Shifting Perspectives: Moonkin mailbag, Cataclysm edition

Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. Does anyone have a mailbox? I've had that little mail flag over my minimap for ages now, and it's time to go in an check out what I've got this week. That's right, it's time for another session of the moonkin mailbag!

Hey there again kids, it's that time of the week again! You know, there's something great about writing on Fridays. I get to kick off the end of the week, which to some people is the best part of every week. I'm not one of those people; every day is the same to me. There are no weekends or week beginnings -- just weeks. Instead, my weeks are tied to two entirely different days: Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays of course are WoW maintenance/patch days, which we all must obey; Thursdays are beta patch days. Perhaps that's a little bit nerdy, even a little bit excessive -- but apart from two-for-one drink specials (which you can find every night of the week somewhere, to be honest), there's little else to mark the passing of the days.

Unfortunately, this Tuesday and Thursday passed by rather uneventfully. There wasn't much new for balance druids on either front. People are still famished for Cataclysm information, though, and I aim to please. While there isn't much new to report, there are still a lot of things out there that haven't been covered; a lot of questions that people have been asking that I haven't answered as of yet. So here are the answers for you now -- all the random stuff you might have been wondering about. If you have another question that isn't answered, feel free to ask! I'll answer everything as best I can.

As a generalized disclaimer, there might be some spoilers in this edition. I've tried to keep them down as best I can, but you never know ... So read at your own risk.

Leveling questions

What's leveling like in Cataclysm? It's a bit difficult to say right now. Lower-level leveling is a bit out of sync at the moment. The Dreamstate bonus we get as part of our specialization is passable at this stage, but it's not nearly enough. Lower-level spells don't really cost that much mana, so Dreamstate doesn't have to be too strong; however, until you get some good gear with intellect on it, you're going to suffer. Which isn't too much of a problem, as all of the lower-end gear has been revamped to be better itemized. You'll get some spirit as well, which isn't terribly useful, but it does help with out-of-combat regeneration. Since the five-second rule is gone, having been replaced with out-of-combat and in-combat regeneration, there's a bit more leeway in the time you'll get between pulls. Mana is still problematic, though, especially until you get to level 10. It does get better once you get Dreamstate, but it still isn't great, so do expect some downtime.

Once you get into the higher levels, mana becomes a little bit easier -- a lot, actually. The new Euphoria talent gives you pretty much unlimited mana, provided that you cycle through Eclipse procs. While leveling solo, cycling through Eclipse can be a little bit difficult, given that the Eclipse bar drains excessively quick outside of combat; forcing you to chain pull quite rapidly. That isn't a bad thing overall given that it allows for the leveling experience to feel faster paced in of itself, but it can lead to some risky behavior which ends up being hazardous to a character's health. Higher-end leveling mana concerns are pretty much nonexistent, but damage is still an issue at this point in time. Wrath hits like a wet noodle and is very mana-intensive. Starfire actually produces a little bit less DPS than Wrath, as always, but its mana conservation is a huge gain over Wrath. Damage is still a bit out there and will be fine tuned better as beta goes on, but there is still concern that too much of our damage potential will be tied up into Eclipse once again.

Just to paint a picture, at level 83, I currently have more spellpower in beta than I do on live while raid buffed, yet Starfire and Wrath both hit for consistently less than they do on live. It's a bit disheartening; some of it has to do with the fact that our DoTs do far more damage than they used to, while another part of that is how Eclipse is being rebalanced. But it still isn't fun to see our primary nukes doing such poor damage.

What's your favorite new leveling zone? Definitely Hyjal. I won't go into quest details, to avoid the screaming emails about spoiling too much for people, but it's easily the best new zone out there. Vashj'ir and Deepholm are both really cool; I'd certainly suggest that players hit up Vashj'ir as soon as they get the chance, but nothing compares to the lore and sheer awesome that is Hyjal.

