Druid Changes - 1.8

[Kevin]

I do.

1.7 Improved Starfire - 3% chance to stun for 3 seconds per point.
1.8 Improved Starfire - -0.1s casting time and 3% chance to stun for 3 seconds per point.  Maxed out, it reduces Starfire's cast from 3.5s to 3.0s.

Starfire just got a 14% boost in DPS.

Frostbolt: 429-463 damage, with talents, 2.5s cast time.  DPS = 178.4
Starfire: 445-525 damage, with talents, 3.0s cast time.  DPS = 161.6

Pure frostbolt is still stronger, except that druids have an instant-cast DoT and mages don't.

Moonfire: 205 dps for one second (at cast), 32 dps DoT for the next 12 seconds.

This is without factoring in the fact that frost spells only get up to +6% in damage from talents and starfire/moonfire get +10%, along with the fact that moonfire gets huge damage and crit chance increases from talents and frostbolt doesn't.  Nor does this count Nature's Grace and the fact that every critical results in a flurry-like effect of temporarily increased DPS. 

Even factoring all those out, druids sustain ~190 dps on targets burning from moonfire and getting starfired, and have short 200 dps bursts when they refresh their moonfire.  Mages hold a line at 178.4.  +damage gear, assuming equal amounts, tilts slightly in Starfire's favour as well - it gets 100% of the bonus and Frostbolt gets 81.4%. 

Mages are still more efficient.  But I'm not quite sure that as a DPS class, the mage should be  "fifth best and third most efficient single-target damage in the game".
[right][snapback]90362[/snapback][/right]

It's actually worse than that because wrath got a 10% damage boost as well and while starfire got a bigger damage boost than wrath did, wrath is still going to out DPS it unless my math is way off.

Fully talented wrath would be 236 - 264 * 1.1 = 260 - 290 damage at 164 mana per cast 1.5 second cast. So 183 DPS. So 1.52 damage per mana. Sure you lose the stun chance but you are doing more damage with it than starfire when it is fully talented and a 1.5 second cast can generally avoid stutter when you get hit.

Starfires damage would be higher than what you had with talents as well. It would be:
490 - 578 damage with full talents behind it. So 178 DPS. 287 mana per cast of it. So what, 1.86 damage per mana.

Neither are great on mana efficiency but the druid DPS will be higher than what you had stated I think. And if you look at using a wrath crit to cast a 2.5 second moonfire you can do even more.

Oh and insect swarm is only 11 points into restoration. And while rank one is only 5.5 DPS more it has ranks as well. So I would imagine that you can sneak one of those in there to up the DPS some too as well as dropping a melee class's to hit by 2% while you sit in your 5000 or so armor (I think that is what Taranna has in bear from in her caster gear right now)

So yes these talent changes should pretty easily allow a balance druid to do more single target DPS than a mage. And with hurricane being a buyable and targetable spell druids will have hunteresque AoE with some more damage reduction functions.