moonkin-shifting-perspectives
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Shifting Perspectives: The potential return of Insect Swarm for balance druids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we go hunting for mosquito nets. A few weeks ago, I talked about the impact of removing Insect Swarm from balance druids' toolboxes. I was pretty positive about the change; in my view, Insect Swarm was mostly superfluous, as the times you would use it independently from Moonfire were few and far between. Removing it was a welcome simplification to the rotation. Several commenters took an opposite view, however. To them, removing IS (along with some of the other changes) took things too far, and made the spec boring to play. Well, if you were one of those commenters, you're in luck. Take it away, Ghostcrawler!
Shifting Perspectives: What balance druid design can take from SWTOR
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid. Welcome to a new year, balance druids. It's been a flurry of a holiday season for many folks, although things have been rather quiet on the Blizzard front. In terms of any new information being released, all that we've seen thus far is a minor patch announcement that does hold some good news: Our four-piece tier bonus is getting 10% Starsurge damage tacked on. While this isn't monumental in the sense that it suddenly turns the bonus into a must-have, it's a good boost that was sorely needed. Instead, the major release of the holiday season was the highly anticipated release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I myself have been glad to officially have my hands on. WoW-killer, front-runner MMO of the new year, or potential flop, it's far too soon to tell -- but what is telling is how new game designers approach the MMO genre and what Blizzard can learn as other companies look to emulate its success stories. What then could SWTOR possibly have for balance druids? Quite a bit.
Shifting Perspectives: Patch 4.3 gear list for balance druids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Hail, druids, and welcome to the wondrous world of a new patch! This patch didn't hold much for us in the ways of personal meat. We got a wicked-awesome new Hurricane animation and a neat new Wrath one as well, but otherwise, things trudge along as normal with our lot. That's perfectly dandy in my book. We're still going along strong as a solid DPS choice, and things are good. This week I'm dedicating to gearing ourselves up in all of that lovely new content that has just been released. Whether you're a dungeoneer or a hardcore raider, there's tons of new loot to look at, and that's exactly that we're going to do. As a side note, I do have to say that I am super-excited about having patch 4.3. The content so far has been gloriously fun, and though I'm sure I'll change my mind once I've done enough of these heroics to last a lifetime (as with the troll versions of last patch), I'm content to make do with what we have. Let's get to work, shall we?
Shifting Perspectives: The matter of Mists talents and abilities
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Druids, friends, brothers and sisters, we need to have a right good talk. Earlier in the week, Blizzard released the ability list and talent calculator for every class and spec in the next expansion. As we all knew, there were many significant changes that were made in terms of what abilities each spec received and, in some cases, how these abilities worked. Oddly enough, this seemed to cause something of an uproar within the druid community over several choice changes. It's strange to me that a community preaching patience quickly froths at the mouth, but fret not, nothing is nearly as bad as it seems. The changes are massive -- of that there is no doubt -- but at the core, everything that we've known is still there. The majority of the balance druid spec as it exists today is virtually intact; as far as changes could go, this is close to the best that we could have hoped for. There are still tweaks that should be made, but those shall come in time. For now, allow me assuage your fears.
Shifting Perspectives: First look at tier 13 for balance druids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Welcome back, druids! Last week, we started the discussion on how to properly read and review your World of Logs parses in order to spot any places where you might be having issues. While I would like to complete that series, recent events rather pushed that back for the moment. In case you aren't in the know for some strange reason, Blizzard has released patch 4.3 onto the PTR and with it, a slew of new information. For good or ill, there hasn't been any balance druid information as of yet. Druids for the most part remained pretty much untouched, with the only spec seeing any changes being a minor restoration nerf. We have, however, seen the set bonuses for the upcoming tier 13, and that alone is enough to worry about. Normally, I'm rather passive when it comes to set bonuses; they are bonuses, after all. While some might be weak or strong, generally sets are pretty well balanced. This time around, though? I'm left with my head scratching to figure out what Blizzard was thinking. Let's take a look at why.
