Reader Vreenash of Dragonblight (US) reports this evening:

Not sure if anyone has picked on this yet, but Thorns has been changed to include about 6.5% of your spell power as bonus damage. The amount of damage that is done can fluctuate during a fight due to spell power procs and such (idols, trinkets etc.).

I have 1097 spell power at the moment, and it’s putting out about 102 damage, as seen in the screenshot. Offhand hits seem to lessen that amount by 10%, once again as seen in screenshot as 92 damage. When I use [Essence of the Martyr] (which increases spell power by 158) it adds 10 damage to Thorns.

I’m headed out to a party (I respecced Feral and am going as a Cat!), but I wanted to share this with anyone whose sitting around waiting for trick-or-treaters. Let’s hope it’s a treat and not a trick!

Edit: It appears that the damage scaling is based upon the recipient’s spell damage and not the caster’s. In other words, a Restoration Druid would be more prickly than a Feral Druid because the Restoration Druid stacks spell power. This caveat makes me suspect this may, in fact, be a bug, but I’ll take any kind of bonus to my Thorn Bush leveling spec I can get!

Related Posts

• Don’t Poke Fun at Thorns (They Hurt)
• Nordrassil Raiment and Regrowth
• Mystery No More: +Healing Explained

More delectable Blue tidbits yesterday and today! Also, happy Halloween to everyone. I hope you Ferals enjoy being able to eat candy in forms for the first time this year! You can check out Phaelia’s costume at right.

Quick Links

• Addressing Feral Mana Concerns
• Restoration –> Balance Switch
• Living Seed Fix
• Lifebloom Complaints
• Wizard Oil to Pull Disappearing Act

Addressing Feral Mana Concerns

Zakirroth of Frostwolf (US) asked for further clarity regarding Feral mana limitations. To summarize his concerns:

1. Feral Druids are currently not sought for Arena teams because of their low damage and utility. With Wrath, utility has been improved but accessing many of those utilities requires shapeshifting.
2. In PvP, Feral Druids DPS in Cat Form but have to switch into Dire Bear Form  for survivability when focused.
3. Shapeshifts will cost more mana at level 80. There is less Intellect on gear at level 80 than there is presently, which means Feral mana pools will be smaller.
4. Shouldn’t the spec that relies on shapeshifting be as good or better at it than the specs that do not require shapeshifting to function?
5. Berserk is a lackluster PvP ability because of it’s long cooldown and the fact that it no longer grants an immunity to crowd control.

Ghostcrawler took a moment to respond to his post with the following:

We’re not trying to punish Feral with a lack of mana or anything. We’re just evaluating how they perform and what they do, especially in PvP with regards to this issue. The bottom line is we’re not sure yet if it’s really a problem or if the Feral players are just having trouble adjusting to the change. (I understand many of them *say* it’s a problem.)

We also aren’t trying to make Balance and Resto the shifting specs. However, as mana-using classes they are going to be able to do more with that mana, such as healing. We want druids to be able to shift — that is a major part of the class. The only thing in contention is how often is too often and how much can they do in Night Elf or Tauren form.

I discussed this issue yesterday in Druids Have the Blues, so to avoid repeating myself, I’d like to take a look at the idea that Ferals should be “better” than Restoration or Balance Druids at shapeshifting. This concept stems from the idea that a Feral in caster form cannot use any Feral abilities, while a Balance Druid can still DPS and a Restoration Druid can still heal. However, a Balance Druid loses a tremendous amount of survivability and utility when they shift out of Moonkin Form:

• Moonkin Form: 370% armor bonus, 5% critical strike bonus, and spell criticals regenerating 2% total mana
• Improved Moonkin Form: 3% haste and 15% of Spirit as Spell Power
• Owlkin Frenzy: Pushback immunity procs

In exchange, they gain access to heals (Lifebloom, Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Healing Touch, Tranquility, and Wild Growth), and Abolish Poison.

On the other hand, a Restoration Druid outside of Tree of Life loses access to:

• Tree of Life: 6% additional healing, 20% mana reduction on HoTs (Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth)
• Improved Tree of Life: 100% armor bonus and 15% of Spirit as Spell Power

In exchange, they gain access to Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Moonfire, and Wrath (Starfire and Hurricane, too, but those aren’t especially useful in Arenas). Essentially, all specs of Druid have to shapeshift in PvP. Even if a Restoration Druid avoids Tree of Life because she loses access to crowd control, she’s still going to spend mana shifting into Dire Bear Form for Bash and additional survivability (formerly Feral Charge, too). I’m therefore reticent to say that Ferals are somehow more deserving of cheaper/easier shapeshifting than the other two specs, but I would support a Feral talent that decreases the cost of Cat Form and Dire Bear Form, maybe their own specialized (and improved) version of Natural Shapeshifter. This would help compensate for considerably smaller mana pools, increase access to Cat- and Bear-specific utilities, but not give a Feral the mana pool to pop out and start healing like a stalk of rotten broccoli.

