I don't want to carve those numbers in rock either. I only know that I was generally displeased by my raid performance compared to other raid members until someone suggested I should try to follow some guides instead of using my own mathematical conclusions. All guides I've read at that time favored the lunar rotation. So I did like a dozen mock fights at the training puppets with both rotations and discovered myself that I had it easier to achieve high DPS when using lunar.

I guess we all know how hard it is to nail down moonkin DPS to a specific numer with all the RNG involved in our mechanics.

In the end, isn't all of that moot, since the 3.2 changes favor using both?

It makes a difference because if Solar Eclipse is much lower in terms of dps than Lunar Eclipse for someone then if there was an unlucky string of non-crits after Lunar they could find themselves in Solar when Lunar Eclipse's cooldown was over and in which case they probably should cancel Solar Eclipse to get back into Lunar asap.

Personally I'm not seeing this dps drop in practice, so I'd be inclined to only cancel Solar Eclipse in the above situation during Bloodlust where Lunar is far superior to Solar, but this mightn't be the case for everyone so it's arguably an open question where it really does come down to you whether it's better to end Solar Eclipses early or not.

That strategy never seemed to make much sense to me. Any eclipse DPS is always better than non-eclipse DPS regardless of its kind. Canceling an eclipse prematurely only results in reducing overall eclipse uptime for the whole fight and that can only be bad for your total DPS.

It would make a difference if there were a possibility to trade Wrath Eclipse's uptime 1:1 for Starfire Eclipse uptime, but there isn't. Even if the CD of the other eclipse is over, you'd begin a whole new cycle of trying to proc the other eclipse. Worst case: you may even end up with another 30 seconds of non-eclipse-proccing Wrath casts.

I think it has some merit in Bloodlust phases. Personally I wouldn't dream of using it outside of Bloodlust. The idea behind using outside of Bloodlust is to maximise the number of Lunar Eclipses in a fight, I've not worked out the maths to see if this is worthwhile though. With a large enough disparity between Lunar and Solar dps it probably would be recommended but I don't think that disparity is there outside of Bloodlust.


Edit: To expand on the above:

We want to maximise the number of Lunar Eclipses during the 40 seconds of Bloodlust for obvious reasons. Ideally we can fit one and two thirds in if we proc Lunar with our first Bloodlust Wrath cast. Then once Lunar is off cooldown we need to get it back up asap to maximise dps over the phase. Every extra second spent in Solar past this point is potentially a second we could have spent in Lunar. In order to maximise average dps in Bloodlust phases we should cancel Solar unless there's only a few seconds of Bloodlust left to go. Assuming an early Lunar proc during the Bloodlust phase we should almost always cancel Solar once Lunar is off-cooldown. It's only in situations where we go into Lunar late (i.e. close to 10 seconds into Bloodlust) that this is a dps loss. Where we proc Lunar just before Bloodlust is cast then the argument for cancelling Solar becomes even stronger.

The same logic then applies to someone who for whatever reason sees substantially lower dps during Solar phases. On average, given enough off a difference, it could be a winner, though you'd have to model it in order to work out how much of a difference would make it worthwhile.

I think the above is correct (in fact, that's exactly how I have it written up in my guide). You can confirm this all by looking at page 2 of the spreadsheet, which has DPET values for all your spells. Both Eclipsed nukes are similar in DPS, and significantly higher than uneclipsed nukes. So there's no reason to cancel Solar early. This does change during Bloodlust, when you should cancel early if Lunar is off ICD.

That said, Lunar is slightly higher DPS than Solar for most people, so anytime you have a chance of proccing both, go for Lunar. Lunar also has slightly better time to proc, allows you to start casting Wraths earlier (due to travel time), and often saves a GCD due to Moonfire extensions. Finally, with WiseEclipse, Lunar nearly always leads right into Solar anyway, so you definitely want to go for it when you can.

As currently implemented, it only cancels if more than 15 seconds remain on Bloodlust.

In reality, this feature is pretty moot since, if you're using the addon in the first place, Solar runs out before Lunar comes off ICD.

Excellent, thank you. The latter depends on one's crit rating no? It's very likely I'll go straight into Solar with 20% crit unbuffed but it's not guaranteed versus the case for you where it pretty much is.

Correct. Still though, it's over 90% for basically everyone.

