So quick question but when I was looking in my spreadsheet and testing stuff out on the dummies, I came across something. In our talent tree a lunar eclipse gives a 45% crit chance to starfire. When proccing it on the dummies, the buff on my screen showed the eclipse, and out of curiosity I highlited over it just to verify it was 45% (I was messing with crit that's why I was there) and the buff said "increase chance of starfire by30%".

Is it just a bug and should ignore it and add the 45% anyway or actually assume blizz screwed us and change stats?

Buffs tend to display the baseline tooltip of an ability even if it is improved. This has been a bug for a long time now and so you can ignore it. You do indeed get 45% chance to crit when you eclipse.

Edit: With 2T8, hovering over 3/3 Eclipse in your Talent Sheet displays 45% crit (increase from 30%) but the actual buff will display 30%.

Eclipse is 30%. (just checked my talent tree)

The 45% bonus is coming from 2pce T8 adding the extra 15%.

Ok guys, here is a quick question... Which set of weapons to choose?

Perdition: 1 yellow socket, 550 sp, 88 crit, 116 haste

relentless mace + offhand that together got: 1 blue socket, 680 sp , 0 crit, 25 haste


The main question is... is 100 sp better or worst than 90 crit + 90 haste?
Thanks for your time!

This post will surely be infracted, but just to use it to make a useful general point about comparing weapons:

Remember that staves get an extra +18 sp from their enchant--roughly equal to an extra socket. Since one-handers have only one socket, and staves can have 3 (effectively 4 with the enchant), they're actually pretty balanced at the moment. In particular, our BiS weapon pre-tribute is probably [Illumination].

Agreed. [Illumination] / [Enlightenment] currently beats any other main hand / off hand combo patch 3.2 has to offer.

And if you already own it, [Sufferance] / [Clemency] from the 25-man-heroic Tribute chest ist not really much of an upgrade worth wasting your DKP on it.

The lack of hit on the staff is one of it's biggest advantages over main/offhand combos. With 82 hit on our ilevel 245 tier helm and 59 hit on on our tier 8.5 pants, our optimal tier set has 141 of our 263 hit cap already. Many to most of the better itemized cloaks, rings, boots, necklaces, wrist pieces, and even several trinkets and gloves all are loaded with hit.
I'm having a very hard time staying below 300 hit, much less needing more, so if I will always take the non hit option, unless it is significantly inferior.

Exactly. If you are already at hit cap with [Illumination], replacing the staff with [Barb of Tarasque] and either [Mystifying Charm] or [Talisman of Heedless Sins] (your only sensible choices) will be a downgrade to your DPS (according to Rawr's model anyway) unless you can shift other items of your equipment to bring that +Hit back into play.

And that's the problematic part: at this stage of the game, your +Hit comes from either T9 items which you have to endure in order to get your set boni or from items that have no spirit but offer a rating combination of haste/hit or crit/hit like [Shroud of Displacement] or [Belt of Biting Cold]. The ideal item has crit and haste without spirit such as [Leggings of the Awakening].


Or to explain it differently:

You can categorize all caster-items into three categories of quality by their combination of spirit, hit, crit and haste (assuming they all have stamina, int and spell power):

1st grade: crit+haste
2nd grade: crit+hit, haste+hit
3rd grade: spirit+hit, spirit+crit, spirit+haste

What we strive for in our equipment ist to have as much items of the 1st grade as possible (unfortunately they are not available for every slot) with only as much 2nd grade items as we need to achieve our hit and haste caps. 2nd grade items are only stronger than 1st grade items as long as they fit into our hit cap. 3rd grade items are ALWAYS the least desirable choice if no item without spirit is available for that slot.

Blade of Tarasque is 2nd grade and the available off hand items for it are 2nd and 3rd grade. Illumination however is a 1st grade item and that alone makes it better despite being 13 item levels lower (which is also partially compensated by two more sockets and a stronger enchant).

Remembering there is a 1st grade weapon on Anub'arak 25 heroic. [Misery's End], although its not as open just yet as the other weapons listed. I actually have more of an issue with the increased haste on [Illumination] then most MH/OH combo's flying around right now. I peaked at 580 haste last week while trying to balance my stats only having just managed to get back relatively close to the 400 mark.

I much prefer having a little extra hit from the OH giving me options in regards to new necks/cloaks, then having extra haste which is only detrimental to my rotation as I play with an average of 250-350ms. Sometimes it's not just clear, cut and dry in regards to 1st stat > 2nd stat.

I have made some comparisons on staff / MH+OH of the same ilvl (or close to it). Took into account enchants and spirit conversions, as well as my view on gemming (ignore blue socket bonuses, gem with SP+haste/crit only if yellow bonus is SP). Didn't compare the heroic versions since i don't have access to them yet, but i guess the they both scale so the difference is the same.

1) [Enlightenment] compared to [Blade of the Silver Disciple]+[Chalice of Benedictus] (ilvl 232 compared to 232+232):
-18 stam
+1 intl
+11 haste
+77crit
-37 hit
-56 SP

I'd kinda use the staff here, but it's debatable.

