Just thought I'd share my short experiences of a night in Alterac Valley with my new 40 Balance/11 Resto build.

I'm not much one for moonfire spamming, especially now I have Insect Swarm as well. I can drop Moonfire, Insect Swarm and then a couple of Wraths (1.5s cast time is really nice) on people for damage totalling from 1500-3000 in about 4 seconds.

My gear last night was kinda average, I hadn't changed back into my mostly Cenarion set, still had some Feral gear from my testing with that spec (more on that in another post) but I was quite happy with the performance of my Balance Druid. I am frustrated though at the lack of gear for Balance Druids and the +spell damage on leather is almost non-existent. I'm pretty tired of being pushed into a pure healing role by Blizzard. They create this great class, full of variance and then put out Epic gear that is only focused on one aspect of the class, very frustrating.

I must say though I was very disappointed in Moonkin form, no healing, no trinkets, no potions, no speed, only balance spells, and only 3% crit, the addtional armor was useless. If I hadn't have wanted the Talent right before it (can't remember the name offhand), I wouldn't have bothered to spend the points to get it and would have put point into another tree. The dancing is hilarious, but hardly worth a 31 point talent, this really needs to be redone.

Hurricane was a lot of fun in AV, though the 1 minute cooldown was disappointing with such a huge mana cost, its also very situational and probably useless almost everywhere else but AV and perhaps raids with AE strats. I was doing between 130 and 200 damage per tick with it. I don't recall seeing it crit at all, but I wasn't watching that well with all the chaos happening.

Starfire I didn't use much even though I spent points in Improved Starfire, I should get that out a little more now its down to 3s cast time. Omen of Clarity I didn't use at all, so will have to test that more.

Wrath I saw some crits of 800-900 damage and saw a couple of 700's on Moonfire which I was quite happy with. I would expect to see some 1200+ crits on Starfire when I unleash it tonight.

I had about 5k mana and was very happy with how much "bang for my buck" i got with that pool. I didn't really Moonfire spam though (focusing a little more on Wrath intentionally) so I guess that was something to do with it.

I specced Balance after the patch, and after one night in AV decided that Moonkin was worthless. Really not a big fan of AV, so I plan on spending more time in AB or WSG for PvP, so last night I re-specced to a a 7/13/31 build (prior to patch I was 19/11/21). I am having an absolute blast with Huriicane too :)

Taith. . .all I have to say is. . .:confused:

Don't know if it's a glitch (if it is I'm keeping my mouth shut), but I am able to use items in moonkin as if I were my normal tauren self. I can even war stomp. So I have no idea what you're talking about there. On the finding of good +spell damage gear, I feel your pain. As I have been trying to make this spec work for LONG before patch 1.8, I have some gear that gives me +arcane. damage. I know there is a relatively low leather headpiece, 40ish I think, (that looks like crap) that gives +27 arcane dmg. If I'm not mistaken, I got someone to make this for me. Also, watch the AH and snake those +arcane daggers from the hands of mages. I also managed to find a +arcane off-hand item to go with my +arcane dagger. If you want, I can get my gear list and post it. I don't have access to it now as I am at work.

On another note, I KNOW you can get your SF crits higher than that. I am 53 and can crit 1187 with just gear. I think my highest crit was 1208 with an Arcane Elixir (+20 spell damage) pot active. Just lemme know if you want to see my gear stats. Right about now, I think I'm sitting at 3k health, 5k mana, and 4.5k armor in /OoMkin.

yep, moonkin can use items/trinkets/potions etc in release. They could NOT use those things on test, however, and the change for release wasn't really advertised.

Also, on release the mana cost was lowered by a ton. It's 400 something now instead of 700.

And, I'm in mostly cenarion as well, and I wish there were more options for balance gear. Also, I wish I had been considering balance as a build on the way up, cause I only have healing rings/trinkets/etc.

LOL, I'm a fool. I was playing with it on test and didn't even think to check on live *slinks off embarrassed*

Starfire critted for 1698 last night, happy with that.

I've changed to Feral now to see what that's like, I'll post some updates with a few more days of testing.

Ya, I been fooling wit that same build, 40/11 balance/resto.

(well, for me its 35/11 since i am only lvl 55! )

All in all, I am quite impressed wit it. Suits my play style well. Moonkin is fer soloing in PvE, where you simply tank the mobs as you blast away! )

In PvP I have always preferred to kite via moonfire, travel form, run in circle, rinse and repeat. So the improved damage there is pretty nice too. (Seems like 90 % or my pvp consists of trying to recover from bein attacked by a rogue)

I really wish that insect thing were affected by the extended range talent.

Also impressed with how little mana it costs to switch to moonkin, less than 5 % i think.

Only beef I have with balance tree is the lack of any interrupt lowering talent for nukes.

Oh, and moonkin form is GREAT fer pickin up girls in ironforge! Hehe, they can't resist the cuddly dancing teddy bear! )