I run around trying to get into a crash when there's not one currently down in a good location :P - don't worry about not dps'ing the whole time - it's definitely the way that fight is designed - melee does consistent damage the entire duration of the fight, and casters catch up in 20 second bursts when they get to stand in crashes.
Spreading out a lot is good in theory but if you're TOO spread out, the potential to get an unusable crash is much higher, and that is a pretty huge dps loss since half your dps is holding out until they can stand in one.
I do my whole rotation in the crashes, at least initially - if there's a bloodlust, though, the haste is just too brutal to do anything but basically starfire spam (I was actually clipping gcd on starfires, which was amusing, but the numbers you'll see at that point will make you very happy)
Since General is all about DPM rather than DPS, and because Shadow Crash gives so much haste, I've been spamming Starfire in crashes in our last 2 kills.
If there's no crash up (or its too crowded), get in melee and try to proc a clearcast (use this on Starfall if it's up) or bandage the nearest person (your healers should only heal themselves and the MT) or try to proc clearcasts with Nature's Grasp whenever its up.
On fights you have a crit buff on (loatheb etc) and your crit chance is well over 100% with a lunar proc, is it agreed upon going for a solar rotation?
As rumored, the spirit -> SP conversion has been doubled in the new PTR build.
I suppose the reason they put spirit on gear in the first place, is that blizzard wants us to solar eclipse? That has to be the only answer, since I have no mana problems on any ulduar fight whatsoever. That is however with 2/3 Intensity and 3/3 moonglow.
Now that the 4set bonus on T8 has been buffed, and with the recent spirit buff, maybe this set is worth taking overall?
I haven't done any theorycrafting on it yet, but will try to do some over the next couple of days. I suppose solar eclipse means that we have to drop loads of haste (which will happen with T8 anyways) to prevent clipping, and rather up the crit and spellpower. I'm not sure if I like the idea of totally rebalancing my gear too much.
Just my thoughts on the topic. Hopefully some other smartie comes with a perfect equation, or it is being updated in rawr.
I suppose the reason they put spirit on gear in the first place, is that blizzard wants us to solar eclipse? That has to be the only answer, since I have no mana problems on any ulduar fight whatsoever. That is however with 2/3 Intensity and 3/3 moonglow.
1st. Why use 3/3 Moonglow when you could put another point in Intensity which is alot better?
2nd. Perhaps the reason they improved spirit is so it becomes a little better for us and our t8 isn't as bad as it previously was?
1st. Why use 3/3 Moonglow when you could put another point in Intensity which is alot better?
2nd. Perhaps the reason they improved spirit is so it becomes a little better for us and our t8 isn't as bad as it previously was?
1: That's not the issue.
2: I didn't talk about why they improved it, I talked about why they included it in the first place.
No, it's so healers and caster DPS can share drops. Nice try, though.
That explains all the spirit on the balance set, right?
It's there so they can fill out the item budget with things that are good, but not great and then fill it out in Icecrown with stuff that's great. That makes the last tier of gear better than just the item level would indicate. There was at least one blue post that said as much with regard to Naxx itemization a few months ago.
I suppose the reason they put spirit on gear in the first place, is that blizzard wants us to solar eclipse? That has to be the only answer, since I have no mana problems on any ulduar fight whatsoever. That is however with 2/3 Intensity and 3/3 moonglow.
Now that the 4set bonus on T8 has been buffed, and with the recent spirit buff, maybe this set is worth taking overall?
I haven't done any theorycrafting on it yet, but will try to do some over the next couple of days. I suppose solar eclipse means that we have to drop loads of haste (which will happen with T8 anyways) to prevent clipping, and rather up the crit and spellpower. I'm not sure if I like the idea of totally rebalancing my gear too much.
Just my thoughts on the topic. Hopefully some other smartie comes with a perfect equation, or it is being updated in rawr.
2/3 Intensity and 3/3 Moonglow (and 1/1 OOC assumed) is a lot of mana talents. If you're not having mana problems ever you should consider dropping a few. That said, Blizzard realizes that spirit is not a good mana stat for moonkins (it is for resto), and this is not the reason they put it on our gear.
The reasons Blizzard put spirit on gear are:
1. Complexity of gearing - Spirit is a stat. Having one more stat to itemize with makes gearing more interesting. Caster gear already has less stats then melee gear. You may not care or agree, but I assure you this is a consideration.
