Howdy fellow moonkin!

If you’ve been following my Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve stepped down from raiding and canceled my active subscription. Sunfyre’s Nest is about to turn four, and I’m too old to keep spending as many hours as I have killing internet dragons. Unfortunately I’m an “all or nothing” type player, so I can’t really play casually. This won’t affect my blogging, and I’m going to try to actually editorialize more and provide a weekly roll-up of news and opinions from the last week. I will still be an active participant and moderator in the MMO-Champion Druid Forums.

In actual balance druid news, don’t be dismayed that we haven’t seen much PvE balancing in 5.2. In a response to a PTR question, Ghostcrawler stated the following:

This is a legit PvE nerf, but a very, very small one and as I said, we haven’t made any PvE numbers adjustments to anyone yet. This one is easy to fix without PvP risk and it makes a glyph less mandatory for its DPS benefits.

It does appear the Nature’s Vigil was a PvP nerf. Hopefully we will see some sort of change to counter it for PvE.

Also, if you’ve been following the soap opera that is known as Cyclone, it’s now back to 20 yards, with the 2-piece PvP bonus extending it’s range by 5 yards. Ferals will be hit with a 20 second cooldown.

Still haven’t heard why Force of Nature doesn’t scale with Solar Eclipse. Apparently it’s intended.

That’s all I’ve got for this week!

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Another change in the never-ending saga that is Cyclone … it’s range is now 20 yards. The tier gloves, however, continue to extend the range by 5 yards.

The cooldown has also been lowered for ferals from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.

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New patch notes for PTR were posted, and a few additions and changes were made:

• Cyclone range has been increased to 30 yards (was 20), and it now has a 30-second cooldown for Feral Druids. In addition, it will now share diminishing returns with Banish, Seduction, Bind Elemental, Hex, Freezing Trap, Wyvern Sting, Gouge, Sap, Hibernate, Paralysis, Polymorph, Ring of Frost, Repentance, and Quaking Palm.
• Starfall will no longer strike targets that are affected by crowd control effects.
• Balance/Restoration Druid PvP Gloves: Bonus now increases Cyclone duration by 2 seconds (previously increased Cyclone range by 5 yards).

A few changes came out after this, which haven’t been officially posted:

• Cyclone range was reduced to 25 yards, but now the Balance/Restoration Druid PvP Gloves yet again increase range by 5 yards.

I’m excited if Starfall not breaking CC actually works.

For nostalgia, here’s a hotfix that was applied back on July 1st, 2011:

Starfall is no longer hitting targets that are within 40 yards if they are not in combat with the druid or his/her party/raid members. It is targeting all hostile characters in combat with the druid’s party/raid members, is not hitting Stealth characters, is not breaking crowd control effects, and is not targeting nearby critters.

Maybe now it’ll actually work.

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The PTR notes have been released for 5.2, and others have been datamined by our friends over at MMO-Champion.  I’ve parsed the notes to only show relevant balance druid changes.

• Cyclone will now share diminishing returns with Banish, Seduction, Bind Elemental, Hex, Freezing Trap, Wyvern Sting, Gouge, Sap, Hibernate, Paralysis, Polymorph, Ring of Frost, Repentance, and Quaking Palm.
• Displacer Beast has been redesigned. It now triggers Cat Form and grants 50% increased movement speed for 4 seconds after teleporting, and no longer activates Prowl.
• Cenarion Ward now grants 100% increased healing.
• Rejuvenation now costs approximately 9% less mana.
• Revive and Mark of the Wild now cost 55% less mana.
• Faerie Swarm can now snare more than one target at a time.
• Mass Entanglement now has a 30 second cooldown (was 2 minutes).
• Typhoon now has a 30 second cooldown (was 20 seconds).
• The Treants summoned by Force of Nature now deal more damage and healing, and the Force of Nature tooltip will report the capabilities of these summoned pets.
• Soul of the Forest
  • Balance: Now generates 40 Lunar or Solar energy upon leaving Eclipse.

Datamined changes:

• Symbiosis now has a 6 sec cooldown.

Reviewing these changes, it looks like Heart of the Wild may become more attractive.  While mathmatically, Nature’s Vigil will remain unchanged, it loses the power it had when we stacked it with Incarnation.  I still do not think we’ll look at Cenarion Ward — the versatility of Nature’s Swiftness (including the ability to NS rez) is just too attractive.  Cyclone hit ferals hard (they now have a 30 second cooldown), but I’m not sure if the DR change will affect us too much.  I’m still skeptical about Force of Nature.  I think it’s there just to be there.

The Soul of the Forest change seems interesting, but the thing to note is it only affects one side of Eclipse:  Lunar to Solar will still require two non-Eclipsed Starfire casts.  This will shorten the Solar to Lunar, though, only requiring two non-Eclipsed Wrath casts, instead of the previous three.  (And 4 without SotF).  As Hamlet pointed out, as unattractive as Wrath is (especially non-Eclipsed), this may prove to be very useful.

What are your opinions?

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I’ve returned from vacation… many thanks to Balourd for stepping in while I was away.  I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but it seems besides the Class Q&A for MoP, not a lot more has changed, especially for balance druids in the 4.3 world.  This is the only small change that I think has been missed so far:

• Celestial Focus now also reduces Cyclone spell pushback.

A small buff for PVP.  I’m really hoping that something still changes with the 4pc Bonus or to Starsurge before the patch is released.  I think we’re sadly going to be disappointed.

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