Moonkin DPS Spreadsheet - Page 15

Allurissa · 08/06/07, 12:48 PM

Moonkin have always been somewhat of a joke to our guild. We had a single balance druid pre-BC that was pretty much required to heal during raids. Since she left the guild, we have had no solid balance druid.

I have decided that I would like to prove to myself and everyone else in our guild (particularly the RC's and Officers) that Moonkin are not a joke. I have been working on my gear, which is still in need of some upgrades. But even with what gear I do have I am barely staying above the tank for dps. I was starting to doubt myself until I saw Benita's WWS. (Thanks for the boost of confidence by the way).

It's plain to me that Moonkin ARE viable for raiding. I'm running into a couple problems though. Perhaps it's my spell rotation or my gear (or both), but with low DPS I'm still hugging the tank for threat on nearly every boss fight and sometimes out aggroing on trash.

For now, I'm only running Kara as my comp can't seem handle anything else. I can *sometimes* do Gruul.

Thanks for the DPS spreadsheet Efejel. It's really helped. Items I thought were upgrades I learned actually weren't and it helped me find the most bang for my buck on some other items.

It shows my best DPS at a IS, SFx4 rotation. My problem is that IS drops off before the 4th Starfire. Is it better to try to stick to the "best suggested rotation" or to try out something that perhaps keeps the DoT on the mob? Also, I find my DPS faltering when I have to keep Imp FF on the mob.

I'm open to suggestion. My guess is I'm missing some important concept. Kudos to all the great input though. I had never even though about things like +Spell Hit or Spell Rotation as being important. These forums have opened my eyes and got my brain working more on the theorycrafting side of things.

Caliane · 08/06/07, 1:15 PM

Originally Posted by Allurissa

Moonkin have always been somewhat of a joke to our guild. We had a single balance druid pre-BC that was pretty much required to heal during raids. Since she left the guild, we have had no solid balance druid.

I have decided that I would like to prove to myself and everyone else in our guild (particularly the RC's and Officers) that Moonkin are not a joke. I have been working on my gear, which is still in need of some upgrades. But even with what gear I do have I am barely staying above the tank for dps. I was starting to doubt myself until I saw Benita's WWS. (Thanks for the boost of confidence by the way).

It's plain to me that Moonkin ARE viable for raiding. I'm running into a couple problems though. Perhaps it's my spell rotation or my gear (or both), but with low DPS I'm still hugging the tank for threat on nearly every boss fight and sometimes out aggroing on trash.

For now, I'm only running Kara as my comp can't seem handle anything else. I can *sometimes* do Gruul.

Thanks for the DPS spreadsheet Efejel. It's really helped. Items I thought were upgrades I learned actually weren't and it helped me find the most bang for my buck on some other items.

It shows my best DPS at a IS, SFx4 rotation. My problem is that IS drops off before the 4th Starfire. Is it better to try to stick to the "best suggested rotation" or to try out something that perhaps keeps the DoT on the mob? Also, I find my DPS faltering when I have to keep Imp FF on the mob.

I'm open to suggestion. My guess is I'm missing some important concept. Kudos to all the great input though. I had never even though about things like +Spell Hit or Spell Rotation as being important. These forums have opened my eyes and got my brain working more on the theorycrafting side of things.

Barely above the dps of the tank? Theres something very wrong then.

What buffs do you and he have?
If you are not gettnig the proper buffs, you could be having serious mana issues. You should have divine spirit, (improved greatly suggested), blessing of salv/wisdom/kings if you can, AI, motw, to increase your damage.
Dont be cheap.
Use consumables, all the time. Blackened basalisk, adepts elixer, and dreanic wisdom.
Takes 20min to farm 20 basalisk along the river outside shattrah, and that damage and spirit is a HUGE damage gain.

Gear wise, you have a bit too much emphasise on crit. Most gem slots should be +9 runed living rubies. Go ahead and ignore socket bonuses, unless its 5 damage, and you want to use some epic heroic gems.

More hit will help, but I would focus on getting closer to 1k damage before worring about that too much. Take it as you get it, but dont go out of your way for it.

