I wasn't always a moonkin. Back before BC I was a resto druid. I was the main resto druid for my guild that raided a little more than halfway through Naxx. The problem was, healing was pretty boring. So what did I do? I rolled a rogue and spent most of my time outside of Naxx raids on him. I even brought him through some BWL and AQ20 runs.
Well, then the Burning Crusade came out and it was time to level my druid up. I sure wasn't going to do it as resto. I already had a character with an energy bar that did melee DPS. So I decided to try going moonkin with a few random pieces of gear I had picked up from AQ40 that no one wanted.
After about level 62, everything was great! I had replaced my old pieces of gear and the slots I had been missing with blues from quests. I could kill mobs reasonably well and I had healing abilities that were somewhere between those of a feral druid and a resto druid. Life was all sunshine and roses, despite the fact that it was hard to fit a moonkin into some instance runs. There was gear for moonkins at last, and it looked like Blizzard was finally going to support the spec.
Then I hit 70. I hit 70 a bit ahead of a lot of the other raiders and began working on my gear. We did Gruul and Karazan and I was able to justify my spot in the raid with above average DS, even if I did lack so many of the benefits that a different hybrid or a pure class would have brought.
Around the time we were really beginning to push through SSC I had to take a hiatus due to personal reasons. By the time I returned about 3 months later, the guild was pushing through BT and Hyjal content and I was not attuned.
Well never fear! There's always PVP! And there's badge gear!
So I grinded honor. I grinded badges. I did arenas. I brought my gear to the highest level available to me. Now I arena, raid Kara/ZA/SSC/TK including Vash/Kael, and run the occasional heroic or battleground.
This is the character I leveled to 60 and then 70 with. This is the character I want to play, and this character is a moonkin.
But, things haven't been good for moonkins lately. They were never good for moonkins really, but things have been even worse these last couple months. The spec was flat out laughed at before BC. Then there were promises to make it better, and in part they were fulfilled. I can perform a roll in a raid. I perform my role well enough to justify my place, by researching the best gear and rotations and understanding the class mechanics. I work my @SS off, chug mana potions and consumables, and hope to god for a shadow priest in my group so that I can perform at an acceptable level.
The problem is, that level that I bring myself to through all my hard work is the same level that a player of any other spec could achieve by barely trying. A warlock that puts forth as much effort as me is able to do anywhere from 150%-200% my DPS. A shadow priest at the same level is able to put out as much DPS as me while providing a 5% buff to damage for every caster in the raid, a 10% increase to shadow damage, and giving his party insane amounts of health and mana. I provide a measly 5% crit to my party. An elemental shaman provides buffs to spell damage, mana regeneration, AND a totem that by itself provides more damage than my aura. Not to mention, he provides bloodlust for his group.
There are similar problems in PVP that I won't go into at the moment for the sake of (LOL) brevity.
The problem is, there are so many classes and specs that can do what a moonkin does, but better and with less effort. It's not that we don't serve a purpose. It's that we serve our purpose in a way that's "Just good enough to squeeze by if you devote an exceptional amount of effort and are an above average player."
There are problems with the spec:
-In raids we provide less utility than other hybrids with the same amount of DPS.
-We run out of mana easily on long fights and have no worthwhile abilities besides innervate, which is still based on spirit (a stat that is horrible for balance druids), to regain our mana.
-Our maximum damage is forever capped by our lack threat reduction talents that are readily available. (Subltety requires enormous sacrifices in the balance tree and 10 points of filler in resto to get.) A paladin with blessing of salvation does somewhat help this though.
-In PVP we have no interrupts to stop casters.
-In PVP we also have no burst damage beyond hoping for a starfire crit.
-We run out of mana and are especially susceptible to every type of mana burn/drain/sting.
-The balance tree is exceptionally bloated.
Those are a few major ones off the top of my head. There are plenty more.
The thing is, moonkins had hope with BC that they'd finally be able to compete. That they'd finally be viable. We hoped and hoped and hoped that we finally wouldn't be "that third druid spec everyone hates." And then we received encouragement for that hope. We were itemized for in badge gear and arena gear. Tier gear was switched to a token system to support off-specs.
Now I'm all out of hope. I had fun being a moonkin. I had fun surprising people with the damage I could actually do because of the amount of effort I put into the character. I had fun playing a caster that could DPS and then heal himself a little. I had fun learning the class mechanics and rotations and agonizing over how to best gem my gear and which gear was best for me.
But I just can't do it any more. Blizzard has officially said "We know you think you need buffs. A lot of other classes think they need buffs too. Wait another couple of months for WotLK and hope for the best with that." Worse then that, patch 2.4 brings NERFS to the balance spec. My lifebloom is going to heal me for less because I don't have empowered rejuvenation to make up for the coefficient nerf. I won't be able to use my one saving grace, cyclone, from 30 yards away any more.
I've posted before saying that Blizzard doesn't care about moonkins, but only to try and stir the pot. I wanted to be proven wrong. I was trying to get them to prove that they did. It turns out, blizzard really is completely ignorant of the state that moonkins are in right now. How could they possibly decide to try and nerf resto in the way they did without a complete lack of understanding or a complete lack of concern about balance druids?
So here it is. I've posted a lot in the last month or two to try and get an answer about moonkins. The answer I got was "We don't care." Well, I'm not going to post about moonkins any more. I don't even know if I'm going to play my moonkin any more. In the face of overwhelming evidence and outcry to the contrary, Blizzard has not only ignored moonkins in 2.4, but actually nerfed them as a side effect of changes to other druid specs.
If you took the time to read that, thank you. If you didn't, feel free to post "TLDR," because any bump is a good bump. If you're a CM or developer at Blizzard, then I hope you did read it, and I hope you realize that I'm not the only moonkin who feels this way. I'm also not the only customer who feels this way, and you'd do well to take note of that.