Monday, May 10, 2010

Boomkin 4T9 versus 2T10

I'm kind of excited because I got a question through @redhawksgaze on Twitter.  The question I got was this...

i have 4xT9 and 1xT10 and 95 frosties. Is it time to break that sweet T9x4 bonus?

The short answer is absolutely yes.  And thanks to the 140 character limit on twitter, that is about the extent of the answer that I gave.  However, I did want to delve a little further into this situation on a full post.  

Now, when I gave this answer, I made one huge assumption.  I'm assuming you do not have full TotGC heroic T9 and are fully stocked on 231/245 T9.  The only reason I'm thinking this is because if you were in full TotGC heroic T9, you would have already replaced it with at least 264 T10 and maybe even getting 25 man HMs down.  And even then, it is kind of a tough call on whether to replace it or not.

Now, I currently see two major arguments to going for T10 gear and why you should even be thinking replacing heroic T9 with this gear..
1)  Itemization - The T10 for moonkins is almost perfect.  The head, hands, and shoulders are all red gems which lets us gem for spellpower and get the bonus of more spellpower.  The hands and legs have hit, which is necessary.  No spirit on any of this gear leaves more room for haste and crit.  Also, with the way the tokens are working for 25 man ICC and both heroic ICCs, these items will only get better.  Even if you have heroic T9, you should still at least get the T10 for when it is your turn to get the token piece in 25 mans.  And if you are going to get it, you might as well wear it.

2) Set Bonus - The 4T9 set bonus for moonkins was great.  Here is the comparison of the 4T9 and the 2T10 bonuses.

4T9 -   Increases the damage done by your Starfire and Wrath spells by 4%.

2T10 - When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 15% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 sec.

Now looking just at the set bonuses, it would appear that the 4T9 bonus is superior to the 2T10 bonus.  However, there are a couple things that should be noticed.  First, Wrath is a Nature damage spell and Starfire is an Arcane damage spell.  This means that you are increasing from 4% damage to 15% damage albeit for a shorter amount of time.  The second thing is the proc rate of Omen of Clarity.  It procs a lot especially if you are just standing still and casting.  In addition, you can use Gift of the Wild to proc Omen of Clarity when you are about to stop moving to help increase your damage.  I now carry about 5 stacks of Wild Quillvine just so I can proc it on the move.  This is why overall, the 2T10 bonus is superior to the 4T9 bonus.   However, the biggest reason you want to get 2T10 is you are halfway to the 4T10 bonus, which is even better.


4T10 - Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 5% of your spell's damage over 4 seconds. 

This bonus is huge.  Hitting 25k Starfire crits means that you will get 1250 more damage as a DoT and this is refreshed with every crit.  Since during Lunar Eclipses, you can get multiple 20k+ crits in a row if you are Lunar Crit Capped, you are talking about a fair amount of damage. 

So, as I mentioned, the answer is an emphatic yes if you have 231/245 T9.  While heroic T9 becomes more of a question, I still feel that the T10 is superior to the heroic T9.  I would love to hear some thoughts from other moonkins out there on this.

3 comments:

Qieth said...

Well, long story short, 4PT10 increases crit damage by 5% ;)

Wemb said...

I'm glad my twitter question inspired you to write a blog ;)
I did just have straight t9 gear, my toon is Wembli on Jubei'thos if you wanted to check me out. I'm not ubah geared, i raid in my guild which is Pants On Head, the guild attached to the wow podcast i am a host of- Bind On Equip. our raid group only runs 2 nights a week and we are only 6/12 on normal 10 man ICC at this stage.
Really enjoying your blog. its good to see you keep stuff on there for up'n'comers- remember only 3% of players are elite raiders, so its good not to shut yourself out of the bulk of players. Cheers- Wemb.
ps- heres the plug www.bindonequip.com

Redhawks said...

@Qieth

Yeah, basically. That is a much more succinct way of putting it.

@Wemb

Thanks for the great comments. I was excited to get a question from one of the podcast that I listen to regularly. My guild is about to move to two 25 man nights for 3 hours each. If you get a good group of people together, you can accomplish a lot in a small amount of time. Thankfully, the game is set up so that you don't have to raid 7 hours a day and 7 nights a week to see all the content.