Since my guild has two boomkins, Ive decided to re-spec taking imp IS over imp FF, as its just a waste of mana and good points for each of us to have imp FF. We just keep overriding each other and it wastes time. It Also makes the cast cycle more complicated but i enjoy it a lot more, and I can push out more dps then I could with imp ff. I just have to watch for Eclipse to proc and then either tap on the moonfire or the IS and go from there. coupled this spec with a starfire rotation, the starfire glyph and (hopefully soon) the Idol from instructor, Its a very nice with a starfire based rotation. But i was wondering if I should also take the moonfire glyph, which will nerf the moonfire for pvp, but makes it nice for pve. Any thoughts?
--->The answer to world peace is always in the Pie<----
But i was wondering if I should also take the moonfire glyph, which will nerf the moonfire for pvp, but makes it nice for pve. Any thoughts?
It's been mentioned here a few times but I'll state it more clearly: when you want to PVP and PVE seriously for the time being you would be wise to invest in a large supply of moonfire glyphs. It's not expensive or difficult to change before you do each activity. With the MF glyph you're missing your only real tool to stop runners and spam damage without the threat of interrupts.
Yea that's exactly what I was thinking. Prices do differ server to server, but it seems for at least the start of the season its a good idea. thank you. Its more usefull then Dash Glyph anyways!
--->The answer to world peace is always in the Pie<----
Regarding the whole IIS vs IFF discussion. I was wondering if maybe it wouldn't be worth to invest in both of them? This would be a spec proposal: Talent Calculator
I took 2 points from Genesis (this wouldn't seem any great loss) and 1 from Eclipse. However, I am wondering how 2/3 eclipse works with proccing lunar eclipse on which I base my current rotation.
Well if there is no sp in the raid, iFF is by far a greater dps increase, both for personal and raid dps. But as a pure crit increase i dont think that it will make a difference at mycurrent crit levels. With my current gear i getting around a 42% critchance with wrath, and i havent found myself having any issues getting eclipse from wrath at these levels.
However this is just my oppinion, and it also depends on what rotation you use. Im using atm SF+MF, switching to wrath when eclipse is off cooldown and using IS before wrath spam and it is down to those casts in between eclipse cd's that 3%crit vs 3%damage comes down to. Im guessing that the difference between the 2 at that level is quite small, small enough to suggest that at these levels its more of a matter of flipping a coin to determin which is superior. Cause if that 3% extra crit gets you an eclipse from the 1st wrath you fire it is a massive damage increase, if you get a crit for a possible extra wrath after eclipse goes off then the damage increase is prolly more in favour.
Iv always been going with the assumption that FFF doesnt work with iFF since i havent seen anyone prove the opposite, so ill have to think this over more. But this also opens up a new topic: comparing iFF or iSS with brambles or owlkin frenzy
I'm currently running 2/3 Eclipse and only rarely have issues getting the SF Eclipse proc. Both iIS and iFF are worth having in 25 man raid situations, particularly if you don't need the extra AOE from GW.
Genesis probably is not worth spending points in as a Moonkin since each point is worth less than 6 dps (based on Erdluf's math done in beta). Admittedly, you do have to drop either a point there or in Moonglow, but you're not going to see substantial differences due to that decision. More than 1 point in Genesis is probably not in your best interest.
If you have full ilvl 200 or higher epic gear, you probably only need 2/3 in Intensity. That's what I'm running with and even still, 2/3 seems to be a bit much as I never have to use mana pots or Innervate myself on anything but the longest fights (KT, mostly due to his "haha mana users" outlook, and Sapph).
I did a simple test last week which seems pretty conclusive to me, but I might have missed something.
I went out to the arena in nagrand, took off everything but two items, which left me with ~4.8% crit showing on the character pane. This should put me at 8.8% with talents.
A guildie brought out a level 70 warlock and put on pvp gear such that his character pane showed 9% crit reduction.
Another guildie put FFF up on the warlock. I spammed rank 1 wrath, and got a crit. If IFF did not work with FFF, this should have been impossible.
This, makes me favor IFF to IIS.
I have a quick question....
What level were you at the time of testing? Stats in your character sheet are based off of fighting someone at an equal level, So if you had ~9% to crit and the lock had 9% resil at level 70 those are different.
Pretty much every stat was halved leveling from 70-80, so 9% reduction from resil at 70 is probably only 4.5% reduction against a level 80.
To really test this you need two level 80 chars, one with a X amount of crit and someone with resilience > X but less than X + 3.
To provide an exaple with numbers, if you have 9% crit, to be safe the lock should have 10% resil, that way FF will give you 13% to crit and you can prove that you overcame resil with FFF.
However you need another sample proving that you will NOT crit without FFF on the target, and anything less than about 1000 spell casts is too small a sample size to really say that you will not crit. (Even 1000 casts may be too small for that matter).
What level were you at the time of testing? Stats in your character sheet are based off of fighting someone at an equal level, So if you had ~9% to crit and the lock had 9% resil at level 70 those are different.
