LAZER CHICKEN

I won’t apologize for the long gap between posts, since the reason is a really good one (my wife is due for our second child shortly, so life is nuts) and not just sheer laziness.  I still plan on a reflection of 5.3 post, but with the notes on 5.4 being pretty huge for us, I wanted to hit that first.

So let’s talk about the major lazer changes in 5.4

1. Nature’s Swiftness is going baseline for Resto.  Yikes!  Awesome for our leafy brethren, and AWFUL for us.  This, combined with the next change on the list (#2) are making it look like we will be returning to the old dreaded style of ‘train the Moonkin all day erryday’ strategy for melee cleaves.  Definitely going to miss the instant healing touch after coming out of a stun/silence or the instant clone to peel a warrior with cds popped.  Big change.

2.  15% damage reduction on Moonkin form gone!!  Blizz has stated the reason for doing this is trying to make melee more enticing in a raid setting, since ranged have become so much more likely to be chosen.  Unfortunately, this will make us EXTREMELY trainable, unless it’s coupled with another broad change, such as a buff to resil (especially since Locks and Spriests are receiving the same nerf). Again, hoping they are buffing baseline resil or something of the like to compensate (and a blue post did confirm they have something planned, just not announced yet).

3. Heart of the Wild healing cut in half – well, we had to see this coming, didn’t we? Moonkin and Ferals turn into godmode healers (not offhealers, it’s literally as powerful as some healers with fewer spell options) for 45 seconds and it was too powerful.  The good news is that it may make the other talents more interesting with their changes (more on that in a sec).  The bad is obviously it makes 2s a little less viable again, since our offheals were one of the main things that made 2s possible.  

4. Talent tiers are getting changed again!  This is typically a good thing, to make the non-viable talents more interesting choices, though taking NS away from us is really a huge deal.  The changes look like this:

• In Tier II, NS is being replaced by Ysera’s Gift, a passive heal for you or your teammates.  Could be useful vs. dot cleaves, but it’s hard to say if it will compete with Cenarion Ward.  Renewal is still garbage, but is the only large instant heal available, and the NS change feels like Blizz wants to force us into taking it if we prefer a large instant heal.  TBD on the best talent, though Cenarion Ward looks like the best at first glance.
• Tier III only saw the # restriction on mass entanglement removed, so that is a big buff for RBGs and a slight buff for arena vs. mass pet teams (hunter/demo teams, for example) where you can root the entire team if they are grouped up.  Not a huge deal, outside of RBG’s where you can potentially root beam the ENTIRE TEAM in side a solar beam after a dk mass grip.  
• Tier IV is where things get interesting again.  Incarn hasn’t changed and we already have the awesome new Treants, but they made a really bizarre change to Soul of the Forest that I’m really unimpressed with at first glance.  First off, this was a great talent for beginners to use, as it gave them one less button to push or think about while they learned the spec.  The new talent is quite complex by adding a new spell into your normal spell priority (astral communion) that was primarily used in the passed to get into eclipse outside of combat.  For advanced players it could be interesting, but I can’t see taking it over the other two, especially with the incredible utility of Treants.  And it’s now not a good choice for beginners either because of how complex it is.  Will have to see how it plays out.
• Tier VI also saw some big changes, including the reduction by half of the healing bonus from HOTW that I mentioned earlier.  Dream of Cenarius had a complete redesign like SOTF, and now boosts your HT casts all the time, as well as giving you a damage bonus for your eclipse after using HT.  So this looks great for feral, since they can use their procs on instant HT’s, but can we really see many Moonkin getting a ton of use out of casting an HT before unleashing damage in each eclipse?  I think it will be near impossible to have good uptime of the buff, unless you aren’t the train target (and with the other changes, I’d be surprised if we weren’t the target), so this may end up being a dead talent for us again – time will tell.  Nature’s Vigil changed largely for Resto, but it has a small change for us – if you cast a heal while it’s up, it will now heal another target for part of that healing.  Could be a good choice vs. dot cleaves, since your rejuvs across your team will heal 1.5 times the usual, and NV has great uptime with a 1.5 min cd.  Still tough to beat HOTW, especially because of the static 6% int.

The only other druid change that might be an issue (not sure yet about the math) is the large mana cost increase on our spells and the larger tie in to eclipse changes to gain mana.  This could start to widdle down our mana to ensure that we keep moving our eclipse bar so that we can afford to offheal, but I haven’t seen math yet to show if the increase is large enough.

