To continue.....

As far as the Innervate change, I rarely see it dispelled when I'm using it in PvP or Arenas, maybe I'm lucky or maybe the dispel class is dead by the time I need it, who knows, but at it's current value in PvP gear, you don't get much mana back in the first place, so now that you get even less, it's another PvP nerf. On a spec that is already way out of league of other classes.

So again, doesn't feel to me like it's fixing problems, just placing them somewhere else. Overall I'm pretty happy raid wise, I'm keeping up with most dps, maybe 1k below, but I offer rezzes and healing. So I can't complain there.

PvP wise I'm begging for changes, I hate the fact that to be taken seriously on any arena team Resto is truly the only thing anyone wants. Half the time as a Moonkin I feel like my teamates have to carry me, or I have to pray I get lucky and I can take a guy down with me, cause I sure as hell can't survive anything like other classes. Which sucks, I love playing Balance spec'd but I want the chance to do well in Arena and not have to rely on a cookie cutter team (whole nother problem Bliz needs to solve with Arenas)
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With that said here are my suggestions that could make us a little more viable, note to those who'll reply I'm not asking for all these changes, these are just suggestions of things to think of and all PvP based in my reasonings.

"Oh Crap" cooldown:

1.) This usually for us is a result of trying to get to bear form, casting barkskin, and maybe frenzied regen, or survival instincts (which would waste a whole lot of talent points in a completely opposite spec line).....3 talents/spells to try and save us from dieing....sounds fair compared to other classes right?

(Mage = Iceblock, Rogue=Vanish, Pally/Priest=Bubble.....wait they all get 1 talent/spell to do that.)

If this is what Bliz is giving us, then I suggest putting "Shifting" on its own cooldown, and get it off the GC system, and/or taking the mana out of the shifting mechanic altogether. It would at least make the 3 things we have to do faster and/or less mana intensive, in a sense making it a 1/2 talent/spell save.

2.) Allow Moonkin Form to be apart of Survival Instinct. (which was already thought about) The amount of talent points we'd have to spend already nerfs our dmg, but it would at least give us a move to try and buy time for the healer to take care of us.

3.) A much simpler fix, make Cyclone an instant cast spell with a 5-6 sec cooldown, keeping the same dimishing returns it currently has.

4.) Another idea is to look into also adding Immunity to everything while Owlkin Frenzy is proc'd, similar to Warriors who can't be stopped, or Hunter's Big Red Pet ability. At least if we are getting beat on we have a chance to save ourselves without an "Oh Crap" move.

or

DPS abilties:

1.) I find myself getting targets down 20-30% but not being able to put the finish touches on them, alot of other classes have dazes, and or stuns, that they can talent, or are apart of their spells/abilities, along with a ridiculous amount of direct dmg. Since our only random stun was removed I find myself not being able to finish off targets. We need a new spell, probably following along our instant cast lines, that is a burst dmg spell; or at least has some type of stun/daze/silence/root ablitity attached to it. Or an ability/talent similar to a hunter's kill shot. Maybe call it "Moon Shatter" or "Moonfall", and it can only be used if the target is at 20% or below, and maybe disorients us as well for 3 secs due to the physical and mental will it would take to bring down a moon on someone.

2.) Or a dps spell similar to lifebloom. The dot dmg effect is small until the final tick. Call it "Choking Vine" or something like that, and make it another instant cast dot with a silence/stun/daze on it that lasts a couple seconds.

3.) Or another idea to maybe help us survive and do a little more dps. A spell/talent that does so much percent dmg, and heals us for so much percent of the dmg. Wether its direct or dot style would be nice. Which you'd think would make sence considering the overall nature of our class. Or just make it a pure talent point spec'd passive ability, call it "Moon's Blessing" and so much percent of dmg we do heals us, or possibly even a friendly focus target. (Similar to Warhammers Shaman Mechanics)

To finish off my long post.....

Caster Tank

I know Blizzard is doing a Q&A about the vision and future of it's classes, I always thought with the Balance spec you guys were so close to making a caster tank. We use to pull threat like crazy, we use to gain mana by physical attack, but you never quite got it all together. I felt elemental Shamans were getting close to this effect as well over time, but then you pulled us closer to a pure caster style character. I'm envisioning a play style more like a Pandaren Brewmaster/Monk, or even better the style of the Friar from Dark Age of Camelot.

