Saturday, May 22, 2010

A Moonkin's Ode to the Notorious L. K.

This is a story bout the glory
Final boss of an expansion
Been waiting for this moment
Since Naxx was re-imagined

Learned hard modes with Sarth,
Void zones toasting raiders like bacon
Ulduar was next with Yogg-Saron insanity
Alone in the Dark without titan amnesty

Next a tourney, not on a horsey
Engaging enemies from the Northrend hood
Climax with an old friend, Anub
He's a spider-beetle-dude

Now finally we've fought through a three-headed skeleton,
KT's lady, a boat full of horde, the great cleaver
Double Grobb and the professor, the plague asylum
Then the vampiric quartet, three princes and their madam

Eventually the final wing, frosty halls
Cold in our veins as we wipe to val'kyrs
Rescue a maiden from a dragon (or a dragon who is a maiden?)
And then we think we're back in Naxx with a skeleton dragon and ice-tomb-geddon

Now we're finally at the top, Arthas' crib
Tirion at our back, the light fantastic
But he's a PvP noob who doesn't bind his human racial
So he gets to sit in that block like he's going glacial

But no problem, we've got this
Me and 24 of my friends
We've got practice and experience
We'll take this down like it's old clearance

Now it's time for me to break out my stuff
Show the world what I've got and smash meters
Casting spells, channeling nature, hitting buttons like crazy
The Lich King is going down today, see

I've got Moonfire – I bet you didn't even know Elune was on fire
I've got Insect Swarm, cockroaches from hell
Fire from the photosphere, direct from a star
And elemental anger, incarnation of Wrath on my bar

I bring down stars on Artha's head,
I block out the sun and the moon over and over again
But it's not enough, time to break out the big guns
So I summon my trees and start the forest fun

*rustling leaves* *rustling leaves* *rustling leaves*
Yeah Ash, kick the King in his ass!
*rustling leaves* *rustling leaves* *rustling leaves*
Mighty Oak, beat em up go for broke
*rustling leaves* *rustling leaves* *rustling leaves*
Go go Elm, smashin Nerzhul's special helm

We dodge shadow traps
And hope the tanks stay alive
As we smash and burn and cast
And heal or bandage fast fast fast

Finally we transition and head to the edge
The Lich King is summoning a vortex of bad
It's time for vile – er, wicked – er, raging spirits to play
We kill ice orbs and get ready to head back into the fray

Now it's time to head back to the middle
Moving fast before we're dropped in the void
It's time for fun, the valk and defile dance
Over and over while we stack warlocks and hope for chance

Now Deja Vu as we're back to the outside
Arthas was nice and rebuilt our playground
We burn and heal and dodge like there's no tomorrow
Preparing for the finals to the lich king's sorrow

Here's phase three, defile's a joke
But Arthas has a new trick and introduces us to his sword
Tries to harvest our souls but we disagree
So we end up inside running around like tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee

Now we dodge the Raging – no, Wicked Spirits who appear
Spectral explosions and ectoplasmic C4
Then we're back outside, time to run around
Because the final brother spirit Vile shows up to fight a round

Things are getting crazy
Berserk is coming up
Cooldowns and hero as we fight and try to win
That fifteen minute limit is an unreasonable sin

Now Arthas goes crazy and tanks are going down
Everyone's running like a chicken without a head
We're spread out and burning, he's at 12 percent and falling
We put up DoTs and try to live long enough to win our calling

Then Arthas starts to cast and we all groan
As he kills us with one spell and ends our hopes
He tells us all this was his plan from the start
Apparently undead chicken moon warriors are where it's at if you're smart

But we've forgotten Tirion in his ice block
The paladin extraordinaire
He finally realizes how many arena points he's going to lose
So he hits that racial and then Ashbringer's on-use

Now Arthas is spinning like a Lichy Pinata
And we're whacking away with our fists and our magic
His health drops to zero and he croaks like a crow
So we loot him for goodies – and of course, double crossbow

