Playing Too Conservatively

Last night was a frustrating night of raiding for me.  I don't know what was going on, but I was constantly behind our other moonkin in DPS.  When I have issues, I always go back and review my spec, spend some time on the target dummy, and make sure my gear is enchanted, gemmed properly, etc.  I noticed two big things.  One, I really need to finish grinding out Hyjal and Therazane rep to get those enchants.  Second thing I figured out took a little bit of thinking.

When we are trying to find DPS problems, we check the spec, rotation, etc. to make sure it is all correct.  I thought the spec I had was good to keep mana mangement better.  I had both Moonglow and Dreamstate, two major mana saving capabilities.  However, looking at the other moonkins spec, I noticed one major thing.  He had neither.  He was going with a more damage oriented raid spec, I was going towards a mana conservation spec, and he was winning.

I mentioned a few blog post ago that I figured out in 25 mans that mana doesn't seem to be as big of an issue as in 5 mans or questing.  This is where I started putting the pieces together.  Why would I take a mana conservation talent over damage talents like Owlkin Frenzy and Master Shapeshifter?  I haven't had mana issues.  The reason I took it initially was obvious.  I specced this way right when I hit 85 when I was having serious mana issues.  Now, most of my gear is 246 with a few epics from Wildhammer Clan. (Yes, despite my advice, I loved the Wildhammer questline, so I was almost revered with them before hitting 85.) and the mana issues seems to have resolved a lot, especially with going with spirit for hit.  The reason I had kept the spec for so long was I was playing on the safe side of mana while ignoring what the main role of moonkin is in the first place, damage.  I was playing too conservatively.

After changing my spec, I decided to go whack on the target dummies for a while. (No comments from the LeetSauced group.  I know you want to, but no.)  I found it was a DPS increase despite not being able to proc Owlkin Frenzy since nothing is hitting me.  I'm sure in a raid enviroment with some fights have raid wide damage, it will proc to give more DPS increase. In addition, I was playing too conservatively with my trinket.  I have the Figurine - Jeweled Serpent, which is an awesome caster trinket and a reward for being a jewelcrafter.    Besides having a little snake follow me around for a bit, which is cool, it is a huge DPS boost.  However, I had it macroed to each of my nukes.   This would have been the conservative route.  The better route was to not macro it and hit it when I proc the next Eclipse after it comes off cooldown.  Again, doing this lead to a DPS increase.

When you are diagnosing problems with your damage or whatever your role is, look at all the normal stuff.  However, also look to see if you are playing too conservatively.  If you had your spec when you hit 85 and did not account for new gear, you likely are playing as a new 85 versus a geared level 85.  If you can change it, you can take away the conservative choices you made early and make you more effective in the job you are doing.

Also, just a reminder, please vote for the winner of the Header Contest.  I'm sure the makers of all 3 headers would greatly appreciate it.

P.S.  After posting this blog post to Twitter, I got the natural question of what is my current spec.  For my new moonkin spec, I would refer you to Quieth's Quips Guide to Moonkin.  He has a damage focused spec and a mana focused spec.  I went with his damage focused spec.  This only goes to level 79, so you will want to pick up the two talents in Resto to get to Master Shapeshifter.  I also put the last point in Solar Beam.  He also has an in-depth guide to moonkins that go into more details than my quick and dirty moonkin guide.

Moonkin Meta Conundrum (a.k.a What To Do Until 4.1?)

Last night, I finally picked up enough JPs after a couple instance runs to pick up the Cluster of Stars, my leather helm of choice pre-raid.  However, it also was the first helm in Cataclysm that has a meta gem slot.  However, this is where a situation arose.

There is no doubt that the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond is the preferred meta gem.  It is a 54 critical strike rating plus 3% increased damage with critical strikes.  The math, which if you would like to see it, I would recommend going to Graylo's site, finds this to be true.  However, it is going to be broken until 4.1 where they will return to requiring two blue gems like the old Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.  The current meta requires more blue gems than red gems, which as moonkins should never happen in the first place.

From there, we have three different choices to go to.  Each is dependant on what you may need.

Bracing Shadowspirit Diamond - 54 Intellect + 2% Decreased Threat

This is a very attractive meta for me specifically.  One, it has a blue gem requirement so that when 4.1 fixes Chaotic, it is going to be easier to transition over in terms of regemming.  Second, it has an intellect boost, which is our most important stat behind being hit capped.  Third, it has decreased threat which means it is Starfalls for everybody. (Not really, but you get my point.)

Ember Shadowspirit Diamond - 54 Intellect + 2% Maximum Mana

Originally, I thought this would be the one of choice depending on your mana issues.  However, it appears that at least in 25 man raiding, mana doesn't seem to be as big of a deal as first thought. (See post from yesterday.)   This means that having more mana may not be as good as having some sort of threat reduction.

Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond - 54 Mastery + Minor Run Speed Increase

If you remember the reasoning behind why Tuskarr's Vitality was the boot enchant for choice in Wrath, then you know what the Fleet diamond is on the list.  The faster you move, the sooner you can DPS.  However, this gem has two major problems with it.  One, it has Mastery, which is our worst stat.  Second, there will be an enchant for a run speed increase for boots that will stil be preferred.  The reason this is bad is because the speed run enchants don't cumulatively add up.  In addition, looking at the math, this is the furtherest behind the Chaotic in terms of DPS by a good deal. 

In terms of what I would recommend  until 4.1, it is all dependant on what you want.  If you have lots of gold to regem your gear when 4.1 and you want the maximum DPS, go with the Chaotic.  (I would also look at Graylo's site for how to gem in this circumstance because it is not easy.) If you want to put our solid damage, decrease threat, and make it easier to regem after 4.1, go with the Bracing.  If you are having mana issues in raids and 5 mans, go with the Ember.  If you want to get a small run increase prior to getting your boots enchanted, go with the Fleet.

As I said, there is no doubt after 4.1, you will want to go with the Chaotic meta gem.  It simply is the best output in DPS.  Until then, we will just have to make due with the other gems out there.

Last reminder for this.  Tomorrow is the last day for the Header Contest.  I will close entries at midnight tomorrow night so if you want a chance to win some great prizes, this is your shot.

Lessons From First Night of Raiding

Last night was the first night I got to step into a 25 man raid with my guild, Conquest. (Which we are recruiting quite a few classes so I would recommend checking them out with the link on the sidebar.)  I was only in for one boss, Halfus, since they had been wiping to the second boss all last week and wanted the experienced people in there for that fight.  Here are a few things that I found out while raiding:

1) Moonkin mana may not be as big of an issue in 25 man raids. - It may have just been the mechanics of the first fight, but I was never below half mana thanks to Eclipses, etc.  As I start to get some actual raid gear, I may see this improve over time.  I'm not gonna change my spec based off of one single boss kill, but if this continues, I may take points out of Moonglow and move them into Owlkin Frenzy.

2) Raid bosses are fun - Halfus is not the most involved fight in the game, but it sure is a lot of fun.  Between the dragon breathing fire on you all the time to activating the drakes and whelps, it is a hectic fight, but a lot of fun.  Which brings me to the next point.

3) Threat has changed - In 25 mans in Wrath, for the most part, I could open up on a boss almost immediately due to MDs, Tricks of the Trade, etc. to give the tank aggro.  Not the case anymore.  If I am popping Treants, Starfall, Wild Mushroom, adding DoTs, and start casting my nukes, I can pull aggro easy.  It even lead to our second wipe.  Now, it is better to delay slightly and let all the tanks pick up what they are going to pick up, then start bombing.

4) DPS standards have gone up - At the end of Wrath, I was pulling 13k - 15k DPS on most boss fights with highs of around 17k.  Last night, I pulled 18k on the Halfus kill.  It would have been great if the tank hadn't pulled 18k as well. (Admittingly, there are a lot of adds in that fight which add to tanks DPS) Most of the other DPS was above 20k + DPS.  This shows mainly one thing, if you think you are gonna step into a raid with any green pieces and do great, it is not gonna happen.  I still have a green 318 head that needs to be replaced in my moonkin set.  Also, I really need something with a meta to get increased damage percentage. (Once they fix the Chaotic meta gem) I'm at 1700 JPs approximately, so I'm sure the head will now be my next purchase. 

