Hi,

I'm new to this forum but have enjoyed it for a very long time. I'm Kembo from Feathermoon.

Haste Cap

With 400 haste as a soft cap on wrath I was wondering if it would be smarter to collect spirit/crit items over haste crit items for off-set slots. On some swaps you can gain ~35 spell power for ~70 haste. Being at almost 800 haste couldn't it be worth it to lose some haste for extra spell power to make languish more effective and keep wrath as strong as possible? Is there a haste level where its smarter to go with spirit for spell power instead? Like say around 600 or so? I guess im wondering when its smarter to trade a certain level of haste for spirit's spellpower bonus, especially for those with engineering hyperspeed accelerators.

DoT Idea

With the new 264 idol that stacks on IS and MF, would it be smart if you use ISS and IS glyph to use IS pre Solar and MF pre Lunar to gain ISS's buff? Each dot up for each eclipse proc seems like it might work out. I'm asking if anyone has noted this as a possible choice for rotation being that I have yet to grab the idol.

Only other option I see would be Starfall glyph instead of IS glyph and only cast MF neglecting the ISS wrath buff.


If you check my armory I have around 750 haste with Engineering gloves to help my Lunar cycle and IMO I'm low on crit. I currently use Starfall glyph because I swap out Nibelung for frozen bonespike some times and only use MF for the 245 Idol I am still using. I was just wondering if anyone thought of what these 2 options might bring.

Any comments are appreciated!

Kembo the Mook

Genesis is weak because DoTs our dots are so weak. If they could both crit, that would increase the value of Genesis. I wonder why they don't allow IS and MF to stack whiles an eclipse is up? Won't that give an excellent temporary dps solution while moving? applying another stack is never going to be more dps than casting the appropriate nuke under eclipse, but if you can't, it's a compromisable second option. Genesis would also gain more value. Perhaps in cataclysm, the new spell may be a dot, or a half dot, half nuke like lifebloom but for damage, stackable up to 3, providing some nice burst but also some movement dps. Genesis will also boost that.

An interesting design philosophy for druids in the future might be to have the upper balance tree boost DoT/Bleed damage, and the upper feral boost nuke/strike damage. A balance druid will have a choice to emphasise 2 types of dps based on his talent choices, emphasis on nukes by picking certain talents in the balnace tree and off speccing a newly improved for synergy feral tree, or DoT damage - by picking the Balance tree dot damage talents and off speccing resto.
I can also see feral druids who want a dps style emphasis on dots off speccing into balnace instead, and those preferring the more usual strike damage would off spec resto.

I am dropping 1 point in Moonglow for 1 point in Genesis, it makes more sense on normal modes. However I haven't tested heroic modes yet, so I'm not sure what the mana strain is. I like that I can use my innervate for healers and not myself without having to slump points into intensity to make up for it. IF i had to, I would take 1 pt in intensity if it s really needed, afterall the 1 point in Genesis or OF or IIS are really small dps increases. Saying that though, it is hard to quantitatively measure the value of OF, for me in normal's it has always been a secret weapon, but in heroics you normally can't afford to jump into the fire for procs.

A quick question here about Professor Putricide. I have trouble increasing my DPS on this fight. With the amount of moving and such. The DPS drop comes from when i switch to the add, mostly green slime. FF > MF > IS and by this time it has already selected a target and I have to start running to it. Is it wise to just wrath/starfire depending on the procs i get from Prof?

First I wouldn't worry about FF personally, depending on whether you have a feral in your group the likelihood of FF being on the target anyway is pretty high, and it dies too fast for it to be worth you casting it anyway. MF/IS are more personal preference but if you have IS Glyphed I'd put it up, otherwise maybe not (I don't usually anymore), MF should go up as well especially if you just hit a Lunar phase. Also make sure you aren't switching from Putricide until the slime is actually up, Putricide is full debuffed by the raid and so your crit chance on him will usually be a bit higher which makes the all important eclipse proc more likely to happen.

The only other big thing is that you should be moving whenever you can when it won't decrease your DPS, whenever you use an instant cast move the few yards you can and try to get into position for the next 15-20 seconds, from what I've seen this is where the biggest difference in DPS on Putricide comes in.

Reply MF&IS while moving.. when both dots are up you should cast gotw (t10//2)
If the Add drops under ~15% switch on Putricide and let your Languish tick (When it goes to Hardmode you should finish the Add ^^)

Just to add to the Owlkin Frenzy discussion, I had 28 procs for 13.5% uptime on our LK kill. The uptime percentage is probably higher when you factor in the RP and the free 10% nuke-down at the end, but I haven't calculated the appropriate value. I also dropped imp mark for the points in pushback resistance, and I would say it's practically mandatory, assuming you have another druid for mark. Next time I might try to glyph starfall, as it's hugely important for this fight for valkyrs and for spirits in phase 5.