Well that’s enough for now – what are your thoughts on the changes?  Hit me on twitter (@lazerchickenwow) and let me know.  Until then – tab dot like a boss!

Lazerchicken out.

Check it – we are even recruiting a lazer chicken! (or any other range class).  I play ele when I raid (I know, i know, the shame) and it’s a really fun guild, with great progress and not full of dbags.  Don’t worry, I still pvp mostly as lazer ;D

http://www.undyingresolution.com/ for more info

11/12 in TOT currently and progressing quickly (four new kills last week alone).  Elune is a really decent mid pop server.  For more detailed info, check the recruitment post below.  Hope to raid with one of you soon.  (Alliance, Elune, 25man, 8-11pm EST Wed/Thurs/Sun)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6933913545

As requested, this post is a collection of my Do’s and Don’ts for arena:

DO apply faerie fire liberally to all rogues.  It’s literally game changing and reduces their damage and cc significantly.  I sometimes even reapply before the previous one falls off to leave no gap between.

DON’T forget positioning.  It’s really easy to get caught out in mid because you’re chasing a target that you think you can kill.  It’s also really easy for the other team to see you doing that, turn around, and splat you into a pile of dirty feathers.

DO utilize your utility a ton.  I even have to remind myself sometimes when I find myself spamming damage that things like removing a warrior enrage with soothe, placing shrooms to slow around a pillar or on the bridge, tossing out rejuvs to relieve pressure (did you make your party1/party2 rejuv macro yet?) and using a symbiosis purge or mass dispel can change the tide of a game.

DON’T freak out if you’re getting trained.  In past expacs, getting trained was the name of the game for Moonkin and we usually died with low damage because of it.  These days we are a lot tankier and have more outs than we used to.  Relax, cc when needed (through their burst) with a roots/typhoon/roar/bash/vortex/beam combo of some sort and blink/wild charge away.

DO apply pressure to their entire team, even when you’re closing in on a kill.  So that priest is at 20%, and your instincts say “HIT HIM MANY TIMES!!!”  Very rarely do I find this to be the best strategy, unless you’re free to cast an eclipsed starfire/starsurge without fear of interrupt.  Instead, continue to dot the rest of his team and their pets – not only will he have to get himself back to a safe spot, but now the rest of his team is widdling down.  Many a game has been won for Moonkin where all three targets are at 20% because of this multi-dotting, and your partner or a surge proc finish someone off.

DON’T cc just for the sake of cc.  Diminishing returns can quickly come back to bite you when you just root the warrior because he’s annoying, he gets out, and pops his cds.  Now you can’t root him again for full duration.  Choosing when to use cc is hugely important, especially with clone, since it stops your dots from ticking (this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clone).

DO cyclone your target when you’re close to a kill, and they get a big def. cd put on them.  If you are about to kill that dk and all of a sudden he has ironbark/pain sup/life coccoon/full lifebloom stack about to fall off, you can easily counter him by putting him in cyclone, controlling the healer just as it’s about to come off, and then finish him off after the clone ends.  This way his healer can’t top him up while you’re unable to do full damage.

DON’T let losses get you down.  Learn from your mistakes and find things you did well to make sure you continue to do them.  One thing I like to do when looking to improve is to pick one spell that I think I don’t utilize enough – let’s say it’s Nature’s Swiftness – and make sure I’m using it to it’s fullest potential.  Anytime a game ends, I look to see if it’s off cooldown and if I didn’t use it, I make sure to note points that I could have.  Maybe I could have NS cloned/rooted a dps.  Maybe a big NS healing touch would have relieved pressure.  If you do this with a different spell each night, before you know it they will all become part of your subconscious playstyle.

And finally, DO make sure you’re having fun.  I’m a big proponent of taking a break or calling it a night when you get very frustrated.  We play this game to be competitive, sure, but it’s also for leisure.  If you find you’re not having fun or getting really angry, take a break.  You can always come back in an hour after catching an episode of Dexter or eating a sandwich (or doing both at the same time?!?!)  It happens to all of us (I mean hell, thug cleave this season??) but learn to get up and walk away when you need to.

Hopefully some of this helps and I’m planning to post some additional comps to my play style series soon, including the one I’ve been running that I find VERY different than any of the others previously (hint: I’m playing with a class that’s been historically HORRIBLE for us to play with because of lousy synergy).  Until then, 200k starsurge crits FTW!

So for those of you that frequent Arena Junkies (or AJ, as many call it), you will probably notice that there has been something of a renaissance going on over the last couple of weeks.  Posters are fed up with the low quality of posts, lack of content, and general decline of the site.  Some people have gone about doing something to fix it, and that’s where this site comes in.