Yeah, but the distribution of average time to proc Solar is interesting. For the 10% of the time, the next Starfire will have approx 45% or so chance of proccing Solar meaning on likelihood is around 2 Starfires to proc meaning 4ish seconds lost. It's what makes the soft crit cap so bloody attractive, it means your cycles are far tighter since it removes the above small but not insignificant time loss (as well as improving the time taken to proc Lunar).

The above is off the top of my head, so I could be very wrong here.

Well after my last gear upgrade ([Idol of Lunar Fury] +set 2t9, set 2t8.5 and using resto t9 pants as the 5th items i got 514 haste and 21.78% critical. Also using [Reign of the Unliving] i switch my talent tree and glyphs to THIS , with the rotation of spells: IS MF Wrath until Starfire Eclipse then Starfire x1 IS x1 Starfire till the end of eclipse, MF again and Starfire to enter Wrath eclipse. I have 5600-5800 DPS on Beast of northrend at Trial of the Grand Crusader (25man).
So if anyone has a better idea about talent build with this gear please let me know.

It took me a few seconds to wonder where your 54th-58th balance talents had gone. I think that the two points spent in Imp MF are much more beneficial than any points spent in Genesis. Imp MF gives you an additional 5/10% crit AND damage on your Moonfire ticks with 2 t9 as opposed to a 1% increase in damage from MF and IS (which additionally seems to have less uptime nowadays). As an aside, I think a point spent in Genesis is also much less beneficial than the 26k of potential burst from Treants every 3 minutes.
...I don't think much of Genesis is what it comes down to.
Lastly and unrelated, my dps has dropped by as much as 2k on all comparable fights over the last two weeks. This hit suddenly as I'd moved and was without internet for those two weeks, and having tried all of the obvious solutions (that I can think of) the only factor would be that my new internet has a latency of about 80 as opposed to that of 30 previously.

iMF helps with 2t9, and Force of Nature is a single GCD for 30-40k damage, and I can't even begin to tell you the countless times that Starfall has been proven a DPS gain on single targets, not even to mention the OoC procs and NG uptime factor of the spell.

If you want to put something in genesis, put 1 point from moonglow in it, and put the last 2 points in impMF, take FoN and Starfall, this will leave you with 2 points, I would spend one to max out iIS and if you want 1 in Brambles.

I don't have a large amount of ToC Heroic gear yet, but on a previous NrB Heroic kill I had 5.6k+ DPS, so if you are in higher iLvl I would expect higher numbers.

Well i prefered to add Genesis and not IMF cause IMF doesn't improve the critical (DoT) of MF and if you check i have also have the Glyph of Moonfire that decreasing MF instant dmg to 90% and increase DoT dmg 75%. So if you count +75% MF DoT dmg, +30% IS DoT dmg (glyph of IS) + Genesis you have a really good dmg from your DoT.
Critical (DoT) on MF with that talent build does about 2.5k -3k so i ll rather prefer to have more powerful DoTs than Force Of Nature every 3 minutes.

Genesis is a piddling DPS increase. Pretty much anything else in the tree does more.

I've noticed that Starfire glyph is refreshing moonfire indefinitely, without the 9 second limit in 3.2.2. I can't imagine it is anything but a bug as the tooltip on the glyph still states the 9 second limit. Has anyone heard anything about a change like this though?

So you're happy to spend 5 talent points to get a 5% damage increase on two DoTs rather than spend 2 points to get a 10% boost on the one that can crit? I really cannot see how this is a better option..

Even without 2T9, you get almost the same amount of dps from 10% more MF dps than 5% extra IS and MF dps for 3 points less points that you can plug into Force of Nature/IFF/Celestial Focus.

It's definately not intended. I thought I saw SaA tell me I had (6) ticks of Moonfire extended from the glyph, however now on a dummy I can't see to confirm it. It hasn't felt any different rotation wise for me though.

It was hotfixed.

Just noticed that moonfire dot crits are now 200%. They used to be 150% before the patch right?

3.22 Patch Notes:

Moonkin now take 15% less damage while stunned when in Moonkin form.

The daze effect from Typhoon has been lengthened from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.


The former will give us a little more survivability against Ignis, Icehowl and Champions. The latter is of use during Champions at least. Mostly badly needed pvp buffs though but with some limited PvE uses.

Vengeance affects them; nothing changed.