Moonkin Guide for Dummies!

Start there first.

Not that i go anywhere near what you pulled here in terms of DPS, i messed up one or two rotations aswell, and we didn't have an elemental shammy in our raid.

But what puzzles me is the fact that altho i am over the 10% hit cap, with SP in the raid, i still have misses, while you didn't. Do i put that on the fact that our kill took longer than yours and luck basicly?

Here's our WWS for Patchwerk.

1. The only reason you would miss is if your spriest is not keeping the Misery debuff up, not sure why they would not be attacking the mob but I noticed your first miss happened pretty early. It may be worth it to start of the fight by casting iFF just to make sure you don't miss. Hopefully the spriest will keep it up the rest of the fight. Although taking a closer look at the WWS, we see this:

22:31'55 The encounter started
22:32'05 Wrath Miss
22:32'35 Starfire Miss

So both of your misses were within 30 seconds, so iFF would have definitely prevented them, not sure why it is taking that long for the Misery debuff to come up, but that is why you have misses.

Edit: Took a look at your spriest:
22:31'57.016 Patchwerk is afflicted by Misery.

That changes things, no idea how you are getting misses with Misery up, someone else will have to help.

2. You are using SF to proc eclipse, have you tried switching to the rotation where you use wrath to proc eclipse? On most crits (especially under heroism/bloodlust) you will be incurring a GCD by trying to spam Wrath since it is already under a 1 second cast time.

Edit 2: I was wrong about iFF being worth it for you (as stated below) had the spriest NOT been putting up Misery for a time, it would have probably been better raid DPS (assuming 33 GCD through the raid apparently) but since he was putting it up this is not the case. I underlined this section above to note the error, but left it in for coherence of the post.

If you're getting misses while the Misery debuff is up, you were wearing the wrong gear.

Also, it's not worth it to spend a GCD in iFF just to avoid a 3% chance of a miss, unless you expect to spend 33 GCD's casting spells before it goes up.

In the fight Picu was using Idol of the Unseen Moon (Lunar Grace procs). That doesn't match his armory.

Picu, Is it possible you had PvP weapons/trinkets equipped (less hit)?

I keep iFF up the whole fight.

I thought I read somewhere (maybe Moonkin For Dummies Thread) that one moonkin should keep up FF for the armor debuff?

If there's no Feral, yes (or Recklessness, or... Wasp?).

If there's no Feral keeping it up.

I think it's dangerous to do that because the ferals will notice that "a more powerfull spell is active" and stop try to put it up if you start with yours, meaning that once you start putting it up you probably will have to to keep it up the whole fight.
I've been thinking about that because recently having some problems with my unit frames not showing all debuffs recently, which made me unsure wether FFF was there or not.

I'd say even if not seeing it up you should trust them to put it up since doing it yourself will negate the buff you expect from it (supposing there's an SP and a feral in the raid). And communicate with them to make sure they keep it up.

ideally, you and the feral should discuss these things to prevent such issues. of course not all of us raid under ideal circumstances ( myself included).

The Idol of the Unseen Moon is correct, i got the Idol of the Shooting Star from Razuvius the same run.

22:31'55.657 Picu gains Mark of the War Prisoner.
22:31'59.516 Picu gains Now is the time!.

Both trinkets were in place and i don't have any pvp weapon.

What is the understood effect of a higher ping on your dps? I play with about 300 to 400. How much of a hit will my dps take versus someone with say 50-100?

Edit: as a boomkin of course.

Roughly speaking, it's a more significant hit than with most classes. Not only does clean spell queueing become harder with a very high ping, instants (which can't be queued) get hit for the full value of your ping, and Wrath chaincasting (which alternates randomly between queueing and GCD-timing) becomes yet more awkward, and it's easy to lose time.

It wasn't really a communication problem but a debuff display problem on my side (they probably were doing it, i just couldn't verify wetehr it was up or not, which led me to think about it).

Read most of the posts, and still wondering if I can justify my rotation or not, so here is the question...
Curently using a heavy wrath rotation, only switching to starfire to extend my moonfire and proc eclipse.
First, because the retarded starfire idol just wont drop for me, so I am curently using the badge wrath idol.
Second, specced for sarth 3d, and I have a bunch of tards in my raid group that keep dying, so I have to battle rez wich totaly kills my mana, so end up raiding with Tons of mana talents that would normaly not be needed, and simply havent specced my third point into eclipse (3rd point in eclipse or NS?)

In other words, has my rotation been lowering my dps or not? Kinda hard to test, but figured it was okay.

