Nov 09
8
In a previous blog, I ranted a bit about the fact that our damage is tied up in two talents, that our key talents are rather useless and that our rotation lack some greater finesse, a move of awesomeness, something that makesa difference.
And it doesn’t really seem fair that I always bitch and moan without actually giving some suggestions for what could be changed. I can’t rightfully complain about what I have without saying that I want. So i started to think about what could fix our problems and add a bit more.. bling to our playstyle. Treants are nice, but they are not a massive part of our playstyle. We can do without, and when we decide to summon them, their damage is medicore at best. Starfall is fun and unique, especially on AOE packs, but it lacks the damage and general awesomeness on a bossfight.
It would have to be something that can fill the gap where we need it. Something that would benefit equally from haste and crit, especially when crit and haste are meeting some nasty soft caps. It could be a long cast spell, a channeled spell like Mind Flay, or a skill that modifies something we already have.
Nature’s Grace
My first notion would to change Nature’s Grace. Its a nice spell, but it hinders us at higher levels. If we didn’t have the haste from Nature’s Grace, haste would be a much more beneficial stat for us. Wrath wouldn’t be at GCD, but if Nature’s Grace added a constant damage increase equal to the haste, it would allow us to get more haste for wrath, which would also benefit starfire. It could be something simple as a 10% damage increase for 3 seconds after a crit, or an ability that stacks on crits, and on the third crit your spell would do double damage. That would be fun! Imagine the utility in PvP, and imagine what this would do to starfire. It would obviously not include crits from moonfire and starfire, and it would still have to be balanced. I’m not looking for a buff, I’m looking for a fix that will allow us to continue to scale in the future.
It would be very easy to fix us by changing Nature’s Grace. Removing the haste from that would allow us the full benefit from Bloodlust, even while spamming wrath, and it would raise our haste cap so we can be a bit more casual with our haste.
But if I can’t have that, I can certainly dream:
Hadoken
I’ve always fancied the idea of a moonfire going horisontal. Like the Hadoken from the Blue Mage from 8 Bit Theatre. It just seems so moonkinly with the white energy beam. A 3 second channeled, 10 yard beam of pure light, ripping through the air, blasting the enemy away. If this was a channeled spell, it could act just like mind flay, and we could cast it during Bloodlust when we would normally get nothing from Solar Eclipse anyways. But this idea lacks the bonus to the general rotation. If you would only use it during bloodlust, then it would be used once every fight. Also, the white beam of power would probably not sit well with.. pretty much anyone not casting it.
Image is taken from 8 Bit Theatre.
Stars Grace
If we have to make it easy for the developers, maybe we can use something already in the game and modify it for our needs. A 51 point talent that casts a beam of light, like we see from the moonkins on Hodir or those little lanterns from the Moonglade event. This could do numerous things for us. The most interesting thing I can come up with, would be if it extended our current eclipse by 15, or even 30, seconds (taking note of the bloodlust issue again). It would benefit us outside of Bloodlust aswell: If we simply want to continue our lunar eclipse for another 15 seconds because we need some big numbers, or if we are on a Loatheb-like fight where we would want to have as much time under solar eclipse as possible. It would be fun to do, and we would get a bit of bling from the pillar of light coming down during the duration.
Image is from Andrige’s Moonkin skin pack.
Chaos moonkin
One thing that really floats my boat is the idea of an enrage kind of ability, like Beastial Wrath. We can certianly play a lot with what bonuses this ability would do, but it would basicly ensure that we get a damage bonus when we want it. Currently, we are under the (Nature’s) grace of eclipse to ensure any form of damage increase, and we can do nothing, except for sprouting some friends and calling down some stars, for a minor damage increase.
The chaos moonkin would have a damage buff and some awesome graphics, sort of like when a warlock uses his metamorphisis. Green flames and dark shadows gliding all around us, along with a general damage bonus and something fun – our spells doing 30% more damage as dots (ala T10) or something else that would be a general increase to our damage for a short period of time. We could make Typhoon a baseline skill (yeah, who takes it for raiding anyways?), move Starfall up to where Typhoon used to be, and place this little beauty at the bottom of our talent tree for some serious fun.
The image is just a quick photoshop of how I imagine a Chaos Moonkin could look.
What do you think? What would you like to see?
I REALLY like the idea about extending the duration of eclipse. Its seem that our window for Prime dps time is far shorter than other hybrid dps classes. Making the window larger would be a HUGE buff!!!! I really like your blog Mang:) Keep up the good work. im your newest fan
Isn’t a chaos moonkin sort of like ‘Owlkin frenzy’?
Ya but the green flames make it CHAOS!!!!
Perhaps, but Owlkin Frenzy has that.. whats the word.. wank, about it. Im running with 2/3 OF – because what else would i spend the points on – and there is no noticable difference. Actually, it is my guild master that notices whenever it procs, because of the sound it makes. I am completely oblivious to it.
The benefit to Chaos Boomer is that you decide when to pop it, it will be a major damage increase on a duration, and it would look awesome.
Now that I understand, I definitely think that is something I could get down with!!!
Stars grace is probably my favorite though. I think extending Eclipse would be and amazing buff for us. 9/10
Hadoken is a great idea, it could be our filler for after eclipses. Perhaps it could increase the duration of our dots by X amount of seconds and gave a chance to proc eclipse with every tick.
also maybe if its damage was increased while under the effects of the eclipse cool down and after and afetr 3 casts if it it put you back into the next eclipse or something.
