I'm pulling about 850 Spreadsheet, 700 actual DPS, so this is just theorycrafting, but you're definitely gonna want 4pc T5, and a bunch of non-set T6, probably cloth. Plus, getting numbers that high often relies on group makeup as well. Pocket Shadow Priest, Ele (or Resto, or both) Shammy, an Affliction Lock in the raid with +3% to CoS, and a BM hunter wouldn't be horrible either. We're still very mana-limited, but again, with enough regen, being able to work in Moonfire and/or going to some funky rotations is a big plus.

Second question's a little out of my league, as I'm nooooooowhere near that kind of gear level. My guess would be that if you've made the sheet as accurate as possible, go ahead and try it out. Be careful of crit strings, though, aggro adds up fast. (Though I guess if you're at that gear level, threat's not gonna be an issue.)

As you just admitted, this isn't entirely true. Dps depends on the last sheet and the sort of raid buffs you'll be recieving. With a Malediction Warlock putting up CoS and enough damage and crit, Starfire becomes the better dps. Wrath doesn't gain anything from Nature's Grace, and there is no Curse of Nature (stormstrike doesn't count because your shamans will be eating those). Not to mention Starfire gains an additional 20% from Wrath of Cenarius while Wrath only gains 10%.

Force of Nature is more of a PvP talent. It doesn't fit into a real cast rotation and the treants like to die before they despawn. I don't have any hard numbers on what their DPS is like but I get the feeling that they just aren't worth it.


As with all DPS casters, being hit capped is more important than anything. Any more damage and hit gets better is silly, you should be hit capped as it is! Also I'm not sure about your claims on MP5, but I always get a shadow priest so I can't comment one way or another.


IFF is a DPS loss for the moonkin, but a major DPS gain for the entire raid. Even if all your physical DPS is hit capped, your tanks aren't going to be, so their TPS will increase (meaning raid DPS can also increase).

1) There are only a few fights where you do nothing but DPS, and to be honest I doubt there are many balance druids that push 1300+ on any fight.

2) If you're going to start stacking crit, I wouldn't do it until you hit 1150 to 1200 damage. I was peaking at 1275 unbuffed and decided to trim off a lot taking me down to 1170 or so, needless to say my raid DPS went up quite a bit. The combination of crit and using TLC helped quite a bit. However, you need to get consistent DPS and understand your mana pool, rotation, and the fight in general before you start worrying about massive burst damage.

I havnt checked this thread in a while, and going back over the last few pages, its amazing how much misinformation is being thrown around.

Please, if you are just guessing, or assuming, don't post. You throw others off, and more then likely you are wrong.

I'll try to clear up the misconceptions.

1)Treants. They are nice, but the point is probably better spent in the restore tree, especially if you are threat capped. I was threatcapped all through t5 content, so treants really werent worth it over -threat talents. This thread sparked me to go try trees again, maybe i'll take a look at their dmg since my +damage has grown a lot since I last had them. However, if you are reading this thread, you probably should start without them. (also, they fuck up your casting rotation.)

2) Wrath. Its been a long time since wrath spam has been the most dps rotation. I was always trying to get enough regen to make MF Starx3 work. Back when I was doing 5 mans I think wrath was still the best, but to say its the max dps for all gear levels is silly.

3) +hit should be capped as soon as you can. However, point for point its not "the end all be all" stat until about 800 spell dmg. Before that socketing spell dmg will be more beneficial.

4) As with most other casters, once you cap hit, all that matters is spell dmg. Gems, enchants, max spelldmg all around. Crit is definatly not your best stat. Spell dmg scales very well with the extra 20% off starfire. Also, haste is nice to pick up, and in most cases is better then crit in those spots its available.

5) As the post above me states, always have Imp FF, always keep it up 100%. Its a huge raid benefit, and tanks having extra threat helps you out a lot.



I also have a question for people who've played with the actual spreadsheet a bit more. Have you found any point that trading in 4pc t5 is viable? I've been passing on all my t6(cept gloves of course), and I just cant find a point, even if i picked up 4pc t6 where I would be able to get out of my t5. I worry that I'm facing a t2 restore issue, where I cant drop t5.....ever....

The majority of a shadow priest's damage is not from direct damage spells, so the moonkin's aura is mostly wasted. You should be looking only at the mages.

