It's still pertinent info until 3.3 hits. Once 3.3 hits, you're correct. The info would change. I would suppose that a caveat could be placed in there noting that this changes in 3.3 or something of that nature.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it possible to create an addon that runs a stopcasting command at the right time when you're spamming Starfire button such that the cast lines up when Lunar fades?

It's protected, so it only can be launch from direct hardware inputs

So basically what you're saying is due to the WE and 2T8 nerf we get to spend all of ICC upgrading our gear trying to claw our way back to the DPS we're currently doing now?

Sounds like fun.

Well only to the extent of Tier pieces. As we upgrade other slots with ICC loot our DPS will go up too. But yeah it is sad that we may be out paced by other DPS specs that are not starting 3.3 with a DPS loss.

I based my itemization DPS increases off of this post:
If we use the estimates for itemization increases from one ilvl tier to the next we can generate some estimates. I am assuming an average of ~40DPS for a 13 ilvl increase. Thus you would need to upgrade 7-8 non tier pieces from 245 to 264 gear break even for losing the 2T8 bonus or 4T10 pieces as the set bonuses convey added DPS. But yeah we are going to be spending weeks just getting back to the dps we are doing now. I have not done the napkin math for those going from T9(258) combos but would suspect a similar number of ilvl upgrades to break even. These are all rough estimates to get a general picture of where we are headed in 3.3. It could be the gap is smaller too because the itemization is more optimal in ICC loot as well.

A nerf is a hole that we must climb out of. Improving skill, as was brought out, or a new add-on may counter some of the WE DPS loss too, and then less new gear would be needed to break even as well.

All the numbers I used are based off of the last WrathCalcs posted with my own stats and gear: 2T8(226)+2T9(245), Illumination(245), 3 pieces of 258 (back, boots, wrist), and the rest ilvl 245. My main is Isen on Arygos. Other people will find the works differently depending on the gear they have. Those better geared may need more upgrades while lesser geared will need less. The reason for this is that the ilvl itemization is once again the biggest factor in our gear upgrades. Which after all was Blizzards intent for nerfing 2T8.

Personally I would like to see a bigger 2T10 bonus to compensate a lil bit more for the 2T8 but it is what it is, for now.

I did a bit of testing and concluded that my suggestion was not possible(with quit scripts). So I guess the only possibility way is precise timing.

They were. That being said, I imagine that this would be a DPS loss. Theoretically, if we have to cast the extra starfire, if you are soft-crit capped, 55% of the time, you get starfire crit damage and into wrath anyway. I don't think not casting for a time that would average about 1 second would be advisable given this number.

I did some testing with reign today, it seems as if any cast between 1.9 and 2.1 after the last proc has a chance to proc the mote that is less than 100 but greater than 0, anything faster has no chance, anything slower has a 100% chance. The items internal cooldown isn't overwhelmingly fine tuned, but removing haste to increase trinket output isn't advisable.

On another note, we did Yogg 0 today, yay server spam. A good fight for moonkins.

What about Shapeshifting? I have a particular Boomkin that is a very strong Resto Druid but, has been working as a Boomkin for the last several months. DPS is strong, spec is good etc. and when he stays as a Boomkin he usually does pretty well.

However, on progression type fights when things get hairy he's constantly switching forms, healing himself and others. It should be noted we're a 10 man group. (Note: when he's resto, he'll do the same thing - get bored while the fight is building and will switch forms to DPS -- not as huge an issue as he's a strong player and typically gets back into form)

My thoughts:

1 - shifting out of form drops the Aura from the whole Raid, obviously making an impact to DPS
-- is this significant? Should I be as concerned about this as I am?
2 - costs him Mana
3 - makes it difficult for us to easily identify where the issues are (ie: he hops out and heals the tank to keep us going but, then someone OOM's (or he does) - do we have a healing issue, tank issue, DPS issue... you ge the point)


I'm just wondering if there's any hard n' fast rules / thoughts on this. I'm by no means an authority on Druid's so I'm hoping someone can provide some guidance on how I should handle this guy.

My stance has been: stay in form and DPS - if you want to heal then we'll open a Resto spot for you.

Any input from you Druid folks would be greatly appreciated (and I hope I posted this in the correct forum; please forgive if I did not).