Pretty much every stat was halved leveling from 70-80, so 9% reduction from resil at 70 is probably only 4.5% reduction against a level 80.
Yes, I was level 80 (the lock was, unfortunately, the only char with any resilience I had available for testing). This is one of the concerns I have about the test.
My understanding is that resilience rating is converted to resilience based purely on the wearers' level, and the attacker's level is irrelevant. I have never heard of nor am I able to find now any reference to resilience being reduced against a higher level attacker.
There is a mechanic where level 70s take more crits from level 80s, which might be where you're getting your ideas. Physical crit chance are based off of weapon skill vs defense and resilience, so a level 80 does have increased chance to crit against a level 70. I am unaware of, and unable to find now any reference to any mechanic by which spell crit chance is affected by the combatants' relative levels.
I agree that the test would be much stronger if it included many non-crit casts on a target without faerie fire. Unfortunately, without knowing the specifics of the mechanics you suggest, it would be hard to come up with any sort of confidence level. If the warlock has 10% resilience and I am at 9.6% crit, then I'm (obviously) at -0.4% base crit. If the resilience mechanic you suggest would give me an extra 5% crit against a level 70 target (for a total of 4.6%), then I would need a much smaller sample size to gain confidence in the result than if the mechanic were to give me an extra 0.5% crit (for a total of 0.1%). 1000 trials with 0 crits would have a 1/10^22 chance of failing in the former case, and a 36% chance of failing in the latter. This argument applies to any hidden mechanics we might be worried about that would lead us to attempt a test with 1000+ trials.
I would be very interested in any contradictory test results or corrections to my (very possibly incorrect) understanding of the mechanics involved.
Regarding the whole IIS vs IFF discussion. I was wondering if maybe it wouldn't be worth to invest in both of them? This would be a spec proposal: Talent Calculator
I took 2 points from Genesis (this wouldn't seem any great loss) and 1 from Eclipse. However, I am wondering how 2/3 eclipse works with proccing lunar eclipse on which I base my current rotation.
If you happen to be the only balance druid in the raid I don't see why not. But when you have two booms in almost every raid, its a waste for one to have both, as they just keep over-writing each other. They won't stack.
--->The answer to world peace is always in the Pie<----
There's a thing called communication, where you talk to other people. It's useful in this kind of situation, where you both gain benefit from a talent (3% crit) but only one person needs to use it to get the benefit. It was (and is) exactly the same with mangle, you talk to another person in the raid if they can put up the debuff to see which it will affect least. In this case, whoever does less DPS should generally be the one who uses it. If you have a feral and a shadow priest then even better - you don't need to use it at all (the feral can put up FFF and the priest gives Misery).
As far as it is currently understood, it can be anyones Faerie Fire for the %crit talent to work, including Feral Faerie Fire.
Are people still advocating the wrath spam until eclipse proc then starfire spam rotation? Of course, with IS and IFF and MF thrown in as needed. I've been using the standard starfire to wrath eclipse rotation, and it works well and doesn't cost me nearly any mana. If I swap to wrath spam till starfire eclipse, will my dps increase? I haven't had a chance to test it. Any thoughts?
Well since apparently someone felt I was an idiot for asking what people are advocating for eclipse specs, please ignore my very very stupid question. I'm sure nobody here has any idea whether a wrath > starfire rotation or starfire > wrath rotation is better.
Well since apparently someone felt I was an idiot for asking what people are advocating for eclipse specs, please ignore my very very stupid question. I'm sure nobody here has any idea whether a wrath > starfire rotation or starfire > wrath rotation is better.
Perhaps it depends on your gear. Perhaps it depends on the other people in your raid. Or perhaps we're fucking tired of idiots coming in and asking the exact same fucking question twenty times. There are multiple posts here on the difference between a SF-heavy cycle and a Wrath-heavy one. Rawr and WrathCalcs both support modeling both cases, and Dukes is right that even if none of the above were true, you have training dummies you can practice on and find results out for yourself.
I anxiously await the infraction I know is coming for making this post, because it's worth it if a single one of you people learns to use the tools we're giving you and make decisions on your own.
So asking if there is new information is apparently out of line? These posts go a ways back and yes, I have read through them. I apparently don't need anything from this forum, so thanks for nothing.
a) Nothing has changed since those posts. The scaling information is there (wrath > starfire early, starfire > wrath as gear gets better).
b) There is both a spreadsheet and a rawr model for testing.
c) If you wish to contribute something, then contribute. Coming here and saying what amounts to "hai guys, I read the posts but I still want to know what eclipse is better?" doesn't do anything. If you'd come in and said "Here's my testing, it says x eclipse is better, why doesn't this match up?" it would be much more useful.
d) There's a simple questions thread for simple questions.
While rawr is a great tool and clearly a lot of work went to it, I think its moonkin module leaves some to be desired. The rotation definition are quite unclear (at least to me - not a raiding moonkin). It's just that there are a lot of possible rotations - what eclipse to proc, what spell to use when it's on CD, or whether to ignore it and just spam 1 nuke, and I'm not sure how these options map to the rotations rawr talks about.