Edited to say that I had OKF 3/3

Nothing in ICC needs Gale Winds except trash if I recall, right? So even with Typhoon, you have one free trash point in a normal spec. OF seems as good a place as any. Good on BWL and maybe okay at LK (I take it was proccing from Infest at least?). At the very least, no worse than Genesis/Brambles at most fights.

I personally went with Typhoon and 1 point in OF. I have always loved the OF talent and I wish I could find more ways to get points in it. It may not have a steady proc rate but it is a nice little boost of damage on certain fights and that to me is worth 1 point.

I think I am going to try out dropping the IS glyph for the Starfall glyph. I use my dots on the run all the time and I do not have my 4t10 until later this week so I try to maintain a good uptime on dots. I also like the sound of having more utility again with the 3% miss chance applied to mobs/bosses.

Owlkin Frenzy was proccing off of Infest as well as Pain and Suffering. The Pain and Suffering DoT keeps it up pretty well. I've noticed that after the shield drops off of lady deathwhisper the frost bolt nova will proc it more likely then not.

A question popped up in my head about Lunar being faster to proc – shouldn’t that be dependent of the spell haste? Especially when above the haste soft cap (i.e. when Wrath is locked at a one second cast time).

I started looking into this and after verifying the haste dependency I found that paired with 5/5 points in Starlight Wrath, Wrath (and thus Lunar proc) takes a severe penalty from latency. I have yet to fully understand this effect, but according to Rawr, when Starlight Wrath is maxed (i.e. when Wrath is on the same cooldown as the global cooldown (GCD)), the cast time of Wrath becomes GCD+latency. I’ve googled and asked on Rawr’s discussion page for an explanation to this, but have not gotten any answer yet. However, I’ve done some testing in the game that seems to verify this.

I thought I’d post my results of the subject here, in case anyone is interested.

If you don’t put any points in Improved Insect Swarm (IIS), the haste needed is independent of crit chance and only depends on latency. However, as you put points in IIS you get a crit chance dependence, and the haste needed to make Solar proc faster than Lunar behaves in a similar fashion to what is shown in this graph (this particular plot is for 3 points in IIS and 0 latency):



As you can see, the higher crit chance you have, the higher haste you need to make Solar proc faster than Lunar.

Now, taking latency into account, the haste needed to proc Solar before Lunar decreases quite drastically as latency increases. You can find the numbers in the table here
haste_needed_to_proc_solar_before_lunar.xls .

For instance, if you have 30% crit chance and expect 50 ms latency, you will need 56% haste to make Solar proc before Lunar. This is a bit beyond soft haste cap - however, during a Nature’s Grace you only need 30% haste to make Solar proc before Lunar under these circumstances.

The numbers are, once again, highly latency dependant, so you have to look at your own crit and haste to find out at what latency you will benefit from farming Solar instead of Lunar and vice versa. It might even be worth installing an addon which shows latency clearer than Blizzard’s original (e.g. Recount), so that if your latency crosses any relevant threshold, you can switch to the relevant nuke.

Remember that the table relies on 3 IIS, meaning you need to keep Moonfire up for the values to be correct. (I’m assuming most people run with 3 IIS, hence I haven’t bothered to do the table with 0/1/2 IIS. If anyone has any interest in this, let me know).

Finally, looking back at the quote: “Slightly” is quite a vague term, and by the time I would’ve finish the calculations to take this into account (what with me being so slow and all), Blizzard will have released the talent overhaul patch. Therefore I have assumed that the increased damage per proc is negligible. If anyone feels like doing the math though, that would be great.

Does it work?
After doing a few tests I’ve found that while farming for eclipse, alternating Wrath/Starfire seems to boost my dps more than spamming the nuke that has fastest proc time. This is most likely because I gain one more eclipsed nuke at each proc. Further, it minimizes Glyph of Starfire’s downtime by limiting it to Wrath spamming during a Solar.

In conclusion, rather than starting fights with Lunar farming, I’d say it seems better to start fights by alternating Wrath/Starfire – beginning with the one that has the shortest time to proc, given in the attached table. Also, moving close to the target while applying dots (unless you can’t because of aoe or whatever), so that Wrath connects faster, gives you more breathing room when looking for the lunar proc.

It would be nice if someone could waste a few minutes to check if they notice any dps-change, either up or down, by casting like this - or if it’s simply my brain that wants it to be better so that I experience some placebo effect.

The calculations for the table has been done in MATLAB, you can find the .m file here
timetoproceclipse2.m
where I’ve tried making comments for each step, if anyone wants to check for faults or whatever (possible to open with regular text editor).

I've heard from folks in my guild that they are disallowing equipping normal+heroic versions of the same trinket, e.g. the ever-popular dual Reign, for ICC trinkets like the coveted DFO. I haven't seen any Blue posts mentioning such a thing though - has anyone else heard something like this?