A Look At Balance Glyphs

Inscription's coming up in the next patch and that means the wackiness that involves altering the fundamentals of the spells we already know and love will shortly ensue. Maybe I'm just a little resistent towards change where I can't easily quantify what the trade-off will be, but the changes are coming and I know I will have to make myself competitive, and that means educating myself about these funny glyphs I'm going to be applying to... my body? Just where do glyphs go anyway? Armor kits go on armor. Gems go in sockets. Glyphs go in...?

Major Glyphs for Balance Druids

Glyph of Entangling Roots - Increases the damage targets can take by 20% before the roots break. Obviously not a raid talent, but would be extremely useful for any leveling moonkin. Probably good for PvP as well. If prices end up being reasonably I'll most likely pick this up for my run to level 80.

Glyph of Hurricane - Slows enemy movement speed by 20%. Probably would be fantastic at any of the AV chokepoints, but I can't think of a PvE reason to want this other than perhaps a situational pull where it's an advantage to AoE a group of enemies and have them approach the group very slowly, and even then it would most likely be a feral doing such a pull and not the moonkin.

Glyph of Innervate - Not a Balance spell per se, but with Blizzard making comments about how they want casters to watch their mana again, chances are moonkin are going to be using Innervate a lot, either on themselves or their healers (or even their mana batteries). This gives a bonus 20% mana regen to the moonkin whenever Innervate is used, no matter who the target is (including the moonkin herself), and who wouldn't want that?

Glyph of Insect Swarm - 30% damage in exchange for the 2% less chance that the target will hit. On the surface I like this glyph, because the 2% less chance to hit generally isn't enough to make or break a fight. The occasion I most certainly would not want it would be on a progression battle where the healers are struggling to keep the tank alive. If keeping the tank up is not a concern, then this glyph is a winner.

Glyph of Moonfire - Periodic damage up by 75% but initial damage decreased by 90%. While this isn't good for Moonfire spam, it's fantastic for raiding since it the bulk of the damage has always been in the DoT component to begin with. Now the DoT will be even stronger. There's no way a raiding moonkin should can pass this up.

Glyph of Starfall - Starfall lasts another 2 seconds. I don't know whether or not this allows extra stars to fall. WoWHead doesn't seem to have confirmation on it. If it does, it could be worth it, but if it doesn't, I wouldn't bother for the extra AoE power.

Glyph of Starfire - Increases the duration of Moonfire by 3 sec with each application of Starfire. Talk about a mana saver. A moonkin could theoretically keep up Moonfire indefinitely just by chain casting Starfire, and combined with the Glyph of Moonfire the initial burst of damage that will no longer happen won't even be missed.

Glyph of Wrath - 50% spell interrupt resistence to Wrath. Given that is says interrupt rather than pushback, this could be good for PvP when that shaman/rogue has an Earth Shock/Kick just waiting to happen. For raids? I doubt this would see any use. Even if Blizzard means pushback rather than interrupt, I can't see this being a tremendous advantage in PvE, especially in light of the Glyph of Moonfire/Starfire duo.

At level 70 we will only have room for two Major Glyphs. For raiding Glyph of Moonfire and Starfire are clean winners, with Insect Swarm and Innervate competing for the third slot at 80, but since WotLK is just a month away I'm rather doubtful I'll be raiding much. I might go Insect Sworm and Entangling Roots in anticipation of leveling.