I was a little curious about how haste interacts with the reign of the unlivings effectiveness.

If you have double reign, for example, would it be more beneficial to stay right at/under the haste cap to keep your starfires at or just above 2 second casts? Obviously, this would promote mote procs on back to back casts in lunar which could be very beneficial to overall dps.

Obviously, if you were to do this, some question of where the extra stats would be allocated, given its relatively easy in high end gear to hit the haste/crit softcaps.

I was just curious if anyone had done some work on this.

I only did napkin math, and with double Reign trinkets you need to either have over 700 haste rating, or stay under 400. Right now I have only the normal one, but having the highest DKP I expect to get the Heroic one before Icecrown. I tried to get crit/hit and crit/haste gear mostly, then went for crit/spirit on the remaining pieces once I got hit/haste capped. With all raid buffs (including Focus Magic), I am slightly over 100% crit on lunar. However there might be crit depression on raid bosses, so crit soft cap might be a few percent higher than 100% (with all buffs, including lunar).

It seems extremely unlikely that Reign procs will have enough of a impact to dictate gear decisions.

I wouldn't say that's true. Given how much DPS the proc alone is worth, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some range over which haste has negative marginal value. The problem would be identifying where that is through the mess of lag/queueing/other casting delays.

WC currently assumes the proc loses value when the cast time of SF, with casting delays included, drops below 2.0. Like the other haste-based effects, this model results in a more precipitous cutoff than reality (due to the randomness involved in casting delays). The limiting effect in either direction should be right, though.

I was merely suggesting that, if you were trying to stay just over the haste cap, it might be beneficial to sacrifice some of the haste. The BiS set has, what, 468 haste? Something in that area? I was curious if, with double reign, if it would be beneficial to find a way to drop about 70 haste without ruining the itemization too much.

If this would be attainable, and the net loss in dps was realatively insignificant, the extra proc, coming from both trinkets, would likely outweigh the stat dropping.

For example, dropping pale thorns for winters solstice, you lose a small amount of stats, but convert the haste into crit, which isn't a horrible transition. That drops 60 haste, so you are only 8 or so away from finished. Drop aethas' intensity for drape of bitter incantation to get rid of that 8.

That would put you at 400, the change in stats would be 9 int, 14sp, 8 crit, 8 haste for the cape lower...

That would total, between the two items, to -18 stam, -18 int, -2spr, -36SP, -68 haste, +33 crit. I don't know how substantial or insubstantial that would be compared to the proc, but lets assume that this comes out to even 100 dps, would an extra average proc of 2500 per 2 trinkets be enough to outweigh it. Given the math, that would be 5000 damage. If you earned even 1 more proc per 50 seconds(which you clearly would in lunar alone) that would be a DPS increase.

Playing with the spreadsheet now, the value of the nonheroic Reign proc drops by about 70 DPS in my gear (from around 300 to around 230) when you transition from Starfire over 2s to Starfire under 2s. The problem is, in reality, where does that transition happen and how rapid is it?

For someone who's considering swapping gear to drop a lot of haste, I'd go to target dummy in both suits and check whether or not you get consecutive Reign procs in each, then go from there.

Well, I would assume that the drop off is at the haste soft cap because the same number that gets wrath to one second under grace will get Starfire to 2 seconds. After that point, the value of the proc will go up because more haste = more procs if not happening back to back on starfire.

So the question is going to be what is the # that it drops off from when Starfire goes from 2 seconds or greater to under 2 seconds and what is gained back in value by your gear as you gain haste from that point on. The math seems highly likely to prove that for pure DPS, you need to build your haste exactly at/below the haste softcap for wrath for reign purposes. I don't think the damage boost will be wholely significant, maybe 100-200 dps, but that number isn't insignificant, either.

Here's a few tests on the dummy. I was only using Wrath/Starfire, and yes, I checked to make sure there were no non-crit Starfires.

Without WoA:
428 haste, sometimes had consecutive Reign procs. 2.08s cast on Starfire.
397 haste, always had consecutive Reign procs. 2.10s cast on Starfire.

With WoA:
397 haste, sometimes had consecutive Reign procs. 2.00s cast on Starfire.
Testing was a little short as the shaman had to leave.

It was kind of weird to see it sometimes have consecutive procs, and sometimes not. I was at 90-100 latency the whole time.

I've noticed that T10 does not have any Spirit on it. Does it mean that we're going back to the old school no Spirit gear.
and till know I've ignored all my mana reduce/regen talents and i have no mana issues so far, but my guild could not ready Anub'arak 25H so probably there I'll need to respec for some mana regen.

