There are currently only four pieces of leather 80 gear which have hit on them - the Heroic and Valorous Helm and Shoulders. The moonkin itemization makes me want to vomit. All in all though, it's still pretty easy to get the hit cap from heroic gear and rep gear.

Oh come off it. You need 263 to cap, 77 comes from the Valorous set. You can drop ~30 in your neck slot, and another 49 in one of your ring slots, leaving ~107 left. You can grab [Greatstaff of the Nexus] for 95 of that and use a couple gems to fill the rest, [Dying Curse] and [Dark Shroud of the Scourge] and a single gem, or one of the 1h weapons with Hit and a Hit offhand. There's a huge number of ways to Hit cap without needing cloth, and the ENTIRE POINT of switching healers to using spellpower was so that they didn't have to waste space on the loot tables with single-spec gear like you're asking for. Do I think they could have added more Hit to our tier set so that this wasn't as much of an issue? Yes. But don't pretend that it's in anyone's best interests for there to be Moonkin-only gear much beyond that.

I keep seeing all this redundant discussion of hit cap being 263. NO. Let's start putting a caveat on that 263-sell, please, because the common advice present assumes 17% when: you have 2/2 BoB and either Misery or IFF up.

Let's assume something else. Heroic Precense (HP). Hello Blue-Man Buff! That's another 1% if your raid leader can manage to put a Draenei in your group. I generally see 4-5 Draenei in a typical raid of our own and its not like a healer party needs them either. Bring this to your raid leader's attention if need be.
Heroic Presence - Thottbot: World of Warcraft

The way I see it, if you are going to depend or assume that IFF or Misery will be present, you may as well count on HP.

237 (9%) is easier to gear to if you spec right (4% BoB) and can count on an additional 4% (not just 3) from your raid.

Amazingly, some of us (Rosoo included) are cows.

I admit that I did forget the Horde consideration yet my post was more for a few pages (most of them really) of hit cap discussion and not specifically in response to your last.

I must ask, as it really does seem like a common fact in here that only 263 hit is needed (assuming IFF or Misery are on), does it mean IFF is a must in our build if we cannot be absolutely sure we get a shadow priest (and in 10-mans, and sometimes even in 25-mans, this is certainly not sure)? Does it mean it's better to spec for IFF even if I can get tons of hit from my gear (I'm at ~240 with mostly pre-raid and some Naxx-10 gear, and still haven't gotten the trinket from VH)? I know IFF means raid-wide boost, but does that mean I have to give up other DPS talents fot that? If so, can u suggest how to tweak my build? The World of Warcraft Armory

A note on my build - It's heavy with mana talents as we are still in the 10-man raiding, and I do not always get Replenishment or other mana regen sources, and I still find my self having mana issues, even with this build...

Dropping CF for IFF and grabbing Eclipse in some way (even 1 point) will both gain you effective mana regen, as crits are a very effective way of regening mana (and the haste from CF is increasing the mana you use per time period). IFF is also the best damage talent if you don't have a shadowpriest (as it's a raid-wide buff) unless every single one of your casters is running with capped hit without it (which I would doubt).

As a note of interest, a Ret paladin is one of the best mana regen sources you can currently get. JoW + Replenishment is such a big deal, and if you aren't getting BoK off a different paladin, that will also increase your regen from all sources too, by quite a significant amount. Not having a mage will also impact your regen quite a bit, as the regen from 10% crit from improved scorch/winters chill is approximately equivalent to replenishment.

Depending on your 10 man setup, you can have hugely varying mana regen even though you have the same gear/talents as others.

Yea, I'm well aware of the huge effect external regen sources have on me. Sadly, in my guild we don't really have any sort of a set raiding team, so we can have one run stacked full with mana regen, and be dried up in the next, so I have to be able to be somewhat self-reliant in this, as with the Hit debuffs (Misery, IFF).
I'll drop CF for IFF though, and start using it in my rotation, and hope for much more int and spirit on my gear so I don't have to worry.

First off i levelled to 80 as feral, and because of an overabundance of tanks and melee dps in our guild, went boomie. I've been trying to get a handle on it, so have been doing lots of research, and wws parses, and reading much of your gold here in these forums...

Anyway, i'm just wondering if any of you have seen the latest Simulator Output from Dedmonwakeen <Wicked Legion> that lists all the caster builds and their potential DPS. He's done a lot of work on this and it's pretty well received as accurate. SampleOutput - simulationcraft - Google Code

A hunter in our guild pointed this site out to me, and it seems like an excellent piece of work.

It basically has the best Boomie build (Druid_58_0_13_SF) 5th on the caster dps charts(Lock/Mage/Priest/Shaman/Druid - depending on spec/rotation), but doing pretty awesome dps nevertheless...

One thing i note is that his rankings differ from the ones posted here in the forums... His dps scale factors change depending on your rotation...

What do you think of his rankings vs. the more (general?) rankings posted here in the druid forums? There's a breakdown per build/rotation, and a link to Lootrank/Wowhead for each item slot...

If you look at the bottom of his analysis, you can see the raw stat ouputs too.

All in all, to my relatively uneducated eye, it looks really impressive, and i thought i'd share, and see what sort of comments my fellow chicken's had on this!

I'd also like to hear some comments, especially regarding the simulator and the balance-druid implementation
If you need help to set it up
PlayerOptions - simulationcraft - Google Code
DruidOptions - simulationcraft - Google Code - Description of possible options/actions for a Druid
I read in one thread that there was no documentation and made a list of possible general options and one for the druid spells (as I work on the balance-druid implementation for SimulationCraft)

Any feedback is appreciated.