Restoration –> Balance Switch

Vento of Trollbane (US) wrote a post pleading with Restoration Druids to stop switching over to Balance after a long-time raidmate made the switch himself because, “Resto druids are useless after the patch. CoH and Chain Heal covers ‘em all.” Surprisingly, Ghostcrawler chimed in to respond to the recent spec changes:

I think part of it is that Resto was a good spec and Boomkin generally was not. We got Boomkin up to being a "real" DPS class now, so it might look all bright and shiny to long-time Druids now. We have seem similar phenomena with Paladins going Ret and warriors going Prot. Basically specs that were changed a lot feel exciting.

My prediction is that once things settle down, the community will have a better feeling for how Balance is really shaping up based more on experience and less on theorycrafting (not that there’s anything wrong with theorycrafting). Your friend might come back if he or she sees Restos doing competitive healing. Or Balance just might prove fun.

I have to agree with Ghostcrawler here. Many long-time Restoration Druids are going to be attracted toward Balance because it’s more viable than ever, similar to the number of Restos that switched to Feral as soon as Bears became truly competitive tanks. I do think that the excess of mana post-3.0 is certainly contributing to Vento’s guildmate’s low feeling of self worth, and that he might change his mind when they’re doing more challenging content again. Of course, the most likely outcome of all of this is that Vento’s guildmate chooses Balance of Resto as his “main” spec and uses his second talent spec for the other. I suspect we’ll see a lot of Resto/Balance and Balance/Resto dual-speccers because of the tremendous gear overlap.

Lifebloom Complaints

Dreamheld of Farstriders (US) took advantage of the recent blue attention on the new Healing forum to complain about the current state of Lifebloom, prompting two responses from Bornakk:

Using one spell and just cycling through 4 people (or 5 if you were fast enough) and doing nothing else isn’t what we have in mind for a healer and we’d like to change that if possible.

You can imagine the responses that the above prompted, one of which pointed out the Chain Heal spam Shamans are so well known for. Bornakk seized upon that observation to share his opinion of the use of AoE heals:

I personally would say that an AoE heal is a different category from a single target heal. Even if there were 3-4 different kinds of AoE spells, I’m pretty sure one would be the best and be the only one used in a situation where you need AoE heals.

I guess targeting a spell that requires you to count off X seconds or risk losing your stack and a large mana investment is a less appropriate method of healing than standing near a group of people and pressing a button to automatically heal them every 2.5 seconds.

On another thread, Ghostcrawler responded to similar complaints from Netsio of Demon Soul (US):

There are plenty of good threads on Lifebloom post-nerf. It is less powerful than it was before, but it is still a very good spell and we fully expect druids to still use it in PvE and PvP.

Which I have to interpret as “HAI GUYZ YOU STILL GIT TO CAST UR SPELL EVEN THO WE MADE IT BAD.” (Translated to LOLCrab.) Honestly, I’ve reconciled myself with the nerf, but telling me that “yes, it’s crappy; we still expect you’ll use it” does not give me the warm fuzzies.

Living Seed Fix

I’ve received several reports from readers that Living Seed isn’t functioning as its tooltip would seem to indicate, essentially that the seed is “popping” immediately, even before the actual critical heal hits the target. (On the bright side, Living Seed is currently behaving like a healer-version of Vengeance, making critical heals heal for 75% extra instead of the standard 50%.) Beta tester Cheroba of Lich King (US) describes the issues thus:

Right now, it only takes a percentage of my effective heal from a crit. So, if I crit for 3k but do 10 effective healing… my Living Seed only will go off for 3. Really? Why isn’t this one of the most useless talents in the Resto tree? It’s not only ineffective, but it’s kind of counter-intuitive.

Further, if my target is brought up to full health before the next hit after Living Seed is placed on a target… they get zero healing, waste the seed, and then take damage. How is that effective? Earth Shield was awesome in that it provided an extra buffer… I thought that was the point of Living Seed.

Ghostcrawler’s response is (somewhat) promising:

This part should be fixed in the 3.0.3 build — it should be consistent with Earth Shield. I believe we even hotfixed it. Can anyone confirm?

The part about it being effective healing is by design.

This means that the seed should remain on your target until the tank takes (or would have taken) damage that the seed then absorbs. This is great news. However, the fact that the effective healing is what is intended seems pretty silly to me. With the elimination of downranking, it’s going to be really hard to limit overhealing with direct heals (read: any spell that can crit and therefore proc Living Seed), greatly reducing the worth of this talent. Boo, I say, and not just because it’s Halloween.

Wizard Oil to Pull Disappearing Act

Verimonde posted on the Item Discussion forums (the what???) in response to a player’s concern about Sharpening Stones:

Sharpening Stones and also Wizard Oils have been discontinued. While they were something nice to use once in a while for most people for many raid guilds they were simply another burden to the cost of raiding. They also caused some issues in that they only helped certain classes and took away some of the uniqueness of other classes who were able to imbue their weapons with temporary enchants such as Rogues and Warlocks.

