Patch 3.2.0 – Moonkins Rejoice!
Patch notes are always a fun read. Reading them or at least knowing what to expect is often great, and can sometimes give you some sort of advantage over the people that haven’t read the patch notes. As always, you can find the current PTR patch notes over at:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html
What’s Changing for Moonkins in Patch 3.2.0?
Let’s go through it:
Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.
- Definitely a welcome change, if you ask me. Overall, if you were the type of boomkin to actually use Innervate on yourself in a 25-man raid setting, this doesn’t change much, minus the fact that you have to cast it twice. However, since I don’t Innervate myself, and assume most other boomkins don’t, the change is nice. Why, you ask? I personally save my Innervate for my healers, particularly my holy priests. If you ask me, Innervate used to return too much mana to them, and now, I’ll be able to keep 2 priests per fight happy instead of just one. Even if you did used to use Innervate on yourself, everyone has died right after an Innervate or even while its up, so I do enjoy this change.
Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.
- Another change I readily welcome. We all take Balance of Power anyways, for the 4% extra +hit, and I *much rather* have 6% reduced off ALL spell damage taken than simply a 4% chance to miss a spell. Definitely more a PvP change than a PvE change, but less damage means less heals needed in PvE too 
Owlkin Frenzy: Now also restores 2% base mana every 2 seconds for the duration (10 seconds) in addition to its current effects.
- An interesting an unexpected change. Obviously its free mana on a talent I already took for PvP, but I still don’t think the mana regen justifies it for PvE, if that was their goal. In PvP, if I’m ever near going OOM I probably wasn’t going to win the match anyways, so I don’t see it helping me personally in Arena. What I do wonder, and maybe will do math on sometime, is if the change (10% of your base mana back to you when it procs), may outweigh Intensity? Who knows, maybe I’ll analyze that in a future post.
Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30 second cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.
- This is the crazy change. I don’t even completely understand it, but it is obvious that this is going to change our rotations, which sucks because it means I will have to update my spell rotation guides 
. But seriously, from the sound of it, our rotation may now be something like: FF, IS, MF, spam SF till Solar Eclipse, Wrath till Solar Eclipse is over, and continue spamming Wrath to proc Lunar Eclipse. Rinse and repeat. Somewhere in there you’d have to refresh your DoTs, but if that’s what this change means, I accept it. It’s definitely a BUFF, if I’m reading it correctly, because it will almost double, I believe, our Eclipse uptime. No more waiting for an Eclipse cooldown to be done, because you can simply proc your other eclipse! Definitely await a new post on this, how it will affect us and our idols (Graylo briefly touched on this).
Other Patch 3.2.0 Changes
Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).
- Not directly related to us, and without looking at parses I’m sure that Replenishment and Moonkin form make up the bulk of our mana regen. The change isn’t as bad as it seems but it definitely is a nerf to everyone’s mana regeneration. We used to get 1.25% of our maximum mana every 5 seconds, now we are only getting 1% back every 5 seconds. Not sure how important that 0.25% of our mana pool ever 5 seconds can be, but I doubt it will hurt us too much, especially if you have a couple of points in Intensity.
Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
- Not a change I particularly like. I understand where they are coming from — all gear should be accessable to all types of players — but I’m not sure they have properly weighed the other side of the discussion. Gear isn’t just gear; gear is also an indication of a player, their raid experience, and usually how much of an asset a player is to their guild. Sure, some people get carried through raids, but it is very unlikely that a full T6 player back in BC didn’t know how to properly play his class. With gear accessible like this, players could theoretically only run Heroics and VoA every week and be full T8.5, almost on par with players consistently clearing Heroic Ulduar weekly. I am going to have to change the way I PuG players, as I won’t be surprised anymore to pick up gear players that are scrubs. Oh man.
Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage over time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.
- I like this change, might end up helping us in the long run in PvP. I had long since ditched my PvP set for Arena’s and was simply sticking around with full PvE gear (+ PvP trinket). With these changes, you will probably be seeing me actually use my PvP gear — I’m sure most of the targets that actually kill moonkins in seconds are killing us via direct damage, not DoTs. I enjoy this change very much 
.
Conclusion
Lots of good stuff in this patch, make sure to check it out and let me know what you guys think! I really hope to update you guys soon with what the Eclipse changes will mean for us, and hopefully write up on the new ideal moonkin spell rotation. I also want to re-look Owlkin Frenzy, although I doubt the mana regen addition to it will do much for us. One things sure – I definitely recommend liquidating your current stash of Emblems of Conquest that you may have and getting Runed Orbs – you can bet your antlers that the Runed Orb price (currently over 1k each on my server) is going to drop to where the Frozen Orbs (50g/each) are on my server!