Vanguards asked me to post the Moonkin guide on the site, and now you can find it in the Druid forums (as a stickie)!  Stoked to be able to give back to AJ, after years of learning from the site.  In just the last week four new guides have been posted (Hpal, Spriest, Enhance, and this one) and it shows a very positive trend.  Have a look next time you’re over on AJ.

On a side note, I got a couple of emails lately with some column requests, and i will definitely look at doing them shortly – just finished up the AJ guide, so now I have a little more free time.  Thanks for the responses, and one day when I get some more ‘free time’ (if you have kids, you’ll understand why that’s hilarious to pretend you actually get free time anymore) I will finally transition the blog to a format that allows commenting, so we can have more open discussion. 

Until then, pop Incarnation and scare the crap out of people in arena!

So with 5.2 barely off of the burner and placed on the arena table for consumption, Blizz has already been pouring on the additional PvP changes for the new PTR.  PvP developer Holinka (follow him on twitter @Holinka) has been awesome about communicating with the community and working together to create good changes for the game.  Just wanted to talk about some of the live changes first, and then I’ll hit a few of the PTR changes after -

Live (5.2)

• Rogues are INSANE (didn’t I tell you to go find one?).  If you can’t beat em, join em.  Dancing with the Stars is a stupidly powerful comp and lots of fun.
• DKs are actually viable partners!  I always wanted to play with some DK friends, but found that it was a bad idea in the past, due to their lack of peels when I’m being trained.  With a 30 sec. CD asphyxiate, they now have the tools to shut down burst on a regular basis as needed.
• Crit baby!  Stacking crit all the way is much more rewarding IMHO than the ol’ staple of haste.  Not only are the starsurge procs more frequent, but they are also critting on impact for some awesome burst.  Yes my clones are super slow to cast, but I personally like this playstyle better, especially playing with a disc priest (he gets clone from symbiosis, so I rarely cast it anyways)
• Mass Entanglement is meh =/  I had high hopes for this talent, but so far haven’t found it as useful as Typhoon outside of RBG’s.  It breaks far too easy from damage (while hunters can turret damage into their rooted targets?!?!) and seems too situational.  I’ll still be working with it, but I was hoping for it to be better TBH.

PTR (5.3)

• LOVE the gear change.  Being able to start gearing a new toon in bgs without getting decimated because of your awful gear will be great.  Sure you’ll do almost no damage, but at least you won’t get one shot non stop.  Make sure to check out some of the great write-ups done by Olivia Grace on wow.joystiq.com.
• Ele is finally getting some purdy buffs (lightning bolt casted while moving is baked in, and the glyph now gives a 10% damage reduction) and yes I’m happy for my alt!  They are finally getting close with Ele not being such a glass cannon.  Great partner for a Moonkin, too!
• Shadow Priests are finally seeing nerfs to Mass Dispel and Life Swap (totally warranted), hopefully bringing them down to earth with other casters.  Up until now they have had the perfect storm of damage, utility, and off-healing.  Glad to see them moving back to having some weaknesses.
• Ilvl upgrades is NOT returning to PvP!  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  I never even got close to full upgraded last season and when I tried to play with an honor geared partner at the beginning of this season he literally got steamrolled because of the stat difference.  It will be fun to get fully geared, and then work on offsets for messing around maybe as a guardian FC, for example.

That’s it for now.  Make sure you follow what Holinka is up to on Twitter and communicate often.  He is a great ally for our community and can only utilize our feedback if we give it to him.

Until next time, it’s lazer time baby!

A very fun comp that can do some insane burst when played correctly.

Teammates:  Fire Mage, Resto Shaman/Disc Priest

Ideal Talents: WC or Displacer, NS or Cenarion Ward, varies, Incarnation, Vortex, Vigil

Symbiosis:  Your healer will be your ideal partner in this comp.  The shaman will gain Prowl, allowing a triple stealth opener, while you gain purge (ensuring that everyone on the team can dispel enemy buffs).  The priest will gain Cyclone (which is fantastic for ensuring targets are getting cc’d when you are getting trained and can’t cast) and you will gain Mass Dispel on a one-minute cooldown (which can literally be the difference between winning and losing a game when you can get your healer out of cc).