I made the same transition. After being a tree main spec for 2 years I was being asked by the guild more and more to go moonkin. Finally switching my main spec to moonkin. At first my healer instincts would kick in regularly and I would pop out a heal or two in a harry or low health situation. But as I grew into my roll as a DPS I learned to trust the healers in the raid and let them do their job. Sure if you are down a healer the hybrid dropping form to heal and save the fight is one thing, but if all members are up and no is CC'd he should be in form trusting the healers do their job.

In my opinion, if a tank dies when the rest of the raid is alive, then the issue is with the healers or the tank. But either way the moonkin should be a moonkin and let the rest of the raid do their roles. Otherwise like you said you won't know where the issue really lies. Now if you had no qualms with a hybrid having a blended roll, ie healing and dpsing in the same fight on a regular basis then you could see if this druids play style could fit your raid balance. But is you are balancing around the druid filling a single role, he should be that role and only change it in an emergency.

My 2 cents.

1- Shifting out of form to throw a heal or two arround once per fight isn't going to have a significant impact on raid DPS.
2- Mana is a non-issue as balance. Your moonkin probably specced out of every mana regeneration talents, except for maybe 1-2 points in Intensity in addition to Omen of Clarity.
3- Are we talking about the occasional rejuvenation followed by a nourish, or is he staying long periods outside of forms?

As for an "hard and fast rule", staying alive is usually the best way to make your DPS go up. When I get into trouble in a raid damage heavy fight (Think HM Mimiron, HM General Vezax, HM Twins Val'kyr), I usually Barkskin->Healthstone, then proceed to heal myself with a quick nourish (or get a tick or two of tranquility if anyone in my group is also in trouble).

Of course you can tell him to trust his healers, make him play like he was a pure dps class without the ability to heal, yet they still survive most fight. But pure dps classes (and most hybrids) have very good defensive cooldowns (Iceblock, Cloak of Shadow, Bubble) while we're stuck with Barkskin (and possibly healthstone) as our only survival cooldown.

both excellent points....

Let me throw this caveat in there..

What about Raid positioning and foot work in fights light Firefighter and General HM. Especially in a 10m group where people need to move together and in the case of General when people get out of 'whack' it can significantly impact the rest of the 'team'.

I love the ability of our Boomkin to be able to snag a quick heal on the tank when things go sideways and/or keep himself alive but, I guess my question is impact to the Raid.

As regular chicken players in here can anyone comment on the impact it makes during your play? Is this a big distraction / can you see where it may impact team mates and if so, are there any 'tips n' tricks' you could offer on lessening that impact?

Any Raid leaders have a comment on this?

Thanks for your responses so far, it's highly appreciated; any more will be as well!

Cheers

It's odd to think that blizzard would remove the benefits of WE just to force us to play a time-waiting game with the last starfire. I believe Blizzard is trying to enforce the idea that you should be proc'ing each eclipse by virtue of the spell's natural crit (not by exploiting the more detailed mechanics of the eclipse mechanism). Trying to time your starfire to take advantage of client-side buffs/internet-server lag is similar to cheating, like wave dashing in smash bros. It's an odd, but very favorable, feature that was surely unintended.

But yeah, I don't think the "fix" that blizzard implemented is a very good one as well. As people WILL attempt to take advantage of it anyhow, except now it's just harder to take advantage of. The problem still exists, just in a smaller (yet still reasonably exploitable) form.

Along with the other major hits to the moonkin, I just wish they would provide a much better buff to moonkins other than a 2% crit buff on the final 4-tier bonus. I don't think we are OP, and we deserve a nice buff to the 2pt10 like longer proc durations, having durations "stack" on each other instead of overriding, or both!

I did some testing on my moonkin the other day with proczilla and I kept getting about 1.3 clearcasting procs per minute. This is much lower than the 3.5 ppm (or even 2 ppm) that I've seen posted in forums. I was testing for about an hour. Was I really unlucky? Is proczilla not working appropriately? If there had been some previous testing done, is there a link to this test data/post?

PPM is based on a castspeed of 1s, which means the proc per hit with ppm = 3,5 (speed * ppm / 60) is 5,8%
If it were based on the base castspeed of the spell or even the actual castspeed we would obviously see more procs.