I’m sure that a lot of players will decry this change as “dumbing down the game” or “encouraging players to be slackers,” but really, anything that makes the slackers who don’t bring consumables to raids less a hindrance to progress is a good thing in my book. And, just like the Potion Sickness debuff, anything that limits the amount of monetary investment required for raiding is a good thing.

Keeva of Tree Bark Jacket shares her opinion of this change here.

Related Posts

• Blue: Question, Answer, and Response
• Koraa: We hope to tone down Lifebloom in WotLK
• “Fake” Patch Notes Not So Fake after All

Crab on a Tricycle by Malakuko

Watch your step this morning as there’s blue goo everywhere. Ghostcrawler made several post in the Druid forums yesterday, and it’s likely that he’s “making the rounds” after the developers’ recent in-depth look at Retribution and Holy Paladins. As usual, here’s a summary of what was discussed and my thoughts on each point.

Quick Links

• Druids are not “Fill in the Gap” Healers
• Druids Need a Fair Chance at Visual Improvement
• Ghostcrawler Responds to Feral Concerns
• On the Subject of Balance DPS QQ
• Infected Wounds’ Snare Effect Can be Resisted

Druids are not “Fill in the Gap” Healers

Beta tester Flynx of Murmur quotes Ghostcrawler for having said that:

Druids have better single-target and AE heals now, but the single-target spells aren’t as good as the paladin ones and the AE isn’t as good as a shaman or priest. They are just there to fill in the gaps. Paladins got Beacon of Light, Holy Shock and things like Infusion of Light to also fill those gaps. The question asked was what if those aren’t sufficient, and my reply was we will buff them or add new spells.

He understandably wanted to know if the developers’ intention is truly for Restoration Druids to simply “fill in the gaps” left by other healers. There is some hemming and hawing about whether the quote has been taken out of context, but fortunately Ghostcrawler himself chimed in on the thread to clarify what he was trying to say:

In our minds, your go-to spells when healing anything bigger than a 5-player group are Rejuvenation, Regrowth and Lifebloom. You are probably not benefiting your raid the most if you are chaining Healing Touch on the tank while the Paladin is trying to keep everyone up with Beacon of Light.

Healing Touch, Swiftmend and Wild Growth are all very useful spells. But they are intended to be used in smaller group or when something unusual happens in a raid. If the entire group takes a lot of damage at once, that’s a good time for Wild Growth. If a melee DPS class is very wounded, and you don’t have time for the bloom and Swiftmend is on cooldown, go for the Healing Touch.

If any class is the “fill in the gap” healer, it’s the Holy Priest. Their strength is in versatility – they have single-target heals, group heals, instant heals and HoTs. The standard (but by no means only) way to heal a raid is to have a Holy Paladin on the tank along with a Resto Druid, have a Resto Shammy AE heal the group, and then put the Holy Priest wherever you need them. We are also trying to get the Disc Priest into a role similar to the Paladin, but based more around damage avoidance than efficient, quick heals.

That’s comforting to know, though I’d be hesitant to classify Priests as “fill in the gaps” healers unless it was in the most positive light possible. In other words, Priests can fill in any gap because they can essentially do everything, almost as well or better than any other healer. Of course, the strength of Circle of Healing is such that you do lose out on a bit of flexibility in terms of assigning them a task other than AE healing on any fight where there’s a considerable amount of splash damage.

Interestingly, Ghostcrawler doesn’t even mention our new level 80 spell, Nourish, a fact that’s seized upon by Arenis of Lich King (US) who inquires, “Is there any acknowledgment among the Devs [that] it is a pretty redundant heal? I mean why does any class need 3 direct heals that heal for basically the same amount with basically the same cast times?” Ghostcrawler graciously responds to Arenis’ question:

Nourish is supposed to be a Flash Heal – fast but expensive. It may be too fine a line for a class that already has Swiftmend and a (much improved) Regrowth.

This is something that has been said repeatedly, both by players and developers, almost as soon as the initial period of “well, what does THIS do?” wore off. So why is it still there? I don’t know how you feel, but I’m personally not looking forward to choosing between two direct heals and a third direct heal plus HoT. The spell made some kind of sense when Healing Touch was still disallowed in Tree of Life (giving us some kind of direct heal), but even then it’s HPS and HPM were pretty divergent from that of an unglyphed Healing Touch. Many Restoration and Balance Druids would like to see the spell scrapped in exchange for a new Balance ability, something that would benefit both specs. As time goes on, however, this looks less and less likely.