CC Diminishing Returns:  Dragon’s Breath & Disorienting Roar; Deep Freeze & Bash & Capacitor Totem & Ring of Frost; Frost Nova & Entangling Roots & Mass Entanglement & Earthgrasp Totem & Frozen Power;

Playstyle:  This comp is a hybrid between the previous two (Dancing With the Stars and LSD 2.0), in that you will be dotting everything for maximum spread damage again, but you have that nice burst window every time Deep Freeze is available for your mage.  The opener against this team can be pretty nasty if the opposing team stacks up, as you have a large number of AoE cc’s available.

Typical opener for this comp will be to start dotting the entire team, while letting the mage control melee with novas and DB (DB doesn’t break on dot damage!).  Since you will be avoiding speccing Disorienting Roar for this comp, the mage should be able to DB on cd without having to worry about diminishing returns.  Use Celestial Alignment when you know you’ll have some free time to get dots on everything rolling (including pets) to increase pressure on the opposing team.

Kill attempts will revolve around your Mage.  When going for a kill, let the mage deep the target (with the proper mage setup for procs), while you drop a vortex/beam on the healer (if attacking a dps).  Fire Mages do nasty damage in a deep if setup right (sometimes 4 instant Pyroblast in a row!), so a properly timed vortex/beam, especially if you can typhoon them back inside, will easily amount to plenty of defensive cooldowns being popped by your enemy – or likely a kill!

Tips:

1. Play defensive – you’re entire team is pretty easy to kill for a decent melee cleave if you get overly aggressive for your kills.  Don’t get baited into bad spots just to get a kill, knowing that your mage will have Deep available again in just a few seconds.
2. Any target is viable – going on a healer is pretty nasty if you can keep the dps from crushing you while you’re doing it (deep, blanket counterspell, vortex/beam/ring of frost), because of the insane amount of time you can keep the healer from casting while you blow them up.  DPS are also good, though, as you can shut down a healer pretty well during your kill attempts with your massive amount of cc.
3. Utilize Mass Dispel – despite being on a one minute cooldown (and costing a load of mana), this can be game changing.  When the KFC gets a trap off on your priest and are trying to go mongo on your mage, using MD to free your healer will ensure they have their trinket available later on.
4. Keep dots rolling – although this comp has awesome burst potential during Deep Freeze, a lot of what makes it so good is the wear and tear that Moonkin dots combined with Living Bomb and Combustion from the Mage can do to the opposing healer who is trying to keep up.  Avoid overwriting stronger dots when you can, but just make sure everything is dotted constantly (including pets!).
5. Fight pressure with pressure – a lot of time there is the tendency to try and offheal through enemy burst, when really you should be countering them by popping your own cooldowns to push them back.  Don’t be afraid to utilize massive cc and pure damage when the enemy goes mongo.

All in all, it’s a very fun comp to play.  Fire does require a pretty skilled Mage to play right now, with the massive number of melee cleave teams out there, but there is loads of potential.

This is probably my favorite Moonkin comp to play, and should be VERY powerful next season (s13).

Teammates: Sub Rogue, Disc Priest (although other healers can work)

Ideal Talents: Wild Charge, NS, varies, Force of Nature or Incarn, Roar (defensive) or Vortex (offensive), HOTW (defensive) or Vigil (offensive)

Symbiosis: Both are excellent choices.  Rogue gives you Cloak of Shadows if you’re playing against a caster cleave and he gets a damage reduction CD in Growl (his version is different than the Druid version).  Priest will be the go to against melee cleaves, as he gets CYCLONE!! and you get Mass Dispel (on a 1 min cooldown).  Both are very gamebreaking – if they train the rogue, you have MD to get your healer out of cc; if they train you, your healer can clone without fear of diminishing returns; if they train the healer, you can get the healer out of a clutch HoJ or Strangulate or get the Rogue out cc so he can peel the healer.

CC Diminishing Returns: Disorienting Roar & Blind & Fear, Pounce & Cheap Shot, Kidney and Bash

Playstyle: This comp is fantastic because it can burst every minute, with the lineup of Solarbeam and Shadowdance (and Force of Nature if you spec it).  In the offensive version of the comp (meaning you’re not playing against something that has very front loaded burst like TSG, triple DPS, or KFC) you’ll be picking up Nature’s Vigil and Ursol’s Vortex as well.  Every one of these has a one minute cooldown, allowing you to swap onto any low target with stupid burst every single minute.  The defensive version of the comp (for when you need to turtle out some huge front-loaded burst) will want to pick up HOTW for some major off-healing and Disorienting Roar for another awesome peel cc during the enemy team’s cooldowns.  

