On Calligraphy
So, I haven’t done a druid post in a while, I figure it’s about time!
Today, we are going to be looking at Glyphs. Apparently, in Lich King, you can tattoo your ass to make you more powerful. Awesome.
THE BASICS:
As of the current build, each player can have 3 major and 3 minor glyphs. There is an ability in the game (though not currently attainable by any known means) that allows you to unlock an “extra” glyph slot. It is not specified if it is major, minor, or could be used for either. Most speculate that this extra slot will only be available to Scribes, to give them an advantage the same way other professions have BoP items, etc.
Unfortunately, most of the glyphs that have been found in the game are not actually implemented, they’re simply accessible by parsing the game files. So it’s not certain which are major and which are minor yet. We have been given the rough guideline that “Minor glyphs will have a cosmetic effect, or allow you to cast a spell without a reagent, or something like that.” (Paraphrasing from a blue post I can’t find for the life of me right now). So, here’s a quick look at things as they stand. I’m separating them into categories based on the spell the Glyph affects, and I’m including my initial impressions of each. Disclaimer: these are from the perspective of a raider. If you want to talk about PvP usefulness in depth, feel free, but I don’t have a good perspective on that. 
BALANCE:
Glyph of Entangling Roots - This seems like it could be worthwhile if you have a spare slot. I’ve never actually seen math on how much damage Entangling Roots can hold against, so I’d have to try it to see if the effect is noticeable. Now that we can use roots indoors, this could have some application in dungeons/raids, but for the most part seems like it would be a PvP/Soloing ability.
Glyph of Hurricane - I honestly don’t see this being useful. It appears that the slowing effect is only while the mobs are in the hurricane itself. It might have limited application in PvP, but I don’t see it being that great anywhere else.
Glyph of Insect Swarm - Again, this might be useful in PvP, but in a raid setting at least, the 2% miss on a target is worth far more than the extra damage.
Glyph of Moonfire - This one is interesting. Your inital moonfire hits will be for almost nothing, but it significantly increases the DoT portion. Some lunch-napkin math here in the office seems to indicate that you’ll do more total damage with the glyph, as long as your crit is < 50% or thereabouts. Plus, there may be some synergy with the Glyph of Starfire (see below).
Glyph of Starfire - So, with this glyph, your 3 second cast Starfire adds 3 seconds onto the duration of your Moonfire effect. Factor in Nature’s Grace and spell haste, and that means that you could toss on one moonfire and theoretically keep it up for an entire fight. Heck, if they don’t cap the duration of moonfire, you could possibly see a moonfire with a duration of 30-60 seconds on a boss by the time he’s dead. Add in the Glyph of Moonfire, and you’ve got a powerful DOT that pretty much self-renews. This could end up being the bread and butter of level 80 raiding for Balance.
Glyph of Starfall - Most of you haven’t been able to play with Starfall yet. because of the way it functions, there’s debate about this Glyph. Starfall drops 20 stars maximum on targets within 30 yards of you, for 10 seconds. If this glyph increases the duration without increasing the maximum number of stars dropped, it will be useless in most AOE situations, which is where Starfall shines. If, however, the maximum stars are “silently” increased in proportion, as if it were a DoT “ticking” an extra time, it would go up to 24 stars total. This could be great for AOEing, or it could just suck, we’ll see.
Glyph of Wrath - Pretty self explanatory. 50% pushback prevention, useful for PvP mostly.
Glyph of Thorns - Reduces the casting cost of Thorns? Seriously, even if it made thorns free…yeah, I can probably find something better for that slot.
Glyph of Innervate - I want whoever came up with this to have my babies. Seriously. The only question that comes to mind - if you innervate yourself, do you get 120% of the innervate effect, or is the smaller one overwritten? This might lead to druids “trading” innervates.
FERAL:
Glyph of Growl - Less chance for the mob to resist a taunt? Win!
Glyph of Mangle - In my admittedly limited experience, this seems like it would help both DPS and tanking by keeping the debuff up longer, thus requiring less energy/rage over a fight to generate damage & threat. My feral math fu is not the best, so I can’t give an in depth analysis, but this seems like a pretty decent glyph.
Glyph of Rake - “Prevent from fleeing” isn’t too specific, but I’m assuming this will put a rooting effect on Rake. Could be useful in PvP, or for stopping runners in PvE.
Glyph of Rip - Feral DPS mathings is weak! No idea, ferals, you tell me!
Glyph of Shred - Again, my Feral DPS is the weakest point of my druid knowledge. My only observation is that stunned/incap targets are far more common in PvP, so it may be geared more that way.
Glyph of Swipe - This seems like it would be great for tanking, helping to hold multiple targets on the druid.
Glyph of the White Bear and Glyph of the Red Lynx - Cosmetic, but cool!
RESTO:
Glyph of Healing Touch - The key here is whether or not the healing coefficent for healing touch is reduced along with the casting time. If so, the glyph is utter trash. If not, you would trade mana efficiency for a moderately higher HPS. Still, with Nourish now available, I doubt it will be super useful.
Glyph of Rebirth - This could be a little useful, but only once every 20 minutes (or whatever the battle rez cooldown ends up being). I’d pass, myself.
Glyph of Regrowth - This actually looks pretty cool. As long as you’re juggling your HoTs and cooldowns right, you could get a large boost in Regrowth. This could help make druids more viable as tank-focus healers.
Glyph of Rejuvenation - This could be really useful as well. +50% healing whenever the target drops below half health, as long as you have a Rejuv up. Again, this would seem to work best on a tank or otherwise designated target.
Glyph of Swiftmend - ZOMGWTFBBQ?! This is incredible. This means that swiftmend can be used at almost any time as long as you have your HoT rotation going, providing a large burst heal, and not having to worry about the target dying due to sudden lack of dots immediately after. Plus, it doesn’t interrupt your rotation for more than the cast of swiftmend itself. Definately a winner.
Glyph of Wild Endurance - I’d probably use this if it only took a minor, or I was soloing a lot. Just for convenience, more than anything else.
And that’s it for now!
No no, not dead.
