It’s been a long time since I’ve written a lengthy editorial post, so I figured it’s about time.

I’m rather disappointed with the Balance Druid Preview.  A lot of people think it gave us a lot of “fixes” for the class, but I don’t think it did.  Without going into further detail of their options, it looks like they’re going to create more problems.

Eclipse.  I’m rather worried about Eclipse boosting Arcane damage and not Starfire crit rating.  Sure, this is going to be nice for things like Starfall and Hurricane (because Eclipse is going to buff a pool and not just an ability), however having to cast Starfire without chain Nature’s Grace is going to be REALLY slow.  (And not to mention our mana regeneration abilities will be severely nerfed).  The only (small) benefit to this is the removal of our crit cap, but that’s not going to counter the problem.

Nature’s Grace.  We’ve always known this spell needs to be revamped because it’s what really gives Wrath such an absurdly low haste cap.  But again, the problem with removing this spell is it’s going to really hamper Starfire.  I will have to do some theorycrafting, but I think the amount of haste you’ll want to make Starfire worthwhile without an absurd critical strike rating and Nature’s Grace is probably going to put you over the haste cap on Wrath, even without Nature’s Grace.

Starlight Wrath. When the cast time reductions for Starfire and Wrath were combined in WotLK, it seemed like they were doing us a favor, but the cast time for Wrath really needs to be brought into it’s own talent and give a boon for lowering it’s cast time, like less damage.  This would allow the base damage of Wrath to be raised, and PvE balance druids to not spec into cast time reduction, possibly alleviating the haste cap issue.

TL;DR. We really need to see how they plan on fixing the haste cap issue for Wrath to see how that’s going to shake out our caps and should give us a better idea with how this new Eclipse will play out.  It’s going to be very hard to strike up a balance between all the problems, and so far Blizzard has given us nothing but a few gimmicks.

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Ghostcrawler has again attempted to explain away Eclipse, but basically admits that it’s implementation failed.  What I find funny is that he admits it’s become “too powerful”, yet they buffed the spell repeatedly in WotLK instead of buffing us in other areas.

“The purpose behind Eclipse was to encourage Balance druids to cast something besides their hardest hitting spell over and over again. From this thread it appears at least some of you were content with a “rotation” like that, but you’ll have to believe me that it was a very common complaint we heard from druids as to what they disliked or why they didn’t play Balance.

Now it’s possible to base a rotation around a single spells. Mages are designed to do just that. However, they also have a lot of procs, cooldowns, secondary effects and other situational events that mean that even though you’re getting most of your damage from one button, you’re managing a lot.

We could have gone that way with Balance druids. We didn’t largely because part of the kit of Balance is balance, and we thought that manifested itself nicely in switching between Arcane and Nature spells, or Starfire and Wrath, or Lunar and Solar.

The problem with Eclipse (as I’ve stated many times, so I find the comments that we won’t address the issue to be a trifle unfair) is that it now accounts for so much of Balance’s damage that the random element can be punishing. Having to shift positions right when you get a proc should be a little bit of a bummer on the level of missing a few crits in a row, and not a devastating blow to your dps.

We’re keeping Eclipse, but the Cataclysm version is a pretty radical overhaul that we hope to be able to reveal soon. It removes a lot of the random element. ”

I’m expecting them to turn Eclipse into charges, although I’m not sure why they can’t do that now, but instead forcing us to wait until Cataclysm.

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Here are the druid related questions and answers from Developer Chat:

Q. Is there any ETA on tree / moonkin form graphical update?
A. Moonkin is hard because Moonkin players are so in love with that form. It’s tough to change it at all. We currently hope to do a new tree form for Cataclysm, but no promises.

Q. Has there been any thought of changing Eclipse to charges so that Moonkin dps doesn’t suffer so much from moving?
A. Yes. Expect a major overhaul in Cataclysm that keeps the same basic idea (alternating from Arcane to Nature) but in a way that is more core to the class. Like everything though, there is the risk that we may decide this idea sucks once we see it in action.

REALLY?  We love moonkin form?  REALLY?