Is lasts 12 seconds.
Sfx4=12s cast time, and 1.5s global cd on is.
Go ahead and let that IS drop off. if you try overwriting it, you are doing less damage per point of mana, and thus defeating the purpose of using IS in the first place really.

Dont worry about lowering your dps to keep FF up. Its worth it.

Nerfy · 08/06/07, 4:32 PM

Originally Posted by Allurissa

Moonkin have always been somewhat of a joke to our guild. We had a single balance druid pre-BC that was pretty much required to heal during raids. Since she left the guild, we have had no solid balance druid.

I have decided that I would like to prove to myself and everyone else in our guild (particularly the RC's and Officers) that Moonkin are not a joke. I have been working on my gear, which is still in need of some upgrades. But even with what gear I do have I am barely staying above the tank for dps. I was starting to doubt myself until I saw Benita's WWS. (Thanks for the boost of confidence by the way).

It's plain to me that Moonkin ARE viable for raiding. I'm running into a couple problems though. Perhaps it's my spell rotation or my gear (or both), but with low DPS I'm still hugging the tank for threat on nearly every boss fight and sometimes out aggroing on trash.

For now, I'm only running Kara as my comp can't seem handle anything else. I can *sometimes* do Gruul.

Thanks for the DPS spreadsheet Efejel. It's really helped. Items I thought were upgrades I learned actually weren't and it helped me find the most bang for my buck on some other items.

It shows my best DPS at a IS, SFx4 rotation. My problem is that IS drops off before the 4th Starfire. Is it better to try to stick to the "best suggested rotation" or to try out something that perhaps keeps the DoT on the mob? Also, I find my DPS faltering when I have to keep Imp FF on the mob.

I'm open to suggestion. My guess is I'm missing some important concept. Kudos to all the great input though. I had never even though about things like +Spell Hit or Spell Rotation as being important. These forums have opened my eyes and got my brain working more on the theorycrafting side of things.

Ok so I agree with mostly with what Caliane said but I think hit is better then +dmg at first...gogo +hit +dmg orange gems. Your at about my +dmg level when I started to pump in those +hit items and gems and my dps shot up.

Anyway I digress on why I'm making this post. Talents. Ok first off I know it sounds nice but I feel that even 1 point in Nature's Grasp is just a pure waste of a point for a raiding spec. In Hyjal it might be nice if you pulled an add or something but other then that it doesn't work in raids. So I'd put that point in Control of Nature instead...I find that talent always useful and I'm always the one to cyclone someone in a raid once they get MC'd. Ok so I personally dont have 2/3 in Brambles mainly because I know theres another druid in my raid with it and she's better at Keeping thorns up then I am lol. I's also take out the one point in Celestial Focus, another worthless raiding talent imo. rest of your Balance tree looks fine but I would consider taking that one point out of Force of Nature and put it into Subtlety since you say your always threat caped.

Ok for the Resto tree. Imp Shapeshifter. Very rarely do I find myself out of form. If I am out of form tho I generally stay in caster until the fight itself is over and I am able to drink after I go back into Moonkin. Its for times like this that 5/5 in Naturalist seems better then sticking 3/3 in Imp Shapeshifter. So now you have 1 or possible 2 extra points. I suggest throwing them into Subtlety. Some threat reduction is better then none.

Ok looking quickly at your gear...Go upgrade your blue ring w/ the epic ring from Cenarion Expedition Exalted./...NOW! lol. I would also suggest getting the Spellstrike Set (helm and legs). Yes they are ugly but its such an upgrade that is semi-easy to get. I personally was alch/herb and dropped alch just so I could make the spellcloth faster for those pieces. Another change I'd suggest is a new trinket then the Skyguard Exalted one. Now IDK if you were just out farming and had it on but X'ril's Gift or w/e its called would be better for a raid imo...that way you can atleact activate the trinket for a burst of some dmg. Theres also either the Blessings or Storms Cards you can look at if you want to be lazy and not activate another trinket every 2 mins.

Ok enough rambling...just ask if you have any more questions.