Druids Need a Fair Chance at Visual Improvement

Responding to a beta tester’s complaint that Druids are tired of the same old form visuals, Ghostcrawler chimes in with a very hopeful response:

New art for forms, customization per form, and even the possibility of showing some gear in a form is all stuff we are talking about. When we have a firm plan we’re ready to unveil, I’m sure you’ll hear about it.

Bubble Crab Meat by Sanja

Great news, of course, but Feral Druids aren’t the only ones who need a visual revamp. Trees also use a model that was in the game at release. You can find it in the model viewer under “Rotten Broccoli.” Left up to me, I’d request new art for forms with optional customization based on the cumulative item levels of your gear. Basically, aesthetic points that you could spend on buying new features. Of course, this begs the question of what happens when you take all your armor off or happen to downgrade an item in terms of item level, but that’s why Blizzard gets my $15/month – to figure out answers to pressing questions like these!

I actually wrote pretty extensively about this topic in Too Sexy for my Bark, and Big Bear Butt also recently shared his desire for some customization.

Ghostcrawler Responds to Feral Concerns

And how. Ghostcrawler took the time to respond to a numbered list of Feral concerns put forth by beta tester Xaamau of Lich King (US):

Q: Feral Mana Pools are very limited, is there a planned fix for this?
A: It’s something we are still looking at. The way mana regens now when you’re in a form feels like it’s enough to let you occasionally use that mana for something. We think you will probably still go dry quickly if you’re healing a lot (which ultimately isn’t something we want Feral to do a lot) or if you’re chain shapeshifting (which is also something we don’t want you ideally doing a lot, but recognize sometimes you need to – dealing with a Frost mage perhaps).

So essentially, only Restoration and Balance Druids are able to shapeshift a lot because they have the larger mana pools to sustain it. Of course, their functionality (re: their ability to heal or DPS) draws on the same limited resource, so there is a tradeoff. Nonetheless, the flexibility of being able to change roles (CC, high armor, stealth, healing, DPS) is one of the things that has made Resto PvP so strong. I can see why they’re hesitant to give Ferals the same advantages.

Q: Protector of the Pack limitation mechanic – not very fun, what was the thinking behind this and can the limitation be removed?
A: I’ve avoided this debate for a long time because it seems to really, really upset people that they can’t do something they really, really want to do in a very niche case. Bear isn’t designed to be something you run around solo to kill things in, and even if you want to do so anyway, your damage reduction shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s designed as a tanking talent and “solo tanking” is sort of nonsensical. Bear itself works fine without it, and in fact you can even tank just fine without it as long as you aren’t doing progression raiding. (If it affected your DPS or something, I’d be a lot more convinced.)

[…]

My take on it is that the people who hate the limitation on the talent just hate the idea of the limitation, not for how it actually limits them (which is still a totally valid way to feel). It would be similar if the talent said “You gain damage reduction but only while wearing a ridiculous green hat.” It is in there just for flavor, but it has been controversial enough that we have talked about removing it. I’m not sure if we will yet, but I believe we understand your concerns.

The concern here might be that a Feral would have too much armor in small-scale Arenas (they’ll still get the bonus in 5s, though, and it doesn’t drop as group members are killed). Runycat provides a more detailed write up regarding this limitation in her latest article, Latest Blue Talks Druid Tanks: Not So Homo(genized).

Q: Feral talent point usage in Resto tree means we have to focus too many points on a non-Feral tree, also very difficult to get all the “tanking” talents offered, no room for PvP choices in a tanking build – is this intended?
We designed the new Feral tree with Omen [of Clarity] as a trade-off. If we ever moved Omen around, we would also juggle Feral talents. We don’t want you to be able to get all Feral talents and OoC. You can be a good Bear, good Cat, get good PvP talents or get Omen. But you can’t do it all with one build.

That seems like way too many tradeoffs to have to make. You can either be good at Bear, Cat, PvP, or get Omen of Clarity but no two of the above?

Q: Swipe / Thorns combo (360′) Aoe. Is it possible to get a 360′ upgrade to our bear form AoE ability?
We don’t think too many Druids are having trouble using Swipe in its new form. A little difference among class abilities that are otherwise very similar is probably good for the game.

Ferals have recently complained that all tanks other than Druids have access to a 360-degree AoE ability, while Swipe remains a frontal cone. We wouldn’t be Druids anymore if we got something awesome that didn’t have an arbitrary limitation to make it worse than our counterparts, right? Expect it to become 360 degrees in the Emerald Dream expansion.

Q: Feral Itemization issue 1: Too much Armor on some earlier tanking weapons compared to 25-man Naxx gear is this intended?
Do you mean you’re going to keep using the older weapon instead of the Naxx bear staff?

Q: Feral Itemization issue 2: Not enough "Armor" trinkets in game making them invaluable to Druids, basically once you have these trinkets you will not grab anything else unless you reach armor cap. Can more armor trinkets be added, with different usage stats?
My suspicion is you are still over-valuing armor compared to other defensive stats. I realize you don’t want block or parry but that doesn’t mean it’s armor or nothing.