MacBeezy
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I will have to say that the Emblem System change will not have an effect on your pugs since you haven’t really been running pugs consistently since the formation of iRaid. It will make the recruitment process a bit harder but then again, theres always achievement checking.
I’m loving the moonkin changes in 3.2.
As far as Owlkin Frenzy is concerned, I don’t see it replacing Intensity. Intensity is a constant mana flow, while you can’t count on Frenzy proc’ing during a fight. That said, it’s great for PvP and a welcome bonus for those of us who dare to use it in PvE, but it’s not going to replace other mana regen talents if you have mana issues.
I’ve been fighting the battle in support of the new Eclipse over at TMR. A few people are weary of how it will change their rotations on certain fights, but, as I explain over there, it’s a moot point because your rotation would change anyways in those situations.
There’s also been some curiosity as to which Eclipse to proc first. My first instinct is to start by spamming Wrath (lunar Eclipse) because it has the faster cast time, but I’m starting to think that starting with solar Eclipse would result in better DPS due to the lesser impact of RNG.
I have not done the math, but my logic tells me that the Starfire idol is going to be the way to go. The Wrath idol is going to take a close second (due to the RNG of proc’ing lunar Eclipse), and the IS idol is going to take a distant third.
I will probably be using the MF, Starfall, and IS glyphs unless I see a reason to use Innervate or a new glyph (dunno if any are in the works).
The Replenishment buff isn’t necessary, but it welcome. The Resilience buff is an interesting change and may make panzerkin tanking viable once again (not for raiding — we just can’t get our health high enough — but for heroics fun). It might actually be employed by feral druids (and other tanks?) as well. We’ll have to see about that.
I absolutely hate the Emblems change. In TBC, I wore mostly badge gear because it was available and on-par with tier gear. I understood at the time why people were upset about that, but I took advantage of it because I was nerfing myself if I didn’t. (This was on my feral druid; my moonkin turned 70 just before the expansion.) Now I feel the pain of this change even more. I thought Blizz finally had a system that was going to work — to reward players of different levels appropriately.
Do we have a timeframe on the release of 3.2? If it’s soon, I’ll definitely be AHing some Runed Orbs. If not, I may actually use the Runed Orbs for some crafted gear. I’m thinking I’d rather have the gold and take my chances with drops at this point.
I’m quite saddened by the eclipse change, as it’ll kill any complexity that the moonkin rotation previously had.
Oh well.
True. I really have been too busy/lately to run pugs, but yeah, it will make recruiting a bit tough too.
Runed Orbs are down to almost 750g on my server, and I haven’t been able to sell any. Seems like everyone threw all theirs on the AH.
Regarding Owlkin Frenzy, yeah — it could never replace Intensity if you actually needed the mana, but since a lot of people raid 25’s without Intensity, I may just find myself taking 2/3 Owlkin Frenzy for the extra damage, and it will give me mana back if I really need it. It is more appealing to me for PvE now that it gives mana back; I won’t feel too bad dropping Intensity.
I hadn’t even thought about which Eclipse to proc first, but I also agree that the SF idol should still be the better Idol in this situation, unless the IS one takes over since it will be the one spell we are keeping up 100% of the time.
Regarding your glyphs — you don’t use the SF glyph?
I don’t think they have any time publicly available for 3.2 but I’d say its soon.
I’m not sure I see where that’s coming from, from what I understand, I would say the rotation is harder now, since this change essentially doubles the duration of our rotation, which probably makes it harder to decide when to refresh DoTs, unless we are simply refreshing them as soon as Eclipse 1 ends.
The only thing that makes it easier is that instead of accidentally proccing the wrong Eclipse after your current Eclipse, that is actually what we WANT to do if these changes make live.
I use MF/SF/Starfall currently. I’m not sure how good the SF glyph will be with the changes. My gut tells me it won’t be as good.
The change to Eclipse is pretty much my 4-phase rotation smushed into a small period of time. I don’t remember which thread that was in, but it wasn’t the rotation thread (I was such a noob in that one! lol). It was probably the Starfall thread. *Reminds Mac to create a new Starfall thread.*
Finally they seem to have understood how fucked up eclipse has been. Hopefully this will limit the amount of time I stand around jerking off when eclipse procs at an inopportune time.
