I neglected to factor in the physical dps gains because I don't know how much freeing that 47.28 item points actually helps physical dps. Of course, this is also hard to quantify. Obviously in any raiding guild which has relatively equal raiders, the moonkin should definitely spec IFF. The problem is the majority of people who are asking this question are not in such a situation.

Actually, coming at it from another angle: Take IFF. If your personal contribution loss of 12%, which should be a net loss of 0.8% DPS to the raid can make or break a boss fight, the rest of the DPS really needs to step it up about three dozen notches. And make it known if you're only speccing into it recently, so that people can optimize their gear and are at least aware of why your DPS just took a hit.

(All this discussion is for 25 mans. For 10 mans, get subtlety. If you don't need subtlety, step up your game because you should)

I finally figured that it's time I took a closer look at how I could put out more damage in raids and situations, so I'd give this spreadsheet a try. After attempting to do gear selections, I noticed that one of the items "Band of the Eternal Sage," does not have the correct stat info built into the current spreadsheet on the first post. If this has been corrected, or I'm just failing, SORRY! On another note, anyone have any idea how many druids out there are close (or have hit) 1300 self buffed (or unbuffed) spell damage? Thanks a lot for all the useful info

I'm not 1300 unbuffed but last night fully raid buffed and with consumables I was at 1490 when Tsunami proc'ed and I had all 10 charges from my card.

I'd like to first thank Efejel for all his hard work and also for all of you who have gave me such an insight into raiding as a Moonkin.

I've been PvPing as a Moonkin for a few months now and I have recently been given the chance to raid as a Moonkin, so I have my fair share of arena/PvP gear. Throughout the Kara and Gruul runs that I'm invited to so far, I have been seriously debating such things as if I should replace my Gladiator helm with the Malorne helm - which I wouldn't of hesitated to re-enchant/gem as soon as I got the token. I may be missing something, but I see more mp5, dmg and just a few less dps using the Gladiator helm instead of the Malorne helm. I am not seeing the sexy appeal of Tier 4, except for when I get a few more pieces to have the set bonus. The mp5 from the PvP gear is straight-up mp5, rather than the T4/PvE equivalents which typically have spirit - so the Gladiator gear has more mp5 and more dmg?

I've just started digging into all of the numbers and stats all of you have presented, but I'm getting a better grasp on it so I can start re-gemming and buy some badge gear that will increase my overall value in raids. I'm doing well on damage so far considering my recent switch and lack of finding a "sweet casting cycle," but I am definitely keeping up with people despite my total lack of spell hit gear acquisition thus far.

Thanks for reading and I hope these questions were not too dim-witted, I'm just trying to start off on the right foot Most of you posting in this thread have much more experience than me as a druid in general, and as a raider, so I appreciate any help I can get.

Those dps numbers don't tell the whole story. I decided to look at your fights and try to find fights of similar duration in my wws and compare your overall damage to my overall damage, and the data in interesting.

For example:

Here is a kaz attempt with a duration similar to yours: WWS Loading...

Your kaz dps: 1380
My kaz dps: 1142

Your kaz damage ( 4minutes 30 seconds): 216669
My kaz damage ( 4minutes 20 seconds) : 219279

Something doesn't quite fit here. If your dps was that much higher than mine you damage should be a lot greater than that, even though I got more dps time than you (I got 8% more dps time, but your dps is 20% greater than mine). Curiously your presence is listed at 68%, but that can't be right, something is wrong here.

Anetheron

Wow Web Stats (from november)

You aneth dps: 1485
My aneth dps: 1131

Your aneth damage (3 minutes 41 seconds): 279994
My aneth damage (3 minutes 55 seconds): 237595

Ok, this looks better... but still the separation in damage is smaller than the separation of our dps. If I divide your damage by the length of the fight we get 1267dps for you and 1011dps for me.

Now these are just 2 examples, I wasn't able to find fights of similar length on the others which you listed, but I would be more interested to see if the damage that you see in WWS is really the damage that you are doing.

I'm not too sure, why in many of your parses, large numbers of people do not have close to 100% presence, some variance is normal but not to the degree I'm seeing here. Your anetheron parse is ok at 90% (still low in my opinion), but your kaz'rogal parse is showing a bunch of people at only 68% presence... That can't be correct. These are also curiously your two highest dps (excluding akama) parses.

Do you have other parses with as close to 100% presence as possible for comparison? I see your supremus parse is quite nice, but that's a bad fight to use for comparison purposes anyway, akama is just not a fight that lasts long enough to be even close to realistic to use.

Do you have some teron parses? Here, I'll list a good one from this month for myself.

