Ghostcrawler responded to a complaint about a “stealth nerf” for Starfall, saying it has not been nerfed since it went live.  He did admit, however, that the final live co-efficients are lower then what he initially posted the would be.

“At some point I posted some numbers for Starfall since there hadn’t been a PTR build in some time and druids were chomping at the bit to figure out just how much damage it was going to do. The numbers we went with for 3.3.3 were slightly lower than that if I recall correctly, but we haven’t made any changes to Starfall since the patch went live. The live Starfall numbers are still much higher than they were in 3.3.

We generally don’t try to execute actual “stealth nerfs.” The community will nearly always figure it out anyway so we don’y gain much by trying to hide anything. Sometimes “stealth nerfs” are just things we didn’t manage to document, but many times they are misunderstandings.

(I’m talking about live anyway. On betas and PTRs numbers are going to change quite a bit — that’s the whole idea.)“

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

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!

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

3.3.3 is live today.  Visit the 3.3.3 recap for a detailed break down of the balance druid changes.

I’ve been asked a few times what glyph and talent changes should occur in 3.3.3.  I personally do not see any talent changes specifically because of the patch.  As for glyphs, you should now be replacing [Glyph of Insect Swarm] with [Glyph of Starfall].  I am not bothering with [Glyph of Focus] because it’s been nerfed.

This should have you using:

[Glyph of Moonfire]

[Glyph of Starfire]

[Glyph of Starfall]

How will this affect your rotation?  If you were keeping insect swarm up for DPS, you no longer need to.  You may wish to keep it up on certain fights if your tank is getting rocked as you now have the boss hit debuff component back.  Personally I really only use it for a few heroic hardmodes and during movement.  I also do not concern myself with 100% Moonfire uptime, I just aim to keep the idol fully developed at all times.  If you need to refresh it during a solar eclipse, do it in the tail end so you can hopefully let the moonfire carry over into lunar eclipse (where it’ll extend).

Starfall does it’s most potent damage between two or more targets.  While you should be using Starfall on every cooldown, if you’re in a fight where there are adds and you’re only a few seconds away from encountering them, you will see the most damage output by waiting.

If you have any more questions about 3.3.3, feel free to leave a comment ask via Twitter @SunfyresNest, or shoot me an email at sunfyre@owlkin.org.

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

Are you ready to melt the world on Tuesday?

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

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.

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

Sorry Moonkin, but MMO-Champion reports that 3.3.3 is delayed at least another week.  You’ll have to wait a little longer for global destruction.

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

Talk amongst yourselves!  I’ll give you a topic:

What to stack past the crit / haste cap.

Right now most people agree that crit and haste have about the same value once you cap out on both of them.  However with the changes to Starfall, I’m thinking I may keep going with crit past the cap simply because it a) continues to help you proc Eclipse, and b) benefits Starfall, which is going to be a much larger DPS component now.

Thoughts/criticisms/opinions?

I’m so verklempt!

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

[Glyph of Focus] is being nerfed in 3.3.3.  This seems to be mostly a PvP nerf, but obviously Starfall will still be a huge buff.  I really didn’t think Focus was the way to go in PvE just because of the range nerf.

• Glyph of Focus: Now increases the damage done by Starfall by 10%, down from 20%.

Moonfire, Starfire and Starfall glyphs will be the way to go

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

Question of the Week:  Do you plan on using the [Glyph of Starfall] in 3.3.3 if you aren’t currently?  How about the [Glyph of Focus]?

I haven’t sat down and theorycrafted a whole lot on the glyph of focus, and whether it’s worth dropping [Glyph of Moonfire] or [Glyph of Starfire], but I’ve decided not to pick it up, and here is my reasoning:

While Starfall is going to be a great boost to all of our DPS, and a 20% boost would be nice, the place it’s going to really shine is Blood Beasts on Heroic Saurfang (as the main star component is not treated as an AoE), as well as Lich King (it’ll do some massive AoE and splash damage to the Vile Spirits).  Cutting the range by 50% would really counter-act that, and I believe really cut into the utility of the spell.

I’m already using [Glyph of Starfall] and definitely will be going forward.

What do you guys plan on using?

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]

The co-efficient to Starfall is being changed in 3.3.3.  That’s where the real boost in damage is, not the flat rate.  The values posted from Ghostcrawler are below:

Main star
Old coefficient: 4.8%
New coefficient: 37%

Splash damage
Old coefficient: 1.2%
New coefficient: 13%

This is a huge buff.  I ran some numbers which I feel are fairly accurate, although I don’t claim to be a theorycrafter:

Givens:
Moonkin form, 4000 spellpower

Current Starfall:

Main star: 687.5 – 764.5 damage
Splash star:  138.6 damage

3.3.3 Starfall:

Main star: 2247 – 2346 damage
Splash star: 683.1 damage

As you can see, the main star component of Starfall was nearly tripled, and the splash star damage went up by nearly 6 times.  This will be a huge boost to Starfall, especially in an AoE situation.  The [Glyph of Starfall] will be a definite must have.

[Sunfyre's Nest RSS] | [Sunfyre's Nest on Twitter]