Throwing off instant starfires as soon as it proced is important to prevent buff selfrefreshing, in my opnion this is dps gain even under eclipse effect.
I can confirm that. Even under the effect of solar-eclipse, casting the instant starfire is a dps gain.
The overall dps-gain of the 4T8 bonus is somewhat lower for a solar-eclipse rotation, but still significant.
If my calculations are correct, the changes to the 4T8 bonus (supposing the bug gets fixed) and to the spirit-spellpower conversion make the set viable. It seems that a gearset with 4T8 can compete with or even overtake a template with 2T8 damagewise.
In regards to 4t8, I'll be rolling with Legs and Hands for sure... but I'm torn with the head, shoulders, and chest pieces.
I think the biggest factor is going to be how much hit rating I end up needing on my tier stuff. The T8.5 shoulders are pretty poor and since I'll likely be keeping with a lunar rotation the haste on [Malleable Steelweave Mantle] is better than the crit on 8.5. Of course I'll take whatever drops first for now and subbing in [Collar of the Wyrmhunter] for the helm or [Robes of the Umbral Brute] would be pretty nice too.
In all the talk of which rotation is better, how much of the decision hangs on the T8 set piece bonus? It seems to me that the bonus lends itself strongly toward a lunar eclipse, or at the very least a solar eclipse with SF when eclipse is on CD. Others have posted that it's still beneficial to fire off an instant SF during solar eclipse, but wouldn't the bonus be more significant if you were using a lunar eclipse rotation?
Also, an aside: I recently acquired the IS idol. As a result, I've been altering my rotation slightly to try to keep IS up more often, a strategy that I think will continue to be optimal once I get 4 piece T8. But, until then, it seems to be that it's a pretty breakeven decision between refreshing IS more often and using the idol or staying with the SF idol and the pre 3.1 rotation standard (which usually saw 85-90% MF uptime while only having 70-75% IS uptime on averages). My numbers just come from a bunch of training dummy rotations - does anyone have anything more substantial showing that one method is clearly superior to the other?
In all the talk of which rotation is better, how much of the decision hangs on the T8 set piece bonus? It seems to me that the bonus lends itself strongly toward a lunar eclipse, or at the very least a solar eclipse with SF when eclipse is on CD. Others have posted that it's still beneficial to fire off an instant SF during solar eclipse, but wouldn't the bonus be more significant if you were using a lunar eclipse rotation?
Also, an aside: I recently acquired the IS idol. As a result, I've been altering my rotation slightly to try to keep IS up more often, a strategy that I think will continue to be optimal once I get 4 piece T8. But, until then, it seems to be that it's a pretty breakeven decision between refreshing IS more often and using the idol or staying with the SF idol and the pre 3.1 rotation standard (which usually saw 85-90% MF uptime while only having 70-75% IS uptime on averages). My numbers just come from a bunch of training dummy rotations - does anyone have anything more substantial showing that one method is clearly superior to the other?
The ulduar idol sucks :/
You are better with steadfast renewal in a wrath rotation and shooting star in a sf rotation
SF rotation: 3SF : 1IS in casts and shooting star is already better.
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In very round numbers, the IS idol is worth 100 per tick. The SF idol is worth 200 per non-crit hit, 400 per crit. (these numbers actually undervalue SF by perhaps 10%).
If you look at your logs for most fights, you'll probably see 2*SF_normals + 4*SF_crits > IS ticks. I've had fights where this wasn't true, but they aren't common in PvE.
Thanks for the responses guys. Since you all seem to be so firm in your convictions, I looked over the logs again to try to figure out why my data was so close, and it just looks like it might be RNG based (I previously miscalculated the crit %). By the looks of the last few posts, the Ulduar idol is obviously inferior. Also, the 4 piece T8 bonus shouldn't change anything. I appreciate the help.
Alright, guys, I have afew questions. I have been going through pages here for quite some time. I've finally actually signed up and now I can finally ask my questions, instead of searching through pages for it. I've looked and figured some of them out because of you number crunching gods <3 Thank you for that.
So here's my first one; With the gear I'm in (I'd give a link but the armory isn't bringing up my character..)
If you do armory me, then you'd see I can get rid of my Main hand, (I hope to do so with the Fist weapon from naxx 25)
My trinket from Vh can be replaced now with the badge one which will be very nice. Aswell for a helm upgrade to Valor would help for a minimal upgrade, but all helps.
Second; my rotation goes like this. Mf-IS-W(till eclipse pops)-Sf(End clipse)/Reapply IS-MF ((Repeat))
Am I doing something wrong? With the gear im wearing and the glyphs I have, should I be doing a different rotation?
