Aadar

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

 

Deathwing

Respec.

I kid, I kid. I doubt you're going to find one, I know I haven't seen one posted here. Moonkin is up there with retadin with raid uselessness and maligned offspec. There's a reason why people don't make dps spreadsheets for moonkins and there's a reason why macs are "safe". I'm pretty sure it's the same reason.

A little side note, I grouped with a moonkin who thought a good way to CC mobs in steamvaults was to nuke the shit out of it and let it beat on him. Only reason I point this out is because this seems to be the norm for people that play moonkin.

 

• zepi

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

 

Deathwing

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

 

• zepi

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.

 

Deathwing

I said nothing of their dps. DPS is cheap, utility is what gets someone a raid spot(baring stuff like personal perforamance, skill, and gear). Besides 5% crit for the moonkin's casters and 3% hit for physical dps, what utility does a moonkin provide? That's why I put them in the same group as a retadin.

 

Aszhalinde

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?

 

• Apate

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?

See you, auntie.
"lol" is not a period lol
You don't need a machine to make a rainbow. For rainbows are made of happy thoughts, and dreams, and chocolate unicorns, and gumdrops, and licorice sunsets, and fuzzy gumdrop bears, and sugar-coated chocolate gumdrop land.

Originally Posted by DeeNogger I am coming for you Apate.

 

Brute

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.

 

• zepi

I think 5% crit, 3% physical DPS and 2% boss miss is a decent utility.

5% crit for a group is very powerful for almost any caster in game. Paladins gain excellent healing efficiency and troughput bonus from it (not that they'd need it), Mages gain just pure damage, priests / shamans gain more +healing and uptime for their armorbuff, Destuction Warlocks gain also nice benefits due to ISB. Ofcourse, utility is always debatable.

But to the results. As I've got no desire to take to burden of sharing this, so I'll publish this as a Google doc. Benefit being that you can all see it in your browser, bad thing is that it's static and that you can't see the formulae. All numbers should be clearly visible though, so you should be able to check most obvious formulae with a calculator easily.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...C9dRDam2H382RQ

Also, following things are assumed:
0 lag
no partial resists
+850dmg, including consumables etc
600int raidbuffed
220crit rating
100 hitrating

Gear combination which allows such numbers should be available in game and doesn't need raid-drops outside of maybe Karazhan.

If anyone likes to get the excel version, toss me a PM.

This is by no means designed to be the final ruling or even very accurate spreadsheet, don't count on it too much, but critique is always welcome.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

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.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

BByte

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.

 

Aszhalinde

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.

 

• Apate

Along with mana and aggro issues, the balance tree could use some real organization and condensation. "Full" moonkin have very few points to put into a secondary tree, synergy issues aside.

See you, auntie.
"lol" is not a period lol
You don't need a machine to make a rainbow. For rainbows are made of happy thoughts, and dreams, and chocolate unicorns, and gumdrops, and licorice sunsets, and fuzzy gumdrop bears, and sugar-coated chocolate gumdrop land.

Originally Posted by DeeNogger I am coming for you Apate.

 

• zepi

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.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I actually think the balance tree is pretty well condensed as it is. The only real "pain point" is that you have to spend 3 points in either natures grasp, control of nature, and/or brambles to open up the tree, and as a raider you might not much care for any of those.

As for mana issues, I remember seeing some chart showing that wrath was around 6 damage per mana, with starfire being a bit closer to 7 (i.e wrath at 6.2dpm, starfire at 6.8). Doesn't seem like that drastic of a difference to me.

You'd need a shadow priest to keep up either in a long rotation I'd imagine

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Heric

it doesn't seem logical to list an advantage of a moonkin that they can "heal in a pinch" and then list a disadvantage that they have mana issues. how can you heal in a pinch with no mana? balance/resto mix has more raid viability than a full balance.

