gwystyl

You're also missing the -610 armor effect of having the Imp FF up there. I didn't just pull the number from thin air, this is based on the most recent rogue dps sheet and the modeling, AFAIK, is correct. Surely the gain is less than the stated 70 dps b/c you never get to truly tank and spank the boss these days but the real number is sure to be within striking distance of that figure.

3% hit translates to roughly 20dps, the balance being credited to the armor reduction. Those numbers are *very* easy to derive and support.

 

galzohar

Remember that the GCD costs the damage of a wrath or 1/2 a starfire, make sure to take that off of the treants total damage dealt.

 

Caliane

Uhm. no.

Lets assume 1200 dps. Thats pretty high rogue dps right?
This is a WWS of anEJ void reaver kill. A very rogue friendly fight.
Wodin - WWS
Shows wodin as doing 1246 dps.

69% of his damage was "white". The rest was "yellow". he has more then 9% to hit, so his yellow damage is hit capped. 99% chance to hit.

Imp ff is going to increase his white chance to hit by 3%. 3% of the 69% of the 1264.
872dps. x.03=26
Thus give him an estimated 26 dps.

If your raid was VERY VERY rogue/dps warrior stacked, I could see this talent becoming useful. Otherwise, its too costly to the druid to justify.

Compare to a warlocks malediction which is a full 3% to Shadow/arcane or Frost/Fire. Aids the lock that cast it, most cases is a full3% dps increase, not a 3% chance to a portion of their damage, and more likely to benefit more dps in any one raid.

Also it should be noted.
Pets have a 16% chance to miss, hunter, lock and force of nature, that is not effected by melee or spell hit of the owner. This talent probably effects that, though Im not certain.

And while tanks only need 9% to hit for hit cap, hit is very hard to find on tanking gear, and thus impFF does have a valid argument for benefiting the MT's threat generation.

 

◊ Kalman

The -610 is not moonkin-specific; any druid can toss up FF, and should, so that damage effect isn't actually attributable to a moonkin. The gain for moonkin FF over normal FF is solely in the 3% hit. Not to mention a Dreamstate build could conceivably pick up Imp FF, leaving you with a healing druid with Imp FF.

http://mmorchive.net

The WoW forums, explained:

 

galzohar

Dreamstate druids cannot have both empowered touch and improved fairie fire which makes the whole dreamstate build pretty pointless. For a moonkin you can pick up imp FF with minimal DPS loss, making it a very worthwhile to pick talent. The question isn't if imp FF should be picked or not, it's the question if it makes the moonkin worth having in the raid or does he still lack total raid DPS increased per raid slot to be worth it.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Even if you move some talents around, the gain from imp FF is still probably bigger than what you would get from putting these points elsewhere.

 

gwystyl

Too true, I had forgotten this.

/blush

I still maintain that the correct way to gauge the moonkin's value is to see the net effect its presence has on the raid. I was simply citing melee dps, so if you credit 20 dps from the +3% hit to rogues (really this would be a bit higher since it enables rogues to wear gear that stresses the other stats), that's at least 60 dps you're adding to the boomkin.

I don't know how to calculate the synergies it brings to the group it is in, but I still see no reason why adding all these together isn't a fair way to truly see the worth of having the boomkin. I guess my question is, what is the dps figure you back into and set as the minimum "you must be this tall to go on this ride" benchmark?

 

Caliane

While this is a reasonable idea.

Where does it start and stop?

Are you going to credit the warlock with malediction giving 13% damage to the spriest, balance druid, and every lock in the raid? And his improved shadowbolts increasing that spriests damage more.
Then that spreist's mana return to party. I get 150dps from a spreist easy. Does that belong to him then? And since that sprist was getting 13% damage and thus 13% more mana return, some of that mana return im getting belongs to the lock as well.

when you start trying to credit the "owner" of synergies, you find out right quick it gets messy, and in the end. the druid doesnt win.

 

Caliane

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11582-d...s_spreadsheet/

Heres a relink to the balance dps spreadsheet.

And to state, A t5 maxed out ssc/tk druid will have about:
1200 spell damage, 150 hit rating, 19% spell crit, 105 mp/5 while casting
430 int, 245 spirit
Unbuffed stats.