Third; I'm always told I don't have enough haste, and I always fall under 3k dps, when really people tell me I should push 3-4k easy with my gear. With what i've said and my gear lay out, what am I doing wrong?
Fourth; My spec was taken from a top dps Boomkin on a chart I saw, i'm seeing alot of people with this - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Should I swap my spec over to that one?
Firth; Glyph problems, I think I have my self Glyphed wrong D:
The overall dps-gain of the 4T8 bonus is somewhat lower for a solar-eclipse rotation, but still significant.
If my calculations are correct, the changes to the 4T8 bonus (supposing the bug gets fixed) and to the spirit-spellpower conversion make the set viable. It seems that a gearset with 4T8 can compete with or even overtake a template with 2T8 damagewise.
Anyway, this is not the main purpose of my post ^^ Assuming the T8 gets fixed we will have to live with much lower crit raiting if we decide to use it. This leads to quite a problem with proccing Lunar eclipse ... well, mostly with it's randomness. My observations lead me to thinking that if I don't manage to proc a Lunar eclipse during first DoTs duration, switching to SF (mainly to add those few more seconds to MF) and eventual proccing Solar eclipse seems to give better dps results than tryint to proc Lunar at all cost. Anyone could support me with some maths to this observation?
Also, I am wondering what would be a reasonable crit level (raid buffed) so Lunar eclipse can get a reasonable proc rate. I mean, before Ulduar I was all about spellpower and haste stacking since I never really had problems with proccing Lunar but now keeping my haste favourizing gearing method I really feel I'm having a problem with the RNG - so I am really confused when it comes to future gear decissions since I feel I can't let my crit drop any more and in fact should raise it a bit. In fact for fights like Hodir gaining 6% crit from switching to T7 atcost of 70 spellpower, 34 haste and 2xT8 bonus seems to be giving better results.
I mean, before Ulduar I was all about spellpower and haste stacking since I never really had problems with proccing Lunar but now keeping my haste favourizing gearing method I really feel I'm having a problem with the RNG
This is due to a combination of lack of crit on T8 pieces, loss of 5% crit from 4t7, and loss of 5% crit due to the improved scorch nerf. If you want to return to the 'better' level of crit from prior to 3.1, you'll need about 10% more crit than you currently have, which probably isn't going to happen (unless you stack crit to the detriment of better pieces). It may also be that you're just noticing those times when eclipse is slow to proc - occaisionally I notice that it takes a long time to proc eclipse (30 seconds+) but it may only be once during a raiding night, while the entire rest of the time eclipse is proccing at a perfectly reasonable rate. Sure, it's annoying for that one eclipse, but in context of the whole time spent raiding it's really a very low percentage of eclipses that take a long time to proc with a reasonable crit rate (~25% raid buffed in moonkin form on the character sheet, or 40% crit on starfire/wrath).
Remember that for Hodir although you gain 5% crit from 4t7, you're losing the 2t8 bonus making starfire under eclipse less likely to crit. Considering the duration of buffs available in the fight, I'd rather be able to make better use of the 15 second period of eclipse than have a 5% increased crit rate generally.
Anecdotally has anyone else noticed the Starlight on Hodir allowing <1 second GCD? I could swear I was chaining wraths at 0.7 seconds cast time yesterday while in it without queuing problems, when normally I notice issues with queuing at ~0.8 seconds cast time under bloodlust. Unfortunately I can't provide any proof of this, so it'll have to wait for next week for me to check.
Hodir is a fight where crit scales insanely well due to Storm Power and haste badly due to Starlight though, so taking Hodir as an example isn't the best idea.
This is due to a combination of lack of crit on T8 pieces, loss of 5% crit from 4t7, and loss of 5% crit due to the improved scorch nerf. If you want to return to the 'better' level of crit from prior to 3.1, you'll need about 10% more crit than you currently have, which probably isn't going to happen (unless you stack crit to the detriment of better pieces). It may also be that you're just noticing those times when eclipse is slow to proc - occaisionally I notice that it takes a long time to proc eclipse (30 seconds+) but it may only be once during a raiding night, while the entire rest of the time eclipse is proccing at a perfectly reasonable rate. Sure, it's annoying for that one eclipse, but in context of the whole time spent raiding it's really a very low percentage of eclipses that take a long time to proc with a reasonable crit rate (~25% raid buffed in moonkin form on the character sheet, or 40% crit on starfire/wrath).