Namsar · 08/06/07, 10:31 PM

Originally Posted by Allurissa

It shows my best DPS at a IS, SFx4 rotation. My problem is that IS drops off before the 4th Starfire. Is it better to try to stick to the "best suggested rotation" or to try out something that perhaps keeps the DoT on the mob? Also, I find my DPS faltering when I have to keep Imp FF on the mob.

I'm open to suggestion. My guess is I'm missing some important concept. Kudos to all the great input though. I had never even though about things like +Spell Hit or Spell Rotation as being important. These forums have opened my eyes and got my brain working more on the theory crafting side of things.

I guess I started in a similair position as yourself Allurissa, having been our guilds only moonkin pre and post BC I've had a lot to live up to. By no means do I find myself being the best of the best in the guild in terms of dps, but I'm certainly right up there (Don't know wtf is wrong with our mages though they _should_ be higher with their gear). Anyway I digress.

First and foremost, Spell Hit > Dam > Crit, I have sacrificed a lot of crit recently just to stack more hit and dam, because by the numbers... it all works out on top. Follow the spreadsheet and try and put in the specific of a generic fight (5-6 mins is a good baseline). If the spreedsheet is coming out at ISx1, SFx4, it most probably means your mana starved and can't put in wrath/moonfires to increase your dps. Try looking at things like, drums of restoration (if your a leatherworker), chugging SMP's at every single time you're 3k down in mana, convincing your raid leader to put you in a group with a shadow priest etc. The more mana you have the more you can burn on higher dps abilities.

As Caliane said, consumables are a big part. Wizard Oil, Blackened Basilisks, Adept Elixir's, Draenic Wisdom's. I Carry 20 of each, every raid, except for Gruul's where I use the flasks (Tanking Kiggler so +Stam helps). Mana pots, get SMP's or Blue Brew, or Bottled Nethergone Energy etc, get what ever is available for the zone cheaply to save yourself some money. If you want to top DPS you're going to need as much mana available to you as possible.

Ok on to spec. Having a quick browse of your's atm and I really can't understand why you have chosen some things. If you want to maximise your raid dps you need to swap some things around, yes it does gimp you solo/pvp a bit but you shouldn't be having issues there anyway.

Lose Nature's Grasp, Brambles, Celestial Focus. And put those 4 points into Subtelty. Also as others have said Natural Shapeshifter isn't something that's likely to be required in a raid environment but spot HT's might be. Shift those 3 points to Naturalist.

In one point I would have to disagree with Nerfy however...

Originally Posted by Nerfy

I's also take out the one point in Celestial Focus, another worthless raiding talent imo. rest of your Balance tree looks fine but I would consider taking that one point out of Force of Nature and put it into Subtlety since you say your always threat caped.

From tests so far the damage output of Force of Nature, if used correctly will outweigh the increased dps you could do if you had 2% more threat reduction. On average my treants put out about 7-8k damage before they die. Especially if used early, and often in a fight, they provide a good threatless dps boost. I've played with both 4/5 Subtelty and my current 1/5 however because my guild has an awesome threat generating machine of a MT I've never had issues being threat capped as long as I watch myself during the first 30 seconds of a fight.

Ok Gear...

Girdle of Ruination (get one crafted), PvP or Bracers of Havok, Exaulted CE ring or Kara Exaulted ring. Put some good gems into your items!.

In terms of Kara items to look for; (Note I am still loooking for these too lol)

Handwraps of Flowing Thought - Items - World of Warcraft
Trial-Fire Trousers - Items - World of Warcraft
Ruby Slippers - Items - World of Warcraft
Brooch of Unquenchable Fury - Items - World of Warcraft

Definately another trinket, preferably either Heroic Badge one (+43 dam) or Quag's Eye from heroic SP.

And if you're using the IF,SF,SF,SF,SF rotation definately use/get the starfire idol.

And I think I have rambled far to much by now. Hopefully this can help you out a bit.

And for reference of some WWS's for similair content you're doing at the moment...

Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

Wow Web Stats <- With me tanking in 150 NR gear too.

Something to go on anyway, good luck!

