I know rawr and i konw the spreadsheets are here. I personally am not a number cruncher spreadsheet kinda guy becuase 1) it calculate your best stand still and not have to move DPS. which is nice and all but I know the spell rotation and what works best atm. 2) they dont work correctly, calculations are wrong because of constent updates expecially now that WOW is out.

What I am looking for is some Moonkins that have SWP clearing experience and have advice on what has or has not worked for them. I appreciate the comments though everything helps.

Judging by the tooltip, the SF bonus applies if you have the MF dot up, not IS (yes, this qualifies as one of the most misleading names for a talent ever).

How can a 1% crit to the entire raid NOT be worth it compared to the SF idol. /boggle

Insect swarm is a good raiding talent for the simple fact that it's instant cast, and doesn't even require you to face the target. I use it any time I ever have to move in a fight, which is most of them.

He's referring to the fact that the 3% crit to SF only comes with the iIS talent, which you can't get without getting IS. (At least, I think that's what he meant.)

Someone mentioned the new PTR patch notes, and I didn't see any response... I am very interested in the fact that the notes don't mention the Starfire glyph. Should I get my hopes up? Anyone not at work who can hop on and see if the change is there?

A few notes (And as for experience my guild was 2/6 pre 3.0 and 3/6 now.):

You're 'not a number cruncher' so how can you 'know the spell rotation and what works best atm'. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but being a DPSer in this game is anywhere from 75-95% about the numbers even post wotlk. Your gearing and your decisions made during combat all can be supported with mathematical calculations. I'm nowhere near the best math person in this thread, Erdluf and Adoriele run most of our complex equations. However, I supplement their spec-wide work with individual calculations that relate to my own situations. If you can't do the basic numbers like that your personal performance will suffer because you're just being told what to do and you do not understand why you're doing it, you'll be unable to perform in un-ideal situations. If you're not even doing the spreadsheet then you're just 'going by feel' which makes you exactly like the randoms on my server asking me "wut is minimum crit level for <insert tier instance> moonkin dps".

Calculating stand and still DPS is all they can do, because no one here has the time and access to the computing power in order to model complex simulations that actually simulate boss encounters and how/when you'd move to determine your average DPS if you made the best choices in those situations. Balance druids have a LOT of options when they have to move now and outside of possibly affliction locks and arcane mages our DPS is one of the highest in movement based fights. You do a basic priority check EVERY TIME you have to move (Even for a small position adjustment, and this is based on level 80 with IS glyph):


This is exactly what I followed on Brutallus last night because I was on the backside group that had to move at the beginning of the fight. Instead of wasting my movement time I had two dots, starfall, and typhoon all applied before I hit my position. These are the things that will separate you from other players (I'm getting tired of pointing this out too!)

Epic Flight Form Idol is the best for raid DPS at 70. It also helps various healer mechanics. Epic Flight Form does not affect melee crit. I used the Starfire idol last night because I wanted to push personal DPS and Brutallus/Sunwell is a joke right now. At 80 it will be worth a bit less than .5% crit. The level 80 Starfire idol is 165 spell damage for starfire. I could pull a bunch of random numbers out to estimate the DPS contribution of the idol, but the likely conclusion is they're almost equal in total raid DPS output with the new SF idol being far more reliable than .5% crit for 6-8 spell DPS for whom crit is of differing value. I will also guarentee you that if the idol somehow impels a top end raiding guild to stack their raid with spell DPS it will get nerfed just like Solarian's Sapphire/Resto Shaman T3/etc.

For my final point: why are you even worried about what gear will maximize your DPS output for the next two weeks? I was pretty happy to pull 3300 DPS 9.3% total damage on Brutallus if only because it shows the potential we have at 80, but it doesn't MEAN anything in the grand scheme of things. If I were you I'd be more worried about the potential Starfire Glyph nerf (Which didn't make the PTR patch notes, has anyone tested it yet?). Right now on live balance DPS is exactly like destro lock pre-3.0, but you won't be on top if you try that at 80. They've shown they're going to buff and tweak eclipse until you have to use it to max out our dps, so I'd start preparing for that.