Well that takes all the fun out of raiding now, doesn’t it?
In other news, Mac, check out the T9 set bonuses and the T9 idol.
About the rotation: It’ll basically turn into SF->W->SF->W. With some dots in between. This basically removes any need to keep track of the ICD, and thereby prevents any mistakes when proccing eclipse.
Proccing the wrong eclipse is indeed a pain, but then again, maybe keeping that under control is what differs a good moonkin from the rest.
But I won’t whine anymore, there’s a lot of good stuff in here.
Fair point, but I still believe there will be things that separate the good moonkins from the rest.
When they buffed the Wrath portion of Eclipse to 30%, you could theoretically proc the wrong Eclipse and still not suffer badly; what I believe makes a moonkin good is how they follow their rotation on certain fights and manage their cooldowns properly, as well as refresh DoTs at the best times.
We’ll see though. Personally I’m pumped for the patch
I just did!!!!
Gonna post about it right now, hopefully.
As we’ve seen since the appearance of Eclipse, just having the gear and the spec, and knowing the rotations is not enough to set you apart as a great moonkin. It all comes down to execution.
I don’t foresee 3.2 changing that. It’s still going to be about execution, about squeezing every drop of DPS you can out of your Eclipse phases, while maintaining your DoTs appropriately.
It’s amazing how, over at TMR, moonkins with better gear than me come around asking about how they can reach 4k DPS (which is lower than I typically pull in my 3.0 gear — I have one Ulduar drop so far). The answer is execution. I have a very tight rotation. I know when to be watching my Squawk and Awe bars and when to be focusing on other things. I know when it’s appropriate to reapply my DoTs, and in an order that maximises subsequent casts. I still see this being the deciding factor with the changes to Eclipse.
[...] comes out), is compromised of 2pc T8 and 2pc T9. The T8 2pc bonus is really powerful with the Eclipse changes that will hit on patch 3.2, so while I personally dislike T8, I will definitely find myself [...]
As far as the new eclipse, What I gathered from it is that Moonkins are the nre hunters… Get ready to Faceroll BITCHES!
Seems like the Owlkin Frenzy buff is for leveling purposes rather than PVE/PVE imo. But if it proccs on the boss' abilities, it's definately more interesting =)
There alot of stuff in the Patch I like and don't like.
For 1 the innervate CD is going to make it a much more Viable spell and not such a last resort.
I read in the Druid Q&A they said that they find Boomkins good DPS, but they do not have enough survivability, something I agree with very much. Don't get me wrong I usually top the DPS Charts, in the top 5 for healing, but I also lead in deaths, my strategy is more of a suicide run, able to kill a few people and then getting ganked. (Ill talk about how I work it more in a later post)
So a little more survivability would be a very nice tihng to see in the near future, but the Patch Notes have yet to say anything about it.
@ Macbook
The New CD's on eclipse are not quite as complicated as they seem. Right now I like to switch between proccing each eclipse and seeing which does more damage, but this way you find a way to maxamize your damage. What is going to change about your spell rotation (ignoring DoT refreshing) is that you are going to be proccing each CD individually, as in now they are on the same timer. So what you are going to want to do is start out the fight using either Wrath or Starfire (Whichever you prefer) and cast until Eclipse procs. Once it procs cast the spell that it procced for and keep casting, cast until eclipse ends and then continue to cast until it procs for themoppositte spell. They have done this so that Eclipse can proc more often, and it puts them on 2 different CD's. This allows you to hit harder longer. A nice change to Eclipse.
As for your post I commented on about using Owlkin Frenzy I forgot about the new proc that they are giving it. If you really wantd to use it for PvE (though even with this new proc it is probably not intended to do so) This would be a safe choice to take points out of Mana Regen to put in there. It makes these talents a much safer chance to spend talents in. The new Replenishment change will also help make Owlkin Frenzy more PvE freindly.
As for the new Conquest badge Ideas I tihnk that they went overboard by giving even heroic dungeons able to drop them. I would prefer that at least only 10 man, if not 25 drop them. They are hard to aquire, yet they give the best gear out right now. They are making it easier for people that do not play as much to be just as geared as us that do. I do not like the Idea and I bet within 3 months of releasing 3.2 they will put out a patch fixing this.
Overall I am excited for 3.2, the new dungeon has alot of rewards for how easy it apparently is.
the new dungeon has lots of rewards