I'm officially a believer of the 4pt5 + 4pt6 thing that everyone has been talking about so much on these forums. Last week, I tried it out and I'm not sure what I was doing wrong... but I could barely break 1700 dps on brutallus. This week I swapped out my T6 chest and T5 gloves for T5 chest and T6 gloves, and I was regularly breaking 2k dps over our attempts. On the final "kill" attempt, I achieved 2006 dps, and that was with me dying about 3/4 the way through the bloodlust at about 5 or 6%, and not being able to pop my hex head trinket for a third time.

I finished 7th on overall damage, slightly behind our top mage. Mind you, I was also in a soak group, meaning spell pushbacks on my starfire whenever the flame debuff hit.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the T5 + T6 deal, and I will probably be sticking with it until my guild has Kil'Jaeden on farm status, which probably won't happen for a long, long, long ass time.

What kind of numbers are you T6 + haste moonkins putting out? If it's not significantly more than what I've been seeing with my 4T5 + 4T6, I doubt I will be taking any pieces until all of the mages/warlocks have had their pick.

My backstory... I raided prebc, started late about three months before BC was to arrive. I asked all my friends whom got me into the game what class no one used, and druid was by far the least (i believe when i checked the numbers on a few of the servers druids as a whole were less that 17% and boomkins less than 3% total.) I have been a boomkin first ever since Blood Hoof, even when i had to heal in the 40 mans.
Anyway, i got into a raiding guild once i hit 60, farmed out MC for 5/8 T1 and many Ony attempts though my guild never did summon rag or down the first boss in BWL.

Jan07 hit and I was deployed to Iraq. I come back to the game about three months ago (april) and boy has everything changed. Just got back into the thick of it all and before i hit lvl 63 i got offers for guilds just for being a boomkin (god i love this toon ). Raiding ssc so many times i can't count, i have 4/5 T5 now and from going off the item listings from both "best upgrade" on wowarmory as well as using the Ef loot tables in the wow druid discussion forums/the spreadsheet comparing upgrades; I am now left with... nothing as a foreseeable big upgrade [besides hex head over DMC: Crusade].

My current guild's progression (of which i am the druid class lead) is at 6/6SSC 3/4 TK 4/5 mt hyjal 2/9 BT with no mother shaz or kael in sight for at least 2 weeks i imagine... I am curious only as to what I should do or if there are any upgrades within those instances that would really put me over the top. money is no factor as i have my epic mount nearly two times over worth so regeming/enchanting can be done at a moment's notice. I personally have my shadow resist set (357 w/o pants) scoped out for when we down kael, and I have the mats to make them all, just need the rep so i can buy the patterns (LW/Skinner). now that we can stomp through the first four in hyjal 1 shots each week, little trouble on first boss in BT then oneshot second (haven't tried beyond that) just trying to see where we should go next.

The biggest setback as far as T6 is rolling on gloves/helm when it'll break my t5 four set bonus. I have done the numbers with the spreadsheet and it looks like just for getting the gloves alone it'll be over a 100dps loss for me. I'm trying to work out the best mode to maximize my dps without taking a hit like that (appeasing everyone by actually wearing the t6 rather than just have it sit in my bank to swap out when we actually get to mother shaz and illidan for the other pieces for T6 four set). The problem with my T5 was sharing my tokens with my druid tanks as well as the warriors; i was last to get any T5 past two set bonus because I had already had the badge loot equiv and wasn't the biggest upgrade over even my tree healers, so i was forced to pass. Now that I have just received my t5 four set bonus and am smoking ALL mages and coming close if not topping the locks/shamans/rogues on the damage meters (even with battle rezes, those clothies are so squishy lol) how can i justify a loss in dps after I just got new teir gear?

as for my skill by itself... do not know if this guild is holding me back or if there is anything more i can do personally to help bring us pass this blockade of three-four main pre-sunwell bosses that we're stuck on (Kael, Mother Shazz, Archimonde) [we practically have Vashj on farm, 1-3 shots each week]. my armory is linked below, if anyone has any input it's always welcome. I have a lot of stock in my guild, i have practically irl befriended a lot of them cuz they're just cool ppl, but if im going to be paying $15 a month, i want to progress, otherwise i might as well buy a few cases of beer and wait for WOTLK if this is the best i'll get. i also do not want to have to drag ppl but im just at a loss of what personally i can do besides just recruiting t6 ppl from other guilds to push us past this brick wall.

