Archive for 2010

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Mar
11
2010

Moonkin in 3.3.3: To dot… or not to dot.

Okay, so now that 3.3.3 is getting closer to release, we have more details about what moonkin PvE will look like “soon.” However, this is still subject to change.

One big looming question that a lot of high-end moonkin are struggling with is when to cast dots, or when to not cast them. The buffs to starfall actually have the effect of making our DOTs seem even less worthwhile.

Recommended reading: Murmur’s wow.com post on DOTs, along with Hamlet’s work (among other posters) at EJ.

The problem:

Our Damage over time spells (insect swarm and moonfire) have not kept up with the rest of our rotation and are not scaling well enough at high gear levels (ie. Tier 10, ICC 25-man gear). So, there has been a lot of discussion lately about how to glyph (since all of our glyphs previously were being used to buff our DOTs), along with when to cast our DOTs (along with if we still use them).

Glyphing in 3.3.3:

The nerfs to Glyph of Focus in the latest PTR build, even with the huge buff to starfall’s damage, make the most common/obvious glyph choices: Glyph of Starfire, Moonfire, Starfall. I will be dropping the Insect Swarm glyph, in favor of Starfall when the patch hits. These glyphs will be the best choices even for beginners. There will likely still be some situational variability, but these are the glyphs that I assume you will have when I talk about DOTs in 3.3.3.

DOTs for new level 80’s:

At the lowest gear levels, and even in Tier 9 gear, our DOTs are worthwile to maintain in 3.3.3. So, the newbie “how to DPS” guides still work great for beginners, because it’s always going to be a DPS boost to refresh your DOTs at the lowest gear levels. So, the basic rotation guide still applies to you. For people wearing 2-piece Tier 9, moonfire is definitely a good damage ability to keep going.  You should also have an idol that requires DOT damage to be effective. In practice, for new moonkin, refreshing DOTs when they fall off will work well enough, since the problem really ends up being at high levels of gear (and for new moonkin, a complicated DOT refreshing system would end up being a DPS loss due to confusion problems & hesitating).

DOTs for ICC 25-man geared moonkin:

It’s much more complicated, and there seems to be very little agreement on what to do about it, and the recommendations seem to be subject to change based on various factors. For patch 3.3.3, this seems to be the most reliable (current) advice, however this is likely to change again between now and when 3.3.3 is released, based on lots of different factors.

  • Since you won’t use the glyph for insect swarm, then you can use IS (potentially even at a DPS loss) just to keep up the hit debuff to help your raid, even in high-end content. It appears to be worth casting IS when Eclipse is not active, but ends up being a larger DPS loss to cast IS when Eclipse is active. If you are trying to keep up the debuff, but not lose too much DPS, then one solution would be to refresh insect swarm after it falls off  when your Eclipse proc has ended (regardless of which kind of Eclipse). If you don’t care about keeping up the hit debuff, then you would likely want to refresh right before you proc a Solar Eclipse and start casting wrath.
  • It is also looking like moonfire shouldn’t be refreshed during a solar Eclipse portion of your cycle, since it is only a consistent DPS increase if you can get off 3 starfire casts before it falls off. When you are chain-casting wrath for a prolonged period of time, then refresthing moonfire is likely a DPS loss because it will fall off before you benefit from the starfire refreshing glyph. If you have the moonfire & Starfire glyphs, then it is going to be worth casting starfire before a Lunar Eclipse proc, where you will be able to cast more than 3 starfires before it falls off.
  • The really only clear piece of the puzzle is to: cast DOTs while moving. Since DOTs are instant-cast abilities, you should always be able to refresh DOTs while moving, regardless of what part of the DPS cycle you are on.  For fights with predictable movement, you can likely avoid recasting right before a movement phase, so that it will fall off before you can refresh it on the run (ie. Marrowgar’s Bone Storm ability). Since most fights have movement phases, and you should “Always Be Casting”, then movement periods are always the best time to cast your DOTs.
  • EDIT Disclaimer: Part of the problem is that DOTs make up such a small % of our DPS that the difference between various DOT refreshing strategies ends up being pretty small, so people are likely going to work out different strategies of DOT refreshing, since a lot of different factors will impact the theorycrafting math. Gear also makes a big difference in DOT scaling issue calculations. So, there may not be a good one-size-fits-all strategy for DOT refreshing in 3.3 – which makes it hard for people like me who are given the task of simplifying all the theorycrafting into bite-sized morsels.