Also would be nice to get an expected damage breakdown list and stat weighting - this is true for other modules as well, naturally.
It's quite possible that WrathCalc or another spreadsheet gives that data, but it's a shame to not work with the very-easy-to-use UI of rawr because of what seems to be technical or usability issues.
Not to totally undermine your point, but this made me curious. I checked Rawr with both my current gear (which is pretty good) and a dream set. It favored IS/MF/W for both--I'm a bit confused on the Rawr model, but I think that means a W>SF rotation. Can't check WC right now because my only computer with Excel is dead, but last I checked it favored W>SF as well. Where did people decide that SF>W gets better with top gear?
While rawr is a great tool and clearly a lot of work went to it, I think its moonkin module leaves some to be desired. The rotation definition are quite unclear (at least to me - not a raiding moonkin). It's just that there are a lot of possible rotations - what eclipse to proc, what spell to use when it's on CD, or whether to ignore it and just spam 1 nuke, and I'm not sure how these options map to the rotations rawr talks about.
Also would be nice to get an expected damage breakdown list and stat weighting - this is true for other modules as well, naturally.
It's quite possible that WrathCalc or another spreadsheet gives that data, but it's a shame to not work with the very-easy-to-use UI of rawr because of what seems to be technical or usability issues.
Those features are in both Rawr and WC (there's a whole lot of information in WC if you're intrepid enough to venture past the first two sheets), but they're pretty hidden in Rawr. You have to use the dropdown that chooses which slot you want to see in depth, then go all the way down to the bottom. Relative Stat Values shows what you're looking for.
I do agree that the rotation information provided for Rawr is lacking. I believe when I asked Dope about it, he said that the nuke listed is the one you use during the Eclipse Cooldown (Smart Switching changes you from reacting-to-Eclipse to forcing-Eclipse), but given that I'm still a bit confused.
I'm using ">" as "greater than", not "follows on from". I was pretty certain that starfire>wrath (or, if you prefer, wrath->starfire) was better (as in, proc the starfire benefitting eclipse over the wrath benefitting eclipse) as gear improved due to Starfire scaling better, and haste causing major issues with GCD clipping on wrath.
I don't use either Rawr or WC, they were given as examples of tools produced by the community in order to test these things easily out of game; I test the stuff in game to see whats going on (and check during things like Patchwerk to see which eclipse proc generally benefits me more). I'm pretty set now that there's little difference - the only major things are that Wrath-benefit is a guaranteed damage increase, while Starfire-benefit is subject to a bit of randomness (80% crit with it on, and I still had one eclipse today where I had 5 non-crits out of 6 casts). Starfire does provide a mana benefit though, which I find useful in 10 mans depending on buffs available. Using Wrath to proc Starfire also seems to provide a faster proc in general, mainly due to being able to "prime" the proc by starting casting wrath ~3 seconds early on the timer so wraths are already hitting the boss as the cooldown finishes (I know you could do this with Starfire too).
This is, of course, ignoring Loatheb, as a wrath benefitting eclipse will always be better there due to the ~100% crit rate (unless starfire spam with pure crits is better than wrath spam with pure crits and 20% damage increase, which I doubt).
I'm using ">" as "greater than", not "follows on from".
Argh, right, that all makes sense now. This is why I try to use "solar/lunar eclipse" in my posts.
This is just a difference in style, but I'd always recommend that someone trying to learn all this stuff uses Rawr/WC over in-game testing. Nobody's* going to test their DPS on a dummy with a sufficient number of trials to overcome the inherent randomness in different Eclipse rotations. Recommending that a person who's new to the spec determine their playstyle this way is equivalent to saying "make a chart of the options and roll a d20."
*At least none of the sort of people who just want to find out as easily as possible what buttons to press.
This is, of course, ignoring Loatheb, as a wrath benefitting eclipse will always be better there due to the ~100% crit rate (unless starfire spam with pure crits is better than wrath spam with pure crits and 20% damage increase, which I doubt).
In case of 100% crit wrath, you will suffer constant delays caused by dropping below 1s GCD. If memory servers me well, hitting min GCD also deactivates built-in precasting mechanism, what further delays casting. It may outweight 20% damage bonus.
Extreme case of RNG curse. If Starfall crits 3 times, you save 1.5s via NG, as much as you need to cast it. Therefore Starfall becomes free (not counting mana of course) and cannot decrease your DPS. And no, don't blame your gear, it's good enough.
I'm starting to think IFF is not worth it for me anymore.
I am Hit overcapped if I put my Hit trinket in.
We have a shadowpriest in our raid.
Majority of my raid casters should be hit capped too by now.
Plus - it seems like dps loss, cause 40 seconds is not enough.
I was told, that those 3% of crit do not stack with shaman totem. So...
Am I wrong?
12/18/08, 1:08 PM
Similar Threads
