Balance Druids and Wrath: More Talent Review

 

You'll need all your new talents to take down this guy

So that first post became lengthier than I expected. But now that we have some of the major talents out of the way, I want to bring up and discuss the other new talents we have in this early build. Let’s start with the brand new talents, because those are flashy and have new icons. 

 

First off we have Improved Moonkin Form, where our Moonkin Aura can have a 100% chance for those affected to increase their spell haste by 20% for 10 seconds after scoring a critical strike. There has been some talk of internal cooldowns, but this is a very strong talent for groups and solo alike. 20% spell haste is huge, and with the reduction of the GCD can allow us to shoot off faster Wrath chains. 

Verdict: Great

Next comes Owlkin Frenzy. This is a solo or PvP talent only, because it relies on getting hit. The proc chance is a little low, 15%, but does work off of any attacks, so spells are included. The effect is great, especially for PvP: immunity to pushback and 10% increased damage. 

Verdict: Great for PvP, limited for PvE

 

I mentioned Gale Winds in the previous post, but we should mention it again. It increases your Typhoon and Hurricane damage by 50% and increases your Cyclone range by 20% (from 20 yards to 24) with 2 talents. This is very strong if you are using those AoE spells at all, but obviously weak if you have no use for them in your normal gameplay. For 2 talents, I would say it is well worth it. The Cyclone range helps combat the recent nerf and could help in the arena.

Verdict: Fantastic for AoE gameplay or PvP 

 

Eclipse is a tricky one, and has undergone some recent changes. Currently it gives you a 60% chance on Wrath crits to increase your Starfire crit chance by 10% and a 60% chance on Starfire crits to increase your damage with Wrath by 10%. This is with 3 talent points. Currently the affect lasts 30 seconds but has a 2 minute cooldown. I don’t know if the two effects share a cooldown. We can only hope they don’t. 

Verdict: Decent, needs tweaking

 

Nature’s Fury, with 5 talents, ensures that your Wrath and Starfire spells add a debuff to your target which increases Nature and Arcane damage by 2% , stacking up to 3 times. This is a great debuff, but 5 talents is a hefty price to pay. I have seen that there might be a second component not yet implemented. Let’s hope so. I’d probably get it anyway, but it’s current talent sink-status is unfortunate. 

Verdict: A great talent sink

 

And those are the only new ones. But there are lots of changes. I will mostly list these with some minor comments.

• All talents which affect Wrath and Starfire affect Starfall now, except Moonfury. This could be inadvertent and will hopefully change to include Moonfury. 
• Brambles now increases Treant damage by 75% and gives Treants and Thorns a 15% chance to daze the target. This could be great, but could also be lackluster. Your 3 talent points mean nothing if Thorns is purged. 
• Nature’s reach now also decreases your Balance spell threat by 30%. Huge. This helps us stay in Balance more, and not have to waste Resto talents getting threat reduction. 
• Lunar guidance nerfed from 25% to 12% at max rank. This is a real nerf, but I have also heard that it is made up for by itemization. That remains to be seen. I’m wary when it comes to itemization.
• Improved Faerie Fire now also includes spells. I personally don’t like this talent, but for high-end raiding, it could be useful, and this only makes it more so. A good change. 
• Force of Nature cooldown reduced to 2 minutes from 3. Now we get to drop them more. If we get a pet bar I’ll be content with FoN. They are extremely mana efficient, if squishy and spastic. 
• Moonkin Form ditched the melee mana regeneration mechanic and now refunds 30% of the base cost of a spell if it crits. * 
• *Just kidding. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

Well, that’s a quick summary if you were unfamiliar with the changes coming to your feathered beast. I’m getting pumped, even if it is far away. I just hope that a 3.0 patch comes soon so we can play with the talents. As always… we’ll see.