Moonkins at 80
 

I really want to discuss talent specs, spell rotations etc and our WotLK thread has been locked so I have started this thread.

I have picked this spec so far with 5 mans and 10 man raiding in mind: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Yesterday I ran every instance in LK on heroic and my biggest issue so far has been mana. I am accounting this on my critrate being reduced so far and less mana being returned because of it. I seriously doubt being able to spec out of intensity at the moment and I am considering speccing back into dreamstate.

The group composition was Warrior(tank), Paladin(Holy), Shaman(Elemental) and Deathknight (Unholy). The shaman was having no problems at all with mana and I would be oom after some of the boss fights after innervating myself and using a runic mana pot with the Alchemy trinket equipped.

Damage seemed to be fine from the spec and I was averaging 2k DPS over the instance and I was getting between 2.5 - 3k DPS on boss fights. By the end of the day I was strating to rely heavily on Hurricane on the trash and just MF and SF for single target.

sorry if this thread isn't needed but I couldn't find anywhere else to post?

Going at this as if you know nothing, sorry if some points are obvious/overlap with what you already know.

a) Assuming armory is up to date: Level 70 gear is generally bad. If you can replace it, do so (a leatherworker might be able to help you with some items). Maximum mana pool is a very big thing now, with Replenishment and the Moonkin crit proc working off total mana.
b) You have a lot of haste compared to crit. Crit = mana regen and damage, while Haste = just damage. Replacing the haste trinket with the [Cannoneer's Fuselighter] (easy Icecrown quest at the beginning of the Argent Crusade stuff to the south east) will help a bit, as will getting the badge trinket [Sundial of the Exiled] if you haven't already (no idea how up to date armory is).
c) Spell rotation - try and conserve mana where possible. Doing KT 10 man on sunday was painful as I'd hardly replaced any gear and the fight is nearly 15 minutes long. I ended up doing starfire and nothing else, as it was all my mana regen could sustain (screw you Detonate Mana).
d) Pay attention to clearcasting procs - always try and use them on high mana cost spells in 5 mans (AoE or Moonfire), although this is a bitch a lot of the time as you tend to consume procs before you even notice them. In 5 mans/10 mans, conserving mana can be a faster way to progress than killing the boss quicker, so interrupting casts to cast a hurricane or whatever when you get a clearcasting proc can speed up things.
e) Try and limit the AoE spells you use. Hurricane, and Typhoon aren't modified by Moonglow, so their cost is really ridiculous (~3k for Hurricane, ~1.1k for Typhoon).

The difference between running an instance with replenishment and without is quite large aswell. You'll find you have less mana problems by far when you have a group with it. I was running heroics with a ret paladin yesterday, and when he went AFK it was clearly noticeable. It seems my regen is good enough now to be able to not "require" all the regen talents - I'm going to go with this for the time being I think and see how it goes, although I'm still split on Natures Focus/Frenzy or NS/MS (I'd have to nick a point from something for MS aswell).

Some problems you may be running into just based on your group composition:

Is the paladin giving you BoW? It's more mana over the course of a fight than kings especially since you're not specced for dreamstate. I cannot see your spec, but make sure you have OoC as the buffed proc rates makes one point there the best for your mana. You're not running with replenishment or a mage, so you're losing some of the most significant sources of mana regen you'll be getting in a raid situation. Remember also that innervate is not particularly effective until you have a decent amount of spirit on your gear, and as dukes said your mana on crit becomes much more valuable as your mana pool rises. My main thought is that you're just running into poor synergy issues so you'll have to kinda suffer through it.

Is the Holy Pally judging wisdom? Their new healing mechanics give some significant advantages for judging, but they may not have the GCD's during all boss encounters just to avoid falling behind.

might help...
 

Dukes, I was wondering why you would bother to throw the single point into frenzy. I realize that a 5% proc rate isn't bad assuming you get hit a lot, which would make more sense for a raid situation since raid damage is unavoidable, however I haven't fully tested the talent yet to see if it procs off of dot ticks which would increase its usefulness tenfold. The problem I'm seeing with it, however, is that normally if there's a boss in a raid situation that does aoe damage, that aoe usually also interrupts casting which would pretty much break frenzy. One thought would be to just toss the point into moonglow, take the extra 3% reduction and have that much more mana to play with, or to use it towards your MS. I suppose that also kinda sums up the usefulness of nature's focus for a raid situation as well, simply because they both involve pushback. Now as for where to get the extra point for the second rank of MS, I'm gonna go ahead and say typhoon. For a raid situation typhoon is completely useless. I realize it's aoe, I realize it does pretty decent damage, especially with gale winds, but it's just not a smart raid choice. The knockback on it changes the positioning for the tank to hold aggro, screws up multiple different classes rotations, and has the possibility of face pulling extra groups. Imo, to boost your raid dps it's worth it to scoop the point from typhoon. This is unfortunate because typhoon is AWESOME =D This change now calls into question whether or not you think gale winds is worth it for a 30% addition to JUST hurricane, so it's gonna depend on how the raid environments end up being, however the other option for those 2 points would be to finish off moonglow, take the added 6% reduction in mana and use hurricane a lot less >.< I'd try something like this if you did decide to take the points out of gale winds, however 30% additional damage for hurricane is kinda a big deal imo, so it'll take some contemplation. Hope this helped =D

Honestly I wasn't really checking for JoW or what he buffed me with but I would assume BoW.