Wow Web Stats

According to WWS I did 1354 dps, with 100% precense, in 4 minutes and 6 seconds. I was wearing my usual 4pc T5.

Especially if you're not spec'ed for Intensity, you may be getting more out the PvP gear at this point. It tends to be much better than PvE blues because there's so many more itemization points to spend that the ones wasted on resil aren't that noticable. Still, you should keep your eyes open for epics and try comparing the numbers you get from the spreadsheet.

At the T4 gear level, IS, SFx4 (repeat) is your most viable cast cycle. An arguably better alternative is IS, SF(rank7)x3, Wr(rank9)x1, but you have to adjust that Wrath to a SF if you get any NG procs during the cycle--tough to do until you get your Balance-mojo up. (A good DoT timer will help.)

So, take a look at the numbers for a simple IS, SFx4 cycle and try out your different gear options. If you're seeing ~2% more DPS from PvE pieces, I might still consider the PvP gear for the extra stam, but sacrificing potential increases beyond that and you're definately gimping yourself. Also, your gem'ing of PvE gear could vary pretty significantly from PvP gear.
Red -> [Runed Living Ruby] or [Veiled Noble Topaz]
Yellow -> [Veiled Noble Topaz] (up to 151 or 152 hit) then [Potent Noble Topaz]
Blue -> [Glowing Nightseye] OR [Royal Nightseye] OR [Dazzling Talasite]
Meta -> [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] OR [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]

I'm gonna try and get an optimal group set up for me next week when we clear hyjal/BT. Lately I've been raiding without a shaman in our group due to us being short. I'll go ahead and post my WWSs from those nights when they happen, as I can't imagine too many other druids with quite as high spell damage while still retaining 4pc T5.

Also, Teron is a pretty pisspoor fight for us to accurately gauge how strong we can pump our numbers. No pushback resistance on starfire = GG optimal casting rotations.

Well, here's the problem as I see it. When you want to compare 2 different players you need to pick the fight with the least amount of outside interference. This interference can come in many forms. For example:

-Rage winterchill is basically a tank and spank, except for the fact that you have to move out of death and decay. If you get unlucky you might have to move a lot and this is going to impact your dps.
-Anetheron's fight has you getting slept, having to switch targets (the way we do it, all the range dps get the infernals down), and if you get targetted by an incomming infernal you've got to run to the tanking spot.
-Kaz, some guilds require you to wear shadow resist, some don't. If you get an unlucky number of non-resisted debuffs you run out of mana.
-Azgalor. Silence, rain of fire, doom (obviously).
-Archimonde. I don't know about you, but I spent retarded amounts of time running around on this fight

-Naj'entus. Pushback, have to move to get the spine, frenquent pauses in dps for the shield.
-Supremus. Waaaay to much running around.
-Akama. Too short. I've done 1100dps on his fight and I've done 2245dps depending how lucky I get with crits.
-Teron. Pushback, getting ghosted.
-Bloodboil. Lots of movement (the way we do it anyway), to get in and out of the main group to pick up the debuffs, and if you get fel raged, well that just screws everything up.
-RoS. Not a standard fight, 3 completely different phases.
-Mother. Shadow resist gear, running around.
-Council. Multi-target, too dynamic, resist aura, moving out of AE spells.
-Illidan. Too many phases.

Now, out of all these fights, which one would you say 'best' represents a tank and spank with minimal interference? The reason I mention teron, is that there isn't much strategy involved. IE: All guilds do teron basically the same way, because there is only one way to execute the fight. The only thing that can really mess you up is getting picked to get ghosted. Other than that, you don't need to move(unless you need to rez someone, but that can happen in any fight), you just stand there and cast spells. Yes there's pushback, and there's no way to fit that into calculations, but every other fight also has multiple things that will interfere with your dps, and usually force you to have to move.

If I had to pick 2 fights that had the least amount of interference, I'd pick teron and rage winterchill. If you happen to get death and decay more than once, well that sucks, but it does show up in the wws at least. Anetheron is a bad choice for me because I'm required to switch targets frequently. Doing this automatically lowers your dps (at least it does mine), because you have to start your cycle over again at weird intervals.

What would you suggest?

Hands down lurker. Sit in the water with an ele shammy and shadow priest. You'll get no pushback except MAYBE once or twice, then compare the damage to target.

Or the simplest way to do it is just go do bear in ZA. Easy enough to get a group for, and you should be able to get an optimal group (what you need is SP, Ele shaman, CoS lock) in a 10 man.

Could you ask him what he was wearing at the time? I see that it's not what he is currently using. During the teron attempt he had the BT trinket equipped, not the eye of quag.

Thanks! A truly impressive feat. I wish we did our teron in 3 minutes 15 seconds