(Group with 3 mages)

Mage 1 does 100 damage in total
Mage 2 does 100 damage in total
Mage 3 does 100 damage in total
300 total damage

(Group with 2 mages, 1 moonkin)

Mage 1 does 105 damage in total
Mage 2 does 105 damage in total
Moonkin does X damage in total

Is a moonkin able to do 90% of a mage's DPS? This depends heavily on raid composition. Assuming both classes get the curses they want up, and in a group with a spriest and a shaman, I'd say definitely.

The first moonkin->mage replacement is easier thanks to the extra goodies, but a second would be harder to justify, and you'd need to look at the individual performances of the players(since you'll rarely have people of equal skill and equipment).

The moonkin should really go to teh destro locks anyway. The shadow priest should be rotated in the group, but with 2.3 mana changes, you really dont need him. And if you were lookign towards moonkin, might as well make it both moonkin and elemantal shaman instead of restore.

Sorry, that was more rambling then I meant it to be. Yes, a moonkin switched for a mage, if hes of a similar gear level and simliar skill will net more dps for the group. Also 3% hit for melee and tanks. They are probably all mostly max hit, but this lets them regem a bit for more dmg. What I was trying to mention with my first post was that you could probably maximise that group more, to get a much better effectiveness. Our moonkin group is elemental shaman, destrolockx2 and a fire mage. Its a larger raid dps increase, especialy with a lot more imp shadowbolt procs.

The treants are threat-free damage. If you're dropping them because you're threat capped you should absolutely reconsider.
They're fragile, but with some care they will dish out a good deal of damage and can fill some intriguing roles as well--Lurker add tanks, catching the (not-so-occasional) Toy from Telonicus, to name a few.

If you find yourself threat capped often, get after your paladins, because they are slacking on your BoSalvation. I have no problems whatsoever with threat if I have Salv. Without it I have no problems pulling Thaladred off his Gaze target.

The discussion a few pages back was saying that full t6 is very close, so if you're at that level of progression to be able to get it, in not too long Sunwell gear should be both attainable and reasonably likely to exceed t5 if by nothing more than the raw stat upgrades from replacing four pieces.

Treants are threat-free damage at the expense of points in Subtletly. The only way you can get around this is if you aren't specced for Imp FF, in which case your raid leaders are pretty silly for letting you get by without it. People that say they don't have threat issues and can spec for treants make me think that either they aren't specced PvE appropriately or aren't geared appropriately or are just not doing good DPS.

Also, you can't pull off of the target Thaladred has gazed, unless they Ice block, Feign death, bubble or get bubbled.

I understand peoples love of the treants but realistically once you get into tier 6 content they are pretty useless. Every single boss in MH bar one has aoe effects that make your treants quite useless. BT is simliar. And if the boss doesn't have aoe effects it has some other effect or factor in the fight that makes them mediocre. Quite frankly 1 extra point in subelty would get me more damage than the 6k from treants and the 1.5 global cooldown for 6k or less damage isn't as amazing as it was in kara.

You're likely underestimating treant scaling. I parsed WWS of someone in T5 content (iirc) and they were getting up to 9000 dmg per FoN cast.

9000 dmg per 180 sec = 50 DPS

And, I don't know of another spell in the game that will do 9000 damage for just a global cooldown.

Are they situational? Yes. But most of a Balance Druid's existence is.

No. You don't. I had it. I was afraid of speccing out of it. And then I did. And you know what? I was fine. I'm not holding myself back, I'm not playing it safe. I'm putting out as much DPS as I can sustain for a given fight. And I don't. Pull. Aggro. Now, granted, our guild's MT is fucking amazing, so I'm in a sort of special position, but you're damn right I'll drop every single point of subtlety for more DPS. I don't recommend doing it if either you or your MT is a moron, but given the level of intelligence of people here, I think it's safe to recommend people playing with it to find their own sweet spot.

Also, how does losing one GCD mean losing a Starfire when the cast time is 3s (assume you have no haste, since it's all but worthless for us)? And you crit for 7k, not hit, so really you're losing half of a 4k average SF, or 2k, and half of a tick each of any dots you have, for 6k+ (probably much more with T6 gear) treants. Yeah, seems like a safe trade to me. Hell, as long as they last more than 10 seconds, they're making up the DPS lost.