Additional starfall 3.3.3 reminders: When starfall gets it’s buff, you should cast starfall as often as you can (it will be a 1 minute cooldown with the starfall glyph). Please remember to still being smart about not wiping the raid by pulling extra things, and paying attention to other factors specific to boss fights. Each fight may have times where it’s better (or worse) to pop starfall, so be aware of the fact that it is going to have a large radius around you if you aren’t using the Focus glyph. Starfall may also potentially cause threat issues when used on new sets of adds (which is good for sarufang if you are trying to pull the adds away from the boss, but not as good for other fights with adds spawning), so watch your timing of when you pop your ability. There may be situations where you need the focus glyph if you aren’t as confident about being able to keep things under control, but this is going to be a more personal choice.

Conclusions:

When should you switch from a “refresh all the time” to a more complicated refresh pattern? I would say that once you have your 4-piece Tier 10 bonus, you probably have the knowledge and need for the more complicated DPS rotation in the 3.3.3 patch. When you refresh DOTs ends up not even being that important, since DOTs are such a small DPS difference in the first place. Even with all that work, the timing of DOT refreshing may only add up to a couple hundred DPS difference at most. The total DOT damage (moonfire & insect swarm combined) makes up between 10 & 20% of my total damage, even on single-target fights.

Suggestions:

Since moonfire seemed to benefit so much from being able to crit with the T9 set bonus, I think that Insect Swarm probably needs the same treatment to remain viable – and this isn’t something that I think can wait until Cataclysm to fix it. As people get more and more heroic gear, and possibly into the new dungeon, it is going to become more and more tempting to start not using IS at all. When we have all the bosses on farm, then I would anticipate not needing the 3% miss debuff at all, and so this isn’t something that we should wait until Cataclysm to fix. The fact that refreshing our DOTs at the wrong time is a DPS loss is actually really concerning, and should be something the developers are concerned about fixing sooner rather than waiting. I am more concerned about Insect Swarm than moonfire, and I think adding in crit IS ticks would be a really good step to helping with moonkin’s stat scaling issues in high-end gear (ie. I’m already crit soft-capped, hit capped, & haste soft-capped, and I’m in mostly 10-man ICC gear).

Posted in Moonkin Balance DPS, Patch 3.3 WotLK, Patches, Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

Mar
09
2010

Should healers have to deal with mana management?

So, the healing forums have been having a pretty big discussion lately (over the last few weeks) about how much mana management should matter in Cataclysm, and how spell choice plays into managing mana.

As someone who survived healing from the early days through now, I remember having to make more… intelligent decisions about what heals to use when mana was a limited resource.

I remember the days of using down-ranked Healing Touches weaved between other spells. In Burning Crusade, we didn’t really make that many choices about spells (my resto druid spammed rolling lifeblooms, and my shaman spammed chain heal). I remember the days of actually having a macro to cancel my long cast spells, though. Even at the beginning of WotLK, mana seemed like something that was a slightly more limited resource.

The problem right now, though, is that you have to use your fastest heals at the expense of everything else. This encourages people to heal with less efficient, more expensive spells (which is why Glyphed Healing Touch is seeing a resurgence, and why HOT raid healing even works). There doesn’t seem to be a way to tell good healers from bad healers. Meters just reward healing “first”, and people don’t really judge healers any other way. Since you can’t run OOM, you may as well just spam your fastest and least efficient heals all the time.

In Cataclysm, the goal seems to be a desire to return to the original game’s style of healing, where you need a team of healers to manage their mana and heal “smart” instead of healing first. Where you will have to actually spend time choosing what sized heals you want (maybe unglyphed HT’s long cast time will make it back as a useful tool?). I think that there would also have to be less AOE raid constant damage, as it is the AOE healing that really tends to be the most spammy and the least mana efficient a lot of the time (with the most limited healing tools). For single-target healing, most of the classes have those small, medium, big options. For raid healing, none of the classes have much variety in tools (and for paladins, they just have nothin at all). So, perhaps raid healing is a place where the developers should look at the tools that the healing classes have, to see if they want to give us more choices in what spells we use for AOE healing.

