It's Finally Here!
Okay, so, this is hot off the presses. Actually, let’s kind of hope that you aren’t coming here for news, but in case you missed it, WoW Insider has what appear to be legitimate Beta Patch notes as the WotLK Beta starts to be implemented (no emails sent out as of this writing, according to WoW Insider). Highlghts.
Well, I might as well be a prophet. My earlier post about Moonkin Form and mana regeneration is vindicated! I’m going to copy and paste this to make sure no errors leak in.
- Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.
Did you read that? Read it again! Now jump up and down and scream like a little girl, like I almost did. We finally have a mana regeneration based on our primary role! And it works differently from most (perhaps all) other such regeneration mechanics, because it regenerates 2% of our total mana instead of reducing the mana cost of a spell cast. Having done no math, this is probably the best thing I could have hoped for! Maybe we won’t even have to spec Intensity with this. I promise to update tomorrow or someday soon with some math to vindicate my emotional response. Okay, I have to go on.
- Nature’s Grace (Balance): Now also reduces the global cooldown of your Wrath spell by 50% while in effect.
Yes, that is right. No longer are the days of failed Wrath chains because of that silly little Global Cooldown (the time after casting a spell when you can’t use another ability, which by default is 1.5 seconds). Because our talented cast time for Wrath is 1.5 seconds, Nature’s Grace essentially locked us out of anything past our second Wrath crit in a row, because we still couldn’t cast faster than every 1.5 seconds. But what this means is that Wrath’s GCD will only be .75, which means that you can indeed cast it every 1 second if you get a chain going, and the extra cushion on the GCD will help immensely to cope with lag and computer-to-server times. This works even better because Nature’s Grace recognizes when a spell will crit before it reaches the target and thus is instantly applied. This great new change will make us much better in terms of DPS when we need it (and with the Moonkin Form change, will actually help us regenerate mana!)
Those are the biggest Balance Druid changes there. Unfortunately we don’t see mention of the other leaked Alpha talents except that Starfall has indeed made it this far because the lower tier talents affecting Wrath and Starfire now also affect it. So this doesn’t mean anything really. Those talents may or may not still be there. Let’s hope so!
There is too much to go over, just go read for the rest of Druids and the other classes (which I haven’t even read yet, I just had to post this). There are some great little tidbits for our other brotherly specs. Tree of Life can cast all healing spells now and is no longer slowed. Feral Charge works in Cat Form. Oh, so many! Wooohoooo!
/wave
“Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.”
Jumps up and down and screams like a little girl in the presence of a male, teen idol astride a pink pegasus! …gag. Srsly though there was some unexpected and involuntary squeeing. . .imagine what Tom cruise did on Oprah’s couch; it was like that x10!
Okay, okay, so maybe I screamed a little, just a little. Moonkin Form is fixed!