 

galzohar

It's quite impossible to take every class and factor all those things in, but with a given 24-man raid choosing a 25th, you don't really have to factor in a lot of stuff as you're comparing "how much dps the moonkin would add" vs "how much dps a <insert class here> would add". Higher wins, easy as that. Well not that easy as adding the moonkin may even change the class choises for other raid slots when calculated in the same manner, but those "backfiring" effects are rather small in comparison to what should be the actual "moonkin damage contribution" minus "<other class> damage contribution".

 

Stent

We frequently run with a boomkin in our raids (we have two in the guild). Our caster groups usually look something like:

1x shadow priest
1x boomkin
3x mage

1x shadow priest
1x elemental shaman
3x warlock

Our WWS site hasn't been updated in a while, so I'll look for some parses. He's extremely competitive in DPS, and usually pulls top 5.

The Armory

One of the more subtle side effects is that our tanks don't have to explicitly itemize or socket for +hit with imp faerie fire.

 

Kelurm

I will be picking up Imp FF when the tanks in my guild can handle the TpS of my DpS. currently my starfires crit for around 5k and as my gear gets better bit by bit they are starting to reach towards 6k.



ugh and what an addon mess >.<, cleaned that up right after the fight

 

galzohar

As I was saying, if the moonkin is matching the DPS of the other DPSers he's definitely worth having as he does more than just his own DPS. However I have to say that if a moonkin is matching your mage/warlock DPS, your mages/warlocks should be ashamed most of the time... "you're losing to the moonkin" is a common way for me to tease DPSers when they're slacking (not to mention in those cases I'm like 1.4X everyone's damage...).

For the group setup you listed, I'd take the worst mage and swap him with the elemental shaman. Mages simply get more out of party buffs than warlocks, even if warlocks are capable of equal base DPS. Mages have more of a need for mana, use crit better and use hit better, at least compared to affliction warlocks (destruction warlocks are almost equal to mages regarding scaling with buffs, except they scale slightly less than mages when you give them more mana, and scale somewhat better with crit due to higher imp SB uptime on top of having ruin). I'd also seriously consider putting an affliction warlock in the MT group - he and your healers will appreciate the extra HP more than the DPS unless the fight is extremely easy on MT healing and very DPS intensive. If that warlock frees a spot in the SP-mage-lock-lock-lock group you can put a BM hunter (or any hunter) there instead, since there are no +spell damage buffs getting wasted and his FI works on casters too.

 

Myul

What gear are you wearing? I doubt, you will have more then 350 spirit raidbuffed with full tailoring/t4+ spelldamage gear! Full Malorne provides 97 spirit, devine spirit 50, motw 18, 150 (?) base or full Nordrassil would provide 114 spirit.

(350/4.5+15)*0.15*2.5=34.8 mp5

Is close to 35 mp5 (assuming you are not wearing spellstrike etc.) worth 3 talent points? More worthy than ..?
+ 2% spellhit/talentpoint
+ 7.78% of your int = spelldamage/talentpoint (300 int = ~ 23 dmg, 400 int = ~ 31 spelldmg, 500 int = ~ 39 spelldamge)
+ 3.78% of your int = mp5 (with 300 int raidbuffed, it's ~ 11 mp5)
+ 1% melee-/rangedhit (even on a caster stacked raid)
+ 0.04% spelldamage bonus to your mainnuke (500 spelldamage = +20 spelldamge, every another +100 spelldamage plus a value of 4 spelldamage)
+ Force of Nature, may be not worthy at one or two encounter, but very worthy on all other for 3x dps


I really understand, that substained dps is very important. But is close to 35 mp5 worth reducing your output that much? That's only the bonus of an alchemist stone on a heavy mana fight.

Celestial focus is a nice talent, but the stun is worthy allmost only on trash. So you have to value it for yourself, if you skip it, you can get more out of your -aggro talent (but that's only multiplicative with blessing of salvation!).

