A new beta build has been released, and here’s a compilation of the balance changes:

• Hurricane base damage increased by 33%.
• Innervate now regenerate mana equal to 20% of the casting Druid’s maximum mana pool, down from 33%.
• Starsurge now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Entangling Roots now has a 2 sec cast time, up from 1.5 sec.
• Starfall now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards. Base damage increased by 33%.
• Lunar Shower now increases damage done by your Moonfire by 15/30/45% (Up from 2/4/8%)
• Force of Nature now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Solar Beam now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Lunar Guidance no longer increases the radius of your Solar Beam.
• Moonglow now reduces the mana cost of all your damage and healing spells.
• Nature’s Majesty now increases the critical strike chance with all spells.

Also to note:  Heart of the Wild and Furor had their abilities swapped, in the Restoration and Feral trees.

My opinion:  It was nice to see the bump up in Hurricane damage.  Un-talented hurricane has always been a bit weak. The Starfall change is welcomed, but I don’t know how much starfall was initially nerfed.  I’ll have to ask Lissanna@Restokin, as she’s currently in the beta, if this ‘buff’ actually restores Starfall, makes it better, or whether it’s still worse.

The innervate change was expected.  They’ve been planning on nerfing how innervate works for quite awhile.  I’m glad to see our base spells all getting bumped up to 40 yards, although this was expected as Nature’s Reach is no longer a talent.

The change to Lunar Shower is welcomed.  I believe everyone currently on the beta has said that the previous changes to Moonfire still did not give us enough damage on the run.  This boost to moonfire should help.

I’m sure the changes to moonglow and nature’s majesty were just because they got tired of adding more and more spells to the list when very few weren’t on there.

Notible gains from Moonglow though would be Insect Swarm and Hurricane now being included.  Nature’s majesty should now affect our DoT crits as well as our Hurricane crits too!

Your opinions?

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We were able to kill heroic Halion tonight, bringing to the close all of the Wrath of the Lich King raid content.

You can kind of see me in the background, but you can see my treants and Starfall better.  Apparently tradition has it that the moonkin faces backwards in Aftermath.

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I know I’m way behind the curve on this, but I just returned to raiding this week after a 5 month hiatus.  I was able to get in on our ICC25 clear this week, and I can finally strut my feathers around random heroics with my “Light of Dawn” title.

If you haven’t had a chance to do Lich King in any form, I suggest you try to find some sort of group or guild that can.  I personally think it’s the most fun (and diverse) fight in the game, and heroic is just a blast.

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 Are you attending BlizzCon this year?  If not, are you attending the ‘virtual BlizzCon’?

Since I took a hiatus, counts have been a little low.. I’m thinking of maybe giving away a virtual BlizzCon ticket as a small surprise sometime in the next few weeks….

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It’s that time year again.  Online ordering for BlizzCon 2010 “virtual tickets” is available, and it looks like this year Grunty has a new friend, “Deathy” is a murloc dressed up as Deathwing.  There will also be a Murloc Marine character portrait and Terran, Zerg, and Protoss decals specific to BlizzCon.

(Image courtesy of MMO Champion)

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MMO-Champion released some further balance changes in Cataclysm:

I find most of these rather interesting.  The Thorns change has me rather perplexed.  I’ll have to rely on someone who has beta access (*cough*Lissanna*cough*) to let me know how this now scales with spellpower.  Unless it’s going to give a huge damage burst to a tank for threat, I really don’t get the purpose of Thorns.  The Moonkin form change was needed, or it would have made the form pointless in 25man raids.

Thoughts/gripes/complaints?

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According to Ghostcrawler on the Cataclysm Beta forums, here are the class synergy thoughts for Cataclysm as of today:

Balance druids will be providing spell haste and spell damage increases.
Agility and Strength – Death Knight, Shaman, Warrior
Armor – Shaman, Paladin
10% AP – Marksmanship Hunter, Enhancement Shaman, Blood Death Knight, Paladin
Burst Haste – Shaman, Mage
3% Damage – Beast Mastery Hunter, Arcane Mage, Retribution Paladin
Health – Warlock (probably Destruction), Warrior, Priest
Mana Pool – Mage, Warlock (probably Affliction)
Mana Regen — Paladin, Shaman, Warlock (probably Affliction)
Replenishment — Shadow Priest, Frost Mage, Survival Hunter, Destruction Warlock, Retribution Paladin
5% Crit — Fury Warrior, Feral Druid, Subtlety Rogue, Elemental Shaman
20% Melee Attack Speed — Shaman, Frost Death Knight, Retribution Paladin, Survival Hunter
5% Spell Haste — Shaman, Balance Druid, Shadow Priest, Destro Warlock
6% Spell Power — Mage, Shaman
10% Spell Power — Elemental Shaman, Demonology Warlock, Fire Mage
5% Stats — Paladin, Druid

12% Armor Debuff — Warrior, Rogue, Druid, Hunter
10% Physical Damage Debuff — Warrior, Druid (probably bear), Protection Paladin, Warlock, Blood Death Knight
30% Bleed Damage Debuff — Arms Warrior, Feral Druid, Subtlety Rogue
30% Cast Speed Slow — Warlock, Rogue, Arcane Mage
5% Spell Crit Chance Taken — Fire Mage, Warlock (probably Demonology), Mage (possibly Frost)
25% Healing Taken — Arms Warrior, Fury Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Frost Mage, Shadow Priest
10% Melee Attack Speed Debuff — Warrior, Death Knight, Feral Druid, Protection Paladin
4% Physical Vulnerability — Arms Warrior, Combat Rogue, Frost Death Knight
8% Spell Damage Taken — Warlock, Unholy Death Knight, Balance Druid, Assassination Rogue

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Sorry for my late posts, I’m trying to catch up on a lot of old things as well as move IRL.

The latest data-mine from MMO-Champion shows a lot of changes to the balance tree, including a change in a core change in Moonkin form, now causing it to grant 5% spell haste instead of spell crit.  With the changes to Wrath, this may not be such a bad idea.

Balance

• Starsurge now also generates 10 Lunar or Solar energy.
• Wrath of Cenarius is now named Lunar Shower.
• Lunar Guidance now generates an additional 2/4/6 Lunar or Solar Energy. (Down from 5/10/15)
• Moonkin Form now increases spell haste by 5%. (Old – Spell crit)
• Genesis now increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spell damage and healing effects and by Swiftmend by 2/4/6%. (Up from 1/2/3%)
• Nature’s Grace now has a 100% proc rate for all ranks. increasing your spell casting speed by 5/10/15% for 3 sec.

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The re-vamped masteries have been released with the last beta build to Cataclysm.    Courtesy of MMO-Champion:

• Restoration – Increases the potency of your heal over time spells by up to 20% based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Healing increased further by mastery rating.
• Feral – Increases the damage absorbed by your Savage Defense ability by 32% and increases the damage done by your Cat Form bleed abilities by 20%. Absorb and damage increased further by mastery rating.
• Balance – Increases the bonus damage from Eclipse by 12%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.

I’m still curious whether mastery is still going to put all the eggs in the Eclipse basket.  Granted Eclipse is being revamped, but still…

Thoughts?

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