I wasn't really looking for people to check out my gear but all the feedback is good. I haven't purposefully gone for haste it is just that all gear seems to have it on in bucketloads. I can see me being up to 600 haste rating without breaking a sweat honestly. I am not fussed about the level 70 gear and I know it is out of date, which is why I haven't changed many of my gems over yet. I do have 46 badges but I wasn't sure what to go for so I think I will buy the trinket when I get home tonight.

I did notice towards the end of the day I was having less trouble and I wasn't sure if it was due to equipping more spirit/int etc or not as I have really just been replacing items with whatever I get that is better. I have tried to keep my 4pc T6 bonus so far and I will prolly dump it when I have pieces to cover all the associated slots.

If you have no mage, than [Scroll of Intellect VIII] is your friend.
Should be quite in abundance and not very expensive, so surely you can take 5 for a run.
You can also use the [Scroll of Spirit VIII] of course for more spirit.

If you are in fact having some issues with mana, the 3 points into Dreamstate would be a pretty significant investment for you. A quick look at your armory currently shows your mana regen as: 297/92 mp5 for out of combat and in combat respectively. With your unbuffed intellect pool of 620, the 3 points in dreamstate effectively work out to 74.4 mp5. For 3 talent points, you're almost doubling your in combat mana regen (assuming you don't lose any regen talents to pick it up). That's pretty significant.

Additionally as already been mentioned and I'll echo the same sentiment, converting some of your haste to crit will help out a lot as you'll be casting fewer spells, and then getting a greater return in mana from the additional crit. So the effect is two fold.

Mana return on crit is only on single target spells as of last patch.

Moonkin form doesn't give mana back from AoE, it was changed just before WotLK came out.

What about something which completely sacrifices AoE damage which is mostly trash clearing damage for something more single target focused? Something like this for 25 man raids.

Also, with regards to rotations, I have a couple of questions.

Is any version of IS worth keeping up? (With Glyph? With 2pcT7? With neither? With both?)

With regards to Eclipse Rotations, is there a final word on what was the best? I've heard several suggestions including:

• Wrath till Eclipse, SF till internal CD is up, refreshing MF as needed
• SF till eclipse, Wrath till eclipse is over, refreshing MF as needed
• MF, SFx3, Wrath till MF falls off switch spells based on whatever version of eclipse procs

(Insect swarm not included as the only variation would be "refresh IS as needed" depending on if it's useful to cast or not. Also assuming that IIS is not taken and the desire to keep IS up for Wrath is not in play)

You want Typhoon for Naxx. You want Gale Winds for Typhoon/Hurricane in Naxx. Plenty of bosses have aoe type mechanics and you'll use your aoe enough for it to be worthwhile. I did not take Starfall for 10-man Naxx last night, and I didn't miss it. Starfall's main use is as an aoe stun for damage prevention, but the cooldown is so long that it's not going to be up enough to really utilize it as that. Starfall should have a mana cost similar to Force of Nature, just so it is always a benefit in PVE situations. Typhoon is amazing because sometimes you need burst aoe on enemies hurricane can't stick on or isn't worth the mana for 3 ticks of. A future glyph that removes the knockback for a reduced cooldown would have tremendous use.

The rotation information is in the locked thread, all the data is there that points to W-SF-SF as the optimal rotation due to latency concerns while SF-W-W is highest in a purely theoretical universe up to a specific combination of haste/crit. Glyphed + T7 IS should be higher DPET than Starfire, but that may change at higher crit levels (I haven't seen those numbers run yet).

They seemed to provide similar damage. What I've decided on is Wrath to proc eclipse, Starfire during eclipse, Starfire after eclipse, refreshing moonfire as needed.

The reasons being:

1) Should perform better than something more wrath-heavy under latency
2) Starfire is probably better to use while under the effects of power infusion or bloodlust and you can't always predict when those are coming
3) Better mana efficiency
4) Would make better use of an idol to be casting mostly starfire, instead of a bigger mix like the other rotations

To start of on heroics/10mans/raiding, I will be MF, SF x N and then repeating...
Main reason for this is that my Crit is below 20%. Combine that with eclipse's proc being on 60% of your crits, its not likely to get Eclipse to proc early and with the current mana regen in my gear, I will be oom before I would get eclipse to proc. I threw 1 point owlkin frenzy also, just to test out how often it procs. I took typhoon and Starfall simply because I love those spell, although in a 25 man situation I would probably put both those points into maxxing out intensity.

Those were the reasons I'm using W-SF-SF as well. Not only BL/PI but there are several very good trinkets with haste procs and activation effects that would be wasted during wrath. My only major complaint with this rotation is how unreliable wrath is at getting eclipse to proc, which can be a significant mana cost on fights with aoe components. I'm likely retooling my spec tonight to include 3/3 Intensity just due to the amount of fights where aoe and multi-mob moonfire is a huge boon, it's just a real challenge to decide which DPS talent points I can spare the most.

The 'time spent to activate eclipse' should be pretty much the same between Starfire and Wrath, just wrath feels more random.

At really low levels of crit I could definitely see avoiding worrying too much about eclipse and just use a normal starfire and moonfire rotation and wrath on eclipse, treating it merely as a bonus rather than a primary focus.

As for Typhoon and Starfall, these will likely be damage increases on most fights since they can be used while moving, making them superior than celestial focus or improved insect swarm for many fights.