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.

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.

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.

Managing the GCD - How Should It Affect Your DPS?

The GCD, more commonly known as the global cool down, can be important in figuring out what order to use abilities during DPS.  Yes, your Starfall may be off cooldown, but you just procced your Lunar Eclipse.  Which is more important in terms of your DPS?  This is not an easy question to answer and a lot of different factors can play a role in it.

The first and most important factor is how much DPS will you gain or lose out of doing one action in a GCD versus another.  Lets just look at some normal numbers at what occur.  These are close to what my numbers and depending on where  your gear is, it may or may not be close.

Ability	Non Critical Strike Hit	Critical Strike Hit	Affected by Eclipse
Wrath	8k	15 - 20k	Yes
Starfire	8k	22 - 30k	Yes
Starfall	2k per Star	2k - 5k per Star	No
Treants	800 per hit	1k - 1.5k per hit	No
Insect Swarm	DoT		No
Moonfire	DoT		No

Now that we have a base idea of numbers, lets look at different conditions: 

The first condition is during no eclipse.  This means at that time, the critical strike rating is anywhere from 37 - 42% depending on cool downs, etc.  Also, remember, that Starfall is not affected by Eclipses.  This would mean the best time to use Starfall would be when no Eclipse is up and there are multiple mobs up.  Same thing for treants.  They are not affected by Eclipse bonuses.  Also, DoTs have the potential to proc an Eclipse, but are not affected by one.  In other words, it would appear that the best time to apply DoTs, Starfall, and use your treants are when there is no Eclipse.

The second condition is a Lunar Eclipse.  At this point, your critical strike for your Starfire goes up to 100% (assuming you are Lunar Crit Capped).  This means that Starfire would give you more DPS even though it is slightly higher than the GCD (My Starfire is currently at a 1.66 second cast time).  This means that even if DoTs fall off or Starfall comes off cooldown, it is better to keep casting Starfire because of the damage increase.

The same holds true for the third condition, a Solar Eclipse.  Although it is not possible to get 100% critical strikes for Wrath, you can get up to around 60% during an Eclipse.  Wrath is also equal to the GCD when you are above 408 haste so in two GCDs, you are likely to get around 35 - 40k worth of damage, which would be better than even a multiple mob Starfall.

It would appear that all your abilities are cut and dry when to use except for the fourth condition, which is moving.  If you are moving, you are not able to cast Wrath or Starfire, so you are only left with all of your other abilities.  If you have to move during a Lunar Eclipse, you can still use Starfall or treants while moving or refresh your DoTs to get DPS on the boss.  

The fifth condition is what I would call situation specific.  For example, during phase 3 of the LK fight, you have to DPS down the vile spirits.  Even if I don't have an Eclipse currently and the Starfall just came off cooldown, I will wait until right after the LK calls out the Vile Spirits so that we can DPS the vile spirits down easier by me casting Starfall.  Or even if I just procced an Eclipse, the Vile Spirits dying is more important than 100% critical strike on LK.  But I will be able to use the Lunar Eclipse on the Vile Spirits as well.  And if you want to break my heart, let me proc a Lunar Eclipse and get Unchained Magic at the same time during phase 3 of HM Sindy on 25 man.  I have all this power and can't use it due to the AoE effect of Unchained Magic.

There is also one exception to all of these rules and it is Faerie Fire.  Now, in 25 mans, where  you will probably have a feral druid and a shadow priest, you may worry about it a little less or not at all, but you need that 3% hit to be hit capped.  If nobody else can cast it, you have to.  And hitting the boss every time is more important than your 100% critical strike Starfires during a Lunar Eclipse because you will not hit the boss with full effect or may even miss the boss entirely.

So hopefully, this will help you in giving you a guide when to use abilities based on the GCD.  There are other factors that play a role, like trinkets, etc. but this should be a general guide for you.  And this holds true for all the classes.  Everything is based on how much DPS or healing or threat you can do per GCD and how to maximize it. 

ICC Hard Modes - Moonkin Style

Moonkins and hardmodes in ICC go together like bread and butter or peanut butter and jelly.  However, the strats you use in regular ICC do not necessarily translate over to hardmodes.  Let me give you a rundown of a moonkins strategies in hardmode ICC based on every fight except LK, since we are still working on it in 10 man and have not touched it in 25 man.

