Shroomism

I apologize in advance if this has been covered before, but I searched and didn't find any topics discussing this.

Basically, I'm wondering what most raid leaders think of bringing a moonchicken to 25 mans. The aura is great for DPS casters and they can be a good support class and have pretty decent DPS provided they are well geared for it.
Moonkins have always been a sort of running joke among our guild. But currently one of our druids is thinking about going balance and I'm wondering if it's worth it.

The cons of a moonkin as I see it:
1. There are usually several (3-4) healing and tanking druids already in the average raid - bringing in an extra druid can sometimes disrupt class balance issues.

2. Moonkins are very gear dependent in order to maintain high DPS without running OOM. IMO, most of the time it is probably just better to bring a mage or warlock as pure DPS/AoE, or a shammy or shadowpriest as support/DPS.. or am I dead wrong?

3. They must be able to manage their aggro well as they have no aggro reduction abilities (that I know of?)

Now with all of these things combined it seems to me a moonkin is probably not even worth the raid spot most of the time. As most moonkin I have personally witnessed, don't really know what the hell they are doing.. they will either pull aggro and die early on, or run OOM and be crap DPS, waste innervates on themselves, etc..

Now I know a skilled moonkin that has maximized gear (+spell damage and MP5?) and spec, can be a valuable support class in raids.

The question is how viable? Do any of the top guilds run with a moonkin regularly? Wouldn't it just be better to bring another mage or warlock or shaman instead of a moonchicken most of the time? Seems to me a Spriest or shaman is better in a group of casters than a moonkin, especially on mana intensive fights.
Granted, that extra innervate and combat rez and moonkin aura is always nice, but is it worth the raid spot?

(My guild is currently 3 bosses into SSC and 2 into TK)

 

air

Someone did the math and the imp Faerie Fire and imp Moonkin aura apparently made a substantial difference, enough to make up for the lack of aggro control. At high end people will have to plan their gear around having 3% less hit to make use of it, though.

If you have someone interested in it with a lot of skill in general they will have good luck- Moonkin are not the elaborate joke they were in classic WoW in both pvp and pve. I die to them sometimes : ( Make sure that you have a party of mages or I guess paladins to make use of the aura... Heh.

Short version: According to the spreadsheet, yeah. Your mileage may vary.

You have the right to remain silent. THAT MEANS SHUT UP.

 

Dranak

My guild is far from high end, but we do have experience with a raiding moonkin; and yes he is pretty much a waste of a raid slot. In a mix of blues and kara epics (about 840 nature damage) he consistently pulls around 450 DPS. Whether that's a function of the player or class, I don't know. But I have yet to ever be impressed by any moonkin I've grouped with.

Also, here's a moonkin thread on the second page of this forum: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11582-d...s_spreadsheet/

 

Spades

He should be able to put out more than that just by spamming Wrath.

"Existence has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long."
-Rorschach, Watchmen

 

Abbi

Our moonkin is in blues and already pulling 450 DPS -- regardless of whether or not it's a good 25 man spec, your moonkin could be working a bit harder.

 

Dranak

Oh I realize our moonkin does terrible DPS, I edited my first post to add in the statement that I don't know if that's a function of the spec or the player, but either way it's the extent of my raiding experience with moonkin.

 

Torrential

My guild certainly isn't 'High End' We're 3/5 in SSC (No Hydross), and of course Lootreaver.

We run a group that consists of myself (Ele Shaman), Boomkin, Destro Lock, Mage, Mage.

Basically, the Lock and 2 Mages can adjust their gear to the fact that they get 4% to hit from me. Plus we're handing them 8% crit as a bonus. Our Boomkin is almost always top 4-5 DPS, and on fights that are especially un-melee-friendly he wins quite often. He manages his aggor and mana pool like a champ despite the fact that we lack a shadow priest. (Only one in the guild and the healers get it...we've done most of our guild firsts with no Shadow Priest including FLK...)

So for us, he clearly is viable. Not only is he providing 5% crit, and swarm of insects and all that, but his DPS is great.

Maybe every last caster in our guild is terrible and he shouldn't be on top, but from my experience Boomkins are great.

 

Mearis

Replace the moonkin with a shadowpriest, hell replace anyone in that group with a shadowpriest and you'll get much much bigger numbers from your casters.

