Hey Moonkins, Check Your Gear (So You Don't Get Screwed on 4.0.1)

I was over on the Moonkin Repository, a great resource for moonkins by the way, yesterday where I thought of some things that caster druids will want to check before 4.0.1 hits, which is really looking like it is next week. (Which also happens to be the day of my surgery.  Oh yeah.)  

1) Hit - I'm not expecting this to be too big of an issue because we will have a talent that converts all spirit to hit, but you will want to take a look at your hit rating.  If your caster hit rating is only 10% after 4.0.1, it is not good enough anymore.  In 4.0.1, we are losing hit bonuses to both Balance of Power, which provided 4% of our hit, and Improved Faerie Fire, which provided us 3% of our hit.  This means that our new hit cap will be 446 and will provide all 17% of our hit.  Now, with spirit converting to hit, I'm not anticipating a problem.  However, if you are way over hit cap, like I have a feeling mine will be since I have about 500 spirit from gear and gems (natural spirit does not count in the conversion, only gear, gems, and enchants), you will want to reforge some of your gear to hit close to the hit cap and get more crit or haste.

2) Leather Gear Only - There are some pieces of cloth gear that are BiS for caster druids.  The immediate ones that come to mind are the Crushing Coldwraith Belt off of heroic Marrowgar 25 man and the Plague Scientist Boots off of heroic Festergut 25 man.  Come 4.0.1, you will want to get the 5% intellect bonus from using spellcaster leather, so you will want to make sure all of your pieces are leather.  This means you will likely have to take the best leather BiS piece versus the actual BiS, which may be cloth.

3) Reforge to the Caps - I have not had a chance to play with the gear yet enough on the PTR, but you want to make sure that you are hitting all three of your caps (hit cap, soft haste cap, Lunar Crit Cap).  Reforging gives you the perfect opportunity to do just that.  If you have a lot of haste after gem conversions but not enough crit, you can reforge some gear to get to the crit cap.  If you are way above the crit cap,  you can convert some crit to haste.  Reforging gives a real opportunity to be a little less dependent on the gear we do have and can add a little more skill to it.

So, those are the basic things to get your ready for 4.0.1.  We are going to take on heroic Professor Putricide 25 man on Thursday so, personally, I will be looking for a nice 277 leather belt to replace my current cloth belt to prepare for 4.0.1. 

Also, just a reminder, this week, we are recording the druid roundtable, Shift Happens, with the cast of Raid Warning and some of the biggest moonkin bloggers in the world.  I'm looking forward to a few drinks, a few laughs, and a lot of talking about the balance class and where it is going in Cataclysm.

Also, final thing, since I am having surgery next week and may be out for two weeks, I'm looking for some guest bloggers to do some blog posts to cover for me while I'm out.   If you are interested, you can contact me on Twitter, @redhawksgaze, or you can e-mail me at bigdog1862@yahoo.com.