Moonkins Make Life Easier in Heroics

Most of my time in this expansion so far has been tanking dungeons/heroics, not DPSing.  I occassionally get in a guild run where someone wants to tank so I can DPS a little.  What I have seen from myself and other moonkins that we bring a metric ton of stuff that can help make heroics go a little smoother.

First off, moonkins should be using CC constantly.  We have some of the most versitile crowd control (CC) in the game.  We have 2 forms of CC and 1 ability that when combined with a CC makes it usable for caster CC.  The first one, Hibernate, is really only usable against animals and dragonkin.  But it does make Grim Batol go a lot easier with being able to Hibernate a mob.  Our second CC ability is Entangling Roots.  In and of itself, it can CC melee mobs.  However, you combine Entangling Roots with Solar Beam (also, this is one of my favorite combinations in PvP as well.) and you can CC casters.

Second, we should bring a good amount of DPS right now.  With mostly 333 - 346 blues, I'm finding that my DPS is almost equivalent to where it was at the end of ICC with only self buffs.  And this is with ICC trinkets, legs, and chest. A lot of classes are finding that their DPS has actually decreased from ICC.  In time, I'm sure they we will all be doing 20k + on normal boss fights, but right now, we are bring a fair amount of damage.

Third, and probably a big advantage right now among casters right now, is that we can cause have more constant DPS because our mana is very hard to deplete.  It is incredibly hard to run out of mana if you are doing things right.  How do you make sure you do not run out of mana?  There are two ways.  One is through your talents.  The second is through smart innervate use.  If you are properly specced (I personally would recommend Graylo's spec for level 85 raiding), you will have three major mana saving talents being used.  Those talents would be Moonglow, Dreamstate, and Euphoria.  Moonglow just reduces the mana cost of all your balance spells.  Dreamstate causes you to gain 30% more mana instead of 10% of your mana when you cast Innervate on yourself.  Euphroia is the interesting one in all of this since it gives you 12% of your total mana back when you hit either Eclipse.  Also, if you remember during my pre-raid gear recommendations, I mentioned that spirit was preferred over hit due to the out of combat mana regen you get with spirit as well.  That will help keep you up in between pulls.  The other thing that is important is smartly using your Innervate.  You should not wait until your mana is used up to use your Innervate.  You should be using your Innervate at approximately 50% of your mana depleted.  First, you will get 30% back because of Dreamstate.  Second, that should be enough to get you to your next Eclipse to get 12% of your mana back.  As our gear gets better, I'm sure that we will take away those mana saving talents (At least Moonglow and Dreamstate) to change for better DPS talents, but the way mana is now, you need it.

Fourth, we finally have great interrupts.  For interrupting casters, we have Solar Beam.  For interrupting melee, we have Typhoon and Cyclone.  I wouldn't Typhoon on trash, but when interrupting bosses, it would be effective.  I would use Cyclone on trash (Which is technically a 4th CC, but I would use the other 3 first) and use Typhoon on bosses where you can't knock them back anyway.

Count in Moonkin Aura, Earth and Moon, and Battle Rez (I have actually came out of bear form while tanking to throw a healer an Innervate or Battle Rez a player) and we are really a complete package for both heroic dungeons and raids.

However, this is one thing that I must stress that will make people hate you in heroic dungeons.  Unless you are in a boss room with no other mobs around, don't Starfall.  Starfall can get you in a lot of trouble in Cataclysm.  The need for CC and not pulling extra groups is more important than ever.  I have had other moonkins wipe groups because of using Starfall inappropriately.  Just as a general rule, don't Starfall unless it is a boss and even then, check around you and assess the situation.

Just following these simple rules as a moonkin will make it incredibly easy for you while handling the new heroics.  Tomorrow, I'm gonna go a little into tank theory and talk about why and how you pick which mobs to CC and about an addon I'm starting to use again since we actually have to mark targets.

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