 

• constantius

This is a big one. If you have 4 druids and you regularly run with all 4, having one go moonkin can be a blessing (esp if you're healer heavy). However, if you're thinking about *adding* a druid slot, I would think long and hard before taking a moonkin in that slot.

Shaman > Moonkin. However, if you have 3 shamans already ... there's an option there. Some guilds (like mine) run with few druids -- if one of them, who already has a raid slots, goes Moonkin, there are benefits.

It's fairly trivial to go 15 points in Restoration and gain a 20% threat reducer. It's not enough, but it does help (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft).

It takes a truly skilled player to make a moonkin work well. And if you are pre-BT (like 99% of us), the only gear available for such a player is either cloth, or T4/T5. It's easy enough to hit 1000 nature damage : the question is then what to do with it. The theorycraft says that a moonkin should be able to perform approximately on the level of a fire mage, *assuming* the fire mage gets no synergistic buffs. Unfortunately, this will never be the case -- fire mages get CoE and Imp Scorch stacks; Moonkins get neither. It's a very similar build : one spams Fireball, the other spams Starfire (and Scorch/IS are similar in terms of mixing the cycles).

But done properly, it's much *much* easier to do high dps as a fire mage than a moonkin.

We have a moonkin in our guild. The 3% hit buff does help. But realistically, she's never topped 600 dps in a raid setting. On Dr. Boom she's able to hit about 850, but somehow in the stress of combat, it never works out that way. We're tolerating it for now, and hoping that with a bit more gear and practice, she'll push her numbers higher.

For SSC/TK, I'd be perfectly happy with 700 dps. If she could do that on every fight, I'd take her along. 5% crit as an aura is powerful for both paladins and the dps casters (mages, locks, ele shaman), and the 3% hit debuff is amazingly powerful. Even if you just consider it as bringing your tanks up to their hit cap, that's a LOT of threat headroom you just handed to your raid.

 

Shroomism

That's what I was thinking too. Anyone care to confirm/deny this?

 

Proxy

We have druid who can't decide on roles and with crafted gear (+750dmg or something), some blues and Karahazan epics, he can easily sustain 600-700dps on bosses (with me, a spriest in his Karahazan group that is).

I view him as a mage with different extra utility next to dps.

 

• constantius

Benefits in a group of all casters from Shadow Priest >> benefits from Moonkin. But that completely ignores the benefit of Imp Faerie Fire.

It's very similar to the arguments about bringing a Ret Paladin. People focus the argument *only* on the group buffs (+2% aura, +5% crit aura), and ignore the raid-wide buffs (mostly because they're very very hard to quantify).

Unfortunately, JoW/JoL/JotC > Imp Faerie Fire, so you actually have more of a case in the ret case than the moonkin case.

[As a side note: we typically will stack shadow priest + 3 mages + moonkin *or* shadow priest + destruction warlock x2 + moonkin + fire mage as a group composition.]

 

Torrential

Clearly we'd love to have a shadow priest. We don't and we can't get one. Trust me we're trying. We have a priest that was going to be shadow but we simply can't find enough decent healers. As it is our one SPriest sits with 4 healers.

 

Flamingcloud

We have a moonkin that out dps most of our mages on the average fight, brings an innervate, combat res, spot healing, and +5% crit aura etc. -15% threat is enough that you can deal above average damage on most fights without being threat capped.

 

Torrential

That's another thing I had forgotten to mention. Another Battle Rez is always nice to have. Granted the cost of the rez+shifting back to oomkin costs about 2k mana and could potentiall cripple the boomkin into an oomkin.

Also, on most fights I start with Tranquil air down. When it comes time to re-drop totems I look at the gap between the MT and the boomkin. If it's big enough, I swap to Wrath of Air. Later at the next re-drop I check again. Basically adding Tranquil either some or all of the time is a benefit to oomkin DPS.

You could argue that dropping Wrath would benefit the other casters more but seeing as how he's winning DPS for us alot I don't see why I should not continue to help his threat. On most fights I drop totems at least 5 times and if 2-4 mintues of the 10 are tranquil, and the rest wrath I don't see it hindering anybody that much either.

 

SonySwarm

We have somewhat of a celebrity moonkin in our guild (Madrox). He has fairly decent gear (I think 3 pc T4, 2pc T5) and usually comes up top 3 in dps. I myself am a shadowpriest and loving having him and his crit aura (usually our caster group of death consists of him, me and 3 other mages). He has changed our guild mentality in regards to boomkins.

http://wow.tachyonsix.com.nyud.net:8...01232rwKWU.png

 

Oth

I think I'd have to second that putting your lone shadow priest with your healer group is not nearly as useful as putting that same priest in a caster DPS group, especially a mage-heavy one.