PS: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t33457-s...l_development/ is the thread on EJ, if you wanna asks dedmonwakeen something about the sim itself

Hi all

I need your professional help!!!
Yesterday I've done Naxx-10 with my guild. I'm satisfied with my dps (2.1k medium, second position in recount) but i've a LOT of problems with my mana.
I've done all bosses with mana issues, especially Noth where my mana finished at half fight!!! I can't uderstand WHY.
After Naxx I've spent about 400g to change gems, items and enchants...
After that i've tested my previous equip on the 80 elite dummy in IF.
I've noticed that i was able to get only 2-3 crits, during 2 mins of fight.
Then, i've changed items and test again.
At the end of tests i've fixed a partial gear. With this i got more crits (around 5-6). As you know, moonkin regens mana with crits.
At this point I've to understand where's the mana-eater in my gear/stats/items...
For example, i don't know if it is better to keep the cyanigosa trinket instead of Alchemist Stone... Alchemist stone let me drink and gain a lot of mana from potions, while the cyanigosa trinket let me cap hit rating but potions become weak... Cannot take a final decision...
This is may actual situation:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormrage&n=Thelothian
Also i've an idea to change my talents build.
This is the build i want to try:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft...because who cares about stun on mobs? Better move 3 points from Celestial Focus to IFF.
Someone writes me to move those 3 points from Celestial to Dreamstate... it's another option...
And last but not least, our resto shaman (in my guild) will be unavailable for a long period!!!
Normally i don't have any of above problems if i'm grouped with him...
But without him my "story" takes another direction... worst direction.
Can you help to find a solution? Is it so difficult to find??
Thanks in advance...

Todo:

- put Celestial Focus points into dreamstate.
- cap hit rating
- reduce haste (mana eater)
- change gems with spell penetration with +sp/hit gems
- swap alchemist trinket with mark of the war prisoner (for +hit and -haste)
- take a retri pala with me for the next raids
Thank you...

Too much haste and penetration, not enough Spirit or MP5.

Maybe you didn't mean MP5 as a stat, but the way it's worded might be confusing.

In my experience I never needed MP5 as a stat on my gear. With upgrades comes a massive amount of int which helps any mana return based on the size of your mana pool.

I couldn't see the above poster's armory, but the five percent crit from 4 piece T7 probably helps a fair bit with mana regen from moonkin form as well if you don't have that yet.

Another thing you should focus on is crit. I realize your gear isn't done yet, but it seems to be that you only have around 21% crit in form. The more often you crit (which is why IFF is so helpful) the more mana you regain, thus the less points you have to spend on mana regen talents. I've also noticed you're way over the hitcap, and can probably rethink some of your chants//gems. The hit softcap is 227, so lets round up and say 230. The reason for this is that you've got yourself the opportunity for a friendly neighborhood space cow (thank gods for alliance eh?). The 1% there, plus the 3% from IFF//Misery and the last 4% from BoP is 8%. Include your 9% from ~230 hit and you've reached 17%. You're sitting at 319 hit. You can certainly drop 40-50 hit rating and be almost guaranteed to be above the hitcap.

Personally, I don't bother speccing into any of the regen talents, because even in a 5 man raid situation I've either got enough time to drink before a boss, or simply don't have to. As your gear improves, you'll find yourself needing less and less mana regen to stay at a reasonable amount of mana. I do a lot of research into these forums & everything, and it seems that the best spec is something along the lines of what I'm running with (for pure unadulterated dps) The World of Warcraft Armory. The spec I'm using is mostly for 10 mans, because in every 25 man there's an spriest, and it's a wasted gcd if you don't HAVE to throw it down. I mean, the 3% crit is nice and all, but when it comes right down to it if you have an spriest and you're not giving the raid that hit, there's no point to wasting your time or mana.

The gear I'm in is probably my resto gear with my dps drinkets, so don't focus too much on that, I was just trying to show you a possible spec. You'll notice I also didn't put two points into Nature's Reach, simply because after a lot of study I feel it's a waste of a talent point. As you progress you'll notice tanks have no problems keeping threat high (due to tank/threat reworkings for wrath) and the only real need to be at max range won't require those extra 3 yards from putting 2 points into it.

All of this brings me to my question: If I remove the 3 points in IFF to account for misery, would I be better off putting them into Genesis and taking the 3% added dmg there (which is what I'm thinking currently), or should I toss them into brambles for the 15% treant dmg? I get the feeling that after I test both specs I'll find the 3% added to IS & MF will amount to more than 15% extra every 3 minutes, but I'm looking for anyone else that's done so.

Thanks,
Shake

With the confirmation that IFF crit works from feral FF, if you have a feral druid in your raids you should not remove points from IFF. Especially for genesis.

1. It is worth casting it for the armor ignore.
2. Probably no. I don't have the math though.

If there are no ferals in the raid (25man), then iFF (or even FF if you don't have iFF) is worth it for the dps increase of melee classes caused by the armor debuff. Else a warlock will have to use CoR which is very probably a much larger dps hit than in your case.
On the other hand, 3% crit will not compensate for the personal dps lost by having to keep it up.

FF/iFF is really a spell where you have to look at the raid composition to now wether it will be good to cast it or not.

So basically if it's important for raid utility (no ferals around) it's worth losing personal DPS for, but it's not worth casting for my own personal DPS? And still it's worth the 3 talent points for such a situational talent? I mean, I can provide the armor debuff without those points, and since the idea is for em to not have to keep it up because I'm actually losing more DPS than I'm gaining, than the only justification to spec into it is if I know there's a feral around so I don't have to use it?

Angelfire, it's not really a situational talent. Faerie Fire is going to be up whether there's a feral to cast it or whether you have to cast it. So the talent basically offers 1% crit per talent point all the time.

Yep, with GC's recent configuration you want the talent. I was only decribing in which case you want to cast the spell yourself