All in all if ya'll could help me with the summarized questions below... minus the fluff from above that would be most beneficial

1. Bosses to focus on as far as guild progression; Arch...(17%,22%,34% 3/25 notable attempts in two weeks)... or Kael?
2. Gear... where do i go next? T6 over t5 four set bonus? (keep in mind my boss/instance constraints...)
3. Guild period, is that my folly? The 400% armor can't drag an entire raid... can it? lol

The World of Warcraft Armory

To Ef and everyone, thank you so much for putting in the leg work for all the formulas within the spreadsheet as well as taking the time to research all the difference weapons/armor/items/chants. it made my personal progression from t1 - t5 all that much quicker and easier.

-Lath

PS Owlkin Frenzy? Holy balls lol

PSS that +15 stam was to apiase my meta... i'll be replacing that this week so please no QQ on that nubness

How about you just wait until your guild has got at least hyjal cleared, and clearing BT through illidan, before picking up any pieces of T6? I was wearing 4p T5 well into black temple, and I only started taking T6 after everyone else got theirs/it would go offspec. Hell, I still wear my 4p T5 now, in sunwell.

1) Has your guild crafted shadow resistance for your entire raid, for mother sharaz? If so, I don't see how you could still be having problems...
2) Archimonde .. tell everyone that it's not a dps race, it's a control fight. Control the fight, heal the tank, stay out of doomfire, use tears of the goddess EARLIER than you think (taking a bit of fall damage is better than cratering). If your guild has too many downies who can't seem to get things right, that's what recruitment is for... sit them out until their performance improves.
3) You can basically look forward to offset upgrades (boots from najentus, main hand wep from either hyjal trash or najentus, and offhand from rage winterchill, belt from supremus, ring from ZA/trinket from ZA, etc). Just keep your T5 as is, it will serve you just fine until your guild has illidan on farm status.

Good luck.

1. We have been building our Heart of Darkness stockpile in the gbank, though we're less than half needed to get everyone in one raid their set, let alone anyone else who would be a replacement for later fights.
2. As we have even yet to attempt Kael it seems that focusing on Archimonde and downing him a few times would be the best focus, then once we have Hyjal on farm then focus on BT, as the natural progression states.
3. I keep losing DKP from our GM and RL getting pissed off an arch wipes though. some people that miss main progression raid nights have 200+ dkp and I have 63 now, even though i've been to literally every raid but one since our guild's inception. Some people take it upon themselves to outbid people on items (mostly happens on offspec though) just to sell it to them for gold cuz they have DKP to burn). Getting offset is proving cumbersome, though not impossible, i have a full healing set mapped out at around 1700 I believe.

I guess all in all im just looking at the time dwindling away and getting frustrated with having to take three months plus to get there. I'd like for myself to continue to receive upgrades, other than just showing up and watching myself slowly get bumped lower and lower on the dmg meter as other members surpass me in gear before i can take another big upgrade one week for 4/8 when every has had their fill.

I guess i can hope for a delayed expansion so I can have more time to experience those instances, seeing how I've missed out on so much of this game already lol. Thanks for the pep, and I'll keep chuggin along trying to catch you guys, im entirely too jealous of the whole "4/5 + 4/8 or 4/8 + sunwell" debate

Thanks Havok.

-Lath

-EDIT-
forgot to mention, our loot is based off DKP for non-tier items, roll on hyjal trash (due to the waves, we loss our first hammer of judgment cuz of a wipe on Az) need main spec greed offspec, and officer loot council for tier items.

I've got a decent amount of t6+haste (no t5 availability for me), and in the few times I've done 25-man moonkin raiding, I don't think I ever broke 2k dps, even with a couple heroisms. I was on track for it on gorefiend (but then got marked for ghost duty, BAH). If I can pick up a grand magister's staff I'll probably hit BT moonkin again and see how it goes.

But yeah, it really looks like 4t5+4t6 is very hard to beat unless you've got many best-in-slot-ish items.