Lord Marrowgar - The biggest new mechanic is that he still Bone Spikes during Bone Storm.  This is great for moonkins since this means we can Starfall on cooldown and we are going to hit 2 mobs all the time, whether the boss or spikes.  In 10 versus 25 man, the strat changes slightly.  In 10 man, all of the DPS and healers group up on one side with the tanks on the other to allow for the Bone Storm to go between them.  In 25 man, we split the DPS and healers in two groups to go to the two sides while the tanks are against the wall.  Little hint:  Tanks cannot be Bone Spiked.  Beyond that, normal stuff including avoid fire, DPS during Bone Storm, etc.

Lady Deathwhisper - Moonkins have a very important role in this fight and, unfortunately, it is not DPS usually.  In 10 man, you may have a mage who can sheep the mind controls leaving you free to DPS.  However, in 25 man, you do not have an option since there are 3 mind controls.  The ability for you to Cyclone mind controlled players is more important than your DPS.  Beyond that, DPS the fanatics, Starfall after mind controls but not right before the bosses mana shield breaks as this will make you get aggro and there is no taunting in 25 man hard mode, and avoid ghost since they one shot you.

Lootship - Don't change anything.  Not that hard. 

Deathbringer Saurfang -  The biggest change I have noticed between normal and hardmode is that you don't Typhoon.  Now, it seems weird to say that, but it is true.  In 10 man hardmode, you will likely have the melee killing one blood beast while it is stunned and the ranged killing the other.  In 25 man hardmode, you will have melee killing one blood beast while it is stunned and the ranged split between the other 4 blood beast.   Since melee is killing blood beast in hardmodes, the last thing you want to do is Typhoon unless a blood beast gets near you.  Beyond that Starfall normally and DPS normally.  Realize that Marks do come out a lot quicker in hard modes and hit harder so be ready to use Barkskin if you are a Mark to give your healers a little break.

Rotface -   Remember the Vile Gas from Festergut.  Well, Professor Putricide throws it out during the Rotface encounter.  This means like Festergut, you will need ranged spread outside of the room.  The big thing this also means is you have to put up with the slime filling the room.  However, let me give you a little secret.   At no point in the encounter is slime filling both sides of the room.  What I mean by this is if you are on the right side of the room, it will not fill up both the back and front areas on the right side of the room at the same time.  This means if it is on your left, just move right.  If you see it coming on your right, start heading left.    Beyond that, it is normal mechanics including move out for slime explosion, etc.

Festergut - Remember Malleable Goo from Professor Putricide.  Well, now you have to put up with it in Festergut.  The easiest way I have noticed to take care of it is to angle your camera at what would be about a 45 degree angle behind your character where you could see the floor.  If you see green area under you, move.  The tough part is when you are grouped up for spores and you see a green area below you.  At this point, you have to communicate to everybody on the spore to move to avoid the Malleable Goo.  Also, if by chance you only get two spores (which you shouldn't do on hard modes since you really need all 3), you can throw up Barkskin to maybe save yourself with some heals.  Beyond that, DPS normally.

Professor Putricide - We have downed him on 10 man but not on 25 man, but most of the mechanics are the same.  This is a communication fight especially with the Unbound Plague.  6 raid members need to hold it for 10 seconds each.  Also, once a raid member has held it for 10 seconds, they cannot hold it for another 60 seconds.  The best way we have had to go through this was to have a rotation with clean ranged people in the middle of the room who could take the plague while those on cooldown were on the outside of the room to avoid giving it to the same person since you take more damage if you take it again and reset the timer.  Also, we line up on the right side of the room where the green slime comes out to help group on who it is targeting.  Also, the transition phases do not involve tear gas, but something much more sinister.  You get both an orange and a green slime at the same time.   In 10 man, you can DPS both.  Yes, Starfall does work great for this.  On 25 man, you get a debuff that says whether you can attack the green or the orange.  Starfall is still pretty good, especially if you can get near Putricide and hit him with the Starfall as well.  Also, transitions are important because if you tip him at the wrong time, you could end up with 3 slimes, which is almost certainly a wipe.  Beyond this, DPS normally and avoid stupid stuff like Malleable Goo and the orange bottle he throws down.