Hoping to respec either this week or in 3 weeks after guild finishes all the 25 man achievements and just curious as to what you guys believe would be the best rotation when I finaly put my third point into eclipse.

So should I stick to my IFF, MF, IS, SFx3 +(SF until eclipse), Wrath during eclipse, IS, Wrath until MF refresh, SFX3
or should I use the more standard rotation of just using wrath to proc SF eclipse?

Also, just out of curiosity, how badly does 3-5 fps affect dps on a fight like patch? I know its awful and lowers dps, but anyone have any idea by how much? Averaging 4.5k dps on patch this month (3 min kills) and wondering if without the framerate issue I would be doing 4.8k or 5.5k.

Raid leader been getting on my case about my rotation and dps, so figured id ask.
(He got used to seing me as first pre-wotlk and not 5th... )

Even using the Wrath Idol, a Starfire-heavy rotation is higher DPS. A wrath-heavy rotation is more mana-intensive than a starfire-heavy rotation. A starfire-heavy rotation is less affected by high ping or low framerate.

Anyone having trouble with the current itemization of hit, especially if Tauren (no Draenei). Plugging the numbers I get from WrathCalcs (SP = 1.26, Crit = 0.71, Haste = 1.04, Spirit = 0.21, Int = 0.42, Hit = 0) into LootRank (Loot Rank for WotLK), and assuming we want 4 piece without legs, it looks like BIS is:

Head: [Valorous Dreamwalker Cover]
Neck: [Wyrmrest Necklace of Power]
Shoulders: [Valorous Dreamwalker Mantle]
Back: [Pennant Cloak]
Chest: [Valorous Dreamwalker Vestments]
Wrist: [Unsullied Cuffs]
Hands: [Valorous Dreamwalker Handguards]
Waist: [Leash of Heedless Magic]
Legs: [Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster] or [Leggings of Mortal Arrogance]
Feet: [Footsteps of Malygos]
Finger1: [Signet of Manifested Pain]
Finger2: [Band of Channeled Magic]
Trinket1: [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
Trinket2:[Dying Curse] or [Embrace of the Spider] or [Sundial of the Exiled]
Main Hand: [Torch of Holy Fire]
Offhand: [Surplus Limb] or [Matriarch's Spawn]
Idol: [Idol of the Shooting Star]

Taking the hit version of each item leaves us with 307 hit with icewalker, which is 44 over the cap. We could replace [Surplus Limb] with [Matriarch's Spawn], but this is barely an upgrade. We would really want to drop [Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster] for [Leggings of Mortal Arrogance] or [Dying Curse] for a DPS trinket, but either of these choices would put us below cap (even if we enchant hit to gloves). So, is the best answer right now really to be almost 2% over cap? I was 2% over cap,so I've dropped a point in Balance of Power, but it's not like that extra talent point is great either, and with the BIS gear above, we wouldn't even be 2% over. Any thoughts?

Maybe you could give up dying curse for one of the other dps trinkets, and eat some snapper extremes or use [Cincture of Polarity]?

Assume there is a competent Shadow Priest in the raid and no Feral or other source of FF. Is it worth casting IFF for the 3% crit buff? If the answer is yes, at what level of crit would it become a waste of time to cast IFF.

I'm speaking purely in personal dps terms here. I realize melee dps will benefit from the debuff the spell casts. I've read through most of the Moonkin threads and apologize if this has been answered elsewhere.

For personal dps no -- For raid dps yes.

Personally, I am planning on:
Head: [Valorous Dreamwalker Cover]
Neck: [Wyrmrest Necklace of Power]
Shoulders: [Valorous Dreamwalker Mantle]
Legs: [Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster]
Trinket1:[Dying Curse]
-----These items provide 263 hit rating------

This will reach the hit cap for me, which leaves me wearing:
Back: [Pennant Cloak]
Chest: [Valorous Dreamwalker Vestments]
Wrist: [Unsullied Cuffs]
Hands: [Valorous Dreamwalker Handguards]
Waist: [Leash of Heedless Magic]
Feet: [Footsteps of Malygos]
Ring1: [Signet of Manifested Pain]
Ring2: [Band of Channeled Magic]
Trinket2: [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
Mainhand: [Wraith Strike] (Possible Torch if we get enough of them to drop so that healers won't need them)
Offhand: [Matriarch's Spawn]
Idol: [Idol of the Shooting Star]


The Dying curse is a REALLY strong trinket, especially if you need the hit, so using it to reach the hit cap is not really hurting you. (Considering weights where spellpower is the highest value, this trinket offers a ton of it in procs.)