Shifting Perspectives: Avoid these common balance druid mistakes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Welcome back, my little space turkeys. It's been a fun couple of weeks here recently with all sorts of nothing announced for us. Despite Blizzard's new plan to be speedy like the rabbit, it doesn't quite seem to have gotten a handle on what that actually means. Information about the next patch in slow in the making, and all that we have gotten so far hasn't really been of any use to us here in constantly-in-the-shape-of-a-fat-mutant-chicken-form-land. Shouldn't complain, I suppose. It could be worse -- it could be raining. Oh wait ... it is raining. This week, in light of the dreary New England mood that's been permeating my area for the past few days, we'll be going over some of the common mistakes that balance druids make (and sometimes those who think they know balance druids). I'm not entirely sure how the weather is related to this topic, but I promise you, the correlation is there. Prepare for a mildly exciting read that's also rather informative -- like a science textbook only better, and it doesn't cost you several hundred dollars.
Shifting Perspectives: Letting go of DOT-based AOE
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com. Firelands comes and goes, boss strategies are created and refined -- and with each passing encounter, players come up with different ways in which they can push the mold. What may be true for one raiding tier can quickly become the wrong way of doing things in the next, without any changes or direction from Blizzard. While we can sometimes point to spell scaling as the root cause of these alterations, often it is the changes within the design of the encounters that actually force players to adapt in ways that go against conventional wisdom. In the past raiding tier, using DOTs as our AOE has been the one and only method to perform. Our more traditional AOE was mocked due to the constraints that were placed upon it. That has not changed in the least; what has changed, however, in AOE in general. Throughout the first raiding tier and even into Firelands, Blizzard has made changes to the mobs that we AOE and the strength of other classes' AOE abilities, all of which impacts the way we perform. This week, we take a look at the new face of balance AOE.
Shifting Perspectives: How to kill Shannox as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. There was a little bit of an update for balance druids in the most recent hotfixes. Finally, Blizzard has come to its senses and allowed Moonfire to generate Lunar Energy when traversing from a Solar Eclipse to a Lunar Eclipse if you have the Lunar Shower talent. Awesome -- this should have been done back on the PTR, but whatever. Helps PVP druids; PVE still doesn't have much of a reason to take it. Get to work on that, Blizzard. This article has nothing to do with that, though, mostly because I'm over the whole Lunar Shower business. If Blizzard wants to dig in its heels on the matter, well, I'm not interested in pushing. Instead, I want to make stuff go BOOM! That's what we're talking about, taking out one of the first four bosses in the Firelands. Prepare yourself, soldiers ... There are battles to win!
Shifting Perspectives: Building a better balance druid rotation -- gaming Eclipse
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Out of all of the emails that I get, out of all of the posts that I see on the official forums and other sites, the single most common problem that people have as a balance druid is damage -- which for as a damage-dealing spec only makes sense, right? I mean, it would be a little bit weird if the largest problem we saw from balance druids was that they weren't tanking well enough or something. The thing is, most of these people aren't "bads." More often than not, these aren't people who haven't a clue how to spec, gear, or enchant. They probably do follow the rotation that's listed on the official forums sticky or in one of my guides. All in all, these aren't bad players -- they just can't seem to get something right. Something isn't clicking. Well, let's talk about what that something is.
Shifting Perspectives: Why there are moonkin in the world
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Owlbears, I spend an awful lot of time discussing Eclipse and the various ways that I'm just a little bit unhappy with the system of DPS that we have. To be quite honest, I'm tired. For one day, can't we all just be faceroll arcane mages, casting nothing but Arcane Blast, maybe a Missiles here and there? I'd really like that, really I would. I don't think anything would quite make my day as that would. Alas, it is not to be. The real question is why anyone should bother their pretty little heads playing possibly the fattest characters in WoW. Face it, folks: Moonkin are huge. And despite what some people may have been saying lately, it seems we do have friends -- or at least people who are willing to keep our fluffy feathers around. Which, you know ... I'll take that.
