I was a little curious about how haste interacts with the reign of the unlivings effectiveness.

If you have double reign, for example, would it be more beneficial to stay right at/under the haste cap to keep your starfires at or just above 2 second casts? Obviously, this would promote mote procs on back to back casts in lunar which could be very beneficial to overall dps.

Obviously, if you were to do this, some question of where the extra stats would be allocated, given its relatively easy in high end gear to hit the haste/crit softcaps.

I was just curious if anyone had done some work on this.

It seems extremely unlikely that Reign procs will have enough of a impact to dictate gear decisions.

I wouldn't say that's true. Given how much DPS the proc alone is worth, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some range over which haste has negative marginal value. The problem would be identifying where that is through the mess of lag/queueing/other casting delays.

WC currently assumes the proc loses value when the cast time of SF, with casting delays included, drops below 2.0. Like the other haste-based effects, this model results in a more precipitous cutoff than reality (due to the randomness involved in casting delays). The limiting effect in either direction should be right, though.

I was merely suggesting that, if you were trying to stay just over the haste cap, it might be beneficial to sacrifice some of the haste. The BiS set has, what, 468 haste? Something in that area? I was curious if, with double reign, if it would be beneficial to find a way to drop about 70 haste without ruining the itemization too much.

If this would be attainable, and the net loss in dps was realatively insignificant, the extra proc, coming from both trinkets, would likely outweigh the stat dropping.

For example, dropping pale thorns for winters solstice, you lose a small amount of stats, but convert the haste into crit, which isn't a horrible transition. That drops 60 haste, so you are only 8 or so away from finished. Drop aethas' intensity for drape of bitter incantation to get rid of that 8.

That would put you at 400, the change in stats would be 9 int, 14sp, 8 crit, 8 haste for the cape lower...

That would total, between the two items, to -18 stam, -18 int, -2spr, -36SP, -68 haste, +33 crit. I don't know how substantial or insubstantial that would be compared to the proc, but lets assume that this comes out to even 100 dps, would an extra average proc of 2500 per 2 trinkets be enough to outweigh it. Given the math, that would be 5000 damage. If you earned even 1 more proc per 50 seconds(which you clearly would in lunar alone) that would be a DPS increase.

Keep in mind you'd need a WoA totem on the target dummy for the results to be accurate, to test it.

Well, I would assume that the drop off is at the haste soft cap because the same number that gets wrath to one second under grace will get Starfire to 2 seconds. After that point, the value of the proc will go up because more haste = more procs if not happening back to back on starfire.

So the question is going to be what is the # that it drops off from when Starfire goes from 2 seconds or greater to under 2 seconds and what is gained back in value by your gear as you gain haste from that point on. The math seems highly likely to prove that for pure DPS, you need to build your haste exactly at/below the haste softcap for wrath for reign purposes. I don't think the damage boost will be wholely significant, maybe 100-200 dps, but that number isn't insignificant, either.

Here's a few tests on the dummy. I was only using Wrath/Starfire, and yes, I checked to make sure there were no non-crit Starfires.

Without WoA:
428 haste, sometimes had consecutive Reign procs. 2.08s cast on Starfire.
397 haste, always had consecutive Reign procs. 2.10s cast on Starfire.

With WoA:
397 haste, sometimes had consecutive Reign procs. 2.00s cast on Starfire.
Testing was a little short as the shaman had to leave.

It was kind of weird to see it sometimes have consecutive procs, and sometimes not. I was at 90-100 latency the whole time.

Given that the warlock t10 also doesn't have spirit on it I imagine they partially did it because spirit will be useless to moonkin in cataclysm like they said they were going to do and this gear is meant to be carried over into it.

I've just done a write-up of Moonkin threat and can think of 5 methods for a moonkin to reduce threat (4 for horde)

- Blessing of Salvation
- Stop dpsing target
- Shadowmeld
- Die
- Shapeshift to cat and Cower

I just want to know whether there are any that I have missed. I am assuming most raiding moonkin have Nature's Reach which provides some threat reduction. If any are interested in the post you can find it here : Strayegg.com • Moonkin and threat management - keep in mind that this post is intended to be marginally tongue-in-cheek

Other threat-reducing aids (most of these require advance preparation):

1) Don't Glyph IS. Your DPS is down, but the raid gets a corresponding benefit (- Hit) to make up for it. Also, if the tank waits longer before blowing a defensive cooldown, he might have more threat.
2) Spec Brambles. More tank threat. More of "your" threat belongs to your treants.
3) There are some BC (and classic) threat reducing trinkets, but it's hard to imagine using them in a progression fight.
4) Find something useful to do that generates less boss threat. Remove Curse. Abolish Poison. DPS, FF, or CC another target. Heal (if your raid can afford to lose Moonkin Aura) or Bandage. Drop a basic campfire. You mentioned some of these in your article.
5) Cloak enchants (LK Wisdom or BC Subtlety).
6) Shrouding Potion
7) Bracing meta gem.

When you do pull threat, remember Dash. One more second of life might mean Taunt goes off cooldown.

I don't suggest holding back on Treants. Their threat belongs to them, not to you. From a threat perspective, casting FoN is one GCD where you stopped DPS.