Blood Princes - A hard mode that encourages you not to move.  (What is better for ranged?)  Every movement you make gives you a stacking debuff called Shadow Prison, which increases shadow damage.  So the first thing is do not move unless necessary.  Also, kinetic bombs become a huge problem in hard mode and it becomes the responsibility of every range to hit them if possible.  Especially on 10 man where you may only have 2 ranged.  However, moonkins have a great trick for dealing with kinetic bombs.  Starfall is direct damage to the bombs and will send them back up.  So not only use Starfall on cooldown, but use it near kinetics to drive them back up so you can keep DPSing.

Blood Queen - In terms of mechanics, there is not a whole lot different.  The major mechanic difference is she hits harder the more vampires there are.  However, you will likely still use the same bite order and will have to do the same things to survive the air phase.  So really, there is not a lot different than normal besides more damage.

Valethria Dreamwalker - For ranged DPS, the mechanics are not really that different.  The major difference is it will be your job to take down the zombies since melee will get killed by the explosion.  This also means you may have to get aggro and kite them a little bit.  If need be, typhoon them too.  Beyond that, DPS normally.

Sindragosa - We have not touched Sindy on 25 man, but I can give you our 10 man hard mode strategy.  There are two major differences.  One, Unchained Magic causes an AOE effect when it goes off and causes more damage around you the higher the debuff gets.  This means during the first two alternating phases, you will just move out from the middle with the ranged and healers if you get Unchained Magic.  During Phase 3, you just don't DPS if you have Unchained Magic because you will still need to shake your stacks of Magic Buffet and you don't want AOE behind the blocks.  The other mechanic is that the frostbolts during the air phase will one shot anybody.  Now on 10 man, there is still only 2 blocks and they go down easily.  We just maneuvered behind the blocks while doing some minimal damage and then destroyed them after the fourth frostbolt.  On 25 man, I can tell you already that this will not be an option so it will deal more with how we arrange the ice blocks during the air phase.

So,  hopefully, this information will get you started on your way to taking down the hardmodes in ICC.  As we get our strategy for 25 man HM Sindragosa and HM LK down, I'm sure there will be some updates to this.

    

Lunar Crit Cap - The Third Big Cap

I have mentioned this several times before, but for moonkins, there are 3 important caps.  The first is the hit cap, which is 263 hit unless you have a dranaei in your party.  The second cap is the soft haste cap, also known as the Solar Haste Cap, which is 408 haste.  This brings  your Wrath spell to be equal to the global cooldown of approximately 1 second.  The third cap is the most difficult to understand and does not really become an issue until you get in the highest gear possible.  This cap is the soft crit cap, also known as the Lunar Crit Cap.

The Lunar Crit Cap is the one cap that is not a fixed number as it is a variable based on your intellect.  The Lunar Crit cap is the point that while fully raid buffed and during a Lunar Eclipse, you will crit with your Starfire every single time.  That alone should make you want to get to the Lunar Crit Cap.  Unfortunately, it is not necessarily that easy.

First thing you will need to hit the Lunar Crit Cap is the T10 idol, Idol of the Lunar Eclipse.  This adds 220 critical strike rating.  You could possibly hit it otherwise, but you will really have to be stacking critical strike to get it.  Getting this idol will be the first step in getting to the Lunar Crit Cap.

Second, you have to figure out what your critical strike rating has to be to be at the Lunar Crit Cap.  The first piece of information you will need is your unbuffed intellect number.  The best way to get it is just to go to the armory and pull the intellect number from your character sheet.  This is the best number to get.  Do not get it during a raid from your character screen.  The reason for this is some of the buffs you will need to get to the Lunar Crit Cap will already be on you and you can't count them twice.

The next piece of information you will need is the Lunar Crit Cap equation.  Now, you can stick it into programs, like WrathCalcs.  However, I prefer the quick and dirty equation.    Here is the equation to determine your Lunar Crit Cap critical strike rating.

1575 - (Intellect/3) = Critical Strike Rating Needed

As any math teacher will tell you, solve the parentheses first.  I love my old math teacher.

