Yellow	Green	Orange	Purple
7,000g	599b	1385g	999g	2060g	1325g

Ultimately this is a problem Blizzard created 2 years ago when the started designing the Cataclysm expansion, and can't really be fixed until the next expansion even if blizzard wanted to.

Supply side:
The Cata system for epic gems does have several positives. For example, every player who kills a boss on normal or heroic levels has a chance to get an epic gem. The supply isn't controlled by the guild, and players have a choice to use it them selves or sell it for gold.

This system does eliminate some of the core problems of the previous two systems, but it's too random and inflexible to meet the players needs in a reasonable way. It creates a surplus of all colors except red, and an extreme shortage of red gems which increases prices to unreasonable levels.

The good news is, that changing the supply should be easy, and Blizzard has several options if they so desired to make a change.

Change Drop Rates: There is no rule that says all gems have to have an equal chance to drop from the Geodes. I bet it wouldn't be difficult for Blizzard to modify the drop rates. They could make epic gems more common on the more common Geode, or they could change it so that red gems are favored over the other 5 options for both types of Geode. My guess is that Blizzard could easily implement this with a hotfix.

Eliminate the Geodes: Blizzard could eliminate the geodes all together and allow players to buy the gems directly, instead of buying a random chance at an epic gem.

Enable Gem Transmutes: If I remember correctly there were some transmutation patters for gems in the 4.3 ptr, but they never made it to the live release. This would allow blizzard to maintain the randomness of the geode, but still give players a way to modify supply, even if it's with a weekly cooldown.

Conclusions:

As much as I would like them to, I doubt Blizzard will make a change at this point. Prices will come down as people are getting less gear upgrades, and more gems are being created. That said, when I talk to players, this epic gem situation is a common source of frustration. Since we are entering the lull between expansions when burn out among players is high, I think it would be a good idea for Blizzard to take a look at this issue and try and reduce some of those frustrations.

FWSC: Upgrading from 4T12

2012-01-12T16:14:00.000-06:00

In my last post I addressed the value of the 4T13 set bonus because before it was buffed in PTR patch 4.3.2 it was widely regarded as very weak and several people asked me if it was a set bonus people should strive for or just ignore it and use other gear.

I think I answered that question sufficiently last week, but I was surprised by how many of you asked when we should upgrade from 4T12, and weren't even concerned about 4T13 yet. I had assumed (somewhat wrongly) that upgrading to 2T13 was a given based upon my experience and where items fell on my gear list. After thinking about it a little bit, I realized it's not that easy.

In the past, upgrading gear between tiers had usually felt fairly clean to me. The values of the set bonuses did very some, but that was usually small and the difference was made up for with improved stats. However, with this tier, I didn't take into account the significantly weaker set bonus and I didn't realize that the ilevel upgrade was as small as it is. So, lets stop making assumptions and start looking at some simulations to see what the results actually are.

My Methodology:

All of the results generated below were generated out of SimulationCraft using the simc-430-6 build.
The gear sets used in the simulations were based upon my own. It was primarily a mixture of Heroic T12 gear and Normal T13 gear, but I did not have a single piece of the T13 Moonkin tier set due to some extremely bad luck with guilds. I chose these gear sets because it was clearly a realistic set up and was easy for me to upgrade the gear.
iLevel gains were minimized to avoid confusion. For example, my T12 helm was from Normal mode, so I chose the T13 LFR helm as the upgrade in my analysis.
I made a few changes to the default rotation used by SimulationCraft. The main change is that I had it cast Starsurge on cooldown rather then only in Eclipse.
All results are from a Patchwerk style simulation.

The Results:

First lets look at the values of the different set bonuses. These will be a little different then what I presented last week, because I'm using a different gear/glyph set up and a slightly newer build of SimulationCraft. While there are differences, I don't think they are significant.

	4T12	Only 2T12	No Set Bonus	Only 2T13	Live 4T13	PTR 4T13
% Change	2.05%	1.71%		1.75%	1.23%	2.54%
Avg DPS	34,931	34,228	33,652	34,242	34,664	35,111

As you can see, both T12 set bonuses are better then the T13 bonuses that would replace them (at least until 4.3.2 is released). When we trade 4T12 for 2T13 currently we are giving up a 2.05% damage increase for a 1.75% damage increase, for a net loss of 0.30%. When trading 2T12 for 4T13 it's even worse with a net loss of 0.48%. The 4T13 set bonus does get significantly better when 4.3.2 is released, but we are not there yet, so lets see if improved ilevel can make up for our weakening set bonus.

This list represents a series of simulations I ran to see the value in transitioning from 4T12 to 4T13. It includes both the set bonus changes and the ilevel changes.

iLvl Rank	Sets Used	Slots Upgraded	Avg DPS	% Change
0	4T12	None	34,922	n/a
12	2T12/2T13	S,G	34,952	-0.06%
12	2T12/2T13	S,L	35,151	0.51%
18	2T12/2T13	S,L,H	35,299	0.42%
24	4T13 Live	S,L,H,G	35,305	0.02%
24	4T13 PTR	S,L,H,G	35,755	1.27%

Column Definitions:
iLvl Rank: Represents how much my total ilevel increased in each simulation.
Sets Used: Indicates which set bonuses were used in the simulation. If the 4 piece is used, then the corresponding 2 piece was used as well.
Slots Upgraded: S=Shoulder, G=Gloves, L=Legs, H=Helm
Avg DPS: The average DPS from the simulation
% Change: The percent change in average DPS when compared to the previous iLvl Rank.

What this Table Tells Us:

Upgrading isn't bad: In all but one occasion, upgrading my gear in the simulation resulted in higher average DPS. The one time it didn't increase DPS, the decrease was just 0.06% which is really insignificant. And remember, these simulations were done using the minimum ilvl upgrade possible.
How You Upgrade Matters: The one time average DPS when down was when I upgraded using the two weakest tier slots (shoulders and gloves). When upgrading with the larger tier pieces (Legs, Chest, and Helm), the change in Avg DPS was more significant.

TL-DR:

As long as you use some common sense while upgrading your gear, you shouldn't see any significant DPS losses from going from 4T12 to 2T13 and beyond. That said, depending on what loot system your guild uses, it doesn't always make sense to go for an upgrade right away. If you have a choice, focus on upgrading the larger slots like Legs and Helm, before the smaller slots.

FWSC: A Look at Set Bonus 4T13

2012-01-04T12:34:00.005-06:00

Since the release of patch 4.3 I've received several questions about the Moonkin 4 piece set bonus, and had been working on this post for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, it is now a little late given new information from the recent PTR build, but I would like to go ahead and get it out there to answer any questions that might be lingering.

Fun With SimulationCraft: The Moonkin 4T13 Set Bonus

When the set bonuses were reveled on the PTR months ago, the criticism of the 4T13 set bonus was pretty quick and pretty loud. I don't remember seeing a single theorycrafter or analysis that suggested it was a strong set bonus, and I like a lot of people thought it should and would be buffed. However, it quickly became clear that Blizzard wasn't going to buff it (at least before the patch), and the question became: should we use it?

Since the 4T13 set bonus is being change on the PTR to also buff Starsurge's damage by 10%, the answer to that question is a bit obvious now. Of course we will want the set bonus when the 4.3.2 patch is released. But lets take a look at the numbers anyway. Who knows when the new patch is going to be released some of you might find this info helpful in the mean time.

My Methodology:

All of the results generated below were generated out of SimulationCraft using the simc-430-4 build.

Most of the results were created using the Moonkin Heroic T13 build that comes with the program, but a few of the results were created using a Normal mode Moonkin T13 build that I created. I did this to answer a specific question that will be come obvious later.

SimulationCraft obviously isn't updated yet for changes that occurred last night. So, I estimated the benefit of the new 4T13 set bonus by increasing Starsurge's DPS on the old 4T13 results by 10%. I think this is a reasonable estimate, but it may be a little generous since that assumes the buff is multiplicative and it may not be. Either way, I don't think it changes my conclusions and I don't have a way of getting more accurate results at the moment.

Rotation Change 1: The default SC Moonkin Rotation has you detonate Wild Mushrooms at the start of the fight when not in Solar Eclipse. I added a condition to only detonate it when Solar Eclipse is up. It was a tiny improvement.

Rotation Change 2: The default SC Moonkin Rotation has you only cast Starsurge while you are in Eclipse. I changed it to cast Starsurge on Cooldown. I can see delaying a Starsurge cast a little right before Lunar Eclipse, but it doesn't make sense to me at other times and my results agree with my logic. Let me know if I'm missing something.

All results are from a Patchwerk style simulation. I did run the simulations on helter skelter, but it didn't change the results significantly.

The Set Bonus Valuations:

From what I can tell most moonkin are using Glyph of Wrath for most fights in Dragon Soul because Glyph of Starsurge doesn't make sense with a few exceptions. That said, I ran the results using both glyphs for a comparison.

Glyph of Wrath:

	No Set Bonus	Only 2T13	Live 4T13	PTR 4T13
% Change		1.8245%	0.8344%	2.2134%
Avg DPS	44,724	45,540	45,920	46,548

As you can see from these results the Live version of 4T13 buffs Moonkin DPS by about 0.8344%. This is easily one of the weakest Moonkin set bonuses in the history of the game. However, that doesn't mean it's useless either. While a 0.8344% buff isn't particularly strong, it's not something to be ignored either. I've seen plenty of players expend a lot of effort for a smaller bonus.

Glyph of Starsurge:

	No Set Bonus	Only 2T13	Old 4T13	New 4T13
% Change		1.7154%	1.2554%	2.6435%
Avg DPS	44,480	45,243	45,811	46,439

These results might give us a little clue as to why Blizzard was hesitant to buff the 4T13 set bonus before the patch went live. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard was expecting some level of Synergy between the 4T13 set bonus, Glyph of Starsurge, and Lunar Eclipse. These results show us that that expectation isn't completely baseless since the 4T13 set bonus is significantly more valuable when using Glyph of Starsurge instead of Glyph of Wrath.

That said, the results also show that Glyph of Starsurge isn't always the best choice even if it does synergize well with the 4T13 set bonus. These results are from a single target patchwerk simulation and Glyph of Wrath out performed Glyph of Starsurge in every simulation. Glyph of Starsurge would be better in multi target situations, but only two of the Dragon Soul raids fit that description in my opinion. In three of the fights it may be useful, but somewhat iffy, and in the other three fights Glyph of Starsurge would clearly be bad.

The Alternatives:

Before coming to any conclusion on the usefulness of the 4T13 set bonus we have to look at the alternatives. It's not enough for the set bonus to be bad or sub par. We have to have a better alternative to replace to declare the 4T13 useless. Luckily answering this question proved to be easier then I expected it to be.

Heroic Gear Level:
At the T13 heroic gear level the answer is easy. There literally are not any ilevel equivalent alternatives. The only head, shoulder, chest, hands, and leg option we have at the 410 ilevel are the tier pieces. To be fair, you could use the resto tier instead of the moonkin tier but that only seems to make sense in the chest slot. The other option is to use lower ilevel items, but doesn't make sense either when you look at Normal Mode gear.

Normal Gear Level:
At the normal gear level there are some non-tier options for four out of the five slots, but none of them are a clearly better choice. In most cases you would be trading one secondary stat for a lesser secondary stat like trading Haste for Mastery. The other issue is that the non-tier items have a lot spirit on them that could be difficult to get rid of and balance around. In short, if you ignored the set bonus in this way, you would be losing the set bonus without any significant stat gain. Obviously this is a DPS loss.

Using 2T12:
The final option would be to use two items from T12 so in hopes that the 2T12 set bonus is better for your DPS then the 4T13 and better stats from a higher ilevel. Anyone who has played this game for a while knows this isn't unheard of. In ToC during WotLK all moonkin continued to use the T8 items because the 4T8 set bonus was extremely over powered. A more recent example is that before patch 4.2 was released may moonkin were going to continue to use their T11 gear to keep the 4T11 set bonus, until Blizzard announced a nerf to the set bonus.

The question though, is 2T12 that good? The answer is, that it's not.

Using a 397 ilevel gear set I ran two simulations, swapping out the chest and legs of the Normal level Deep Earth moonkin gear for the chest and legs of the heroic level Obsidian Arborweave. The simulation with a full 4T13 set bonus had an average DPS of 37,697. The simulation with 2T12/2T13 set bonuses had an average DPS of 37,661.

While it is clear that the 2T12 set bonus is better then the 4T13 set bonus, it is not so much better that we can ignore the ilevel difference and continue to use the 2T12 set bonus without a DPS loss. Since the two numbers are so close it's not a big loss, but given that there is a clear advantage to upgrading to the heroic level tier gear it doesn't make sense to stick with the T12 level items.

TL:DR

The live version of the 4T13 set bonus is one of the weakest I've seen in my years of playing a moonkin. However, due to a lack of alternatives, there is no reason we should ignore it, especially considering the buff it has received on the latest PTR build.

MoP: Celestial Alignment and other Talents

2011-12-08T21:06:00.006-06:00

There is a new Mists of Pandaria talent calculator up with some fun stuff to discuss. Many of the changes are Mana cost changes and error corrections. For example, Moonkin Aura grants 5% haste again instead of crit. Nature's Grace is back up to 15% instead of the 1% listed before, but nobody is interested in this small stuff. On to the good stuff.

New Ability: Celestial Alignment

Celestial Alignment: Grants you the simultaneous damage benefit of both your Lunar Eclipse and Solar Eclipse, increasing damage done by your Nature and Arcane spells by 25%. Activating this ability consumes all Lunar and Solar Energy and prevents gaining more during its duration. Lasts 15 sec.

Having an additional DPS cooldown will be very nice, but I would like to learn a little bit more about the ability before I get all giddy. The way the tooltip reads I've had a couple of thoughts about how this could work, but some of them seem a little strange.

My first question is how does the buff work? Does it just proc the existing Lunar and Solar Eclipse buffs or does it proc a new buff that gives our nature and arcane spells and additional all 25%? Having the buff use the existing Lunar and Solar buffs would be bad because it would make it easy to waste the buff by using it during eclipse. I think this option is unlikely, because it would be a clear trap for players, and Blizzard has said they don't want to create traps. It makes much more sense that the buff would stack with what ever other buffs we have at the moment including Lunar and Solar Eclipse.

My second question is how does the ability consume our Eclipse energy? Does it move you to neutral once you proc the ability or does it consume the energy at the end of the buff. If it consumes the energy at the start of the buff it's probably that it would shift you out of Eclipse, since we loose the Eclipse buff when we reach zero energy. This would create another trap where it is bad to use the cooldown at the wrong time.

Even if it consumed your Eclipse energy at the end of the buff, I'm not sure how I feel about the consuming mechanic in general. Since the buff both consumes your energy and prevents you from generating more energy. There are points within the eclipse cycle where it would be better to use Celestial Alignment then others. For example, it could be best to use the cooldown at the end of Eclipse so that you can extend the existing buff and have the spell consume as little energy as possible. This would ultimately give the better players a bit of a skill advantage that I know a lot of you would support, but I'm not as sure that would be a good thing.

Incarnation Change:

Balance: Chosen of Elune - Improved Moonkin Form that also halves Lunar and Solar Power generation while in an Eclipse, and doubles it while not in an Eclipse.

It's hard to know how significant this change is given how little we know about DPS in MoP. However, I do think this change is interesting given the creation of the Celestial Alignment cooldown discussed above. First, the two abilities clearly shouldn't be used together. Since, Celestial Alignment prevents you from generating energy, clearly a buff that changes how you generate energy would be a bad thing. This again creates a potential trap since one buff could possibly negate another in a way that is not obvious to more casual players.

Mists of Pandaria Calculator Changes

2011-12-02T10:44:00.002-06:00

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday I checked out of the World of Warcraft for few days and didn't see that Blizzard added a Mists of Pandaria talent calculator with an updated list of ability changes until Monday. So I'm behind the curve, but I'm going to hope that my response is better late then never.

There was a lot of interesting stuff in the Mists of Pandaria information I want to talk about, but there is also some stuff in there that at this point I don't think is all that important (and I think Blizzard would agree). Since we are in a very early stage of development, I am more worried about the structure of the changes then the actual details. For example, changes to spell mechanics like Insect Swarm being turned into a pure debuff is interesting, but the fact that Moonkin form grants a 20% damage increase in MoP instead of the 10% we have on live is uninteresting for me.

The structure is important be cause it defines how our spec will play. The structure determines if it's too easy, too hard, and if it's fun. The details while important in the long run, don't matter a whole lot if the structure isn't right, and there will be plenty of time to address those issues when we know more about the structure and how all of our abilities will interact.

Insect Swarm:

Insect Swarm: The enemy target is swarmed with insects, increasing all damage taken from your Wrath, Starfire, and Starsurge spells by 30%. Limit 1 target.

I have absolutely no problems with losing a DoT as long as the end result is a design with balanced and competitive DPS. However, I don't what Blizzard's goal is for this change, and I worry that it will turn out to be pointless or annoying for the player.

The big question for me is what's the duration of the new Insect Swarm? I can see this going a couple of ways.

