Anyone know of a Moonkin DPS spreadsheet that will simulate the DPS and allow you to try out the effects of different kit?

Because of the tone in your voice, I'm forced to try to prove your wrong, this will take a while, excel incomming...

Making one up or taking a while to find one because they're so rare would actually prove my point.

Most likely, but it's still worth some excel Fu.

Also, the definition of "good dps" varies wildly, seeing that the accusations are coming from a class that is usually regarded as the best DPS'er at the moment, it'd be easy to state that no other classes should be even considered as DPS'ers.

I'm nearing the final results atm.

I think the balance tree is still a work in progress. We still have our mana-for-melee mechanic (which, admittedly, could have theoretically almost been useful in some cases depending on how many hoops you were willing to jump through, before the age of 360 cleaves).

I would love to see a balance DPS spreadsheet. Without unearthing all the mathematics I and others have done, I think it's been adequately proven that balance druids *can* do respectable dps if geared and played properly, we are just hamstrung by aggro and mana.

I'm not sure what I think on the issue of utility. There's the usual utility any druid brings, plus the ability to pinch-heal if necessary (much better than a feral druid in feral gear). What would need to be done to the balance tree to make it viable in terms of utility? Imp FF +hit to spells as well as physical, maybe improved moonkin aura?

Although it's a teeny niche, Moonkin can't be hexed and they have decent armor. I don't think it goes to far in actual utility, but perhaps something in that vein could give them more use?

Its not rocket science really: capable, on the spot adaptability between dps and healing due to gear synergy and then the standard druid bonuses (innervate, rebirth). The value of that package will vary from guild/raid to guild/raid.

Thanks for the spreadsheet, those are some pretty impressive numbers overall I think.


One thing is that it's very difficult to measure the benefit of nature's grace. There's debate over whether nature's grace actually reduces the global cooldown on wrath. To me it certainly FEELS a lot faster when you get chains of crits on wrath, but some people still insist that it doesn't let you cast it any faster.

Overall Balance could use some tweaking, the main points being mana and aggro as mentioned here and in previous threads as well. Currently 34/0/27 (or 33/0/28 if you want to go to the extreme) is a much better raid spec, but it's of course primarily a healing spec.

I believe it’s an effect created by lag and the fact (?) that global cooldown is entirely client side:

In theoretical ideal conditions with no lag Nature's Grace provides no benefit while spamming Wrath. Getting a NG proc doesn't reduce the length of GCD.

In practice with some lag it's a bit different. Global cooldown is client side and starts the moment you press your cast button. If the cast is 1.5 seconds, you can only start casting your next spell after your client gets the information that the previous spell was finished. Now if the cast is only 1 second, your client gets the "spell finished" information before the client side global cooldown is finished, effectively allowing you to start casting the next spell a bit earlier.

For sustained raid DPS Wrath is rather irrelevant because Starfire is much more mana efficient.


And sorry, a bit offtopic, but:

Why exactly wouldn’t this be a good way to "CC" mobs? I'm assuming you're talking about normal, not heroic. Even wearing lots of cloth, any druid in moonkin form should be able to take 3-5 hits without any heals and ideally will only take 1-2 before his own and other players' dps kills the mob. It depends on the mob of course, but it’s certainly possible to do this even in heroics for some caster mobs.

I'm not sure how often you would want to cast wrath in a raid environment anyway. Without the benefit of a warlock curse you'd get hit pretty hard by partial resists, unless you were stacked on penetration. As for a NG'd wrath, it *does* cast faster, the problem is just that you have to then wait for the global cooldown for .5 seconds afterwards, so it's still effectively a 1.5 second cast. Useful in pvp to get the cast out sooner, I suppose, but I think you'd be better served winding up a 2.5 second starfire in a raid environment. There're also the mana issues associated with the two spells.

EDIT: What BByte said.

I added wrath only spam, because Celestial Focus might make it usable in certain situations. I also assumed that Natures Grace doesn't affect GCD. Using a Cycle of IS, MF, 2x SF + Wrath it should be possible to ensure that IS never drops of, if you are really worried about the +2% miss thing. It's hurt dps a bit, but under normal lag conditions I'd guess that the difference would not be huge.