Anti pushback isn't that important on the most of your raiding targets, since your main nuke is starfire (you will lose the nature's grace buff to often in the other case, and at ~40% critrate it's a huge buff for 1 talent point). But it can help in several situations you have listed, with the decision problem written one paragraph above.

The way to go should be somewhere between 46/0/15 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and 50/0/11 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft in my opinion.

But there's another problem, the synergy of a shadow priest and a balance druid is allmost not given for the shadow priest. +5% crit is not much worthy for him, but you will need one to substain your damage. A shaman (resto or elemantal) can support the group better, i guess (isn't wrath of air alone more worthy then +5% spellcrit on allmost any caster build? Adding additional boni from manaspring and totem of wrath or manatide - versus innervate for the shadow priest - as well as bloodlust and emergency heals without shapeshifting and correlated global cooldown issues).

I haven't seen wws parses of balance druids with over 900 dps substained (but 1500 dps mages/warlocks with the support of a shadowpriest at ~ 1000 dps and ~ 1000 dps elemental shaman). On a direct comparison the boomkin needs a lot more dps then the supported elemental shaman to have a bon chance on achieving a raiding slot. But that's not given at the moment in the t5+ regions with properly geared casters. They do well on casual progression raids, since they have a really good base dps, but other supporter compete better while changing blues for epics more and more.

Stent
You should maybe add that you have killed gruul two weeks back the first time, there's a big difference in claims that boomkins do well in raid on regular base or at certain progression states.

 

◊ Rob

I think the problem with Boomkins is that there are too many other excellent class/spec combos to bring along. For example, a group of 3x mage/elemental shaman/shadow priest is going to be really kickass and there's no arguing that ToW + Heroism + WoA isn't better than Moonkin Aura at least for that group of casters. So that probably leaves a Boomkin out of the group that would benefit the most from it. Maybe if/when destro locks start overtaking affliction locks as the build of choice there will be a reason to bring a boomkin, but until then I'd rather bring a shadow priest, elemental shaman, mage, aff lock, or BM hunter.

 

◊ Shalas

Err, what? It's when you're threat-capped that a talent which lowers your damage in exchange for raising other peoples' (including the tanks...) is best. When you can't keep up with your tanks is when you'd drop Imp FF, not when you pick it up.

 

Lavode

Guessing he means that he isnt currently running as moonkin because he is threatcapped to much in that spec? Re viability - well, yes if you have more druids than you know what to do with, speccing one moonkin will work. Problem with the spec is that everyone wants/needs a resto druid and a couple of ferals or a couple of restos and a feral druid to make their overall raid compositon make sense.. I actually have a full set of moonkin gear (collected by not sharding unwanted stuff) in case some raid night we should ever wind up with too many healers / tanks /melee and not enough ranged dps on, but it has never, ever come up yet.

 

Lambach

Exactly, 3% hit for your tanks is probably a huge portion of their threat gen at that gear level. You will actually help them out a ton, and thus, help yourself out.

 

Maax

So what would it take for moonkin viability to compete with shaman/spreist?

- Improved Moonkin Aura? (rip-off of imp LotP that returns mana on crits)
- Better Imp FF? (add spell hit/change it to some other kind of damage increase)
- Remove casting restrictions? (Healing/decurse/rez without the shifting costs and GCDs)
- Some kind of vulnerability debuff put up by casting? (imp wrath building a nature vulnerability to 15%, or something more general like misery)
- Change the base aura altogether? (maybe parallel the tree aura, 25% of the druids INT as spell damage for the group)
- Aura gives Nature's Grace effect? (-0.5 sec on next spellcast after a crit)
- Indoor roots?
- Something else?

Devs: Our nerfs will block out the sun!
Druids: Then we will tank in the shade.

 

LucidityAxel

I think changing the Moonkin aura to give a percentage of the Druid's INT as spell damage would parallel nicely with the Tree aura and would benefit all casting classes equally. Heck, it would even benefit an all-healing group, just not to the same extent that a Tree would.

Crit-based talents are problematic because they are nearly worthless for Shadow Priests, and only slightly better for Warlocks, since a lot of damage from each class is based on DoTs or spells that cannot crit.