5) Trash Is Tough - Going back to trash like we saw in Ruby Sanctum, I think we had at least 6 - 7 different types of CC at one time on trash and we wiped more on trash then on bosses.  The trash it tight and tough and is easy to pull extra groups.  It requires special awareness to know that you are not pulling stuff you shouldn't.  Also, goes without saying, Starfall is a no-no on this trash.

So overall, I enjoyed the first night of raiding.  It was good to get back in the swing of things and am looking forward to more raiding with my guild. 

Also, just a reminder about the Header Contest.  The last day for entries is this Friday.  After that, I will post the nominees the week after and will let the readers vote on the next header for the blog.  Also, next Monday, I will have some major announcements on the new blog projects I talked about yesterday.
       

Best Cataclysm Factions for Moonkins

In Wrath of the Lich King, they found easy ways to raise your reputation with factions whether it was tabards or relics of Ulduar.  And, thank God they did.  Remembering back from Burning Crusade where you had to run heroic in Zangarmarsh over and over and over again to raise Cenarion Expedition rep to get the best pre-raid feral tanking staff was insane.

In Cataclysm, they have expanded it to include every faction in the game including your major capital cities. (Which I personally appreciate after having got Crusader on my  main and had to raise my city rep by either cloth or questing.  A level 80 druid doing level 1 gnome/dwarf quest just didn't seem right.)  However, determining which factions to do first can be a little tricky.  Let me go through each of the major factions and break down what goodies you can get as a moonkin.

Wildhammer Clan - The Alliance faction found out in Twilight Highlands, the Wildhammer Clan has some of the most interesting quest to open up its faction.  Also, there are several great rewards for moonkins as you raise your rep.  At honored, you get leather caster shoulders.  At revered, you get a nice caster ring.  However, at exalted, you get a couple of nice epics.  You get an epic caster neck and an incredibly nice caster waist.  Also, there is a bonus if you are a feral tank because the leather gloves at exalted may end up being BiS until you get into heroic raids.  Priority:  High

Guardians of Hyjal - The single biggest thing you want from this faction is the head enchant at revered, the Arcanum of Hyjal, which will be your standard enchant for all your head pieces of gear as a moonkin.  Beyond that, there is not a lot of great moonkin gear from here.  There is a 333 cloak at honored and 346 leather caster gloves at revered.  Unless you are a feral tank, there is nothing for you at exalted.  However, solely due to the head enchant, you should get this faction to revered early.  Priority: High

Earthen Ring - Yes, Thrall may be there, but that doesn't mean as a moonkin,  you should be.  At least not at first.  Both the caster pieces at honored and revered you could use have critical strike (Yuck!) and mastery (I just threw up in my mouth a little.)  In addition, there is nothing at exalted for moonkins.  Again, depending on your offspec, you may want to hit this early if you are a tank due to the head enchant.  However, if you are focused on moonkin, stay away from Earthen Ring to begin with.  Priority: Low

Therazane - Cataclysm's Sons of Hodir in more ways than one.  First off, you start off as hated.  Through about 5 quest, you quickly become friendly.  However, the difference is they have a tabard this time instead of relics to up your reputation.  In addition, they are also the faction with your shoulder enchants starting at honored.  While the 346 rings are nothing special (unless you are a feral tank), you really want to get your shoulder enchants quickly, at least the honored ones to start.  Priority:  High

Ramkahen - Come on.  Do you expect a race of cat people to have anything for moonkins?  Besides a 333 caster ring at honored, there is not a lot here except for a camel mount, which is gonna be awesome.  However, in terms of priority, it is not gonna be the highest.  They don't even have a lot of good feral druid stuff here.  Priority:  Low

Baradin's Warden - The Tol Barad faction.  There are a lot of interesting rewards, but nothing that really jumps out for moonkins though, although reforging the Slump of Time's hit into a massive amount of haste might be awesome.  Also, there are a couple of cool mounts.  However, this faction has no tabard and can only be raised by doing Tol Barad, which personally, I love more than Wintergrasp. Priority: Low

So if I was going to rate the order in which I would do factions based solely on moonkin,  here is the order I personally would go in:

1) Therazane to Honored
2) Guardians of Hyjal to Revered
3) Wildhammer Clan to Exalted
4) Therazane to Exalted
5) Guardians of Hjyal to Exalted
6) Ramkahen to Exalted
7) Earthen Ring to Exalted
8) Baradin's Warden to Exalted (Through Every Tol Barad)

Of course, taking into account the tanking offspec, I might get Earthen Ring to Revered before Guardians of Hyjal to Exalted for the head tanking enchant. 

Just a reminder, you have until Friday to get in your entries for the Header Contest.  I still only have two entries so if you enter, you have an incredibly good chance of winning one of the main prizes.

Finally, I'm going to start working on a couple new blog projects.  I don't want to give anything away yet because I'm not certain about what I'm doing yet, but I have a few ideas.  One is likely going to be a personal blog for stuff outside of gaming in general, like the fact that I got engaged this weekend.  I'm also thinking about resurrecting a general video game blog.   Just keep an eye out here for what may be coming up next.  

Level 85 Moonkin PvP Spec Necessities

In our PvP division of my guild, Conquest (And yes, we are still recruiting for both our PvE and PvP divisions.), we had a new moonkin apply.  As someone who enjoys PvPing and tries to as much as possible and reviewing his spec, I thought that I would try to develop my very own PvP spec with what I thought were the major components needed for a PvP player.

Looking through our talent tree, here are the things that I found different from the PvE moonkin spec that are necessary in PvP.

Gale Winds - Increasing the damage of your Hurricane does not do a lot in PvP, but increasing the damage of your Typhoon is huge and necessary.  Also, being able to Cyclone at a distance is incredibly important.

Solar Beam - While it may be situational/CC use in PvE, Solar Beam is a life saver in PvP with the ability to silence casters in a huge area.

Fungal Growth - Since we have Wild Mushrooms now, we can set it up to slow people down in PvP besides cause damage.  Also, it helps with Treants as well, but in PvP, we would likely use Wild Mushrooms more.

Perserverance - Regardless of which spec you use in PvP, you should always go for this talent.  Having 6% less magical damage is huge in PvP, especially when combined with PvP gear.

Of course, these aren't the only talents you will take.  You still want to focus on spellpower/intellect and haste talents wherever possible and of course you want to pick up Typhoon and Starfall for PvP.  One of the more interesting talents that may look interesting is Owlkin Frenzy.  In fact, when making my list, I was left with a choice between Perserverance and Owlkin Frenzy.  While a 15% chance of increased damage is nice and no pushback from spells, taking 6% less damage in PvP is more necessary in my opinion. 

The other major question of concern is mana.  In PvE, mana can be drained pretty quickly depending on your spec.  From what I found in PvP,  mana seems to be less of an issue.  This will also require a few small changes, mainly, the elimination of Moonglow. 

So without any further ado, let me give you my custom moonkin PvP spec:

Balance
Nature's Grace (2/2)
Starlight Wrath (3/3)
Nature's Majesty (2/2)
Genesis (3/3)
Balance of Power (2/2)
Euphoria (2/2)
Moonkin Form (1/1)
Typhoon (1/1)
Shooting Stars (2/2)
Gale Winds (2/2)
Solar Beam (1/1)
Dreamstate (2/2)
Force of Nature (1/1)
Sunfire (1/1)
Earth and Moon (1/1)
Fungal Growth (2/2)
Lunar Shower (3/3)
Starfall (1/1)

Total Points: 33

Feral
(None)

Restoration
Blessing of the Grove (2/2)
Heart of the Wild (3/3)
Perserverance (3/3)

Total Points: 8

As I mentioned, there are a couple customizations you can make.  If you are really not having any problems with mana, you can go for Owlkin Frenzy, but until gear and mana pools get better, I would hold off on getting that one in favor of more mana return from Innervate.