Q: Feral Itemization issue 3: Tanking gear – PVP gear seems to be better for tanking, more Stamina, why is this the case?
PvP gear pays a lot more of its item budget on resilience than it did in BC so you’re going to be giving up something else (like Agi) to use it. Also make sure you are comparing PvP gear to PvE gear of the same item level.

I’ve heard many complaints that the PvP gear is better for Ferals than the equivalent PvE gear because it still has green armor. It seems obvious that, if PvP is the way to get the highest armor values in PvE, Druids are going to PvP to pursue it. It almost sounds like they’re arbitrarily punishing Druids who do this, though, with more expensive Resilience (which no longer grants any benefit in PvE) and lower auxiliary stats as a result. The major contributor to the decision to eliminate bonus Armor was probably the desire to streamline gear between Druids and Rogues (who would complain if itemization points that could have otherwise been applied toward DPS stats were instead spent on augmenting Armor values). Later in the same thread, Ghostcrawler comments about a player-proposed gear comparison between the [Hateful Gladiator’s Dragonhide Robes] and the [Heroes’ Dreamwalker Raiments], both item level 200:

Okay, yes I have seen these examples before. If you are willing to give up 42 AP and 35 Exp (which is a nominal mitigation stat), then you can increase your health by 130 (plus modifiers). I don’t predict many tanks will take that trade, but we’ll see. I am sure there are other situations in which you could take an even lower item level that grants you more Stam than that. You are giving up an awful lot of threat stats though. If we start getting a lot of reports about how bears can’t hold aggro, I’m going to immediately look to see if they are wearing Resilience gear.

So essentially, Ghostcrawler is re-emphasizing the idea that Druids are expected to avoid PvP gear or see their threat generation take a noticeable hit. This seems to be confirmed Kalon of ThinkTank’s recent post, Rumors of My Bad Threat may have been Greatly Exagerrated.

Q: Kitty AoE – Kitty form basically has no AoE ability, which limits damage output in multiple mob situations – we would have to switch to bear / caster which would mean taking a chance on pulling aggro or doing minimal damage with hurricane. Are there plans to add kitty form AoE?
Hurricane and Swipe do pretty good AE, certainly better than rogues have (on which cat was modeled).

It’s easy to say that neither Rogues or Cats should be doing “good” AoE damage and that they should have better single-target damage to compensate. However, in practice, this philosophy is flawed since most boss encounters end up being single-target damage fests. If Rogues and Cats were that much better single-target DPS, you’d end up stacking your raid with melee DPS. On the other hand, without any AoE to speak of, Rogues and Cats will find it difficult to remain competitive on many trash fights and even a few boss encounters where AoE can be helpful. It’s a delicate balancing act, and I don’t envy Blizzard for having to manage it.

Q. Cat charge being linked to Bear charge. – Why is this the intended mechanic for these two attacks?
We think this would encourage quickly shifting from one form to another, which is something we have actually taken pains to discourage (RIP powershifting).

Ghostcrawler goes on to elaborate on this point by responding to complaints about being forced to remain in the same form for extended periods of time:

No, that’s not exactly it. Using cat in short bursts is awesome. Shifting out of feral to Innervate or Rebirth is cool, even if you immediately go feral again. Where it starts to cross the line is being a bear, going cat to hit a button, then going back to bear to benefit from the cat button. Doing feral charge bear, shifting and doing feral charge cat is not what we want. Anything that starts to feel like the old powershifting (changing just to generate mana) is what we’re trying to avoid.

If it helps, think about it this way: shifting once in a small window is cool. Shifting several times in a small window is less cool.

RIP powershifting, indeed. Anything that discourages shapeshifting into different roles is going to cost Druids some of the versatility that would make them strong in PvP. I’d personally love to see a talent or talent addition that affords Ferals an additional mana discount for shapeshifting directly from Bear to Cat or Cat to Bear, but I suspect that by more or less tying you to one form or the other, they feel it’s safer to make each individual form more potent than they could otherwise. They are, in effect, de-hybridizing us in an effort to ensure we remain competitive.

Q. Berserk – The current version of Berserk feels weak now that the immunity to all snares has been removed, and its cooldown is too long. – Is there any way the snares functionality of berserk can be restored?
We thought it was too good if it broke all snares and granted such a great DPS increase.

Q. Savage Roar – Is it possible to have it persist through shifting?
Same answer. We don’t want to add anything else to the class that encourages you to say go cat, use an ability, then go back to bear. Changing forms is cool. Changing forms to buff yourself in one form then going to another isn’t what we’re going for. If you’re a cat and shift to humanoid to heal or decurse or bear to survive when being attacked – that’s cool and what the Feral design is all about. It’s when you start to chain several shifts together that we get uncomfortable.

