Kellarus

Starfire is definitly the default boss mob rotation by far. I just mentioned my use of wrath in that fight due to dodging arcane orbs (lots of movement due to my guildmates not knowing how to spread out j/k) and that I was having some threat issues after knockbacks with starfire crit strings, so I switched to wrath to fine tune my dmg a little.

 

Namsar

Although not up to the content levels lots of people are, I can attest to all that has been said here re wrath/SF and combo's.

Usually there is a lock with me in all my raids, but I've found for everything but boss kills, wrath spam is far and away my best dps. I'm in australia so on a 400ms lag usually, the issues with NG/GCD are hardly noticed as I'm sure my normal casting cycle for a wrath is ~ 1.8 secs or so. With the speed at which trash dies, there is no point charging up a SF, to see it crit when the mob is on 5% health.

Boss fights it's been purely IS/SF unless it's something specifically requiring speed dps, (Curator adds, prince 60-30 stage, etc.) or a running battle with limited time to cast.

But then again most people reading this would know all that already. Whats kind of disturbing to me is that I usually top kara meters, and am top 3-4 in gruul's. I kind of worry the other dps isn't really picking up the slack.

 

Traek

I think the reason for my inconsistency was due to the fact I had an enhancement shaman without a warlock. Runs after that, there was no enh shaman but there was a warlock. On earlier fights in the instance (karazhan) I was focusing on MF/IS/Wrath, assuming that unlimited mana would be the best thing to do (Like attumen + midnight).

Spreadsheet showed that IS/Wrathx7 would have been better for me with an enhancement shaman and without a CoS. Otherwise, even on short fights, IS/MF/SFx3 or SF spam was better.

Pretty much what was said, but I was unsure how wrath rotations would perform on shorter fights.

 

Kurthios

I am a complete moonkin noob, but I'll stick my neck out here to have my head cut off.. :-)

I did some testing with Dr. Boom, just flat out race to the bottom or my mana with my crappy gear and got the following results:

Spam Starfire until OOM: 39380 dmg in 96.48s (2 misses)
Spam Wrath until OOM: 43138 dmg in 78.15s (0 misses)

Mixing in IS won't affect both in quite the same way (because of the number of shots you can take minus the IS mana), but it won't drastically affect the fact that Wrath nets me 143dps more than SF.

Even if I give SF 0 misses, my avg. SF damage was 1514 (no, seriously, my gear is not good), so that won't get me to the Wrath damage, and it'll take me 20 seconds more to get there (which is 20 seconds I could be regenning mana).

Anyhow, from this it seems to me that Wrath is going to give me higher dps, and allow me to space for more optimal mana regen. This appears to run counter to what most people here are saying, so I'm left wondering. Now, the more +dmg I have, the better SF will get, over Wrath, because of the coefficient, but at what +dmg should I be using SF for more DPS? I have about 650 dmg now, since I tried to actually stay with leather (foolish, apparently), and I think I can get to about 800 with just leather. What should I be shooting for?

(A quick back-of-the-napkin calculation for mana regen indicates that I will regen ~1300 mana in those 20 seconds from mp5, plus another 1300 from AP when I beat on the mob while I wait, not counting free dps from OOC procs - I don't know for sure because Dr. Boom isn't melee friendly).

 

Kellarus

Putting in time when you are out of mana and hitting the mob for regen doesn't really simulate raids conditions for 2 reasons. One is that it is impratical due to aoe/cleave/shatter etc to go back and forth between melee range and ranged. Thats not even to mention potential threat problems if you get in melee range and are over the MT's threat.
The 2nd issue is that mana isn't a huge problem between pots/shadowpriests/T4 set bonu/shaman while just dpsing. The only times I've gone oom on a boss recently was when things had gone really wrong, had to drop moonkin, brez someone and throw some heals, and then go back to nuking.

Playing with the spreadsheet some it seems that with raid buffs/debuffs the crossover point to Starfire being higher dps is somewhere around 900 buffed spell dmg.

 

Kurthios

Granted, I'm only moonkin in kara, but I have no problem with almost any boss running in to melee for mana. Since Sweeping Strike and rear cleaves have been removed from the game, incidental damage isn't that much of a factor. Not to mention that our healers spend all their time bored off their minds in kara anyhow, so if I take a little damage, it's not a big deal.

I suppose if you never run out of mana, then obviously it's not a big deal, but I find the melee regen + OOC procs for free casts add nicely to my dps. On a similar note, if we don't need to melee for mana, that sortof defeats the purpose of the whole "battle-mage" idea. Of course, so does wearing cloth.

