Angelfire

Ah, sorry about that, never even bothered with the Simple Answers as it's filled with Feral/Resto issues as well, and is a mess to look through for valuable information.
Many thanks Kuruk, and many thanks for your post in general!
So to sum up:
at 1942 Spell Power, Haste and SP are worth about the same. Hit is the most valuable stat until cap of course, as it has always been. Crit is the last and least of the "DPS" stats, and Int is slightly more important than Spirit.
Sorry I'm double posting, but I think it's best to have those stats in this thread, which is Moonkin specific.

 

Frenzi

I plugged those values into Pawn to help with gear selection. I have tried a few different ways to help with and this certainly seems to be the best.

On another note for those with Herbalism I have started popping [Fire Seed]s during wrath eclipse and it makes a huge difference to my DPS during encounters. I tried a few different ways, popping before your dots is a waste as your dots are modified by the seed after they have been applied, I tried using it for SF but the cast time is too large so you can potentially cut alot of the seeds time off. Wrath eclipse seems to be perfect as it lasts the duration of the seed and you have lots of quick casts plus the additional benefit of the damage modifier.

 

dukes

Are you sure on this? I have two proc trinkets ([Sundial of the Exiled] and [Dying Curse]) so my spellpower is constantly changing. As far as I know, it takes the dot damage from when you cast, not when it ticks - I'm sure that I've had a 900 tick moonfire, an ~1100 tick moonfire, and a ~1300 tick moonfire (on different mobs) going at the same time due to procs between casts, and it's not just because of vulnerabilities (E+M/etc) on one and not on another.

Direct damage effects such as Hurricane and Thorns do definitely re-calculate at the point of damage though.

 

Frenzi

Fairly certain, I also have the Sundial and it does change the damage output from when it activates and deactivates. Easiest way of seeing this is when you are Hurricaning and the Sundial procs, I realise these aren't the same type of spell but it is still one spell cast and the mechanics should work the same in this example. I am sure I have seen my dots ticks change but I will test it tonight on a dummy. It also definitely effects thorns which damages based on your current spell damage not on the spell damage you had when you cast it.

 

erragal

As of last week Fire Seeds were bugged and they did not provide any benefit. Have they hotfixed this? Did you try using them out of combat and check the spell power in your character tab to see if it's actually changing anything? Also try using them -not- in conjunction with eclipse to get more accurate results. With the short duration temporary spell power buffs the best usage is probably two starfires then wrath (Even when not in eclipse) for the last part of the duration so you don't waste 2 full seconds of the buff with poor timing. I'll test again tonight, but last tuesday they were not working.


Dots tick damage is determined at the time of application. This was why you could stack spell power consumables before applying your initial moonfire and roll it throughout the fight before they changed the Starfire glyph. I've seen no changes to this, if I apply a dot while under the Sundial effect it ticks for 1200 the entire duration of the dot. Hurricane works a bit differently than normal dots (It can crit for one). Hurricane also only will proc sundial on initial cast, not per channeled tick.

 

Frenzi

I only started using them on Thaddius last night as we had serious DPS issues and I was really gunning for it to maximise my personal DPS to try and beat the encounter. I assumed they were working because popping one during an eclipse really boosted my DPS, far more than I have seen previously. When I get home I will check them out as I was unaware of the bug.

I did try using them on the initial cast of IS and MF although if it does stack throughout the duration of the DoT is it worth it? Considering they are only 10 seconds long 3s (+.5s for human reaction speed, I am old and slow :P) seems like a large chunk of the buff. I would get two more SF's and then try for a wrath maybe to use what was left of the buff. Starfire just seems like too long a cast to make full benefit of the 10s you have and with my wrath at 1.2 (0.7) cast speed it meant that I would reliably get full use of the buff. This is easier to do as it requires less thought as well which is certainly a factor for myself during hectic fights such as Thaddius.

This certainly isn't my experience, the trinket has procced several times during a Hurricane. I am starting to doubt myself as you seem so sure but I am positive I have seen it proc. Is it possible that clearcasting or some other secondary effect could activate the trinket?