The opener for this comp will always come out of group stealth from the rogue.  Ideally he’ll get a sap on one of the dps, while you open with a root>solarbeam (or Vortex>solarbeam if you’re specced for it) on the enemy healer.  This gives you the opportunity for your first Shadowdance (and all 1  minute cds – Starfall, Force of Nature and Nature’s Vigil) on one DPS, while the enemy healer starts falling way behind.  Coming out of the sap/solarbeam combo, if you can get a cyclone/blind off on the same too people who were already cc’d, you have a very good chance of scoring a kill.  

If you don’t score a kill – DONT PANIC!!  This comp is not at all about scoring an early kill.  If the enemy is able to stop your kill attempt, then start spreading dots/starfall.  This is a good opportunity to pop Celestial Alignment and dot everything (including pets).  Your rogue can then swap to whatever target makes the most sense for him (based on positioning, relative health, stun DR) and work on setting up the kill for the next Shadowdance/Solarbeam combo.  Make sure you are in Eclipse before your Rogue uses Shadowdance, and you should be scoring kills in no time!

Tips:

1. Supposedly they are making Starfall not hit cc’d targets in 5.2 – until we see that this is true 100% of the time, the biggest thing to watch out for in this comp is Starfall breaking Sap and Blind.  Make sure you are using it wisely (and communicating it well) and that your Rogue is watching for Starfall when he goes for a Blind or Sap (it’s something he’ll become used to as you play the comp more.
2. Healer kills are VERY viable for this comp.  If you are good about dotting everything during the time between Shadowdance/Solar beam cd’s, there is a good chance the healer will be sitting at 60-70% when you swap to him.  A well timed Garrote>Kidney>Solarbeam/Vortex>Paralytic Stun is horrific for a healer to deal with.  If your Rogue isn’t peeled properly through this, the healer could be in for over 20 seconds straight of CC (which he will never survive)!!
3. Priest having cyclone can be amazing – but watch out for DR.  If you are getting trained all game, this is a great time for your Symbiosis to be on the Priest so he can keep cloning while you are unable to.  Just make sure you are communicating your clones, the same way a Lock/Spriest have to do with fears when playing Shadowplay.
4. Don’t forget your offheals.  Even just tossing out occasional Rejuv’s (especially when you can’t cast because you’re being trained) can be huge for your healer.

I hope you have as much fun playing this comp as I do.  When you get the hang of it, there is an incredible amount of everything – CC, burst, offhealing, utility, and mobility.  Pew, pew!

This is the first, in what I hope to be a lengthy series of posts on Moonkin playstyle in different 3v3 comps.  I thought we’d kick it off with one of the more straight forward (and super fun) comps that is available to us: LSD 2.0

Teammates: Resto Shaman, Affliction Warlock

Ideal Talents: Displacer, NS, varies, Incarn or SOTF, Vortex, Vigil

Symbiosis: Lock will be ideal (he gets rejuv, you get a defensive CD that makes you take less damage and become immune to interrupts for a short time use of his portal) since it will increase your mobility edit* Thanks to Spammer on Arena Junkies for catching this error!).  Shaman is also viable (he gets prowl, you get purge) but less important, since you won’t typically be purging too often in this comp (unless facing disc) and the lock can’t stealth so it won’t be a triple stealth opener.

CC Diminishing Returns: Shadowfury & Bash & Capacitor Totem, Earthbind & Entangling Roots

Playstyle: This comp is your traditional dot cleave.  The goal is fairly simple: dot EVERYTHING.  I literally mean everything, including pets.  The real strength of LSD 2.0 resides in getting everything low gradually, so that the healer just cannot keep up.  It’s not uncommon to be playing this comp and to see the entire team die within 10 seconds of each other, rather than just killing one player while the others are close to topped off as can usually be the case.  Popping Celestial Alignment and trinket early can start to really accelerate the pressure, especially if you toss a vortex/beam onto the healer just before popping it so that the dots can really tick away before they are able to start healing.  Ideally your Lock will use Dark Soul at the same time, and you’ll find the pressure to be overwhelming.  Incarnation and Nature’s Vigil can be stacked and used almost anytime you’re free to put out more pressure, since you’ll still just be dotting, surging, and casting starfall most of the time.

It’s pretty unnecessary to ever cast in this comp, outside of a rare cyclone or using Starsurge (if for some reason it comes off cooldown without proccing), so it’s pretty new player friendly with very little fear of a lockout.  I recommend avoiding cloning unless necessary, as it slows your damage down – obviously you need to evaluate the situation and use it when appropriate (CC’ing a warrior with all his CDs popped should take priority over dotting him).  Very little DR on CC here, as well, and almost none of it breaks on damage if you avoid taking Disorienting Roar.