In terms of glyphs, there are a lot of choices for glyphs, but it probably won't change a lot from PvE to PvP.  The one in particular that you may want to change out for your PvP spec is adding Entangling Roots, which makes it an instant cast and may make it useful to set up and keep a caster in Solar Beam. 

Hopefully, this will get you started on your way to doing moonkin PvP.  It is a lot of fun, from pushing opponents off ledges in AB to keeping a healer under control while you are killing him. 

Finally, just a reminder about the Header Contest.  This contest will close next Friday so I encourage you to get in your headers as soon as possible.

Level 85 Pre-Raid Gear Recommendations for Moonkins

Last night, I hit the halfway point in my goal of becoming Justice Points capped prior to Cataclysm.  Just a few more LFG dungeons and I will at least be close to my goal.  However, when I do get capped, I have to start thinking about what my purchases will be.

 I started off by looking at some gear list of what you can get with Justice Points and I started to build my list of what I wanted.  Unfortunately, considering the choices available for us, our decisions are relatively straightforward for Justice Points.  Also, there are a lot of slots that are not covered by Justice Points.  To fill those slots, I looked at the heroic dungeons to find what gear would be the best to fill in those slots.

In terms of what I was looking for in gear, my priorities changed slightly from my level 80 stats.  Here are my current level 85 priorities in gear.

Spirit > Hit > Intellect = Spellpower > Haste > Mastery = Critical Strike

A little explanation.  The reason I chose spirit over hit is for one major reason.  Spirit is automatically converted to hit so it is at the very least equal to hit.  However, given the issues that may occur with mana in Cataclysm, we will need to have better mana regeneration out of combat.  In this vein, I chose spirit over hit.  This also shows the initial priority should be our hit cap, which at level 85 will be *prepare to catch your breath* 1742 to have 17% spell hit.  Also, I chose haste over mastery/crit due to the way haste effects the speed our spells are cast and DoTs tick.  Mastery and Critical Strike are relatively close in importance.  We will want to get plenty of both, but haste is our major stat.  What I tended to find with our gear is that haste and mastery were together or crit and mastery were together.  When there was a question, I took the haste/mastery.  Also, remember that reforging can  help to get the gear to where we want it.  Finally, and it should go without saying, but leather only to get the leather specialization bonus.

So with all that in mind, here is my ideal level 85 pre-raid gear.  I tried to only use Justice Points or gear from heroic 5-mans.  Also, I got all this information from Wowpedia, since it is the only one I can access from my job.  It doesn't have all the heroic 5-mans bosses' loot, so some heroic 5-man loot may be better than this, however, it has enough info to at least make a starter list.

    Head: Cluster of Stars - 2200 Justice Points

Neck: Celadon Pendant - 1650 Justice Points

Shoulder: Somber Shawl - 1650 Justice Points

Back: Solar Wind Cloak (Heroic) - Halls of Origination (H) - Rajh

Chest: Robes of Forgetfullness - 2200 Justice Points

Wrist: Armbands of Change (Heroic) - Blackrock Caverns (H) - Corla

Hands: Blessed Hands of Elune - 1650 Justice Points

Waist: Thatch Eave Vines - 1650 Justice Points

Legs: Leggings of Late Blooms - 2200 Justice Points

Feet: Awakening Footfalls (Heroic) - Halls of Origination (H) - Temple Guardian

Ring 1: Lavishly Jeweled Ring (Heroic) - Deadmines (H) - Admiral Ripsnarl

Ring 2: Rose Quartz Band (Heroic) - Stonecore (H) - Slabhide

Trinket 1: Witching Hourglass (Heroic) - Blackrock Caverns (H) - Ascendant Lord Obsidius

Trinket 2: Tendrils of Burrowing Dark (Heroic) - Stonecore (H) - Ozruk

Main Hand: Scepter of Power (Heroic) - Halls of Origination (H) - Setesh

Off Hand: Apple Bent Bough - Justice Points 950

Idol: Book of Dark Prophecies (Heroic) - Stonecore (H) - High Priestess Azil

So, for only 13,750 Justice Points (Don't worry, this won't be that hard when we are getting 75 justice points for downing heroic 5-man bosses) and a few instance runs,  here are the stats that you get.

Spirit/Hit: 1436

Intellect: 3068

Haste: 1158

Mastery: 1001

Critical Strike: 533

Since you are not at the hit cap, you will need to reforge slightly and maybe even gem for a little hit until you get some raiding gear under your belt.  If you are going to reforge for your hit, I would work backwards on the list of stats.  40% of the mastery and critical strike numbers come up to 613, so you should be able to find your hit in just those two stats to get to 1742 and still have a good amount of mastery and critical strike. 

Finally, if you want to save some Justice Points and go for a sweet staff instead, I would recommend getting Staff of Isolation (Heroic) from Lord Godfrey in Heroic Shadowfang Keep.  However, I think the stats would be overall better going with an offhand and main hand due to the increased spellpower of using a main hand/off hand combo.

Of course, when you start raiding,  you will want to go for your tier sets and then get the next level gear from there.  And you don't need all these pieces to start raiding.  From what I have heard, an average iLevel of 340 would be enough to get into starting raids.

What Moonkins Bring to PvP

Kitty PvP At Its Best

Blog Azeroth is doing a shared topic this week about what your class brings to raids.  I hope by reading this blog, you have seen all the benefits of bringing a moonkin to raids means in terms of crit buffs, armor debuffs with Faerie Fire, damage output, etc. 

This past week on the last day of raiding for this expansion, I got my 25 man Glory of the Icecrown Raider drake, which I hope to have a pic up in the screenshots section soon.  This means up until Cataclysm I have two goals.  Max out Justice Points and max out Honor Points.  My guild has started doing organized 15 man BGs to get ready for rated BGs in Cataclysm.  While I haven't decided whether I'm going to apply to the rated BG group, I have found out what moonkins can bring to a rated battleground PvP setting. 

1) Pseudo-Glass Cannon - The term "glass cannon" usually refers to clothies, like mages, who can bring incredible amount of damage but can be killed relatively easily.  Moonkins are a different class that I like to call a pseudo-glass cannon.  We can pump out a lot of damage with Starfall, Starsurge, DoTs, Wrath, and Starfire.  However, we can also heal ourselves, have more armor than clothies, and have a mechanic that damages melee if they hit us with Thorns.  That is why I'm using my PvE gear in our PvP battleground matches.  I can survive so that I don't need resilience but I can still pump out the damage. 

2) Typhoon - A situational spell in PvE becomes an incredible spell in PvP, especially with the fun things you can do with it.  I love being at Lumber Mill in AB and just waiting for someone to start capping the flag.   A second later, they haven't capped it and they are flying off the cliff praying to their diety of choice that they survive the fall.  In addition, to the knockback, it also has a snare effect that slows them down incredibly.

3) Entangling Roots + Solar Beam = Dead Casters - Ideally, this would be used against healers, but would work with any casters.  One of the things I have loved doing is finding the healer in a group, casting Entangling Roots followed by Solar Beam and you have a useless healer that will die quickly.

4) Solar Beam In General - This has so many great uses.  If you see one of your melee guys against a caster, cast Solar Beam on their opponent and they are dead.  You can also use it on choke points.  My favorite was the path leading down in Isle of Conquest to the Docks.  You set it up right before the end of the road and meet the enemy before they get down and they go down easily.    Although a guildie would disagree with me, Solar Beam has very situational use in a PvE setting.  At level 85, it may be a better tool with a couple more points to work with, but I would much rather get higher damage boosting talents in PvE.  That is why I have dropped my feral tank for the time being for a moonkin PvP talent spec.  I may drop my moonkin PvE set for a while so I can tank some heroics for Justice Points and for leveling, but we will see about that.

