I agree with counting NG into SF's dps. Mana is really a non-issue now at my gear level, yet I still think SF based rotations are "in general" better dps than wrath ones in a raid environment. It just plays much better with raid buffs/curse of shadows/heroism/natures grace/MSD. Perhaps wrath would be better if you have a really bad ping and need NG to compensate for it on wrath. The only fight I currently use wrath spam +lightning capacitor on is void reaver, just because I'm always dodging orbs and I feel I can fine tune my threat easier.

Not having enough +hit is devastating to Starfire rotations though. Starfire DPS is very spikey for lack of a better word since it is big slow spells. Getting unlucky with a resist or two in a row can pretty much knock you out of a whole dps cycle before the next shatter/orb/phase change etc. Not to mention losing a chance at a natures grace proc. The good news is that this is also true on the other end with lucky crit strings fueling the NG engine and really spiking your damage up to absurd levels. Unfortunatly that can result in a dead moonkin, as a double crit can put out about 13k damage in 5 seconds at T4 gear level.

edit:
Just wanted to clarify what I meant by the above paragraph. Spell hit applies equally between wrath and starfire if you were able to sit there for 10,000 casts and average out your lost dps. However with the lower number of Starfire casts (about 60 on a gruul kill) there is much more room for outliers and wasted dps time in your results. The more casts you have, the more your dps gets smoothed out to the expected value. You are more likely to have a "bad run" or a "great run" in a starfire rotation as opposed to wrath

It's best to look at which buffs/debuffs are present. If you're able to get CoS (even 10%) Starfire should be pretty attractive. On the other hand, if you're getting Shadow Priest mana back + impBoW + impDS + JoW (lots of regen) and no CoS, then Wrath should play pretty nicely.

Put your numbers into the calculator, put in the actual buffs, ballpark the fight duration, and see what results you get.

You can even copy & paste addt'l copies of the sheet to compare multiple gear sets, different combinations of buffs/debuffs, and/or fight durations.

Out of curiosity, do you respec for Kara/dps-ing?

I imagine you're looking at my armory, so that's why you ask. I do respec to dps, what you see in armory is my typical raid pve heal spec.

Generally, though, there's always been both a shadow priest and warlock for CoS in my kara groups.

Remember when you calculate how long your mana lasts it gets very very complicated as the more time you spend moving in a fight as a time where regen etc as well as the fight's timer is running but you're not spending mana, so if a calculator (that doesn't take those things into account) says you can DPS for 3 mins b4 going oom with a certain rotations, in a real fight moving a certain % of the time will increase your time before oom by more than the given %. The more regen the bigger the difference.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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