Any caster worth their salt maintains double gear sets due to the variance in desired +hit between level 70-72 trash mobs (anywhere from 3-5%) and level 73 mobs and raid bosses (+16%.) If a raiding caster class is wearing their +x% hit gear (whatever that total is, +13 for mages, +16 for destro locks, +6 for afflic locks, +4 for elemental shaman, etc.) while they are fighting trash that doesn't require it, then they are failing in their gear choices and should maintain a second set to maximize their DPS output on non-boss mobs.

The corollary to that statement is that since said casters should already be maintaining that gear set for other reasons, it is very easy for them to switch in gear -- or not do so -- depending on whether iFF is present in the raid at that time or not.

first of all thanks to who wrote in this post. very useful posts indeed.

we all know what subtlety brings to boomkins with 2.1. im not well geared yet, so i got some mana issues in long fights. especially when you gotta help healing or throw a BR. i was thinking about mana regen.

after 2.1 we all gonna spec with 5/5 subtlety forsure . but what about sacrifice force of nature ,imp ff, celestial focus like talents and get 3/3 intensity? 3/3 dream state with 3/3 intensity working together . wouldnt be nice?

non of those talents except imp FF will hurt raid or druid him/her self in raid groups imo.

it might be a talent build for raiding moonkins after 2.1

dps + mana regen.

3/3 natural shape shifter: shifting for healing/ rezzing and shifting back moonkin.
3/3 intensity: 15% mana regen while casting
3/3 dreamstate: 10% mana regen while casting

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MxcrzicsguVZZxMIx

I hesitate to suggest this, lacking solid numbers on how they scale, but dropping a point of Subtlety to get your Treants is probably a solid idea if Water Elemental is any indication.

Well i used treeants both for pve and pvp.. I gotta admit I didn't find any benefits in pve. But they are useful in pvp both against spell casters ( Spell interruption ) and melee chars ( Extra dps ).

I'll drop treeants to gain more treat reduction + mana regen after 2.1 but its just for raids.
As you can see on that talent build of mine I dropped celestial focus also ( Very useful for pvp or solo questing/grinding/farming )..

That build is only for efficient pve'ing . ( imo )

Fully raid buffs my trees do ~200 normal hits and ~450 average crits. Thats three of them attacking like that for 1/6th of every fight. Im not sure on their attack speed, but it seems to be between 1 and 1.5 secs. Thats a LOT of added dps. They only suck if theres an aoe portion of the fight, and even then they are getting a huge stamina boost in 2.1

Going back to the question about utility vs. damage output - there are a few things to look at vs. the really popular hybrid class (shadow priests).

What do moonkins bring to raids over say, a shadow priest in that moonkin spot? 5% crit. Neat. To sustatin your dps, we'd need to give you a shadow priest who benefits very little from that crit. Throw in 2 mages and a destruction warlock (are there any destruction warlocks atm with how good aff is in raids?).

So a moonkin would increase the burst dps of a mage and also a warlock (aff by an okay amount) - and you'd be able to battle res and innervate someone. Compare that to a shadow priest who is able to provide over 250mana/5 to a party while healing them if necessary (and threat allows). Burst dps is generally not a factor in raiding - one can take things like destruction pots if necessary. Sustained dps - however is a huge factor.

The question comes down to - what does a moonkin bring to a raid that a mage or shadow priest or warlock can't? 5% crit, battle res, innervate. Okay - a shadow priest will provide more overall mana - but to a party. Check. At long fights, you may even have to self innervate anyways. Gruul is relatively short in comparison to a lot of other ones. Battle res? Well, that's cirumstantial but useful - but costs a lot of mana and unlike Feral Druids, you're mana based.

5% crit? The question is - does 5% crit ever outweigh a VE/VT combo, an imp buff/other healthstone type, or more water (I mean aoe)? A few fights - probably. Shorter fights where threat isn't an issue and healing isn't an issue. A moonkin also can't do anything like shield, dispel magic (I don't think they can depoision in moonkin form) like a shadow priest can - I'm not sure if they can decurse in it like a mage can, and they have no pet utility in the longterm.