 

Kellarus

The whole melee moonkin/moonkin tank thing is a so-so idea that has never quite worked out. I would love it if it did, I've had fun tanking 5 mans in moonkin, but the talents/skills/itemization are no where near there. It's at melee hunter level. It's really annoying because moonkin ac/OOC/celestial focus/mana regen all kinda suggest this playstyle, but the swingtimer reset, lack of itemization and lack of reason to do it make it fail.

A lot of times its not even that going into melee is always bad, but a lot of times it can jeopardize your tanks/rogues as things like cave-in on gruul is targeted at a player as far as I know. Void reaver is especially bad for this as you can trigger arcane orbs hitting the melee. Sure it's pretty to go whack a mob with your stranglestaff and get 350 mana per hit back, but you get almost that much back with switching in a high spirit staff and sitting there.

 

Efejel

I know how things can get busy, but did you happen to get a chance to do this?

Sure, I'll push 0.7 soon & these should be on there (along with um... Tempest's Touch, I think).

I think folks are steering you in the right direction RE: Moonkin melee, but don't forget about Curse of Shadows, and the fact that fights are about total damage/average DPS. In most fights where you're able to IS/MF/Wrath throughout, i.e. trash & very outmatched bosses, your individual DPS likely won't be that important.

 

doogless

This isn't really a good way to test. Just because Wrath did more damage than Starfire once doesn't mean this will always hold true, especially because you aren't accounting for the fact that two Starfires missed, the fact that there was no Curse of Shadows, and you didn't list how many time each crit. Spreadsheets are good for a reason - they're the average case. If there's a flaw in the spreadsheet then it should be corrected, but assuming that "Wrath is better than Starfire" follows from "I did more damage in one test with Wrath than Starfire" is very flawed.

Find your average Starfire and Wrath damage when raid buffed, figure out how many you can cast on a full mana pool, and average how many should miss/crit. Total this up and divide by total time to cast (account for shorter casts from Nature's Grace) and you have which one you should use for DPS (and don't forget CoS).

 

Kellarus

All right, finally had some time to test the Relentless Earthstorm diamond metagem.

I'm not the worlds best tester, but here are my results- I grabbed a spirit shard helm, took off any gear with procs/didn't use any clickies. I then cast starfire at Dr. Boom untill I had 30 crits. I put the gem in and then did the same thing, same spell dmg etc. I was using recount to record/average the data


Non-gem test:
Average non-crit: 1860
Average crit: 3666
197% crits

Gem test:
Average non-crit:1858
Average crit:3897
210% crits

The less than 200% crits confused me at first, untill I realized that if you add 55 to the crit numbers it almost exactly equals 200% and 212% crits. I guess the starfire idol only applies once, regardless if its a crit or hit

 

Efejel

Hmm... that's... wierd.

Suggestion for testing: low-rank moonfire. You get the slightly better crit rate with a narrow damage range and no cast time. And ideally you need to compare the boundary (min-max) cases, not the average.

 

nero

Just a quick question rather than making a new thread.

I've seen most DPS specs go the way of 40/0/21 (i think >_<) for Natures swiftness and subtlety but was wondering If anyone had some numbers or had done some testing on if Improved FF (3% hit for tanks mainly) was worth it for the raid over perhaps the ability of the moonkin to increase his/hers dps via subtlety and NS.

I did some estimates and generally thought that it would provide the raid (for the estimates presumed 3 warriors(1MT), 3 rogues (hunters dont need hit)) would possibly benefit the raid more so than the 20% reduction in threat that a moonkin would use.

Anyways just thought i'd ask to see if anyone had been thinking of it

 

galzohar

You want imp FF, I mean it's very good return for the point cost when you add up all the DPS it gives to all the melee and the extra TPS for the tanks.

 

nero

I think i need more sleep, just realized you get subtlety and imp FF.. with a build like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tbrzicsLuAZZxxcx

Thanks tho =.=

 

Nerfy

Personally 5/5 in Sub is a waste of points for a Moonkin, to me anyway. I have 2/5 for 8% and the 2% cloak enchant for a total of 10% and on boss fights I'm never above the tank...even with a chain of crits. Also losing that 4% hit is HUGE. I don't see how any Moonkin who plans on raiding not have it. You only need to get to 12% +hit from gear with it or 16% without it. I know that I personally don't have tons of gear with +hit layin around that gets me to the 16% without the talent yet, but if you do then good for you.

 

Efejel

Well, threat reduction from different sources are (allegedly) applied multiplicatively. So you have 1 - (.98 * .92) = 9.84% threat reduction. But I can't imagine >2 pts. subtlety being that important to all but the best geared Moonkin.

 

galzohar

Thinking about it I'd probably spec like that:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MtbrzicsguAZZxxcb

While threat reduction for a DPS class is awesome, if mages do find with 10% threat reduction (with raid buffs on top of course), so should a moonkin. If you really find yourself threat capped drop the regen while casting, it's not all that much especially if you're threat capped you shouldn't be having mana issues (as you have to stop due to threat) and can free up those points for threat reduction. If you're not threat capped get the mana regen as I did in the linked build ;p

Make sure to always have salv on when DPSing, obviously, or no tank (except maybe a perfect player) can hold aggro off of you if you're good even if you get 5/5 sublenty.

