I'm more concerned about coming out of trash packs going into a boss. As to it being a steady cycle of dps and it not mattering what direction you are heading, I can just about guarantee you two things:

1) one Eclipse cycle is going to be stronger than another
2) proc-based trinkets will continue to be in the game

In that those trinkets tend to proc very soon in the fight, you would want to be heading toward your "good" Eclipse. In that those trinkets also tend to cycle based on ICDs, which Eclipse they proc in first can also determine which Eclipse they are likely to proc again throughout the rest of the fight.

Again, I can tell you right now that there is a significant swing in my sustained DPS given how DFO/Phylactery interact with the Eclipse cycle if I start at Neutral going toward Lunar versus any point on the bar heading toward Solar. I would expect that to be the case at lvl 85 in Cataclysm as well -- maybe it turns out Solar is the direction you want to be going first -- but I'm fairly certain there will be an optimal place to start a fight.

Quite frankly, even without the feature, I'll manipulate my Eclipse bar during trash so that it's where I want it to be for the boss (as noted, trash is less important). It's just a bit messy is all. That said, this is my last post on the matter because it's not likely a feature to be implemented and this probably isn't the best forum to spend 5 to 10 posts discussing it. Only reason I brought it up was in reference to the directional arrow not resetting once you have combat history that Arawethion brought up.

Wrath crit on Solar Eclipse, 25k. Starsurge crit on Solar Eclipse, 30k.


Yeah... Starsurge needs Moonfury inclusion. This is a 15 sec cd spell whereas my spammable Wrath is critting for slightly less.

Starsurge crit on Solar Beam? What is that supposed to mean..?

It's supposed to mean I'm alt tabbing while dueling and getting the terms confused, edited for clarity.

At lvl 80 in BiS gear and both trinkets proc'd, I can cross 6k spell power. Highest Starsurge crit I've seen is a little over 41.5k. Highest Starfire crit I've seen was around 39.5k (I know I haven't crossed 40k on it). I'm fairly certain that I haven't seen a Wrath crit cross 30k (high 20s yes but not past 30k). All of those highs are of course with trinkets proc'ing me above 6k, in the right Eclipse state, etc. High crits aside, if I take the averages of all 3 spells crits and hits, Starsurge "hits" for about 200% Wrath on average and for about 150% of Starfire hits on average. Starsurge "crits" average about 160% of Wrath crits and 110% of Starfire crits.

I'll test Hand of Gul'dan, Chaosbolt, and Lava Burst. From some preliminary play on the shaman premade, Lava Burst goes as high as 25k crits without trinket procs, just Unleash Weapon.

Conflagrate, and instant and 8 second cooldown glyphed, crits for 34k, and I've gotten as high as 41k. That's confirmed by my testing at least.

EDIT: Warlocks are missing their crit bonus for the moment. Elemental Shamans are not and neither are mages missing this. Will have to wait until further builds to the the warlock.

With that said, I'm back on my troll druid premade with 85 ilv355 blues. My starsurges are not critting beyond 30k. It may be critting for you at 80 in heroic ICC gear and procs for such numbers, but that's not the gearset you're designed to possess at 85, and for the time being I'll take the crits from the premade as what is currently designed to be.

With that said, Hand of Gul'dan is critting for 20k average on a target with curse of elements up. 5611 spellpower base on premade with fel armor.

The 20k crits don't include 15% damage of Demon Soul or the 40% damage bonus from Metamorphosis.

4953 spellpower on troll druid premade. 22k crit outside eclipse on Starsruge. 31.518 crit in Solar Eclipse.


40k crits are not happening ever under a PvP environment at least, and in PvE it's silly to say 40k is overpowered because the planets aligned with trinket procs.

My point with trinket procs was to say, even though I'm level 80 on PTR, that I was at over 6k spell power. My understanding was that lvl 85s in blue gear in beta were around 6k spell power. So at lvl 85, it wouldn't be the trinket proc planets aligning, it would simply be a normal crit. Seems like you are saying lvl 85 premades are slightly under 6k so I guess I'm a bit high. Either way, Starsurge is hitting substantially harder than Wrath and Starfire. It is critting substantially harder than Wrath and reasonably harder than Starfire.

So, in reference to other Moonkin spells, I think Starsurge's damage is where it should be. Now, if our set of spells and overall dps are not comparing favorably to other casters, that is another concern entirely. Given that many of the class specific buffs that made Moonkin a good-to-have for overall caster synergy have been taken from us or put elsewhere, I do agree that any "hybrid tax" should be removed completely. We should absolutely be tuned to be 100% competitive with other casters. If we are or aren't atm in beta/PTR, I have no idea.

However, if we aren't competing favorably with other casters, trying to fix this by making one of our cooldown spells hit like a truck to make up for the rest of our arsenal's inadequacy isn't a good plan. Haven't we done that already with Starfall? While it sort of accomplished the goal of making us more competitive, I wouldn't call it good design. If we are lagging behind other casters, tune the relative damage of multiple spells upward or Eclipse or whatever. Don't just make Starsurge hit extremely hard once every 15 seconds / on Shooting Stars procs. That's a bad plan.

I would agree it should be more about how it scales in relation to our other spells. That's why I stated that was another discussion entirely. If the discussion is about Starsurge and how it scales in relation to our other spells, I would say I have probably one of the larger recorded sample sizes of how Starsurge, Wrath, and Starfire are scaling in the logs I've been keeping. In the single log linked below (50 million damage worth), if I take the average hit and crit damage of all three spells, it looks like this:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis for reference - relevant detail pulled out below:

Wrath: avg hit 7,277 avg crit 15,438
Starfire: avg hit 10,540 avg crit 22,274
Starsurge: avg hit 15,760 avg crit 24,952

At equal the cast time to Wrath, Starsurge hits for 215% more and crits for 162% more.
At 2/3 of the cast time of Starfire, Starsurge hits for 150% more and crits for 120% more.

I will note that, even though my sample size is large, it's not perfect. However, I'm sure if someone took the coefficients and damage ranges of the spells, they'd come out with something fairly close to the above.

Finally, to put some additional impact to that Starfire / Starsurge / Wrath crit comparison, I think it's worthwhile to focus in on the cast time of the spells in relation to their damage. Wrath at .6666 the cast time of Starfire is averaging .6931 the crit damage. Starsurge at .6666 the cast time of Starfire is averaging 1.202 the crit damage. I'm somewhat stating the obvious but to put it in full context, Starsurge can also do this in either Eclipse phase and it can be instant cast on Shooting Stars procs. For all of those benefits, it is on a cooldown. Is this scaling well? The answer to that is somewhat subjective but I can tell you that, based on the above, if Starsurge weren't on a cooldown, I'd never cast Wrath or Starfire. I'm not one to refuse more damage but including it under Moonfury might put it a bit over the top.

Looks like we've lost Overgrowth in the PTR patch. Is it still in the Beta? I guess I can't say I'm terribly surprised. An instant AoE snare on all targets in 8 yards is a bit much, especially in battlegrounds, but we've slowly seen them chip away at our crowd control mechanics, and now this...

Also, MMO champion is saying that only rank 1 Dreamstate has gone up?

Dreamstate used to go from 10% to 30% over 2 points. 15% to 30% seems like a fix.

As far as crowd control, it remains to be seen what kind of crowd control will be required in raid environments, if at all, what kind of MOBs they will be, and what their immunities will be. Hibernate has enormous potential, assuming there are actually things it can be used on.

I'll try to prepare a summary of everything we've figured out before live time, but currently, IS and Wrath are looking like the two strongest Glyphs. MF and SF are close for the third slot; I'd probably favor MF for now.