Giving us more instant dmg spells with cooldowns, higher HP, and Defense in Moonkin form, and possible a small array of physical strike abilities similar to a hunter.

Would be an interesting class, possibly a Hero style class you guys have planned for the future.
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So those are my suggestions, I enjoy playing balance spec, I'm just hoping I get an even playing field in Arenas to truly enjoy the system.

*PS*
*cough*Make Warstomp INSTANT*cough*

Further to this they really need to fix the spell queuing system from enabling at any cast above one second to any cast above 0.7 of a second (which would bring it inline with the GCD, not violating Blizzards sacred rule). The reason being is that we can't gear for one or the other Eclipse now and having any haste over 400 means that our casts that are 0.9 of a second become 1.2 instead!

When stacking more haste (especially as our gear gets more of the states making it harder to stay below that limit) and haste can be our best scaling stat apart from spellpower (and we scale poorly as it is) it seems like we are back to the old nature's grace problem with wrath. This small change would actually solve it!

The lifebloom nerf is mildy annoying, but really as far as PvP heals go what you want is to get away from low health fast, so I tend to see LB's chief virtue as the 1 second ticks.


What I really wanted for PvP was pretty much: a better self peel than nature's grasp, caster/travel survivability.

The change to resilience should help some, but for now I'm going to remain jealous of restos having improved barkskin.

The better peel is nowhere to be seen.


To be honest at high levels a better peel may not be needed with a cc heavy team to back you up, but I think it might smooth out the relationship between skill and success for moonkins somewhat.

Built-in magical damage resist was one of the ideas I thought would help, though, I think they should up it to a flat 10%. Instead of mana or in addition to it...Owlkin Frenzy would do well to have some kind of silence/stun reduction in there. As many have pointed out, that extra mana isn't going to mean anything if you come twitching and hobbling out of a stunlock. Won't be long before you're dead waiting on some HoTs anyway.

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Q u o t e:
Built-in magical damage resist was one of the ideas I thought would help, though, I think they should up it to a flat 10%. Instead of mana or in addition to it...Owlkin Frenzy would do well to have some kind of silence/stun reduction in there. As many have pointed out, that extra mana isn't going to mean anything if you come twitching and hobbling out of a stunlock. Won't be long before you're dead waiting on some HoTs anyway.

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The magical damage resist change isn't that great.

Sure it might be good because it reduces the RNG. The problem is that it means we are more susceptible to CCs that otherwise at least had a chance of missing. We have no survivability with CCs and now we don't even have a chance getting out of it.

The 'buff' really is more of a nerf. Do we need a magic dmg reduction? Certainly, but not at the expense of the talent they chose.

The other problem is a lack of anything addressing the problem with survivability against meele. We still remain having no viable ability to counter them. They could have at least fixed up Typhoon to do this :/ Or nature's grasp, or cyclone... The generic reslience change isn't going to change a specific problem to the lack of active abilities to counter. Especially when we are already so susceptible to stuns. If our 'flavor' is to be a caster tank...they could at least make us tank like with a dmg reduction while stunned.

Twelve percent less damage is a lot less damage, but it's pretty costly for classes that don't have MS that are trying to kill/pressure healers. :(

Late "hi" to you again. :D

GC, Moonkins getting damaged reduced because of resilience improvements will not be enough fix a broken spec :/

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Q u o t e:
for which the Moonkin's prodigious armor did nothing.

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moonkin's "prodigious" armor is an outdated concept that does very little against ANY damage right now. I'd gladly ditch the armor for a few more defensive tricks.
And owlkin frenzy returning mana? Really??
Unless the proposed resilience changes are going to have a substantially bigger effect than I imagine, I'll just be dying with a full mana bar instead of half of one.

Thanks, I realise you have a lot of stuff to fix in this game and moonkins having such a low population probably pushed us down the list. At least were finally getting some attention.

I still think its stupid that were built as a tank caster yet we have 0 defensive talents in our tree. Mana was a problem so the owlkin change is spot on. The resilience change will definately help, but it helps all the other classes who already have defensive talents as well, so proportionately were in the same boat.

