Will the Innervate Changes Affect my Talent Build?
So, while I’m still trying to catch up to all the reader questions I’ve been getting lately (most aren’t good enough to put on the blog, as they are all either specific questions or questions I have already covered on my sidebar pages), I got a good one that I thought would be worth discussing. Note that I say discussing, because I don’t theorycraft, just hypothesize.
Here was the question:
Someone on the Elitist Jerk had mentioned that with the new innervate change -
he gonna spec out of all mana regen talents except for OOC. Do you think there’s
any validity to that approach?
Valid question, and I can see where the guy is coming from. Sorry, before I continue, for those of you who didn’t really know or care, the change was to make it based off of our base mana pool (450% of it, to be exact), instead of how it previously worked (spirit-based).
What do I think about speccing out of mana regen talents except for OOC?
So, what I am assuming some people may do for their 25-man raids is drop the 2-3 points they have in Intensity (or Dreamstate, I guess), and count on our mana to come from OOC, moonkin form, and replenishment. This is doable in a usual 25man raid setting, and you shouldn’t be experiencing mana problems at all. To be honest, you really shouldn’t have to Innervate yourself either, unless its a mana-intensive fight, or you are AoEing a lot.
You guys already know my moonkin talent build. Let’s say, hypothetically, that I spec’ced my 2 points out of Intensity and 2 points out of Moonglow (you have to have at least 1/3 Moonglow to go down to the next group of points) where would I put those points? Let’s explore the options:
- Genesis: Totally not worth it. DPS increase isn’t even noticeable. I won’t do the math (obviously), but hopefully you agree.
- Brambles: The damage increase to Thorns won’t increase your own DPS, and unless you personally Thorns your tanks every 10 minutes (I never remember), it won’t help much. The 15% Treants increase may SOUND nice, but I don’t really think it is. On a good fight, you get to pop Treants twice. They seem to do an around 30k damage while they are alive, so 60k dmg * 15% = 9k extra damage. That’s like an extra Starfire cast every 6 minutes, doesn’t really sound too good for a 3 talent point investment.
- Improved Moonfire: You’d have to go 2/2 here if you wanted to drop Moonglow, and this seems to be (from what I’ve heard), a whopping 0.5% DPS increase. Take this over Moonglow if you want, it doesn’t really matter either way, but just know you have to take this if you are “speccing out of all mana regen”.
- Typhoon: Nope. Its not a single-target DPS increase (it does less than a Wrath hit for almost the same GCD? NTY.), and is too situational for use on most bosses. It only has very limited use.
- Gale Winds: Maybe. It can be helpful, I guess, if you need to get past some trash or on fights like XT with adds, but remember, I believe our class to be one of utility and single-target DPS. I leave most of the AoE to our mages and shadow priests.
- Anything else?: I don’t see any other talents I would pick up instead of Intensity. What would you guys pick up if you didn’t spec in mana regen talents?
Conclusion
Spec’ing out of mana regen isn’t the worst idea ever, especially if your healers never ask for your Innervate, and you are free to use it for yourself. Without looking at parses, I can tell you that the majority of our mana comes from our crits, raid buffs, and replenishment, so spec’ing out of Intensity and Moonglow shouldn’t hit you too hard, in a 25-man raid setting. However, given the fact that my current talent build doesn’t really skip over any talents that will add to my DPS (at least in the way I play), I see no reason to drop mana regen.
Furthermore, I am the guy who DOES save his innervate for his healers, and the mana regen can come in handy when soloing or running 5/10 mans.
What do you guys think?
Macbook
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16 Comments
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My decision to drop Intensity came before the changes to Innervate, so that gives you an idea of roughly where our mana situation is. Generally speaking, if I have to Innervate myself, it’s because the raid DPS is lower than it should be. And Replenishment only helps.
I would never recommend switching points out of Moonglow, ever. There’s simply nowhere else to put those points — Genesis and Imp. MF are both dreadfully poor talents, to the point where I like to muse that Moonglow is a DPS increase over both (it’s not actually, but it’s close).
Where would I put those two missing points from Intensity? I actually had to deal with this problem for the last two weeks. After reading that “Owlkin Frenzy procs all the time” in raids, I decided to give it a try on both Vault-10 and Vault-25. I wasn’t actively monitoring it and I didn’t have WWS going (grr…), but I didn’t notice it proc’ing all the time.
