Yeah, I definitely see where the transition is coming from, from haste having full effect while Wrath is well over 1s, to having no effect once it's under 1s. But the transition zone will be fuzzy and weird.

Have you modeled the new NG for Starfire yet? We get a nonlinear and decaying benefit from crit now as NG uptime approaches 1.

If (as I suspect) Wrath at any reasonable amount of haste will be too awkward to chaincast cleanly even with the new NG, the cycle will remain the same as it is now. However, we see a big DPS benefit from the increased NG uptime while casting Starfire.

For people who wants to review my code:

feralbynight - Google Code

Disclaimer:
the code is a bit "spaghetti", I usually don't erase old code parts, for istance there is still powershifting code and so on. The program works for both cat and bear, at the begining you must choce gear/simulation and many parameter. You should put then changing code string (variable definition) there is no comand line or interface, so you should rebuild it every time.

Known issue:
- manglespam code doesn't work properly
- barkskin usage still need to be fully implemented
- trinkets usage still need to be fully implemented (atm they are averaged out into the gear)
- berserking enchant still need to be fully implemented (atm they are averaged out into the gear)
- Atm the code is made with a very large time sample, you can easly reduce it, with such a large time frame some variable doesn't work properly (nothing important, only statistical ones) simply change them from "int" to "unsigned long int".
- Haste has a resolution of about 1% due to time steps (0.01 seconds) so if you want to see real dps increase due to haste you should do some math after simulation.

P.S.
I think is better that you post question and so on via private message to avoid going off-topic.

While it has been mentioned that, with the changes to NG, there is a break point of haste rating, above which a Solar Eclipse rotation becomes unattractive due to Wrath clipping, I would suggest that there is a second break point of haste rating, above which the (already preferable) Lunar Eclipse makes a jump upward in dps.

The reason is the 3 second duration of NG. At a point where haste reduces the normal cast time of Starfire below 1.5 seconds, we will be able to cast three hasted Starfire for each crit.

With the usual raid and talent haste buffs, the haste rating required would be 810, if I didn't mess up the calculation.

To be checked:

- how practical is it to achieve this haste rating (including Ulduar gear)?
- how much crit / spell power potential would it sacrifice?
- what is preferable, spell power / crit heavy gear with Solar Eclipse (staying below the first haste rating break point), or haste heavy gear with Lunar Eclipse (going above the second haste rating break point)?

Edit: It's three Starfires of course, not two.

It does seem it could split moonkins into 2 groups. One going for 12% gear haste and using solar eclipse freely while stacking crit. And other still massing haste to the point of scenario presented by gormane above. 2 starfires under NG, which means, raidbuffed as we are, almost 100% NG uptime (with the exclusion of dots). Solar eclipse branch would be in similar situation, having near constant NG uptime through their superior crit and lower wrath cast time.

No doubt it'll be determined which path is better dps, i'm having a hard time believing wrath eclipse could surpass lunar (with BL speaking so loudly against it). But i for one would welcome equality of the two paths. Perhaps two sets of gear, for depending on the encounter one can definitely shine more than the other. A choice in gearing and bit of a change in playing style that doesnt mean you cant do comparable dps.

Wouldn't that allow you to actually cast 3 hasted starfires? Haste is applied at the start of the cast, isn't it? So 2 should be possible at under 3s cast time.

I'm not sure that there is a viable gear set that stacks crit and doesn't stack haste. A lot of the current BiS gear has both crit and haste. In order to skip on haste, you have to take spirit or hit, and we don't need that much hit to get to the cap which leaves us taking the (less desirable) spirit, especially as we move into higher ilevel gear where those items that give hit will be giving more per piece, potentially reducing the number of items we need with hit on them.

Also take into consideration that DoT's do not scale with crit at all, while haste at least reduces the GCD which has an effect on their effective cast time.

Hi all again.
First of all I should say "sorry" due to an error with hit within my simulation. I was lucky (and all the people following my road to gear up) because it seems that the "best in slot" gear choce didn't changed too much except maybe for gemming choce (agility vs. hit), also if you choce to gem and change the only 2 items that changed graduatory (badge ring instead of , Stalk-Skin Belt instead of Belt of the Tortured, Ruthlessness) you will only gain about 30 dps (from 6672 to 7002) but you will not be hit/exp capped, I think I'll stay with hit cap also if it's a little less dps.

I should also say thanks to A Civilian and Allev for their feedbacks.

