I've been thinking about 25 H Anub, and I've been thinking about speccing into 3/3 Intensity for whenever I actually have the chance to do the fight. My reasoning is that the 50% mana regen while casting will delay the inevitable going oom while going through Hurricanes. From a build that I've made so far, I took 3 points out of Improved IS and put those 3 points into Intensity. My question is though, when it gets down to P3 where you have to start putting out more damage on Anub, would those 3 points I put out of IIS be really needed in P3, and would it be worth it to get that mana regen talent for the loss of 3/3 IIS.

Build
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

When I went Moonkin on our Anub'Arak, I had 0/3 Dreamstate/Intensity while using OoC. I don't think there was one time while hurricane was up that I didn't get an OoC proc. I kept up Moonfire and IS. My glyphs were Moonfire (Periodic Increase), Starfall and Focus. Kept on moonfire for the Idol and IS for the 3% debuff. I timed most of what I could well with NG and hurricane and OoC, dipping to about 60% but regenerating most of it during P2. I used [Crazy Alchemist's Potion] during P3 when I got the debuff, along with barkskin. With my guilds DPS, I had no problem maintaining mana efficiency. But I also was in some of my resto gear, like [Boots of the Unrelenting Storm] gemmed with Luminous.

Note: If you are not on 3% IS duty, then don't put it up unless OoC isn't up.

Or glyph it over Focus, in your glyph setup. I personally found glyphing Starfall for Anub is slightly wasted until p3, and even then you're only getting so much use out of it. Not to mention it's a pretty decent hit on your single target Anub dps.

Ok, people still talk all the time about this 2T8 v. 4T9 business. I'm going to run some numbers in my spreadsheet to make sure my sig is accurate. First, in my current Moonkin gear (armory, some of the time). Base stats: 3040 sp (including stacked trinkets and Lightweave average), 777 crit, 263 hit, 489 haste, 556 spirit, 1174 int, all raid buffs (including a 420 sp Demonic Pact).

Result: 8568 DPS.

Now, change my T8 legs/gloves for T9.258 legs/gloves. I gain 46 hit from doing this, so let's simultaneously swap my 239 hit neck for a 258 Val'kyr neck (very generously). Net change from all this, according to wowhead item comparator:

-3 hit
-7 crit
+66 int
+113 spi
+2 haste
+95 sp
-2T8 set bonus
+4T9 set bonus

Result: 8497 DPS.

So, even throwing in a completely gratuitous neck upgrade just for the sake of a hit-neutral, haste-neutral, and socket-neutral comparison, I've lost 70 DPS upgrading to the 258 set.

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For fun, let's mock up some BiS sets (those of you who love throwing BiS lists all over the forum, this is the closest you'll see me come). Some compromises made to make the comparisons parallel.

With 2T8:
Head: T9
Neck: Cry of the Val'kyr
Shoulders: T8
Back: Aethas' Intensity
Chest: T9
Wrist: Autumn Willow
Hands: T8
Waist: Pale Thorns
Legs: Awakening
Feet: Harsh Winter
Rings: Firestorm/Lurid
Trinkets:Reign x2
Weapon: Barb of Tarasque
Offhand: Mystifying Charm

3320 sp, 741 crit, 268 hit, 470 haste, 612 spi, 1406 int.

DPS: 9745.


4T9--same as above, but swap in T9 shoulders/gloves, and Talisman of Heedless Sins:

3393 sp, 763 crit, 268 hit, 546 haste, 602 spi, 1455 int.

DPS: 9637.

Yup, a loss of 108 DPS. All's well, 4T9 still sucks.

Yeah, I know. And it's worth keeping in mind that at Anub, where you're AoEing a lot, you want the stats more than the set bonus anyway. But the point is that people still regularly underestimate 2T8 for stationary DPS--4T9.H is close, but the 245 isn't even. I was just confirming and reemphasizing.

And I'm also curious why Simcraft and Rawr value 2T8 less than WC. Rawr was valuing 4T9.H as higher than 2/2, which is irritating, but as usual with Rawr, the user can't ever tell why it's doing what it's doing.

Is Simcraft taking into account the shortened mean cycle length due to WiseEclipse when you have a higher Lunar crit rate?

I wonder if part of it is because I don't do WiseEclipse in Rawr. Would that inflate the value of the set bonus? If so, that is probably your explanation right there.

It would absolutely increase 2pt8's value since it would shave 3-5 seconds of non-eclipse time off per full eclipse rotation.

Maybe this is just strategy differences, but I don't understand why people value AoE so highly on Anub hardmode. It's fairly simple to reach the raid AoE dps required for the trash, and I think it's much more important to reduce the length of p3 as much as possible? It just seems a lot more relevant to focus on our single target dps, and let the AoE part of the fight be more of an afterthought. I do maybe 5-6 hurricanes in total in that fight, and I wouldn't swap in 4T9 for that over 2T8.

Could you go into a little more detail here?

There are a couple Moonkin-related items I'd like to see investigated/fixed in SimC:
(1) Using SimC travel mechanics to properly model Wrath.
(2) The effects of lag and spell queuing for uber-hasted Wrath casts that drop below 1sec.

Basically, what he's saying is that the common practice for most Moonkin (and what's mainly modeled in WC) is that you will cancel your Lunar Eclipse as the last Starfire cast is going off, in order to guarantee a transition into Solar Eclipse. It reduces the duration of Lunar Eclipse slightly, but causes the overall cycle to be shorter, which increases the relative uptime of both Eclipses in total. It appears that neither SimCraft nor Rawr models this effect.

In my guild there are some aoe-guys and the other ones are single-dps-guys ... and DKs and Mages are much more stronger in aoe than me, so sometimes i am single-dps too, and then i dont hurricane a lot too