Let me use myself as an example here.  My current intellect is 1457 according to the WoW Armory character sheet.  Putting it in the equation, I need a critical strike rating of  1089 to be at the Lunar Crit Cap.  Now, my current critical strike rating is 873, so it appears that I am not at the cap.  However, this is where having the T10 idol is important.  From the 1089, I can subtract out 220 critical strike rating.  This puts my requirement to be at 869, which means that I am above the Lunar Crit Cap with 873.

A couple things you may notice about the equation.  First, the more intellect you get, the smaller your critical strike rating needed.  This means that the better your gear gets, the less critical strike rating you actually need.  Second, without the T10 idol, it is almost impossible to hit the Lunar Crit Cap.  You need to have it.  This means when you are gearing up a moonkin, you may not be at the crit cap until you get all of your T10 first, which would be my first purchases with Emblems of Frost.

A lot of moonkin gear has critical strike rating, however, you should also notice that some trinkets have the potential to put your easily over the crit cap.  Those two trinkets are Muradin's Spyglass and Phylactary of the Nameless Lich.  Both of these trinkets have high amounts of critical strike rating.  Of course, the Spyglass is the easier to get of the two since it is from Lootship.  The reason I bring this up is the recent situation I have run into.  

I got both the heroic version of Dislodged Foreign Object and the normal version of the Charred Twilight Scale.  Both of these trinkets have huge amounts of haste but no critical strike rating.  Once I got both, I was about 100 critical strike rating from the Lunar Crit Cap.  I had to look at my gemming choices again and decided to put yellow critical strike gems in my yellow slots that could be changed.  As I get more 277 gear, I will be able to change those back to the spellpower plus critical strike gems or even spellpower plus haste gems.  (Although looking at Moonkin Repository, I may be up against the hard haste cap now.  But that is another discussion for another day.)

So when gearing up your moonkin, look at your gear and get to the first two caps of hit and the soft haste cap.  Then start aiming for the third.  When you hit the Lunar Crit Cap, watch your DPS explode.

To DoT or Not To DoT? - A DPS Question

Note:  Thanks to this blog goes to Qieth (see sidebar for his blog) who made a comment about DoTs on the moonkin DPS rotation.  He started me thinking along the lines of this blog.

I mentioned a few post ago about the DPS rotation that I'm using for my moonkin.  However, even with that rotation, there will be small changes based on the situation.  The best moonkin players realize they may have to make some small alterations to their rotation based on the situation.  We try to minimize alterations and get in our standard rotation, but there are times where you just can't help it and have to change.

One of the things I have been thinking of personally is are there times where you will not want to apply your DoTs?  Could your DPS actually be hurt by applying DoTs?  While I'm still doing some personal research, the answer I'm coming to is yes.

Now, on actual bosses, there is no question.  You apply Faerie Fire, Moonfire, and Insect Swarm like you are suppose to.  As was mentioned in the comments on the moonkin DPS rotation, Faerie Fire should be on at all time, Moonfire should be on during a Lunar Eclipse, and Insect Swarm should be on during a Solar Eclipse.  That is the optimal DPS for bosses.

However, not all fights have just bosses.  Some fights have adds.  Does this mean we should DoT up every add before going into our Eclipse rotation.  I'm gonna make an argument for no.  Here are my reasons why:

1) Adds Die Too Quickly - Take the Dreamwalker fight for instance.  All the adds in this fight die really quickly.  By the time you use 2 global cooldowns to apply Faerie Fire and Moonfire in anticipation of your first Lunar Eclipse, they are dead most of the time, which hurts our DPS.

2) Adds are Not the Same Level of Bosses - Our hit cap is based on what is required to hit the boss 100% of the time.  However, adds typically are not the same level as bosses.  Most adds I have seen are 83 Elites.  Now with moonkins, we get 4% hit from our talents.  A moonkin should also be at 10% hit on their gear.  For bosses, our extra 3% hit comes from either Faerie Fire or a Shadow Priest's Misery.  However, since trash is lower level than the bosses, they do not require the extra 3% hit from Faerie Fire.  This gives a reason not to cast Faerie Fire on every add.

3) Time Is of the Essence - Take LK for example.  In that fight, there are 3 instances where adds must die quickly.  First is the raging spirits.  Second is the valks.  Third is the vile spirits.  Putting DoTs on adds that will die in under 15 seconds does not really help out anything.  Just start casting Wrath and hope for a Lunar Eclipse.