Short Duration: If the new Insect Swarm has a short duration of 18 seconds, this is really just a nerfed version of the current DoT, and changes the moonkin rotation in a bad way. With a short duration, the new Insect Swarm doesn't reduce the complexity of the moonkin rotation at all and is an actual nerf to damage since won't benefit moonkin DPS at all while moving and has a single target limit. In short, a short duration is bad and annoying.

Long Duration: If the new Insect Swarm has a long duration or a mechanic that extends it automatically with a glyph of something, then what's the point of having the spell at all? Why not just buff Wrath, Starfire, and Starsurge by 30% and get rid of the spell completely? Since all moonkin nukes are single target abilities, the fact that IS is limited to a single target is meaning less. All it does is limit how quickly moonkin can start DPSing a new target since we will have to put IS on the target before we can start nuking. In short, I find this model of IS to be pointless.

New IS means One DoT?:

Not everyone is as carefree about the possibility of losing Insect Swarm as I am, and some players were worried. When a Grayfox (no relation) expressed concern about moonkin having only one DoT on the forums, Blizzard responded with:

I just wanted to drop into this thread and let you guys know that we currently plan for Moonkins to have two DoTs: Moonfire and Sunfire will be able to stack (both applied at the same time).

Now that's really interesting.

I'm assuming that Moonfire and Sunfire will still be a single button in MoP. As in we push one button to cast both spells, but which spell is cast depends on if you are in Solar Eclipse or not, but Moonfire and Sunfire wont overwrite each other anymore. If that is the case I love this change. And I think it helps moonkin in a couple of ways.

First, it lessens some of the impact of losing for Insect Swarm as a DoT. Traditionally DoTs have done more then just damage. We have had trinkets, set bonuses, and abilities that proc or stack based on how many and when ticks hit their targets and losing those IS ticks could affect how we value those gear choices and abilities. Assuming MF and SnF are a single button, this change won't make up for all the lost ticks from losing IS, but it will help.

The second big benefit is that I think it makes the rotation more obvious, and could really help make Glyph of Starfire more useful.
One of the current issues with Eclipse is that it forces to make some choices on the fly, which can lead to small errors that add up to significant DPS loss. For example, if you are about to transition out of Eclipse should you refresh your Moonfire DoT even it has 8 seconds left? Not refreshing the DoT can lead to lost uptime or having your DoT not buffed by Eclipse. However, refreshing the DoT unnecessarily means you lose damage because you could have spent that time casting another damaging spell like Starfire.

I think this change will reduce that confusion because it should become obvious that you should only cast MF/SnF while eclipse is up and even if it results in a lower uptime. Also, clipping should never be necessary with the Glyph of Starfire, because you an easily transition from one eclipse to the other in 27 seconds.

One final comment, if my original assumption that Moonfire and Sunfire would remain a single button is incorrect, then this is a horrible change. In that case, they are just replacing IS with SnF, which makes no sense and just increases the rotations complexity.

Symbiosis: The Three Paths

Symbiosis: Creates a symbiotic link which grants the Druid one ability belonging to the target's class, varying by the Druid's specialization. In exchange grants the target one Druid ability based on their class and combat role. Lasts one hour and persists through death.

There is obviously a whole lot of information we don't know about this spell yet, but I am very intrigued by the spell so far. It sounds really cool, but after thinking about it I'm not sure how it would work and could be a balancing nightmare for Blizzard. I'm not predicting failure, but the headache on this one could be so large that Symbiosis goes the way of the Dance Studio and it all depends on the path Blizzard takes with it. At the moment I see three paths.

Utility / Long Cooldown: I like the idea of trading Utility spells and long cooldowns between classes. For example, if Blizzard went the pure utility route if a moonkin linked with a Death Knight, the DK could gain Cyclone while the moonkin gained Death Grip, which could be a big help if your raid is lacking a particular ability needed to complete an encounter. The problem with that approach is that not all utility spells are significant that often, and by extension Symbiosis may be insignificant in most fights because it's not really necessary to trade abilities.

Long Cooldowns on the other hand would be significant in a lot of fights, but also might be overpowered. From a DPS perspective it could really work by trading Starfall for Elemental Mastery with a Shaman, but from a healing or tanking perspective it could be an issue. For example, lets say if a resto druid cast Symbiosis on a Holy Pally that the druid gains Aura Mastery and the pally gains Tranquility. Additional cooldowns could make some fights trivial, unless Blizzard really increased the incoming damage, which could lead to class stacking which isn't a good thing.

I think this is the most likely path but it could have some balancing issues.

Core Ability: My original thought was that Symbiosis would trade core abilities between players. For example, if a moonkin linked with another DPS we would both gain a new DPS spell, like the moonkin would get Corruption and the Warlock would get Moonfire if the link was with a Warlock. Obviously in that vision if the druid linked with a healer they would gain a healing spell and so on.

This sounded really cool at first, but the more thought about it this path didn't seem all that realistic. The basic problem is that those core spells are designed with a specific class in mind and the other buffs and abilities that the class has. For example, Starfire is a solid spell for a moonkin, but if you gave to a Warlock it would be weak without Eclipse. Ultimately I think this would be a balancing nightmare. The other issue I have with this path is that it could add significant complexity to our rotation. I don't want to have to work a new spell into my rotation and I really don't like the possibility of having that spell change depending on what class I link to if the fight requires it. In the end, I don't think this path is likely.

Passive Buff: We don't really think about passive buffs as "abilities," but it is possible that Symbiosis won't trade any active abilities. For example, by linking with a tank a moonkin might gain 5% damage reduction, or gain 5% Crit by linking with a Mage. This is probably the easiest path, because it shouldn't be difficult to balance, would provide an obvious benefit, and wouldn't change either class’s rotation. However, it's boring and would easily be math out. There would never be a discussion about which class or player to link with because we would just put it on the class that helps us the most much like players already do with Focus Magic and Dark Intent.

Final Thought: I think Symbiosis has a lot of potential but there are some pitfalls as well. It will be interesting to hear more details about it.

Starfall:

Starfall: Triggering Lunar Eclipse resets the cooldown of this spell.

I absolutely love this change. I recently had some discussions about where Starfall fit in our rotation and if we should cast it on cooldown or wait for Lunar Eclipse. In the end it was obvious to me that it's a problem without a good answer currently. Casting Starfall without Lunar Eclipse is a significant DPS loss, and not casting Starfall on cooldown can be a significant DPS loss. Sure there are ways to line Lunar Eclipse up with the Starfall cooldown using Glyph of Starsurge, but the benefit of GoSS is limited in Single garget encounters.

This change effectively ends those conversations and I love it. It's another situation where blizzard is taking the ambiguity out of the situation and making the rotation more obvious. In short, it turns Starfall back into a "cast on cooldown" spell.

Nature's Grace:

Eclipse: When triggered, both Lunar and Solar Eclipse also grant 15% haste for 15 seconds.

At first I thought they might have gotten rid of Nature's Grace, but turns out that they just baked it into Eclipse and improved it. Having the NG effect proc when Eclipse is triggered makes a lot of sense for several reasons.

First, having the buff proc based on a DoT cast doesn't make a lot of sense when the class has only one DoT (if my assumption above is correct). It would seem almost cruel to have the spell that benefits most form the haste buff not to be affected by it because it has to proc it. Second, since the cooldown on the current Nature's Grace is reset when Eclipse is triggered, the effect is procced shortly after you enter Eclipse already most of the time. Having Eclipse proc Nature's Grace is just taking out the middleman, and it prevents the possibility of overlapping Nature's Grace procs which is possible in the current system.

The Trend to Simplify

Many these changes don't seem that big when you look at them on their own, but when I look at them as a whole I see a very welcome trend. In my opinion, the moonkin rotation during cataclysm has been filled with ambiguity and on the fly choices that has lead to an overly complex rotation for an average player like me. We have questions like: Do I clip my DoT to maximize dot Damage or can I just power through to the next eclipse? Should I cast Starfall on cooldown or wait for Eclipse? How can I maximize the benefit of Nature's Grace?

A lot of these changes are very welcome in my opinion because they remove a lot of the ambiguity from our rotation. Starfall will be cast on cooldown most of the time because the cooldown will be reset when the spell is most significant most of the time. Assuming Moonfire and Sunfire are single button and the Glyph of Starfire doesn't change significantly means that we will only cast the DoTs once during Eclipse and shouldn't have to worry about clipping or overwriting an existing DoT.

If it is Blizzards goal to simplify the moonkin rotation a small amount, I fully support and appreciate their goal.

Patch 4.3 Gear List

2011-11-29T19:17:00.004-06:00

I've updated the gear list for the new patch. It's a little rough due the limited amount of time I had to create it. I do plan on going back and fixing it, but I wanted to have a draft out there for people raiding tonight.

The things that I need to fix are:

Locations: I haven't added many of them for the new items yet, but that will be correct.
Proc Valuations: There are a lot of good procs in this patch that I need to take a closer look at.
Do I have everything: I built the list using WoWhead, but I'm worried that I missed something. For example the list doesn't include any random stat items.

As always, if you see an error in the list please point it out. I will try and fix it as soon as possible.

Finally, I know Blizzard released a lot of new info regarding Mists of Pandara just before the holiday. It hasn't gone unnoticed. I had planned to comment on it today, but didn't have time since I was rushing to get the list out. I hope to have one posted tomorrow or the day after.

Class Q&A and Blizzcon Follow Up

2011-11-15T13:23:00.003-06:00

I already took a look at the big talent changes announced at Blizzcon, but that wasn't the only thing that happened there. Plus, Blizzard has been busy doing Q&A and other things to get word out on the new talent systems and such. In this post I want to try and round up round up some of those items I haven't commented on yet (and even a few I have).

Putting the Hybrid back in Druids:

In the Class Design & Balance Q&A there were several questions about, Hybridization for druids and the "Hybrid Tax," and I think Blizzard's response is summed up best in these quotes:

The overall philosophy of the Druid talent tree is to bring some hybridization back to the Druid class. The 4 Druid specs have become very focused on never using the forms that they do not specialize in. We would like to bring the whole class back together more. So, interesting functionality themed around the different combat roles has been introduced.

We don't intend for that added hybridization to be offset by any sort of DPS nerf. While DPSing, a druid's DPS will be entirely competitive with other DPS. We hope to see druids that do things like, "DPS in Cat Form most of the fight, but during one phase, when healing is super difficult, pop out of Cat, hit Heart of the Wild, Tranquility, and spam heals on the raid to help top everyone off, then go back to Cat and resume DPSing."

From a high level perspective I support this design goal. I like the idea of Druids being able to temporarily fill another role, and that's why I suggested it back in June of 2010. Theoretically it makes a lot of sense. From a raid composition stand point, you don't have to bring as many core healers if you were only bringing that many handle a few sort periods of high damage. Or, you could stack a few restos and have them pop their cooldown for a temporary burst of DPS.

That all sounds good in theory but I worry about how it will work in practice. For example, the version of Heart of the Wild previewed at Blizzcon said "Healing spells generate Lunar or Solar energy and will benefit from Lunar and Solar Eclipse." Unfortunately, that's a horrible idea. The concept of Eclipse works for moonkin, because DPS occurs over an extended period of time. As a moonkin, I know that I am going to be switching between Lunar and Solar multiple times in a given fight and good and bad luck should balance each other out. For a temporary buff like Heart of the Wild that falls apart.

How would Blizzard balance Heart of the Wild? Should they balance it around having Eclipse? If that is the case then Moonkin heals could easily be too weak to be of any significance when not in eclipse. What if they balance HotW around not having Eclipse? In this case, HotW could be way to strong. Obviously, there would be an advantage for holding Eclipse to use it if possible. This could be devastating to class balance in PvP. Balancing it round some point in the middle would just be picking up the disadvantages from both sides.

My other concern is that applying Eclipse to healing might be too foreign of a concept for players. By doing so, Blizzard is basically adding a second healing style to class that already has a healing spec. Moonkin that are already familiar with resto would be forced to learn a new style to take advantage of the ability. Moonkin, who do not typically heal are already learning something foreign, but Blizzard would be missing a big opportunity to introduce them Resto, but continuing with the Eclipse concept.

My suggestion to Blizzard is to keep it simple and to not get to creative. You're already asking someone to do something they are not necessarily familiar with. There's no need to complicate it further. The buff should be consistent and include a mana cost reduction so that players don't need to concern themselves Eclipse or mana over these short periods of time. The suggestion I made a year and a half ago was to allow moonkin to heal in moonkin form temporarily and buff the heals by some percentage. I think this would meet all the goals Blizzard has in mind.

Troubled Tier Six and Master Shapeshifter:

As I said in my last post, the tier 6 options at level 90 were some of my least favorite, and after looking around the internet it was clear to me that a lot of moonkin agreed with that sentiment. So, it's not surprising that the tier 6 talents were addressed in the Class Design & Balancing Q&A. Unfortunately their response only made my fears worse.

The level 90 Druid talents deliberately come in 3 different levels of work required. Heart of the Wild is perfect for an encounter where there is a period where increased healing is needed for a short time, and dps is not the need of the encounter. Something like the Chimaeron encounter where more healing is needed at certain times, and dps is less important. Master Shapeshifter targets the Druid who is willing to do a lot of work shifting back and forth or occasionally needs to heal or damage, such as Blood Queen Lanathel, where a Tranquility boosted by the talent would help your group a lot during her air phase. Disentanglement is there for the "lazy" Druid who doesn't want to do that work, but still gets some benefit from a well-timed shapeshift.

Though I am sure Blizzard doesn't intend for us to interpret the comment this way but here is the way a majority of players will apply this comment. "Good players will take Heart of the Wild or Master Shapeshifter depending on the fight. Bad players can take Disentanglement so they can at least have something." I'm honestly really surprised Blizzard would make a comment like this, because it's such an obvious trap.

The comment I particularly hate is when Blizzard says "Master Shapeshifter targets the Druid who is willing to do a lot of work shifting back and forth or occasionally needs to heal or damage." If Blizzard actually believes this it shows a shocking lack of understanding of the player base by Blizzard at least from the moonkin perspective.

As you know Master Shapeshifter as we know it allows a druid to buff his primary role by doing something out side of that role. The example provided by Blizzard was that our melee abilities could buff our spell power and vice versa. If this buff is significant then it becomes a required talent, because as Blizzard knows, there is no such thing as an optional DPS talent. That simple truth is the entire reason for the last two Talent System redesigns. If Master Shapeshifter provides a significant DPS buff then, no one would take Heart of the Wild or Disentanglement, because that would tell all of the other players and potential guilds that "Hey, I'm a bad player." And no, one wants to think that they are a bad player or to tell other players that they are bad.

To be fair, Master Shapeshifter does make a lot of sense for someone specced into Resto or Guardian spec. I could easily see a healer doing a little DPS when things are not busy to buff the heals for when they are. Tanks are in a similar situation when in between add phases and tank swaps. But for cats and moonkins this makes little sense and could over complicate two already very complicated rotations.

Incarnation:

The Blizzcon version of Incarnation didn't mention how it would impact DPS in moonkin form, but Blizzard was nice enough to address this talent in the Class Design & Balance Q&A. The

Incarnation for Balance transforms the Druid in to the Chosen of Elune Form, which currently increases spell damage done and Solar and Lunar energy generated. That is, of course, subject to change.

This seems fairly straight forward and I'm fine with that. It's still impossible to say if we will use it or not yet since we don't know the math behind it or the MoP version of Force of Nature, but it's obviously a promising DPS buff.

That said, I've seen some comments indicating that some people are upset that it doesn't do more. If I am reading them correctly they would like it to be more unique like Tree of Life form or the Warlock Demon form where we would get new abilities or have our current ability's modified in ways other then pure damage. I can see that perspective but at the same time I don't think it's really necessary.

Bi-Polar Hurricane and Moonkin AoE

During the Blizzcon Class panel it was said that "In 5.0 Hurricane will have a new arcane function to make sure you can use it whenever you have to," according to MMO Champion. I interpret this to mean that Hurricane will behave in a way similar to Moonfire. As in it will be buffed by Solar when in Solar and buffed by Lunar when in Lunar. If that's true, I think it's a good change, but I don't think it will have a huge impact on Moonkin AoE unless there are other changes as well.

Current Moonkin AoE center's around Wild Mushroom because it's the strongest whether that's by design or not. We hold solar during AoE periods because all but one of the spells we use in an AoE situation are buffed by Solar Eclipse. Giving Hurricane an arcane function won't change this situation because we would still be encouraged to stay in Solar for WM and the DoTs.

So, if that comment was a small preview into a larger goal of revamping Moonkin AoE, I think Blizzard will find a lot of support among players. I and a lot of players I've talked to haven't been happy with Wild Mushroom in AoE situations because placing three mushrooms feels contrived and difficult during the run of play, in fights like Maloriak and Rhyolith. However, in fight's like Rag where we can place the mushrooms before the Elementals spawn, it works great. I think it would be nice for Moonkin AoE to follow a model of WM being a DPS opener, but Hurricane providing a bulk of the damage done. However, Hurricane would have to be buffed (or the other spells nerfed) to make this happen, and Blizzard would have to address how WM is affected by Eclipse or we will still hang out in Solar during AoE phases.