Mana management can be an interesting part of the healers’ game.  I hope that it leads to interesting changes in Cataclysm, and that it makes the game more fun instead of more frustrating. So, I think that healing spell variety has to be interesting and meaningful if mana management is going to be part of the healers’ job in Cataclysm once again. If one or two spells are obviously just better than the rest, then we’ll just spam ourselves OOM and get frustrated, so there has the be the right mix of tools and the right balance. Can we achieve all of this next expansion? Only time will tell. I personally think that mana management can work as an interesting part of the game, because it has been in the past. However, I think there is also a lot of risk.

Posted in Cataclysm, Restoration Healing Trees, Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

Mar
07
2010

Restokin’s First Blogiversary

Happy Blogiversary to me!

A little over a year ago, I decided to start a blog. A year ago today was when my boyfriend finished setting it up and I posted my very first posts! The first day, I posted 4 mini-posts, mostly analyzing the 3.1 PTR patch note changes. This also means that I have been in my current guild, Conspiracy, for almost a year, too!

Since I was already pretty well known amongst druids from my long time posting (& stickied leveling guide) in the druid forums, this blog really started out with a bang and has continued to pass my expectations every day. On March 24th (Only a short time after starting the blog), I got linked on Wowinsider, and my first huge jump in hit #’s (4,300 visitors in 1 day). Then, every other large jump in my analytics is usually either a patch day or another day I was linked on wow.com. I even had to change hosting services in my first month (that’s the strange dip at the beginning of April that analytics didn’t pick up readers for that day). Good times!

Here is the analytic break down by day across the last year:

And my hope is that over the next year, these numbers are going to get even bigger. With Cataclysm coming, and so much changing for WOW and the druid class, I can’t wait to see what Restokin will bring over the next year! I have slowed down my posting speed a little bit compared to the rapid pace that I was pushing out articles in my first couple months of blogging. However, I have also worked to increase the quality of the posts that I release, and I frequently work to update my leveling and healing guides.

I really just wanted to say thank you to all the druids AND non-druids out there who read my blog. I wouldn’t be who I am today without all of you. I love being part of the WOW community and the blogging community. Even with all the fancy charts and numbers, I still take the time to respond to people who talk to me in-game, on twitter (@restokin), in comments on my blog, on the forums, or by e-mail. I’m here to be part of a community and I enjoy playing (and writing about) world of warcraft with all of you.

Here’s one of the early screenshots of my druid, back when I was a newer level 60 (in 2005). It really feels amazing that I’ve been part of this community for so many years! It’s so nice to take the time to remember where you came from, and to think about how far we’ve come. Unfortunately, in all that time, I’ve still managed to have a lot of dead animals on my head… Oh well.

Posted in Achievements | 25 Comments »

Mar
05
2010

Putricide down – Progress report & more

So, there has been some chatter around the internet amongst bloggers about how much they write about their guilds. Since I started out as a fairly prominent druid community member before I started blogging, I didn’t see the point in trying to hide my in-game identity – instead, I capitalized on the readership I already had when I started the blog (by re-posting, cross-linking between my stickied guides & here). Since my forum identity also comes with an armory profile & guild name, it’s not like I can actually hide my guild. Instead, what I do is I keep all the things I say about my guild in a positive tone. It comes down to something my mom always said: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!” This is pretty much a moto I use to blog by. If I say negative things, it’s usually about game mechanics, not about individual people.

One of the things that I’ve been doing is posting boss kill pictures, mostly because I like to highlight something that people can already tell just by looking at public armory info, because I’m already judged by my armory. Honestly, I really just enjoy being in my current guild.

So, congrats Conspiracy on recent Putricide & Blood Prince kills! Yes, I know the Blood Prince pic is a bit old (sometime in February). It’s been a while since I did an update.

Posted in Achievements | 3 Comments »

Mar
02
2010

Cataclysm Gear changes for druids

So, they announced more details about their plan for Cataclysm gear, which has set off a posting frenzy across the WOW community.

Most of it was stuff we already knew. The summary is that they expect bear & cats to share gear, while they expect resto & moonkin to share gear. This sounds great in theory, but is likely going to cause problems in the long run, and it’s going to take months of Beta testing everything to get all the “nobs” tweaked right to pull this off.

However, please keep in mind that we have multiple months to get everything working right, and that there will be some variety & customization for our gear, and that the sky is definitely not falling (well, except for moonkin who can make stars fall out of the sky on demand).