But anyway, Moonkin pvp will get a bit easier ;p thanks

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Q u o t e:
Mana was a problem so the owlkin change is spot on.
But anyway, Moonkin pvp will get a bit easier ;p thanks

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No mana, was not a problem unless you somehow managed to hide unnoticed behind a tree and nuke freely or you spent half your bar pointlessly trying to heal youself in caster form.
The owlkin frenzy change was just bizarre and out of left field and completely different from suggestions that might have actually helped us.
I predict moonkin pvp will stay exactly where it is now.

I'm still waiting on a /cry animation. Far more important than PvP concerns!

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Q u o t e:
At full resilience, you are going to take ~12% less damage in PvP. That's a lot.

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I don't normally do this but......

GC you said when nerfing TG that 10% would have little to no effect on fury pvp. I think you said something like 10% "won't make or break a match". O rly?

Add to that the resil change. Between the rage starvation and wet noodle white hits..... :(

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Q u o t e:
I don't normally do this but......

GC you said when nerfing TG that 10% would have little to no effect on fury pvp. I think you said something like 10% "won't make or break a match". O rly?

Add to that the resil change. Between the rage starvation and wet noodle white hits..... :(

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So... something that Ghostcrawler said about moonkin reminded you about something you imagined he might have said about warriors, so you posted here?

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Q u o t e:

I still think its stupid that were built as a tank caster yet we have 0 defensive talents in our tree. Mana was a problem so the owlkin change is spot on. The resilience change will definately help, but it helps all the other classes who already have defensive talents as well, so proportionately were in the same boat.

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This.

Further to it we aren't the best at burst (hellooooo crit dependency), have no effective CCs in which to nuke someone (in the hope of a crit), don't have a MS effect or anything else, and are reliant on a 3min CD and a 1.5min CD in order to even approach the burst we then need. The gameplay is frustrating, especially when we still have no proper abilities to actually survive (since our ability to survive is notorious as being relatively weak, hence all the 'free honor' comments in bgs, let a lone some of the comments we get in arenas).

The chance for spells to miss is actually a nerf, because whilst frustrating it means that we can no longer have a chance to avoid CC, which was our only way to survive it. All our stuns and our ability to avoid stuns have been taken out over the course of WotLK because they were all 'too much RNG' yet we have not been compensated in anyway. Is there any plans to fix this?

Actually is this seriously all the planned changes for balance druids in PvP?

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Q u o t e:

No mana, was not a problem unless you somehow managed to hide unnoticed behind a tree and nuke freely or you spent half your bar pointlessly trying to heal youself in caster form.
The owlkin frenzy change was just bizarre and out of left field and completely different from suggestions that might have actually helped us.
I predict moonkin pvp will stay exactly where it is now.

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Incorrect. If i could nuke freely I would never run out of mana, my crits would be returning mana. Mana is a significant problem for moonkins in PVP. With a 15k mana pool and expensive spells like starfall and typhoon, plus being reliant on crits from single target spells which we can rarely chain cast off. And running around dotting and ccing things which also give no mana back means running oom very fast.

Basically when we get pressure we can no longer truly use our mana regen mechanic. Owlkin frenzy solves that problem big time.

That being said survivability is till an issue especially against opposing casters.

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Q u o t e:
I wanted to correct a few misperceptions.

The resilience change does nothing to the relative damage caused by crits and non-crits. If you are a crit-dependent class, this change does absolutely nothing different for you. If 40% of your damage came from crits before, 40% of your damage will still come from crits. The only way I can imagine it having an effect is promoting more players to wear resilience which makes you less likely to crit. However the same phenomenon will also cause you to live longer.

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I'm pretty sure I brought something up about this or if I didn't I was thinking it in my head. The problem isn't being that you are going to get less crits, it is that it is hard enough to spike down things as it is pre-resilience nerf, so them taking less damage all around will mean that those larger crit spikes, most of which end up being 6k or less, are going to shrink. My moonfire is allready only critting for 1.5k and that is what I rely on a lot of the time to finish off a target because it takes a long time to wind up a starfire and it can take a long time for wrath to travel to the target. While it means I will live longer (in theory, which I add because a lot of the time I'm dying to overwhelming amounts of damage, so I concede that we will have to wait and see, but its hard to imagine that 10% less damage is going to save me from the amount I was taking), but if I'm having trouble taking down healer dps teams now, whats it going to be like post patch?