Basically something to stop the times where we are in eclipse cool down casting non crit wrath’s trying to get into another eclipse.
All great idea though i oove you blog man.
maybe for the hadouken thing it could refresh dots on the target
as in say the situation,
BAM,into a lunar eclipse…..but wait my dots are at 2 seconds to go, hmm dnt realy want to loose them, HADOUKEN, 3 second channeld spell (doing reasonable/balanced damage) which refreshes dots,
so now u can go into your lunar eclipse in the same time as if u refreshed your dots but havin done damage at the same time
Making it refresh dots takes focus away from the main purpose. I think it would be unreasonable to have a spell that does “x damage channeled over y seconds and refreshes your dots on the target”. This would mean that because it has this utility, it would lose utility somewhere else. And then imagine if dots fell off before you used Hadoken, then it would lose half of its function. Rather that it just did damage, and that it was bumped a bit because the spell doesn’t have a secondary effect.
Dots are about 15% of our damage, so if they fall off, i wont lie sleepless at night. I can refresh them after Hadoken if need be.
KK I came up with 2 ideas that aren’t too bright but I just feel like putting them up for shits and giggles.
Blessed by Elune: Channel a blessing of Elune towards a friendly target and increases damage done with spells by 150%. Lasts X seconds.
I would see this as a filler during bloodlust or whatever… Obviously the issue here is it doesn’t increase our personal dps.. but if it’s cast on the right person it will definitely increase the raids dps and to me that’s what matters.
The other idea doesn’t fit in 1 comment so I’ll reply to that too. Please don’t hate me
Talent (find a name for it yourself
) This idea changes in my head every second.. So i’ll just go with every small detail and someone smarter then me can decide what would be best (hint: that’d be you Q)
When you cast wrath you get a debuff that decreases the haste on your wrath but it increases the crit on it. Same with Starfire but vice versa. This of course is a copy of arcane barrage in a way.. It’s made to compliment Eclipse.
Or everytime you cast wrath or eclipse you apply a stacking debuff on the boss that increases your personal damage on him. Once you reach 10 stacks the debuff explodes. The result of the explosion can be 2 different effects: If it was caused by Starfire, it increases the crit % of your wrath. If it was cause by wrath it increases the haste % of Starfire.
My hope here is to slightly counter Eclipse but it would take a genius to make it work perfectly. You’d have to make sure your Wrath or Starfire will proc Eclipse and boom huge dps boost! Another solution is to simply have an ability called “detonate” off the GCD and cast it right as you wrath or starfire to make sure you get the proper buff.
I actually decided i like this last one best..so I won’t post the rest! I need a name for it but I was thinking about it and I remember Malfurion in War of the Ancients using various seeds on demons and some of them explode.. This could be used to find a name (yes I’m a lore freak)
Blessed By Elune could be fun, but its sort of an odd mechanic. A disc priest could be popping Power Infusion, a blood DK could be using hysteria – they could both still be DPS’ing. While we are channeling, our damage would go to zero. Imagine two DPS’ers doing 8k DPS – one is taken out because he has to channel a buff to the other, and increase his damage – the actual buff would only be +50% damage to the one person. Meanwhile, our dots run off, aswell as earth and moon and such. I don’t think that would work out too well
If you had less crit but more haste on starfire, it would probably even out each other pretty well. Same goes for wrath – if you do 10% more damage, but cast 10% slower, it would result in the excact same amount of damage, or very close to it. It doesn’t really fix any problems, it just makes stuff more complicated
With the stacking debuff, it becomes a problem if the debuff explodes and you are are not ready to switch to the other. Lets say you have to do five starfires – what if there is still 5 seconds left on eclipse, and (after 3.3) you have to wait a few more seconds to proc solar eclipse? There is a lot of waste in that buff. Most of the time it would be pretty difficult to get it the right time, and that just makes us even more dependant on RNG.
Keep at it – ideas sharpens the mind
The reason I came up with the 2nd ability was simply to let us have more room for haste or crit. Imagine with ICC we are capped on hit, haste on wrath, crit on starfire. There is no other stat for us to get
(but of course you know this already with your first post in the blog 
). So i came up with it to maybe find a small solution for this.
Say someone is overcapped on haste only. Now he knows that if he detonates the debuff (let’s call the debuff “seed”) at 4 stacks his wrath would be right at the cap. So he lets 4 Seed debuffs add up on the boss. Then he detonates it and boum. His wrath cast time is the same but his crit increased.
In the other situation he is overcapped on crit with starfire. Say the boomkin knows that even if he detonates after 7 debuffs he will be at 100% crit with Starfire during an eclipse. So he detonates it and his starfires cast faster without losing crit.
What I meant to say when I said “So he detonates it and his starfires cast faster without losing crit.” is, instead of being 130% Crit chance (30% wasted) you an gain haste and be at 100% Crit chance. which in the end isn’t a loss at all
so yeah.. you lose crit.. but not useless crit
but useless crit* I really wish i could edit. Sorry
I’m super tired
I actually decided that I personally really liek the idea and am gonna work on it some more and see if we can shwo it to blizz. I realyl see them enjoying it because it promtoes the idea of “balance” and that might make them actually imply it.
So I decided to come up with the name of the Seed:
Seed of Cenarius
Solar Detonate : Photosynthesis
Lunar Detonate : Respiration
You really have to consider if you are over complicating the matters. Find me one single spec that has the same confusing elements in its core. With that, i think you are making WoW very hard to play for new people, and i shutter to think about the length of the tooltip
Closing comments on this, because there is just so much spam going into this single thread.