May 10
6
A peek at Cataclysm talents
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Waking up today was like christmas evening, with a ton of goodies spilling out of MMO-champion. Just to clarify, danes get presents on christmas evening, not chistmas morning on the 25th.
There is a lot of stuff out there, ripped from the Cataclysm alpha client. I am not excactly sure how Blizzard feel about people stealing info from the client, but since nobody in the alpha really said anything, I suppose it might be alright.
Before we go on, I MUST stress the point that this is really early alpha changes. The talent tree below is not finished, it will be changed, and nothing of this is guaranteed. Got it? Let me repeat it again: The talent tree below is not finished, it will be changed, and nothing of this is guaranteed.
If you don’t like spoilers, you probably shouldn’t read this post. What am I saying? Ofcourse you should read my blog!
Even though the talent trees are going to change a lot over the next few months, the moonkin talent tree has been changed with a few very interesting talents which gives us a clue as to what Blizzard has in store for us. Check out the talen tree here.
Celestial Focus
CF has been moved from tier 4 to tier 3, and no longer offers spell haste. This means we will probably not care much for this in a PvE setting, and even though we “lose” 3% spell haste, its probably not a huge deal. To be honest, I am glad that we are getting rid of all that random haste here and a spot of haste there, because it goes a long way to help increase our soft haste cap on wrath – as long as we get balanced around it, everything should be fine.
Solar Beam
Blizzard hinted at this ability in the recent Twitter Developer Chat, and with the first draft for this ability, it looks pretty cool. Solar Beam will cast on your enemy target disorienting all enemytargets under the beam for 3 seconds, and then silencing anybody under the beam while it is active. This sounds really powerful; A ranged disorient with great stopping power, and then a silence!
Lunar Justice
Whenever you kill someone, they get bathed in moonlight. If you or an ally stand on this moonlight, they get 2% of your base mana back. This seems like another PvP talent, to help keep us going in PvP. Cute.
Starsurge
Following up on Solar Beam, I am not sure if Starsurge will be beneficial in PvE. That really depends on what kind of damage it does and how it scales. In any case, it still offers another ability to use, and helps with a bit of crowd control. It does have a cast time though, so the damage might just be a placeholder, and turn out to be worth getting for PvE as well.
Lunar Guidance
Your solar beam becomes bigger, and starsurge returns up to 15 luanr or solar energy – for the new eclipse system – depending on which is greater. This means that Starsurge will push the meter around more if we have this talent, than if we didn’t.
Balance of Power
Still increases our hit by 4%, but now also converts 1 spirit into 1 hit rating, simple as that. So if we need 500 hit rating to be hit capped in Cataclysm, we really just need 500 spirit.
Moonkin form and Improved Moonkin Form
Moonkin form, currently, does not show any bonuses other than 370% armor and polymorph/root immunity. They removed the usual stuff on it, and we will probably see either some changes to the bonus we get, or make it into a… dare I say it? A cooldown to use, much like the new Tree of Life. On one side, I am probably alright with this, as long as we are balanced around it, but I would feel sad about not being a giant chicken. Realisticly though, I don’t think they are going to pull that stunt with two druid specs. What will the next thing be, that you can only be in bear form for a limited time? Hah!
Improved moonkin form was also changed to give us up to 6% extra crit chance to us and all party or raid members nearby. This is a fair damage increase, and one that makes sense. Current moonkin form gives us spell damage from spirit, but in Cataclysm we will only have enough spirit to be “converted” into hit. Maybe at 500 spirit, we wouldn’t want any more, so removing the spirit component from Imp. Moonkin form makes sense.
Don’t worry, they will put something shiny on our moonkin form, surely.
Eclipse
Hasn’t been changed yet, though it has been disabled in the Cataclysm alpha.
Fungal Growth
Our shrooms have limped into the talent tree, as a sidenote to our treants. When our treants die or when our Wild Mushrooms are triggered Fungal Growth will pop around in an 8 yard range, slowing enemies by 70% for 10 seconds. So anyone will be wanting to get far away from our treants, and they will curse themselves when they trigger a Trapshroom. This is probably a bit focused for PvP, but it could be very nicely for add control as well.
Blessing of the Grove (restoration)
Goodbye Improved Mark of the Wild. I’ll miss you. No, not really; Blessing of the Grove will increase the direct damage of our moonfire by 6%. Since we will probably see new glyphs in Cataclysm, we are most likely not going to be using Glyph of Moonfire, so the extra damage on a good old moonfire spam will do nicely.
Perseverance (restoration)
A little treat for PvP’ers as well, reducing all spell damage by 10%.
Insect Swarm
It seems that Blizzard misplaced Insect Swarm and Improved Insect Swarm. Not a big suprise really, because Insect Swarm will probably be a baseline skill, and Imp. IS will be lost and balanced out somewhere else.
Conclusion
We already know a little bit about Blizzards plans for PvE moonkins, and I have previously stated my enthusiasm for the eclipse changes, and I am in good faith that however the talents and the new eclipse system turn out, they will turn out alright. It’s all about tweaking the numbers, really, and since we don’t have the numbers, I’ll give Blizzard the benefit of doubt before I go all RAWRRAWRRAWR on them.
For PvP, it looks like moonkins are getting a whole lot of new crowd control; An invisible trap, a ranged disorient and mass silence, a 2 second cast damage ability that knocks people down and an AOE slow whenever shrooms or treants die. Add that to entangling roots, cyclone and lolhibernate, we have a pretty wide range of crowd control abilities.
Sidenote: Talent builds
As it is right now, you can reach our 51 point talent with 51 points, and grab everything critical on the way down. Spending the classic 13 points in restoration as well, we are left with 12 talent points at level 85. This could be used on stuff like Genesis, Owlkin Frenzy, Gale Winds, Brambles or even mana regen talents, should we need them. We could also go over into restoration and grab Nature’s Swiftness, although I don’t know if we will get any long cast nature spells. In any case, it seems to go fairly well with Blizzards plans to make us able to take everything we want, and then a few more talents for funsies.
While the talents might change their function, I am not sure they will change position or how many points they will require. The structure of the talent tree might probably be as we see here, but hey, nothing is set in stone yet. And we still have archeology to worry about.
I’ve made a draft talent tree of what the basic cookie cutter build might look like, if these changes were to be out now. You know, just to play around with it for a bit. Check it out here!