Counting in all raid buffs my 2xT8 gear set has around 38% crit chance on wrath raid buffed. The thing is tho I am kinda afraid to switch out any item with crit on if the alternative doesn't have crit too. The thing is the best spellpower items are usually also haste items. For example, I am using [Footsteps of Malygos] at the moment. Now I can't really decide if I should spend all that gold for crafts and get [Boots of Wintry Endurance] or maybe [Spellslinger's Slippers] or wait for when we start doing hard mode Leviathan and make some clothies unhappy and take [Boots of Fiery Resolution]. I know the last boots are quite superior to the rest but that again means losing crit.
Remember that for Hodir although you gain 5% crit from 4t7, you're losing the 2t8 bonus making starfire under eclipse less likely to crit. Considering the duration of buffs available in the fight, I'd rather be able to make better use of the 15 second period of eclipse than have a 5% increased crit rate generally.
The problem lies mainly in proccing eclipse on this particular fight. Each time I tried to focus on proccing Lunar eclipse my dps was really miserable even when counting in bad luck with getting all the buffs. When I skipped eclipse at all and just spammed Starfire and focused on getting the buffs I had much better results. Now I do understand that Lunar eclipse + haste buff + crit dmg buff is a win but it's also very hard to get all 3 of those - happend to me once per few tries
Anecdotally has anyone else noticed the Starlight on Hodir allowing <1 second GCD? I could swear I was chaining wraths at 0.7 seconds cast time yesterday while in it without queuing problems, when normally I notice issues with queuing at ~0.8 seconds cast time under bloodlust. Unfortunately I can't provide any proof of this, so it'll have to wait for next week for me to check.
Hmm... on Hodir I haven't noticed (maybe because there is so much going on I wasn't paying attention) but I did on Vezax ^^
Last edited by Lilija : 05/08/09 at 6:48 AM.
Reason: typos
Anecdotally has anyone else noticed the Starlight on Hodir allowing <1 second GCD? I could swear I was chaining wraths at 0.7 seconds cast time yesterday while in it without queuing problems, when normally I notice issues with queuing at ~0.8 seconds cast time under bloodlust. Unfortunately I can't provide any proof of this, so it'll have to wait for next week for me to check.
I actually checked it with both bloodlust and without with getspellcooldown() and it was exactly 1sec in both cases.
Anecdotally has anyone else noticed the Starlight on Hodir allowing <1 second GCD? I could swear I was chaining wraths at 0.7 seconds cast time yesterday while in it without queuing problems, when normally I notice issues with queuing at ~0.8 seconds cast time under bloodlust. Unfortunately I can't provide any proof of this, so it'll have to wait for next week for me to check.
I threw on my crit heavy gear rather then my hast stuff, and sat in the haste buff on hodir and just spammed starfire. Good lord so much damage.
Anecdotally has anyone else noticed the Starlight on Hodir allowing <1 second GCD? I could swear I was chaining wraths at 0.7 seconds cast time yesterday while in it without queuing problems, when normally I notice issues with queuing at ~0.8 seconds cast time under bloodlust. Unfortunately I can't provide any proof of this, so it'll have to wait for next week for me to check.
I was definately clipping when trying to proc lunar eclipse with wrath, when they poped hero while I was in the moonlight, I was clipping GCD with starfire.
Alright, guys, I have afew questions. I have been going through pages here for quite some time. I've finally actually signed up and now I can finally ask my questions, instead of searching through pages for it. I've looked and figured some of them out because of you number crunching gods <3 Thank you for that.
So here's my first one; With the gear I'm in (I'd give a link but the armory isn't bringing up my character..)
If you do armory me, then you'd see I can get rid of my Main hand, (I hope to do so with the Fist weapon from naxx 25)
My trinket from Vh can be replaced now with the badge one which will be very nice. Aswell for a helm upgrade to Valor would help for a minimal upgrade, but all helps.
Second; my rotation goes like this. Mf-IS-W(till eclipse pops)-Sf(End clipse)/Reapply IS-MF ((Repeat))
Am I doing something wrong? With the gear im wearing and the glyphs I have, should I be doing a different rotation?
Third; I'm always told I don't have enough haste, and I always fall under 3k dps, when really people tell me I should push 3-4k easy with my gear. With what i've said and my gear lay out, what am I doing wrong?
Fourth; My spec was taken from a top dps Boomkin on a chart I saw, i'm seeing alot of people with this - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Should I swap my spec over to that one?