5) The Potential of Wild Mushrooms - While I don't know how they will finally work, I can imagine some awesome potential in PvP for Wild Mushrooms.  Imagine you are in Warsong Gulch.  You set up three mushrooms by the tunnel entrance to your base.  The flag carrier uses a different path to get in, but they try running out the tunnel.  Detonate those mushrooms plus add in the talent that makes the mushrooms create a area of slow and you have an incredible PvP tool.  Think about the possibilites in AV, the road to LM or GM in AB, by the gates in SotA.  So many awesome possibilites.

And this is not including all our normal PvE benefits including MotW, critical strike bonuses, DoTs, Faerie Fire, and even Rebirth in rated battlegrounds.  So I encourage you in the last few days of this expansion to try out BGs.  If you are on Ner'zhul, you can come in on the Conquest BG pre-mades, where we are owning the 15 man BGs.  If you really love our premades, I would recommend applying for the rated BGs team in Cataclysm.  

   

My Level 80 Moonkin 4.0.1 Guide - A Quick and Dirty Guide for Moonkins

Note:  All of this guide comes from my research of other blogs/sites.  I would refer you to them for a more in depth discussion of things from this guide.  Check out the blog links on the side or under the WoW Blog Links tab.

Spec: Hopefully, I will find a better link to the graphical version, but this is my current spec highlighted.  I'm sorry, this is MicroArmory and it sucks balls.  Ignore the glyphs.  Those are not the correct glyphs because again, MicroArmory sucks.

Stat Priority:  Remember that all spirit is converted to hit so while it is priority number 1, it is not difficult.

Hit/Spirit to 446 Hit (17%) > Intellect/Spellpower > Haste > Critical Strike Rating

Main reason behind this is haste will reduce the cast time of Wrath, Starfire, and Starsurge and allow you get more Eclipses.  In addition, higher haste will increase the number of Insect Swarm/Moonfire ticks which also equals more Shooting Stars which means more instant Starsurges.  Also, notice I did not put Mastery in this list.  For the time, you should not gem or reforge your gear for mastery.  Wait until 85.  This guide is just for a level 80 raiding moonkin.

Caps:  Before 4.0.1, I said go for the caps of hit, soft haste, and Lunar Crit.  While the hit cap is still incredibly important, there is no haste or Lunar Crit Cap.  You want as much haste and crit as possible because it will improve everything with haste having a slight lead over crit.

UI Changes: Thank goodness Eclipse is not a random proc anymore.  We can actually control our own Eclipses thanks to the new Eclipse bar.  While the Blizzard eclipse bar is nice, if you use any type of raid frames, you will want to get BalancePowerTracker, which is a movable Eclipse bar that has the nice additional feature of telling you when your next Wrath, Starfire, or Starsurge will proc the next Eclipse so that you know to immediately start changing as soon as it hits.  There is also a couple of additional instances where you will do actions based on Solar or Lunar Eclipses, but we will get to those.

Gemming/Enchants:  While some recommend changing the head and shoulder enchants, I tend to agree with Qieth from Qieth's Quips on this because I would much rather have critical strike versus spirit unless you are not at the hit cap.  We still only go for bonuses of +7 spellpower or greater.  Red should be straight intellect.  Yellow should be Intellect + Haste.  Blue should be Intellect + Spirit .  Remeber that you need at least two blue gems to activate our meta gem.  Of course, we only should be using epic gems because you can get 4T10 by just running instances now.  Otherwise, enchant like before focusing on spellpower and haste.  And yes, Tuskarr's Vitality is still preferred over Icewalker.

Glyphs:  I will update when I get a chance to get to somewhere I can actually see my real glyphs and not this MicroArmory crap.

Spells and Their Uses

- Faerie Fire: You can be nice and cast it if there is no feral druid tank in your group, but since it doesn't provide a hit bonus, it is not as much of a priority.  In addition, your feral will appreciate you not casting it because it can help more with their threat if they are tanking.

- Moonfire:  If you liked Moonfire prior to 4.0.1, you will love Moonfire after.  Not only is Moonfire a DoT that should be started at both the beginning of the fight and after each Eclipse proc, but you will want to cast it on the move because it becomes an instant nuke.  Not as powerful as Starsurge, Wrath, or Starfire, but still good damage. Remember that Moonfire is for Lunar Eclipses and non-Eclipse time periods.

- Sunfire:  You may have noticed that when you proc a Solar Eclipse, your Moonfire button changes.  This is the Solar Eclipse version of Moonfire.  Same rules apply though in terms of when to cast it.

- Insect Swarm: Pretty much the same rules as Moonfire.  Cast it at the beginning of the fight and when you proc and Eclipse.  Do not cast this while on the move unless you just procced an Eclipse.  While casting it when you proc a Lunar Eclipse is important, you will definitely want to cast it when you proc a Solar Eclipse.  The damage on Insect Swarm is absolutely insane when you have a Solar Eclipse up.

- Force of Nature (Treants): In my rotation, I'm not changing too much on how the Treants are used.  I still use them at the beginning of the fight and in the middle of a fight if it takes that long.  The one difference is that if I can hold them until a Solar Eclipse, I will because they do more damage during a Solar Eclipse.

- Starfall: Although it was nerfed slightly because we don't get splash damage anymore, this is still an insanely powerful spell, even more so if used during a Lunar Eclipse.  That should actually be the goal with Starfall is to use it exclusively during a Lunar Eclipse.  Now, there are some instances where you might want to use it in a non-Lunar Eclipse, like breaking ice blocks during HM Sindy, but if you can, wait until you have a Lunar Eclipse.

- Starsurge: Our newest castable nuke that has two uses.  First off, this spell will work with either a Solar or a Lunar Eclipse so you will want to cast it on cooldown.  Second, this becomes an instant cast when Shooting Stars is procced by your Insect Swarm or Moonfire/Sunfire, making it something that can even be cast on the move.  This is part of the reason why you want to cast Moonfire/Sunfire when moving because it increases the chance to proc Shooting Stars and get an instant Starsurge.

- Wrath: Has not really changed.  This is how we move from a Solar Eclipse to a Lunar Eclipse. (Right to left on the Eclipse bar.

- Starfire: Has not really changed.  This is how we move from a Lunar Eclipse to a Solar Eclipse. (Left to right on the Eclipse bar.

- Typhoon: Same use basically.  Knockback with a stun.  Usable in certain circumstances like LK but should not always be cast unless you want to piss off your tank and melee DPS.

- Hurricane: Our AoE trash spell.  Its damage is increased if you have a Solar Eclipse.

Now that we have gone through all the spells, let's add them together for certain circumstances.

AoE Trash:  Try to stay in a Solar Eclipse and cast Hurricane.  Can Starsurge if you get a Shooting Stars proc.  If you are on your way to a boss, at least start trying to move towards a Lunar Eclipse by casting Starsurge/Wrath. If safe, you can cast Starfall, but use cautiously.

Single Target Trash: Use this to move towards a Lunar Eclipse.  If I can, I like to start bosses in or a few seconds from a Lunar Eclipse to get a Starfall off quickly.

Bosses:  I start to set up Treants before the pull.  Once the pull starts, I cast Treants and throw up my DoTs, Insect Swarm and Moonfire.  You use to worry about having Earth and Moon on first, but you will get it quickly enough.  Then Starsurge is my first spell because I want to get as many Starsurges in as possible since it is one of our faster casting spells.  From there, it is all dependant on the circumstances.

Non-Eclipse: Start casting the nuke to move it the appropriate direction with the arrow.  If arrow is moving from Lunar side to Solar side, I cast Starfire.  If arrow is moving from Solar to Lunar side, I cast Wrath.  Starsurge on cooldown or Shooting Stars proc.  If DoTs fall off, don't refresh because you will hit an Eclipse soon.

