This point needs to be shouted! In fact, the time to proc Lunar is even shorter given that NG can play a role on non-procing crits.

As a side note, how did you decide to model pre-lunar-eclipse dps given non-proccing crits and NG and stuff.

Sure you can. Take, for instance, proccing solar Eclipses with 3/3 Eclipse. You're guaranteed to get Eclipse as soon as you crit, so allowing DPS numbers pre-Eclipse to include crit chance inflates them by quite a bit (~ your crit chance). Granted, it's a short period of time, but assume your SF spam DPS is ~2400 without crits, and you have ~40% crit chance. That's about 1k DPS difference between assuming you can crit and assuming you can't (more, factoring in NG). If you're in pre-Eclipse for 5s, that's 125 DPS averaged out, which is non-trivial. It's also not including inflation when counting crit chance for proccing Lunar, which is lower, but I wouldn't be surprised if the total inflation is worth around 200 DPS. That's what the funky math in WC is doing to determine pre-Eclipse DPS. It's finding your chance to crit and not proc Eclipse, then calculating DPS based on that.

No, I think Hamlet is right here. Because the amount of time you spend in the pre-eclipse phase depends on when you crit, the average dps wont be effected by the phase ending on the first crit. Think of it this way: if you crit on your first spell, your dps is very high for the period, but if you crit on the 10th starfire, it is very low. You should still "expect" to crit after 1/[crit%] spells, which would give "expected" dps equal to non-eclipse spam (including crit). I think if you summed up the chances of critting on spell #1, #2, #3.. etc. you'd get the same result.

I know the argument; I think I actually recommended the change in WC a while back where you modify the crit chance of the pre-Eclipse Wraths. I'm just not so sure of it at the moment.

@Huskar, yeah, that's what I meant. Let me see if the infinite summation looks hard.

The result should be the same, mathematically. That's what I've been commenting on trying to prove above.

Don't write it off just yet. The awkward gearing would push moonkins into more leather. Making 52 points of hit rating useless would nerf hit cloth pieces and make spirit leather relatively more attractive. Some pieces (e.g. [Leggings of the Enslaved Idol]) would become very difficult to work into a set. Do I hear clothies rejoicing?

It's not problematic for us to have better hit talents than clothies. They have plenty of non-tier hit pieces in their armor class while we have zero. If Blizzard wants us to pew pew wearing healing leather then the balance tree needs to compensate for the non-optimal gear like the feral tree compensates for bears wearing DPS leather. The balance tree doesn't need to work as hard as the feral tree, but it's obviously not there yet.

I don't think that's what Blizzard intends, and you seem to be ignoring the fact that it's almost definitely just an oversight. If all the talent was was 4% hit and they changed the tooltip to say 6% hit, then I might be inclined to believe they were changing it. But it's not, it's obviously just an oversight, please let it drop. It's been at least two PTR builds now... don't you think they would have changed the value from a 4 to a 6 by now? Do you really think they want alliance druids to be over the hit cap wearing just T9 hat and pants?

It's probably worth keeping in mind that real pre-eclipse phases don't actually end on a crit thanks to travel time, the spell queue and player reactions all conspiring to ensure that we'll keep going with the wrong spell for at least a single cast. For Wraths at max distance I'd expect 2-3 extra casts after the proccing cast before you swap, at least going by my own logs.

We're also going to have some fun if not very significant distance-to-mob related effects at the end of our Solar Eclipses in 3.2. If we're at a distance then the last couple of Wraths we cast in Solar will be able to proc Lunar by the time they hit, which is good for Lunar's time to proc. If the last casts in Solar fail to proc Lunar then our time to proc following the dot refresh is increased by the current Wrath travel time, which is bad for time to proc.

Specifically assuming a 50% crit chance and a 2.5 second travel time causing the 2 last Wraths in Solar hitting late enough to proc Lunar gives:

Early Lunar (average TTP = 0s after dot refresh): 51% of the time
Late Lunar (average TTP = 1/.3 +2.5 ~5.8s after dot refresh): 49% of the time.
Average TTP: ~2.9s.

Assuming no Wrath travel time and no Wraths from Solar hitting late enough to proc Lunar -- melee range, in effect -- gives a TTP of ~3.3 seconds in the same scenario. It's not a very significant difference, but it might be worth taking into account when designing a model.

shhh theoretical math major don't want to hear it

But if you look my spreadsheet models for both 3.1 and 3.2, I did adjust the start/end times of the Eclipse phases to try to account for the dangling half-casts at each transition.

Yeah, I'd included a Wrath travel time factor in my 3.1 model, but forgot that it would work this way in 3.2 as well. I think I have to add that back in.

/Applause

Woot!

Your math is solid, but I believe you have some typo's. Here's what I'm seeing (high-lighting typo's with <-).
Intuitively, this makes sense, as total damage done should be your crit + mean damage of your non-crits