4) Adds Don't Require a Lunar Crit Cap Hit - You want bosses to be hit with a critical Starfire everytime during a Lunar Eclipse.  This requires that your DoTs be on the boss.  Adds die so quickly, you don't need to hit them with a Lunar Crit Cap Starfire.  Also, since bosses are lower level, they are easier to crit, so you will still likely get 100% Starfire crits during a Lunar Eclipse.

5)  Massive AoE - In some fights and trash especially, you are just going to be casting Hurricane and maybe Starfall if it is safe.  This is more of a reason not to put DoTs on because you will be channeling during Hurricane.

I only have anecdotal evidence of this, but I saw my DPS double in World of Logs from about 3k DPS in Dreamwalker (for some reason, they look at each individual mob DPS instead of encounter DPS with Starfall, etc.  My personal Recount had me at about 7k DPS.) to 6k DPS by not casting DoTs on the adds during that fight and just focusing on Eclipse rotations.  I know it is not strong evidence, but it was enough to convince me to not worry about casting DoTs on adds and focus on our nukes. 

Again, this likely will change in Cataclysm where our Moonfire will have a nuke capability.  I wouldn't be surprised if we just cast Moonfire on adds in Cataclysm since it will be our moving nuke.

I want to remind everybody about the Christmas in July contest.  You only have 11 days left to enter to win some great stuff.  Also, check out WoWCentric on the side link and show them your love.   

Moonkin DPS Rotation - Present and Likely Future

Note:  While part of me wants to continue about the firestorm that is RealID and another part of me wants to discuss the change to 31 point talent trees, I'm doing neither.  For RealID, what has been said has been said.  It will either sway Blizzard or not.  For the 31 point talent trees, I want to see an actual moonkin talent tree before I comment.

A lot of people who do not understand moonkins say that the moonkin rotation is very simple.  You probably hear people say it is just alternating between two buttons like 1112222222222222222221111111.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  There is a little more complexity to the moonkin rotation than that.

Now, everybody is going to have a slightly different rotation, but here is my rotation for my current situation.  Note that this rotation is for a fight with no adds, little movement, and no mechanic to limit casting, like normal Festergut or normal/hard Blood Queen.  In some fights, you may want to wait just a second more for Starfall or not use it all depending on the situation.  Also, if you are moving a lot in a fight, you might want to apply DoTs just a second before they fall off, especially if you can use Gift of the Wild to proc your 2T10 bonus.

Treants > Faerie Fire > Wrath > Insect Swarm > Moonfire > Wrath until Lunar Eclipse procs or Spyglass proc is up to 10 > Starfall when Spyglass proc is up to 10 > Starfire until Solar Eclipse procs > Reapply DoTs and use Starfall/Treants on cooldown in between procs > Keep alternating between Lunar and Solar Eclipses

Here are some of my particulars in my rotation.  One, I open with Treants because I want to start getting damage on the boss as soon as the tank touches him.  All my other spells have the potential to pull aggro off the tanks except for treants.  That is why I open with that.  However, opening with treants means they come to you first unless you give them some direction.  That is one of the jobs of Faerie Fire.  It directs the treants where to go in addition to apply Faerie Fire.  Unless the fight is an incredibly long fight like LK, you should only have to apply Faerie Fire once.  If you do have to reapply, I considering it a DoT to reapply.   I cast Wrath next before the DoTs (Insect Swarm and Moonfire) because I want Earth and Moon on the target to make it easier to start getting Eclipse procs.  Plus, it provides a damage buff to the DoTs.  After my DoTs are on the target, I just start casting Wrath.  I will only pause casting Wrath for two reasons.  One, if I get a Lunar Eclipse proc, I will start casting Starfire.  Second, I have the Muradin's Spyglass, which stacks up to 10 increases in spellpower.  If I hit my stack of 10 with the Spyglass, I will go ahead and cast Starfall for maximum damage with Starfall, which is based on spellpower.  After that, it is just alternating Lunar and Solar Eclipses while reapply DoTs and using my Treants and Starfall on cooldown until we have a dead boss.