One possibility suggested to me would be to turn Wild Mushroom damage into fire damage for example so that it's not buffed by either Eclipse and can be balanced around a consistent damage output. I find this idea very appealing since it should make holding Solar Eclipse insignificant because only Insect Swarm would be buffed by Lunar Eclipse.

Good Riddance to Relics:

I know there are druids out there that are morning the loss of relics, but I couldn't be happier that they are getting the boot. While relics did provide a few interesting gear choices in TBC, in most of my years with this game they have been more of a headache then a help. For most of TBC there was only one option. In WotLK, the Tier 8 relic was worse then the Tier 7 relics. And when they were converted to stat sticks in Cataclysm they were boring and almost impossible to upgrade. I say good by and good riddance.

The New Talent System: A Moonkin's View

2011-10-23T21:26:00.006-05:00

I must admit that when I heard there was a new talent revamp I was extremely sceptical that it would be worth while or have a good impact on the game. In fact, when I was reading through the opening comments on WoW Insider and MMO Champion I jotted down "Cookie Cutter Builds: Blizzard's Exercise of Futility" as the original title of this post, because I truly believe that it is impossible for Blizzard to prevent the cookie cutter builds. That said, after hearing more of the details of the new plan, I am a little less critical. Here's my take on the new talents tier by tier.

Two quick notes: First all comments are based on the limited information we have and assume that the talents go live as we currently see them. That is of course not true, but we have nothing else to go on. Second, the wonderful images below were taken from the MMO Champion website. If for some reason you don't know about MMO Champion, please check them out. They are hands down the best WoW news site out there.

Tier One: Mobility Tier

Feline Swiftness - It's not sexy, but it's a solid buff. This will probably be the most common choice of the three options.

Displacer Beast - At first glance it looks to primarily be a PvP/Leveling talent. However, it might have a role in PvE if it can remove Boss DoTs.

Tireless Pursuit - This one seems out of place given the other abilities we traditionally have. For example the speed boost is cool, but we already have that utility with Dash, Stampeding Roar and possibly Darkflight. In fact, I would probably replace this one with Stampeding Roar.

Tier Summary - I'm not that impressed with this tier, but it is the level 15 tier so I'm not sure how much could be expected.

Tier Two: Healing Tier

Nature's Swiftness - Making Cyclone and Roots instant cast could have some PvE and PvP benefits for Moonkin, but I doubt they are huge. Could also act as an "Oh Sh*t" button when macroed with a healing spell.

Renewal - This is a pure "Oh Sh*t" button. Assuming it maths out better then Nature's Swiftness, this is the talent I would choose for raiding.

Cenarion Ward - Some resto's have been asking for a shield type ability for a long time, and this is it. It looks like cool ability to my inexperienced eyes, but I don't see any purpose for a moonkin to pick it up.

Tier Summary - I think this tier is pretty well done. Healers have a definite choice between a shield and a cooldown. Non-healers have a solid choice in Renewal, and Nature's Swiftness might be useful in some situations.

Tier Three: Crowd Control Tier

Faerie Swarm - It's a Faerie Fire that you don't have to stack and that has a slow effect. Sounds great for bears but I see no use for it as a moonkin.

Mass Entanglement - A poor man's Frost Nova for Druids. I see some potential with this talent especially when used with other talents and abilities, but the 2 sec cast time has me a little turned off on it.

Typhoon - What's interesting about this one is that the damage portion of the spell seems to have been removed. That's not a huge deal, since the Typhoon is currently used more for the knockback then it is for damage, but it's interesting none the less.

Tier Summary - Another pretty well done tier. I think Typhoon will be the most common choice for moonkin since a knockback is generally more helpful then a mass root, but I can think of several situations where I would want to have Mass Entanglement instead.

Tier Four: Cooldown Tier

Wild Charge - This is an interesting option, because the effect is tied to your form and not your spec. Basically, you're picking up 4 abilities with this choice rather then just one. In Moonkin form it's a Disengage that generates energy. The caster form example could also be used as a movement cooldown if needed.

Incarnation - The tool tip doesn't list a moonkin example, but judging from the examples listed it looks like Moonkin finally will have the option to have a real DPS cooldown.

Force of Nature - Will summon three trents that may or may not behave the way it currently does for us. My guess is that this will be the same basic spell we've always had from a moonkin perspective, but maybe they will be casters for us instead of melee.

Tier Summary - We don't really know a lot about these options from the information given, but they are definitely some interesting options. Wild Charge seems to be a utility choice, and we will only pick it up if it provides something we need for a particular encounter or maybe for PvP. The choice between Incarnation and Force of Nature is likely to be a math problem. One of them will end up being stronger and that is the one we will pick..

Tier Five: Bear Tier

Demoralizing Roar - Nice utility, but is extremely situation and shifts me to Bear form.

Ursol's Vortex - This one has some potential, but again seems very situational. I can see where it might be helpful in PvP, but for PvE I think it's fairly limited.

Bear Hug - Again, it's interesting but very situational. I like that it does damage, but I don't like being taken out of the fight to use it. I also don't like being shifted to bear form.

Tier Summary - Of the six druid tiers previewed at Blizzcon this is my least favorite. There is just very little there for a moonkin to work with. All three abilities have their uses given the right situation, but my guess is that those situations will be fairly rare.

Tier Six: Shapeshifting Tier

Heart of the Wild - I get the concept. Create an ability that allows druids to be good at their other potential rolls, but it rubs me the wrong way. If I'm in a situation where I need to heal or tank we are likely screwed already, and this ability won't help. Additionally, as a moonkin, why would I ever want Agility and Expertise? If I'm going to DPS I'm going to do it as a Moonkin, not a cat.

Master Shapeshifter - Horrible! Just Horrible! So by shifting out of Moonkin Form to use a few cat or bear abilities I can get an average of a 20% buff for three spells. Minus what ever damage I would have done by staying in Moonkin form instead of shifting to Cat or Bear form. This wouldn't be so bad, if moonkin regularly had to switch into feral forms, but in my 5 years of playing this game I very rarely have had shift to use my melee abilities.

Disentanglement - Shapeshifting removes roots like it currently does but will also real you for 20% of your health. In short, it's a healing cooldown.

Tier Summary - I know I said that tier five was my least favorite tier, but tier six is making me seriously reconsider my words. Heart of the Wild and Master Shapeshifter are at best very situational and at worst completely useless. Disentanglement is good utility, but boring. For the top tier of the expansion I expect something better then this.

The Death of the Cookie Cutter?

Is this the death of Cookie Cutter builds? Will this, as Blizzard puts it, "give players interesting ways to customize their characters according to their preferred playstyle?"

In my opinion, it will not.

The problem Blizzard is up against is that there will almost always be a "best option," and players will always be able to identify that "best option" based upon the needs of the situation. In this post, I looked at all six tiers and in most of them I told you which would be the most common choice, and I could tell you the exceptions for most of those choices. The only time I can't is tier five, because all three choices are extremely situational and near useless from a moonkin perspective.

Final Thoughts:

Given my comments in the last section, I wouldn't be surprised if some of you though I hated this new system, but I don't. It won't eliminate the cookie cutter builds and some of the options are pretty bad. However, this new system has some advantages as well.

I really like the "theme" structure of the choices. I've always hated having to justify taking survivability talents over even the tiniest of DPS upgrades. DPS isn't the only raider quality that has value, but is the one that is focused on 99.99% of the time. I like having to make choices based upon something other then DPS.

The simplicity of the new system is also very nice. Having to make just six choices will make life a little easier and I'm glad that we won't have to go back to a trainer to change those choices.

My Pre-Blizzcon Post

2011-10-20T22:35:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: Clearly I have no clue as to what I'm taking about.

With Blizzcon starting tomorrow and the relatively few posts I've written recently I think it's a good idea to take a shot in the dark and address some of my expectations for Blizzcon. I'm actually quite surprised by the complete lack of information being leaked. As you probably remember, before the last Blizzcon we pretty much knew everything two weeks before Blizzcon was held. The Worgen and Goblin masks were in the datafiles pretty much confirming them as the new playable races. Cataclysm was trademarked and there were tons of lore leaks that gave us a good idea of what the trademark meant.

The big question now is if the lack if information is due to Blizzard protecting it's info really well or a lack of juicy info. In my opinion it's probably a bit of both. First of all, MMO Champion has been the primary source of leaks in the past, but it looks like Blizzard made a deal during the Cataclysm Alpha that turned off that specket of info. It's clear that MMO Champion has had early access to Alpha, Beta, and PTR releases, and my guess is that Blizzard gave them access to the information in return for not disclosing it early. So, my guess is that MMO Champion already has a lot of details of what's going to be announced this weekend, but is keeping their mouth shut as a part of the deal. That said, I doubt the next expansion will follow the traditional pattern of expansion updates and I wonder if there are really any big announcements to be made other then the existence of a new expansion.

Time to Eat Some Crow:

You probably remember that I predicted that the Mists of Pandaria trademark was red herring, but I am not confident in that prediction any more. With Blizzcon starting tomorrow, I don't know what else the new expansion could be. That said, I still think many of the assumptions made by players about what that title means are wrong.

First off, Pandaria and the Pandaren are completely undeveloped lore wise, and most of the lore that is out there is from the RPG books which Blzzard has said is not canon. I have a really hard time believing that Blizzard would base an entire expansion off of such and undeveloped part of the games story. It seems highly unlikely to me especially when Blizzard has expressed some regret at making the Draenei a play able race without much established lore.

So, if Mists of Pandaria isn't completely Panda focused, what kind of story can we expect. I think an Island focused expansion like the one outlined in a Know Your Lore post by Anne Stickney on WoW Insider, and I'm thinking of it as Cataclysm: Part Two. Lets remember that the original concept of Cataclysm was a bit bigger then what has been released. For example, Neptulon was originally intended to be a raid boss in Tier 12, but Blizzard scrapped it when they decided to shrink the tiers. Blizzard also has said they wanted to do something with Kul Tiras but couldn't get to it right away. Also, Blizzard did a lot of work to set up the Old Gods and the Naga with out either of them being a big part of Cataclysm story arc. Finally, due to the Blizzard timeline that was leaked a year ago, we know that Blizzard had next expansion (loosely) scheduled for 2nd quarter 2012.

In my mind, this all adds up to a clean up expansion that goes and fills in some of the holes left by Cataclysm and prepare the story for the the big Good vs Evil fight that is in Velen's Prophecy. My guess is that the new expansion's ending boss will be Queen Azshara with an Old God being an tier end boss. I'm expecting a one two punch much like we saw in WotLK with Yogg in Ulduar leading up to Lich King.

What I don't expect to see from this expansion is a new playable race or a new class. I know a lot of people got all excited at the idea of playable Pandarans but I don't see it happening. First, for game reasons I don't think they will ever make a race available to both classes. Blizzard is really big on player Silhouette in PvP, and having one race playable by both factions messes that up. Second, I don't think they would Pandaran to just one faction given how popular the race would likely be. In the end, I think having Pandaran as a playable race is likely to be a bigger headache then Blizzard is willing undertake.

I also think a new class is a bit unlikely since I don't see the advantage of having a new class. When the Death Knight was added in WotLK it made some sense. The game was a little light on Tanking Classes, and given the tanking shortage in general it made sense to have a tank that didn't have to start at level one. Plus, Death Knights fit in to the overall theme of the expansion extremely well. However, I think looking back the the process of adding a new class proved to be much more difficult then Blizzard expected. Death Knights had balance issues for most of the expansion, and I personally don't think they had a big impact on the pool of available tanks. For Blizzard to add a new class to the game again, I think they will have to see a very definite hole in the game for it to be worth the effort, and I don't think that whole currently exists.

Other Quick Thoughts:

What I would like to see from the next expansion is a more Alliance focused expansion. It may be my bias, but most of the lore for the past few expansions has been more Horde focused, and I think it's time to shift the story back to the Alliance a little. To expand on that, I hope they leave Thrall out of the Horde leadership and keep Garrosh as the faction leader. I also hope they continue with the evolution of Varian Wrynn started at the end of the new book Wolfsheart, and give the Alliance a senseble leader while the Horde has the hot headed idiot for a change.

I doubt there will be much if any Class specific info at Blizzcon, and even less info focused on Moonkin, but obviously I would like to hear something in that regard. Specifically I would like to hear their thoughts on the complexity of the Moonkin rotation. I personally have felt that it is a little over complicated for a while now and would like to see it simplified a little bit.

2011-09-27T12:16:00.003-05:00

Blizzard has been teasing us with patch 4.3 information for weeks now, and this last weekend we finely got some class specific information. If you haven't seen it already Blizzard released the T13 set-bonuses for all classes and specs. Here are the new moonkin set-bonuses:

Balance, 2P -- Insect Swarm increases all damage done by your Starfire, Starsurge, and Wrath spells against that target by 3%.

Balance, 4P -- Starsurge generates 100% extra Lunar or Solar energy while Eclipse is not active

A Quick Look Back:

Before I give my impressions of the new set-bonuses, I want to take a look back at the T12 set-bonuses as a basis for comparison. Using WrathCalcs and SimulationCraft I took a quick look at the old set bonuses to see how they turned out.

With the 2T12 set-bonus, my estimate was horribly wrong because the Burning Trents didn't behave at all like our Force of Nature trents. As it turned out the Burning Trents just stood around throwing fireballs at the boss and increased our DPS by somewhere between 1.6% and 1.8%. That's not completely horrible, but I think set bonuses should be between 2% and 3% in general.

For the 4T12 set-bonus I'm getting conflicting results from SimulationCraft and WarthCalcs. The SimulationCraft results agree with my original estimate of a 2.1% DPS increase, but WrathCalcs is estimating the DPS increase between 3.3% and 3.5%. I tend to agree with the SimulationCraft numbers and not just because they match my original estimate. Eclipse energy and how it relates to our rotation results in a fairly fuzzy math equation. Because of procs like Shooting Stars and Euphoria we don't always know what type of impact extra energy will have and that makes it difficult to estimate what kind of impact a set bonus like 4T12 will have. In this type of situation, a simulation tool like SimulationCraft has an advantage over a formulation tool like WrathCalcs, because the simulation tool plays through the actual rotation with random events like a player would.

In short, the DPS increase from 2T12 turned out to be worth about around 1.7% and 4T12 DPS increase turned out to be around 2.1%.

2T13 - Insect Swarm Boosting Nukes

The 2T13 set-bonus is a simple, straight forward set bonus. Insect Swarm is a high DPET spell that we want to have up 100% of the time, and the buff includes all three of our nukes that we would use as filler. This makes estimating the impact of this set bonus fairly easy using SimulationCraft and game data.

I looked at several World of Logs parses from several different moonkin using only boss kills from Firelands as my data set. In that data the damage from our three Nukes represented about 50% of the moonkin's overall damage. If we assume that Insect Swarm is up 100% of the time, then this set bonus would result in a 1.4% to 1.5% DPS increase. In Patchwerk style fights that percentage goes up to about 1.8%, but there hasn't been a true Patchwerk style fight since Patchwerk.

It's also, important to note that Insect Swarm isn't going to be up 100% of the time. We can expect to lose a little bit of the buff, because some of the nukes will hit when Insect Swarm slips off the target. So, in reality my original estimate is a little optimistic. The actual DPS increase will probably be a little bit lower between 1.3% and 1.4%. With that in mind I think this set bonus is a little weak, but could easily be fixed by changing the buff to 4% or 5% instead of 3%.

4T13 - Double Energy for Starsurge

My first gut impression of this set-bonus is that I don't like it. I don't like basing my evaluation entirely on a gut reaction, but set-bonuses like this are incredibly hard to evaluate without a tool like SimulationCraft, and unfortunately it has not been updated yet to include the new tier set-bonuses. Here is my reasoning.

I don't have a problem with a set-bonus affecting how we generate energy. The 4T12 set-bonus showed that it can be done effectively with solid results. My concern is that because Starsurge as the driver of this set-bonus, that this set-bonus will just be a weak version of our current 4T12 set bonus and limit overall Moonkin DPS..

The problem with a set-bonus like this is that it's only effective when you are not in Eclipse. Because of Euphoria and the energy caps we are guaranteed to be in Eclipse less then 50% of the time and are only going to be able to take advantage of a set bonus like this for a short period of time during each Eclipse transition. For buffs like Euphoria and the 4T12 set-bonus this is a problem that can be managed, because a moonkin is guaranteed to cast several Starfires or Wraths during the time that Eclipse is down. As a result you can adjust the amount of additional energy generated and guarantee that the buff will have an impact. For Starsurge, this is not true.

As we all know Starsurge is a cooldown based spell. It is also a moonkin's highest DPS nuke, and has significantly higher Damage per Energy then Starfire during Eclipse. This all adds up to the fact that we want to cast Starsurge on cooldown, which may or may not fall with in the small portion of the Eclipse transition where extra energy from Starsurge would be effective. This means that the benefit of the 4T13 set-bonus will be a bit random and inconsistent. It will be possible for us to go through a transition without casting Starsurge while not in Eclipse. It will also be possible for us to go through a transition where we cast two Starsurges while Eclipse is down due to Shooting Stars. I can't guess how this will balance out, but I don't like the lack of consistency.

