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?

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.