There is no Moonkin theory thread only this one (not sure if I am aloud to resurrect things from the archive).

My relatively easy question is this. I see a ton of the top dps guilds (according to WWS stats) seem to now have Moonkin. So what is the reason behind this? I personally do not rate the crit to group too much an I am a mage. The only thing i could think is that they are more likely leatherworking and hence drums spam would be available. Is this really the reason or is there something I am missing about moonkin.


On a side note I am already trying to recruit one even though i dont really know why yet.

Indeed, while most guilds killed everything in BT with 8 healers and 9 on healing heavy encounters this has been reduced by 1-2. Having a hybrid respecc to something dps seems more reasonable than to recruit and then replace again when sunwell is out.

Also some things have changed for moonkin (even if the last balance talent change is ages ago). T6 gear suddenly had moonkin specific drops, most tiers are so outfarmed that getting a third or fourth token is not an issue aswell. Intensity got buffed up to a point its replacing Dreamstate and will receive a huge buff in 2.4 on top. Badge gear and ZA made gear available besides cloth offset drops on a T5/ZA level. And last but not least the major buff to haste after it got nurfed before the equip haste gear was actually available.

I think the last one might be the most crucial, Moonkins have the advantage of making use of all stats available in the game, which favours balanced items with higher total stat value.

2.4 will also buff the mount quest idol, did anyone calculate what kind of raiddps upgrade this is roughly in a best case scenario aka full destro lock group compared to the SF idol?

Well it's 20 spell crit, which is 0.9% crit.

Now im no guru but isn't 1% crit in the region of 0.6-0.8% extra damage for a caster?

Meaning the idol gives 0.7*5= 3.5% of a player's damage, spread over 5.

Rough calculations i know ^^

edit: at 1500dps that would be 52.5 extra dps.

I did some napkin math when it was first announced, and the result I got was basically if you have at least 3 equivalently equipped 100% spell critters(including yourself), it's a little better than the starfire idol.

On a side note a lot of people were asking me how balance was in raids and pvp this morning, and apparently they read this blue post: WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Balance druid status. The post is basically full of nothing so I'm not sure why everyone suddenly became concerned today.

Untalented, every spellcaster only has 50% bonus damage on crits. I.E. a cast that hits for 100 crits for 150. Most spellcasters have talents to increase the bonus on crits to 100%.

A minor update on the Moonkin theorycraft post: it is essentially finished, just waiting on a change to the EJ site structure to go live.

Hi guys

This is my first post in the Owl thread so be nice to me
Hope that its okay to ask my question here. Since this seems to be the gathering thread of all the Balance druids.

I am a long time Warlock raider and have just started to gear up my alt as a Balance druid. Have now started working on my gear to become valid. This has mostly consisted of gathering the famous badges so far with a little bit of honor grinding. I was planning to get the s1 staff from honor but was lucky and got the staff from HC Sethekk Halls yesterday so decided that my honor would be better spent elsewhere. Am currently thinking of the PvP neck.

But as to my main concern. Where should I start using my badges. I'm so torn. Should I go for gear that I can throw a expensive enchant on right away? Or should I go with belt (seems to be one of the best belts available) or start somewhere else...

Basically does anyone have a advice on what badge gear I should get and most importantly in what order? All helps and tips are greatly appreciated. Hope it wasn't wrong of me to post this here.

Regarding chest enchants, I would think +15 Spirit would be the winner once 2.4 comes out.

Looking for some gear advice. I am currently using 4pc T5 and haste gear (I'm at about 125 haste), and I am having trouble finding a good rotation. My DPS is lagging. Am I gearing optimally? Or should I hold off on the haste gear and go for more traditional hit/crit stuff.

The problem with Haste and 4T5 is that Haste doesn't work well with DoTs. After some quick calcs, I came up with you being able to cast, on average, really close to 4.5 SFs per refresh of your DoT. Which is bad. Either you have to refresh it early, losing a tic, or have one cast out of five land without the DoT up, and subsequently lose the 10% bonus.

Yeah, i was wondering about that one too. Exceptional stats has 0.6 more spelldamage (before kings), but way less mana regen even with Dreamstate. Then again all encounters in Sunwell have quiet some raiddmg involved so the extra 6 stamina wouldnt be totally wasted.

There's an error for the neck piece Adornment of Stolen Souls. Is there a way to fix this?