Shifting Perspectives: How raid progression affects balance gearing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Gearing a boomkin has always been a strange lot of juggling and switching and planning. For every raiding tier, there comes a new list of items that are the absolute best in terms of damage. All of us wish that we could have best-in-slot everything, but the reality is that this is very rarely the case for even the very best players. Instead, most of us merely have to make the best with what we are able. As the next raiding tier is poised to be released, I think now is the perfect time to remind ourselves of a few very important gearing principles. Getting the best-in-slot is fantastic; getting the best-for-now is far better.
Shifting Perspectives: DOT changes for balance druids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Oh druids, my lovely little space chickens, I am frankly at a loss. I am at the end of my rope, so to speak. For a while there, I thought I had Blizzard all figured now -- but now? Now, the developers are throwing curve balls left and right, and I just don't know what's going on any more. Things are changing. They want to change something ... But what is it that they are looking to change? We've all seen the previous changes that attempted to break our multi-DOTing and the random running around in a Solar Eclipse spamming Sunfire. Shortly thereafter (probably due to the numerous reports that the system was absolutely terrible, by all accounts), it was changed once again. Now I don't know what it is that Blizzard is attempting to break anymore, and I don't even feel like guessing. Don't believe me? Take a look.
Shifting Perspectives: First look at balance druid tier 12 bonuses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Right then -- on the off chance that you happened to miss the massive rant that was last week's Shifting Perspectives, made in reaction to the horrible, horrible changes that Blizzard had originally planned for balance ... ,you don't quite have to read it. Actually you should read it, because the reasoning behind the change is still there and Blizzard is going to try something to make it happen, but that specific method is off the table for the time being. There's already a new attempt out, but frankly, I don't think it's worth spending every single week hammering down a new flop on the same tired design. Instead, I think it's rather a good time to take a first little glance at our newest tier set bonuses that were datamined about a week ago. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of datamined information; it's nice to look at, but it can often be incomplete or missing perspective that allows it to make sense. This is a bit different, though; it's spell data pulled straight from Wowhead, so it should be rather spot on. Doesn't mean it's final though, so do keep that in mind.
Shifting Perspectives: A first look at balance druids in patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. If you keep tabs on the goings-on in the WoW world, then you probably know by now that the initial notes for the upcoming raid patch 4.2 have already been released. While 4.0.6 was supposed to be the large rebalancing patch for Cataclysm and many classes didn't see any significant changes during 4.1, it seems as though Blizzard may have broken down and changed course for this next installment. There isn't yet much information released in the current patch notes, and most classes aren't seeing any changes as of yet, but balance druids are certainly looking at something that is going to vastly shake up their current playstyle. This is the earliest release of the PTR, and things are probably going to change, but one thing about the PTR is that feedback needs to be given, no matter how absurd or unlikely the change might be.
Shifting Perspectives: How to make the switch to balance
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. It's another glorious patch week. Patch 4.1 had a few major balancing changes, but a majority of them were to address specs that were a little low or weak in certain areas. Balance druids, although taking a hit, didn't have too much going on for them this time around. Rather understandable -- we're in a good place damage-wise, and this patch was more a focus on new content and features anyway. Instead of spending gross amounts of time rattling on about such small things, I thought this would be a good time to address a question that I get asked pretty frequently. Cataclysm brought about a lot of changes, both to healing and DPS. Each player reacted differently to the new design, and there are many restoration druids out there who find they just aren't quite happy with the way things are for them any more. And I mean, who could blame them? They have to be trees -- who wants to be a tree? Trees are boring. The natural thing to do is to flow into balance; the gear is kind-of-sort-of the same, anyway. So how is it done? Well, I guess that's what I'm here for.