My 4T13 Thought

While thinking about this new set-bonus I thought of a question for Blizzard. This is the third time Blizzard has used this style of buff where additional energy is only generated when Eclipse is down. Why is Blizzard being so one sided? Why can't a spell consume less energy while in Eclipse as well?

After thinking about it a little while I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, but here is my thought.

There are two benefits to Euphoria and 4T12 buff style. First, is that they increase Eclipse uptime by reducing the number of spells a moonkin needs to cast while Eclipse is down. The second benefit is that it increased Nature's Grace uptime by speeding up the transitions between Eclipse buffs.

My thought is that Blizzard could also increase Moonkin DPS, by reducing the amount of energy consumed while in Eclipse as well as generating more energy while Eclipse is down. For example, instead of having Starsurge generate double energy when Eclipse is down, why not have Starsurge consume only 7 energy while Eclipse is up and generate 23 energy while eclipse is down?

The down side to this suggestion is that it doesn't have the Nature's Grace benefit because Starsurges during Eclipse would cause the Eclipse transition to take longer. That said, I think that the numbers could be balanced to provide a DPS increase equivalent to the 4T13 set-bonus but is more consistent and still based off of Starsurge.

These types of buffs work because they increase the uptime of Eclipse and Nature's Grace by reducing the time it takes to transition between Eclipse buffs. When applied to common spells like Wrath and Starfire it works nicely because they are spells that are used in a consistent pattern.

Molten Elementals as a Moonkin

2011-09-20T19:31:00.007-05:00

I am not a big fan of writing strategy guides for this blog. I think that nine times out of ten, a strategy guide from a "moonkin perspective" is going to be useless. First, of all the way my guild and I do a fight might not be relevant to the strategy you and your guild use. Second, most of the time moonkin don't have to do anything special that another range DPS don't do. As a result Moonkin strategies are basically DPS strategies.

That said, as I have been researching and working on Heroic Ragnaros lately, it has become obvious that killing the Molten Elementals in phase two is a critical part of the fight. These strategies may seem obvious to some or even a lot of you, but they weren't obvious to me right off the bat. With some research and some trial and error, I recognized my mistake and started using a strategy that gave me much better results. Here is that strategy.

My Guild's Basic Strategy:

My guild is using a strategy very similar to the one outlined by the L2R Heroic Ragnaros video. Entering phase two we line up on the left side of the boss. Just seconds before he casts Molten Seeds we move to the center of the room. When the Molten Seeds explode and spawn the Molten Elementals, we DPS for a few seconds and then run to the other side of the room doing as much DPS as we can while moving. On top, this basic strategy I have an additional roll of popping Stampeding Roar every other seed spawn to help the raid move out of the way. There's nothing really exceptional about this strat. In fact, it's pretty standard, but I wanted to lay it out as a frame of reference for understanding my actions.
From here I just want to go over some of the keys to Moonkin DPS in this phase and some of the mistakes I made, in trying to put out maximum DPS.

DPS Key: Solar Eclipse

This probably goes without saying, but Solar Eclipse is the key to moonkin DPS in this phase. You want to make sure you are in Solar going into the phase, and in my experience you don't want to leave it the entire time. To be honest I didn't try transitioning to lunar and back to Solar after each set of adds die, but I don't see how there can be enough time to do so.

I start out phase one going towards solar eclipse, and spend the rest of the pahse doing as much DPS as I can while avoiding damage, This has generally put me in a good spot for phase two. Generally I ended phase one just starting a solar eclipse or just a few casts short of solar. Those extra casts can easily be completed in the transition phase. Once in solar eclipse I only cast AoE, DoTs and Starfire. That said, you may want to cast a single Starsurge each cast of Molten Seeds depending on your glyph choice but I will go into that in a minute.

Glyphs: Wrath vs Starsurge

I'm sure there will be a little debate on this topic, so I'm not going to give a definite choice here. That said I favor the Glyph of Wrath over the Glyph of Starsurge. Here is why.

Ragnaros doesn't have a lot of situations with multiple targets that make Glyph of Starsurge and obvious choice. Phase one is single target, the transition phases end quickly, Phase three and four has multiple targets but the meteors don't take much damage until debuffed in phase four. The only argument I can see for Glyph of Starsurge is that it makes the Molten Elementals in phase two a little easier.

The Molten Seeds timer in phase two is exactly a minute. Since Starfall's cooldown is also a minute without the Glyph of Starsurge then Starfall should be up for every pack of Molten Elementals. However, in practical terms this isn't 100% true since you won't necessarily cast Starfall right has it comes off cooldown each time. Casting a single Starsurge each Molten Elemental spawn would reduce Starfall's cooldown to 55 seconds and shouldn't push you out of Solar Eclipse. This would guarantee that Starfall would be up for every spawning of the elementals.

That said I don't think it's necessary. The elementals don't die immediately. As long as you are casting Starfall relatively quickly it should be up for at least 3 or 4 spawns of the Molten Elementals. If you are going beyond 3 or 4 spawns it's probably a wipe anyway. Besides that Glyph of Wrath is just a better choice in a single target situation which is the case in most of the phases.

Glyph of Typhoon: I want to make a quick comment here. Nine times out of Ten you are not going to want to use the Glyph of Typhoon because you want to be able to knock back the adds during the Transition phases. That said, if you can get away with not needing to knock back during the transition phases then using the Glyph of Typhoon during this fight could help a tiny bit. One of the things Glyph of typhoon does is widen the radius of your Typhoon. This makes easier for your Typhoon to hit more targets and could be a small benefit. However, I'm sure in most cases your guild would rather you have the knockback if it's needed then a slightly better chance of hitting adds with your Typhoon.

Mistake #1: Don't Place Mushrooms Early

My first mistake was trying to place the mushrooms early, before Molten Seeds was cast. My thought was that I'm standing here waiting to pop Stampeding Roar and only able to cast Starfire. It seemed like a perfect time to set the mushrooms because I didn't have anything better to do. In reality it didn't work out.

The problem with setting the mushrooms early is that their explosive radius is very small, and you don't always know where the seeds are going to be placed. This was particularly true in the second and third spawning of the elementals. If you wait, you can see where the seeds are placed and then set your mushrooms accordingly. This way you are much more likely to hit most of the Elementals and do a lot more damage.

As far as placement goes, I try and put the mushrooms a little bit head of the closest seed. You can expect the Elementals to move a little bit before you pop the mushrooms, and most of the Elementals should move into the mushrooms radius in that time.

Mistake #2: Not Precasting Hurricane

I was so concerned with getting good placement on my mushrooms I didn't even think about precasting Hurricane. However, after it was pointed out, precasting Hurricane makes a lot of sense. The Molten Elementals spawn were the Seeds spawn, so placing the Hurricane is easy. Also, by precasting the spell you will start hitting the adds as soon as they spawn getting a little of DPS out that isn't delayed by reaction time. Obviously you shouldn't shouldn't channel your Hurricane until the end, but you should be able to get a couple ticks off before you need to pop your mushrooms and move. This will be a big help to your Elemental DPS.

Mistake #3: Moving Too Far

This depends a little on where your guild desides to group up and such, but your personal positioning can have a big impact on your DPS. There are two times I want you to think about positioning in this procoess, and both revolve around your mushrooms.

The first time is when you place your mushrooms. In my experience, the farther away from a target I am the harder it is to place the mushrooms. It may just be the way I have my UI configured but placing Mushrooms at max range can be difficult due to camera angles and such, and as a result can take longer with worse results then doing at close range. Since you only need to be six yards away from the seeds to not be killed by them, when we are told to move I only go halfway to the stack up point. This allows me to place my mushrooms quickly and accurately, and I still have time to get to the group of spot.

The second time to think about your positioning is when you want to detonate your mushrooms. Wild Mushrooms will do the bulk of your DPS in this phase and being out of range will ruin your DPS if you go to far when grouping up. I try and be as close as possible to the seeds while still being under the effect of what ever shield or other damage reducing cooldown we are using.

Other thoughts:

Jump Casting: While running to the third stack up point after the Molten Elementals have spawned there are only two things you can do: 1. Cast Starfal and 2. Cast Typhoon. Therefore, if you don't know how to already it's a good idea to practice Jump Casting Typhoon. If you jump while running your toon will continue to move in that direction no matter where he faces. So, it's possible to jump and turn your toon back towards the elementals to cast Typhoon without stopping.

Finish up with Hurricane: Again, this may seem obvious but if you get to your third stack up point and there are still several adds left I would finish up with Hurricane. It gets some quick damage out without you having to worry about Cooldowns or targeting the correct mob. All you have to do is place it in the general area of the adds that are left.

Refresh DoTs: As a moonkin it will be hard to do a lot of DPS on Ragnaros during this fight, because you are staying in Solar Eclipse and focusing on Adds so much. That said, keeping DoTs up on Ragnaros is extremely important especially if you have the Necrotic Focus trinket. Since you are staying Solar for the entire phase, having the Mastery it provides is really important for your add DPS. This shouldn't be too hard since you have to cast just one dot every 28 seconds to maintain the buff, but make sure you don't lose sight of it in the chaos the phase.

TL-DR: The Short Version of My Strategy

Before starting phase two make sure you are in Solar Eclipse. At the start of phase two go to the first group of spot and DO NOT pre-place your mushrooms. When the raid leader calls for it move halfway to the second group of spot. Place your mushrooms slightly ahead of the closest Seed and then move to the second group of spot. You have more then enough time to do this before the seeds explode. When at second group up spot start casting Hurricane on the Seeds, and then detonate your mushrooms soon after the seeds explode and start running to the third group of spot. While running cast Starfall and jump cast Typhoon when you are almost to the third group of spot. If several adds left, cast Hurricane in their general area to finish them up. Do not leave Solar Eclipse for the entire phase.

Legendary Mechanics

2011-08-19T13:21:00.003-05:00

Since it was announced that the first legendary of Cataclysm would be a caster weapon people have been asking questions and speculating about it and wondering what the proc would be. When the tool tip became available during 4.2 questions we finally got to see the proc. "Equip: When you deal damage, you have a chance to gain the Wrath of Tarecgosa, duplicating the harmful spell." While this answered one question, it created a thousand others for obvious reasons. Now that we are a month and a half into patch 4.2 the Legendary Staves are starting to come out and we are starting to get some answers. Siiz of Premonition was the first to get one on August 10th, and luckily for us a moonkin Happyjojj was able to get one a day later and has been posting some of the results from his testing of the proc on the European forums. You can find Happyjojj's thread here and Siiz's post is here. Also, I want to say congratulations to Happyjojj and Siiz on completing the legendary and thank you for doing the testing and posting the results.

The Highlights:

The Basics - As the tooltip says, when you deal damage, the Wrath of Tarecgosa (WoT) proc has a chance to duplicate the harmful spell, but this means different things for Direct Damage spells and DoTs. According to Siiz, when WoT procs on a DD spell the duplicate acts like a completely independent spell and with its own damage calculation. It's possible for casted spell to proc but the duplicate to not and vice versa. DoTs on the other hand do not behave the same way. When WoT procs on a DoT tick it does not refresh the spell. It only duplicates the DoT tick and has the same damage as the original tick.

The Proc Chance - Happyjojj didn't address this directly but I did look up the log he did while testing on World of Logs. You can see the results in this CompareBot report.

According to Siiz, duplicated DoT's are listed as Wrath of Tarecgosa rather then the spell that caused the proc. In an effort to calculate the moonkin proc rate I divided Happyjojj's Wrath of Tarecgosa hits by their total number of DoT tick. According to that math the proc rate is around 11.2% (38/340=0.11176) give or take a couple percent. It's important to note that this is a fairly small sample and the actual proc rate is probably a percent or two above or below this number. So, please don't go quoting the 11.2% number I quoted as a fact. We need to get more data to say what the proc rate is more definitively.

Duplicate Nuke Energy - When Wrath of Tarecgosa procs off of moonkin nukes the WoT procs will generate lunar or solar energy. For example, if you proc when casting a Starfire that generates 20 energy, the WoT proc will generate at least 20 energy also. It is unclear if the WoT proc can benefit from Euphoria, but Happyjojj has confirmed that the original and duplicate cost do not necessarily generate the same amount of energy.

My Thought: This is huge! Getting duplicate casts is significant enough as it is, but generating energy with the duplicate casts makes this proc even more amazing. It basically makes the proc behave like a haste buff without the mana consumption. Moonkin that are able to get the staff will transition between Eclipses even quicker. This will allow for more Eclipse buffed DoTs and greater Nature's Grace uptime. I'm jealous.

Moonfire and Lunar Shower - When WoT procs on the Direct Damage portion of Moonfire, the duplicate Moonfire will not stack Lunar Shower or generate energy.

My Thought: I know a lot of moonkin don't use Lunar Shower regularly anymore, but I'm happy that it works this way. Having the duplicates stack LS in movement heavy situations would be helpful, but I think that is the exception rather then the rule. Most movement is usually done in fairly short bursts and probably insignificant when compared to the possibility of having MF generating energy when you don't want it to due to WoT procs.

Wild Mushroom - Each mushroom that is placed is treated as an individual spell, but if a mush room is duplicated it is duplicated for all the targets hit by that mushroom. For example, if three mushrooms are placed and each mushroom can hit three targets, normally you would see a total of nine hits. If one of those mushrooms procs WoT then you would see a total of 12 hits.

My Thought: I'm not surprised by this. I'm sure some people would rather that it duplicated all of the Mushrooms placed, but it probably doesn't matter mathematically. Yes the damage of an individual mushroom will be less then if all three were duplicated, but you are probably three times as likely to get a proc with each of the mushrooms treated as individual spells.

Starsurge and Shooting Stars - Duplicate Starsurge casts will consume a Shooting Stars proc that occurs while you are casting Starsurge, but will not put Starsurge on cooldown. To put it another way, in rare occasions your Starsurge casts with Shooting stars will not be instant casts.

My Thought: This is the one negative I saw from Happyjojj's testing. It sucks but it should be rare enough that it isn't significant.

Hurricane - Damage from Hurricane behaves like a DoT when it comes to Wrath of Tarecgosa, and when it procs for a Hurricane tick it duplicates the damage for all targets hit by the tick.

My Thought: Hurricane isn't used that often by moonkin anymore and probably isn't mathematically significant either way, but this is nice to know.

Thanks Again:

Once again, I just wanted to say a quick thanks to Happyjojj and Siiz for doing the testing and posting their results on the forums and in World of Logs.

My Russian Interview

2011-08-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

A Russian Blogger contacted me a few months ago to do an interview. He's done several great interviews with other moonkin like Hamlet from EJ and Lappe from Paragon, and I am honored by the request.

Since, I assume most of you can't read Russian, I asked Avl if it would be ok for me to cross post the interview here. He graciously agreed. You can find the original version in Russian here. Also, please note that I answer all of these questions in late May early June. Some of the answers may seem a little strange and out of date given that 4.2 has since been released.

Hi, Graylo! Let’s start with a question about your nickname - it’s kinda unique. Can you tell us about the story behind it?

- It's not all that exciting. My middle name is Gray, and I just started adding syllables on the end of it until I found one I liked. All of my alts fit that same pattern. It's very creative as you can see.

What’s your WoW story, Graylo? What classes have you played?

- WoW is my first MMO. I got a free trial with one of Blizzards RTS games and decided to give it a shot. That was in December of 2006 just before the TBC patch was released. I was hooked almost immediately and have maintained my account ever since with out any big breaks. In that time, I've played ever class to some degree, but only the caster DPS classes to max level. Prior to the release of Cataclysm I had 5 level 80 characters (mage, warlock, Shadow Priest, Ele Shaman, and Druid of course). I have raided the warlock and shadow priest at various times as an alt, but never seriously. Most of my attention is focused on my Druid, but I have gotten my shaman to level 85 as well.

When was your famous moonkin born?

-Graylo is actually the first toon I created, and has always been my main toon. I chose a Druid because they were said to be easy to solo and very versatile. I didn't know anything about the game other then what I had read online, so a druid sounded like the safe choice. My first few months playing WoW were an absolute disaster. Two thirds of my talent points were spent in Balance, the other third was spent in resto, but I spent half the time DPSing in Cat form with a mixture of caster and melee gear. As I said, I was a walking disaster. Then at about level 50 I realized that if I respecced I could pick up moonkin form, and haven't looked back since.

What’s you favorite thing is WoW currently? What activity you like the most?

- I've always been a raider. My primary goal in this game is to kill all of the raid bosses before the next content patch and get all of the raid related achievements. I've tried other aspects of the game off and on, but none of them have really stuck with me.

Is there any WoW achievement you are proud of? Some PvE boss or arena rating actually?

-The achievement I'm most proud of is getting Glory of the Raider (25man) and Immortal before patched 3.1 was released. This meant that I got the Black Proto-Drake as a reward. The Immortal achievement was such a pain in the butt because, little stupid things could screw it up. When we finally got the achievement it was cathartic. We had been working on Immortal for months with several near misses. The tension we felt by the end of the instance was enormous and being able to let all that go at the end was awesome. It was one of the happiest moments I ever had in this game.