 

Aszhalinde

I'm not sure I agree. I would say the resto tree is far more bloated than balance, balance feels about right on with the amount of points it has. If you wanted to get everything useful (my opinion) you'd put 47 in balance down to FoN, which would then give you some interesting choices to make. 13 resto down to Intensity is the most obvious route to take, or you could choose between Imp FF and Intensity, or if you wanted to synergize with feral (god forbid) you'd have enough for feral charge with some leftover in Furor. If you don't go "full" balance, the trees are perfectly aligned to make you choose between FoN and NS, and Moonkin and Swiftmend.

I would actually *add* points to balance; without whipping out the wishlist, the change I would most like to see in the balance tree would be a two point aggro reduction talent right there on tier 3 between Insect Swarm and Brambles. It feels so awkward having to put two points in either Imp NG, CoN, or Brambles in order to advance down the tree.

Or just roll it in with subtlety, although the priest talent trees suggest to me that one cure-all aggro reduction talent is a no-no for Blizzard.

You can heal in a pinch......while mana lasts =) thus the cries for additional mana love for balance.

 

• Apate

Just a note: I think Restoration is worse, but I didn't want to turn this into a discussion about that. When I look at the bare minimum of what I'd want in balance to get FoN, it ends up being 45 points, preferably 50. I think resto gets 49 (I didn't count right now), so I'd say both are bloated about equally. Maybe feral is the same way and it's part of a plan to keep druids from getting to hybridized, I have less knowledge about that tree.

See you, auntie.
"lol" is not a period lol
You don't need a machine to make a rainbow. For rainbows are made of happy thoughts, and dreams, and chocolate unicorns, and gumdrops, and licorice sunsets, and fuzzy gumdrop bears, and sugar-coated chocolate gumdrop land.

Originally Posted by DeeNogger I am coming for you Apate.

 

• Playered

The Balance tree itself is great, only 2 worthless talents (brambles/treants), some nice ones which seem really useful, aswell as the generic ones which every class needs.

The mechanics behind the class are the issues preventing it from becoming good when dealing with the flaws (threat & mana).
Threat is easily fixed by amending a useless talent to incorporate it being the easiest, Mana is more of an ikky issue which needs more intensive attention to adress properly.

Both can currently be somewhat evaded now to provide an ability to perform 'well' in raids, with setting a group towards it (SP + Tranquil Air totem). Meleeing to get mana back is never ever going to work even with cleave changes.

The potential is there waiting...

 

Suesse

Sounds like a guy in our guild (which it very well could have been). I think the issue you're seeing is weeks/months/years of people telling Moonkin they couldn't compete with dps classes. Some though, have found a way.
+ You get increased points for landing your first starfire at the exact moment the tank pulls the group. From a skilled moonkin, you should expect the first starfire to land 0.1 seconds after your pull.
+ Every mob must be moonfired. You get bonus points for moonfiring a mob that another dps class is supposed to keep CCed. See this increases your damage relative to them because they have to constantly reCC the mob.
+ Bonus points per trash pull are awarded inversely proportional to your remaining mana. Emptying your mana bar on a two trash mob pull can be challenging, but that's why you plan WoW and not MarioKart.

If there isn't a good moonkin calculator, maybe take a existing caster calculator and modify it. I believe there are several in the 600 page mage theorycrafting thread.

 

Solstice

This is the only one I know of, and it places moonkins firmly at the bottom in terms of both DPM and DPS. One could argue that using IS and iFF increases raid utility, but further reducing dps and dpm is the tradeoff.

 

• zepi

FF is 145mana every 40secs. Hardly worth noting compared to your nukes when calculating mana-efficiency. As is IS, which is by far your most damage-efficient spell balance druid has. So if you are manalimited, make sure to have IS up, and be ready to sacrifice 2x Starfire during 5min fight to keep FF up...

Assuming 600 raid-buffed int and a mere 220spirit, you have 60mp5 from dreamstate and 24mp5 from intensity.

Using the rotation of IS, MF, 3x SF + Wrath with the given stats puts your mana usage at 1868 for each rotation of about 13seconds.