2) [Enlightenment] compared to [Misery's End]+[Symbol of Transgression] (ilvl 232 compared to 245+245):
+24 crit
+50 haste
-44 stam
-24 intl
-96 SP
-50 hit

I would deffinetly take MH+OH here, but MH+OH combo is better partially due to higher ilvl. So, on the same ilvl>>>

3) [Enlightenment] (wanted to link the heroic one, but can't) compared to [Misery's End]+[Symbol of Transgression] (ilvl 245 compared to 245+245, used the heroic version for ilvl purposes, since i couldn't find a nice 2H in ToC 25):
+33 crit
+59 haste
-43 stam
-13 intl
-2 SP
-50 hit

I'd take the staff here.

My deduction out of all of this was that at same ilvl staff is better, before doing the comparison i would have sworn differently. The other staff available would be Cold Convergeance, but Enlightenment seems better.

I got to concede to that one. [Suffering's End] and [Mystifying Charm] add about 100 DPS compared to [Illumination].

But those two items are going to be a big dent in anyone's DKP purse while Illumination is practically a giveaway. Better save those points for [Reign of the Dead] first.


On a side note, don't get too fond of the haste soft cap. My best BiS setup has currently 479 haste, and that's with Lightweave Embroidery on the cloak. Haste just sticks to any good item like a black curse - but even above soft cap it is still preferable to spirit.

I have a couple of questions about the Lunar Eclipse crit cap.

We recieve~22%crit on starfire in raids that does not show upon our character sheet. (5% Scortch, 3%Totem of Wrath, 3%IFF, 3%IIS, 4% Idol, 4% Natural Magesty).

This means that we only need ~33% crit on our character sheet (raid buffed, in moonkin form) to be hit capped during lunar eclipses.

How are you guys gearing after you hit the cap? It seems to me that 1% crit and haste would have roughly the same value after this point making 1 haste rating superior to 1 crit rating.

Once I get to replace [Eye of the Broodmother] and [Sundial of the Exiled] with both versions of [Reign of the Dead], that will buy me about 3.7% more crit budget.

Furthermore, despite my own recent arguments a few weeks back on this form, I've also changed my opinon on the need to upkeep Insect Swarm. That's another 3% off the cap.

And at some time I have to replace T8p2 for T9p4@258 anyway.

[Heartsmasher]/[Heartcrusher], from the 10-man heroic Tribute chest, are really not that difficult to get, and are better than the ilvl 245 version of Anub's mace.

True, but [Illumination] beats [Heartsmasher] even when it's paired with [Mystifying Charm].

Paired with [Talisman of Heedless Sins], it would only beat the staff if that +Hit fits below your cap.

Is this a conclusion from Rawr, or from stat values from WrathCalcs?

Using the latter for my current gear (significantly over the haste soft cap), I am getting that [Heartsmasher] and [Chalice of Searing Light] are equivalent to within 1 dps of [Illumination], even when accounting for the staves SP enchant.

Hello, I have now been raiding as moonkin for some time, been following this thread, and my guild have asked me to do a BiS list so they know who needs what. I have excluded tribute 25 staff and cloak as those will go to warlocks and mages before me, or atleast I guess so. Anyway:

Head: T9-HC
Chest: T9-HC
Shoulders: T8
Hands T8
Neck: [Cry of the Val'kyr] (HC)
Back: [Shroud of Displacement] (HC)
Wrist: [Bindings of Dark Essence] (HC)
Waist: [Belt of Pale Thorns] (HC)
Legs: [Leggings of the Awakening] (HC)
Feet: [Boots of the Harsh Winter] (HC)
Ring1: [Lurid Manifestation] (HC)
Ring2: [Firestorm Band] (HC)
Trinket 1: [Reign of the Dead] (HC)
Trinket 2: [Flare of the Heavens]
Weapon: [Bracers of Pale Illumination] (HC)

With these items I will get 299 hit rating, which is more than enough, and I will also get all socket bonus but 3 using only 2 blue gems. ignoring socket bonus in shoulders, hands and staff.

The reason for T8 hands and shoulders is that they have the least stat upgrade.

What do you think?

Rawr, but I admit that they are equivalent to within 3 dps there too.

You might want to put [Reign of the Dead]@245 on the list as 2nd trinket. They both proc independently and are both better than the Flare.

Your BiS setup is "pragmatic", I suppose. If you go all-out for the best of the best (including 4 pieces of T9@258 and Tribute cloak @272) you can carve out another 300 DPS

Ok thanks, I didn't know how they worked together.

So 4x t9 258 is better than the t8 bonus? Did not know.

but, thanks again.

I'm running with 444 haste rating and 20% crit unbuffed, before moonkin form. I got Reign of the Dead last night (245) which is an amazing trinket, but I ran into one little problem. My starfire fully raid-buffed with nature's grace has a 1.98 second casting time, not allowing me to get a mote every cast. I figured latency would push me over, but I definitely noticed not getting a mote every starfire crit during an eclipse.

Is it worth losing some haste for crit and actively avoiding gaining more haste in order to keep starfire above 2 seconds?

That's an interesting question. Try tinkering with the spreadsheet--I think I tried to account for this effect already. The haste cutoff won't be in exactly the right place since it's so latency-dependent, but maybe by trying out different values you can get a sense of how much the value of the trinket changes.