The other big moment was killing Lady Vashj in TBC. My guild at the time had gone through a lot of trials and progression related drama, and it was awesome to finally kill her. In reality, it wasn't all that impressive because we were the fifth or sixth guild on the server to do so and it was after Sunwell was released, but it felt like a breakthrough to us.

Is there any feature, ability or mechanic in the game you would like to change?

- There isn't really a specific mechanic that I would like to see changed, but I do think that moonkin are a little too complicated overall. Having three nukes and two DoTs by themselves would be fine, but they way they interact with Eclipse and some of our other abilities pushes it a little over the edge for me. I don't like all of the run of play choices that we have to make at the moment.

Should I save this Starsurge cooldown for Eclipse or cast it now? Should I wait to refresh this DoT or do it now? Should I clip this DoT or refresh it later? Should I spam MF while moving? Should I cast Starfall now or wait? Should I hold solar now or can I get back to it in time?

I'm not against having to make choices in the run of play. That is what separates the excellent players from the average, but it seems like Moonkin have a lot of choices at the moment. I would like to see some of those choices simplified.

If I had to pick one mechanic to change/remove, I would pick the 4T11 set bonus. Yes, it is very strong and yes it is going away for all practical purposes in patch 4.2, but I've found it to be a real pain in the neck. It's just too easy to waste in my opinion. We transition between Eclipse procs so quickly now that it's difficult not to waste part of it with Starfall. I will be glad when I don't have to worry about it any more.

Back to your moonkin, what thing amuses you the most of him?

- Obviously the dance is a lot of fun, but I find the various graphical errors over the years to be the most fun.

What do you mean by graphical errors? Will be happy to see one myself!

- The moonkin model can only stand, sit, and dance. As a result it's had issues where and there where it didn't interact well with something else in the game, like having Moonkin stand on mounts rather then riding on them. My favorite one comes from Ulduar. For a short period of time when a moonkin got on one of the choppers the sidecar folded up and it looked like the moonkin was being dragged behind the bike. I posted a picture of it on the blog a while back.

What specs your moonkin has? What are the reasons behind it?

-The spec I use changes depending on the needs of the fight we are focusing on and the needs of the raid, but this is what I consider to be fairly standard raid build. (link)

I consider the fourth tier of the balance tree to be my optional choices. I picked them up because they are the best DPS options available at that point or I like the utility they provide. I skip all of the mana talents, because I haven't had any serious mana issues since the start of the expansion. I do pick up Fungal Growth on some fights because the slowing utility can be helpful, but the graphic is annoying enough that I leave it off when I don't need it. I skip Blessing of the Grove because it is incredibly weak (0.05% increase per point) and I prefer the utility of other talents.

Some people disagree with me but I do not consider Perseverance to be an optional talent. In my experience, raid attempts rarely wipe due to a lack of DPS. Most of the time the wipe is caused by someone doing something stupid and dying or killing someone else. They are also due to not having enough experience with some mechanics of the fight. Damage reduction and survivability help with both of these issues. Therefore, I don't consider it to be an optional talent.

Given only 3 words, how would you call current state of moonkins in PvE?

- Complex, Wanted, Beaten up

If a blizzard developer asked you to add only one feature to your beloved spec, what it would be?

-I would like better cooldowns. I would love to have something like Arcane Power, Icy Veins, or Elemental Mastery. Those cooldowns are nice because they say, I need to do more damage right now, without the complication of having do deal with trents or stars hitting the wrong targets.

Time for some blog questions, Graylo! When have you started to write Gray Matter?

- I wrote my first post for the blog in September of 2007.

What were the reasons for you to start a moonkin blog?

- When I started my intent wasn't to write a "moonkin blog." The blog started out as more of a WoW diary then anything else. As I've said before, I didn't know anyone who played this game when I first started, but I had read about it quite a bit online and had looked at a couple of WoW blogs. As I was leveling Graylo, I had a lot of thoughts and issues I wanted to talk about, but I didn't have anyone to talk about them with. Since I had read a couple of the other blogs I got the idea to post my thoughts on this game on a blog. It took me probably six months to actually sit down and write that first post, but I've been a fairly regular poster ever since.

The blog became more moonkin focused when I got more serious about raiding. Moonkin was not a popular raid spec in TBC so there weren't a lot of Moonkin theorycrafters out there. Also, I didn't trust the few numbers being posted by people on the forums. So, I did the math myself to verify or refute the numbers being posted. With that math I was able to show things like why Wrath was a bad raiding spell and why Crit was the worst raiding stat. I didn't do the research for the blog, but I wanted to get more readers and no one else was posting this type of information. So, I started to post my research on blog to get more readers and I became known as a moonkin blogger.

Does your blog improve your playstyle and WoW statistics?

- Yes and no. I didn't do my spec research to have something to write in the blog. I did it so that I would know what was the best way to play and then realized it would be good info to post on the blog. With or without the blog I would still do research and read the various sites see how I could improve my play. However, the blog keeps me honest and attracts a lot of attention and suggestions. If I post something stupid on the blog it gets corrected pretty quickly because someone reads it and tells me I'm being stupid. It also, forces me to do the research a little more quickly rather then waiting for someone else to do it.

In short, I would probably come to the same conclusions and play choices without the blog, but I probably get to them a little more quickly because of the blog.

What drives you crazy about it?

- At time's I am a victim of my own success and I feel like the blog is more of an obligation then a hobby. A lot of good things have happened to me because I've written this blog and I don't regret any of it, but the pressure to be Graylo can be tough at times.

Hm, obligation? Pressure to be Graylo? Sounds like you have more to say, Graylo!

- If someone's looking for moonkin information now there are several good sources to find it. Hamlet's guide on EJ is great. Calculated's Guide on the Moonkin Repository's the best I've ever seen. WoW Insider is finally covering Moonkin well. There is Moonkin information all over the place now but this hasn't always been the case. As a result, I used to get a lot of e-mails, asking why I haven't talked about a particular topic or why my gear list hasn't been updated yet. The worst example happened in ToC when Blizzard used different names for the Alliance and Horde items. Adding the horde items in the list required a lot of extra work that I wanted to avoid. I thought people could figure it out, but a ton of people complained and I ended up adding them anyway. To some extent I think it's forgotten that the blog is a hobby and that I have a career and family outside of WoW. I'm not always able to respond to things right away, or even do the amount of theorycrafting I used to do, because I just don't have the time anymore.

And it's not just readers that put this pressure on me. I put it on myself a lot of times, because I like being "Graylo, the Moonkin Expert." I find it very frustrating to see others make comments and observations on EJ or TMR that I think I should have thought of as well or posted about first.

I love writing the blog, and I love all the things it has provided me over the years, but it's no longer a casual activity that I do when I have time or feel like it. In that way, it's become a bit of an obligation.

What thing you want to improve in your blog?

- There are a lot of things I would like to improve about the blog, but I'm too lazy to do most of them. I would love to switch it to a Wordpress format instead of Blogger, because I think it looks a lot cleaner. I wish I had an editor to find my mistakes that I miss. I wish it had more pictures.

Our readers liked your moonkin gear rating. What’s the story behind it? Was it a social demand from your friends/colleagues?

- I wrote my first gear guide purely to get readers. This was during TBC and there seemed to be a lot of questions about cloth vs. leather and crit vs. other stats. It was just a simple pre-kara guide to tell people where the good rep gear was and what were the good dungeons to run. In early WotLK, I stole the idea of using a more mathematical approach for creating the gear list from the feral blogger Kalon at ThinkTank.

I like to think of the gear list more as a reference guide then an actual gear guide or BIS list. BIS lists are impractical because you don't get all the gear at once, and most players don't have a hope of ever getting the BIS item in every slot. What I like about my gear list is that it shows all of the options and where you can get them. This way, if you know you are weak in a particular slot you can quickly see where your upgrades are. I also like that it shows which upgrades are significant and which others aren't that important.

Is there any secret benefits of having a moonkin blog? :)

- I've benefited greatly due to having the blog. I've gotten into guilds, because of my blog. I got into the Cataclysm Beta because of my blog. I've been offered free stuff from other game developers because of the blog. Most of all, it's very pleasing to know that I've created something that the players and creators of this game have found to be valuable. I'm very proud of the fact that I've had some impact on this game.

What advise can you give to a novice blogger?

- The best blogging advice I can give, is to write because you want to write. I've seen a lot of people start blogs because they want to be e-famous, be listened to, or make money. Most of those guys burn out quickly and are unsuccessful because blogging is a lot harder, and less rewarding then it looks. I wrote Gray Matter for over a year, before I got any serious traffic, and most of my success comes from a lack of competition when I started rather then being a great blog. A new blogger starting today would have a much tougher time then I did. So, if your primary reason for starting a blog is to be read then I would reconsider, because chances are you are just going to be frustrated and disappointed.

From a technical perspective, my suggestion would be to buy your domain name when you start. Domain names are not expensive and owning your own can make a lot of things easier down the road. Owning your own domain name means you can redesign or and move your blog/site without having to redirect your traffic. I wish I had bought my Domain name when I started.

Moonkin bloggers an elusive people, don't you agree? :)

- Moonkin Bloggers have become more elusive recently with people like Quith and Relevart getting out of the blogging game.

What can you tell our Russian readers about yourself?

- I'm a married 35 year old father of two small children. I work in the banking industry. All in all my life is fairly normal and boring. Outside of WoW I spend my free time reading, watching movies and tv. I also spend a lot of time watching and reading about soccer. Most of my casual wardrobe consists of soccer jerseys. I am quite pissed that Qatar stole the 2022 World Cup from us, but congratulations you Russia for getting the 2018. Choosing Russia made a lot of sense to me.

Woot! Married, two small children! Does it mean you play less now and spend more time with your family than before?

- Yes, and no. My son was born about 6 months after I started playing WoW, so family has always limited the amount of time I could play. In my four years of raiding the amount of time I spend raiding has been fairly constant, and since my kids go to bed before raid time they don't have any impact on my WoW time from that perspective. That said, they have limited more of my casual raid time, since we do more stuff on weekends, and they don't take as many naps as they used to.

Where do you live atm?

- I live outside Milwaukee Wisconsin in the US

What music you prefer to listen? During raid-time maybe?

- I can't listen to music or watch anything on TV while raiding. It's just to distracting for me. Outside of raid my musical interests very. Right now I'm listening to band like Emery, Thrice, Bullet's for my Valentine, but my interests change pretty quickly.

Some people think we, moonkins, are fat, clumsy and got large hair irl. Is it true?

- Unfortunately for me this is a little too true, but definitely not true across the board. Have you seen a picture of Murmurs/Tyler Caraway on WoW Insider? That is one skinny kid.

Is there a favorite moonkin meal you like to eat? :)

- Now that I'm not a Tauren anymore I have to say a Hamburger.

Time is money, friend! As a final word in this interview, what would you say or wish to our Russian audience?

- I just want to say thank you to all the readers. My blog would be anything without them and I appreciate all of their support.

Thanks a lot, Graylo, that was an awesome interview!

Thanks Avl

Blizzard Trademarks "Mists of Pandara"

2011-08-03T11:06:00.002-05:00

Blizzard Trademarked the name "Mists of Pandara" recently according to multiple WoW news sites. With Blizzcon just a few months a way a lot of people are assuming that this is the next expansion. Since Blizzard registered "Cataclysm" as a trademark about this time two years ago that seems like a reasonable assumption. However, I want to go on the record and claim one thing.

I'm Calling Troll.

I acknowledge that I could very well be wrong, but "Mists of Pandara" doesn't smell right as a WoW expansion. First of all lets remember the history of the Pandaran. The race started as a personal art project of Blizzard's lead artist, that was eventually turned into an April Fools joke. The Pandaran were so popular that Blizzard has included them in minor ways into various games and the lore, but none of it was all that major. Since Blizzard knows people are looking at the trademarks to get a clue of what the next expansion will be, it wouldn't surprise me if they threw this one out there to yank our chain a little bit.

Second, let me list the expansions and lets see if we see a pattern.

The Burning Crusade - Established in Lore and a clear enemy in demons.
Wrath of the Lich King - Established in Lore and a clear enemy in undead.
Cataclysm - The name doesn't invoke any established Lore, but a Cataclysm is clearly something bad.

Now lets look at this new trademark.

Mists of Pandera - Pandas?

Lets face it, there isn't a lot of lore about the Pandaren, and most of what we do have comes from the RPG books which Blizzard has confirmed is not canon. Not only that who would we be fighting, and how are the Pandaren related to that. Also, the Pandaren Islands are supposed to be small far away islands, and I have to wonder if they would really be big enough to support an expansion.

I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be a small Facebook or pop cap game that Blizzard created for the fun of it, but I would be absolutely shocked if this is an expansion.

Real Money AH in Diablo

2011-08-02T10:40:00.003-05:00

It's pretty strange that I am writing a post about an announcement for Diablo. In truth, I have very little experience with the franchise. I played Diablo one for a little while after sold for a heavily discounted price. I never touched Diablo 2 and had/have no plans to try Diablo 3. This isn't a comment about the quality of the franchise; it's a matter of so many things to do and so little time. So I think you can see why it is strange for me to post about a Diablo announcement, but this one cuts very close to WoW.

In case you haven't seen it already, Blizzard has announced a new Auction House feature in Diablo 3 that will allow transactions both in game-gold and real-life currency. For the full details, please look at Blizzards site.

An Attempt at Fairness:

First and foremost, I need to qualify my comments on this subject. As stated above my experience with Diablo is very limited. While I can envision a lot of bad things if this type of feature was introduced in WoW, I can't say with any experience that the same bad things would happen in Diablo. In fact, Bashiok has made some decent arguments as to why having this type of AH in Diablo is different then having the same type of AH in WoW.

It should also be said that Diablo 3 is not WoW. Just because this is happening in Diablo doesn't mean this will be added to WoW as well. Blizzard has said in the past that this type of feature won't be implemented in WoW, and they have also said that real money transactions provide any game advantage. This could be a feature that is only intended for Diablo and will never interact with WoW. I recognize that players who have an opinion similar to mine could be overreacting, because there really is no intention of ever implementing this type of feature in WoW.

That said, it's incredibly hard not to see this as a step down a new road for Blizzard. If you had asked me yesterday if this type of feature would ever be considered I would have given you a complete and confident "NO." This step definitely increased the chances of this type of feature being added to WoW, especially when you consider other features like Race and Faction changes which Blizzard claimed at one time or another would never happen. That is why I think my concern for WoW is justified, when Blizzard adds a feature to another game that could possibly be added to WoW as well, even when the games are unrelated.

I really don't care if this feature is added to Diablo 3 or not, but I do have very strong opinions about if this type of feature should be added to WoW. And when I see posts like Mathew McCurley's on WoW Insider absolutely drooling over a real money AH I feel the need to post an opposing view of why this would be bad for WoW.

Dual Auction Houses are a Lie:

One of the big selling points Blizzard is trying to make is that there will be two Auction Houses that you can use depending on your preference: a Gold AH and a Currency AH. Bashiok has gone so far as to say "I have no doubt that the gold auction house will by-far outweigh the real money auction house in scope and amount of items available."

While I am sure that there will be in fact two Auction Houses, the idea that you can choose which one to use based on preference is an illusion. You can tell by answering one simple question. Which is better, fake money or real money? If you answer real money then you are like 99.9999% of the people who will play the game.

Anyone who thinks about this situation at all will realize that the Currency AH will drive the postings on both auction houses. Bashiok may be right that the Gold AH will be bigger, but all of the prices will be determined by the Currency AH.

For example, let say that the Boots of Uberness are listed for $5.00 on the Currency AH, and 1000g is selling for $1.25. How much gold are the Boots of Uberness worth? Clearly they are worth 4000g in this situation. You can list this item on either AH, but the price is clearly going to be determined by the Currency AH. I could list this item on the Gold AH for 10,000g but why would someone buy it there? They could just sell 4000g for $5.00 and buy it off the Currency AH.

So, as you can see, any suggestion that the Gold AH is an independent auction house is an illusion. This isn't to say that the prices between the two AHs will be in perfect lock-step. The fees charged by Blizzard and the less liquid nature of gold will cause some differences, but don't be surprised when they are fairly close most of the time. If WoW's AH has taught us anything, it has shown that there are a lot of very smart people who can work the system to make fake currency. Just think what will happen when people are motivated to make real currency.

Legitimizing a Shady Industry:

Another suggestion that seems to be popular is that is that this is a big blow to the shady business of Gold Selling. In his WoW Insider piece Mathew McCurley says "Blizzard could remove the profitability of gold farming by making everyone a gold farmer."

Yes, how could the gold farmers possibly be profitable when you can buy and sell gold and other things from anyone in game? Let me think. How could they survive?

Oh, I've got it!!!! THEY COULD BUY AND SELL GOLD IN GAME!!!!

This isn't a death blow to the gray market. This is just legitimizing it. Claiming this is any kind of weapon against the gray market is like a politician saying they won the war on drugs by legalizing them.

Some of you might then argue, that because all players are now allowed to participate in the market this will reduce the profitability and that gold farmer won't make enough money, and therefore leave the market. At first that point of view may sound logical, but it's missing a few key points. First, the gold sellers’ biggest problem currently is finding gold buyers. While legitimizing the market will increase the number of sellers, it will also increase the number of buyers, and may not change the profitability of the market at all. It may even increase the profitability of the market.