As far as the new lower-level zones go, I can't really say which I like the most at this point. The goblins are certainly awesome; really, all of the new starting zones are worth making a new character just to get through level 6 and see out the new zones, but I can't really name a favorite. Westfall is worth checking out for Horde or Alliance. I felt that Darkshore is a little flat and disappointing, but that's just me. I haven't had time to get around to all of them yet. No matter how you slice it, though, leveling a new character is certainly worth it just to see all the new quests and lore.

How is leveling itemization? Better, crappy, good, yet terrible. As I mentioned earlier, lower-level itemization is much, much better than it used to be, but casters are still in a bit of a loop. When it comes to quest rewards, Blizzard simply can't provide options that are going to be suitable to everyone. Sadly, when it comes to casters, this means that they are usually going to get the bone here and there. A good majority of the quest rewards at low and high levels are itemized with spirit, which is usually worthless to non-healing classes. Balance druids specifically do gain hit from spirit, but a leveling caster simply doesn't need the amount of hit that he is going to end up gaining from quest reward gear. Leather caster itemization while leveling is pretty much terrible as far as balance is concerned. Everything has spirit on it; everything. Thus far, I haven't found a single leather item that doesn't have spirit on it, which bothers me quite a bit. I don't believe that this will carry over to raid itemization; the problem is more that we can never find a crit/haste or haste/mastery or crit/mastery item, as a cloth user would be able to. This only leads to artifically lowering our leveling DPS, given that Balance of Power covers all of our hit needs while level, unless we're killing something strange that we probably shouldn't be. It's a bit perturbing, but not the end of the world.

Talents and abilities

Do we have to take Moonglow/Euphoria? No and yes. Even though one of our specializations focuses on mana regeneration, it currently isn't going to be enough to sustain a druid completely. You are going to need more. Euphoria is plenty enough mana return, to the point that a druid shouldn't need Moonglow. Moonglow might (quite an emphasis on the "might") be somewhat useful for a PvP balance druid, given that he probably cannot proc Eclipse as much and he might heal more than his PvE counter-parts, but I honestly doubt it. Moonglow is more of a restoration talent that's floating out in the balance tree.

How awesome is Wild Mushroom/Fungal Growth? I cannot say, since we currently don't have Wild Mushroom in beta. I normally don't like talking about things that I have no information on, but I get emails about both of these rather frequently and I've seen them come up in discussion boards several times. To that end, I repeat: Wild Mushroom is currently not in beta, and thus we have no information to share on it.

Is Entangling Roots viable as a CC option? In some places, it certainly is, although we make more use out of Hibernate in several dungeons. If you treat Entangling Roots as you would Polymorph or Sap, then the answer to that question is yes; Entangling Roots is a perfectly viable form of CC provided that you use it against melee-only mobs, of which there are generally several. However, much like other forms of CC, if anything at all hits or gets placed on a target that's being rooted, then it's more than likely going to break early. Even a single DoT is going to be enough to break Entangling Roots eventually, and that's painful, given you don't know exactly when it's going to break. One benefit that Entangling Roots has, though, is that most tank AoE threat abilities won't break it right away. A Thunder Clap or two generally won't break Entangling Roots, and it can last a decent amount of time under a Consecration from a protection paladin as well, so there are some perks to go along with it. More direct attacks like Cleave, Hammer of the Righteous or Swipe will end up breaking roots, though -- again, sometimes it can take a hit or two to do this.

One issue is that I'm not entirely positive that using Entangling Roots on a mob flags it as actually being CCed; in fact, I'm pretty much 100 percent positive that it doesn't, but maybe that's been changed and I haven't noticed. There are several splash effects that will ignore CCed targets; however, given that Roots doesn't flag a mob as being CCed, these abilities will still target the mob and thus cause it to break. On one hand, this isn't a terrible thing, since any mob CCed via Entangling Roots is probably going to be out of range of these abilities anyway. It's still something of an issue. I'm not sure there's a fix for this. You see, there are a few hunter pets that also have temporary root abilities, so having these effects flag the mob as CCed would cause the pet to automatically stop attacking the mob. I'm not certain if this can be fixed to work properly for both abilities.