I don’t really feel qualified to speak to this topic as I’ve never PvPed as a Feral, but it seems like Ferals would like to include a snare break on Berserk to avoid having to spend the mana to shift and break snares. I can understand wanting to discourage shifting into a form for a specific ability and then shifting back to the form you’re using 95% of the time. This was one of the problems with Restoration PvP and Feral Charge and is the reason the ability was moved so much further down the Feral tree.

The whole idea of Druids losing some of their hybrid nature so that we’re more effective in whatever role we choose is really enforced by a comment that Ghostcrawler goes on to make:

We considered a model where the Druid was the jack of all trades and master of all, but decided that might cause problems.

A Crab in the Beach  by Malakuko

In a world (of Warcraft) where players have access to 71 talent points with which to specialize their characters, there is an ever-growing risk that a “jack of all trades” will constantly be eschewed for specialist classes instead. This is less of a concern in 10-man raid instances where Druids will undoubtedly shine, and dual-specs will practically make everyone hybrids to some degree, but I’m not surprised to see an increased emphasis on choosing your role carefully. Yes, Ferals have lost the ability to switch between Bear and Cat in the middle of an encounter and perform at similar levels of effectiveness, but the dual spec should still allow them to switch between the two on an encounter basis, and with a lessened (but not eliminated) need to maintain two independent sets of gear. This can be seen in direct parallel to Restoration/Balance dual-speccers who can also function reasonably well in their off spec by using the gear associated with their main spec.

For a Feral’s perspective of the above quotes, check out Big Bear Butt’s recent post, Ghostcrawler Shares Some Shifty Thoughts.

On the Subject of Balance DPS QQ

Respected beta tester Lisana of Northrend (US) posted an articulate and intelligent response to the recent QQ that’s been going on about Moonkin PvE DPS. At the risk of over-simplifying her lengthy post, she states that

1. Measurements of Balance DPS will vary widely due to the variability of the Eclipse talent.
2. While some meters show Moonkin dominating other players in terms of DPS output, there are many that do not.
3. Performing well as a Moonkin requires considerable skill and – in some cases – the use of addons to help manage Eclipse procs.
4. Moonkin are not overpowered in level 80 PvP, partially because shifting out to access healing costs them a great deal of survivability and other Moonkin-specific benefits (armor, spell casting interruption prevention, spell haste procs, higher crit chance).

Ghostcrawler responds to Lisana’s post with an explanation of how Blizzard tries to objectively measure a class’s DPS output:

I’m not sure which quote you’re referring to, but we measure DPS at a point in time and over the course of several minutes (and even longer if it looks like a caster might run out of mana). For PvP we obviously focus a lot more on the short-term DPS.

Moonkin DPSdoes seem to be pretty high right now on Live, but we believe that is partially an artifact of so many groups AE’ing their way through the nerfed raid content (and Hurricane doing serious damage now). We’ll have to see what the Starfire + Wrath numbers look like at 80 compared to our own testing.

So it sounds like they aren’t allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by player QQ and that Moonkin are actually benefitting from the same thing that’s hurting Restoration Druids: content that’s too easy and allows for the use of abilities that would otherwise be too inefficient or risky. While Restoration Druids are seeing their HoTs overwritten by massive and expensive AoE heal spam, Moonkin are using massive and expensive AoE Hurricane spam they might otherwise avoid. Interesting!

Infected Wounds’ Snare Effect Can be Resisted

Beta tester Zargantor of Murmur (US) asks, “I have noticed infected wounds missing when the attack itself lands. It seems like they land as separate attacks with separate chances to hit versus automatically applying with the attacks they are suppose to hit with. Has anyone else noticed this?” Ghostcrawler responds to confirm that this is, in fact, intended as:

Infected Wounds is a disease, so it can fail, which shows up as a miss in combat logs. Stacking hit should fix the problem if it seems to happen a lot. Poisons have the same issue.

So PvPers shouldn’t discount +Hit! (Not that you were going to anyway, right?)

Related Posts

• Nourish to Benefit from Moonglow and Wild Growth HoT (and Blues)
• Leather Is Yummy
• Blue Review

Druids of Azeroth Wallpaper from Andrige

Andrige brings us yet another beautiful wallpaper this week, this one featuring Druids of all both Horde and Alliance and of all specs. This is a piece that required weeks and weeks of painstaking effort, and I’d say the end result was well worth the time and dedication. There are presently two versions of the wallpaper: one with an orange background (for ebil Hordies, no doubt) and one with a blue background.

On a related note, I’ve added a Resources page, specifically to archive things like Andrige’s gorgeous wallpapers and to prevent great utilities like Paininabox’s Wrath spreadsheet and Rawr from being lost among the many other posts here.

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIINS!!!

And for those of you who just couldn’t get enough zombie fun this week, Andrige has also released a great video featuring his own undead escapades:

Bear-o-Lantern (now with Boomkin-o-Lantern)

Reader Tone also sends in this screenshot of his bear dressed up as a jack-o-lantern. Who says Ferals can’t wear costumes?