Lunar Eclipse: First, refresh DoTs before anything.  Second, cast Starfall if it is off cooldown, which is should be or is close to since it is only 1 minute when glyphed, which it should be.  Then I start casting Starfire to move it towards a Solar Eclipse.  Starsurge on cooldown or Shooting Stars proc.

Solar Eclipse:  First, refresh DoTs before anything, especially Insect Swarm.  Second, cast Treants if off cooldown.  Then I start casting Wrath to move it towards a Lunar Eclipse.  Starsuge on cooldown or Shooting Stars proc.

Moving: Spam Moonfire/Sunfire and cast Starsurge only on Shooting Star procs. Can cast Insect Swarm if the DoT falls off, but don't spam.

Use Typhoon in circumstances when necessary.

Hopefully, you will find this guide necessary to get you started on doing moonkin.  I have had several people asking me for a moonkin guide.  I have never done a full one like this but hopefully it will help some.

My Moonkin 4.0.1 Impressions

After only getting one blog post last week and still recovering from surgery, I am finally back and will be updating back on a normal schedule.  The first thing I want to tackle now that I'm back is my impressions of moonkins after patch 4.0.1.  I think this is best described in this following equation.

4.0.1 Moonkin = 3.3.5 Moonkin + Fire Mage

Now, it may seem a little weird to say it like this, but it is absolutely true.  With the new addition of Shooting Stars and Starsurge, which procs into an instant cast off of Shooting Stars, it seems a lot like Hot Streak proccing instant Pyroblast.   In addition, like a fire mage, we now have no talents that give us hit.  We are required to get all of our hit from spirit or hit on gear. 

The biggest difference however is the short cast time of Starsurge makes it to where we will want to cast it when it is off cooldown, regardless if we have Shooting Stars.  Shooting Stars just resets the cooldown and makes it an instant cast so we can get more in.  Mages may stick a Pyroblast in there every so often, but they would much rather just proc Hot Streak from Fireballs due to the long cast time of Pyroblast.

The other major changes come in the way of our DoTs.  Before, you would cast the DoTs, Moonfire and Insect Swarm, when you don't have an Eclipse.  Now, you will cast them both at the beginning of an Eclipse.  The other change in our DoTs is Moonfire changes to Sunfire when you proc a Solar Eclipse.  In other words, I would not macro the two DoTs together because there is no way (at least, I know of no way) to macro for Sunfire.  Also, Faerie Fire's use has gone down drastically since you don't need the 3% hit.  We have a feral tank and he needs it for aggro, so I just let him cast it now.

With reforging, after patch 4.0.1 hit, I was at 27% hit due to the benefit of spirit changing to hit.  So, when it comes to reforging, here is the order I reforged since you can only reforge each piece of gear once.

1) Reforge excess spirit or hit to haste or crit depending on the gear. (Reforging for some reason only allows to change some pieces to just haste, just crit, or haste or crit.  If I had a choice, I always leaned towards haste.)

2) Reforge 40% crit into haste if possible.

 

The final thing is the timing of Starfall.  Most places I have researched say cast Starfall during Lunar Eclipses if it is off cooldown.  Now, there are some situations where you may want to cast it off Lunar Eclipse.  The best example I can think of is Valks during Lich King.  If people are getting close to the edge of going off and my Starfall is off cooldown, even if it is not a Lunar Eclipse, I'm casting it to save them from going over.  It may not be the max DPS, but it becomes situational.  That is why I would say use in a Lunar Eclipse, but be mindful of specific situations.

So, as you see, a lot of what moonkins do stay the same, but there are some new tricks up our sleeve to use.  I definitely saw a DPS increase although I was using a laptop that was topping out at 10 FPS during some boss fights.  Tonight, since I'm back on my main computer, I'm expecting it to go up even higher.  Also, a lot of this information has come from other bloggers like Qieth's Quips and Gray Matter, so I encourage you to check them out since they go into more theorycrafting than I do.

Also, come back tomorrow because I will announce the winner of the Christmas In July contest where someone will win a FigurePrint of their character.

And damn, it feels good to be back.

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.

My Brief Experience in the PTR - Lessons Learned

I finally was able to get into the PTR and play around with the 4.0.1 moonkin changes (albeit through streaming while downloading).  Also, thanks to whoever took Redhawks.  I had to name my character Reddhawks on the US PvP PTR server. Here are some of the things I have learned so far.

Lesson 1 - Wow, this is going to be a huge download.  Thankfully, they had the thing that allows you to play and stream parts of it while it is downloading because if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be able to do anything on the PTR.  Thank goodness the Background Download is already running for the live client.

Lesson 2 - Moonkin DPS is equal to current or maybe even higher.  I was able to top over 10k on a practice dummy in Stormwind with a higher than normal latency and only about 15 frames per second.  This makes me think that it could even be higher than I thought.


Lesson 3 -  The Eclipse Bar is cool.  I love having a little more control over the Eclipses and it has a long cooldown so you can move.  Now, if someone can come up with an addon that makes it movable, that will be great.

Lesson 4 - Starsurge is incredibly interesting.  Just with my own personal testing, if you cast it during an Eclipse, it pushes it backwards allowing a little more time to Eclipse.  I could see this working in either one of two ways and it all depends on damage output.  Either it will be cast during an Eclipse to push it backwards and get you more Eclipse time or it can be used after you stop moving to regain some of the Eclipse time you lost.   

Lesson 5 - Our mana pools are gonna be huge post patch.  Currently in the PTR with my moonkin gear, I have over 30k mana unbuffed.  This is only gonna get bigger leveling up in Cataclysm.  Of course, my HP is also above 30k as well. 

Lesson 6 - I like the new Glyph system.  Assuming you can find someone to make all the glyphs.  As it happens to be, I only have my current glyphs and the new glyphs. 

Lesson 7 - Treants and Starfall are still not affected by Eclipses.  I was hoping they would be, but my personal damage output does not show it is true.  What will be more than likely true is you will want to cast Treants while moving towards the Lunar Eclipse but outside of the Solar Eclipse to push it further towards the Lunar Eclipse and you will want to cast Starfall while moving towards the Solar Eclipse but not during the Lunar Eclipse to push it further towards the Solar Eclipse.  Of course, it may just end up like now where you just cast them on cooldown outside of an Eclipse.   

Lesson 8 - If you are currently not on the PTR, good luck.  The Launcher started weirding out on me when the Background Downloader for the Live Client started downloading the patch.  If anybody can help tell me where I can download the rest of it, maybe like on FileFront or something so I can run it better in the PTR.

Moonkin Gearing Decisions - A Case Study

Being a pharmacist, I loved it in school when they would give us a case study, or a question wrapped up in a situation and we had to determine the best answer.  I actually had a great one happen to myself last night while we were raiding.  Hopefully, you will enjoy this.

Situation:  We just downed Valethria Dreamwalker on 25 man ICC HM and Frostbinder's Shredded Cape drops.  Here are the major important stats for this cloak.

Intellect: + 78

A Yellow Gem Slot (With +5 SP bonus)

Critical Strike Rating Improved by 68

Haste Rating Improved by 60

Spellpower Increased by 100

A few weeks ago in 25 man Ruby Sanctum regular, I got the Cloak of Burning Dusk.  Here are the important stats for this cloak:

Intellect: +73

A Red Gem Slot (With +5 SP bonus)

Critical Strike Rating Improved by 56

Haste Rating Improved by 64

Spellpower Increased by 104

Here are my current stats:

Intellect:  1498

Critical Strike Rating: 968

Haste Rating: 1035

Hit Capped

264 Idol

Quiz Time  

Question 1: My guild runs a loot council where you can specify if you want a drop for your main spec and it is a major upgrade (Main), whether it is a side grade but you are still interested (Pass), or whether it is an offspec item (Off).  You can also say nothing and just pass on this item.  What would be the correct action in this case for my moonkin spec (My offspec is tank so he would never use it)?

Question 2: Knowing the new info about Cataclysm, it is unlikely that we will actually complete hardmode Ruby Sanctum.  Does this change your answer?

