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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