These are the issues that face raid leaders as far as moonkins go. DPS isn't really hard to find. You can always sub in yet another shadow priest, mage, or warlock if you want top dps (atm in BC, BT showed rogues being able to be a bit more competitive last night as far as I could tell). But - convince me why a raid should take a moonkin. With Illumination nerfed, that's even less of a reason because the 5% crit for a stacked paladin group with a shadow priest doesn't mean as much anymore. 5% crit for the mages is nice - but they'll get more sustained dps from having a shadow priest in the group. Pair them up? Well, that's fewer casters that can get the mana/5 from the priest. Replace a mage with a moonkin? Less water (aoe) in the raid and generally lower dps in its place. Feral can pop out and use the battle res and innervate and not hurt its method of dpsing or offtanking - it's a direct dps drain on moonkins, however.

Add into that, that you share the tokens with warriors and priests - and well, tanks generally get geared up first. Shadow priests are lucky ot have gear thats offset so they dont need to touch warrior tokens to get gear. I'm rambling - but I'm looking for reasons beyond pure dps as to why a raid leader should acknowledge the existence of the spec =D.

Guilds take melee dps? It's also not 2% less dmg for the tank - it's 2% less physical damage. Insect swarm can be obtained in a HT spam build of balance/resto.

Lol, well, yeah good point. However, Ive seen you taking schmity to raids recently, dont hate. I really think the changes to glancing blows in 2.1 are gonna skyrocket melee dps(to a possibly broken level), and for burn encounters they will be needed again.

They physical Dmg portion of IS makes it more situational, your right, but in fights that are purely physical dps its a 2% dmg nerf on the mob, in mixed fights its less, your rigiht. For my views on the HT spam build see our very very long thread on your forums. But maybe you are taking a tree druid to the raid(lol, tree druid), or its just much harder for a healer to reset insect swarm every 12 secs, while a dpser could do it no problem.

I wont argue with you about the viablity of shadow priests, they are imba. However, I think the power of a moonkin vs. a sp depends a lot on raid composition. 3 fire mages and an elemental shaman group gets a HUGE bonus from a moonkin. Pack that with a strong enhance shamn fury warrior, rogue group and the moonkin becomes much more viable.

I know you guys usually run big on SP and locks, making the shadow priest much more viable, and the moonkin not really a choice at all.

When the previous Moonkin thread came around I started work on a spreadsheet. Then I took a bit of a vacation, and am back to working on it. I saw some mention of cast cycles that moonkins use: IS:SFx3:Wrath, swap IS for MF. If you have others you want me to add in before I upload let me know.

I made a couple assumptions (mp5 for shadow priest at 175, averaging cast times due to natures grace, etc). Borrowed some of the layout from Vontre's mage dps spreadsheet (sorry to infringe but it's not easy to make excel even marginally visually appealing). And honestly there's probably a few errors running around. I doubt this'll be something I actively maintain, it was just something to occupy some time - but it should give a bit of a view of what a moonkin can do and it's limitations.

http://www.hidden-arthas.net/Misc/MoonkinDPS.xls

edit: forgot to mention I haven't adjusted anything for hit values against a boss level mob, working on that now

Fixed the wrath crit DPM (haven't uploaded new one yet though). Yea some raid buffs on player are assumed - kings, AI, imp MOTW, imp DS.

Duration I did a bit weird to be honest and I'm not real glad with how I did it but it was easier. I just did average cast times (1.5 for instants, weighted cast time due to crits + NG for others). Added up cast times and lag, figured how much mana would be regen'd in that time due to spirit/mp5 (factoring in intensity, dreamstate, etc). Subtracted mana regen'd from mana used, and averaged it out of the max mana to find out duration.

Example with made up numbers
100 Latency
MF:SFx4: 500 + 4*400 = 2100 mana used
Regen from spirit = 100
Regen from mp5 = 1000
Net Loss in 12+1.5+.5 = 14 seconds = 1000 (cast times + lag)
Max Mana: 9000
Time to OOM = 9000/1000*14 = 126 seconds

If anyone has a better model, throw it my way and I'll be glad to (attempt) to implement it. I'll also work on getting innervate, wrath of air, totem of wrath, mana tide, and of course the spell hit stuff put in.

edit: Uploaded with wrath of air, totem of wrath, mana tide, and innervate options, and fixed DPM for wrath spam on crits. Next up spell hit (can you tell i'm putting this off???)