Bears aren’t the only ones dressing as pumpkins; reader Athryn sent in this screenshot of her Boomkin boyfriend Loupana of Moonrunner (US):

The Feral Prince of Dire Bear

Some people have WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many free macro slots.

Thanks to Gidget of Bloodhoof (US) for sending this in!

Stormcrow in Flight

Reader Mike sent in the above picture after having recently completed the Swift Flight Form quest line. This quest series was my favorite in all of WoW, and I’m quite sad to hear that many new Druids will miss out on it since SFF will soon become trainable at level 71. I encourage everyone to do it anyway, because it really is a joy.

Related Posts

• Andrige’s Tree of Life Wallpaper
• Andrige’s Tauren Tree of Life Wallpaper
• Mana Regen Calculator Updated

Phaelia: This week, I’m honored to share a guest post from Graylo of Gray Matter, a premier Balance blog featuring tons of theorycraft beneficial to any Balance (or Restoration) Druid seeking to improve her DPS or learn vital feather-preening techniques.

The night after patch 3.0.2 dropped my guild was running Black Temple and the [Naaru-Blessed Life Rod] dropped off of the Reliquary of Souls, and my GM, who plays a Warlock, said “looks like a Warlock item to me.”

Before you start writing angry comments about how my GM is an idiot, rest assured that he was joking. Though his comment does highlight one of the issues we are going to have after Wrath of the Lich King is released. With the merger of Healing and Spell Damage into a single stat, Moonkin and Trees are going to be seeking some of the same gear. However, this does not mean that every piece of leather gear with Spell Power is ideally suited for a Tree or a Moonkin. While any item with Spell Power maybe good for both builds, it is my opinion that most items with Spell Power will lend themselves more to one spec than the other.

In this article, I will take a look at each of the relevant stats to see how they lean. Then I will look at a couple of examples to answer the question: Is it Resto gear or Moonkin gear?

Spell Power

I only mention it to get it out of the way. This is the primary stat for both builds and provides no insight into who benefits from this item most. Plus, when considering items of a similar level the amount of Spell Power will be fairly close on both items.

Hit Rating

Unless something has changed in WotLK, a heal is not going to be miss or be resisted by its target. Therefore Resto Druids have no use for Hit Rating. This is the most obvious indicator of how an item leans. If it has Hit then it’s Moonkin gear.

Note from Phae: If it’s “hit” then it’s sh— … er … that is to say, it’s not something you want to GET.

Crit Rating

Crit is a little more ambiguous. It is not the most important stat for either build, but definitely has its purpose in both builds. In TBC, Crit Rating was good for Moonkin, but horrible for Trees since few Druid heals could crit. That has changed somewhat in WotLK. Regrowth will play a much bigger role in Druid healing, Healing Touch can now be cast in Tree of Life, and the new spell Nourish can crit. All of this points to a bigger role for Crit Rating in a Resto Druid’s life.

However, it is my opinion that Crit Rating favors Moonkin more. Over 80% Moonkin DPS comes from spells that can crit. Critical hits not only increases Moonkin damage but also increases our average casting speed for Starfire and returns mana. A majority of druid healing will still come from HoTs, and critical heals have an increased risk of wasted heals due to overhealing.

Note from Phae: Yes, spell crit is better for Restoration Druids than it once was, but try not to go overboard. HoTs still can't crit, and the 50% additional crit from Improved Regrowth actually makes spell crit less desirable to Restoration Druids, not more. To understand why, imagine you have 0 crit chance and pick up gear that gives you 10% crit chance. Your net improvement would be 1.1/1.0 or 10%. Now imagine you have 50% crit chance and pick up gear that gives you an additional 10% crit chance. Your net improvement is 1.6/1.5 or 6%, a substantially lower improvement. For the sake of clarity, this assumes you get exactly double the benefit from a crit, which is actually close due to Living Seed but not exact.

Haste Rating

Haste rating has the biggest question mark. When I talked to Phae about this stat she said she was slightly inclined to defer to Moonkin on this stat, but I think it is much more even.

Haste can be a significant DPS increase for Moonkin but it comes at a cost. It doesn’t increase mana efficiency at all so if you don’t have the mana pool for it, it won’t help your DPS much. From a Restoration perspective, haste does not decrease the duration of your HoTs, but it does have several benefits that can make a Resto Druid more effective. A shorter global cooldown means you can roll Lifebloom on more targets, or allow you to get more direct heals off in between refreshes. It also will help you to get off an emergency heal if both Nature’s Swiftness and Swiftmend are down.

In my opinion Haste doesn’t lend itself to one spec over the other. So, there is no help here.