2. Gear consolidation I - holy priests and resto druids want spirit. Blizzard wants less kinds of gear usable by more people, for excellent reasons extensively covered in many other places. So they try to push healers and casters to want and use the same gear.
3. Gear consolidation II - this is doubly applicable to leather gear, since the ratio of healers to casters is much more biased towards the former than in cloth wearers.
4. As Kluger mentions, preventing mudflation is also a consideration, though I think a more minor one at this point.
The problem is that spirit is a vastly inferior stat for moonkins, which undermines points 2 and 3. The increase of the spirit-->SP conversion to 30% is an attempt to make spirit gear viable for moonkins, and narrow the gap between those people who managed to get the (very rare, always cloth) spirit-free pieces and those who are using "standard" leather caster gear.
To see how effective this is let's revisit Eilt's comparison of the Robes of Umbral Brute to T8.25 chest from the last page of this thread. If we assume you socket T8 with +19 SP and Umbral with SP/SPI for socket bonus, we see that the T8 gains 32 SP and loses 7 haste and 58 crit against the Umbral robe. The non-spirit gear is clearly still better (as expected), but I'm holding off on final conclusions since I don't have the Rawr stat weights handy.
Hello, I've read through most of this thread and am attempting to gain some more clarification on Boomkin's AoE abilities. Due to search limitations with the site, I'm not able to properly search this thread for the information I need. I have a few questions concerning how Balance Druids perform in AoE situations and how viable they are in them. With Ulduar's bosses, there are many situations where a druid in my guild uses the argument that the spec is very weak for AoE and if this is true (Mimiron/X002/Auriya for example), should I have the Balance Druid tank the head while the warlock does adds..?
What is a typical Boomkin Area of Effect Rotation (AoE)?
How effective is a Boomkin's AoE in comparison to other classes?
During the AoE phases of encounters, are they more suited to continue single target DPS or would it be more beneficial for the raid/kill if they focused on the boss?
I apologize for my ignorance on the class and hope my questions aren't to dumbed down for the elitist jerks here
We were limiting the people who could stand in shadow crash to two to avoid the siphon becoming a real issue.
And that's what caused the problems. You should never be casting spells outside of Shadow Crashes. All casters should stand in them at all times. Otherwise you will end up running OOM. If people run away asap when getting a Siphon Life, you'll live.
Use a Saronite cloud whenever you're at 50% mana to avoid ever running dry.
Originally Posted by Knofle
I suppose the reason they put spirit on gear in the first place, is that blizzard wants us to solar eclipse? That has to be the only answer, since I have no mana problems on any ulduar fight whatsoever. That is however with 2/3 Intensity and 3/3 moonglow.
Omen of Clarity > Intensity > Dreamstate > Moonglow
Putting more than 1 point in Moonglow is pointless, since it's the weakest of all our mana regen talents.
Personally, I only have one point in OoC and the only fight I have mana problems on is Yogg-Saron (3rd phase).
1st. Why use 3/3 Moonglow when you could put another point in Intensity which is alot better?
2nd. Perhaps the reason they improved spirit is so it becomes a little better for us and our t8 isn't as bad as it previously was?
Moonglow is the easiest mana talent to put points in as it has the smallest negative impact on your dps (your selections are Imp MF or Genesys, essentially). Putting another point in Intensity means you'd have to drop a point out of some other dps talent such as iIS, Typhoon, or Starfall.
Putting more than 1 point in Moonglow is pointless, since it's the weakest of all our mana regen talents.
Moonglow is approximately equivalent in value to Dreamstate, and about 2/3rds as effective as intensity, but it's at a position in the talent tree where you only have to give up Improved Moonfire to get 3/3; Improved Moonfire is a pretty bad DPS talent, making Moonglow quite high value when looking at what to use to obtain more regen.
For Vezax you should only use vapors if you have to. Estimate the fight length left and how much mana you have left, plus keeping track of how many clouds there are. Pay attention when in a shadow crash and make sure that you don't let the last spell cast when the crash effect ends, or else you're wasting a large amount of mana for very little damage.
