I know there’s a few of you that enjoy Moonkin PvP.  I’ve recently been scrambling to put a set together (finally above 800 resilience!) and have been dabbling in 2s and battlegrounds a bit, but probably won’t be in 3s or 5s for another week or two.

We’ve done a lot of hashing of the numbers for Starfall on the PvE side.  What do you think about the PvP side?  I think it’s a welcome change, and I know it melts faces in battlegrounds and 1v1 duels, but I’ve yet to experience it in 3s or 5s.  Is our survivability decent enough that we can really dish out the damage?  I struggle in 2s against certain combinations just because I can’t always do enough burst damage to break down a healer with 1.2k+ resilience.  I’m not too worried about that because Blizzard specifically does not balance arenas around 2v2s.

How about Nature’s Grasp?  I did do some testing last night and did find that it does have diminishing returns on the charges, and that it’s shared with the actual entangling roots spell.  I think the best application of this would be when you have multiple melee attacking you, as all three should take a full duration roots.

Sound off with your thoughts!

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3.3.3 should be live this week.  Here is a recap of the changes.

Starfall

The co-efficients of Starfall have been dramatically increased.  Before, Starfall took little boost from spellpower.  It will now scale very well.  To see the exact number break down, you can check out my previous post: Starfall by the Numbers.

To not make Starfall so insane for PvP, [Glyph of Focus] has been nerfed to only provide a 10% buff.  What does this mean for PvE?  It’s rather clear cut that the glyphs to have as of 3.3.3 are [Glyph of Starfall], [Glyph of Moonfire], and [Glyph of Starfire].  Yes, I know you may think [Glyph of Insect Swarm] is better then Moonfire or Starfire, but they in combination (since they play off each other), make them a better choice, and you only really ever want one DoT up, not two.

I’ve played around on the PTR with Starfall on 1, 2, 3, and 4 targets, with the nerfed glyph of focus.  I’ve posted the results to World of Logs.  As you can see, Starfall does grant a rather dramatic boost in damage.

Typhoon

Typhoon’s base mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 25% base mana.  This should help out in both PvP, as well as PvE (where it has become rather useful in Icecrown Citadel.)

Nature’s Grasp

Nature’s Grasp has been given three charges.  This means that it WILL allow you to root multiple individuals (although you will not be able to do this simply by casting [Entangling Roots] on individual people.).  See the screenshot below for an example of both a hunter and his pet rooted.  There’s a brief delay in the use of charges to prevent a rogue or other melee from absorbing two charges instantaneously.

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Here’s a developer’s description of the Nature’s Grasp change.  It does appear that you will be able to have more then one roots up at once.

Nature’s Grasp is a self buff that causes things that hit you to become rooted. That effect now has 3 charges. There is a small internal cooldown in between roots to keep say a rogue who hits you twice very quickly from wasting two charges. In your example, both the DK and pet should get rooted. If the DK breaks the roots and gets on you again, they will get rooted again (subject to the 45 sec duration).

The intent of this spell was to be a defensive tool for druids. Since it hasn’t quite kept up, we wanted to try to get it to be more useful (i.e. do its job) rather than come up with an entirely new mechanic.

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The PTR was updated with the following balance changes:

• Typhoon mana cost has been reduced from 32% of base mana to 25% of base mana.
• Starfall damage has been increased. Now causes 563 to 653 Arcane damage (Up from 433 to 503) and 101 Arcane damage (Up from 78) to all other enemies within 5 yards.
• Nature’s Grasp: Now has 3 charges, up from 1.

While I rely on both heavily in Icecrown and welcome the changes, I was hoping for something a bit more substantial.  I may not be a PVPer, but I really don’t think this is a huge burst difference in PVP, either, and I hope this is not what they were promising.  Considering that Starfall cannot continue to proc while stunned, it seems underwhelming.  I’d like to see that restriction reverted, too.

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