Firth; Glyph problems, I think I have my self Glyphed wrong D:
Thank you all for your help! :]
1. I am not sure what the question is.
2. Your gear is currently your feral gear, so we cannot tell the gear at the moment. However, the rotation is fine, except you have to consider whether you cast IFF, and then I would use IS before MF due to the SF glyph. Occasionally, you get bad luck with wrath procs, and MF gets off. This gets you an extra second.
You can reapply IS after the eclipse ends, and then again before the ICD is done, as well as MF. Starting a fresh new eclipse rotation with both DoTs at max uptime helps a lot.
3. Again, your gear isn't showing. But, 400 haste is the threshold for eclipses. < 400, you go with a Solar Eclipse (SF until eclipse, Wrath spam), > 400, with the other. There's a lot of talk in this thread about the exact mechanics of exterior haste (Bloodlust) which you may want to follow.
This is the basic talent spec I recommend. You have 7 points to distribute around, I choose Starfall, Typhoon, Force of nature, and for the last four, you can either get Owlkin Frenzy, Gale Winds, Imp. IS, or Intensity. A lot depends on your style and what fights you have trouble with.
5. You have the MF/SF glyphs, which are correct. The last is usually IS glyph, although I prefer Starfall, especially in Ulduar.
I threw on my crit heavy gear rather then my hast stuff, and sat in the haste buff on hodir and just spammed starfire. Good lord so much damage.
I do the same thing, putting on all my heavy crit and spellpower gear. Forget the eclipse rotation, just stand in the light and starfire like no tomorrow. I kept up my imp IS for and imp FF for the extra crit, and just moonfired nonstop. The reason I avoid wrath is because every now and then everything stacks up perfectly for you and yoru starfire crits become ridiculous. I pull on average 10k dps doing that, and I had to stop casting completely for a few seconds when I go upwards of 13k dps (when I get repeated 65-70k crits) as my threat would jump up way too high.)
Same plan on General Vezax. I only DPS in the black cloud, and I do not DPS for the first 30seconds or so to let the tank build up a good amount of aggro, and all I would cast is starfire. 10K dps again easily, probably more if I never had to battle rez, or run away from guildmates who don't notice their own debuffs =\
when doing 2-4 mobs trash pulls, i find myself falling behind a lot of classes (mages DK's rogues). I normally do my normal rotation, IS-MF-wrath untill eclipse.
how do a lot of you that stay on the top of the charts handle small trash pulls without aoeing?
i was wondering if spamming starfire waiting for a solar proc would yield more dps (or overall damage) because of the faster cast time and easier to swap targets (starfire is a pretty long cast time when mobs only have 2-300k hp remaining)
I had two questions, and I was hoping to draw on the experience of others.
1. Eclipse rotations seem to be extremes, haste stacked (lunar) or crit stacked (solar) - meaning that in the process of switching gear from one to the other, dps seems to drop. Thus the question is what crit rating are people stacking to before switching?
I recently tried moving from a lunar rotation to a solar one, dropped a few pieces of haste to pick up more crit. It really felt like a dps loss, although at time my dps would really spike during good crits under solar rotation. It felt like solar would be amazing, but my crit just wasn't high enough. I'm switching back to lunar until I can pick up a few more solid crit pieces. I think I just got excited over solar eclipse and my gear didn't support it. Rawr and theorycrafting show it's definitly feasible, but those tests seem to be done with everyones BiS gear which nobody has all of that yet. Has anyone experimented and found a good level for crit rating to be before switching?
2. 4 piece T7 VS 2 piece T8 under Lunar eclipse, the impact to being able to proc Lunar with losing 5% bonus from t8.
Nothing worse than spamming 10 wraths straight and not getting a Lunar eclipse. And losing the 5% bonus from t8 seems to compound the problem, dropping wrath crits by 5%. RNG will always be, and we'll always see a string of non crits or crits that don't proc, but what's the balance. We know that 2 piece t8 is a dps boost, but do those simulations use perfect rotations, where it procs Eclipse as soon as it's up every time? I guess what I'm getting at is with the overall crit nerfs and then dropping 5% to pick up 2 piece t8, in a non perfect eclipse rotation, where you have to spam 5 or 6 or more wraths to get eclipse to proc, how much of an upgrade is it still? Similar to #1, is it better to wait for multiple upgrades, including some crit increase before switching to the 2 piece t8 when using Lunar?
I had two questions, and I was hoping to draw on the experience of others.
1. Eclipse rotations seem to be extremes, haste stacked (lunar) or crit stacked (solar) - meaning that in the process of switching gear from one to the other, dps seems to drop. Thus the question is what crit rating are people stacking to before switching?