Allurissa · 08/06/07, 11:12 PM

You guys have given me some awesome advice. In response to the multiple questions on Natural Shapeshifter, in multiple fights I spend time shifting in and out of moonkin (brez, slows on Aran and a couple of other times I did this past raid) so I find it helpful so that I can get back into Moonkin without killing mana too harshly.

I had Nature's Grasp so that I could get further down in the tree. I'll look up the builds from the armory that you responders have to get a better idea.

Thanks for the WWS reports. I'll work on these things and let you know in a couple weeks how things are going. In the meantime, I'll continue to monitor these threads to see what's going on.

Neshalin · 08/07/07, 3:24 AM

The tier 2/3 talents are always a problem to fill with raid-useful talents. Nature's Grasp isn't going to help in raids, but is of course nice in PvP and possibly solo if you don't take Control of Nature. I use Cyclone as suggested before, to neutralize (and protect!) mind controlled people. You don't really need Control of Nature for that. The talent is great solo however, letting you grind mobs semi-warlock style (pull with Starfire, cast Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Entangling Roots, move to the next mob). Brambles doesn't add much threat to the tanks, but at least it's something. I'd say go with personal preference for the three points you have to spend here.

Natural Shapeshifter saves you a bit of mana once every 30 minutes, assuming you need to cast Rebirth that often. There is no need to shift out on Shade of Aran's slow, you can make it easily if you start walking right away. Then again, Naturalist does nothing for moonkin dps... unless you melee for mana often.

I use 5/5 Subtlety mainly because of the troubles getting Blessing of Salvation as druid. With salvation threat isn't a problem, go take Intensity and Force of Nature.

Efejel · 08/08/07, 1:51 AM

v0.71a
SPELL HASTE & CALCULATIONS INCLUDED
---Bear in mind faster cast times will upset optimal cast rotations (Hence MFx2, SFx11, not MF,SFx5 with 2-pc Tier6)
Estimates for Treant/Force of Nature damage included
---Mana AND cast time penalties for FoN & BRez included
Automatic detection of meta gems & almost all set bonuses
Improved estimation of Moonfire damage for custom cast cycles
---Cast cycles which overwrite any of the DOT portion should no longer give insane DPS
Corrected an error that was underestimating Moonfire damage with the 2-pc. T6 bonus
v0.71b (Clicky)
Fixed formatting under OO.o for Boot & Chest slots
Added missing leggings

Will link in first post in 1-2 days. Hit me back with any errors between now and then.

Much <3 to Benita, Neshalim & Caliane for already taking a look at this. Each of them has already helped me find & fix errors, thus saving you wasted downloads!

P.S.-And thank you to all the folks who are using this. It's nice to see 600+ downloads in under 2 weeks when I release a new version. Also, with EJ's LinkBack reports, I get to see how frequently this is referenced in all sorts of forums!

Caliane · 08/08/07, 1:24 PM

Leggings of Channeled Elements - Items - World of Warcraft
Leggings of channeled elements missing still too. not sure how I missed that last time.

Benita · 08/09/07, 5:52 AM

The first socket for Thunderheart Vest is bugged. (Does not add stats and doesnt trigger socketbonus)
Naturewardens Treads socket bonus does not trigger (there is none listed)

Very nice to see items with spellhaste now with an appropriate damage increase. It puts the hyjal belt over belt of blasting at the gear level (which is what i suspected with the excessive use of Starfire).

Allurissa · 08/09/07, 9:45 AM

Just thought I'd give you guys an update. I still need to mess with my talents, but I did swap out some gear. I stuck through the suggested spell rotation adding in FF every 3rd Rotation on the boss fights and came out with 509dps at the end of Heroic Slave Pens last night. We had our best geared, highest DPS rogue with us and he ended at 667dps.

Given the gear differential between us (He has all epic gear, crafted/Kara/Gruul) I consider myself having done extremely well. I'm going to work on the spec next, but just wanted to say thank you for everyone who gave me solid advice. It has all helped. My next step is to replace my computer and push through to 25 man content and see how I do there.

