First off, I main Moonkin. I have no idea why my alt is the character of this post.
Moving on.
We’re equalizing New Moon and Fury of Elune a bit and easing up on the importance of entering Eclipse with a Nature’s Grace change.
I like that you are trying to make New Moon more competitive, cause I love the concept of that whole talent, so that is interesting. Been wanting a viable New Moon spec for a while.
But what I don’t understand is this part “… and easing up on the importance of entering Eclipse …”
Going into eclipse is what we do. That is the backbone of our entire spec, and is rooted in the lore of the spec. If you don’t prioritize getting into Eclipse, or don’t want to pay attention to that too much, then maybe don’t play Moonkin?
- Astral Smolder duration is now 4 seconds (was 8 seconds).
My first question is if this is a typo? The duration on the PTR right now is 6 seconds, not 4 as it says in the blue post. I just wondered if you could clarify. My copium is that it is a typo, as nerfing the uptime of Smolder down to 4 seconds would completely nullify the change you made to the talent. It got buffed to 8 seconds to compete with Stellar Flare when it comes to Waning Twilight uptime. Getting it down to 6 seconds is fine, but 4 seconds again is just weird. Sure, the dps would be an increase on the dot itself, but it would make it even more unreliable to play for waning twilight than it is at the moment, unless we start stacking critt, wich is our 3rd best secondary stat, after Mastery and Haste which are our main secondary stats.
That would of course be weird, since the next line says:
- Wild Surges bonus to Wrath and Starfire critical strike chance reduced to 12% (was 15%).
- Warrior of Elune now starts its cooldown as soon as it’s activated, but the bonuses to your next 3 Starfires must be used within 25 seconds.
This is a great change. It means we don’t have to macro the ability to cancel its effect to not have it misalign with our rotation. Great change.
- Lunar Shrapnel has been redesigned – Starfall deals 20% increased damage and is now a 1 point talent.
Another great change in my opinion, since we never took/take this talent. It will become a must-take for AoE though, so it also makes our life easier that you made it a 1 point talent.
- Umbral Intensity increases damage dealt by Wrath by 20% per point (was 10%) and the damage Starfire deals to nearby targets increased by 15% per point (was 10%).
I’m not a theory crafter so we will see what will happen here. I don’t see a world where we would prioritize this over our other talent choices though. It was stronger before season 2, and we still never took it outside of the Council fight in VOTI.
- All spell damage dealt increased by 5%.
- Waning Twilight damage and healing increased to 10% (was 8%).
We take buffs.
- Nature’s Grace now only triggers after an Eclipse ends, not when extending an Eclipse with Celestial Alignment.
Will affect how much damage we can get out of our incarnation window, but I don’t think it will be very dramatic. The normal thing is to extend the duration 1 time with pulsar, sometimes it’s not a problem to extend it twice (not accounting for Blood Lust).
- Fury of Elune damage reduced by 10%.
- Radiant Moonlight Fury of Elune cooldown reduction is now 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).
- New Moon damage increased by 100%.
- Half Moon damage increased by 45%.
- Full Moon damage increased by 15%.
What I take from this is that you want to make New Moon/Half Moon/Full Moon into the choice for Single target fights, like raid fights, whilst keeping Fury of Elune relevant for AoE. Correct me if I am wrong. Increasing the damage a lot more on New Moon and Half moon to compensate for having to cast twice before getting to the Big Boy spell, Full Moon. Reasonable and very interesting. Will be fun to test out.
I am interested to see what others think of these changes, and what the theory-crafters will make of this.
I can’t say I understand the changes made to Smolder and Wild Surges though. Mushrooms have never been an issue when it comes to waning twilight. It is a reliable option already, right now on Live servers. It’s just one extra button/thing to keep track of. Most people don’t, cause Smolder is so strong anyways.
My thoughts on Stellar Flare though, if you want it more competitive then it would make more sense to buff that talent instead of nerfing Smolder. In large pulls, most people would opt for Smolder anyways, since it’s so strong and you can spend the time in doing damage instead of using Stellar Flare on a big amount of targets.
There are very very few situations where we have a low number of targets currently. It seems like the best option there would be to go for a Smolder/mushroom build in a 5-man dungeon scenario. Outside of that, if we take Stellar Flare now for raiding, then the uptime of Smolder will get even lower, as we would have to sacrifice Wild Surges completely, and Smolders uptime would get dramatically worse as a result.
We will see I guess, but a clarification if it is 4 seconds as it says in the post, or if it is 6 seconds as it says on the talent tree on PTR would be much appreciated.
Peace