Moonglow is approximately equivalent in value to Dreamstate, and about 2/3rds as effective as intensity, but it's at a position in the talent tree where you only have to give up Improved Moonfire to get 3/3; Improved Moonfire is a pretty bad DPS talent, making Moonglow quite high value when looking at what to use to obtain more regen.
Good point, I stand corrected.
I really don't think you should need anything else beyond 1/1 OoC and 2/3 Intensity though, so you might as well pick Improved Moonfire 3/3.
It depends on what fights you're doing really. We've been doing Freya 3e 10 man this week, and with having to give innervate to healers/combat ressed targets my mana has been running pretty dry at times even with 3/3 Moonglow and 2/3 Intensity. Yogg25 is also pretty tight on mana at points. I tend to use AoE pretty agressively at any stage where it can be used on most fights (and I tend to use Typhoon a lot on the move) so mana is probably more of an issue for me than for other more conservative players. 3/3 Moonglow is also quite good for Vezax as it's the only mana talent that has any effect.
I really don't think you should need anything else beyond 1/1 OoC and 2/3 Intensity though, so you might as well pick Improved Moonfire 3/3.
We're back to the point of negative impact on your dps. Picking up 3/3 Moonglow instead of 1/3 Moonglow and 2/2 Improved Moonfire has only a very minor negative impact on your dps. Picking up 2/3 Intensity has a larger negative impact on your dps. You're now removing more valuable valuable points in dps talents in order to get that additional mana regen.
Hello, I've read through most of this thread and am attempting to gain some more clarification on Boomkin's AoE abilities. Due to search limitations with the site, I'm not able to properly search this thread for the information I need. I have a few questions concerning how Balance Druids perform in AoE situations and how viable they are in them. With Ulduar's bosses, there are many situations where a druid in my guild uses the argument that the spec is very weak for AoE and if this is true (Mimiron/X002/Auriya for example), should I have the Balance Druid tank the head while the warlock does adds..?
What is a typical Boomkin Area of Effect Rotation (AoE)?
How effective is a Boomkin's AoE in comparison to other classes?
During the AoE phases of encounters, are they more suited to continue single target DPS or would it be more beneficial for the raid/kill if they focused on the boss?
I apologize for my ignorance on the class and hope my questions aren't to dumbed down for the elitist jerks here
In regards to rotation, there isn't much of a rotation. On trash, spam hurricane whenever possible. Pop Starfall if it's not on CD and it's not gonna pull extra packs/break CC. Do the same with Typhoon as you did Starfall. If you're low on mana, switch back to single target. On bosses, hurricane is a huge cut in your mana, try to refrain from using it if at all possible. If you can and is needed, pop Hurricane when you have an Omen of Clarity proc.
Compared to other classes, we're prolly weaker than most. But we do put up a good fight when we have Starfall up..
Just felt like sharing my recent Ulduar experiences and proclaim my acceptance of the current itemization:
I've been running my old Naxx BiS gear through Ulduar since I didn't like the idea of losing some ~100 haste and ~6% crit for ~50 sp and ~120 spi. But I've also had horrible mana issues which led to picking up both 3/3 Intensity and 3/3 Moonglow (Look at me I'm General Vezax specced). Even then I had problems while learning Yogg-Saron. So tonight, which also ended with our first Yogg kill, I equipped that spirit ridden T8 and all my mana problems were gone. I was tossing Typhoons and Starfalls left and right and still ended up with nearly full mana giving my Innervate to a Priest in late P3. (I did do a try or two in my old BiS gear to compare, but it didn't result in any dps gains - quite the opposite even, since I couldn't spend mana as freely.)
I was sitting at 825 spi fully buffed, and I did use an early Innervate on myself most tries, but in retrospect I don't really think that was needed. I didn't use a mana pot either. Too much mana is not a good thing of course, but I'm glad to be back to that again.
With the upcoming changes to the T8 4p, Innervate and imp.Moonkin Aura I feel confident enough to drop some points in Moonglow and maybe even Intensity, and start wearing my shiny Ulduar gear full time instead of just dragging it along in my bags.
What I'm trying to say I guess is that I thought the time between Naxx and Hard Mode BiS gear would be a series of painful choices between decently itemized Naxx gear and the "Crit and Haste had a fight and now they refuse to share itemslot" spirit gear with higher ilvl. But it turns out I'm already over it. It doesn't hurt at all.
05/04/09, 8:10 PM
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