This is the thing...

If you follow what I PMed you earlier, you should see that I never advocate clipping a MF nor do I believe our rotation is going to be easily nailed down to something like "always refresh after Eclipse." It's just not that simple.

Here's how I forsee things, and I am going under the impression of a 1 DoT rotation:

When Moonfire expires, refresh it:
1. If you are not in an Eclipse
2. Any time during Lunar Eclipse
3. If there are X seconds left on Solar Eclipse where X = 15 sec (normal MF duration) - the time it takes cast a Starfire after proccing a Lunar eclipse.

When IS expires, refresh it:
1. If you are not in an Eclipse
2. Never during a Lunar Eclipse
3. If there are at least 6 seconds left on Solar Eclipse

That should give you the maximum DPS possible because that spells out the times in which it is the best opportunity to cast one of the two DoTs, but this isn't simple at all. It's not like you can just present one condition for refreshing a DoT and achieve the best results.

Moonfire is 15s with Nature's Splendor. Also the "6s left on IS" is a bit oversimplistic. The calculation of when it's worth waiting until the end of Eclipse to refresh a DoT is a lot messier, we've talked about it a whole bunch on this thread. But since in reality you're just casting IS for the debuff anyway, and DoT applications are usually dictated by movement, and it's convenient to cast it during non-Eclipse phases anyway for the timing reason described in the guide, solving this problem exactly is not a high priority.

What you describe is essentially what we've been doing the whole time. The major material question is whether it's worth swapping to a system of planned refreshes right after Eclipse only. This is also a question that's been going on all through WLK, and the answer was "no" early on, but I think it might be "yes" now.

No, that is with Glyph of Insect Swarm. The rules that I put forth assume that you are glyphed for that DoT. I also think that we'll drop down to one 1 DoT in our rotation for maximum DPS. Simply put, if you are not using the Insect Swarm Glyph then Insect Swarm is a DPS loss to cast, unless you have nothing else to do (for instance, during movement). This holds true for MF also, although off hand I don't remember if you can get by with just Starfire glyph. I'll have to double check that, although anyone can look at their WrathCalcs sheet and see how MF stacks up while extended.

And Arawethion, first of all, I fixed the duration error, thanks. Not quite sure what I was thinking... However, the difference I'm proposing is in dropping one of the DoTs from our rotation. If you use the Focus and Starfall glyphs, then use the Glyph of Insect Swarm and avoid casting MF unless you're on the move. If you're not using glyph of Focus, then use Moonfire/Starfire glyphs and drop IS.

Whether you want to apply an unglyphed IS for the hit debuff is a separate matter entirely (and one that I'm not on the fence about), but based on the DPET of the spells, I believe this is the correct path.

Note that the team robot tool (another thread, this forum) seems to be in a pretty good place for these when-to-refresh-dot questions. The simulators (robot and simcraft) probably do a better job of measuring Nature's Grace interactions with our DoTs and cooldowns.

Unlike Simcraft, you can't configure Team Robot to support fights with movement, but for small tweaks to rotations or gear/talents/glyphs it is much easier to use. Team Robot seems to be a bit slower than Simcraft (during simulations), but not painfully slow.

Set at 1000 runs, DPS results are roughly +/- 0.3%.

For the rotation Hamlet has been talking about, in the default rotation change:

Insect Swarm if NOT( target has Insect Swarm)

to

Insect Swarm if (NOT(target has Insect Swarm) AND (eclipse solar is ready))

with a similar change for Moonfire.

I'm seeing:

at t9 levels, only refreshing DoTs between eclipses is a DPS loss (MF before either Eclipse, for t9 idol).

at t10 levels, SF MF IS glyphs, (aceofsween's Mooboom), using DoTs only between Eclipse, and only to boost IIS for the next Eclipse is a toss-up (within the margin of error). Since that means you get more out of "DoT during movement" it is probably superior, overall.

at t10 levels, SF MF SFL glyphs, the limited DoT strategy is a win even on a PW fight. However this glyphing strategy is slightly worse overall (pre Starfall buff, PW fight).

My guild leader pugged with another guild this week and made note of an odd behavior of BQL's Shroud of Sorrow triggering reflective auras like Thorns. I've seen (in forums and no place really "official") that other things like a shaman's shields will be triggered from this aura and its has been common knowledge that Owlkin Frenzy has been triggered by this. I myself have not yet done the fight in 10 or 25 but have been tasked with investigating the merit of this claim. I'm sure when my guild gets there we'll need all the damage we can get so I'm wondering if anyone can confirm that Shroud of Sorrow does cause Thorns to damage BQL every 2 seconds as it occurs. I'm kinda hoping its not the case as I am forgetful enough as it is the keep Thorns on our tanks 247 and the idea of me being the druid with highest spellpower responsible for single target buffing 25 people before each attempt isn't appealing. But Thorns damage times number of targets with thorns active times number of ticks of shroud over the duration of the fight could add up. I don't have that guild's combat logs and I didn't think to ask my guild leader to ask for them but anyone who could confirm this (and similar things like ret aura) actually work (and maybe recommend a mod to preserve my mental health from single buffing) would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. Useful for Marrowgar hard maybe?

I haven't heard about this, but it makes perfect sense. BQL's aura is really weird in that it triggers Water Shield and OF and similar things. Probably an oversight that's unique to her aura. Thorns is worth trying, although I've never heard anything specific. I'll test tomorrow evening if nobody else does.

e: ok, good

I'm looking at a log where two tanks (DK and Paladin) are doing Thorns damage. A resto druid shows "Thorns Fades" three minutes into the fight, but his Thorns did no damage.

I see Thorns procs from Hits and Delirious Slash, but not from Shroud. (47 total procs from two tanks, over three minutes).

I tried this yesterday, and had a very nice amount of procs on the whole night. We did about 6-7 tries, so I could really test it and see it proc very often during the whole fight.
Unfortunately I don't have the logs since our WoL recorder wasn't in the raid last night

The languish mechanic should have absolutely nothing to do with your rotation. I think you may be over-thinking things. Most of the answers to the questions you're asking are in the process of discussion right now, and have largely been already answered (at least to the degree that an answer is available) within the past 3 pages of this thread.

Here's the big stat-reworking post:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Cataclysm Stat & System Changes

I'm sure there will be extensive commentary on this pretty much everywhere. In truth, it doesn't have too many serious ramifications for theorycraft at the moment. That will come when we see the new talent trees. But for now, I think we can anticipate that acquiring loot will be a bit less of a pain in Cataclysm. If they do it right, we'll share loot with Resto always.

I've actually been reading the thread for the past 20 or so pages. If someone had posted about a rotation with languish, I must've missed it. The only thing that I read is just waiting for languish to tick lowers our DPS, so what if we use a global to refresh a dot that has fallen and naturally have languish tick and then refreshing languish? My question is if that would be a DPS increase or not--I haven't tested it yet because it's extremely difficult to test in raid situations, but I hope to test it soon.