[Druid] Well, the Class Preview Isn't Up Yet, But…

The druid class preview isn't up yet, but after seeing the warlock and priest previews there are at least a couple things we can expect for moonkin.

1) Improved Faerie Fire will no longer effect hit.

Why? Because Misery won't. The priest preview says that Blizzard doesn't want people to have to plan their gear based on who they have in the raid (I wonder if that means the draenei racial hit will be going away too?), and while being a moonkin this has never affected me, I know warlocks and mages who kept two sets of gear, or a trinket like Dying Curse, to swap in and out depending on whether or not they had a moonkin or shadow priest with them.

Earlier Blizzard has said something about moonkin getting a spirit to hit conversion so we shouldn't have to worry about having to make up hit by grabbing cloth gear or putting points into our talent trees. Spirit won't scale with buffs like Blessing of Kings anymore, and the priest preview says Divine Spirit is going away, so we shouldn’t have to worry about suddenly getting a lot of hit we don't need after the raid buffs up. Mark of the Wild won't affect it either.

2) Dots will automatically benefit from crit and haste.

With both warlocks and shadow priests getting this, there's no reason to believe that moonkin won't either. The way dots are going to work for those classes is that haste will allow more ticks of the dot to get in rather than shortening the duration of the spell because the dot ticks faster. This means dots won't have to be refreshed any more often than they would with zero haste. Moonkin dots were never affected in this manner, but resto druid hots could be through the Rapid Rejuvenation glyph.

This might also prevent some of the issues higher level moonkin are seeing in ICC (and formerly saw in Sunwell) where the power of their dots vastly diminished as their gear improved, to the point where it was debatable (or not even worth it) to keep dots in their rotations.

What else might be store for us?

We can expect one of our mastery abilities to be spell damage. Warlocks get this across all three specs, and so do shadow priests and ele shaman. We'll probably get spell crit as our second mastery bonus, since shadow priests, ele shaman, and two of the three warlock specs do.

The last mastery bonus will probably be something unique to us, since each of the warlock specs gets a bonus based on what their tree focus is (shadow dots for afflication, fire damage for destro) and the ele shaman have the very specific Elemental Overload. Given our penchant for changing forms, I wonder if it will be tied to something about being a moonkin, so the bonus won't apply if we're currently in another shape.

I haven't a clue what we're going to see for the feral and restoration trees, aside from masteries that can be gleaned from the other class previews.

One of the feral masteries will surely be Vengeance for tanking purposes (the warrior preview says all tanking specs will get it), possibly Damage Reduction since prot warriors got it, and possibly Melee Damage since arms/fury warriors and enhance shaman have it. I seem to remember Blizzard posting something to the effect of "if in cat form, then these mastery bonuses and if in bear form than these mastery bonuses" but I can't seem to find the post at the moment.

Oh here we go… thank you Kalon for the link on your blog.

Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we’re not quite ready to discuss.

So if Melee Damage and Damage Reduction are paired together as the one set of feral form trade-offs, I wonder what cats will get paired with Vengeance. Maybe Melee Haste? Fury warriors and enhance shaman get that. Armor Penetration is also a possibility. Arms warriors get that. And then the third ability will be probably something cat specific and bear specific, hopefully with a flavorful name that makes it sound like we're chewing on our enemies.

Resto druid masteries will likely mirror the healing priest and resto shaman masteries with Healing and Meditation being the first two masteries, for more healing power and for mana regen, and then something druid-specific for the third one. Since druids are commonly considering to be the hot masters, I'd take a stab at it having something to do with hots.

It would be pretty cool if the resto mastery worked like the new warlock dots where if you reapply you don't clip any remaining ticks; you just add to the duration of the spell. Hots could keep rolling for forever!