Overall, they seem to be simplifying gear to a great extent. First, please realize that this is only a plan, and that some things will change between this post & Cataclysm being released. Here’s a rough summary and analysis, rather than a copy/paste of that thread. If you want to see what exactly they said, then go read the original thread. Below combines some of the knowledge from earlier posting, along with what was released today. In all cases, the existing stats on gear are going to change. However, you should wait until we know what individual pieces will look like before you start stocking up on additional gear. There will be several months to get things all straightened out before things go live. Cata is still a long time away.

For cats & bears, stats on leather armor will include:

  • Cat & bear gear will have roughly the same amount of stamina, which will be high like the other classes (so bear won’t need as much additional scaling for stam).
  • Leather gear for cats/bears will likely have a mix of: stam, agility, crit, haste, mastery, hit, & expertise.
  • Bears may need to gear for STR accessories for more tanking-related stats shared with other tanking classes (though bears still can’t block/parry), but this point still isn’t entirely clear. Dodge rating would probably only be on the STR items.
  • Resilience will still be good for PvP.
  • Haste will be a more attractive state for melee specs.
  • Reforging will help with getting your bear & cat sets to have the right combination of stats. However, reforging won’t be perfect (IE. you won’t be able to convert all of that yucky parry/block into dodge at a 1 to 1 conversion rate).

For Resto & Moonkin

  • We’re expected to gear basically the same between resto & moonkin (they said that before WotLK; we’ll see how well that actually works out).
  • Leather caster gear will have a mix of: Int, stam, spirit, haste, crit, & mastery.
  • Resto druids will be happy, and not much is changing for them in terms of gear stats, and everything is happy in tree-land.
  • Moonkin (and elemental shaman) won’t have hit rating itemized on their leather/mail. Instead, we’ll have talents that convert spirit to hit rating. We can still use DPS caster accessories with or without hit on them as needed.
  • It is likely that there will be some leather caster gear without spirit on it (I really hope so). If moonkin ends up with too much spirit (ie. hit rating) from gear, we can either complain to get more non-spirit items, or we can suck it up and reforge (and take the 50% stat penalty) to convert spirit to another more useful stat. However, until we see what happens to the gear, we just have to trust that in most cases, gear will be itemized in a way that makes sense. Also, if other casters end up with too much +hit rating gear, they will have to do the same thing, so it should balance out in the end.
  • My bet is that we’ll end up needing to reforge a couple pieces of gear to get a decent set, but I’m hoping that reforging works out right in the end.
  • We lose mastery if we pick up cloth instead of leather.
  • Spell penetration & resilience will be available for PvP gear.
  • It should be harder for moonkin to reach the hit/haste/crit caps in Cataclysm compared to now.

More About Reforging (ie. what people should be concerned about right now):

Reforging is really what all of druids dreams for the future are tied up in. Bears will need reforging to turn Warrior tanking items into druid tanking items, or to turn rogue leather into tanking leather. Moonkin still won’t have gear perfectly itemized for them, and will need reforging to turn healing gear into moonkin gear (especially for balancing around the spirit/hit cap). For bear druids, there needs to be some way to turn STR accessories into better things for bears without losing itemization points along the way, since bears are likely going to be expected to use them (ie. parry & block rating need 1 to 1 conversions to dodge for bears, or bears will be more limited in the gear they can tank in).

In conclusion:

This isn’t really anything super new or shocking. We have had huge changes to our stats every expansion, and we have survived every time in the past. Cataclysm will bring new and exiting changes, and nothing marked for Cataclysm is set in stone yet. They could make it through part of testing and realize something just isn’t working right, and completely change it to something different. That’s just part of the game, and we’ll adapt just like we always do.

Posted in Cataclysm, Druid - General, Feral Bear tanking, Feral DPS Cat, Moonkin Balance DPS, Restoration Healing Trees | 6 Comments »

Mar
01
2010

Eclipse Basics & Rotations for Beginner Moonkin

Based on request, here’s what the basics of the Moonkin’s Eclipse rotation looks like with pictures. This is the rotation for a level 80 moonkin doing single-target damage to a raid/instance boss. This is updated for the 3.3.3 content patch for Wrath of the Lich King. For more info on the basics of moonkin, please see my previous “how to moonkin raid PvE” post here.

First, lets look at Murmur’s Recommended rotation from the Balance 101 thread: I’ll copy & paste it from his guide to here, and then go through it step by step with pictures & explanations.