 

david0925

I'm not a huge expert on guild composition in terms of every high end guild, but I believe that the lack of Moonkin Success in high end guild is probably the primary reason that guilds are not giving moonkin a shot. However, there are a lot of problems that Moonkins face especially in SSC and TK.

First of all, people don't really view Moonkin as a DPS class, but as a utility class. As a result, since Moonkin does not provide as much utiltiy as Feral spec (note I'm not trying to start a Feral vs Balance vs Resto fight here.) since Feral acts as an offtank, people are reluctant to bring them on raids. In fact, Moonkin actually puts out quite comparable DPS to mages when specced right and with a shadow priest while providing that extra 5% crit to the other 3 DPS casters in the group. For the shadow priest, crits on SW and Mind Blast (if they use these two spells) means extra mana returned to the group. For the mages (especially Deep fire ones), extra crit means extra damage as well as mana regeneration.

Another big challenge moonkin face is the extreme lack of Leather Spellcasting gear that exist in the game (none in SSC/TK, i believe). This cause a big discomfort to the cloth casters that need to compete gear with a Leather wearer. Granted, crafted gears are probably best for both parties (the Moonkin and the Clothies), the reality that they need to compete for gear and clothies complain about it discourage raid leaders from bringing moonkins on raids.

Do I believe Moonkins are raid viable: definitely. Especially with a % party buff, the percentage returns are not declining as gear improve (versus static buffs such as Battle Shout, for example). However, it requires a extremely dedicated Moonkin (since Starfire is much more mana efficient in raids, tailored sets might be pretty necessary just as a starter set) and a very open-minded set of raiders (especially the clothies) and the raid leader.

 

◊ gwystyl

The way to properly value the moonkin is to add up the dps he does on his own and the benefit he brings to your raid group. Our top damage group in the raid is the melee group (yes, our casters seem to be below potential but that's likely due to the fact that we have failed to properly synergize caster groups). The benefit of 3/3 Imp FF to DW melee is pretty significant since our melee have gear both assuming he's in the raid and not.

According to the rogue dps sheet, this simple buff on its own is worth 70 dps to me. 70 x 3 rogues = 210. I don' t know what the delta is for the enh. shaman or the DW warrior, but even assuming this is 0, that puts our chubby bird at 800+dps on average.

You'll have to pry my space chicken from my cold, dead hands.

 

david0925

There is some iffiness by combining so called "damage brought" to the class bringing the debuffs. True, the damage increase will not have been possible without the class. But should we award the MT of all physical damage dealt due to sunder armor as his? By the same logic you would, but I rarely see that being awarded to the MT (or at least distributed evenly amongst all warriors). Another issue is that speccing Imp FF will lower the Moonkin's output (due to limited talent points), therefore providing the misconception that moonkins are not worthwhile in raids (again, I oppose this idea. Higher raid dps is all that matters, but people WILL look at damage meters and make hasty judgments like this).

Also it is important for the other classes to have a subset of gear (like 2-3 pieces) that they can swap in for more crit/AP and reduce hit to actually benefit from the 3% hit, assuming they're hit capped, but this is a given to most aware raiders.

Definitely not disagreeing with your general idea about moonkin's viability, but just have a slight disagreement about awarding the dmg done to debuff classes.

 

galzohar

I would go again and make sure you really get 70 DPS from that. Your crit/hit need to be really low and you need to be doign purely white damage for 3% more hit to increase your DPS by 7% if you're doing 1000 DPS. If you're doing less than 1000 it only gets worse, and you need to do a lot lot lot more than 1000 DPS for me to believe you gain 70 DPS from 3% hit. Just doesn't sound real.

Let's really exajurate here - if a rogue does 1500 DPS with 70% of it being white with 90% chance to hit and 20% crit (low crit to again favor the moonkin), a 3% hit increase will increase white damage by 0.03/1.1=less than 3% white DPS increase. Now since it only applies to 70% of your DPS it's really a ~28-29 DPS increase. While this calculation is incredibly inaccurate, the errors in accuracy are FAR FAR from being enough to agree with a the "70 DPS increase from 3% hit" claim. And the fact is I gave the rogue stats that will greatly favor DPS increase due to hit, I wouldn't be surprised if an accurate calculation will show you gain even less from 3% hit.