Pencils Down.  You get to grade  your own paper so you will make a 100% anyway, but lets go through what my decision was in the moment.

Question 1:  I said nothing although I would have accepted Pass as an answer.  Saying nothing is the ideal answer though.  Looking at my stats, I am hit capped, soft haste capped above 408, lunar crit capped at 968 plus the 264 idol.  Although the 277 cloak is a higher iLevel, trading it out would mean an increase in my critical strike rating, which is not really needed, and a decrease in my haste, which is really not needed.  In addition, the 271 cloak from Ruby Sanctum is better itemized with the red gem slot because regardless of the cape, since it is only +5 spellpower.

Question 2:  I would argue that this cape is still better even if we never do hardmode Ruby Sanctum.  I mean, the hardmode version of this cape is best in slot for pretty much any caster, but I'm thinking in my circumstance that the regular version is better than the ICC HM cape.  This means that this cape is likely the one I use until I replace it at level 83.

Going back to several blog post I have made in the past, I have talked about gemming within the caps.  When you are upgrading your gear, it is important to look at your caps as well.  When you are above the Lunar Crit Cap, haste becomes slightly more important than critical strike rating.  This is the reason for gemming with spellpower  plus haste gems versus spellpower plus critical strike gems when you are above the Lunar Crit Cap.  If I was not above the Lunar Crit Cap, my decision would be to go with the 277 iLevel cloak to get more critical strike rating.  However, since I am, I know it is more of a sidegrade and is arguably a downgrade.

Looking at the gear list I get from Gray Matter, whose blog is listed on the side, she mentioned the HM Dreamwalker cape is higher than the 271 RS cape.  However, that is for a specific situation.  In my situation, where I value haste over critical strike rating, I chose the 271 cape.  This is why gear list are guides.  You still need to know your caps and what you are going towards when choosing your best gear.

Moonkin Gemming - Within the Caps

I got a question from a friend of mine last night who is looking to gem his moonkin.  Thinking back on it, this is one of the few topics that I have never discussed on this blog.  How to gem as a moonkin.

Starting off, there are only a few gems you should be gemming with anyway.  As a general rule, you should be using epic gems except for your meta.  They help your gear the most and shows that you care about your gemming.  Plus, at this point, epic gems are not that expensive.  Here are the gems you should be using (if you are not a jewelcrafter):

Chaotic Skyfire Diamond - Meta Gem for your headpiece
Runed Cardinal Ruby - Goes in all red slots 99.99% of the time.
Purified Dreadstone -  Need two of these for your meta gem.
Veiled Ametrine - If your need hit.
Reckless Ametrine - If you need haste.
Potent Ametrine - If you need critical strike rating.

There are blue quality gem equivalents, but they are not really worth getting.  So now that you have your gem list, what to do with them.  Remember my saying about the 3 caps.  Your first priority is hit cap.  Now you probably notice that I did not include a straight hit gem.  The reason why is most of the time, you will get more benefit from using two of the Veiled Ametrines than you will get for using a Rune Cardinal Ruby and a pure hit gem.  The Runed Cardinal Ruby is + 23 spellpower.  The pure hit gem is + 20 hit rating.  The Veiled Ametrine is + 12 spellpower and + 10 hit.  Just looking at the pure numbers, you will get 1 additional spellpower using two Veiled Ametrines over straight spellpower and straight hit.

This is true for the Reckless Ametrine as well.  If you are not at the soft haste cap, it will be better to use two Reckless Ametrine to get to cap versus straight spellpower and haste.  And they can go in red or yellow sockets to meet your gear bonuses.

However, this rule does not hold true for Potent Ametrine.  Since the Lunar Crit Cap is at a high critical strike rating, you will get more bang for your buck just putting Potent Ametrine in yellow sockets to hit your socket bonuses versus changing out a red to get one additional spellpower.  In time, you will be able to hit the Lunar Crit Cap without gems.  At this point, you just go back to Reckless in yellow sockets only.

Speaking of gear bonuses, there are a few rules about what to go for in terms of socket bonuses.  In general, moonkins look for these stats in this order.

Hit > Spellpower > Haste > Critical Strike Rating

This is the reason why the first rule of socket bonuses is only gem socket bonuses if they are spellpower.  If they are hit or haste or critical strike rating, don't gem to get those bonuses.  Second, even in spellpower bonuses, there is a limit.  Elitist Jerks says gem for anything above + 5 spellpower.  I tend to disagree with this.  I say gem for anything about + 7 spellpower because the loss of using a yellow gem versus a red gem is not as great if the spellpower bonus is above + 7.  In addition, always remember you have to have two blue gems socketed at any time.  Ideally, you would want to find blue gem slots to put these in, but if you don't have two, you can either use the eternal socket on your belt (since it does not affect the belt's socket bonus) or just substitute a red gem for it.

The final thing about gemming is don't be quick to regem all your yellow sockets.  Once you are above the haste cap, you may be tempted to change everything over to the Potent Ametrine.  First, look at how much haste you are taking out.  If it puts you below the haste cap, don't take it out.  If you are above the Lunar Crit Cap, you may be tempted to go straight haste with the Reckless Ametrine in your yellow sockets.  Use the equation I mentioned before and find out what your cap is, then you can replace what will keep you above the cap.  Also, think about your meta, especially when you get new gear to replace gear that has a blue gem in it to make sure you do not lost the meta gem socket bonus. 

So hopefully, this little guide will help you when gemming your gear for moonkin.  It is not difficult, but it does take a careful eye when gemming.

The Major Moonkin Problem - Moving

As my guild is getting into 25 man HMs, there seems to be one overriding fact that I'm getting in each of the fights. Movement. More specific, how to move and keep DPS high. This is somewhere moonkins do not shine. We can hit huge crits with our Starfire during a Lunar Eclipse, but if we move, we can not cast at all. Sure we have IS and MF, but we are not suppose to clip those unless we get an Omen of Clarity proc with 2T10 to get a stronger version of the DoT on the boss. We have Starfall, but since we use it on cooldown, it is likely on cooldown. Treants are another option, but again, long cooldown.

I have not solved this problem by any stretch and I'm hoping Cataclysm will be the full answer to how we deal with this. However, here are just a few things I have started trying to do.

1) Use Gift of the Wild to proc an Omen of Clarity - This helps me refresh my DoTs while I'm moving since it has a 15% higher critical strike chance thanks to the 2T10 moonkin bonus.  Of course, when your moving, your thinking about getting to your next spot and think less about using GotW so it is really easy to overlook.

2) If you can, move immediately after procing an Eclipse - Now this seems a little weird, but here is my thought about it.  Sometimes, you proc Eclipse immediately after finishing an Eclipse.  This is the perfect time to move to refresh your DoTs and be ready 2 seconds later to cast either Wrath or Starfire depending on which is needed.

3) Deliberate Minimized Movements - If you have to move, move to where you need to as quickly as you can and as minimally as you can.  This can be tough in some fights.  For example, the LK normal fight has it where you spread out and then move back in.  However, you also have to think about not dropping defiles in the middle of the valkyrie path when you are thinking about your minimized movements.

4) Fight Familiarity - One of the tough things about HMs is you are basically having to relearn these fights.  Some of the mechanics are the same and some are completely different.  This is the same as when you first face bosses.  As you continue to down the bosses and get more familiarity with the fights,  DPS will increase naturally.  You learn to move minimally and deliberately based on the fight mechanics.

5) Cooldown Management - If you know your Starfall is about to come up, that is a good time to move.  If you see your IS or MF about to drop off, that is a good time to move.  If your treants are up, it is a good time to move.  When your instant stuff is ready, you can move and cast those at the same time.

I would love to hear from some other moonkins and caster DPS about how they are keeping DPS high during fights with heavy movement.  As I said, this is the major problem for moonkins, but I think a lot of casters will face very similar situations.