Honestly, at this point, there’s nowhere else to put those talent points that really stands out. It comes down to a judgment call of what you think you’ll use most.
I specced out of Intensity a long while ago as well. I will not be moving the points out of Moonglow for any reason that I can see. I just don’t have a viable place to put them.
On the other hand, I DO have points in Owlkin Frenzy. I get a nice big notice on my screen about when it procs and then I actually watch what my spells hit for. Even so, I don’t see a noticeable increase in my DPS because there is so little direct damage being dealt.
The upside is that I am an AoE farmer on animals that I skin. Essentially, I pull a big group with Starfall and then gather them up and Hurricane them down. By the time I’m finished looting/skinning, my cooldowns are up and I’m ready to grind again.
I absolutely LOVE Owlkin Frenzy in this situation. It procs every time and makes the grind that much faster. Despite it’s usefulness in this area, I am hoping for a talent rework sometime soon.
Back to the actual topic, those two points in Intensity should likely go in Owlkin or Gale Winds. It is my staunch recommendation that any Moonkin not waste points in any other talents.
Yeah, I agree that there is no point to swap out Moonglow. They should consider fixing those talents to make them a tad more useful…
I had points in Owlkin Frenzy way back. I wasn’t a fan of it, to be honest.
A nice notice telling me when OF was up could be nice, what addon do you use for that?
And yeah, I agree with you that those are really the only two options to spec into if you drop Intensity. Before I had iFF, I used to have Gale Winds, and it was only nice because I could sometimes compete with our spriests on trash pulls
Thanks for stopping by,
Macbook
Genesis is relatively useful for a resto druid delving into the balance tree. It’s just that Imp. MF is so incredibly useless.
Yeah, Gale Winds was great for Naxx, when all the trash was AoE. In Ulduar, the trash is mostly single-target mini-boss fights that don’t scream Hurricane spam.
Fair, but I would still say other class’s Tier 1 and Tier 2 of their talent tree are better than ours.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0xG0uiIscdhVhRuZbxczb
3 points in IFF or Owlkin Frenzy?
I imagine IFF but we do have a Shadow Priest in the raid most of the time w/ misery – Do I still need IFF? Guess it comes to which is better
+3% crit all the time
or
+10% dmg over all some of the time.
I do like the immune to pushback on owlkin though.
I put 3 pts into owlkin frenzy. Did a naxx10 today. Didn’t seem to have any problem as long as I had replenish + blessing of wisdom.
You need iFF (IMO), even with a shadow priest always present with Misery.
Now that it lasts 5 minutes, it is absolutely what I consider a must have for any raiding boomkin.
I’m going to agree here. Owlkin Frenzy doesn’t proc nearly enough for me (2/3 points). IFF is a constant buff to your crit chance, which increases the speed at which you can proc Eclipse and get the Nature’s Grace buff.
Why not iFF!!!!
I'd do it in gale winds. But then I seriously disagree with your assessment that Mookin is single target DPS. It's sort of like saying that a frost mage must be AOE. Can you play a moonkin as single target DPS. Of course. But there is nothing in the moonkin spec that requires you to do so. Properly geared, talented, and played a moonkin can easily match a mage in AOE.
It really bugs me when people equate the way they like to play a certain spec with the way a spec must be played to be successful. It's so not true. And you do people a disservice by pretending that it is.
Hey there — I did say "I believe". Will I ever spec for Gale Winds for a 25 man raid? No. Sure, we can compete with other AoE'ers on trash pulls, I can even top the meters on occasion without specc'ing Gale Winds.
But — since single-target boss DPS is usually always what I care about most — it IS what I believe to be my duty.
AoE has to be someone's job… why not ours? We have some of the best AoE in the game because it ticks every second instead of every two. There are a decent amount of boss fights in Ulduar that require AoE, and as you so accurately stated none of the other alternatives to our mana regen talents (which I don't take in 3.1) are worthwhile.
Fair enough. I actually specced into Owlkin Frenzy instead of 2/3 Intensity last night — going to test it out in Ulduar this week and see some WWS on it.
Should be interesting.