  1. Apply Faerie Fire to the boss.
  2. If there is no Unholy Death Knight, cast a single Wrath to get Earth and Moon up.
  3. Apply Insect Swarm and then Moonfire.
  4. Unless your boss strategy is very strange, use Force of Nature and Starfall.
  5. Cast Wrath until you proc a Lunar Eclipse.
  6. Cast Starfire until you proc a Solar Eclipse.
  7. Reapply DoTs as they fall off.
  8. Use Force of Nature and Starfall as they come off cooldown.

Now, lets break it down.

1. Apply Faerie Fire to the boss. This debuff lowers armor, and if you spec for Improved Faerie fire (which you should do in a raiding build), it gives your whole raid a 3% hit buff, and gives you 3% to crit with spells.

2. Next, apply a single wrath to get earth & moon up (you can skip this step if you are casting your DOTs as you run into the room and get into position, since you can’t cast wrath on the move). This is what the Earth & Moon debuff looks like:

3. Apply Insect Swarm and then Moonfire: DOTs will always be a damage increase for a beginner moonkin.

4A. Force of Nature summons 3 treants to beat up on your target, on a 3 minute cooldown. I can sometimes cast it twice in a fight if I use it towards the beginning of a pull.

4B. Starfall has about a 35 yard radius (After talents, without the glyph of focus), so be careful that you don’t aggro things to the side or behind you. However, it is going to do substantial damage to a single target in the next patch, so it’s an important tool that you need to learn how to use appropriately. Starfall is a buff that is applied to you, but hits things all around you. The buff icon shows up in your buff list, and it puts a faint moon over your head:

5. Cast wrath until you proc a Lunar Eclipse. You can tell that you get a Lunar Eclipse proc for several reasons. First, Lunar Eclipse is the Blue icon that shows up over your head. There is also the Blue circular icon on your buff bar. So, when you see a Blue-colored Eclipse, you switch to casting Starfire.

When you Download Squawk and Awe, it also shows up as a blue icon next to the words Eclipse (starfire). Since S&A is basically a required addon for new moonkin, you should be able to know that you switch from wrath to starfire when the words Eclipse (starfire) show up on your S&A mod. S&A will show up as Eclipse (Starfire) cooldown after Eclipse ends, and you keep casting starfire when it says that. Basically, the word that S&A says on that line is the spell you should be casting at any point in time.

You should NEVER just try to watch for the buff, as you won’t always see it (especially if there are multiple moonkin). You should have some type of mod to alert you when you need to switch.

6. Cast Starfire until Solar Eclipse. This is an orange Eclipse icon. When you see an orange-colored eclipse, you switch to Wrath. Squawk & Awe notes this as an orange icon next to the words: Eclipse (Wrath). When you see Eclipse (Wrath) on your S&A mod, it’s time to switch back to casting wrath.

7 & 8. When your DOTs fall off, or your cooldowns fall off, then re-cast them. Squawk and Awe will also show your DOTs & cooldown timers. It also gives you timers for your Eclipse. So, in the following picture, you should be casting wrath because you are on a lunar Eclipse for another 13 seconds, and you have 5.4 seconds until Insect swarm falls off and you should recast it. The number 2 next to moonfire means that I refreshed it 2 times with starfire because of my starfire glyph. It will stop at 3 starfires, since that is the max that the duration can be extended. This also shows that I have 49 seconds before my starfall is off cooldown. The one blank spot is where my Omen of Clarity procs show up. I turn off ALL the other tracking from the mod, as these are the only things I really care about seeing here.

It’s as simple as that! Have fun being a moonkin!

Posted in Moonkin Balance DPS | 27 Comments »

Feb
28
2010

Moonkin basics for the new level 80 Raider

So, you just hit 80 and want to be a moonkin raider? Great! Lets get started.

First, you have to be aware of how many great resources there are for new moonkin players, such as the Balance 101 guide on WoW.com. Murmur’s guide covers a lot more than what I’m going to talk about here, and he covers it in greater detail. I am also including lots of links in this post to places where other people explained things, so if you are a new moonkin, I expect you to read all those other links, too! The more resources you read, the better you will understand the moonkin mechanics.

This guide will also assume (in places) that you haven’t raided before on another character. Murmur’s guide is very specific to things unique to moonkin, but a lot of the time, people who are very new to WOW raiding will miss over other important basics (like why you need addons, or how to learn the boss fights in advance). This is also going to be more of a resource list of things you need to know, and where to go find out about them.

The most important thing you need to remember is that it is your job to NOT be a faildruid:

From CAD-Sillies by Tim Buckley

How should you spec?