Apologies for the stern tone, but I feel some individuals are cluttering the good information in this thread while admitting they don't even care about the numbers.

If raid dps is 45k dps (15 * 3k dps (VERY LOOSE ESTIMATES)).
+1% crit will add ~.5% dps (crit is devalued with more crit, I'm assuming everyone has at least 50% crit(so this number is low))

This idol will add 225 dps raid wise. (at most 450 dps).

starfire idol cannot compare to a adding ~1% crit to 15 dps.

It's not that I don't care about numbers, I know my spell rotations I do my own calculations off my gear and depending on the boss fight. My concerns are with Getting the BEST possible setup for WOTLK so why shouldn't I be concerned with gear? anyway I appreciate comments good or bad if they are constructive they are helpful.

the SF idol adds 55 damage not 1% crit

Because you're going to replace all of it with 10-man Naxx/25-man naxx loot. You'll replace a good portion of it with heroic loot if you run those before raiding as well. Sunflare is replacable easily by ilvl 200 heroic blue weapons. Netherbreath Spellblade - Item - World of Warcraft The pieces with 2/3 gem slots won't be easily replacable until the actual raid epics because Blizzard was more measured with gem slots this time around so putting the appropriate northrend blue gems in those slots will keep those pieces effective. You're going to want the 2 piece T7 as soon as possible because it makes IS ridiculously good DPCT with the glyph. Accesories (Rings/trinkets/cloak/amulet) are all going to be replaced. You're looking at keeping 4-6 pieces of your current gear for about three weeks maximum before it's all irrelevant, and people in heroic blues/purples will have almost the same quality in those slots anyway.


Adoriele: I think the key is that for certain situations they did state they were going to keep separate spell and melee critical effects. The LoTP part doesn't work for spell critical either when a feral and I were testing them last week.

Has anyone done the math on how many targets makes our AOEs worth casting?

I calculated it out roughly based off wowwikki's numbers for hurricane almost a year ago, (and I'm not sure how accurate I was) but at the time I found hurricane increased my dps on 3 targets or more, and decreased on 1 or 2 targets vs the is/mf/sf*X rotation I used at the time.

Can any of the math gurus in this thread calculate how many targets each of our AOEs need to hit to make them worth casting when standing still? (as was noted earlier in movement based fights they are instant cast so you use them when your dots are already up.)

What does the damage cap do to this equation? ie how many targets can each of our AOEs hit for maximum DPS? Total damage done would be the same vs 50 or 100 targets I presume, but is it higher for 7 targets than 5?

Presuming all the targets are clumped up so hurricane will hit them all, and against a wall so typhon's knockback won't be a problem what is our maximum AoE damage? should we spam hurricane? use typhon every cooldown? Is starfall better than hurricane when mobs are clumped or only if they are too spread out for hurricane to hit them all?

I did this calculation just for my solo use at 70 (1045 +spell, about 10.5% crit in caster).
I ignored Nature's Grace, pushback, and haste.

I don't have the spreadsheet here, but from memory:

Wrath (with E&M) was about equal DPTC to Hurricane (without E&M) for two targets.

If Typhoon hits the same number of targets, it does considerably more (30%) DPS than Hurricane, but the DPM is terrible unless you have at least three targets.

Starfall is higher than Wrath even for a single target. However it really only scales for the first two targets. I'm not sure how many targets you need for Hurricane to be better than Starfall, but it should be at least five or six.

Note that Hurricane and Typhoon both require careful targetting. I was treating Hurricane as a 10.5s cast, and Typhoon as a 2s (cast+gc), to compensate for this.

I haven't seen any test results for the Moonkin AoE cap. I think I saw a post in the mage wotlk thread that said all AoE's (just mage? don't know) were capped at 25k DPS.

starfall is awesome for skele's on felmyst, but other than that I don't really get to use it for its worth. On single boss fights it doesn't do much. I use it on brut, but not sure if helps at all really.