I recently tried moving from a lunar rotation to a solar one, dropped a few pieces of haste to pick up more crit. It really felt like a dps loss, although at time my dps would really spike during good crits under solar rotation. It felt like solar would be amazing, but my crit just wasn't high enough. I'm switching back to lunar until I can pick up a few more solid crit pieces. I think I just got excited over solar eclipse and my gear didn't support it. Rawr and theorycrafting show it's definitly feasible, but those tests seem to be done with everyones BiS gear which nobody has all of that yet. Has anyone experimented and found a good level for crit rating to be before switching?
2. 4 piece T7 VS 2 piece T8 under Lunar eclipse, the impact to being able to proc Lunar with losing 5% bonus from t8.
Nothing worse than spamming 10 wraths straight and not getting a Lunar eclipse. And losing the 5% bonus from t8 seems to compound the problem, dropping wrath crits by 5%. RNG will always be, and we'll always see a string of non crits or crits that don't proc, but what's the balance. We know that 2 piece t8 is a dps boost, but do those simulations use perfect rotations, where it procs Eclipse as soon as it's up every time? I guess what I'm getting at is with the overall crit nerfs and then dropping 5% to pick up 2 piece t8, in a non perfect eclipse rotation, where you have to spam 5 or 6 or more wraths to get eclipse to proc, how much of an upgrade is it still? Similar to #1, is it better to wait for multiple upgrades, including some crit increase before switching to the 2 piece t8 when using Lunar?
I feel as though the bigger impact is having under 400 haste makes Solar slightly better except in bloodlust/similiar buffs or mana intensive fights. I think it has a lot less to do with crit, crit is just more beneficial after you hit that soft haste cap on wrath spam. I personally use Lunar unless I know for sure there won't be a hero, or I won't have time to idol swap before hero.
This also depends on rotation, it seems like the solar eclipse benefits more the moment you get your 2pc, but without any math or anything, just personal experience, the Lunar seemed to suffer at first, then balance out more with more crit from gear.
Also h3llraiser: I feel like dots should only be applied if you think the mob will be up the full duration. I usually wrath spam to proc lunar eclipse on trash. Sometimes I don't purely out of boredom.
I also still have the habit of moonfiring as a killing blow, despite it being glyphed since the great Sunwell nerf. Hard to break a habit that's 4 years old I suppose.
Finally, on Hodir, doing hard mode tonight we found making sure our tank got a charge from 1 or 2 of the crit buffs going out. 1 is absolutely nessicary for threat as far as I can tell, 2 maybe.
Poromu, I noticed you mentioning idol swapping. It made we wonder, isn't it "dead" since SWP times when weapon switching in combat got nerfed? Just wanna make sure I haven't missed something
Poromu, I noticed you mentioning idol swapping. It made we wonder, isn't it "dead" since SWP times when weapon switching in combat got nerfed? Just wanna make sure I haven't missed something
It's comparable with weapon changes for innervate. When you use a solar rotation and have to switch to a lunar one or just plain sf spam because of bloodlust or other haste buffs, you can change your idol to maximize damage.
This can best be done while running and having no instants to cast or with a macro that swaps the idol right after an instant, during the gcd.
Yep, I only swap idol's while moving from fight mechanics and all my instants are spent/applied.
Even then to be perfectly honest, i've chilled out a lot on it during hard mode attempts. There's more to pay attention to than tweaking another 10-20dps. (Not sure on the numbers, just the idea behind it.)
While it remains a foggy issue as to solar or lunar being better, or most likely gear dependant, im going to stick to my lunar rotation since i enjoy it better playstyle wise, and i find it difficult to not have too much haste to cut in a lunar one. So my question for some of you math calc people is: obviously the lunar rotation excels with increasing levels of haste, while at the same time us boomkins have always seeked high sp. So for gemming my new ulduar gear and such, do I want SP or do I want haste? Is there a cossover point where you want to gem for one over the other?
While it remains a foggy issue as to solar or lunar being better, or most likely gear dependant, im going to stick to my lunar rotation since i enjoy it better playstyle wise, and i find it difficult to not have too much haste to cut in a lunar one. So my question for some of you math calc people is: obviously the lunar rotation excels with increasing levels of haste, while at the same time us boomkins have always seeked high sp. So for gemming my new ulduar gear and such, do I want SP or do I want haste? Is there a cossover point where you want to gem for one over the other?
05/07/09, 12:12 PM
Thank you for that.
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