And my second question is with the new items in 3.3 we could see that there're plenty of Haste and Crit, so what is gonna be the right haste rating to reach. Till now I've seen that the Haste is around 500 - 550+ and crit as far we could manage. but now when every single item gives us approximately 100 crit/haste we`ll be above the both hard caps and then what ?

Given that the warlock t10 also doesn't have spirit on it I imagine they partially did it because spirit will be useless to moonkin in cataclysm like they said they were going to do and this gear is meant to be carried over into it.

I've just done a write-up of Moonkin threat and can think of 5 methods for a moonkin to reduce threat (4 for horde)

- Blessing of Salvation
- Stop dpsing target
- Shadowmeld
- Die
- Shapeshift to cat and Cower

I just want to know whether there are any that I have missed. I am assuming most raiding moonkin have Nature's Reach which provides some threat reduction. If any are interested in the post you can find it here : Strayegg.com • Moonkin and threat management - keep in mind that this post is intended to be marginally tongue-in-cheek

Thanks for the feedback. IS I think I'll leave for another post due to that taking a slight tangent. I do agree with not glyphing it due to the fact it does remove a useful debuff. Brambles I don't really agree with as it would take a few more talent points which may be better spent elsewhere. Enchants/metagems are also valid points but I am more looking at the "oh #!!#!#" measures, which these (and the talent/glyphing also fits into) doesn't really fit into.

The point about Thorns though I will add in to the article, as that extra threat on the tank may well help quite nicely establishing a little more threat. Advising to hold back on treants may be worthwhile also come to think of it, as you say its all additional threat which you may not need at the start of a fight..

Shrouding potion is a good one though, I'll add that in with Thorns I had forgotten all about that.

I think I'll also need to top up on a few of these for raiding

I don't suggest holding back on Treants. Their threat belongs to them, not to you. From a threat perspective, casting FoN is one GCD where you stopped DPS.

I've had a comment on the post (I still haven't got the comment displaying code live yet) pointing out a major error in that I listed Blessing of Salvation, where of course what I meant was Hand of Salvation.

The commenter also mentions that 3 and 4 do not reduce aggro, so I added a note to clarify that. Also he can't believe number 5 (the suicide approach) so I felt adding a note to clarify that option 5 is not intended to be taken seriously should maybe be added.

I only just saw that Shrouding Potion is a Sporregar Exalted recipe. Time to get farming I guess

Brambles in 3.3

I was wondering, will Brambles be worth more DPS in 3.3, when treants will almost always last the whole 30 seconds (considering the new 90% avoidence they get)? Will it be worth dropping something else to get it, like Gale Winds or Moonkin Frenzy, or Typhoon?

Of the talents you've listed Brambles has always been the best single target DPS increase. The fact that trents should survive a little longer won't change that, however, brambles is a pretty minor DPS upgrade and will probably remain so with improved trents.

The real question is which you value more? Brambles is best for a single target. Gale Winds is best for AoE. Owlkin Frenzy has very little impact in PvE, but could be useful if you PvP a lot. Typhoon is situationally useful in PvE but not something a lot of moonkin use regularly.

Which is best will depend on personal preference and the situation.

* Item - Druid T8 Balance 2P Bonus - Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 7%. (Down from 15%)

At least tier 10 will actually be an upgrade now.

double post, ignore

Hmm, what about the new 2T8+2T9 -vs- 4T9(245). With the gated system in ICC and high badge count for the T10 it might be a few weeks/month before you can pick up 2T10. Would the 4T9 be better for that period of time?


R.I.P Wise Eclipse

AUGH--

The complaint isn't that they took an anti-WiseEclipse measure. It was very likely they would do so, especially in light of the anti-PoisonSwapper measures they already took. It was a poor mechanic and one that should have been done away with. The complaint is that this is precisely the change I've said in multiple places that I was concerned they would go with, and it's not well thought through.

Lunar-Solar chaining happened before WiseEclipse. That's how we got the idea in the first place. It happened randomly, when your Starfire happened to hit at the right time, with some variance due to lag. Now that canceling the buff won't work, the only way to make it happen is to get really good at the timing, to land a Starfire right as Lunar completes.

A serious raiding Moonkin who reads this change should immediately go to a target dummy and start practicing casting so that you can reliably land a Starfire precisely when Lunar fades naturally. It's ugly, it's twitchy, it's unreliable, and it will the correct way to optimze DPS if this change goes in.

So I should get two more trophies to get to 4pc t9 to wear when the patch hits right?

Why are you glad that you "upgrade" to 245 T9 and get a net dps loss?