Tips: 

1. Avoid the “finish him he’s low!” mentality when playing LSD 2.0.  It’s really easy to get caught up with a player that is sub 10% and wanting to finish him off.  That’s really not the goal of this comp – if you just keep on dotting and switching, something will eventually die (the damage is literally unhealable).  Spamming an instant into somebody to get a kill should be used sparingly, and you should rather turn to other targets to make sure they remain dotted during that time so that everything is still ticking down.
2. Shaman can actually do some decent DPS.  When targets are getting low, if your healer can cast without fear of a lockout, and assuming your team isn’t super low, make sure they are tossing out a flame shock/lava burst combo every now and again. Lava burst always crits if flame shock is up on the target.  They should also be using their fire elemental and storm last totem for that little bit of extra damage for the team.
3. Use your pillars.  It’s pretty easy to stop out, dot something, and step back in this comp.  Don’t be afraid to kite around pillars, dot and hide, and really play defensively when necessary.  Your dots will still be doing damage, even if you are LOS.

Hopefully this was informative and I’m glad to hear any feedback and discussion over on Arena Junkies in the lazerchicken thread!  Happy hunting, feathered friends.

There has been quite the stir over the last couple of days in regards to a single PvE trinket and what its implications will be for PvP.  I know what you’re thinking – PvE gear isn’t supposed to be worth our time in PvP anymore, since it lacks PvP Power/Resilience.  I’ll go into detail below.

The Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen has a random proc every 2 minutes that ensures that all of your spells will be critical strikes for 4 seconds.  Doesn’t sound like that big of a deal on the surface, but when combined with a fix to the way Moonkin dots work (explained by GC here), this could be the new Taste For Blood Warrior 1-shot.  Basically, Moonkin dots will now function like all other classes, in that it will take a snapshot of your stats when cast and not update as procs fall off or are gained.  This means that should you place a dot during the 4 second 100% crit proc, every single tick of the dot will proc over the duration.  Since dot crits can proc instant Starsurges for us, we can literally become a poultry machine gun for a duration of 15-25 seconds, depending on how long the surges extend the dots for (if the starsurges themselves are critting.  How broken will this be?  Let’s look at the ‘very complex’ rotation required to set this up.

1. Match begins – dot stuff
2. Eventually trinket procs – keep dotting stuff.  Dispell has an 8 second cd – as long as you dot more than one target during the 4 second buff, the healer can’t take the dots off fast enough (aside from abilities like Cloak of Shadows).
3. Pop Incarnation/Nature’s Vigil/on-use trinket/race bufs and begin turretting instant starsurges into any target within range.
4. Collect points.

Because it’s random and you could easily be cc’d for the four seconds it’s procced, this obviously won’t happen every game.  Neither did TFB one-shots by warriors earlier this season, but when they did, warriors could solo entire teams.  During cooldowns, it’s not uncommon to crit over 200k starsurges.  

The only thing stopping this from becoming a global fest will be the delay on each proc (starsurge procs won’t let you chain cast – the latest one cast has to hit the target before you can cast the next one, so closer targets will be ideal) and CC if the other team is quick enough on the ball.  But expect PvE players to pop into arena with a base amount of PvP gear and this trinket and cause quite a stir once people have progressed to this boss in 5.2.  The damage from starsurge procs is already unhealable with Incarnation up, even without this trinket.  Having the ability to chain cast like this will make the tears of other classes flow like Moonkins have never seen before (it may be a little glorious after all of our seasons of being underpowered, even if it is insanely broken =p).

Hopefully Ghostcrawler and team will take a good hard look at not allowing this in PvP.  As fun as things like this will be for PvE, it’s far too gamebreaking in arena in the style of legendary weapons, DFO, Cunning of the Cruel, Bauble, and Unheeded Warning.  We shall see!  

Until then, keep those lazers warm for serious enemy cooking!

First off – sorry for being MIA for quite a while.  Unfortunately, I have managed to get mono this month so I’ve been having trouble getting a post together.  But enough about that.  Let’s get lazering!

With 5.2 on the horizon (some people predicting that we are only 4-6 weeks away), it’s time to start looking at some of the major changes and how they affect us in PvP.

