• Item – Druid T15 Balance 2P Bonus (New) Increases the critical strike chance of Starsurge by 10%.
• Item – Druid T15 Balance 4P Bonus (New) Nature’s Grace now also grants 1,000 critical strike and 1,000 mastery for its duration.

Oddly enough, the 4P bonus is probably weaker than our current 4PC, considering we get additional DoT ticks and get to reforge about 1500 mastery to crit.

What are your thoughts?  I think these are much weaker than T14.

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Our friends at MMO-Champion have rendered a video modeling tier 15 and season 13 gear on a few races. What do you think?

Tier 15:

Season 13:

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Our friends at MMO-Champion have datamined the tier sets, and the druid tier set looks very interesting!  Maokai, anyone?  Click to enlarge.

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At the start of Mists week two, the Sha of Anger now drops an item called [Claw of Anger] that starts the quest ‘Remnants of Anger‘. The claw is lootable by everyone who killed the Sha and rewards boots based on your spec, with the balance boots being: [Crushing Treads of Anger]. Make sure to go out and kill Sha today!

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Hi guys,

I know I haven’t posted much about Mists yet.  Been busy digging in and gearing up to raid, rep up, etc.  I will have a post coming shortly about my first opinions and what I think is great, as well as what I think needs to be improved.

In the mean time, this was hugely needed, and I’m glad they finally implemented it.

Bashiok posts:

We’ve just applied a hotfix that removes the faction requirements for Justice gear.

Shado-Pan and August Celestial factions will no longer require Golden Lotus faction to purchase this gear. This will allow players who have reached level 90 to have additional sources of item level (ilevel) 450 gear to progress into the Dungeon Finder Heroic dungeons more readily.

Players who are looking to purchase this gear should seek out the following vendors:

Townlong Steppes:
Shado-Pan – Rushin the Fox in Shado-Pan GarrisonAll – Commander Lo Ping in Niuzao Temple

Vale of Eternal Blossoms:
August Celestials – Sage Lotusbloom or Sage Whiteheart in the Horde and Alliance Shrines Golden Lotus – Jaluu the Generous in front of Mogu’shan Palace

Dread Wastes:
Klaxxi – Ambersmith Zikk in Klaxxivess

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The 4 piece set bonus has been completely redesigned:

• Balance, 4P — Reduces the cooldown of Starsurge by 5 sec.
  

While an improvement, I have yet to sim it to see what kind of DPS it will provide. I will provide further thoughts tonight.

EDIT: I’m not even sure this is an improvement now that I sit down and think about it.  While this could give more credibility to the [item]45603[/item], due to all of our [spell]93400[/spell], it will be under-utilized.  I really hope that Blizzard wakes up. This is another case of Ghostcrawler really not knowing anything about Balance druids, and really not knowing what to do with them.

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Since I didn’t really have enough time to sit down and crunch the Tier 13 set bonuses, I decided to make a second post actually detailing my thoughts.

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

This bonus is nice, and definitely better then the junk 2p T12 bonus that we currently have, however, I’m not sure I like it when you compare it to other DPS classes 2piece bonus.  Some of them seem to be pretty amazing, and while I don’t know other classes nearly as well as I do moonkin, seem they’d average more then 3% more damage on their main nukes.

4P: Starsurge generates 100% extra Lunar or Solar energy while Eclipse is not active.

I think unanimously, the opinion on the 4 piece bonus is that it’s extremely weak.  Starsurge is our highest DPS nuke that we have available.  Why we could sacrifice it outside of an Eclipse just to get an extra 15 energy is beyond me.  That being said, it could be fixed very simply:

Starsurge generates 100% extra Lunar or Solar energy while Eclipse is not active, or costs 0 Lunar or Solar energy while Eclipse is active.

This would give us one extra cast IN an Eclipse, and I think would be much more attractive.  But honestly, I’d also like us to see some bonuses that didn’t involve Eclipse.  It’s getting old already.

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Here are the balance druid set bonuses for tier 13:

• 2P: Insect Swarm increases all damage done by your Starfire, Starsurge, and Wrath spells against that target by 3%.
• 4P: Starsurge generates 100% extra Lunar or Solar energy while Eclipse is not active.

While the 2pc is a decent bonus, the 4pc underhelms me, especially against the 4pc T12 bonus.  To get the extra 15 energy, we’d have to sacrifice the extra damage from Starsurge.  The only way I can see this being great is if we get lucky with Shooting Stars procs, but that’s going to throw our timing way off.

Your opinions?

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I’ve had quite a few people ask me for gear advice lately, and there’s one recurring thread:  Purple Gems.  Specifically, [item]52236[/item].  The most common occurence is in the Tier 12 chest and Hyjal boots.

Unless you literally have a +20 int per gem socket bonus (which I think actually happens in one piece of 359 gear), purple gems are never the way to go.  You are sacrificing 20 int for 20 spirit.  In reforge terms, you’re effectively giving up 20 int for 20 mastery.  This is never a good deal.  You will want to run red gems in all blue sockets.  You gain 20 (or 10 int, depending on the bonus), and lose 20 spirit.  After reforging, you’ve just made a trade off for 20/10 int for 20 mastery.  It’s worth it.

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I’ve had a lot of people ask me what the “Best-in-Slot” trinket configuration is.  And to be honest, that depends.  One trinket is clear:  Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor.  Whether heroic or non-heroic, this trinket will be BiS for you.

The second trinket is a bit iffy.  Generally, the heroic Necromantic Focus will be your second trinket, unless the DMC: Volcano will put you at or above 2637 haste, which is a DoT breakpoint.

Now, if heroic Necromantic Focus is not available to you, DMC: Volcano will be your BiS option, UNLESS it’s a heavy solar cleave fight with mushrooms (See: Rhyolith and Ragnaros).  If it’s one of those fights, you will want the normal Necromantic Focus for the mastery and Eclipse damage.

Confusing enough yet?

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