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 [Glyph of Starsurge], due to all of our [Shooting Stars], 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, [Purified Demonseye].  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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The World of Warcraft Blog has released the Tier 13 for Druids: Deep Earth Vestments.  What do you think?  Click to enlarge.

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It has been announced, at last :

Wrath of Tarecgosa – When you deal damage, you have a chance to gain the Wrath of Tarecgosa, duplicating the harmful spell.

Expect a high proc chance to make it Legendary. I suspect this kind of working like the Ele shaman mastery, except for full damage.

In other exciting news, the full Tier12 has been discovered, and it looks %&”$ awesome. What do you think?

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Some news from the PEE TEE ARE

All class abilities which place a buff on friendly targets no longer generate any threat. This goes for raid-wide buffs like Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude, as well as triggered effects such as Blessed Resilience or Fingers of Frost, and single-target buffs like Dark Intent and Hysteria. The exception is buffs which directly cause healing or damage, such as Thorns or Renew. Abilities such as these still generate normal threat.

Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.

Earth and Moon’s duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.

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

Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. 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).

Solar Beam has a new spell effect.

Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.

They were clearly trying to prevent people to stay too long in an eclipse state (probably about the solar eclipse overpowerness) and it seems they found the way to incorporate it.

What this means to our AOE rotation :

• We still want to be in solar eclipse. The damage increase to our Wild mushrooms, Typhoon, Hurricane and Insect Swarm is still pretty considerable. The only difference is that we can’t spam Sunfire anymore. Doing so will push us out of the eclipse state.
• The solutions we have  :
  • Shrooms on cooldown, hurricane while we wait. Typhoon if it’s safe.
  • Shrooms on cooldown, insect swarm spam while we wait. Typhoon if it’s safe.
  • Shrooms on cooldown, starfire while we wait.
• On another note, Wild Mushroom triggering Earth and Moon is a huge but subtle buff, making all our attacks deal an extra 8% that we would probably not have otherwise.

Testing is needed.

In other exciting news, the stats on Tarecgosa’s Rest are out, and it seems like it will not be so fitted for us ! We’re talking about hit and crit. Thanks to reforging, we’ll be able to get a few of that hit replaced with tons of haste. And the insane amount of red sockets makes it definitly best in slot! ilvl 404 wuuuut ?

To conclude, I will say that the new Tier 12 models are available (except the shoulders). Looks like it’s made out of a treebark which is kind of cool. What do you think?

Please visit mmo-champion for all your pictures, details and daily dose of awesomeness.

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As pointed out by Ava in a previous post, the new Tier12 set bonuses are known :

Balance 2 Pieces – You have a chance to summon a Burning Treant to assist you in battle for 15 sec when you cast Wrath or Starfire.
Balance 4 Pieces – While not in an Eclipse state, your Wrath generates 3 additional Lunar Energy and your Starfire generates 5 additional Solar Energy.

I expect the burning treant mechanic to work a little like the Val’kyr from Nibelung back in WOTLK. All the classes’ set bonuses are about Fire and related to them, so expect alot of red and orange on your screens !

Thoughts? 4 set sounds quite interesting!

It’ll be interesting to see if the Burning Treants benefit from Fungal Growth! Probably not. But it would be sick. Can’t an owl dream ?

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• Soothe is now instant cast, down from 1.5 sec cast.
• Moonfire and Sunfire now costs 9% of base mana, down from 18% of base mana.
• Fungal Growth now has a 100 yards range, up from 30 yards.
• Total Eclipse now increases bonus damage from Eclipse by 16%, up from 12%. Each point of Mastery now increases the bonus by an additional 2%, up from 1.5%

Blizzard apparently acknowledged that Moonkin mastery was too weak and provided a slight tweak to the numbers.  Now, each point of mastery will provide a 2% boost in Eclipse damage. (Up from 1.5%).  Since Total Eclipse also provides us with a base mastery value of “8″, that is going to boost the standard Eclipse from 37.5% (25% + 12%) to 41% (25% + 16%).

What does that mean to you?  Well, crit and mastery numbers were trending about on par for each other before this build, and should now give mastery a decent edge over crit.  As haste values were still leaps and bounds over both, I don’t think we’ll see a change of haste being our prime stat.

Moonfire/Sunfire’s base mana cost was reduced from 18% to 9%, but that is most likely just a tooltip clarification. (I’ll verify this later, but I believe the mana cost was already halved when the base damage was buffed by 50% in a beta build).

The fungal growth change is handy, as I’ve often been out of range of my mushrooms and unable to pop them.

The soothe change was just reverting to 4.0.1 behavior.  I’m not sure why they changed it in the first place.  (Probably to offset the small mana cost we face versus the larger focus cost of a hunter, but it’s still a silly way to do it).  Since I’m no longer doing heroic Arthas, I don’t really care either way.

What’s your opinions?

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