I was able to pick up the [Moonwell Chalice] today, and I began doing some tests with a fellow balance druid friend.  I realized that either my thinking of how Mastery works has always been WAY off base, or they’ve changed how Mastery affects Eclipse since the start of 4.0.  If I’m way off base, I’m not the only one, because I know other balance druids who shared the same thought.

The tooltip for Eclipse is misleading.  The damage reflected by the tooltip is based on the mastery value when you actually proc the Eclipse buff.  I had mistakenly understood that your Eclipse actually maintains this value of damage, even if additional mastery falls off.  (Such as which is provided by the Chalice or [Theralion's Mirror].).  This is not the case.  The damage you do under Eclipse is reflected by the amount of mastery you currently have.  If mastery falls, your Eclipse damage will fall as well (although the tooltip will not reflect such).  If you gain mastery after proc’ing Eclipse, your Eclipse damage also increases, without a change to the tooltip.

This is going to cause me to re-think how I value mastery.  I realize I’m probably a giant tool for not understanding this a lot sooner, but I know I’m not the only one.

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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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A lot of people still ask me what to reforge for.  Hands down, this is haste.  Haste not only affects both Wrath and Starfire, it also affects our DoTs.  If your item already has haste, reforge to crit.  Mastery is a very poor stat for us as we’re not constantly in an Eclipse.

Also, something I just recently realized, was how to determine how quickly our DoTs will tick.  Our DoTs tick as quickly as the hasted cast time of the same duration spell.  For example, Moonfire and Insect Swarm (and Sunfire once it’s fixed) tick at a 2 second base.  Wrath, when talented, also has a 2 second cast time.  Whatever your current cast time is for Wrath, that’ll be how often your DoTs tick.  Currently you can look at Starfire to see how often Sunfire will tick.   With bloodlust and Black Magic, I’ve been able to get .8 second Wraths and .8 second DoT ticks, obtaining 22 ticks in an 18 second duration.  The good thing is, while Wrath still clips at 1 second due to the global cooldown, DoT ticks do not.

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I was able to get Mastery to work on the new PTR build (I had to copy a new character over and learn mastery before I talented anything), so I reforged for Mastery and ran another 10mil damage to get a new parse. The DPS numbers obviously went up as I’m running 42% (158 Mastery) Eclipse damage versus 25% Eclipse damage (About 1.5k dps).

Here’s the numbers: 12979 DPS

Starfire: 22.9%
Wrath: 20.4%
Insect Swarm: 19.9%
Starfall: 16.0%
Starsurge: 9.3%
Moonfire: 5.8%
Sunfire: 2.9%
Languish: 1.5%
Moonfire (Direct): .5%
Sunfire (Direct): .5%

I’m ran these exact same numbers reforging the 158 Mastery into 134 Haste/24 Crit Rating to see how it skews the percentages. If Graylo’s calcs should be right, the 158 haste should easily win out. I think you can see how Insect Swarm lost a slight amount of percentage whereas Starfall gained it, as Starfall actually gains from Mastery and not Haste.

After exchanging 158 Mastery for 134 Haste & 24 Crit:

13424 DPS

Starfire: 22.1%
Wrath: 21.3%
Insect Swarm: 20.5%
Starfall: 15.6%
Starsurge: 9.0%
Moonfire: 5.7%
Sunfire: 2.9%
Languish: 1.8%
Moonfire (Direct): .5%
Sunfire (Direct): .5%

Starfall, as expected, did a smaller percentage as it gains nothing from haste, yet gains from the mastery. It appears Insect Swarm favors haste over mastery considerably.

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The re-vamped masteries have been released with the last beta build to Cataclysm.    Courtesy of MMO-Champion:

• Restoration – Increases the potency of your heal over time spells by up to 20% based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Healing increased further by mastery rating.
• Feral – Increases the damage absorbed by your Savage Defense ability by 32% and increases the damage done by your Cat Form bleed abilities by 20%. Absorb and damage increased further by mastery rating.
• Balance – Increases the bonus damage from Eclipse by 12%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.

I’m still curious whether mastery is still going to put all the eggs in the Eclipse basket.  Granted Eclipse is being revamped, but still…

Thoughts?

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