Also I would check what you usually have in your caster group - we usually have a shadow priest and a resto shaman because of no elemental and the need for healers in the raid (although I'm considering pushing for getting a good elemental shaman - though these are really hard to come by as they will usually be ex-resto or ex-enhance with very poor elemental DPS gear). Shadow priest and resto shaman get very little from the crit aura, so only 2 classes actually get 5% crit increase. I estimate moonkin aura as ~56 (4%) DPS increase for my mage.

Overall it really really depends on group composition and the moonkin's actual DPS. If a moonkin in the caster group can sustain 90% (or very close to 90%) of a full-time caster DPS I'd say he's worth his raid slot no doubt. More than that and he's more than worth his raid slot. Less than that and I would think many times if the buffs really make up for it, is it gets more borderline with simply not being worth it. Also remember they can't AOE/CC as well as a mage/warlock on most fights, although you don't always need that anyway.

 

Caliane

Balance is "viable" now.

But by no means on par with everyone else.
In the past, balance was a flat out black hole. You were marginally better then an empty raid spot.
Now adays, you can function as a raid member.

But if the question is, Are other classes better? The answer is yes.

The two most direct comparisons are elemental shaman and shadowpreist.
In a 1to1 damage comparison, the balance druid "should" beat both of those hands down.
Better damage coeffiecents, and gain more from class synergy buffs. "vamptouch/curse of shadows, etc"

But at the same time, those classes buff everyoen else far more then the balance druid. 5% crit aura is nice, but doesnt remotely compare to vamp touch or wrath of air/manaspring/totem of wrath.

The druids innervate is for himself. He will need it. The only real secondary utilty the balance druid has is offhealing, and rebirth. both of which come at a massive cost to damage however.
1 rebirth is an estimated 17000 damage lost in mana cost, nevermind time spent casting or the mana for shifting back into moonkin.



Mana constraints are a HUGE issue for balance still. A shadowpreist is almost required to function.
The good news here is mana burn is mostly constant, so as the druid gets better gear, this need dimishes.
By 4pc T5, and as they start collecting t6, the spriest partner isnt needed, wisdom/kings, and possibly just a mana spring is enough to last with the basic, starfire/IS rotation. Moonfire rotation might still needt hat extra mana.


If the druid knows what hes doing, he can perform in that role. you need to allow him to collect the right gear though. This means cloth in nonset slots. Glvoes, belt, boots, wrists. As well as neck, rings, trinkets.
They will never replace mages, as they have very poor aoe. Nor provide the debuffs to compensate for lock curses.

 

Caliane

Not trival at all actually.

The problem. the druid needs itensity, for mana regen while casting. right next to that talent.
Getting 3/3 intensity, and 5/5 sublty means 18 in resto.

This means you cant get the full 48 points in balance you need for those more or less essential raiding talents.

There are only 2 talent not considered 100% nessecary in balance.
Celestial focus and force of nature.
And this assumes you dont get imp FF, which is not very good.

1 point force of nature. Trees are very unreliable AI. Die to most aoe instantly.
But when they dont.
Treant - WWS
256 dps during up time.
3 casts-20,000 damage over 7min, 30 seconds. 44 dps or so in this instance.
37 dps sustained of zero threat damage using the 3min CD as the basis for dps. with a single instant cast, 1.5s global cooldown every 3 min..

Crap in many situations. But hard to argue with 1 talent point giving 37 dps sustained in many others.


Celestial focus: 15% chance for starfire stun. 70% antipushback.
The stun has no real raid purpose. But the pushback on wrath doesnt. Spitfire totems, tainted elementals, prince axes, Nightbane skels, lurker naga. any case of aoe damage to the raid, or where kiling something fast, where the druid is tanking, or just cant afford to be interrupted. its a utility talent. Threat reduction for void reaver, or antipushback for every fight were the druid might get pushback.
I used to use starfire to kill tainted elems. then I had a poisonbolt+forked lit delay my casts and let a tainted despawn on me. Now I use wrath on them 100% of the time.

 

mek

I don't suppose either of you have any WWS parses you can provide?

 

◊ gwystyl

I rarely see anyone needing to justify the MT's presence.
:P