As I said, this is my current rotation for what is essentially a tank and spank fight.  I can see where a few changes might occur before Cataclysm though.  For example, I would like to get Dislodged Foreign Object and Phylactery of the Nameless Lich.  This means that I would likely use Starfall sooner in my rotation versus where I use it now.  We also don't know what will come in Patch 4.0 that will change this rotation.  I'm not foreseeing anything in 3.3.9 that will affect it though.

When it gets to Cataclysm, I think our rotation will begin to change drastically depending on the new Eclipse mechanic and the new spells that will grant Lunar or Solar power.  Who knows what it is going to be (especially with the news of the new 31 point talent trees), but I'm almost certain you are going to see faster changing between Wrath and Starfire and a lot less dependency on random chance for Eclipse procs.  In addition, the new spells that give either Lunar or Solar power will almost certainly be added into the rotation somewhere, likely at the beginning and maybe even replacing Wrath to proc our Earth and Moon.  Whatever happens, I think it will add more complexity to the moonkin DPS rotation.

Just a reminder, the Christmas in July Contest is still going on.  Please check it out so that you can win some great prizes.  I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but I really want people to enter and then get the word out about this blog.    

   

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. 

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.

How to Move from Feral OT to Moomkin

In previous guilds I was in, I always had a tendency to OT.  I loved playing what I always thought was the optimal OT.  The tank that can hold aggro and have a huge health pool but do decent damage if needed in cat form.  Even in single tank fights, I could be the one to jump up and save the day if the tank went down.

When moving from the feral role to the moomkin role, it took a change in mentality to approach fights.  These are just a few of the things I  had to change my thinking on handling fight mechanics.

1)  Specific time for specific actions - Yes, there are times as feral tanks where we need to blow cooldowns to help protect ourselves or give healers some time.  However, when  holding aggro, it just seems fine to push three buttons to keep Mangle going, Lacerate up, and dump rage with Maul while throwing in the occasional Swipe.  Do not think I'm saying that feral tanking is easy.  Not by any stretch. But as a tank, as long as I had aggro and I was staying alive, I was doing my job.  However, when I started playing moomkin, I found that I was having to pay attention to additional details to maximize DPS.  Did I Faerie Fire the target? Am I in lunar or solar eclipse?  Although the eclipse is finished, do I still have a cooldown where I should still be casting the opposite spell to proc the other eclipse?  Are my DoTs up?  Am I clipping my DoTs?  What is my Starfall's remaining cooldown?  What is my treant's remaining cooldown?  Forgetting just one of these and my performance suffers.

2) Different raid awareness - When tanking, I knew if I had to move a boss or keep him there or whether I needed to taunt.  However, when moving to moomkin, I had to realize that it takes a completely different raid awareness to play a ranged DPS.  First, I had to start watching aggro meters more closely.  This was especially true during Lunar Eclipse and Starfall.  Second, range became more important in two respects.  First, I didn't want to be close to anybody else in some fights due to fight mechanics.  Second, it also took looking at the range for targets and location to be able to DPS.  For example, in Blood Council, the tanks are in three different locations.  Normally, where I start a fight, I can hit all the targets at once except for Prince Keleseth, who is being ranged tank.  If I see it jump to him, I know I have to move.     

3) Different fight strategy - Tanks and ranged DPS tend to have two different strategies for every fight.  For example, in Saurfang, it is alternating tanking and taunting while avoiding AoE like Swipe around the Blood Beast to prevent them from pulling onto me.  Now as boomkin, I tend to use AoE with Typhoon/Starfall.  In addition, I actually have to watch for Blood Beast aggro.  This is just one example of a fight where your strategy changes when moving from tank to ranged DPS.  This is true for every fight you encounter as well and you have to learn those mechanics from the ranged DPS perspective.  I also had to learn what was optimal for each fight.  In Rotface, I could move with each Slime Spray and move back behind the boss afterwards.  However, when learning the fight and learning that Rotface has no cleave, it means that I learned that I only have to move if the Slime Spray is in my general direction.  Learning that I could stand in one place until absolutely necessary to move helped increase my DPS drastically.

However, with both classes, I learned that the biggest thing is research.  Just like life, you never stop learning your class or spec.  In my next blog post, I'm going to review my guild history and talk about how I moved from very casual guilds to hardcore guilds and what you need to do if you are ready to take the plunge into progression raiding.