From my latest logs 5,8% is about right.

Couldn't find this on any page, but i will keep it short:

Regarding 4pt10: Ignite can crit, right? Can languish?

Ignite cannot crit.

On the topic of dropping out of form to heal:
To be quite honest, if you're paying so much attention to the tank that you drop out to heal them, you're not paying attention to what you're supposed to be doing, i.e. DPS. Or just as likely, you notice too late and your heal is wasted because the real healers do their job before your heal gets off.

One exception would be healing yourself in a pinch, as paying attention to your own status is part of everyone's job. Another would be a planned usage of Tranquility, such as in XT hardmode or Twins hardmode (if you aren't switching colors for vortitces). A third might be when trying to salvage a fight when a real healer has died so you completely switch roles.

In general though, seems like a terrible idea.


On the topic of our 3.3 nerfs:
The changes are necessary, I think; I just hope we don't lose our ability to pull competitive DPS at comparable gear levels, as is the case now. Our 4T10 bonus is now closer to what it should be (hoped for 8% or more, but I'll take 7%), so I'm not too concerned with the 2T8 nerf other than a short term hit to my DPS, but losing WE without compensation will probably hurt us in the long run.

Ghostcrawler remarked on the situation. Not exactly a satisfactory response, but at least they know what's going on.
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Rogues get a buff. Moonkins get a nerf?

Some interesting words from GC on the T8 nerf and Eclipse in general:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Rogues get a buff. Moonkins get a nerf?

To get to the point:
He does not go into details about how they are going to "Offset", but I suggest waiting with calculating upgrades and what our DPS loss will be until he does.

On another note, I don't think I've seen this mentioned here:
Edit:
Just posted with the guy above me, sorry for the seemingly double post

Well, for what it's worth, I made a post on the official forums:
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> WiseEclipse comments, from its originator

(First time I've posted there in like 3 years :/ ). Let's see if anything happens.

I haven´t thought it through thorougly, but in my opinion one of the biggest scaling problems for us moonkins is not exclusively eclipse, but wrath. Wrath goes below our gcd since months and we have to cope with the 400 haste-rating-softcap since the beginning of Ulduar. This could be easily fixed via glyphs, e.g.
Glyph of Wrath: Increases damage of your wrath spells by 20%, but also increases its cast time by 30%.
Actual percentage-numbers could be theory-crafted. This glyph would replace the IS-Glyph, bringing back the 3% miss-chance while keeping NGs functionality. The loss of IS´s damage might be counterbalanced in the balance-tree, e.g. a 15% dmg-increase, if needed.
The benefit would be a more "balanced" and scalable spell-combination of SF and W while keeping dots intact, plus giving the player a choice to glyph it or not, depending on his equip.

What do you think?

I think the purpose of the IS glyph was to choose either the 3% mitigation or 30% dmg increase on IS. One might think that giving up on optimal DPS is odd, but a few raiders actually lower their capabilities (be it from losing out on talents or glyphs) for the better of the raid - IS unglyphed, scorch, tree revitalize talent. I suppose all I'm saying is that the IS glyph is not mandatory.

I suppose if a wrath glyph like that came out, then we might be all over that... but are you assuming that the IS glyph is rendered useless then? Because the IS glyph might still be useful for PvP.

Ah ok so it's 5.8% for any spell. Meaning that if my wrath was 1.26 seconds and I was just spamming wrath, I'd expect to see about 2.77 PPM. Unfortunately the test I did was pure wrath spam for an hour and I was getting about 1.3 PPM. Perhaps I just had really really crappy RNG and/or proczilla was recording while I was mana'ing up. I'll try again another night I suppose.

I was giving some thought about the Wrath issue last night. I don't really think increasing the cast time of Wrath would help, it would simply move the goal posts. What would be interesting is if haste were to effect Starfire and Wrath differently, i.e.

Starfire : behaviour as-is
Wrath : haste increases the base damage and mana cost (maintain same mana to damage ratio) but does not affect casting speed. casting speed increases still increase the speed of casting (i.e. bloodlust/heroism etc).

This would change the dynamic of the two spells as well as effectively removing the haste soft cap to a much higher number. It then becomes a choice of how much mana you want to burn in a given time as the more haste you have, the more wrath will burn.