If only this was possible
A long time ago, in a time before TBC, we brave, we few, we Balance Druids were known by the oh-so-clever title OOMkins. The problem was our itemization was so bad, and the talents non-existent, that we honestly couldn’t last long during fights without drinking. The talent that is now Intensity was our only hope for regeneration, and it still wasn’t enough. Now the itemization is better and we have Dreamstate, but one of our main weaknesses remains our inability to last as long as other casters, especially in boss fights (although it is annoying while soloing and deadly in long Arena matches as well).
For example, Elemental Shaman do fairly well with their mana. Each time they crit with a spell, the next two spells cost 40% less mana. And they have a high-end talent which gives a 20% chance to cast a second spell which does half damage, no threat, and costs zero mana whenever they cast a Lightning Spell. These two talents combined (along with Mana Spring totem) give them fairly good mana regeneration.
Or look at Mages. They don’t need to spec for the 30% mana regeneration we do, because they have a spell they can use on themselves (Mage Armor) which accomplishes the same feat. But not too deep into Arcane, they can have a 10% chance on each spell cast to have the next spell cost zero mana. These combined with Evocation make them do pretty well.
The only active regeneration we have is Innervate, and depending on just what play style you participate in, you might be expected to save that for another player (such as a healer).
Unfortunately, the only other way we can get mana is through melee. While our Moonkin Form bonus can actually regenerate mana very well (not to mention, endlessly), it is inefficient in terms of how we accomplish our main role–damage. Both Elemental Shamans and slightly-Arcane Mages need to be doing damage to save mana. We need to essentially stop for a minute or so and whack a mob with a big stick (which we must acquire first) to get back to our primary role. This is why it is flawed.
There are other concerns of course. On certain boss fights, for example, you can’t really just walk up and start whacking away. AoE damage prevents that, or certain other placement restraints. While soloing, it can be difficult because when you decide to fight a mob in melee to get mana back, you take a lot more damage which then needs to be healed (or bandaged). If healed, this reduces the net gain of mana you can regenerate. Now, our 400% bonus to armor can help a lot if fighting a melee mob, but the issues with itemization for Leather currently reduce that bonus from Plate to maybe more like Mail or Leather depending on how much cloth you wear. And just try getting any reasonable mana back from that MS Warrior in SV trying to smash your antlers in. It ain’t gonna happen.
So what to do? Well, this topic has come up a lot, of course. The typical suggestion is just replace all that melee mumbo jumbo on Moonkin Form to give us a percentage of the mana cost of a spell if it crits. Seeing as the form gives us 5% spell crit anyway, it seems rather synergistic. I approve. Another is to give a second talent which improves our Moonkin Aura to cause party members to do the same. Now, in Wrath, we are getting such a talent, but instead of returning mana, it increases spell casting speed by 20%. This is of course fantastic, but sometimes your DPS is more limited by how much mana you have than by your casting speed. Of course, this could be flipped around drastically and it might appear in the final release version. I would probably prefer that to the current version.
Another common idea is to copy Priests’ Shadowfiend and let our Treants return mana equal to a percentage of their damage done. The cooldown is being dropped to 2 minutes in Wrath, and if they gave us a pet bar AND mana regeneration, they would become very useful and necessary (and even more important for our enemies to incapacitate or destroy, which unfortunately isn’t very hard right now). In fact, I’d be just smitten.
There has also been some suggestion of using spirit more in Wrath. If you take a look at some Warlock talents, you see that Blizzard is even making their Spirit more worthwhile. Hopefully they will ramp up our Spirit both on gear and in its effectiveness for us. This still relies on having the Intensity talent (which just gets harder with all the wonderful new talents so deep in Balance). The other possibility is to add a lot more Intellect on our gear, because our one Balance talent for mana relies on that. And they can certainly add pure Mp5, although Intellect helps our mana pool, regeneration and critical strike chance.
It’s kind of cute to see a Moonkin in melee, but unfortunately it doesn’t work quite as well as it could or should. Hopefully in Wrath, and maybe later builds we might see in Beta, we Moonkins will have a better way to keep supplying our boom, and change our nickname permanently from OOMkin to Boomkin.
/wave
The Talkback