Note from Phae: The value of haste depends almost entirely upon your style of healing. A healing style that relies primarily upon insta-cast HoTs – Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth – will little benefit from haste; its global cooldown reduction is overpriced. On the other hand, an unglyphed Healing Touch or heavy Regrowth build would benefit from stacking spell haste. Still, it’s rare for a Restoration Druid to so vigorously eschew her HoTs to focus instead on direct heals.

Spirit

In the Burning Crusade, Spirit clearly lent itself to Restoration build,s and it is still a good stat for Trees in WotLK due to talents like Intensity, Living Spirit, and Improved Tree of Life. Moonkin on the other hand had very little use for Spirit. It was good for mana regeneration because most Moonkin picked up Intensity, but it did little for our DPS. That is changing with the addition of Improved Moonkin Form, which increases Spell Damage by 15% of your total Spirit.
Despite this change, I still believe that Spirit lends itself more to Restoration then Balance. The Resto Tree has more talents that benefit from Spirit, and I think healers in general benefit more from mana regen then DPSers do. Restos can easily blow through their mana really quickly trying to keep someone up and prevent a wipe. A Moonkin’s mana usage is much more consistent and can be managed in other ways. Plus, the extra DPS a Moonkin will get from Spirit is fairly small.

Note from Phae: I’m the one with Spirit; I don’t wanna hear it! Living Spirit means a Restoration Druid gets 1.15 Spirit for every 1 Spirit that a Moonkin would get. If said Moonkin doesn’t even have Intensity, I’d punch it in the beak for trying to take an item with a ton of Spirit.

Intellect

Obviously both builds need some amount of Intellect, but an item with an extraordinary large amount of Intellect probably lends itself more to a Moonkin. The Balance tree has two talents, Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate, that buff the druid based upon his level of Intellect. Restos can’t get these buffs without putting over 20 points in the Balance Tree.

Note from Phae: I believe that the new mana regeneration effect, Replenishment, makes Intellect desirable for all casters since the amount of mana restored is based on your total mana. As a result, I would be less inclined to consider this a stat that favors solely Moonkin, though I agree that Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate does seem to give the slight advantage to Balance Druids.

MP5

To be honest this isn’t a great stat for either build. It is a very expensive relative to the other stats listed above. Plus, it has only a situational impact on performance. If you don’t have mana issues currently, then more MP5 isn’t going change anything.

That being said, I believe that MP5 lends itself more to Restoration builds. As I said before I believe that mana regen is a little more important for healers then it is for DPS.

Note from Phae: Ewwwww … MP5! This stat continues to be overpriced for those casters with an Intensity-esque ability (ex. Meditation, Arcane Meditation). I’d look the other way on an item who sinks a large portion of its item budget into MP5.

Examples

To illustrate these points lets look at two pairs of boots that drop in Naxx25:

I think both boots would be good for either a Restoration or Balance Druid, but I think I know which one Restos would prefer. Despite having 38 Crit rating, I believe the [Boots of Septic Wounds] are more of a Resto item. They have a large amount of Spirit and the gem socket allow for more potent heals and greater longevity. On the other hand, the [Boots of the Escaped Captive] favor a Moonkin build in my opinion. The sheer quantity of Haste means that they will provide more DPS at the expense of less valuable base stats.

For another example look at these two chest pieces, also drops from Naxx25:

In my opinion, the [Vest of Vitality] is clearly a Moonkin item. The large quantity of Crit and complete lack of Spirit say this item is for all out DPS. The [Tunic of Prejudice] is a much more balanced item that has lots of Spirit that I think Restos will find more attractive.

Leather vs Cloth

I want to make a quick comment on the Leather vs. Cloth debate. Moonkin are used to having to fight with Mages, Warlocks, and Priests for cloth gear because there was very little leather caster DPS gear in the Burning Crusade. My guess is that in Wrath of the Lich King we are going to see clothies push back and say they should get priority over Druids.

I still believe that armor type doesn't matter for the most part. The stats on the gear are what cause you to do more DPS or be a more effective healer. Therefore, I say rolling on cloth items that are clearly better then the other options available should be okay. That being said, be mindful of the clothies' needs. Don't roll on a cloth item when there is a leather item that is equally accessible. For example, a Moonkin should probably pass on [Slippers of the Seacaller] if a clothie wants it, because the [Naturewarden's Treads] are available just a few bosses later.

Final Note

None of this means that Restos shouldn’t roll on the [Vest of Vitality], or that Moonkin shouldn’t use the Boots [Boots of Septic Wounds]. All of these items could be upgrades for either spec. These are just guidelines to help you navigate your gear choices.

My suggestion is that you talk to the other caster druids in your guild and see what gear they are looking for and how big of an upgrade it is. This type of planning with your shape shifting brethren can prevent arguments and feelings of animosity. It can also save you DKP and help you get the item that best suits your needs when it drops.

I want to say thanks to Phae for giving me this opportunity and supporting my blog. The Druid community would be at a loss without you. Note from Phae: <3 Thanks, Gray!

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