 

erragal

As I said before it's very possible they hotfixed the Fire Seeds (I sure hope so since tonight is 25-man night). I only suggest trying it in a neutral setting due to the randomness of an actual fight (Trinkets, procs, varying raid buffs) in terms of getting valid results. Roywyn had even mentioned it as early was when 3.0.3 hit the beta they were bugged; fortunately it seemed simple since the melee ones do work properly as opposed to a stealth attempt at removal.

I'm going to make a trinket thread and respond to your other questions there. Caster trinkets are itemized very heavily this expansion, so we need some more focused discussion.

 

• Adoriele

It was mentioned in the BB a while back that Fire Seeds were finally hotfixed.

 

yuppidoooooo

Has there been any word about upcoming changes/buffs/nerfs to Moonkins in the next patch? I've been reading mmo-champion to see what direction the devs are taking with Balance but all I see is nonstop stuff back and forth about Feral armor.

 

Angelfire

There has been no mentioning of Moonkins at all for the next patch, it's all about feral armor and attack power changes (and of course changes to pallies, locks and melee AOE).
The only news worth mentioning are the Dual Spec issue, which according to GC is not ready, and may or may not come in 3.1 (Ulduar patch).

 

Marauding Master

If you don't gear up at all and all your gear is downscaled greatly while upgrading your feral gear, then you can expect to pull around the same DPS. While you level, your crit and haste % drops greatly. So you'll probably push less DPS than you did while raiding. Try it again in level 80 blues.

 

Frenzi

I would like to point out that he was attacking a level 70 dummy and that melee scale greatly against lower level targets whereas casters don't at all. It is no wonder he was superor as feral than Moonkin.

 

Robusto

Add spell>Hast>Crit

That's what seems to be the stats you want optimize for moonkins after reading forums, when i look at my talent i just dont get why "Crit" is not first on that list (or at least second). I mean it help you to proc "Eclipse", "Nature's Grace", it give you mana back and crits on "starfire" increase your dps a lot.

If anyone could explain me this like i was 12 i would really appreciate.

Thank you.

 

dukes

You need ~32 haste rating per 1%.

You need ~44 crit rating per 1%.

Crit is a much more expensive stat generally than haste. Haste also allows you to get more spells into the period where you have procs up such as eclipse, and haste affects DoT's while crit does not (although the haste effect is minimal, it still decreases the GCD).

Mana back on crits is not a DPS issue so does not come into it in terms of raw DPS statistics.

 

veo

had it been determined if starfiring to proc eclipse or wrathing to proc eclipse which one is better yet?

 

Humbaba

You'll weight things differently as your gear progresses. I have several slots where different items are listed as far better than the next best alternative, but that's largely because I'm so far behind the hit cap.

 

Erdluf

Playing around with different numbers, I find it difficult to find situations at 3/3 Eclipse where you want to use SF to proc the Wrath Eclipse. A big part of the reason is that the extra SF you are going to cast after the proc "wastes" too much of the Eclipse time. Also, CSD + NG make 30% crit really nice, even if you already have a high crit leve.

For many (most?) sets of numbers the "Weave SF/Wrath" to proc eclipse looks very good, even though it is more likely to proc the Wrath eclipse. In this case you avoid casting the wrong spell at the beginning of the Eclipse.

I believe the latest version of simulationcraft added support for weaving. I have not run those numbers (which I'd trust more than my spreadsheet numbers). In particular, the spreadsheet wasn't looking at the interaction between the SF glyph and the Eclipse type.

 

thedopefishlives

As far as my math goes, in general, it seems to be almost a wash with respect to which version of Eclipse you're proccing. I did most of my testing at 1/3 Eclipse, however.

 

Storm

I have read a lot of posts here and elsewhere, but even so perhaps I missed it somewhere, or maybe the answer is so obvious I'm going to regret this post. Why has there been no discussion on using MF > SF > W > SF > W .... as a rotation where you only break the alternating once eclipse procs?

The rotation of course assumes that maximizing eclipsed casts within the eclipse period results in better DPS, and without having the time to crunch a lot of numbers it feels that it would. If eclipse was more controllable due to high amounts of crit, I would assume my theory would no longer be valid. However, as it stands I just feel I have so little control over when it's going to proc.