So what is Starsurge, exactly? Starsurge is our new direct nuke attack that's similar to Mind Blast in many respects; honestly, it pretty much is Mind Blast in every sense. The spell is useful in that it deals significantly more damage than either of our primary nukes -- right now, a non-crit Starsurge does slightly more damage than a Wrath crit -- plus it has the benefit of a knockdown effect. A knockdown is essentially nothing more than a glorified stun, but it is set to a different DR than stuns (at least, it is currently); therefore, you don't have to worry about hampering any stun effects that your fellow players may being using against the same target, which is a great benefit in PvP. You'll pretty much want to use Starsurge on every cooldown simply because of the raw damage that it deals. It also generates the highest amount of Eclipse per cast, an additional benefit that's pretty nice.

I've heard Typhoon has been improved; confirm/deny? It has! The graphic effect is still the same, which makes me sad, since the ability still looks like it comes right out of Pokemon. But the actual knockback is much better. Instead of pushing a target straight back like it currently does, Typhoon now arcs the target upwards, giving slightly more travel time before it is free to move again. This gives the druid a lot more time to work with in order to follow up Typhoon with either Cyclone or Entangling Roots. Overall, Typhoon is a much better ability in beta than it is live.

Random nonsense

How about the new Reforging option? Reforging was finally put into beta just recently, and it works out all right. In case you haven't heard, Reforging allows a player to take 40 percent of a single stat present on an item and convert it at a 1:1 ratio into another stat. For balance druids, I'm sure this ability is going to be our new best friend as a method to ditch excess spirit. However, that does worry me to an extent. Hit juggling can already at times be something of a pain as we configure which gear set to use based upon the hit gear that's available. Now we also have to think about how our conversion is going to influence gear placement, making gearing far more mathy than it currently is. Depending on how raiding gear turns out, this could end up being a double-edged blessing -- useful in that we can actually ditch some spirit that we don't need, but horrible due to having to spend so much time configuring gear properly to remain at the hit cap while getting the most benefit from what gear we have. I'm slightly worried about the concept, but we'll see how it pans out, I suppose.

Do you still like Mudkipz? No, not at all. I've moved on. Snorlax is my choice now. Dude can hold 10 Pokemon!

Why is Blizzard ignoring us/hate us/just delete the spec already? I don't know; take your pick of answers to this one. To be honest, I don't think Blizzard is ignoring us, I don't think they hate us, and the spec really isn't that broken. It's beta, and there are still several things about the class that need to be worked on. Some people are upset over how the current design is shaping up. To a degree, I share a lot of this disappointment -- I would say that balance is still stuck in Wrath, as things currently stand -- but it is beta and things can still change; things will change.

I'm not in beta, but will you suggest X? I might, but (and this is just me being honest here) chances are that I really won't get around to posting too many of the things that people send to me. I spend an exorbitant amount of time doing testing, even now with everything as "broken" as it currently is, and I spend even more time reading through various forums, blogs and emails that I receive everyday on different topics. I simply don't have the time left to go through every single suggestion that people send asking for me to post up in the beta forums for them. I will say that posting in the WoW Damage Dealing forum or The Moonkin Repository is your best bet at getting any suggestion out there. Blizzard is still trolling the Damage Dealing forum quite frequently, and there are plenty of other balance druid posters who browse around all of these places and are kind enough to cross-post things for people when they get the chance.

I'm not saying to stop sending me suggestions; by all means do, because I read each and every one of them. Just don't become upset or discouraged if I either don't repost it or don't send you a personal reply. I've got quite a lot going on right now, so I can't find the time to respond to everyone -- but I assure you that I do read everything that I get.

Every week, Shifting Perspectives treks across Azeroth in pursuit of truth, beauty and insight concerning the druid class. Sometimes it finds the latter, or something good enough for government work. Whether you're a bear, cat, moonkin, tree or stuck in caster form, we've got the skinny on druid changes in patch 3.3, a look at the disappearance of the bear tank and thoughts on why you should be playing the class (or why not).