Updated Eclipse Mechanic - My Thoughts on Stuff Unknown

I usually don't do a lot of pure speculation post, but I'm gonna try on this one.  We know that the Eclipse mechanic is changing in Cataclysm to a bar that tells whether you are closer to the lunar eclipse or the solar eclipse.  If you cast nature spells, it moves you closer to the lunar eclipse.  If you cast arcane spells, you move closer to the solar eclipse.  Here is how I'm thinking some of this maybe useful, if it does work like I think it will work.

1) Loading Lunar Eclipse before a boss - I do not know if the bar will reset after each fight, but if it does not, this could make for an interesting mechanic.  On trash, you would have more incentive to use Wrath versus ever using Starfire.  Also, Hurricane is our most used trash mechanic, which is also a nature spell.  I could see where you use nature spells to get yourself into the lunar eclipse state so that you can have full lunar eclipse right at the start of the boss fight.  In other words, you are talking about increasing our burst DPS greatly at the start of a fight.  This in turn may lead to the second thing, which is...

2) Moonkins More of a Threat in PvP - As if Starfall wasn't enough, if you can front load your Lunar Eclipse and can bust out with 25k + crits of Starfire right at the beginning of PvP, you are talking huge up front burst damage.   Of course, they will break this for arenas by resetting your bar at the beginning of arena fights.

3) Moving Less of a DPS Loss - Nothing hurts me more than getting in a fight like Festergut and just as my Lunar Eclipse procs, I have to move to a spore.  I know because that means that at best, I will be able to reapply my Insect Swarm and my Moonfire, but no huge Starfire crits.  With this new mechanic, it moves it away from a strict timer to something that can be used over time.

4) Nature's Torrent Will Be Used When The Bar is in the Middle - From what they have said of this spell, it sounds like it is going to push the bar, one way or the other.  This is the thing that I hope will give us more variety.  If we can't front load our Lunar Eclipse, I could see where after we apply Faerie Fire and DoTs, our next spell will be Nature's Torrent.  This will move the bar one way or the other and tell us which to start casting.

5) Degradation Over Time - I can't imagine that they will let us stay at one state for any longer than about a minute.  I can imagine that after a minute, the bar will return to the middle if no action has taken place.  We can still front load Lunar Eclipse if we are fast, but it won't be forever.  The longer before it returns to the middle, the better for us moonkins.

6) Eclipse at Level 10 - This is honestly the most exciting thing for me.  While I'm sure moonkin form will still be down the talent tree, if somebody puts points into Balance at level 10, they get Eclipse immediately.  It will be interesting to see how the mastery system will affect Eclipse.  My guess is that higher mastery will give higher crit chances on Eclipse or increase your haste.

So what are you thoughts on the new Eclipse mechanic?  I am very optimistic for what Cataclysm will bring to the moonkins in the game.  And, Blizzard, please don't take away our owl form.  Don't do to us what you did to the trees. 

Hit and Gear for Moonkins - Tit for Tat

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I always try to have my gear list in front of me for whatever role I'm playing.  Now that I have an IPad, this is even easier.  I like to give props to the gear list that I currently use and really like.  For moonkins, I recommend Grey Matter's list, which can be found here.  When tanking, I really like Think Tank's list, which can be found here.  Yes, I do also use programs like Rawr to look at my particular situation, but I am also not a math person so I appreciate the fact that some people can look at the gear and say what is better.  I'm still looking for a good arcane mage gear list, so if you have any recommendations, feel free to post them in the comments.

Now, with tanking, it is incredibly easy to be hit capped.  Not that it is really needed since we do a lot of actions very quickly, but since bears use rouge gear for tanking, it tends to have a lot of hit on it.  It also helps with threat generation.  However, with moonkins and mages, hit becomes a bigger issue.  It is their number one stat that must always be maintained and a requirement to be capped.  The difference in DPS between a hit capped and a non-hit capped moonkin is drastic. 

Some of the recommendations that I see from both moonkins and mages say they depend on other people to be hit capped.  While I'm not saying this is necessarily wrong, it doesn't feel right for me.  Sure, I have a Draenai and a shadow priest in my 25 mans that would make it very easy to be hit capped, but what about 10 mans or even 5 mans.  I want to know that I'm not dependent on another person for my damage to matter.  Plus, I don't want to be the person to say that I have to have a Draenai in my group for me to be able to DPS. And yes, I know I get buffs from other classes that increase spellpower, crit, or haste.  But I want to know that I could do the damage needed without them.  Those help to improve it.

This is where the value of gear list and what I value come into contrast.  Let me give an example with my moonkin.  I had the Crushing Coldwraith Belt on my moonkin gear and I was using the Shard of the Crystal Heart as one of my trinkets, since it has hit.  However, I had a decision to make with hit.  I could definitely get a better trinket than Shard of the Crystal Heart in ICC 25, however, this means that I would not be hit capped.  I tried to use the Maghia's Misguided Quill, but when I used it, I found that my DPS was not getting better.  So this lead to a decision.  I decided to not use the Crushing Coldwraith Belt anymore, get the T10 legs plus the Belt of Omission so that when a better trinket, like Dislodged Foreign Object dropped, I could trade the Shard of the Crystal Heart for it and be hit capped without gems or enchants.  Is the Belt of Omission the best in slot for moonkins? Not even close.  Is it the best for me?  Yes, because I can use a better trinket than a 245 haste/hit trinket.

This is why it is important to look at your situation.  I was looking at a mage list of just the best in slot gear.  It ended up with a hit rating in the 220s, not even close to being hit capped.  They argued that with other buffs from other classes, you would be hit capped.  I would much rather trade a BiS piece for a lesser piece if it means that I'm not dependent on another person for damage output.

I would love your thoughts on gearing for your class.  Is my fear of being dependent on other people for my hit rating completely insane or do you feel it is well founded?  I would love your opinion on this.  

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.

How to Maximize Solar and Lunar Eclipses

Since Eclipses are the bread and butter of a moonkin's rotation, I thought I would take a little bit of time to discuss how I have tried to maximize the amount of damage you get from your eclipses.  With the druid changes in Cataclysm, this will likely change drastically.

1) Spellpower Maximization - You should try to get all the spellpower you can.  Whether it is through intellect, spirit,  enchants, gems, etc., spellpower will be your number one stat overall.  The more spellpower you get, the harder your eclipses will hit.

2) Soft (Solar) Haste Cap - I mentioned this in an earlier post, but the soft haste cap is 408.  This is also known as the Solar Haste Cap.  Since you be will casting Wrath during your Solar Eclipse, you want to get the cast time on your Wrath down to as low as possible.  When it is at the haste cap, your Wrath cast time is around 1.2 seconds.

3) Lunar Eclipse Macro - While the 408 will really reduce the cast time of Wrath, it will barely touch the cast time of Starfire.  There are a few ways to decrease the cast time on Starfire.  One, Heroism/Bloodlust will increase your haste and really decrease the Starfire cast time.   This will be cast during the fight and you have little say in it.  Second, you can have a trinket that will increase haste and decrease Starfire's cast time.  Although their are some better trinkets I'm trying to get from ICC, I'm currently using Shard of the Crystal Heart while waiting for another trinket.  Third, you can use a Potion of Speed.  I'm sure my GM is wondering why I'm grabbing a stack of 20 Potions of Speed before every raid.  This is the reason why.  Well, I can't do anything about Heroism/Bloodlust.  However, I can do something about trinkets and potions.  I have a little home brewed macro that takes care of both of these issues.

/use Potion of Speed
/use Shard of the Crystal Heart
/cast Starfire()

This does several things, first, I can use this at the beginning of the fight so I will benefit from Heroism later without going over the haste cap.  Second, you can only use one potion during a boss fight so it uses it at the beginning.  Third, my trinket will be used on cool down when it is ready.  I don't need that trinket during Solar Eclipse, because I'm already Solar Haste capped so I would just hook it to my Lunar Eclipse Starfires

4) Switching Wrath and Starfire Efficiently - I mentioned in a prior post about this, but the key to Eclipses is to switch to the proper spell as quickly and efficiently as possible.  It takes a little bit of quick movements and a little coordination, but the quicker you can get to the proper spell, the more damage you are going to do.

