Moonkin = OOMKin

[TheWesson]

Counter nit:

nit #1:
Here's a Blue post saying global cooldown is 1.5 sec.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...ugs&T=55845&P=2
see bottom of page

Copying it here since posts in Blizzard forums tend to vanish:

August 23 2005 by "Seismics"  (Blizzard poster)

Both Bane and Shadow Bolt are working fine.

The global cooldown timer is 1.5secs. This is the gray shade that envelops all spells/skills for a short duration. Immolate default casting time is 2secs. Cast Immolate and notice the global cooldown timer ends about a split second (0.5secs) before Immolate completes casting. Now do the same with a Bane Warlock and you'll find that the global cooldown is exactly the same as the casting time for Immolate (1.5secs).

The same method can be used to test Shadow Bolt - 3secs is twice as long as the 1.5sec global cooldown timer. Cast Shadow Bolt once and place your mouse cursor over the middle of the casting bar. Now cast Shadow Bolt again and notice the casting time progress bar hits your mouse cursor at the same time the global cooldown ends. This effectively means that Shadow Bolts casting time is twice the amount of the global cooldown or 3secs. Now do the same with a Bane Warlock and you'll notice the casting time progress bar crosses over the mouse cursor meaning Shadow Bolt is now casting faster than the global cooldown (0.5 faster to be exact).

All this can be tested and found in a 0 lag environment. In lagged situations the results will vary. You'll notice all spells start a bit after you actually press the button to cast them. This is not something that only affects Warlocks. This lag affects all players all spells with a similar latency to the server. This lag can be 0.25 to 0.5secs or 250 to 500ms latency to the server. To test if you're experiencing this lag use the following rule: Your casting bar shows after your global cooldown has started.

I'm guessing that certain actions which are on auto (melee? wand firing?) can occur more often than once per 1.5 sec. Hopefully they can, a 1.4 speed wand is supposed to fire every 1.4 seconds, right?

nit #2:
Shadowburn can't be spammed if your definition of spammable is "instant" and "no cooldown". (Thottbot seems to be saying a 15 sec cooldown.) So is Moonfire unique in being spammable single-target DD?

...

Just FYI here is the game designer post (no longer avail thru Blizzard forums as far as I can tell, so I wanted to copy it here from the IGN forums post where it was included verbatim):

There is some confusion about how these effects work and how effective they are, so I wanted to explain what they do.

When an item has the effect "Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 20", the damage dealt or hit points healed by one of your spells will be increased by a fixed amount up to 20. The actual amount that the spell is increased by is not determined randomly, but by which spell you are casting. You are not receiving a random bonus value between 1 and 20 whenever you cast a spell. Some random items, such as those with the property "of Shadow Wrath", indicate that they provide "+X Shadow Spell Damage". The actual amount of the bonus is again determined by the spell being cast. There are a few items that do provide a random bonus, such as Dreamweave Gloves, but their effect notes the randomness by stating that item's bonus as "up to 1 to 19." Once again, the bonus received could be reduced depending on the spell being cast.

Spells with longer casting times such as Fireball and Greater Heal will receive the full bonus listed every time they cast the spell. Spells with instant or short cast times receive a fraction of the bonus listed. As an example of such a spell, Flash Heal (Rank 7) only receives approximately 43% of the item bonus. Talents or other effects that might change the casting time of the spell will not change the bonus; the amount received is a property of the spell being cast.

Most long duration Damage and Heal over time spells have the bonus divided amongst every tick. So Renew, which lasts 15 seconds and heals an amount every 3 seconds, has 20% of the bonus applied each tick. In a similar fashion, channeled spells also have the item bonus divided amongst every tick of the spell's duration.

Lower level spells receive a greatly reduced benefit from these effects.

These effects all stack. So if a Mage is wearing 3 items that provide up to +20 Fire damage, you will have a combined +60 to Fire damage. This means every high level Fireball cast will inflict an extra 60 damage to the target.

These bonuses are also added to the effect of the spell before the 50% bonus from a critical spell hit is applied.

Note that there is currently a bug in the game that affects heals over time such as Renew and Rejuvenation. The +healing items worn by the caster are only providing the appropriate healing bonus if the caster is also the target of the spell. Direct heals such as Greater Heal work fine, and the +Healing bonuses are being appropriately applied. Damage over time spells are also working properly. We're working to fix this bug, but currently I can not provide any kind of ETA on the fix.

Daelo
Game Designer