the other druid in my guild is gonna try out the changes on the test realm for a few days. i'll be sure to post whatever it is he learns while doing so.

I've been playing around with it a little bit. Did Balance spec, I've got 300g on me so I'll probably try Feral and Restoration eventually too. :P

So far, Moonkin looks neat... armor is decent, but I'm using my caster gear instead of feral gear, so only 6k armor ...

Omen of Clarity is now just a buff, and not a weapon buff, so swapping weapons doesn't get rid of it anymore.

Also, Insect Swarm is not usable in moonkin form, as it's a restoration spell (yeah, weird).

Need to find stuff to kill now!

Tons of quests in Silithus around 55-60ish (at least 9 so far), though some stupid Tauren was attacking the quest NPCs. :P

Also, someone was asking, Clearcasting does stick around when you swap forms, so you could proc it in bear then swap to caster for a heal, or whatever.

I joined "thedruidsgrove" channel over on Test if anyone's on.

Balance wasn't bad. Nice damage, though I didn't like that I had to shift back and forth to heal myself. Didn't get to try it in a group, either.

Trying Feral now. Thick hide does work in caster form now, as well as feral forms. Heart of the Wild is pretty impressive; still not as much int with feral gear, but it's closer.

9% extra chance to crit in feral forms now, with the crit talents.

LOL. I thought killing NPCs screws your honor?

Killing 'Civilian' NPC's hurts the honor.... and it's a test server, even if they were civi's who cares.

As for my thoughts on our changes, I did two builds 41/0/10 and 7/31/13 (currently I'm 9/11/31 on my home realm).

My thoughts on Balance is it's not for me... I just can't wrap my mind around not having mana to heal.

I have a decent aray of +dmg gear, only +1% crit' (from gear) and just over 5k mana. I was disapointed weapon proc's don't work in Moonkin, perhaps whishful thinking on my part.... That said I only pve'd vs. level 58'ish mobs and I gotta say Moonkin/balance can kill a mob fairly quickly. Moonkin is going to have a problem with more then 2 or 3 mob's like most classes do... bear is still there for when your almost oom and need to buy time.

As for feral, I'm much more impressed. I have pretty decent feral gear, over-all better then what Cay used in her test's. Somthing like 170str/150agil, 8.2k armor bear, +15def and some +attack power... feral is kicking. Bear was killing level 58 elementals in almost half the time that it does 1.7.. with more hp's left at the end. Cat seems better, little hard to say' as my feline test was cut short when they restarted the server.

I'm pretty much of the same opinion so far, Rockwell. Balance was ... not bad, but didn't really impress me. You have to shift out to heal, and unlike cat and bear, you're still using mana while you're shifted, so you burn through it really fast. Maybe good in a group, but not good for soloing.

Feral on the other hand was pretty impressive from what I got to try of it so far. Even with my mostly bear-oriented feral gear, I was able to get a 1278 crit with ferocious bite, and it seemed like nice DPS overall.

Will probably go with feral or restoration again when it goes live.

on 1.7 I curently have 730 AP and 13% crit on my druid... working towards more feral gear right now, hopefully I can get a full set before patch goest live!

I was cat'ing it up in DM tribute last night, getting FB crits for like 1600(highest) and around 1300 on the warrior-type mobs

I tried Moonkin and I liked the look and it crited a lot, it was fun, but like others have said I burn through mana and without innervate I end up having to drink a lot, and can't even drink in moonkin form, much less heal. So I doubt I will choose that when live. Plus hurricane being now a regular balance spell will give me a nice balance alternative when I really need it without having moonkin.

Feral was fun and strong, I'm not yet sure it is worth giving up innervate but it is very impressive.

I didn't try Insect Swarm, can someone say if that has multiple ranks and gets better?

Wow - I guess I won't give up on moonkin just yet after all.
Quick note: we'll have a few more tweaks for the Moonkin form before it goes live (ie: lowered mana cost for the shapeshift and being able to eat/drink/trinket/etc).

Well, this is going to be a tough choice. :P

I respecced Restoration on test now... the changes are pretty nice, and the extra dot (insect swarm) helps soloing go a lot faster. I did a 40 restoration/11 balance build, and it seems very solid. I didn't really notice any difference in skipping reflection.

And whoa, I didn't notice it before, but nature's focus gives a 70% chance to avoid interruption with tranquility too, not that it's needed with barkskin.

Also, a random non-talent change in 1.8: Ironfeather set bonus is now +20 to heals and magical effects, instead of silence resistance.

I spent a good bit of time trying out two builds. 0-30-21 and 37-0-14.