The other thing proponents of this argument are forgetting is that the gold sellers won't play fair. Gold Sellers are more then willing to bot and hack their way to create their product, and that's not going to change if Blizzard legitimizes their market. Botting will still be the most efficient way to gather trade goods. Since Blizzard tends to allow bots to operate for a few months and then ban them in waves even when the bot is obvious, the gold sellers are unlike to stop using bots. Hacking has a similar issue. It's obviously profitable for them now, and there's nothing about a Currency AH that would make hacking unprofitable on its own.

In short, anyone who thinks that a Currency AH is a silver bullet against the commercial gold sellers is just deluding themselves. It will definitely change their business model, but it's not going to prevent them from doing harmful things like Hacking. In fact, legitimizing the gold sellers could harm the casual player more then botting and hacking ever have. If the gold sellers are significantly more efficient with their gold farming than the average player, then that will push the price of gold extremely low and inflate gold prices on the AH, thus forcing players to play long hours to earn enough gold to buy an item or to buying gold.

The Social Hazard:

Finally, I want you to think about this situation if a Currency AH was introduced to WoW. Let’s say you are the GM of a moderately successful guild with 100,000g in the guild bank along with plenty of items. After a while you grow bored with the game or just want to go casual. What do you do?

Of course, there are a lot of GMs that would leave the guild bank intact and step down without issue. At the same time, I'm just as confident that there will be plenty of GMs that will take the money and run. Being the GM of a guild is hard work, and I assure you that fore some people it will be easy for them to justify taking the money by saying they earned over there time as GM in the Guild. I've heard that excuse several times in my 4.5 years of WoW without a Currency AH.

And guess what, you as members of the guild are powerless to stop them. Guild Masters have total control of their guild. They determine who has access to the guild bank and who can be in the guild. They could justify locking up the guild bank by saying they want to protect it from people who might take the items for themselves to sell them. Then the next thing you know, you log in one day with everyone kicked from the guild except the GM and his alts. I can't say how often this will happen, but I guarantee you it will, and you might be surprised what your friendly GM is capable of justifying when several hundred dollars of gold and stuff are on the line.

TL-DR:

To be fair, I have very little experience with Diablo, and a real money AH may be perfect and helpful for that game. I also recognize that what Blizzard does with Diablo doesn't necessarily relate to WoW in any way. So, my concern for WoW at this announcement may be an overreaction. However, since they are willing to implement it for Diablo, it's reasonable to assume that they might conceder it for WoW as well. That is why I think it's important to lay out why I think a Currency AH is a bad idea for WoW.

While Blizzard can create and claim to have two separate AHs, it's impossible to have them operate independently. The Currency AH will set the prices for both AHs because gold will aways have a price. Some people are arguing that this is a damaging blow to the gray market businesses that deal in game items for real money, but it is no such thing. It just legitimizes them and makes their business easier in some respects. It also isn't going to prevent harmful activities like botting and hacking in any way shape or form. Finally, if this type of service was added in WoW it would create new hazards for players. Guild Masters and other players with access to community gold and items can easily take them and sell them for personal gain. And if that personal gain can have a real financial impacts expect that activity to become more common.

Lunar Shower Symmetry

2011-07-25T11:10:00.002-05:00

Sorry guys, I was on vacation the last week and didn't have anything prepared to post while I was gone. Plus my internet availability was horrible so I wasn't able to respond to the one bit of moonkin news that did happen. Anyway here is a bit of a catch up.

Lunar Shower Redux:

I'm sure everyone has seen this by now, but if you haven't:

Moonfire will now generate Lunar Energy when crossing from Solar to Lunar on the Eclipse bar. (src)

I know some of you have been a little surprised by the lack of talk regarding this hotfix. After all it is an issue that moonkin have been complaining about since the early days of the 4.2 PTR. I'm not all that surprised that the community has been relatively quite about this hotfix. I think almost every moonkin will be happy with this update. However, it doesn't do a whole lot to change how we value the talent.

In a strange way patch 4.2 showed us how poor a talent Lunar Shower has been all along. Prior to the latest patch we always picked it up because there was no reason not to. The other options we had were fairly poor, and it did provide a nice utility. Once Blizzard added a downside to picking up the talent, we had to reevaluate it's benefits and the truth became clear. The main thing people were using Lunar Shower for was to delay Eclipse transitions. Since that was being removed as a possibility in 4.2 then Lunar Shower didn't provide a whole lot of value.

For example, lets take a look at the Firelands bosses.

Shannox: On normal mode it's a multi-dot fight and therefore bad for Lunar Shower. On heroic mode it's a single target fight, which means LS isn't a liability, but Shannox doesn't necessarily have a ton of movement either. In short, it doesn't hurt to have it on heroic mode, but the benefit it provides isn't huge either.

Rhyolith: This is a multi-dot fight in heroic mode which makes LS a liability, but there is quite a bit of movement as well.

Beth'tilac: As a moonkin, I've been used primarily as add control. Therefore, I want to get in solar and stay in solar. I haven't attempted this fight in heroic mode yet, so I don't know if it changes, but I can't see LS being a big help here.

Alysrazor: Having one feather allows you to cast while moving, completely removing any benefit of having Lunar Shower.

Baleroc: It's a single target fight but there is no real movement involved. Lunar Shower isn't a liability, but it doesn't help either.

Staghelm: There is some movement, but there is also some multi-dotting. Once a gain there is no big reason to have Lunar Shower.

Ragnaros: This is a big fight with a lot of movement, but I'm not sold on using Lunar Shower for it. For a lot of the big Movement phases I'm putting down Mushrooms while I move because I either need their AoE damage, or I need their slows. There aren't a ton of multi-dotting options in the fight, but I also don't see a lot of time where I will be spamming Moonfire either.

When I look at these fights, I see several where LS is a liability, and a few where it shouldn't have any impact at all. In the other fights where it could have an impact there are other limiting factors, and when I've looked at log data, I just don't see that much potential for DPS gain. In short, even with symmetrical power generation, Lunar Shower doesn't provide a while lot of DPS potently or utility. So, while the change is welcome, it doesn't fix all of the talents problems.

Gear List and Stat Weights:

Several people have sent me emails talking about the gear lists and the weights I use to rank the items. First of all thanks for everyone then sent in a correction or addition. I knew about most of them, but some times it takes a while to get things changed. I apologize the for the delay and appreciate your patience. That said it should be completely up-to-date and with all the locations included as of now. If you do find a mistake please let me know.

I also got a couple of emails disagreeing with how I've ranked the items in the list. I won't address any of them specifically, but would like to make a general comment. Prior to Cataclysm the ranking was very straight forward, but reforging changed all that. Now there are a lot ways that all of the items on the list could be reforged to change the value and where they rank on the list. However, I have to pick one way and live with it. I don't have the technical know-how to create list that you could sort yourself, adjust the weights or apply your own reforging strategies. However, WoWhead has some good tools if you would like to play around with that sort of thing.

Second, I agree that the high value of hit over inflates items with spirit and hit rating on it, and it skews the list in a way I don't like. However, I don't think Hit Capping is such a no brainer that I can just ignore it from the ranking as of yet.

Molten Front Vendors:

Several people have asked which Molten Front vendors they should unlock first once they get enough Marks of the World Tree. To be honest this isn't a big concern for me since the rewards they provide shouldn't really matter for Progression raiders, but I realize that some of my readers are alts and very casual raiders.

Which one you unlock first really depends on what you need.

Damek Bloombeard - Additional Armaments - Has the best overall item in the Fireplume Girdle, but he has only one item.

Ayla Shadowstorm - Filling the Moonwell - Has three items a moonkin can use, but that doesn't mean that you want to use any or all of them. The Relic can be replaced with Valor Points. There are plenty of ways to get good trinkets, and you only need an off hand if you are using a one handed weapon.

Varlan Highbough - Calling the Ancients - Has only a Crit/Mastery ring, and is likely the last vendor you would want to activate.

Is the Firelands to Easy?

2011-07-12T11:59:00.000-05:00

If you take a quick look at WoWProgress.com you will see that 18 guilds went 6/7 in the first week that Hard Modes were available. Predictablely this has some players saying that Firelands is too easy, and we already have a blue response to this claim.

I am endlessly intrigued to find players judging the difficulty of the encounters and how long lived the content is by how pro players, some of the most skilled and focused players in the world, engage the content. It's a little like judging the difficulty of juggling eight chainsaws by what the best jugglers in the world can accomplish. Sure, it might be easy for them, but when was the last time you tried it?

The content wasn't designed to be 'quick'. It was designed to be epic, engaging, challenging and fun. It can accomplish those goals without being punishing.(src)

Call me a homer if you want, but I agree with Blizzard's take on this situation. I find it difficult to judge an entire tier on the progression of a few elite guilds. Here are my reasons why.

Elite Players vs. The Rest of Us:

Let me ask you this. What if a new golf course was opened in your area and as a promotion they had Tiger Woods come and play an early round to generate publicity. Would you say that the course was too easy if Tiger Woods hit 15 under par in that round? If the course was designed to be a championship level course then probably, but if it's intended to service the local population then maybe not.

If the WoW endgame was intended to test the most elite players then I would agree that Firelands is too easy, but that isn't the case. The raid encounters are designed with a broader population in mind.

The funnier part of this argument in my opinion is that as far as I know, the members of Paragon and the other 17 guilds that are 6/7 aren't the ones making this argument as of yet. If they want to say that Firelands is too easy, just as Ensidia did after Tier 7 content WotLK, then they may have a point since they've seen most of the content. However, many of the players I see complaining aren't even close to the 6/7 standard. I always think it's funny when players complain that they are bored or that content is to easy, when they haven't completed the content that is available to them. It's little like when my children tell me they don't like a food when they haven't even tasted it yet.

How Did They Get to 6/7 HM?

It’s also important to ask is how those guilds got to 6/7 in one week. We should remember that the Elite Guilds like Paragon approach new content much differently than a vast majority of guilds do.

PTR Experience: First and foremost, the Elite Guilds were on the PTR when most of the guilds are not. Tuesday July 5th wasn't the first time those guilds had seen these fights. So the first question is did they really get 6/7 after just one week of trying or do you have to consider the time they spent on the PTR. It's true that the PTR versions of these fights are not exactly the same as the Live versions, but the basic mechanics are the same. Adjusting to these modifications shouldn't be as difficult as learning the fight from scratch like a majority of guilds. I think it's very telling that the one fight that wasn't tested on the PTR is the only fight that wasn't killed last week.

Raiding Schedule: It's also very important to consider the elite guilds raid schedule. Blood Legion was already 2/7 Hard Modes before I left work last Tuesday. The elite guilds take extraordinary measures to get World Firsts at the start of a new raiding tier. They take of work and raid very long hours to try and get to kills first. I guarantee you that all 18 of those guilds at 6/7 raided at least 30 or 4o hours last week, and I would be willing to bet that many of them raided more than 60 hours last week. At the same time, most "Hardcore" guilds raid less then 20 hours a week now. Since the elite guilds put in significantly more hours you can't really compare the progression of more normal guilds to the elite guild, because their first week of raiding was equivalent to three weeks of raiding for the other guilds

Exploiting Staghelm: Being at the bleeding edge of content means that you encounter bugs and such before anyone else. Most of the time this isn't a good thing, every so often a guild comes up with a strategy that Blizzard hasn't thought of that significantly reduces the fight's difficulty. And in Firelands we have that situation with Majordomo Staghelm.

In case you hadn't heard there is a new Strategy that basically turns Majordomo Staghelm in to Patchwerk. If you've done the fight you know that it's a big dance switching him between forms with lots of stacking and spreading out. The longer he says in one form the more damage he deals and the more you switch him the more damage he deals. So the basic strat is to keep him in one form as long as you can take it and then switch.

In the new strat, guilds have used a Beast Master Hunter to tank the boss in Scorpion form with his pet. The Scorpion form's Flame Scythe is considered AoE damage and therefore didn't hit the pet. Every one else stands behind the boss doing as much DPS as possible without pulling threat off the pet. This basically takes every single one of the bosses abilities off the table. You don't have Cat form, Human form, or Flame Scythe. Since the raid is stacked behind the boss and not taking damage they also get full stacks of Concentration without any difficulty and can do 100% more damage. Literally, the fight is all about not pulling threat at this point.

Obviously this is a VERY clever strategy, but it's also clearly an exploit (though I doubt anyone will get banned for it). I guarantee you Blizzard won't be happy that someone discovered a way to completely avoid all of the bosses abilities and turn the fight into a tank and spank. I guarantee you that in the next few days you will see a hotfix that allows pets to get hit by Flame Scythe or something to that effect. So it's important to remember that some of the guilds that got to 6/7 this week got there because they used a strategy that most likely won't be available to the rest of us this week.

What Haven't We Seen?

WoW is six and a half years old, and in that time Blizzard has created hundreds of raid bosses. If you consider 5-mans that number goes even higher. At this point it's got to be difficult for Blizzard to come up with new abilities and fight mechanics that we haven't seen before or can't immediately throw into a bucket on how to deal with it. We have addons like Deadly Boss Mods and Power Auras that help us to know when we are standing in something bad or if there is an ability coming up that we need to avoid. If a mob needs to be kited or interrupted we have our go-to classes and players who we know can handle the job.

This isn't to say that Blizzard can't or won't come up with new and unique mechanics that will throw us for a loop. However, we as a player base are more educated about fight mechanics than we ever were in the past. When Blizzard throws a new ability at us most of the time it fits one of the standard buckets that informs us on how to deal with it. As a result high progression raiders are able to adapt to these new abilities more quickly than people who have not played as long or raided as much.

More 4.2 First Impressions:

I wanted this to be longer and its own post last week, but due to work issues that ship sailed. Anyway here are some quick thoughts on the other bosses in Firelands.

Alysrazor: I've done both aspects of this fight. I've been in the air and on the ground. From the ground it's a fairly standard fight. From the air, it's something completely new. To be honest I've found managing an Eclipse rotation while in the air to be quite difficult. Moving and casting the normal rotation at the same time is strange enough, but having to focusing on where the next Ring of Fire is took some of my attention away from making sure I was casting the correct spell.

Overall, I think it's a good fight, and I find the air phase very challenging. My main complaint would be that the Rings of Fire are a little difficult to see given that the entire zone is pretty much orange and they blend in pretty well to the scenery. I would like Blizzard to make them a little more visible.

Baleroc: It's probably different from the point of view of a tank or healer, but as a DPS I found this tank to be very disappointing. There's absolutely nothing to it as a DPSer. If your soaking a crystal all you have to do is make sure you keep the rotation straight. Other then that all you have to so is make sure your not near one of the spawn points and to make sure your not spread out to much to make the soaker's job difficult. Very simple in my opinion, and the heroic version doesn't sound all that impressive either.

Majordomo Staghelm: I've said in the past that my favorite fight of all time is Shade of Aran in Karazhan, and the dance of the Staghelm encounter reminds me of the dance of the Aran encounter. I like having the stack phase and then the spread phase. I like having to manage Searing Seeds and the Burning Orbs. All in all I like this fight.

Ragnaros: I have to say that this is a classic final boss encounter. It has multiple phases that build on each other. Lots of abilities to deal with. I think it has a good balance of complexity and difficulty and is a good fight. I'm not at all disappointed that my guild cleared it in the first week (without any PTR testing experience). As a guild who went 13/13 in tier 11 I think we should be able to pick up the normal modes quickly.

Heroic Shannox: Heroic Shannox was a little disappointing for me. I expected us to get him quicker. We spent about two hours using the wrong strat because we thought it was more like the normal version. Once we figured that out the fight went more smoothly. In generally I think it's a good fight for moonkin because it doesn't require a ton of movement, and our high amounts of damage reduction allow us to eat the immolation traps.

Heroic Rhyolith: We didn't kill this boss this week, but I think I've gotten a good impression of the fight. The heroic version is more complicated than I expected it to be. It's another good fight for moonkin if you can multi-dot and uses your utility well. Fungal Growth and Typhoon are great for dealing with the Obsidians. Our main issue was figuring out the steering and I think we figured that out and the end of our attempts this week. Hopefully he will go down quickly this week.

Stars' "World First"

2011-07-01T13:29:00.001-05:00

If you haven't seen it already, MMO-Champion is reporting that the Taiwanese guild Stars has gotten the world first kill on Heroic mode Shannox yesterday. This is quite surprising. Not because Stars isn't a good guild. They are a very good guild, proven by their world first Yogg +0 kill back in WotLK. This is surprising because Firelands heroic modes shouldn't be available until next week. Apparently Stars had their raid ID reset by having the raid team faction transferring after they killed Ragnaros on normal mode.

After reading the post I had a lot of thoughts right away, but after reading some of the comments on the post I felt the need to address the idiocy that followed.

World First (*):

I haven't seen any indications that they did anything to exploit the actual fight. So yes, by most definitions this is a world first, but that doesn't mean it's significant. Finishing first in a race when you are the only one running isn't all that impressive. I am sure that Heroic Shannox is a difficult fight, but I am also sure that we will see several heroic mode kills next week when many more guilds have access to them. At the very least this is a kill with an asterisk, and no one is saying "awe shucks, Stars beat us to that one."

