Midnight Changes

The beta build for the Midnight expansion is in full swing and the Dreamgrove community has spent some time posting feedback about the upcoming changes in this forum post. The thoughts in the post are gathered from the community after testing the updates. If you care, then please engage with the post and voice your opinion as well in a respectful manner!

Below will be a short summary of the upcoming changes.

• Sunfire / Moonfire requirement for our Mastery Astral Invocation is removed and is now just flat damage increase.
• Stellar Flare, Waning Twilight, Umbral Inspiration, Astronomical Impact and Warrior of Elune are all gone.
• Eclipse is now a single button on a shorter 0.5s GCD - The button changes depending on your last builder used. 15 second duration, 30 second cooldown. There is a talent (mandatory) that makes it 2 charges and another talent (optional) that makes it 28 second cooldown.
• You can not press Eclipse while already in the same Eclipse, this also means you can not cancel CA early by pressing Eclipse.
• You can cancel a current Eclipse by casting the opposite Eclipse.
• Astral Smolder remade into an Apex Talent interacting with all crits and not just Wrath / Starfire.
• Renewal removed, Aessina's Renewal still in.
• Heart of the Wild has been reworked to a 2 minute cooldown that uses a spell based on your current off-role form. For Balance this means you either have a 30% increased HP buff while used in Bear Form or cast a powerful Wild Growth if used without a form.
• Nature's Vigil removed, replaced by a better Mark of the Wild on yourself.
• Starlord is 20 second buff up from 15 seconds, refreshes on Eclipse entry.
• Starlord is no longer cancellable.
• Dryad tier set baked into Keeper of the Grove hero talent, without the 4pc, and spawning on Eclipse instead of CA. Pressing CA does not spawn 2 Dryads.

Use Owlkin Frenzy procs to enter Solar Eclipse, inside Lunar Eclipse or inside CA/Incarnation if Starfire will hit 2 or more targets. Keep in mind that Warrior of Elune charges are consumed before Owlkin Frenzy procs.

Whirling Stars is a talent that changes your CA/Incarnation cooldown to a charge system, with a 100s recharge. In Keeper of the Grove, you want to overlap these charges with Force of Nature and Convoke the Spirits or just Force of Nature if your CA/Incarnation will recharge before Convoke comes back off cooldown.

In a raid scenario where you pull a boss with both charges up, you want to use your 1st charge on pull, and your 2nd charge when you gain Dryad's Favor during your Force of Nature window.

In an M+ scenario, if you're talented into Incarnation: Chosen of Elune instead of Convoke, you want to use your Whirling Stars charges at any time where you can overlap with Force of Nature.

When using Elune's Chosen and not talented into Convoke, you can use Whirling Stars right after entering an Eclipse that procs Sundered Firmament, but this is not a major gain. If you're using Elune's Chosen and you're talented into Convoke, you want to overlap your Whirling Stars charge with your Convoke cooldown.

When using Nature's Grace you should make sure to start casting your Wrath/Starfire when the duration of your active Eclipse is shorter than the cast time of your Wrath/Starfire. This will make sure that you always keep 1 stack of Nature's Grace when entering your new Eclipse. This can be tricky to pull off consistently when cycling between Lunar Eclipse. Try to bank some AP for the end of Eclipse if you need to fill a GCD to time your Wrath cast correctly.

If you are approaching a pack in mythic+ you can cancelaura your Nature's Grace and spell-queue 2 Wrath casts while the tank is walking towards the pack before you've entered combat, this will make it so you are in Lunar Eclipse and have 2 stacks of Nature's Grace up for faster Starfire casts whenever you've finished spreading your dots. This can be tricky to pull off, especially if your tank is chaining a lot of packs. Keep in mind that the moment you enter combat, spreading Sunfire and Moonfire becomes the highest priority.

You can use the macro below and replace your existing Wrath keybind with it to cancel Nature's Grace when you're out of combat to help with this.

#showtooltip
/cast Wrath
/cancelaura [nocombat] dreamstate

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• For the Balance Druid spec tree there are currently a solid number of talent iterations to choose from that don't provide a meaningful increase to your damage. Talents like Soul of the Forest, Crashing Star, Touch the Cosmos, Hail of Stars, Umbral Inspiration and Sundered Firmament are mostly interchangeable in ST with Keeper of the Grove, which is the recommended hero talent for raid encounters. Below there will be short explanations for each talent. Keep in mind that most of these options don't provide any changes in your rotation or decision making.

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The key differences between the two different hero trees lie mainly in their distinct damage profiles. Elune's Chosen has a very flat damage graph with solid damage over the fights duration and mainly revolves around keeping good uptime casting Starfire. This has been solidified in Season 3 with the new tier set reducing the value of generating Astral Power since you can only proc the free Starsurge casts whenever you generate Astral Power with Starfire. In ST scenarios you forego talents like Nature's Balance, Rattle the Stars, Touch the Cosmos and Convoke the Spirits because these either help generate Astral Power or reduce the cost of spenders. Elune's Chosen is generally a stronger pick in M+ as the flat damage profile fits a dungeon scenario better than Keeper of the Grove's burst oriented cooldown windows.

Keeper of the Grove revolves around doing big damage in your Force of Nature window and using the window to fit all your high damaging abilities in. The Season 3 tier set also plays into this, spawning a Dryad that does solid damage during its duration. 3% of the damage you do during the window your Dryad is active gets pooled into a buff increasing the damage of your next 2 Starsurge casts whenever the Dryad despawns. The damage profile from Keeper of the Grove fits well for raid content and is not as taxing as Elune's Chosen when it comes to movement. The Dryads Favor buff is capped to 10x your intellect whenever the Dryad despawns. With 715 ilvl you will have around 120k intellect, which makes the cap be 1.2m, and means you will have to do 40m damage inside your Dryad window in order to hit this cap.

Since Elune's Chosen mainly revolves around casting Starfire and having uptime, it is natural that this hero tree values Haste more heavily, where as Keeper of the Grove values direct damage stats like Crit and Versatility more, this can cause a noticeable difference in your Top Gear when simming different talent builds.

Keeper of the Grove compliments Convoke pretty well when you use it with the dmg increase from Harmony of the Grove and Celestial Alignment. Convoke is also good for priority damage and boss fights in M+. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune is good for AoE scenarios, or in situations where Convoke would use spells on targets you don't want to hit. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune also pairs well with Whirling Stars in M+, giving you very consistent cooldowns on most packs, and allows for more flexibility in when your damage spikes, as opposed to Convoke. If you're playing Convoke in M+, you should use it in AoE with the conditions outlined in the "Rotation" section.

Control of the Dream lets you hold on to either Celestial Alignment/Incarnation, Convoke or Force of Nature for up to 15 seconds without losing a use, subtracting the amount of time you held the ability from its cooldown.

Depending on the fight timer, this talent is stronger than Power of the Dream which it shares a choice node with. As always, you should research the fight you are preparing for on warcraftlogs or sim your character to make an educated guess.