Tuesday, October 13, 2009

[Druid] Omen of Clarity A Necessity in Icecrown

Foofy's post the other day caused me to realize something that didn't originally strike me as odd. The T10 2-piece set bonus for moonkin is: When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 15% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 sec as of the latest PTR notes. But Omen of Clarity is in the Restoration tree.

It's a talent commonly taken by druids of all specs just because the occasional free ability usage is nice. It's rare to see a moonkin without it, so tying a damage boost to it doesn't seem unreasonable even if it's in the "wrong" tree, but OoC is not a necessity. Once past a certain gear level the mana back from crits and Innervate (should the moonkin be allowed to keep it) is more than enough. I can vouch for that. I haven't had OoC in my spec for months now.

Back when my 25-man guild was working on Sarth 3D I told my raid leaders that there were other damage dealing talents I could take in the balance tree (which was true), but that I'd have to lose some talents in mana regen/conversation which might affect my throughput. I was told not a problem, we'll stick you in a group with a resto shaman for Mana Tide Totem. Being that we had up to three resto shaman in any given raid it wasn't a terrible burden like I'd be stealing from healers. An arcane mage with good dps was similarly added to the MTT group.

When we moved into Ulduar I didn't change my spec at all, and I found out that I could actually cope without a single mana regen talent. My much loved resto shaman still dropped MTT for me even when he or she didn't need it (such nice people ^_^), but more importantly I found out that under the power of with my own Innervates and a mana pot I was still good to go. Even now that I do 10-mans I have yet to spec back into a single regen talent. I just have not needed it.

Though granted, 5-mans really suck with my current spec. Chain casting Hurricane really hurts, but aside from that I've been doing well. Regen isn't worth much if you don't need it, right?

But I can't see myself getting my 2-piece T10 and not respeccing to pick up OoC. Even if I don't need it to save mana, how could I pass on 15% more Nature and Arcane damage for 6 seconds? It's going to be more than any single talent point gives me unless it has a ridiculously horrible proc rate, which I'm sure it won't.

I'm not complaining that I'll have to respec, it's a commonly included talent point in most moonkin builds anyway, but it does bring me back to Foofy's comment about the fact the bonus is tied to a talent in the Restoration tree, a talent that some moonkin might not even have. Even if a lot of moonkin do take it, it's not a part of our primary tree and it's not tied to something that is intrinsically part of being a moonkin (i.e. dps).

1 comment:

Adgamorix said...

Even though it's not something 'required' for Moonkin - my guess is that it's still a talent that 'most' moonkin take. If they are going to make T10 as available as T9 was - there will probably be a ton of moonkin that still have OOC.

And they probably needed something to base the proc off of - since that lets you tie it to a visible talent you're familiar with - instead of just another RNG proc.