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Q u o t e:

The spell miss chance was very RNG, which was frustrating for both the druid and casters attempting to get binary spells off. Changing it to spell damage will also include melee attacks from DKs and paladins that struck for Holy and Shadow damage, for which the Moonkin's prodigious armor did nothing.

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yes, frustrating, but honestly, a very important thing. It is a lot like the random stuns we used to have. They were annoying, but getting rid of them was brutal and not in any way helpful for moonkins. Just because it is annoying doesn't mean that it is overpowered.

Also, if 50% damage reduction on armor + 20% reduction from barkskin and the 25% less chance to be crit from the glyph doesn't stop a rogue from destroying me after a series of stuns I can't get out of, sprinting after me when I try to get away, and cloaking when I try to CC him. This creates a situation where I can't get out of form to heal, which is the situation that all melee puts us in now. Warriors can charge me to catch me in caster, and ret's can make use of hammer's, freedom, and lower my ability to get away quickly, and deathknights can just pull me to them, meaning I can't get distance to heal, and when I do, they can close the gap quickly. How is 6% less damage from spells going to make the difference? I am still probably going to die in the period of stuns, silences, and other CC's.

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Q u o t e:

We realize the Lifebloom nerf does hit Balance druids too, but unlike critical damage above the resilience change does affect the relative power of healing -- it buffed it. Consider that it is harder to cause damage to someone in PvP now but no harder to heal it. As such, the LB nerf will either not be felt at all or will be a slight buff relative to the amount of damage you take. At full resilience, you are going to take ~12% less damage in PvP. That's a lot.

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so 12% less damage, but 20% healing off the base healing, and more importantly 20% off the bloom. The numbers don't seem like they are going to equal out for an allready extremely mana in-efficient spell for balance druids. It costs me almost 1000 mana for each lifebloom I cast, and I need healing that I can get on the go because i can't afford to stop and nourish most of the time. Things see me in pvp and come after me, and in its current state, I can't tank anything so I need mobility. Also, because my healing is allready not efficient and not very powerful, anything that reduces that healing ends me very quickly if I can't hide behind a pillar where it can't hit me. Mortal Strike, Aimed Shot, Wound Poison make it worthless for me to try to heal (with the exception of wound poison if I'm in a position to remove it and heal before I die).

Balance works a lot like how you described mages in the Q&A, we are not tanks in the current form, if you stand and tank a melee, you are going to be dead in less than 10 seconds. We need to be moving around like our mage counterparts and we need things to not be getting close enough to hit us. We don't have the tools to tank, nor the tools to keep effectively mobile when things are after us in many situations. Also, I don't necessarily want to work like a mage for what it is worth. I have 17k armor, I want it to mean something. I used to be able to tank warriors a few seasons ago, and we don't seem to have the tools to deal with casters in terms of stuns and silences, so what exactly happened with the idea of anti

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Q u o t e:
I wanted to correct a few misperceptions.

Owlkin Frenzy is caused by all types of damage, not just physical. We were considering making that change a few patches ago (3.1?) but ended up not doing it.

The resilience change does nothing to the relative damage caused by crits and non-crits. If you are a crit-dependent class, this change does absolutely nothing different for you. If 40% of your damage came from crits before, 40% of your damage will still come from crits. The only way I can imagine it having an effect is promoting more players to wear resilience which makes you less likely to crit. However the same phenomenon will also cause you to live longer.

The spell miss chance was very RNG, which was frustrating for both the druid and casters attempting to get binary spells off. Changing it to spell damage will also include melee attacks from DKs and paladins that struck for Holy and Shadow damage, for which the Moonkin's prodigious armor did nothing.

We realize the Lifebloom nerf does hit Balance druids too, but unlike critical damage above the resilience change does affect the relative power of healing -- it buffed it. Consider that it is harder to cause damage to someone in PvP now but no harder to heal it. As such, the LB nerf will either not be felt at all or will be a slight buff relative to the amount of damage you take. At full resilience, you are going to take ~12% less damage in PvP. That's a lot.

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To me this reads like a defense of the changes and an implicit claim that they provide the buffs we need. If that's the case, it seems like there's a real disconnect between the players and the developers regarding Moonkin PvP. That greatly saddens me, because it destroys any hope I might have had that my favorite spec will ever get to a place where it's fun to PvP with.