A Civilian revisioning my code found an error: basically I was cutting 80% of energy on a missed rake, mangle, shred instead on 20% as it should be.
Also Allev found 2 "minor" bugs into sim: expertise was rounded like character sheets rounding (25-26, etc..) while in game mechanics it use to be a floating point value, the change is obviosly basically ininfluent for my sim and stats value (I already simply copy & paste hit value into exp value for stat points so there is no problem here). Another minor bug founded by Allev was Feral Fairie Fire, I used melee hit instead of spell hit, the problem here is also 0 due to the fact that in the posted simulation I've assumed 100% FF uptime (moonkin, other ferals, etc..).

3 other things founded into the sims by me:
- Ferocious Bite: I didn't implemented the 30 max energy usage of FB and didn't take into account extra energy while computing FB damage, the difference is small but nevertheless I've changed the code and I'm rerunning the sim.
- I've used shred idol instead of rip idol into my previous sim, this change obviously the outcome for ArPen.
- If you try to remove Primal Gore you will found the same value, this was fixed (I didn't remember to introduce a check into previous sim), the sim outcame will not change from my previous one because I was assuming that you will spec into it.

The most important change:

reviewing the code I noticed a things that we didn't take into account while theorycrafting the hit value about FB and RIP. Basically I was erasing all CP on a FB and RIP misses (I was sure about that, did the changed that kind of mechanic or it was always that way?), while you actually preserve your CPs when you miss a finisher.

The right value for hit/expertise is: 19.9

This will push hit/exp value at the theorycrafted level.

Those values push hit/exp back into priority list, obviosly in real fight hit/exp will value more than the theorycrafted value, mainly due to more stable dps and cycle but you can't quantify it.

Sorry again guys, and special thanks to A Civilian and Allev for finding code errors.

For a complete breakout of the new sims / code /feedback see: FeralbyNight (Cat & Bear simulation tool)

No worries. We all provide feedback to make us all better. You just had to do all of the typing. Keep up the good work.

It always was. It seems the value of hit/exp is almost half of what it used to be? Pretty big difference from a small assumption.

Possible incoming changes to Bear Swipe, or at least thoughts about it, from GC:

Maybe (hopefully?) not just for bear swipe.

They should introduce a Savage Roar - Bear, with a cooldown, for snap AoE / 360° threat. A Bear version of Thunderclap, with an heavier cooldown and appropriate threat numbers.

Any news about set bonus for Druid Tier 8 set?
Did anyone got hand on a T8 druid set item during one of the ulduar test phases?
Curious to see what Balance druid can expect

No set bonus is out right now. Some of the gear is there but no bonuses attached yet. I doubt we'll see the bonuses until they finish changing around all the classes talent/skill values.

Does the +25% expertise from expertise rating be a "wanted" PTR mechanic or is it a bug?

I think it's a bug. It was reported on the PRT forums as a bug and a blue replied that they would look in to it, leading me to believe it was not an intended change: Source

Just an observation, we were doing Patch on the PTR (dps test) and I saw many solar wrath crit for 9500-9800.

I am only sitting on 1806 sp unbuffed, so I am positive wrath can easily crit for 10k during solar eclipse.

I managed to keep a 5434 dps average without any mods (on the PTR while I am standing at around 4500 dps on live) and without any real purpose. By that I mean I using both solar and lunar to try and test numbers, but towards the end of the fight, I decided to proc solar as often as possible.

Please note I am in crit gear (24.34% unbuffed crit, 34.34% with 4 pieces and my own 5% crit from moonkin aura only).

Here the WWS (don't worry too much about my rotation, as I said I had no addons so it's kinda hard to keep track of dots/ecplise hidden cooldown):

Wow Web Stats

I am not sure what it means in regard of solar vs lunar, but smart people around here might find this information useful.

Sorry but I think they really need to come up with something else, as this just seems to me too close to Challenging Roar. If they would just tune Demo Roar up, change the cooldown perhaps and add more threat I think we'd be set.

T8-Boni are there for Resto and Feral

They look very very strong for me, especially the 4piece ones.

So the t8-4set resto, if I am reading it correctly just means that you'll get an extra tick of the hot "right away"?

Thats what It sounds like Charnas. Kinda like the Priest glyph for PW:S that heals for part of the shield value.

That's the way that I'm reading the set bonus effect. You cast Rejuv, it instantly heals for the amount of 1 tick (instant heal, ala Swiftmend) and then continues to tick normally. Considering that Rejuv ticks for a decent amount, and that I already use it quite a bit, this will be a very nice bonus, I think.

If the above interpretation is correct, I will be interested to see how it interacts with [Glyph of Rejuvenation]. Assuming my target is at <50% health, will the 'free' set bonus tick take advantage of the additional healing that Rejuv does, or only the subsequent ticks?