• Nature’s Vigil nerfed to the ground! – Well as unfair as it is for Moonkins to pop vigil and Incarnation (with our on use trinket) for a ridiculous amount of burst over the duration, it was bound to see a nerf.  We were seeing upwards of 200k insta-surge crits during cooldowns, which is pretty broken when you get them back to back (totally possible).  The new version is 10% damage/healing increase every 90 seconds.  The bad: it doesn’t really line up nicely with anything.  The good: if you combine it with your on-use trinket (1 min cd) you can potentially force defensive cds on the other team more often than the every 3 mins when you have incarnation available.  Getting deterrence from a hunter or block from a mage (or resto druid =p) in between incarnation cds can help score a kill later.
• Displacer Beast =((( – I can just say flat out that this one is a killer for Moonkin.  The new version doesn’t stealth you (instead it gives you a speed increase) which was by far the best part of the talent.  Being able to displacer a cc or chaos bolt was HUGE.  It will still allow us to displacer>travel form to get away, but it’s a pretty big survivability nerf.
• Typhoon and Mass Entanglement 30 sec cd – This is a fantastic change IMO.  Typhoon was really the only choice here, and with the rampant amount of melee cleaves out there, being able to Mass entangle when the hunter sends his zoo, can be game changing.  Typhoon will still be great on Z-axis maps, and a 10 second nerf isn’t unwarranted.  The other talent on the tier will have some situational uses as well, now that you can spam faerie swarm on multiple targets (oh i cannot wait to abuse this in an RBG like I used to do with the slowing curse on my lock in Cata).
• Cenarion Ward healing buffed by 100% – This could really make this a viable alternative to NS.  As much as it would suck to lose insta-clone, when you’re playing against comps like LSD2, Spicy Chicken, and old style Shadowplay, having that massive amount of extra healing to help your healer keep up with the dot pressure could be huge.  Won’t be used very often over Nature’s Swiftness, but it’s nice that there is a viable alternative now.

Looking at some changes to other classes and how they affect us is important as well:

• DK – Strangulate down to 1 min cd (from 2 min) and Asphyxiate down to 30 sec (from 1 min).  This is gonna be INSANELY ANNOYING.  With the disgusting amount of pressure DK’s already do, plus buffs to unholy, expect to be shutdown when going after a DK.  Not a lot of them in 3s at the moment (because of their awful survivability outside of AMS), but expect that to change with some of the buffs they received.  
• Feral – Some VERY necessary nerfs to feral. They still have the insane mobility they’ve always had with passive movement increase and shifting to break roots.  The big changer for them is a 20 second cd on cyclone.  This will keep them from keeping an entire team cc’d indefinitely.  Nice change (if you’re not a feral =p).  They still also have some ridiculously broken Symbiosis options (bubble from a pally, dispersion from a priest?!?!) but at least Blizz is doing something to curb them.
• Resto Druids – They looked fantastic at the beginning of the expac, and the nerf to arena healing hurt HOT’s a ton more than other classes.  The good news is that they are looking at a flat 10% healing buff across the board.  The bad (or good if they are the opponent) is that the displacer nerf CRUSHES resto and makes them a very viable swap target.  The strat most times has been to get the resto to displacer and then swap – now it’s no longer necessary to swap, since he doesn’t drop target/focus or vanish.
• Hunter – I’d say hunter’s have been tollerable (since the fix to the pet’s ignoring resil bug), aside from how annoying their pets are.  A couple of buffs they are getting frighten me a tad.  They will be able to activate Bestial Wrath without even being in LOS of their pet anymore.  This promotes bad game play IMHO, by not punishing the hunter for allowing his pet to be drawn out of LOS by the enemy team.  When you play like that, you should be punished, and not able to break the bet out of CC.  Silencing shot did get nerfed to 24 sec cd (from 20) which is nice, but they got some other really nice buffs to talents and glyphs that make them more powerful and easier to use (lower cds, no focus cost, etc.).  The blanket change of making our on use cc-breaker trinket get their pet out of cc as well is a nice buff to Hunter’s specifically.
• Mage – Mages seem to be in a really good place right now, and the changes in 5.2 seem to be in the right places.  Using PoM with Ring of Frost will no longer insta freeze you – instead, the ring will instantly land, but you won’t get anyone frozen for 2 seconds.  Any change to remove instant CC is a great change in my book.  Despite reverting the nerf on blanket silences (they were removing mage/lock spells) at least Blizzard has told us that they want to go back to casting and interrupts, rather than instants and immunities.  Unfortunately they gave straight damage buffs to frost mages (needed in PvE, but definitely not in PvP), as well as giving them a much better version of Blazing speed to pickup which could make them a much larger pain in the ass to ever catch.
• Monk – Here is where things get interesting.  This class in incredibly underrepresented in PvP currently, and isn’t exactly screaming “I’m OP, play me!”  To that end, Blizzard did some heavy buffing to Mistweavers and Windwalkers that should increase their presence quite a bit next season.  Ring of Peace looks to be incredibly strong (basically an 8 yard silence and disarm every minute on any friendly target) on only a 45 second CD.  Add this to a 2 min. built in trinket on fear/stun/root for windwalkers, and combined with their already formidable damage, they should be a scary class to see in arena.  Mistweavers saw a pretty big buff just by Cocoon no longer being dispellable, and they bring some of the strongest heals out there, along with decent off DPS (expect to see them a lot in 2s).
• Paladin – FINALLY a nerf to the insane CC chains from holy paladins.  Repentance is now a 1.7 sec cast time (in line with other cc) and Blinding Light is no longer instant for Holy.  They haven’t yet quite figured out a way to make Ret more viable in threes outside of “WINGS YOU’RE DEAD”, though they are stepping in the right direction by making BoP remove all magical effects on the target (BoP your healer out of fear, etc).
• Priest – WELCOME BACK DISCOS!!  With a bunch of mana changes, baseline return of Focused Will (damage reduction on priest) and ability to cast Pain Sup while stunned, disc priests should make a return with a vengeance.  Don’t forget they can get Cyclone from you on symbiosis (and you pick up Mass Dispell), so this is a welcome return of a healer that has great Moonkin synergy.  Shadow is seeing some appropriate nerfs to healing and survivability (they are no longer untargetable at times from the talent Phantasm) and should be in a good place (though the dps buffs that PvE needs could make shadow much stronger again from a damage standpoint).
• Rogue – How do I love to hate thee?  First things first – go find one.  Latch on to one.  Dancing With the Stars is going to be INSANELY strong again in 5.2.  Between getting preparation baseline, new mobility talents, and 30 bonus energy from their set bonus (was 10), Rogues are set to dominate S11 style minus the legendary daggers.  Personally, I find the comp to be insanely fun, so I’m going to cry a river – although I might after I get ganked by them over and over again.  People are ignoring how good Rogue damage currently is, solely because they die so quickly.  With a lower cd on cloak and a damage reduction on people standing in smoke bomb, expect them to be our new overlords.
• Shamans – Necessary nerfs to Resto throughout this season have caused a ton of pain to those of us who enjoy Elemental or Enhance.  Fortunately, they are making some changes to help that.  Giving a buff to Stone Bulwark totem and making the health you gain from Nature’s Guardian not go away after it expires will help all three specs tremendously.  Combine that with gaining Shamanistic Rage (damage reduction on a 1 min. CD) as Ele, and I’m feeling like we are finally moving away from “glass cannon” status.  They also baked in Glyph of Flameshock, allowing us to keep it up on more targets (which equals more insta-Lava Bursts) will be awesome when we are getting trained, KFC style.
• Warlock – DING DONG, BLOOD FEAR IS DEAD!!  This is the best news of the patch.  Possibly the worst ability they have ever implemented has been neutered to a point of uselessness.  I honestly was so excited for this that it has overshadowed any other notes about Warlocks.  Unfortunately for a class that isn’t looking great at the moment, they didn’t really receive much in the way of needed buffs.  I won’t lie though – when we faced an old school LSD 2.0 this week, affliction didn’t look that weak while they were obliterating our entire team at once!
• Warriors – Ok, I won’t sit on the Warrior hate train (even though I hate them this season), but is anyone else enjoying seeing the people who were carried by terrible abilities (Avatar immunity, 30% dmg reduction while still hitting hard, cd stacking, 20 sec cd shockwave) crying about the class no longer being viable?  Warriors look to FINALLY be in a relatively balanced state, and they might have to actually use their brains while training one target endlessly  ;)

Aside from all of this, gaining 25% of our PvP power into our healing is going to be huge – lately it hasn’t even felt worth it to cast a heal on my Moonkin, between Battle Fatigue (reduction on healing in PvP) MS abilities (25% healing received) and the insanely long cast of Healing Touch.  Gaining Conquest points, even in a losing RBG will be nice too, for those of us who don’t RBG that often and still like to gain the extra points each week above our arena cap. 

Well that was an insanely long post, but I hope it was useful.  I’m working with someone next week about making the migration onto a format that will allow comments (I swear this is really happening!) so please keep an eye out – I’m stoked for the day when we can have real lazer conversations!  For now, this is Lazer Chicken signing off.