Recently we've been a bit low on ranged dps so I've jumped in to help with my offspec oomkin gear, fairly respectable and all but it means I'm quite new to this. So I'm looking around on where to improve, not looking for specific advice on gear pieces here, but I downloaded both this spreadsheet and tried out Rawr.

Spreadsheet: I've used the rogue gear spreadsheet, which calculates dps and all that and it has the wonderful functionality of sorting all gear pieces in each section by dps value. This really helps and makes it easy to get a quick overview of upgrades.

As I understand it with this spreadsheet you will have to try out all the items you think could be upgrades and then figure out which one is the best? Just seems like a lot of work, have you considered doing something like the rogue gear spreadsheet? It would, in my humble opinion, increase the value of the spreadsheet by quite a lot. At least for new people like me.

Rawr: It seems completely broken, it suggested that I should use healing items (possibly a good thing, sure) but then socket it with +11 heal / 2 mp5 and that's where things just started to seem wrong. It even suggested I use an item with a +10 int gem in it.

Specific examples - it suggests to me that I'd be best off putting +10 int/spirit gems in Anetheron's Noose over 2 x +12 dmg gems. It also suggests that [Brooch of the Highborne] is approx 15% better than [Loop of Cursed Bones] and that [Pendant of the Violet Eye] is the third best upgrade available to me, being 20% better than [The Skull of Gul'dan].

So yeah what I'm trying to say is that it seems me that Rawr utterly and horribly broken. Am I wrong? From what I've read in this thread and seen on peoples profiles, I don't seem to be noticing a lot of +int and +spirit gems

PS: Sorry for the messy formatting of the post, seems a bit staccato.

There's also an option where you can force it to ignore mana concerns, if you're _really_ convinced that your mana regen is sufficient to last the fight. Tell it to sort by Raw DPS instead, and you'll see the items sorted by damage increase in an infinite-mana situation. You will want to be careful with this, though, because it can come back to bite you if you take too much direct-damage gear and ignore regen completely.

Quick question, my guild is just starting attempts on Brutallus. I was wondering if I should be using Insect Swarm for the 3% reduced hit chance. My problem is that I have stacked the appropriate haste for my +dmg and I also have 2 piece t6 wit the extended time on moonfire. Implementing IS into my rotation would most likely cause me to have to drop moonfire and therefore lowering my dps by a significant amount. So is it worth using IS for the reduced hit? Any feedback is appreciated.

If you're having tank gib issues, I'd use it. Especially during stomps.

I don't see why it would cause you to drop MF though. Dropping MF will just lower your dps, especially with 2 piece tier 6.

Ah yes, the sort thing in the comparisons tab? Just set it to raw damage I suppose?

You're probably going to run weird rotations on Brutallus, but just work in an insect swarm just before he stomps. Don't think dps, think utility I only do IS just before stomps and carry on with my normal MF/SFx4 rotation.

PS: Thanks for the explanation on the extra options, turned out to do a lot of good :P

Addendum:

I can't remember where on the forums I read it, but I seem to remember someone suggesting using a macro like this:

/cast Moonfire
/equip Unseen Moon

and back to Ivory Goddess or whatever on starfires.

Can anyone clarify on that? Does it work? Worth it?

Used to work, still works to an extent, but pretty heavily nerfed in 2.4.3 - now any idol/weapon swapping interrupts casts with a cast time. You could try the macro above [1] combined with /cast Insect Swarm /equip Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess [2] and Starfire [3] for a 1,2,3,3,3,3,1,2,etc. rotation but:
A) This forces you to include IS in your rotation, which is probably a DPS loss and
B) You'll lose the benefit of haste on the GCD reduction (at least, I have been led to believe the GCD from item swaps is NOT reduced by spell haste).

My guild just downed Archimonde last night, and i don't mean to sound like the annoying little brother here (I'm a USAF Vet lol) but it was a guild first, as well as a personnel one, so yay me!

I told my officers that seeing how that I am now sporting T5 four set I will most likely not be Loot Counciling myself on T6 until either the guild has had it's fill (as was the case in my T5) or we progress into Sunwell and I can work on my other side of my T6 four set instead. I will only be working on my offset or crit/haste/hit sets from now on it seems. I have the Hammer from MH but I still see the 150 Badge loot as well as the dagger in BT as a viable dkp roll so I have options in switching up my stats rather than spending thousands on regeming trying to get it right.