To Starfall or Not To Starfall (Actually, That Is Not a Question, I'm Going To Use Starfall)

Ok, I have decided to officially start my own moonkin blog and I decided to start with one of the issues that comes up in my 25 man raids all the time. Starfall is a powerful asset in our moonkin rotation but it is something that has to be used very carefully. If not used properly, you could easily pull aggro. This is even more true with the Starfall buff in 3.3.3. With my first post for my new moonkin blog, I would like to run down the ICC fights and tell you when to Starfall and when to not starfall.

First things first, please glyph Starfall. Have it on a minute cooldown helps out tremendously and can help increase your DPS drastically. Second, as a general rule, it is preferable to use Starfall when more than one mob is up. Having at least two mobs up causes each mob to get hit with 20 stars instead of the normal 10. This is a significant DPS boost. Also, as a general rule, don't Starfall trash. There are a few exceptions. (Precious says Oh hai!) Now, lets get into the ICC bosses.

Marrowgar - I usually love to use Starfall after the first bone spikes come up. Many times, this allows me to stay on the boss and just watch the spikes fall around me. I will usually save my Starfall for bone spikes.

Deathwhisper - Depends. If this is the weekly raid quest in ICC, I never use Starfall. That is just asking for the mob you are suppose to be protecting to die. If it is not, I use it on the trash under the condition that somebody is not mind controlled. If they are mind controlled, I wait until they are out.

Gunship - Pretty much on cooldown. Our tanks are excellent at picking up adds that come on our ship. In addition, use Starfall on the edge of your boat so you can hit people on both ships with Starfall.

Saurfang - Blood Beast Phase. I also have the honor of being the typhoon person for our guild. I usually hit typhoon first, then Starfall. With timers, you usually will be able to Starfall every other Blood Beast. If you pull aggro on the Blood Beast, just run backwards until they are dead.

Rotface - Pretty much on cooldown. I usually prefer to wait just a little bit for the first big ooze to form to Starfall to get the 20 stars benefit.

Festergut - No adds in this one, so this becomes on cooldown. Great if you are moving to get to a spore.

Professor Putricide - For the first two phases, I Starfall when the Unstable Experiment ooze is up. This gives me the 20 stars benefit plus allows me to put some extra DPS on the ooze. I tend to go on the green ooze but if your rotation gets off, you can always Starfall on the orange ooze. During Phase 3, Starfall on cooldown. Another great phase to use it since you are moving constantly.

Blood Princes - While I thought that Starfall was a raid wiper in this fight, it is actually okay since the Dark Nuclei are not damaged by AoE attacks.  Thanks to  Qieth for the update on this fight.

Blood Queen - There is not really any adds in this fight so I would just use on cooldown. Also, as a general rule, don't expect to the first bitten. Your burst DPS is not high enough to get bitten from what I have found.

Dreamwalker - Pretty much on cooldown. I would say exercise some caution if a mob is out on your side that must be tanked like the abominations. I personally love to use them on suppressors.

Sindragosa - This is a tough fight for boomkins in general because of the unchained magic debuff. I try to Starfall at the very beginning of the fight just to get some DPS on the boss. I will hold my second and all subsequent Starfalls up until phase 3 for phase 2 with the ice blocks. This way, you at least get the 20 star benefit. You may be able to sneak an additional Starfall in there during Phase 1, but I have been saving it. In phase 3, it becomes on cooldown. Just be careful to make sure to clear your debuff. Also, I find that our healers are good enough so that I can get behind every other ice block to clear the Magic Buffet debuff.

Lich King - We are only to phase 2 of this fight so I'm sure I can add some more as we get closer to downing him. However, here is when I have been doing the first few Starfalls. I hold my first Starfall until both of the big adds in Phase 1 are being tanked and Lich King is around 73%. The raid leader has been calling for AOE on the ghouls. I will do one Hurricane and then Starfall and then Hurricane again until Lich King moves to the transition phase. Never Starfall during the transition phase. Originally, I was using Starfall after the transition phase to clear the explosive bombs. However, our hunters have been doing a great job of killing those. I am now using them on the Valkyrs during Phase 2. That way, I can hit all 3 at once and try to kill them quicker. I will expand once we get past Phase 2 for other preferred times to Starfall.

So to the boomkins of the world. Go out and melt face with Starfall. Hopefully, I will update this soon.