beta druid talents push 8926Follow

That's ok. PvP Ferals lol. Both of you will be real pissed!

Ferals are getting big buffs for PvP already, so even with these nerfs we are 10x better than we were. Just have to wait and see how we balance against other classes though.

You are right though - this is a massive buff for PvE.

blizzard seems to have swung the other way in terms of class viability. now, instead of many classes with lots of overpowered skills and talents, there are a number of classes and specs that are quite underpowered (witness non-blood dk's, or non-prot wars, or non-resto druids among others). granted, some are still quite strong (locks have three strong trees, if not quite overpowered in every aspect), but for the most part they seem to be taking a....lets call it "conservative" approach to the numbers game.

thankfully, as ghostcrawler likes to say, there are a lot of "knobs" to turn to tune things to just the right frequency.

I'll be curious to see when the exp does come out though what classes are going to be full out deemed OP. I just really don't want to see boomkin get pushed to the wayside and nerfed straight to hell. I want to be able to compete for a dps slot in a 25 man raid. I would also like to get higher than number 10 on the dps charts.

I raid as resto in 10 mans and boom or resto in 25 mans. The 25 man raid leader is also a fellow druid, feral sadly... But still has love for the boomkin.

I'm just saying I dont want to see anymore boomkin talent/spell nerfs.

Admittedly, I don't play Moonkin, but I do have a caster, and I notice there's some key talents missing from your build.

Eclipse: 10% to Wrath or Starfire for 3 talent points.

Balance of Power: 4% spell hit for 2 talent points.

Master Shapeshifter: 4% spell damage for 2 talent points.

Moonfury: 10% to your main 3 spells for 5 talent points.


Instead, you got...

Improved Insect Swarm: 3% increase to Wrath and Starfire for 3 talent points.
Any of the above talents are more damage for fewer talent points.

Nature's Splendor only adds 1 tick to your IS and MF duration for 3 talent points, I think any of the above would be better, although I'm not sure how significant an extra 3 second in your rotation would be for DPS.

Also, I think 2% spell damage / talent point is better than 15% to your treants, who are only out for 30 seconds every 3 minutes. I could be wrong, I'm not sure just how much damage they can do for those 30 sec.

I'd start by taking all three points out of Improved IS and get 2/2 Master Shapeshifter. It's a 4% damage increase to all your spells instead of a 3% increase to 2 spells, and you save a talent point. Beyond that, I'd need to know how much damage treants do and how well they scale with spell damage, how Eclipse and Nature's Splendor affect your casting rotation, and if Owlkin Frenzy procs off AoE damage or just targeted attacks.

Also, if you ever plan on raiding, 3% spell hit from Imp FF for the entire raid is huge, that's a lot more crit rating or spellpower all the casters can gem and enchant for. The same goes for Balance of Power on a personal scale, 4% more spell hit is about 50 less hit rating you need to hit-cap your spells (at level 70). And yes, you can actually have enough hit rating for spells; 202 is the magic number (before talents) to be spell hit-capped, the point where you push all but 1% spell miss off the spell hit table.

Even on a personal scale, it gives balance druids 7% spell hit for 5 talent points. Warlocks and mages get 3% to some schools for 3 talent points, shadow priests get *6% for 6 talent points, Elemental shamans get 3% for 3 talent points.

With how plentiful gold in BC, and the fact that WotLK will only make it more so, it will be easy for raid casters to spec in or out of their spell hit talent. No regemming, no re-enchanting, just an extra 3 talent points for every raider. Spell hit from a debuff will also help Destro locks with their imp, mages with Mirror Image, and frost mages with their water elemental.

Moonkin druids will be more important than ever, giving 3% spell haste, 3% spell hit, 5% spell crit, and 13% spell damage to the whole raid, on top of 5% avoidance for the tank.

I just noticed S Priest Misery has been changed from 5% spell damage to 3% spell hit, so it should be a given that any 25-man raid will have someone giving all the casters 3% spell hit. Also, currently Imp FF is melee hit % deep in the caster tree, so the debuff doesn't help the moonkin directly. The new version is for spell hit, so even if no one else benefits from it, it's still 3% for 3 talents, which is as good as what anyone else gets.

This is how I will spec.

Owlkin Frenzy is nice for solo but for raids you won't be getting hit so it's rendered useless.

Earth and Moon 5/5 is absolutely a must have considering its basically throwing down a curse of elements w/o causing any damage indirectly. You're going to make those warlocks and mages look like gods in dps.

The one point in Imp IS is just a filler talent to get me to the next tier.

I think eclipse should always be 3/3 since you will undoubtedly crit something and with a high enough critical strike rate you'll be able to pop a wrath to crit followed by a quick two second SF for some crazy stupid damage.

Boomkin is just looking amazing I can't wait til Nov. 13th.

Edit: The only talent I'm kind of wondering about possibly going into is Celestial focus. 6% more haste w/o having to do any gemming for it seems pretty crazy. But I'll have to play around with it.

Edit 2: I've wondered about not using Starfall at all and going 2/5 in Earth and Moon just to pick up Celestial Focus for that haste. It seems that even with a 40% chance to put Earth and Moon up you should have it on the target in the given cooldown.

Ok I'm done editting now.

Edited, Sep 18th 2008 12:59pm by ArexLovesPie