 

◊ Lorewanderer

This talk of threat has gotten me thinking.

As it is a balance talent and this is more or less the de facto balance thread, I was wondering if anyone knew when the damage modifier from brambles is applied. Specifically if you have the 3 pc Cenarion set bonus (+5 damage and 150% duration on thorns), does it apply the brambles modifier before or after adding the damage?

I'm not really sure of the swing speed for bosses, but if you were up against a fast-hitting mob, an extra ~24-30 threat per hit (3/3 brambles + set bonus, depending on the order it is calculated) could really add up.

With a theoretical mob landing 3.3 hits per second, that's another 100 TPS for the tank. If half of your raid is threat limited, assuming melee range with salv, another (very very roughly) 1k DPS that could be generated just from swapping in an outdated 3-set before the fight, and spending three points, two of which I can never decide about anyhow.

Am I way off in one of my assumptions, or is this just someone nobody has bothered to think about before?

(e) Hrmm, ok. So from a brief look through WWS, it seems the boss delay is quite a bit larger than that of the ones I was used to in other games. Moroes, a 'fast hitting' boss, is landing 30-40 hits during a 3 min fight. So rather than 3.3 hits/sec we're probably seeing a hit per 3 seconds (given the amount of running around he does with vanishes and all). So the rather nice 100 tps gets reduced to a very trivial 10tps.

Probably only worthwhile then if you have a tank with awful avoidance. Oh well. At least I don't have to worry about bugging friends to go beat up stuff in MC to finish up that bonus. heh.

 

Dioneirra

Well, i am a somewhat average geared Moonkin Druidess (~1000 Spelldamage plain, while raiding 25 instances usually about ~1200 fully buffed), and regularly hit the Threat Cap with 3/5 Subtlety and no enchant (i did test various amounts of Subtlety in Heroics until i decided to go 3 points for being the best cost/effect result) if i get the chance to start chainfiring and happen to get crit-series. Of course that might be a sign of a less than average tank, but still, i can reproduce this effect. After 2.2 i will get myself a Subtlety enchant (right now theres almost no enchanter left with the AQ recipe), and reevaluate the investment in talent points.

 

Caliane

Thorns. yea. A normal thorns damage over a full 8minute fight is ususally like 2000-4000 damage.
A trivial 10 tps as you said. No reason "not" to cast it. But by no means worth the 3 points for improved.



I'm not sure how the cenarion bonus works with brambles.
I did the math on root a while back. It gets a very large +damage value due to its long duration. After talent it was somethign like 175% of +damage.

 

Thorondorchrom

Brambles may not be worth the investment for thorns, but don't forget the added damage to Entangling Roots. If you are ever soloing something, an improved roots can be an effective third DoT (MF, IS) having ticks of 200-300 with some decent gear. Although roots may not work well in raids, thorns may still be viable if blizz made +spelldmg also increase thorns damage (or did they do this already?). But in normal 5mans with faster bosses, brambles may be more effective.

 

Nobbynob Littlun

What I'd REALLY love to see for a spell at the bottom of the balance tree would be something like...

Sun and Moon
N* Mana
Channeled Spell
Shafts of sunfire assail your target, dealing X* damage to the target every second for 10 seconds. This is reflected as shafts of moonglow to the target's target, healing for Z*% of the damage done.

N*,X*,Y*: Don't ask me what these numbers should be, because I haven't a clue.

I'm thinking a 4 min cooldown, with arcane damage, would make it a fairly big deal in PvE, without being a bastard in PvP (if it were on 8 min, it'd have to be really powerful, and if it were fire school of magic, we would just laugh in the face of spell interruption). But being on 4 min instead of 2, they could conceivably ramp it up enough that you'd gain DPS using it instead of your normal routine - so there's no reason not to whip it out.

This would be a useful talent spell for the raiding scene, I think. And it'd look cool, with the twin shafts of sunlight/moonlight pounding down, damaging the boss and healing the tank.

 

Efejel

I think >>>this thread<<< is the NEW unofficial place for kicking around Moonkin/Balance suggestions, Nobby!

 

Caliane

Efejal, if your still looking to update.

There is a new flask being added in 2.3 patch.

It will be 80 nature/holy/arcane damage.

 

Moginheden

Any chance you can add the Idol of the Raven Goddess, (9 spell critical strike rating to entire party)

It would be cool to have it both as estimated party contribution, (5x your personal) and just how it effects your personal dps, but the party wise thing would have to be optional if you do it at all.