5) Lunar Crit Cap - This gets into some max/min stuff, but hopefully, you can follow me.  First, I would recommend you look here.  This is the updated Elitist Jerks thread about PvE moonkins.  In there, you will find an equation that tells you what crit cap you have to be at to be at the Lunar Eclipse cap based on your Intellect.  This is based on the fact that Lunar Eclipse adds 40% crit to your Starfire during a Lunar Eclipse.  Add that to the crit you get from Faerie Fire, Moonkin form, etc.  and you can hit 100% critical strikes during a Lunar Eclipse.  This is the point where you can start to switch priority from critical strike to haste to help lower the cast time on Starfire to allow you to get more Starfires during a Lunar Eclipse.

6) Keep DoTs up - Besides Faerie Fire giving a general 3% critical strike percentage, both Insect Swarm and Moonfire have beneficial effects depending on what is cast.  For example, if you are glyphed for Starfire and Moonfire, as you should be, you extend the time of your DoT when you can Starfire and the Moonfire DoT does double.  Also, Improved Insect Swarm increases the damage of your Wrath spells and increases the critical strike of your Starfire.

7) Check Your Spec - Look at recommended specs to try and maximize  your DPS.  Experiment some yourself to try and find that perfect spec for you.

This is some of the ways that I try to maximize my DPS during Eclipses.  I'm sure there are many others and would love to hear some of your thoughts on that.

Signs of a Bad Moonkin Player

After a week of commenting on WoW news, I thought it was time to bring the attention back to moonkins.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I have had some great teachers on how to be a good moonkin and I have done a lot of research.  However, there are some traits that I have seen in moonkins that are things that have to be watched for and corrected if they are seen.  Here are some of the major signs of a bad moonkin player:

1) Any Points in the Moonglow Talent - This is a mana conserving talent.  While somebody who may be leveling may have points in Moonglow in the Balance tree to get there mana back and thus less down time, for a raiding moonkin, there is no reason.  Especially on 25 mans where many classes have ways to increase mana.  Unless I'm spamming hurricane on trash, I rarely get low on mana even in 10 mans.  Moonglow is a pretty much useless talent for a raiding moonkin.

2) Gemming Straight Spellpower - A moonkin should never gem straight spellpower for several reasons.  One, if they are using the proper meta gem, they need to have two blue gems at least.  Second, while spellpower is important, you cannot ignore gems for haste or crit.  Elitist Jerks recommends gemming for any spellpower bonus +5 or over.  I have some issues with that however which is why I recommend gemming for spellpower bonus +7 or over.   If you go for +5 or over, either of the gems you will use in that spot whether yellow or blue (I will have a whole post on gems later, plus I don't have Wowhead at work so I can't link the proper names for the gems), you will have +12 spellpower plus some other stat.  If the bonus is +5, this means you will end up with a net of +17 spellpower.  If you would have gemmed straight spellpower, you would have lost 6 spellpower.  Multiply that by the possible gear that could have those bonuses (head, neck, shoulder, chest, wrist, waist, hands, legs, boots, two rings, and a staff), you get a loss of 72 spellpower, which could be significant.  If you gem for +7 or better, you will either lose +4 or +2 depending on the bonus.  Even worst case scenario, you are only losing 50 spellpower.  You are trading 50 spellpower for more crit or haste, which seems like a fair trade.  In most cases, this is less because several pieces of tier gear and weapons have +9 spellpower.  In many cases, you will also get the bonus by just gemming spellpower.  The tier hands, shoulders, and head come to mind with this.  This would also make the loss less if you gem for +7 or above.

3) They Consider DPS More Important Than Staying Alive - This is actually just a general bad player rule, but it especially holds true for moonkins.  Both of our major attacks at least have a cast time of 1 second, with Starfire having even a longer cast.  However, if it is a choice between casting and dieing and moving and staying alive, you should always move.  Remember, dead = 0 DPS.

4) They Stop Casting - As a moonkin, there is the ABC rule, which is Always Be Casting.  Even while moving, you can be refreshing DoTs or casting Starfall.  If you are standing still, you should be proccing your Eclipses and having more control over your DoTs, which brings me to

5) They Clip DoTs - This is something that even the most experienced players have trouble with.  If you are moving, it is ok to refresh DoTs if they are low.  However, as a general rule, you should try not to clip your DoTs.  Clipping DoTs involves resetting the timer before the timer goes off.  If you do that, you could cost yourself DPS because you clipped off a DoT tick.  This will become less of an issue in Cataclysm with how they are reworking DoTs and make it where you add on time, but even that will have a limit.

6) They Continually Cast Wrath on Lunar Eclipse or Starfire on Solar Eclipse - I give myself a one cast rule due to travel time.  If I see a Lunar Eclipse proc, I have one cast before I should be casting Starfire since there is no reason to cut a Wrath when it is mid-casting.  Same with Starfire proccing a Solar Eclipse.  You need to get to the higher damage outputing spell as quickly as possible.

7) They Glyph Typhoon - This is somebody who can't control themselves.  You should be able to not cast Typhoon on trash packs.  Plus, if you glyph Typhoon, you are giving up the two beneficial effects from Typhoon in the first place, the knockback and the snare.

8) They Typhoon at Inappropriate Times - Everybody has the accidental button press where they Typhoon where they are not suppose to, but in general, you should not Typhoon unless the situation is appropriate.  I thought at one time that you should Typhoon every boss.  However, the more I'm testing it, you really should not.  The DPS gain from a global cooldown of Typhoon versus even a global cooldown of Wrath is not worth it.  Times where it is appropriate to Typhoon include the following: Saurfang and Lich King Phase 3.  And if you are doing Onyxia, for the love of all that is good and holy, do not Typhoon whelplings.  Quith's Quips just had a really good article recently about the use of Typhoon, and I would direct you there for a more in depth discussion of Typhoon.

9) They Do Not Use Treants - The Treants actually provide a fair amount of DPS and should be used on cooldown if possible.  There are some fights where it is tough, like Dreamwalker where the adds are dying really quickly.  The ideal would be use them at the beginning of the fight and before Heroism if you know it is coming.

10) They Pull Threat - If you go all out at the beginning of a fight, especially in 10 mans, you can pull threat pretty easily.  I did it with just a normal rotation on one of my 10 man Lich King fights.  Use Omen and just wait if needed.  Now, I stick my treants on the Lich King and cast Faerie Fire until he is in position, then bring the fury.

11) They Are Not Soft Hit or Soft Haste Capped - Every moonkin should be soft hit capped, which is 263 without Heroic Presence and if appropriately specced. (A post coming later about proper raid specs as well).  Even in 25 mans where a dranaei is almost a guarantee, I would still aim for 263 so you are not dependent on another person to be hit capped.  The other important cap is the soft haste cap, which is 408.  This makes your Wrath casting time equal to the global cooldown.  This will allow you to proc your Lunar Eclipse quicker.  Beyond that, it gets more into max/min areas.  I would forward you to Elitist Jerks threads on the balance of crit versus haste.

12)  They Do Not Cast Faerie Fire - This is the biggest one.  Even at the soft hit cap, you will still not hit the boss without Faerie Fire because it improves hit by 3%, which with other talents in your spec, will put you at the total 17% hit cap.  It also gives you a 3% crit bonus.  One of the interesting situations is the possibility that this will override Faerie Fire from your feral tank.  The answer is no.  Feral Faerie Fire and Balance Faerie Fire are two different spells and both can be on the boss at the same time.  However, if any Faerie Fire is on the boss, you will get the 3% crit bonus.  It should also be noted that Misery by a shadow priest can give you the 3% hit bonus as well.

Edit:  Thanks to Qieth for correcting me on the Moonglow and Faerie Fire issues.