Shifting Perspectives: Total Eclipse, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Last week, we talked about the mastery stat and how it influences Total Eclipse. This time around, I would like to delve into the innate concept of Eclipse itself. Mastery, as you may recall, is a rather tricky stat that has a lot of scaling potential to cause some issues in certain situations. The entirety of Eclipse hinges upon a few basic principles, the first of which is uptime. Given that Eclipse's uptime is determined by number of spells cast (which cannot be changed by any means), there is an average expected uptime that can be balanced around. When you take certain measures to extend Eclipse's duration, such as multi-DoTting or Sunfire spamming, then you effectively change Eclipse's uptime, which causes distortions in mastery scaling. But, again, this was last week. As you have probably already noticed, the same fair warning we gave last week applies: This will get deep and possibly mathy. As an additional warning: I'm rather unwell at the moment and rather drugged up on various medications that I couldn't even begin to pronounce. If you end up getting a bit lost or I'm totally off base on something ... all I can offer is my apologies.
Shifting Perspectives: Total Eclipse, part 1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Eclipse is probably a rather worn topic for many balance druids. People love it, people hate it. The new design is great, the new design is terrible. It's too mathy, it doesn't function well in PvP, it's too gamey. There are a lot of positive and negative things that can be said about Eclipse. No matter your side of the fence, there are always attempts to improve upon Eclipse, to make it more viable for PvP or less annoying in PvE. A fair warning, as I attempt to deconstruct both the Eclipse system itself and the common suggestions that arise: It will be impossible to avoid all math. Theorycrafting may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I promise to keep it as minimal and easy-to-understand as I possibly can -- for both our sakes.
Shifting Perspectives: Entering The Bastion of Twilight as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday. Learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant lazer turkey! Questions, comments, or something you'd like to see? Email tyler@wowinsider.com. And so it finally comes to an end -- or rather, a beginning. If you have been following my strange tangent, then you would already know that we have tackled Cho'gall and his devoted Council, leaving only the first two guardians left. In comparison to the end bosses, the first two encounters can be a bit hit or miss depending upon your raid composition. As always, certain encounters are easier in 10-man than 25-man, while some are actually more challenging in 10s. Whichever raiding style you choose to run with, both are going to have a running head start in this instance -- they have you! Balance druids are a force to be reckoned with in PvE right now. There are very few niches that we cannot fill, and our utility is rather useful during this tier. So, let's show these beasties a good what for.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance druids vs. Cho'gall
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday. Learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant lazer turkey! Cho'gall? The ending? But where is the beginning? Oh, you silly druids, why do anything in sequential order? That's so ... 2010. It's a new year, a time to do things differently! And I say that we start by going backwards through an instance. Yeah, yeah, I know, not really that exciting, but bear with me on this one; I promise it will be an epic adventure of grand proportions. This introduction is going to have to be cut a little bit short. Before going into boss information, there are a few unmentioned changes from the patch that need a quick review.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid leveling in Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. This week, I'm running myself ragged trying to level and getting no sleep, relying purely on the soothing sounds of Coheed and Cambria and Dragon Force to keep going. Remember, I could still use your leveling screen shots, so send them in! And the race is on! Cataclysm is finally here: new zones, new races, new quests, new dungeons, new raids -- everything new. By now, most of the hardcore types are probably already level 85. I remember the sadness of getting home from work at eight in the morning to see that half my guild was already level 83. Even this "late in the game," as it were, I would still like to bring up a bit about leveling specs. Not just leveling from 80 to 85, but starting fresh from level 1; alts do exist, you know, and some of us have more than one druid. (Guilty.) Before we begin on this little journey, I want to say one thing; everything listed here is merely a suggestion from my point of view after leveling during beta and on live. There are other ways to spec for leveling, there are multiple ways to spec even at level 85, and what is written here is not a gospel. OK, well, some of it is -- but for the most part, you are always free to make up your own mind. Without further ado, here we go!
