Kharlis

Sure with raid buffs breaking thats a peice of pee. This wasn't taking into account raid buffs though and was based purely on wrath spam.

Except when natures grace procs at a certain point wrath is always greater dps than starfire, because it basically gives 126% of the damage component (compared to 120%) in the same time interval. Mana concerns can make this impractical though (but thats what downranking is for )

 

Boevis

Unless it's changed in this last patch, Wrath gains no DPS from NG procs as GCD is still 1.5 seconds. The only possible way you could see a DPS gain using wrath for NGs is removal of some of your casting delay due to lag. And Downranking? Come on, this isn't healing, the only reason to downrank is if threat is an issue, in which case you may as well pause and take a couple tics of regen outside FSR.

If you're talking strait DPS then yes, Wrath is always better than Starfire, however the you said you weren't talking about Burst DPS. I don't really care what Tufriast says, even at ludicrous amounts of MP5 (500+ while casting) Just Wrath can barely make a 6 minute fight, while Starfire is infinitely sustainable at that point.

 

norfin

Wrath spam definitely "feels" faster on an NG proc, but it's only because the casting time of the next spell is shorter. As Boevis said, gcd is still 1.5 seconds.
Wrath casting time is 1.5 seconds, after an NG it's 1 second.
So after a crit, you have to wait for 0.5 second before you can cast the next spell no matter what you do. Ideally, the best thing to do is to cast a starfire as soon as you get a crit, as you wouldn't face this problem. Pretty much any effect that shortens the duration of a 1.5 second cast spell is useless.
This is one of the reasons I focus more on pure +dmg before +crit. Usually in a raid I'm put in a group with a shammy. On any boss fight, when he uses heroism near the end of the fight, I've found that starfire spam is a better idea as you totally circumvent any gcd problems.
Wrath spam seems to work well on shorter fights like in kara. But again, highly inefficient casting cycles are possible in shorter fights - mf+is+wrath spam. With raid buffs and around 970 +dmg it's pretty easy to break 1k dps in such situations. Wrath spam alone is around 970 dps fully raid buffed.

 

norfin

Mana is still a huge issue for moonkin on some of the longer fights, and starfire is pathetic in the base damage it does compared to other spells in the game. Wrath is extremely mana inefficient dps and moonfire is a joke. So we have basically 1 almost insignificant dot (swarm) and a woefully inadequate spell - starfire that has less base dmg/casting time than any other spell in the game.
Our aura is a complete joke. 5% crit is like give or take 15+dmg x5 ~ 75+dmg.
All shamans get a base 101+dmg wrath of air totem. The utility of a moonkin is starting to fall far behind other more potent offspec casters like shadow priests and elemental shamans and is slowly going back to the sad oomkin joke status.

 

Boevis

Insect Swarm and iFF are actually pretty amazing. IS is still 2% Boss miss and extremely mana efficient, and iFF is going to be ~2% more DPS direct to melee, and a good 3% more DPS from anyone who is bound by threat since the MT is using all of that hit.

Overall yes, it's rather pathetic. Starfire and Wrath didn't scale up like they should have. Having our spells be equal to an untalented mage/warlock is rather pathetic when moonkin utility is still very low.

 

• frmorrison

5% spell crit is certainly worth more than 15 damage for a caster or healer, but your other points are valid.

For a Warlock who uses SB between DoTs, 5% spell crit is worth over 40 +damage.

 

Khaelarys

Your paladin healer loves you for it.

 

• Playered

The aura is good theres no point questioning that, but the raid-slot to get it isn't generally worth it in returns of damage.

 

norfin

Sorry I guess I wasn't clear. What I meant was that 1% crit is roughly around 15 spell damage for a typical dps caster with talents like ruin/ice shards/elemental fury/vengeance etc. It's a very ballpark figure and I'm making a lot of assumptions like the caster has around 800-1000 +dmg and has the appropriate talents.
So 5% crit is worth around 15x5=75 +dmg.
Now of course there is some variation, but this is a good ballpark figure to work from.
Wrath of air is a base shaman ability that's 101 +dmg. Another thing to notice is that having crit may lead to damage spikes, and threat issues, whereas a flat +dmg boost is safer.

 

norfin

Another thing that I would like to point out is starfire has an extremely low +dmg and scaling based on it's cast time:

Starfire (Rank 8)
370 Mana 30 yd range
3.5 sec cast
Causes 540 to 636 Arcane damage to the target.

Frostbolt (Rank 14)
345 Mana 30 yd range
3 sec cast
Launches a bolt of frost at the enemy, causing 630 to 680 Frost damage and slowing movement speed by 40% for 9 sec.

So, Starfire has a base dps of 168 dps
a base dpm of 1.59
Frostbolt has a base dps of 218 dps
a base dpm of 1.89
Frostbolt has a 40% snare, which is a large part of the "spell budget".
Even the base stats are woefully inadequate.

 

chase

Not exactly a fair comparison. A talented frostbolt gets 71.4% of damage gear and 81.4% untalented. (10% nerf)

As someone once put it, it basically comes down on how deliver the +dmg warhead.

For instance both the spells you mentioned start to become similar in dps at around 1000 +dmg. (starfire 529 dps frost 547 dps) At 1400 in +dmg they are basically the same with starfire coming out 1 dps ahead.

Granted it is just rough math, but you have to consider the whole +dmg warhead thing.

 

Boevis

Lets talk about this for a moment.

One way to model it for starfire would be: Damage / (3.5 - (.1 * Starlight Wrath) - (.5 * crit%)) for just using starfire.

As far as cycles go, IS-SFx3-Wrath is probably the best sustainable cycle, replacing the Wrath with another SF when Grace procs. Model this by multiplying the damage of each cycle by the chance for it to occur. Keep in mind the SFx4 requires 3 NG procs to be 12 seconds, if only 2 procs occurs it becomes a 12.5 "extended" second cycle. 4 Procs is extremely rare, but you're still best off waiting the .5 seconds to start the next cycle instead of trying to fit a wrath in there. And with only 1 proc you're better off casting wrath instead of extending the cycle by a full second.

(ISdmg + (SFdmg * 3) + Wrathdmg)/12 * ((1-crit)^4 + ((1-crit)^3 * crit) +
(ISdmg + (SFdmg * 4))/12.5 * ((1-crit)^2 * crit^2) +
(ISdmg + (SFdmg * 4))/12 * ((1-crit) * crit^3 + crit^4)

Feel free to correct my math there, I know it's longer than necessary.

 

doogless

Does insect swarm stack with scorpid sting?

If it doesn't, does it still do enough damage of its own to warrant using?