I also question how much do early heroic kills really matter? I am by no means saying that the early heroic modes are easy, but no one is measuring the T11 progression race by who got the first kill on Halfus. In fact, I bet that a lot of you couldn't tell me who got the first Heroic Halfus kill without looking at WoW Progress or guessing one of the five obvious names and getting lucky. At the same time, I think that a lot more of you would be able to tell me who got the world first Sinestra kill without looking or guessing. The fact of the matter is that the progression race isn't measured by how you start, but by how you finish. So, even if this kill of Shannox wasn't controversial, it still probably wouldn't be all that important in the long run because this tier is going to be measure by who kills Ragnaros first.

However, while I don't think a lot of the elite guilds are all that upset about being beaten to a world first Shannox kill, I guarantee you that they are upset that Stars has gotten access to heroic gear a week earlier then everyone else. It's true that player skill is more important than gear in general, but at these elite levels of play the differences in skill are very small, so little advantages like having slightly better gear could have a significant impact on who gets that world first Ragnaros kill.

After considering all of this, I don't understand why Stars would change factions to get a new raid ID. The best case scenario is that Blizzard takes no action against them, and they get to keep the gear they gained as a result. However, the primary reward for winning the progression race is respect, but by winning the race this way they would ultimately lose the respect of their peers. Worst case scenario, is that Blizzard bans them for some period of time and takes away their gear and achievements. If this is the case then they are out the money they spent to transfer and possibly lose a raid week depending on how long the ban is for. To me it looks like they had very little to gain, but a lot to lose.

Exploit vs "Clever Use of Game Mechanics"

In my opinion, this will probably go down as an exploit. Some people are arguing that this isn't an exploit because Stars was just using the processes that Blizzard put in place. However, I have a hard time seeing how this would fall under the "Clever use of Game Mechanics" category.

It's important to note that "Clever use of Game Mechanics" doesn't mean that if it's possible it's allowed. There are a plenty of examples of players being banned for things that were possible. The most prominent example is Ensidia being banned for their World First kill of Normal Lich King, when they used Saronite Bombs to cause the platform to reform and trivialize phase 2 of the encounter. So, how is this different then Paragon stacking their raid with 13 feral druids to kill heroic Nafarian?

In my opinion, "Clever use of Game Mechanics" is best defined as using game, class, and encounter mechanics in an intended way, but producing unintended results. The Ensidia LK example violates this definition because the outer platforms were not intended to reform during that phase, and the Saronite bombs caused the encounter to behave in an unintended way.

The Paragon/Nefarian example is different, because all of the mechanics were used as intended. The Stolen Power buff is intended to increase the player’s damage output. Players are expected to use this increased damage to complete the encounter. Feral Druids are expected to use Rip as a part of their DPS rotation. Rip is intended to be a very efficient ability that does a lot of damage over an extended period of time, and the damage Rip did with the Stolen Power buff was mathematically and mechanically consistent with how Rip interacts with other buffs and debuffs. They used game mechanics as intended which when combined produced unintended results. What's interesting is that Stars did something very similar to this where their world first Yogg +0 kill by stacking Warlocks

Finally, while we can debate the line between exploit and "Clever use of Game Mechanics," history gives us a good example of how Blizzard will likely view Stars' actions. Back in ToC Ensidia, transferred servers mid lockout to reset their ID and get an additional 50 attempts. I don't think Ensidia got punished in that situation, but Blizzard did take steps to prevent it from happening again in the future. That sent a clear message to all guilds that Blizzard doesn't view this type of action acceptable. Don't be surprised if Blizzard reacts more harshly this time to discourage this activity from happening again in the future.

Crazy Theories and Rationalizations:

These are just suggestions that I wanted to address that didn't really fit somewhere above.

Greedy Blizzard: One of the crazier suggestions in the MMO thread is that Blizzard allowed this to happen because they are greedy and want the faction transfer fees. Lets do some quick math.

It costs 30 dollars to change factions and lets assume that Stars transferred 30 players and plan to change back to their original faction next week. That means it would cost Stars $1,800 to faction change their entire raid team twice. Now lets assume that the top 100 25man guilds would do the same thing to complete for world firsts, and that there are three major content patches a year. In this scenario Blizzard would earn an extra 540k dollars a year in revenue. On it's own that sounds like a lot, but lets think about it another way.

World of Warcraft has over 11 million accounts. Each of those accounts pay a monthly fee of at least 13 dollars. This means that over a year Blizzard has over 1.7 billion dollars in revenue a year in subscription fees alone. I know that every little bit counts, but do you think Blizzard is going to risk taking bad press and a negative player reaction for just 540k dollars? If you do, your crazy.

Time Zone Disadvantage: Another common response is that the US and European guilds have had a day or two advantage due to the servers they play on. Therefore this is just turnabout is fair play that the Taiwanese get an advantage for once.

It's very true that in the short term US guild definitely have an advantage in these early kills, but how does that justify breaking the rules? As I said above these short term milestones aren't all that significant. The really significant world firsts generally take at least a month to complete, and in that time frame that extra day or two isn't all that significant.

The time zone situation is what it is and has been this way for years. Claiming that this is just turnabout is fair play is a little like an embezzler claiming that what they were doing is ok because they've been underpaid for years. In the end this argument is just an attempt to rationalize their actions that were clearly against the spirit of the rules if not a blatant violation of the rules.

First Impressions of 4.2

2011-06-30T08:13:00.002-05:00

The patch is now two days old. I've done some raiding, I did a few dailies also, and I haven't written a post in over a week. That means it's time for me give my first impressions of this patch.

Trash:

"Oh my god there is a lot of trash" was my first impression of the Firelands instance. It actually wasn't so bad when I got past Shannox, but it seemed like we were killing trash forever just to get him to spawn. Combine that with the Starfall buff that was causing it to hit trash not in combat and it got hairy at times. Unfortunately for me I discovered this sad fact when we were standing near the death turtles. That was not a good time.

All in all none of the trash packs weren't too bad on there own, and they dropped lots of patterns for us, but the quantity of them was overwhelming. I didn't count at the time, but we killed at least a dozen packs of trash (and probably more) before Shannox spawned. I'm glad that they increased the respawn rate on that center trash to four hours, but that's not enough in my opinion. They need to thin it out a little bit and have Shannox spawn more quickly. As it is, I think it's worse then the BoT trash, which is not a the way you want to start an instance in my opinion.

Shannox:

Going in to the night I thought Shannox would be the easiest boss we tried. Turned out he was the most difficult of the three we attempted. The fact that all of the mobs are now untauntable threw us for a little bit of a loop like most guilds. We also used only two tanks when it sounds like a lot of guilds were using 3 or 4. However, none of that really impacts me directly.

From my perspective, I had this vision of multi doting nirvana going into the fight. Yes, there is a strong don't stand in the fire element, but that generally isn't a problem for me so I wasn't expecting big issues. It didn't work out that way. First off, the traps are tiny. When one was put directly on me I could barely see the teeth around my feet. If a trap is put in front of me, I might not see it at all due to being an overweight moonkin. As a result I got trapped a lot more then I like to admit. Second, my guild is very heavy on DoT classes. We have two moonkin, two shadow priest, and four warlocks. Not all of them were in raid at the same time, but having so many multi-doters meant we didn't have as many people consistently on Rageface as we thought and it made Face Rage a little more difficult then expected. You wouldn't think getting a 30k hit on him with an increased crit rate would be that difficult, but with only a couple DD classes, range issues, and traps it proved to be more difficult then expected.

All in all, I thought it was a good fight, but not quite what I expected going in.

Lord Rhyolith:

As a moonkin I found this fight to be quite annoying, and lot simpler then I expected. Our biggest problem of the night was accidental pulls. Without those we would have had him down in just two or three pulls. After that the big issue was multi-dotting the legs. We thought that doting both legs would increase the damage without making the boss harder to turn. We were wrong. Once we stopped doting the legs the fight was easy. My job was just to kill the adds, and once his shell came off it was a simple tank and spank.

As add dps I found the fight to be quite boring. I had quite a bit of down time waiting for adds to spawn, and the burn phase didn't feel all that threatening. On the other hand, the GM of my guild (who is also a moonkin) really liked the fight. He was helping with the steering of the boss and I can see how that could be a lot of fun.

Beth'tilic:

After reading a few strats and looking at the boss abilities I thought this one would be hard. The fight has two levels with lots of adds. I though the coordination of the fight would cause a lot of headaches, and it did until we realized a couple things.

Our first issue was controlling the Drones and the Spiderlings. We didn't organize our efforts much at the start. The spiderlings were getting to the drone, and all hell was breaking lose. To fix this we started trying to control the Spiderlings from their spawn point, and Moonkin are pretty well designed for this. With the typhoon knockback and Fungal Growth we can slow down the spiders quite a bit. The problem then became DPS on the spiderlings. Since I was starting at zero power my mushrooms, typhoon, dots and hurricane were weak, and there is no good way to get to solar quickly. As a result I had a hard time getting my set of spiderlings down in time. I'm sure with more practice I could get it, but it wasn't obvious to start.

Then we realized the second important fact. DPS on Beth'tilic doesn't matter in the first stage of the fight. Once we left all of the DPS on the ground and only sent a tank and a few healers into the web it was easy. The second stage was once again a simple tank and spank.

Lunar Shower:

First of all, there is a nice discussion going on at EJ regarding Lunar Shower. I suggest you check it out if you haven't already.

Originally I had expected to keep Lunar Shower since, I didn't have a good idea of what to spend the talent points on, but after realizing that Shannox would be a first boss of the night I ended up dropping it to improve my multi dot potential.

Obviously I can't make any lasting conclusions based on three normal bosses, but the impression I got from my first night of Firelands raiding was that using or dropping LS didn't really matter a ton. Not having it on Shannox made multi doting easier, but Shannox was more about control and personal responsibility rather then DPS so multi-doting wasn't critical and may have caused a little tunneling. On Lord Rhyolith, the fragments can be dotted, but they don't last that long, so dotting might not be ideal. Other then those adds the fight is completely single target. Beth'tilic has plenty of mobs that can be dotted, but my role in the fight was centered around control rather then DPS. On the other hand having Lunar shower to proc Solar Eclipse in the beginning could have helped. At this point I'm still up in the air.

The Pre-4.2 Blog Post

2011-06-22T12:15:00.004-05:00

All signs point to the Firelands being released next week. Therefore it's probably a good time to take a look back and remind everyone what's coming with the new patch and to update my guides.

Lunar Shower:

While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath)

After 4.2 Lunar Shower will still increase your Movement DPS potential, but it how has the above caveat attached. There has been a lot of talk about this change, so I won't make a big detailed comment.

This change has turned Lunar Shower into a "blah" talent. On movement heavy fights having the moving DPS will be nice despite the asymmetric way it generates power. On multi target fights it definitely makes sense to drop Lunar shower to make multi-doting easier. However, I suspect that most fights will fall between those two possibilities and won't have much of an impact one way or the other. At this point I am not planning to spec out of it, because I don't have a better way to spend those points. That said, I will drop it in a heart beat for any fight that favors multi-doting.

Nuke Buffs and 4T11 Nerf:

The 4-piece Balance druid tier 11 PvE set bonus, Astral Alignment, now provides a total of 15% critical strike chance with 3 charges, decreasing by 5% per charge, instead of 99% decreasing by 33% per charge. This change was made because the set bonus proved so valuable it was not possible to upgrade out of the set into tier 12. To compensate, changes have been made to Starfire and Wrath.
Starfire damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
Wrath damage has been increased by approximately 23%.

This is the other big change of this patch cycle. In an effort to prevent a Tier 8 situation, Blizzard nerfed the 4T11 set bonus so that players would upgrade their gear in tier 12.

I am a big fan of this change. I didn't like how Astral Alignment complicated our casting rotation and the net result of these changes should be an overall buff. This change also simplifies our glyphing strategies a little bit. Glyph of Starfire is falling to the bottom of the pack. Glyph of Wrath will be best for single target situations and Glyph of Starsurge will be better when Starfall can be fully utilized.

One final thing, I've seen some people question what impact this change will have on how we use Starsurge. As far as I can tell it won't have any impact on Starsurge. At this point I will still be casting Starsurge on Cooldown no matter what phase of my rotation I am in, because Starsurge is still our highest DPET nuke.

Other Changes:

Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid's maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.
Glyph of Innervate now causes the druid to gain 10% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds when Innervate is used on a friendly target, in addition to Innervate's base effect.

Blizzard thought that healers were getting to much mana from Innervate so they nerfed Innervate for everyone but the druid casting it. The change to the glyph is intended to be a neutral change where where the druid casting it gets the same mount of mana before and after the patch.

Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.
Earth and Moon's duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.

My guess is that this change is being made to make life a little easier on 10mans, and improves moonkin utility a little. I doubt this will have any impact on 25man raiding, but this is a big boost for 10man guilds that don't have a DK or Lock able to apply the spell power debuff.

Fungal Growth spell visual effect has been updated to be less visually intrusive and more aesthetic.
Solar Beam has a new spell effect.

The Solar Beam graphic is still a little blinding, but these are two good quality of life changes.

Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast.
Entangling Roots and the equivalent spell triggered by Nature's Grasp no longer deal damage.

Another quality of life change designed to help 5man dungeon groups. Should make CCing in raids a little easier as well, but druids aren't major CCers in general.

Gear Guide Updates:

Overall, the updates to the gear guide are what you would expect. I would like to bring your attention to the point for point valuation of Hit Rating/Spirit.

How we value Hit Rating and Spirit is highly dynamic with regards to gear level. Since the amount of hit rating we need is capped at 1743, it's point for point valuation below that cap goes up dramatically as our Int, Haste, Crit, and Mastery increased. Since we are moving from T11 to T12, I am assuming a higher gear level when I evaluate the options and the value of Hit Rating/Spirit increased dramatically. By the end of the tier I expect it will be more valuable then Int on a point for point basis below the cap.

Please keep that in mind while reviewing the list. As always you can't take every item at the top of the list because that valuation is based upon a high valuation of Hit Rating. It is up to you to manage your Hit Cap and to make the right choices to stay as close to it as possible.

Raiding Guide Updates:

The raid guide didn't change all that much, but there were a few changes that needed to be made to accurately reflect the 4.2 raiding environment.

Talent Section: I now treat Lunar Shower as an optional talent.
Glyphs: I limited the third Prime Glyph choices to the Glyph of Wrath and Glyph of Starsurge since Glyph of Starfire has fallen behind. I also updated the Major Glyph section to include a few more situational choices.
Professions: This section was changed to account for the longer internal cooldown on the Lightweave buff. I also was a bit harsh on the Engineering buff and have adjusted my valuation as a result. Finally, I added a small section on the Race choices available to Druids.

Patch Notes: Starfire & Wrath Buffed - 4T11 Nerfed

2011-06-13T13:32:00.004-05:00

This change was announced late Friday, so I'm sure most of you have already seen it. Just in case you have not, this is what you missed.

Starfire damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
Wrath damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
The 4-piece Balance druid tier 11 PvE set bonus, Astral Alignment, now provides a total of 15% critical strike chance with 3 charges, decreasing by 5% per charge, instead of 99% decreasing by 33% per charge. This change was made because the set bonus proved so valuable it was not possible to upgrade out of the set into tier 12. To compensate, changes have been made to Starfire and Wrath (listed at the top of the druid class section). (src)

The current live version of 4T11 is very strong. So much so that there was some talk that it might be best to ignore the T12 set and stick with T11. I don't think that would have been worth while in the long run, but clearly it's a situation Blizzard wants to avoid after the 2T8 issues we had in WotLK. The question is how effective is this change?

I've tried to look at this change from a couple of different angles and it looks like the results are favorable. First, I looked at the WoL parses of five different moonkin over a series of fights to see what a 23% damage increase would do to the parse results. When I applied a straight 23% buff to Starfire and Wrath it increased the total damage of the parses between 5.16% and 7.77%. That is a pretty wide margin and a significant portion of the variation seems to be due to the presence of Dark Intent, which fights are included, and player skill. This of course doesn't account for the nerf to 4T11, but I think it's obvious that 23% buff is a significant increase.

I also tried to compare the change using WrathCalcs. Hamlet has created a version that takes these new changes into account and I compared the results I got from the PTR version to the current live version using the same set of gear, glyphs, and rotation. When I compared the two versions of WrathCalcs I saw a 3.01% buff to overall DPS from these changes. EJ poster Berthold also ran the changes through SimulationCraft and had favorable results. Using standard glyphs and rotations, SimulationCraft showed the change to be worth a 2.13% buff. If you changed a few changes he showed a 4.87% buff.

All and all it's clear that this is a positive change from a purely mathematical point of view. However, it's also a great change from a quality of life point of view. This will simplify a few things while we wait to pick up our T12 set pieces. For example, using Starfall around the start of Eclipse will no longer be a DPS loss due to losing Astral Alignment charges to Starfall hits. In short, this change not only buffs the overall damage of a moonkin but it also simplifies the moonkin rotation a little bit which I think is a good thing. However, there are a few ripple effects from this change that we should consider.