What's the ideal amount of haste i should stack before it becomes useless and i should then focus on dmg or crit? I know the universal magic formula is hit>dmg>crit though i do see many of you are not hit-capped and I never had a firm answer on where haste really works into that. [I rarely have mana issues on boss fights in MT and BT which is why I've decided to possibly go in another direction]

I do see as well a lot of ya'll have your +12 on rings, I am currently a LW/Skinner mainly for gold farming and after I make my guild their leather Shadow resist sets do ya'll think it's worth it to go enchanting simply for that +24 damage boost? or if anything the healing as well for offspec? I have all the gold i'll ever need... like 10k + (it'd buy my damn Loop of Forged Power if my scrub PvP server guilds were further progressed into Sunwell and had the over abundance to sell me a few lol)

-Lath

Many/most folks will not be logging in their "boss" gear. Swapping a ring, a cloak, a 2H weap or OH will probably hit cap any serious raider in T5 or beyond. Even if you see someone just off the hit cap (145-155 range) they may be waiting on "imminent" upgrades before regemming.

Haste can be roughly reduced to:
~1100 +dmg -> use haste / dmg gems in yellow slots with good bonuses
~1300 +dmg -> use haste / dmg gems in yellow OR red slots OR non-bonus slots (i.e. T6 chest)
~1400 +dmg -> use pure haste gems in yellow & non-socket bonus slots
(Always bearing in mind the 2 blue gems for meta activation)

And there's practically no PvE reason to ever gem for crit now that haste is available.

What is the point of inflection where gemming spell damage will be better than haste or equalize again?

Spell haste + 1400 > Spell dmg

There must be a point where haste will deteriorate in value, or will haste be infinitely better no matter what? I'm just not sold on that concept yet.

On the topic of idol swapping. If you have the MF idol equipped prior to the MF cast then right after equip the SF idol wouldn't that effectively only setback the GDC just a little bit since it's an instanct cast and you have to wait for the GDC anyway. I'm talking little to no haste involved so the normal GDC would still be ~1.5s. I haven't really had a chance to play around and compare numbers, but it would be really nice to keep getting the benefit of both of those idols.

It looks like if you do a macro like this:

/equip idol of the unseen;
/cast moonfire;
/equip Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess;

then cast SF

You don't really lose much casting time at all. I mean if you do I cannot really tell, but I am by far no expert. Nor have I attempted to measure the difference between doing this and just keeping either idol equipped.


EDIT: After trying this out a bit yesterday it seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

Whoops, I think I wrote this one wrong... should be: Stack haste UNTIL your spell haste + ~1100 > your spell dmg

Eh, it's kind of a grey area in between anyway. 1400 is better for knowing flat out that a haste gem is better than a spell damage gem, 1100 is just "Oh hey, Haste might actually be useful now".

Ok so I'm trying to decide what's better, the SSO pendant of acumen or the new guardian's pendant of conquest.

And also, is haste stacking better than crit stacking [as in the crit/dmg and haste/dmg gems] at +1203 dmg? I'm still not entirely bought on haste, because I feel that I'd go oom faster =x lol since I do usually end up battle rezzing, and not able to cast innervate on myself.

Thoughts, anyone?

Aldor SSO > Subjugation > Dominance >= Conquest

Scryer SSO < Aldor SSO, but I'm not sure exactly where it fits in the list above. I suspect it is still above Subjugation.

If you don't have the mana for your preferred rotation, crit would be better than haste, but increasing your mana would really be the main priority (and Dominance at least has a bit more Int than the others).

Is 1203 raid buffed? At that level, for gems, spell > haste > crit (assuming you have the mana for haste). At 1400 buffed, spell gems are about equal to haste gems, and both are considerably better than crit.

Can you point me at a source or explain your reasoning for how you're valuing the DPS impact of the proc effects on the SSO necklaces? Without calculating the proc DPS, the Guardian's Pendant of Subjugation, or Dominance if you don't like spell haste, seem to be better choices, contrary to your statement.