Adding spell hit to Faerie Fire would be another pretty reasonable change, and would go a long way towards making Imp Faerie Fire one of the "must-have" debuffs for a raid boss.

 

Caliane

ImpFF should be removed. Its a terrible concept for a talent. 3 points and it has zero benefit for the balance druid that specs it. Poor design. It should either be moved to feral FF, or imbedded into Insect swarm as the 2% chance to be hit by physical, inherently.

Thorns scaling with spell damage would be huge. Currently thorns is a trival average of 2k damage done over a 8 minute raid enounter, reflecting 25 damage per hit. Imagine thorns got 10% of spell damage. I have 1356 damage raid buffed with basic buffs, not even shaman totems. Imagine thorns reflecting 160 damage. That would be closer to 12000 damage over 6min. A much more noticable contribution.

An improved moonkin aura should exist. Mana is still an issue. So the simple, mana return on crits to party is the easy choice. Personally, I think thats boring, and would just be a rehash of a spreist. I would like to see the nat grace effect applied to party with imp moonkin aura.
Your party's spellcrits give them 320 spell haste for 8 seconds. This can not occur more then once every 10 seconds, or something to that effect.

Root snare and damage should be two seperate effects. Allowing the dot to occur even when the snare is immune from buffs, trinkets, indoors.

Not tying moonkin aura to moonkin form would help as well. Allow the druid to truely be the damage/healing hybrid by allowing them to use their heals, and provide the aura at the same time.

Moonglow should be buffed to 15% mana for damage spells, 9% healing.

 

tetracycloide

Given what we've seen and discussed in the thread it doesn't seem like moonkin really needs anything to be raid viable other than itemization in SSC/The eye/BT/Hyjal.

Barring that the best change I can see is adjusting the crit aura to affect the entire raid group instead of just the party and reducing the effect slightly. One of the main problems I see with the moonkin is the type of party they would excell in requires a shadow priest and that's at least one party slot seeing very few tangable benifits from the crit aura.

On top of that one of the better choices for the crit aura are destruction locks who, by their very nature, are poor choices for a shadow priest group due to the fact that mages/shaman/hunters/moonkin get so much more DPS for the mana return. You could argue that fire mages are a better choice but frankly with so much of the end game for casters being dominated by mana issues the ISB uptime for the shadow priests trumps a few extra ignites.

The two major cons to a raid wide aura being that it encourages using only one, hardly a major change from the current standard of zero, and that reducing the effect would reduce the moonkin's personal DPS. The obvious solution to the second being to add the difference back in for 'free' via balance talents.

My vanity is justified.

Multiple classes using the same gear is an excellent idea. Just the other day I was thinking to myself 'Not enough toons look identical with arena and tier sets looking the same, we need more appearance homogenization.'

 

Caliane

You forgot dreanic wisdom 30 spir, and blackened basalisk 23 spir, and all base, gear and buff stats that scale another 10% with blessing of kings.

But just using that 35mp/5 you asserted.
I'm a very well geared balance druid.
My starfires raid buffed hit for an average of 2800. Cos, misery, and kings, food, ai, motw, imp spirit, adepts, dreanic. (not including shaman totem)
1% miss rate, 2772 average damage, 6% partial resist rate, 2605 average damage.
30% crit rate buffed, 3387 average damage per cast.
331 mana for a rank 10 starfire.
10.2 damage per point of mana

358 damage per 5s from that 35 mp/5 then.
Resulting in 71.6 damage per second from that mp/5.

I am mana starved at nearly all times. Only if I have mana tide and a shadowpreist, or in a threat capped situation (void reaver and only void reaver) am I ever really in a place were I have more mana then I need. it is very apt to convert mana to damage for a balance druid.

But to go beyond that, that mana might not be a starfire. It might be a rebirth, or a lifebloom.
Or perhaps the druid is tasked with dpsing something that must be dpsed. spitfire totems, enchant elems/tainted elems.

Even if 3% to hit did represent more raid dps then that mana regen for hte druid, is it worth that 2% more dps on naga, for the balance druid on the elementals to not run oom during Vashj phase 2? Or to not have enough mana to rebirth?

 

• Efejel