So here are a few examples:

MF > SF (eclipse procs) > W (which you are already casting) > more W until eclipse timer runs out > 2 more SF to extend MF if possible > either SF or W until MF expires

MF > SF > W (eclipse procs) > SF (which you are already casting > more SF until eclipse timer runs out > either SF or W until MF expires

MF > SF > W > SF > W > SF > W > SF (eclipse procs) > W (which you are already casting) > more W until eclipse runs out > either W or SF until MF expires

At the end of the rotations for any filler time where I have said "either SF or W until MF expires" I guess I would always use wrath due to it's shorter cast time and being more able to get MF back up and start over as fast as possible.

Maybe some day when I have a few hours to invest in the math I can get a more concrete answer for myself, but I'm curious if there's an obvious answer why this would be a bad rotation for a typical gear setup. It just seems to me that wasted eclipse time (ie. having to wait for another SF to complete casting after eclipse procs) represents a respectable amount of dps loss.

Thanks for any feedback.

PS. I've been "forced" to raid resto for a year and a half, and I'm playing around with different talents atm, so please no gear/spec comments based off of what armory reflects.

 

lissanna

I've seen it talked about a few times. Mostly, it's just complicated to switch spells every single time you cast. If you are really good at spell managing, it could work out in your favor, however it's a little too random for my tastes. I'd worry about the difference in casting speeds along with managing DOTs, and watching for the Eclipse proc, once something is too complicated, it's not really worth doing if it's only going to have marginal effects on your damage output.

 

veo

thanks for answering my questions, but I have a new one now, you're saying that you can use either starfire or wrath as a filler during hidden cooldown of eclipse, does that mean neither has a higher dps value than the other?

 

Gurth

I think storm have hit the nail in the head, most of the rotations i've seen in this thread are so situational that can hardly be called rotations. In fact it all sums up in "apply/refresh dots out of eclipse, spam either wrath or sf out of eclipse, spam either wrath or sf during eclipse itself". If you really want to optimize time spent in eclipse then weaving IS the solution, granted will be hard to time the right spell in cases where SF crit--->solar eclipse+nature grace--->less than 1 sec wrath--->less than half sec to recognize that (lag included) to switch spell to wrath spam againg before chaincast will shoot off another SF.

Optimizing such rotations seems to me highly demanding in terms of focus in a raid enviroment, the question is: how much is it worth, considering you could spend those points in eclipse somwhere else (brambles for example) to mitigate dps difference?

Also, it seems to me that SF is bound to scale better than wrath. With enough haste and crit nature's grace clipping on wrath spam is gonna be a huge dps loss on wrath spam against sf spam, making eclipse effectively useless. Anyone has figured out at which level of haste/crit SF will outperform wrath yet?

 

Boswell

It's not my intention to derail the current discussion going on but I thought I'd slip a question in to think about.

Is the Eclipse Wrath spam still worth using during heroism/bloodlust? It already loses cast time using Eclipse regularly but not to the point where DPS diminishes, but during heroism/bloodlust, shouldn't Starfire be more DPS since it scales way better with high haste then Wrath does? Wrath loses a ton of cast time during heroism if you're critting consecutively.

 

Uday

During heroism, stick with SF, even during Eclipse. With only 167 haste rating + talents and WoA, heroism will put your wrath cast at .99 seconds. Since this is below the 1 second GCD cap, your latency will be added to every cast. With or without NG procs, heroism wrath's will cast at 1.x, with x being your latency.

 

Uday

This is a hard number to pin down because the DPS lost or gained on NG wrath's is a function of your latency. At low levels of haste with good latency (until your wrath cast time becomes less than 1.25+latency) wrath benefits more from NG procs than SF. Then at high levels of gear (when your wrath cast time drops below 1+latency) NG procs actually increase wrath's cast time. It all varies with your latency, so be cautious of any claim that you need to switch at a certain level of haste or crit, and get a few friends to give you their raid buffs and whack a dummy for a while when you think you're getting near the point.