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Ghostcrawler actually admitted that his pride and joy, Eclipse, was fundamentally broken, that Moonkin are overly penalized on movement fights, and it’s over budgeted for a talent.  What is the world coming to?!  Now let’s see if he’ll try to fix it.

“As I’ve said before, the goal isn’t merely to get you to use Starfire and Wrath. The goal is to have a rotation that is more than just 12121212 or even 111222111222. RNG is something we actually want. The best players should be the ones who can pay attention and react to situations, not the ones who can mash their keys the fastest (or download the most recent macros).

The biggest problems with Eclipse are:

1) It’s too much of a damage increase. Here we see the problem with overbudgeted talents. The RNG wouldn’t be an issue if the magnitude of those random rolls wasn’t so huge.

2) It suffers too much from movement. Losing an Eclipse proc when you have to run is a problem, particularly given point 1. Now we have no problem with classes taking a dps hit when they have to move and we don’t even mind of some specs pay a heavier penalty than others. But it’s a problem when the delta between dps when moving and dps when not moving is so great. “

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I’m still running 2pc/2pc, as I don’t have enough badges to buy the 4pc yet, and I must say the changes aren’t as bad as I expected.  I only had a few minutes to run with a pug 25man in ToC (please shoot me), so it really wasn’t the best medium to determine how I’m doing.  I missed raiding this week thanks to being stuck in Philadelphia last night as my flight to Chicago was canceled due to weather.

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Thanks to Lissanna’s post at Restokin, a bug has been noted in 3.3.  Essentially, Eclipse does not trigger the SPELL_AURA_APPLIED flag, so addons which track it do not work.  An addon called Class Timer / Class Timer Eclipse has the ability to track the Eclipse buff and it’s internal cooldown.  I suggest you download it from Curse and install it before 3.3 lands.

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According to MMO Champion, the following was added to the patch notes:

[Eclipse] now increases damage done by Wrath by 40% (up from 30%) and the critical chance of Starfire by 40% (up from 30%)

I guess they are trying to compensate for nerfing 2pc T8.  I definately did NOT see this one coming.

Thoughts?

I’m glad they’re attempting to fix the damage disparity. I am sure that 4pc T9 or T10 will be a huge boost in DPS. I really wish they would have tried to find a way to do it without putting more eggs in the proverbial Eclipse basket, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

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According to MMO-Champion, the following changes are in the new PTR test build:

[Item - Druid T8 Balance 2P Bonus] – Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 7%. (Down from 15%)

I guess this will prevent us from keeping the 2pc T8 around.

Also, another change.  It looks like this one was created to purposefully disable WiseEclipse:

[Eclipse]: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cooldown for each type of Eclipse.

So I guess my question for the devs are:

You’re purposefully nerfing our Tier 8, instead of making our Tier 10 better.  You’re purposefully nerfing WiseEclipse which allows us to keep our DPS semi-competitive.  What do YOU expect us to do now to stay competitive?  How are YOU going to fix the spec instead of just nerfing everything we’ve had?

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Please join me in the damage dealing forums in this discussion regarding moonkin dps.  I didn’t start the thread, but it seems to share my similar opinion about movement spells overly penalizing us as we spend more time wasting Eclipse/procing Eclipse then using it.  The thread so far has been fairly troll free and qq free, and hopefully if enough people respond, the devs might pay attention.

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Gripe of the Week: I do not know any other class that is such a slave to a single ability / talent as balance druids are to eclipse.  I’ve been asked many times why certain druids seem to be so bad (or so good, depending how you look at it) at standing in the proverbial (or not so proverbial) fire.  I think a lot of the time it’s due to the person being so consumed with maximizing their DPS and maximizing Eclipse output // DoT rotation between eclipses, they fail to see the environment around them.  I know 3.2 did help us a lot in allowing us much more flexability, and not causing one spell to consequently jack up 15 seconds of max DPS rotation, but it still causes a lot of focus to make sure we’re maxing properly.  I hope going forward in Cataclysm the developers are able to find a way to raise our DPS, still give us a more enjoyable rotation then “moonfire, starfire, rinse, repeat”, but not cause us to be so consumed in eclipse.

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