Friday, May 7, 2010

Cataclysm Alpha - Eclipse

Buried in the data mining of mmo-champion is this little gem:
Increases the damage done by your spells by a percentage. 
Grants a percentage of spell haste. 
The damage done by your Wrath is increased when you reach 100 Solar Power, and the damage done by your Starfire is increased when you reach 100 Lunar Power. Effect will last for 15 sec. Mastery increases the damage done by your Wrath and Starfire when you gain Eclipse.
I keep on writing rants about this so I'm just going to not post much since I can't do it civilly.  I just hope that this has nothing to do with the final version of Eclipse, and is a placeholder while they finish the mechanics.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Cataclysm Alpha - Initial Thoughts

In case you aren't aware of it, we have our first look at more cataclysm moonkin changes here.

While it's hardly comprehensive there's also a lot of information there.  Some interesting things:
  1. Solar Beam - this was discussed in a blue post but it's always nice to get more details.  Looks like a nice PvP boost.
  2. Nature's Splendor - the calculator doesn't show it for the first rank but this is apparently now a 3-rank talent that adds 3 seconds (33%/66%/100% chance of applying).  With the new way haste is going to work with dots I'm guessing they can just add three seconds to something like Insect Swarm and not have it be an issue.
  3. Insect Swarm - on that note, it's gone.  No longer a talent.  Since it's referenced elsewhere the implication is it's now baseline (restos rejoice?).
  4. Starsurge - this looks like the "Nature's Torrent" that was referenced before here, from what I can tell.  With the new Lunar Guidance this should become a significant way to swing the Eclipse meter.
  5. Balance of Power - this is where we get our base 4% hit and the the spirit->hit conversion.  No real surprises.
  6. Moonkin Form and Improved Moonkin Form - I am really not sure what to think of this change.  It looks like Moonkin Form literally only provides armor now, while the improved version gives 6% raid crit - a combined change that's confusing on several levels.  First, why increase the buff to 6%?  The implication I had for cata was that powerful buffs are being reduced (and they are, see Earth and Moon!) not increased.  Second, where is the "selfish" benefit for a moonkin taking Improved Moonkin Form?  While it's kind of interesting as an optional talent (especially since then you could theoretically dps in caster form...), I don't really want to either 1) respec every time the elemental shaman can't make the raid, or 2) spend a GCD to shift into moonkin when the elemental shaman dies, and the rest of the time waste three talent points.  This seems like a promising change but one that still needs some polishing.
  7. Wrath of Cenarius - I find this very odd.  The talent reads (at rank 1):  "While moving, the direct damage of your Moonfire spell is increased by 5% and it's mana cost is reduced by 10% for 3 seconds.  This effect can stack up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds, but is refreshed as long as you are in movement."  So depending on how this scales at a max of three ranks you could be looking at moonfire spam in PvP that costs 90% less and does 45% more damage.  Along with some other changes here I'm going to predict the Moonfire Glyph is going away and the direct damage of Moonfire will be much more significant.
  8. Eclipse - now a three-point talent that increases the amount of Solar/Lunary energy your spells create.  Nothing exciting, but probably still a core talent.
  9. Earth and Moon - really interesting change here, apparently all "Curse of Elements" type effects are going to be 8% instead of 13%.  This fits and was expected - it's a similar change to how sunder is being nerfed.
  10. Fungal Growth - 70% AOE snare when your treants die or wild mushroom pops.  Interesting PvP implications and has some potential PvE uses.
  11. Naturalist was moved down - Naturalist as a tier 3 talent is an easy way to force ferals into speccing "deeper" into restoration (most ferals already use that many points, but this effectively forces you to pick up master shapeshifter), which makes sense - they need somewhere to go with the extra five talent points.  Since Moonkins are in the same boat, expect some sort of change either in restoration or tier 1 feral to give us some additional spec options.
There are a lot of talents I expect to see change (Nature's Grace, Owlkin Frenzy, Furor, etc) that currently haven't, but this is a very early build - lots of classes have less changes then this.  It'll be interesting to see where they go from here.