Efejel · 08/09/07, 1:48 PM

Originally Posted by Benita

The first socket for Thunderheart Vest is bugged. (Does not add stats and doesnt trigger socketbonus)
Naturewardens Treads socket bonus does not trigger (there is none listed)

Not seeing either of these in Excel 2003. Will try OO.o...

EDIT: A-ha! OO.o is greying things out, that it may/may not be adding. It's a bit stricter about formulas, but it's probably just the conditional formatting.

Comp · 08/10/07, 7:58 PM

I'm curious as to how accurate the spreadsheet is. I've been questioning my DPS lately as my guild starts to push with interest in progression.

Its weird, but my raid buffed DPS is lower than what the spreadsheet says I should do selfbuffed with no debuffs on the mobs by almost 170 DPS... We recently started running web stats and i was excited cause I hoped it would finally show me what exactly it was that I was handling wrong.

I don't see how self buffed no debuffs on the mob I should supposedly do ~730 dps and in raids my average is 570. My rotation is IS/SFx4 I usually dont get a shadow priest.
My self buffed stats are 948+ dmg 17% crit ( in moonkin) 135 hit rating 100mp5 (while casting) and about 8600 mana. I would really like some help getting this sorted out.

Some Stats from our attempts at Void Reaver and Gruuls Lair.
Wow Web Stats - TK: Void Reaver
Wow Web Stats - Gruul's Lair

♦ Lorewanderer · 08/10/07, 9:49 PM

Looks like Magnified Moon Specs are broken in .071b -- well, ish. You can still select the gems and if they're correct the socket bonus is applied, but they aren't visible, and the socket bonus requirements aren't shown. It seems to be applying the invisible gems to your stats, so I guess it is only a display bug.
(Using Excel 2004 - Mac)

Also, unless it has changed very recently, the Distruction Holo-Gogs are only available to cloth classes--the Engineering trainer will only give you the ones of your armor type. So only Magnified Moon Specs for us.

Kellarus · 08/10/07, 9:56 PM

Originally Posted by Comp

I'm curious as to how accurate the spreadsheet is. I've been questioning my DPS lately as my guild starts to push with interest in progression.

Its weird, but my raid buffed DPS is lower than what the spreadsheet says I should do selfbuffed with no debuffs on the mobs by almost 170 DPS... We recently started running web stats and i was excited cause I hoped it would finally show me what exactly it was that I was handling wrong.

I don't see how self buffed no debuffs on the mob I should supposedly do ~730 dps and in raids my average is 570. My rotation is IS/SFx4 I usually dont get a shadow priest.
My self buffed stats are 948+ dmg 17% crit ( in moonkin) 135 hit rating 100mp5 (while casting) and about 8600 mana. I would really like some help getting this sorted out.

Some Stats from our attempts at Void Reaver and Gruuls Lair.
Wow Web Stats - TK: Void Reaver
Wow Web Stats - Gruul's Lair

Looking through those reports your big problem is the time between your starfire casts. You are pretty good about dps uptime, but most of that is your dots. You have 7 minutes of dps time on the gruul kill but only 51 starfire casts despite even having heroism. Almost always 4 if not 5 seconds between your starfires landing while you are chain casting. Downloading quartz and using stopcasting macros would be a huge help for you if its lag that is causing your low number of casts.

Efejel · 08/11/07, 12:15 AM

Originally Posted by Lorewanderer

Looks like Magnified Moon Specs are broken in .071b -- well, ish. You can still select the gems and if they're correct the socket bonus is applied, but they aren't visible, and the socket bonus requirements aren't shown. It seems to be applying the invisible gems to your stats, so I guess it is only a display bug.
(Using Excel 2004 - Mac)

Yeah, it's only a formatting bug, and only occurs under "stricter" environments than Office 2003. I've fixed it locally and will upload soon, but will try and aggregate some more fixes first.

Also, unless it has changed very recently, the Distruction Holo-Gogs are only available to cloth classes--the Engineering trainer will only give you the ones of your armor type. So only Magnified Moon Specs for us.

Well, I put them on the sheet before they were in the game. So the exact mechanics of getting the recipe weren't certain at the time. Again, I've fixed it locally and will re-upload soon, pending any other fixes that may be required.