The Glyph Impact:

Of the Prime Glyphs, Glyph of Insect Swarm and Glyph of Moonfire will still be the two dominate glyphs, but these buffs will change the debate about the third glyph a little. Glyph of Starsurge will still be the best Glyph when you have multiple targets and can cast Starfall on cooldown. In fact, Glyph of Starsurge is probably buffed a small amount because we no longer have to worry about using it during Astral Alignment, and it can get more of a buff from Lunar Eclipse.

The changes occur in Single target fights and in fights where Starfall is unlikely to be cast on cooldown. In 4.1, many of the top moonkin preferred Glyph of Starfire in these situations because it allowed us to cast Moonfire just once per Eclipse transition and most if not all of our MF/SF dots would be buffed by Eclipse. However, a buff to Wrath is also a buff to the Glyph of Wrath, and according to the calculations I did with WrathCalcs, in T12 level gear the Glyph of Wrath moved ahead of Glyph of Starsurge in these single target situations.

In my opinion this is a happy side effect, because it's another simplification of the Moonkin rotation which I think is a little overly complicated at the moment. Not using Glyph of Starsurge should make it a little easier to track and reapply DoTs, because the dot durations should stay aligned.

Is Starsurge Worth it?

I hadn't considered this possibility when I first read the change, but some observant people wondered how this change would Starsurge and our over all cast priority. In patch 4.1 we saw a significant nerf to Starsurge. In patch, 4.2 it looks like we are going to see a significant buff to our other nukes. On top of that, the 4T12 set bonus, diminishes Starsurge in terms of Damage per Energy. Considering all of this together you have to wonder if Starsurge is worth it in 4.2 raiding.
Hamlet has already made a great post on Elitist Jerks considering this question. What Hamlet says is that from a damage perspective Starsurge is still a strong spell. Starsurge has "the damage of a Starfire in the cast time of a Wrath," Therefore it's still stronger then both of the other spells from a damage perspective. When you consider Energy production and usage Starsurge is still favorable in all situations up until you have the 4T12 set bonus.

Once you get 4T12 the situation gets a little more complicated. With the 4T12 set bonus Starsurge will generate slightly less Energy per Second then Wrath or Starfire outside of Eclipse. As a result there are some situation where casting a Starsurge could extend the down time of Eclipse longer then necessary. However, as Hamlet indicates, this shouldn't be a big concern. The chance that Starsurge will extend your Eclipse down time is fairly small, and the mental math you would have to do to determine when Starsurge isn't advantageous is pretty complicated. Therefore, it's probably best to simplify your rotation and just cast Starsurge on cooldown as we do currently.

Other Concerns: Lunar Shower

The new changes do not impact the debate over skipping Lunar Shower in patch 4.2 at all but I want to take another look at it since we are getting pretty close to the patch being released.

In case you've forgotten when 4.2 is released "while under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy." This change has lead to many people questioning if we should spec into Lunar Shower at all. I honestly thought we would see another change to Lunar Shower before 4.2 is released, because I don't think this is a question Blizzard wants to leave up to the player. However, since we've seen no change in the month since this patch note was announced and all indications are pointing to 4.2 being ready for release, it's a question that we players are going to half to answer.

From my point of view, there aren't a whole lot of positives for specing into Lunar Shower when 4.2 goes live. On a movement heavy fight it can still be a significant source of DPS. Yes, it will cause you to use up your Eclipse power and move out of Eclipse more quickly, but that is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it will also allow you to move into Solar Eclipse. Unfortunately that highlights the problem that Moonfire's energy generation is asymetric. Moonfire will generate Solar energy when your out of Eclipse and moving towards Solar, but generates no energy when out of Eclipse and moving towards Lunar.

However, the problem with skipping Lunar Shower is that there aren't any good alternative talents. Even when we do spec into Lunar Shower we still have 6 points to spend on optional talents that provide minor DPS gains, mana or utility. From my perspective, I don't have a big need for additional talent points to pick up utility.

In the end I think speccing into Lunar Shower is going to depend heavily on what fight is being worked on currently. If there is a fight that encourages a significant amount of multi-dotting with low movement, then you will see a lot of people getting out of Lunar Shower so they don't consume Eclipse with their Moonfire casts. However, outside of a big multi-dot fight, I don't see a reason to spec out of it. On single target fights without much movement Lunar Shower shouldn't have any significant impact, but none of the other available talents would either. On a fight with heavy movement Moonfire spam may be very beneficial.

10 vs 25: A Year Later

2011-06-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

A little over a year ago I wrote a series of posts about Blizzard combining the 10man and 25man formats into a single lockout with the same loot and other rewards. As I'm sure many of you guys remember, those posts generated a lot of comments. Some people agreed with me, most disagreed. In the end the nay sayers where predicting doom and gloom, while the 10man fans were predicting sunshine and rainbows.

For obvious reasons, it was impossible to say who was going to be right and who was going to be wrong, but here we are a year later with 6months of Cataclysm under our belt and the first tier of Cataclysm raiding nearing a close. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my reaction and the reaction of some of my commenters and see what ended up happening.

Quick Disclaimer: I'm assuming that tensions over this issue (and the way I titled one of my posts) have calmed down quite a bit over the past year. I don't expect any of the drama that resulted last time. However, in an effort to prevent any issue I want to acknowledge one thing. Most of my "evidence" comes from personal experience or observations I've seen on the servers I've played. I do use some numbers from WoWProgress.com, but none of it is scientific.

Personal Experience:

The Concern: My first reaction was very negative. Most of my 10man experiences in WotLK were very positive. My groups were filled with 25man raiders so we overgeared the content, and we had a lot of funny joking around in a way that wasn't really possible in the 25man raid. After a little thought I still had my doubts, but I also saw some of the potential of the change. I could man a chance to raid an alt in a meaningful way or just sleep more once the allure of the 10man rewards was removed.

The Result: A year later and a year wiser, I must say my second reaction was much more correct then my first. When I wrote my first reaction post the best days of my 10man groups were behind me. My 10man group like my guild saw a lot of turn over and we had trouble building a group. We did eventually end up killing heroic Lich King, but that was only after a massive effort from a few dedicated players and was months after it should have happened. In the end, it was the people that made my 10man experience so great, and that couldn't last forever.

The second reality is that I don't have much of an interest in maintaining that type of schedule anymore. To do the 10mans, I was staying up to one or two in the morning several nights a week. On the other nights it wasn't unusual for me to stay up late leveling an alt, crafting for my AH businesses, or doing some other activity. I didn't sleep a whole lot and it had an impact on my life in the game and in my normal life. There are still nights where I stay up very late playing the game, but not having the 10man raid has removed the obligation to doing so. If I stay up late one night, it's likely that I will go to bed early the next. My play time is much more balanced now, and that is probably for the best.

Balancing: Can 10man Equal 25man?

The Concern: I and many other 25man supporters questioned if Blizzard could balance the 10man and 25man formats to be relatively equal. While the gear ilevel difference was the main balancing difference between the two formats in WotLK, it wasn't the only difference. Converting a 25man raid to a 10man or vice versa isn't a simple fix where you just have to adjust a bosses total health. Spread out mechanics favor smaller groups because they have more space to work with. It's unavoidable that Room design and boss abilities will have different levels of significance for different sized groups. Some mechanics will be easier for 10mans because they have more room to spread out or fewer targets to deal with. Other mechanics will be easier for 25mans because they have more people to fill the needed rolls and players are allowed to specialize their responsibilities more. Skeptics like me were unsure if Blizzard could counteract these inevitable balancing differences between the two formats.

The Result: With Tier 11 raiding, Blizzard did a pretty good job. I've done very few fights in the 10man format, but what I'm told by people who have raided in both formats is that the lead up bosses are fairly well balanced, but there are/were a few balancing issues with the end bosses. Nefarian and Cho'gall were much tougher in the 10man format and had their damage nerfed significantly in patch 4.1. On the other hand Al'Akir is significantly easier in the 10man format, and several 25man guilds have gone in and killed Al'Akir on 10man to get the kill and ranking just as some of us skeptics worried might happen.

All in all, I can't really expect Blizzard to do a better job then they did. This type of thing is never going to be perfect the first time. I'm also pleased that they errorred on the side of 10mans being to hard (though I don't know if this was by choice). The fact that 10mans were a bit harder on some of the end bosses may have prevented a mass exodus of progression guilds switching to the 10 format.

Destabilization of Guilds:

The Concern: Organizing 10 to 15 people is easier then organizing 25 to 35. There are a lot of tasks involved in running a guild/raid that just get harder with the addition of more people. It's more people you have to evaluate, it's more people you have manage, it's more whispers and PMs you have to respond to. The question was, why would a GM stick with the 25man format when they can get the same rewards from the 10man format with less work and few problems. Not only that, but a 25man GM could take his best 10-15 players and form a more successful 10man they they could have at the 25man level. It seems like a perfect situation for guilds to abandon the 25man format for the more accessible but similarly rewarding 10man format.

The Result: There has definitely been some movement away from 25mans to 10mans. In the past six months I've seen several 25man guilds reform as 10 man guilds due to recruiting and other issues. I've also seen very few new 25man guilds form, but I've seen many recruiting posts for newly formed 10man guilds.

That said the 25man format definitely isn't dead. Progression raiding still seems to favor the 25man format, while 10man seems to be favored by casual raiding. Looking at numbers from WoWProgress this division is clear. Of the top 100 guilds in the world only five are 10man guilds and of those only one is in the top fifty. The 25man format also has a much higher participation rate in the heroic modes then the 10man format. This is probably an indication that many of the historically successful progression guilds have stuck with the 25man format.

The question now is how is this going to change in the future. Is the 25man format still in decline or has has it stabilized? How many of the 25man guilds in WoWProgress are dead guilds that failed after a couple of months of raiding and won't be active in Firelands? It's going to be really interesting to see the progression numbers at the end of Tier 12 progression cycle. It's my guess that 25mans will still be the dominate format in progression raiding for a couple of progression cycles. However, it's quite possible that the 10man progression guilds needed the Tier 11 cycle to get organized and come out and take the T12 raids by storm and dominate the 25man format.

The Great 4.2 Nerf

2011-05-25T11:13:00.000-05:00

Just in case you haven't seen it, though I'm sure most of you have, Blizzard announced yesterday that the T11 normal mode raids will be nerfed significantly when 4.2 is released. Here's the quote:

With the upcoming content patch, 10- and 25-person Normal mode raid encounters will be receiving a comprehensive set of tuning adjustments to decrease their difficulty.

These changes will allow players, groups, and guilds who have yet to experience the content in Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, and Throne of the Four Winds an opportunity to do so.

With the addition of a new tier of armor and weapons, we want to make the previous tier more accessible in ways other than just a shift of currency type, so we are making item level 359 gear purchasable for Justice points in the upcoming content patch.

The general reaction to this change is about what I would expect after playing this game for four years. The casuals are happy, but some seem to be more excited to troll the "incoming QQ from raiders." A few "raiders" are happy to provide the whining and say all sorts of stupid stuff on the forums which I will get into later. However, I think most serious raiders are like me. We just don't care about the nerf.

My Perspective:

In all honesty, I don't understand why anyone really cares about this change. Seriously who does this help? If you take a look at WoW progress you can see almost 19,000 guilds have cleared Nefarian on normal mode. Even more have cleared Cho'gall and Al'Akir. If you haven't cleared the T11 normal mode bosses at this point of the expansion, you clearly aren't serious about raiding or progression. For the casual player this allows them to see some content that no one is going to care about otherwise.

If anything, this change helps the serious raiders out there more then any one else. Raiders tend to get locked into playing one character for very long periods of time. Raiders spend so much time learning, optimizing and gearing a particular toon that it's hard to switch to something else even after they've grown bored of their main toon. This change will make it easier for players to gear an alt or main switch if they so choose.

I am a sensitive to the argument that these nerfs will cheapen the rewards of titles and such. However, I think this argument is being over blown a little bit. The "Defender of a Shattered World" title will become more common, but was it really all that impressive to begin with?

I'm more concerned about Heroic titles and Meta achievements that signify the rare accomplishments in raiding. I still think these types of rewards should be removed in a timely manner, but that is irrelevant to the 4.2 nerfs since the 4.2 are being made to normal mode bosses only.

Legendary Concerns:

The silliest complaint I've heard about these nerfs is that they will some how make the Legendary staff easier to get and more abundant. Yes, you have to complete the T11 raids to be able to pick up the first quest leading to the legendary staff, but it's not like that was a significant barrier in the first place. There are already hundreds of thousands of players who meet that criteria already. The real barriers to the staff are the 25 Living Embers you will need to create the first step, and the 25 Seething Cinders needed to complete the second step. The Heart of the Flame needed to complete the legendary might also be a big issue if it only drops off of Heroic Ragnaros. The simple truth is, if you haven't completed T11 raids yet, you probably don't have a snowballs chance in the Firelands to complete the legendary staff anyway.

Some people may argue that this nerf sets a precedent that the Firelands raid will be nerfed at some point in the future. Thus making the staff easier to obtain when Tier 13 is released. I agree there is some merit to that argument, but I think history shows that to be an insignificant concern. Let’s use Ulduar as an example. The legendary mace [Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings] was the BIS healer weapon right up until the release of Cataclysm. Yet, it wasn't a very common item to have even at the end of WotLK when Ulduar was easy to clear. The reality was that you still needed close to a full group to clear the instance, and most players weren't willing to run the instance for weeks on end just so that a healer could get the mace. I expect the same will be true in Cataclysm. There will be plenty of caster DPS that want to still run Firelands to try and get the Legendary, but only one player can work on it at a time. It will be difficult to get the necessary tanks, healers and other DPS to fill out the group. Thus the legendary staff will still be very rare.

Encounter Journal a Nerf?

I find it very strange that some people are upset that Blizzard has added the Encounter Journal to the standard UI. Complaints that it "gives too much information and will trivialize learning the fights" seem silly to me. Have these people actually looked at the Encounter Journal or paid any attention to how guild prepare for raids these days?

The fact of the matter is that Blizzard isn't providing anything new by adding the Encounter Journal. All of the information it contains has traditionally been provided by third party addons and websites. If this information trivializes learning the fights then it's been trivialized since TBC. Almost nobody goes into a raid encounter completely blind any more. The elite guilds have tested most of the encounters on the PTR and have a good idea of what to expect when the content goes live. The rest of us comb the internet for kill video's and strategies before we make any serious attempts. For the people that want to go in blind, they still can. You don't have to look at the Encounter Journal if you don't want to.

I don't see a good reason for anyone to be upset over the encounter journal. It's just a list of abilities and loot, with some lore thrown in. It doesn't tell you how to deal with those abilities and kill the boss. The Encounter Journal is just a quality of life change. It makes it easier to find fight information, should limit the amount of misinformation that is pass around while people learn the fight.

A Fee to Play with Friends

2011-05-17T21:55:00.001-05:00

In case you missed it Blizzard made a new announcement today that they are working on a new service that will allow players to group with friends on your Real ID friends list even if they are on another realm. There's just one catch. You'll have to pay extra for it. Here's the entire announcement:

With the continued popularity of the Dungeon Finder, many players have been asking for a way to group up with real-life friends who play on other realms to take on instances together. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about a new feature currently in development that will allow players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon.

As this is a fairly complex service to develop, we don’t have a release date to share quite yet. It’s important to note that as with some of the other convenience- and connectivity-oriented features we offer, certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based, though only the player sending the invitations will need to have access to the premium service. We'll have more details to share with you as development progresses -- in the meantime, you may begin to see elements of the feature appear on the World of Warcraft PTR.

Those of you who've read by blog for a long time may remember that I'm not against Micro Transactions and Premium Services as a general rule, but I do think there is a line that shouldn't be crossed.

Micro Transactions: Being able to purchase pets and mounts doesn't bother me because they have no game impact.
Mobile Services: The Mobile Auction House and Guild Chat don't bother me because they extend the game to device beyond your computer and they are fairly small aspects of the game.
Premium Services: Fee's for server transfers and race changes also make sense to me because they are a bit of an extraordinary situation. Plus you want some disincentive to prevent people from using them frequently and fees are good at that.

My general rule is that as long as it doesn't have a big impact on a core function of the game or doesn't charge a fee for a core feature of the game I don't have a problem with it. This new service cuts dangerously close to that line in my opinion.

On one hand this really doesn't have any impact on how we play the game. If you don't buy the service nothing changes for you. Nothing is preventing us from starting a toon on a new server or transferring a toon to play with friends. It's also worth remembering that this is a bit of functionality that players have been requesting since Real ID and the LFD tool were created. Creating it costs money and without the fees it might have not been a priority for Blizzard to create it now.

On the other hand, it really feels like a fee to play with my friends. I've played this game for a very long time and have friends from almost every guild I've played with on several different servers. It is literally impossible for me to be on the same server as all of my friends because they are on multiple servers. The only other solution would be for me to level multiple toons on the different serves which I feels is both an unfair and impractical solution. The Real ID service was designed so that players could more easily stay in touch with their friends. It doesn't feel right to monetize it by charging people to be able to group with people on their friends list.