The feral build kept Nature's Swiftness and is just plain godly. I don't have great feral gear, but I do have a few pieces that add +dodge% and my dodge was up around 20% in cat form. With NS in this build, I hardly ever used bear in 1v1 pve encounters. I didn't get a chance to group to test out the aggro management of bear, mostly because there were just druids on test :P

The balance build was nice, too. I got moonkin and nature's reach, and added insect swarm and reflection from restoration. Yes, insect swarm has about 4 ranks, but the -2% to hit is flat. The only thing that increases is the damage over time. Still, a -2% when you're in moonkin with it's 6-8k armor is very useful. I didn't seem to have mana problems in moonkin. In fact, I was hardly running out of mana in 1v1 pve encounters. That could be due to reflection, my gear (7/8 cenarion and finkles lava dredger), or my playstyle. I was using the moonkin's armor to drag out fights and I was trying my best not to shift. I'd open with swarm, root, shift, starfire+root+moonfire, then wrath, then melee+moonfire til dead. If I got a starfire stun, of course, I'd get another starfire on it. Used omen procs mostly to refresh moonfire.

The trick to healing in moonkin, I think, is judicious use of barkskin. Once I figured out that I should hit barkskin just before shifting for a heal, and timing that right so that I wasn't too low or too high, I started to feel more comfortable pve in moonkin. I even started letting myself get lower so that I'd have to HT then regrowth, rejuv, shift back.

moonkin was able to handle multiple mobs, btw. I did most of my testing in Winterspring on the Yeti's, but I ran over to the high chief winterfall and killed him a few times. In moonkin I rooted the melee add, killed the shammy with wrath +moonfire, then killed the add, then the chief. Things did get hairy here with two beating on me, so the barkskin heal was necessary. If we could get NS with moonkin form....GG!!

Granted, the feral build waded thru these same three mobs without blinking. Moonkin did kill them faster, though.

A few comments on pvp. Duels: Moonkin form cannot beat a well played feral druid. I tried really hard, but without the ability to bash or interrupt, they can just heal until you run oom. Moonkin does really well against rogues--I mean REALLY well. Hunters suck mana and fear you, so...well, I guess you could win, but I don't have a good strat for them yet. Same with priests--currently I just use charge to keep them from casting and just heal until they're oom. In moonkin they can mana drain you, so... Warriors are easy-ish, since you can nature's grasp them. Mages out dps you, so, um, good luck. etc etc.

Didnt' get a chance to do an battlegrounds or find more than a few stray hordies to kill, so no comment on group pvp yet.

--sn

well from the sounds of things, all three talent trees are now viable, depending on your playstyle and gear..

I am coming back from a few days away from reading posts, so if this has been asked before, please ignore/delete. Has anyone verified OoC proc working w/ Frenzy Regen on test? Please advise. Thank you in advance.

note: Even if it does work now on test, I do understand that there is always a chance that Blizz may change it before going live.

I don't think it will work. After I went back to actually read the OoC wording change, it said something about Nature Damage or Healing spell or Damage ability. While Frenzy regen does heal, its not a spell and it isn't a damage ability. I don't think it will work, but thats ok with me. We can now carry around a rogue and a warrior in our pockets as well as still heal/nuke. Sounds like the druid now has at least two extreemly viable trees, and a third that soon will be with the food/drink/trinket changes Yrys mentioned.

Nyte

when in cat form you will see that it does between x-y damage for every combo point. it is the same as eviscerate, where a rogue could have a skinning knife or a barman's shanker equipped and it would do exactly the same amount of damage. the damage from a ferocious bite is based solely on combo points, so if you wish to give an indication of how you are pwning in feral, throw some high ravage or claw crits at us.

The feral spec is nice but to be honest, I find it harder to kill high level things with the 1.8 feral spec than with the current 7/11/33 innervate spec I have. A good example is a Stone Guardian in Un Goro. I can solo those with my cookie cutter innervate spec but with my 1.8 feral spec they kept crushing me.

But feral is probably better for pvp, there's just not as much chance to test pvp on test as there is on live servers.

I wish they would swap nature's swiftness and innervate, make innervate the 21 point talent similar to how evocation for mages is not a 31 pt talent. But I know that will never happen.

Edit:
Played around with Moonkin a little more today. I like the balance change over all. My one talent that I would have added was root not breaking as easy with damage done. Moonkin seems like its built for groups where you won't heal and raids where you wont heal. I didn't like it for soloing. I was playing around in Silithus and just too much can go bad without being able to shift out for a quick heal, no more NS so no incredibly fast heal available.