Talents are a very, very important thing. Having the right talent build can take you from being a failkin to being a boomkin. When you hit level 80, you need to choose a good talent spec for raiding. There is a little bit of flexibility, but not that much. Instead of explaining all the talents, I’m just going to give you 2 “template” specs that you can use:

For more discussion on talents, see Graylo’s talent guide, and Hamlet’s moonkin basics for more advanced raiders.

Get to know your spells.

Priority/rotation basics:

  • In a raid, always attack what your raid leaders/tanks tell you to attack. If they put a Skull symbol over something’s head, it means you should attack that. At the very least, follow directions about what kill targets you are supposed to be on. For example, there are often adds that spawn that you will need to single-target kill in boss fights. The raid leaders will ask you to kill those adds FAST and then go back on the boss.
  • For 3 or more mobs that are standing near each other (usually on the “trash” packs before bosses), you can AOE instead of doing single-target damage (ie. hurricane & starfall). If you have enough space to not aggro a bunch of other crap, then you can use starfall when it’s off cooldown. If you aren’t sure how big your AOE radius is on starfall, then skip it and stick to just using hurricane.
  • For your single-target rotation, you will basically be refreshing DOTs, using your cooldowns, and switching back and forth between wrath and starfire based on having a solar (orange = switch to casting wrath) or lunar Eclipse (blue = switch to casting starfire) proc. For how this all works, See Graylo’s “spells and rotations” guide. Graylo has great advice about being able to master the art of doing good damage as a moonkin druid, and should be considered “required” homework for you.

Addons/Interface.

  • You have to WATCH your Eclipse buffs and your DOTs closely so what you should do is to install an addon called Squawk and Awe. (Advanced moonkin can find other options, such as Quartz, power auras, etc).

Here are some other addon things I find helpful. In general, try to keep your interface CLEAN and SIMPLE. Make sure you can see the world around you so that you can pay attention and your screen isn’t covered in windows, spam and crap. If you are a new player without other high level characters, here is a couple really basic addons that are helpful for raiding:

Gear for Success

  • Gem & enchant all your gear, and use the right kinds of gems & enchants. The worst mistake that you can do is to apply to a serious raiding guild without any enchants or gems in your gear. Even running PUGs, they will likely not accept you if you do poor damage and you look like you don’t care about your gear at all.
  • Run Random Heroics to get your triumph badges for the Tier 9 set pieces (which you will eventually replace with Tier 10 from frost badges) & make sure that you get a good idol, trinkets, and pick up enough stuff to replace all your blues with dungeon epics. Running 5-man dungeons will also be a good way to practice your rotations before you try to start raiding. Graylo has good loot lists to help you evaluate raid-level gear.
  • Make sure you have enough hit rating that your spells don’t miss (263 without a draenei, or 236 with a draenei in your group). You want to hit these marks, but not have a ton of extra, since you get zero benefit from hit after these points.
  • Try to have between 400 & 500 haste rating, and then focus more on crit after that point as you are gearing up.
  • Don’t forget your glyphs! What the “best” glyphs are will change in patch 3.3.3, but before the next patch, you would want moonfire, starfire, & insect swarm glyphs. You will likely trade out your insect swarm glyph for a starfall glyph when the next patch day hits, however this is subject to change.
  • Use flasks (Flask of the Frost Wyrm), and food buffs (usually fish feasts, but make sure you have your own spell power-increasing food if you need it).
  • Since you need to run 5-mans before you start running 10-mans or 25-mans, you may also want to read this wow.com rookie guide for advice on preparing to run 5-man dungeons at level 80.

Know the boss fights.

Additional Moonkin Resources:

Conclusions:

  • Moonkin CAN do respectable damage, but often don’t live up to their potential.
  • The biggest places where moonkin lose out is by having a bad spec, not gearing correctly, not understanding the “rotation” well enough to maximize damage output, not using good raiding addons, not knowing enough about the fights (so you lose more damage time by moving too much or too little), and not using the resources available to learn how to do it right.
  • Try to run other raids (like Naxramas, Ulduar, ToC, VoA, etc) before jumping into Icecrown Citadel if you haven’t really raided much before. You can usually tag along with PUGs running 10-mans for the weekly raid quests.
  • Learn to maximize your potential – so that you can be a contributing raid member and to help your team to succeed.
  • Also, don’t forget that this is supposed to be fun!

Posted in Leveling, Moonkin Balance DPS | 12 Comments »

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