Archive for the ‘Moonkin Balance DPS’ Category

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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 | 9 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 »

Feb
26
2010

Recap of Twitter answers for druids

There were 2 questions relevant to druids in the latest twitter #blizzchat.

  • Q. Is there any ETA on tree / moonkin form graphical update?
    A. Moonkin is hard because Moonkin players are so in love with that form. It’s tough to change it at all. We currently hope to do a new tree form for Cataclysm, but no promises.

I think what moonkin would like more than a complete revamp is just color customizations of the already existing forms. A quick re-color (tied to our hair colors) would be a lot of fun, even if the basic forms weren’t changed for moonkin. Color customization is more important for trees & moonkin, really. More colors, please!

Also, moonkin & tree form (and ALL the forms) need to look different for Worgen & Trolls compared to their NE & Tauren counterparts. Since we won’t likely be able to fight outside of forms as druids, the new races need very distinctly different forms so that the new races can be fun.

  • Q. Has there been any thought of changing Eclipse to charges so that Moonkin dps doesn’t suffer so much from moving?
    A. Yes. Expect a major overhaul in Cataclysm that keeps the same basic idea (alternating from Arcane to Nature) but in a way that is more core to the class. Like everything though, there is the risk that we may decide this idea sucks once we see it in action.

This is something I’m super excited to see. I can pretty much promise you that the moonkin players will give you great feedback on anything that you tinker with during Cataclysm testing. We can’t wait to see what the developers ideas are for making moonkin a more fun spec to play! If their first idea for the Eclipse mechanic comes out funky, we’ll do whatever we can to help it work out in the end.  I think moonkin need to see a lot of revamp & change to bring us into a better place in Cataclysm, but that’s what expansion talent revamps are really all about.

I’m glad that they are at least willing to consider fundamentally changing how Eclipse works, which gives me hope that maybe they’ll make the changes necessary to moonkin so that we don’t feel like we’re always an expansion behind everyone else and just trying to play catch-up all the time. I’m really excited to see what may be coming for moonkin in the future. This next expansion will be really fun for moonkin (yes, I can still sound hopeful from time to time).

Posted in Cataclysm, Moonkin Balance DPS, Patch 3.3 WotLK, Patches, Restoration Healing Trees | 11 Comments »

Feb
25
2010

3.3.3 Druid changes – for moonkin pvp (or not)

First, the changes:

  • Typhoon mana cost has been reduced from 32% of base mana to 25% of base mana.
  • Starfall damage has been increased. Now causes 563 to 653 Arcane damage (Up from 433 to 503) and 101 Arcane damage (Up from 78) to all other enemies within 5 yards. Spell Power coefficients also increased.
  • Nature’s Grasp: Now has 3 charges, up from 1.

Typhoon:

First, the typhoon mana change is designed to help make typhoon not cause moonkin in PvP to go OOM. Typhoon needs to be something that moonkin can use often, so making it slightly less of a drain on their mana pools is a helpful change.

Starfall:

Designed to help starfall feel more useful. Gives probably a small-ish DPS increase for PvE (depending on how much you use starfall already). Unlikely to do anything significant for moonkin PvP. If each tick does a couple hundred more damage (at most), and you only get off 2 or 3 ticks in a PvP situation (at most), then it’s not really going to do what the developers had hoped it would do. Starfall is always going to be interrupted by Crowd Control, and no amount of crying is going to convince the developers otherwise, so the best hope for making starfall more useful for PvP is being able to capitalize on getting off the first couple ticks when you can.

UPDATE: It looks like starfall should be doing somewhere around 3x’s more on the PTR compared to what it is on Live. Should be a nice PvE boost. Not sure for PvP yet how it’s going to work out.

Nature’s Grasp:

Now has 3 charges? I’m really confused on how this could actually work for moonkin in terms of being something useful. It’s much more likely to help resto druids escape, since resto has the mobility to keep HOTs going while root-kiting. Feral  already has instant-cast cylones & roots with their cat form talent, which doesn’t require them to get hit in the first place. Moonkin can’t rely on nature’s grasp as an actual escape mechanism. Moonkin PvP’ers are worried that more procs that go to waste is not going to be helpful because it will just contribute to the diminishing returns (or just snag pets that you don’t want snagged). Unless it could root all 3 targets at once, then the charges won’t help moonkin (and it’s unlikely that they would give feral & resto an AOE root).

The nature’s grasp change, combined with all the other changes, really need to be tested on the PTR, and people need to post constructive feedback about why they are (or aren’t) working. However, anything that makes this a viable escape mechanism for moonkin would likely be overpowering for resto druids. In fact, resto probably benefits the most from this in PvP because they have improved barkskin and other mechanics (like instant-cast spells) that help them escape while also being able to cast something worthwhile on the run. We really need to see this in action to get a better idea of how it’s effecting the 3 specs.

UPDATE: GC says that the roots from Nature’s Grasp can apply to other people without breaking the previous roots (so you could potentially have 4 people rooted at once if you were super lucky).

Conclusions:

All 3 of these are buffs. The typhoon one buffs PvP moonkin’s mana. The second one buffs moonkin PvE. The third is likely to benefit resto druids the most. None of these are the actual moonkin PvP fixes that they were looking for, which is why there has been a string of rather non-productive posts on the damage dealing forums. The lack of focus in all the moonkin threads, however, makes it particularly hard to see if the buffs are actually going to help moonkin PvP or not. I’m hoping that people will start talking about their actual PTR PvP results once things settle down. I gave up on moonkin PvP so long ago that I don’t even think I could do any worthwhile PTR PvP testing at this point. The good, productive, posts are also being lost in the low signal-to-noise ratio on the forums.

UPDATE – More info on Starfall:

Hey Hamlet, sorry for any confusion. We probably should have just waited until you guys could test it on the PTR.

I think I figured out how you all are calculating the coefficient, so maybe this will make more sense. Again, I’m not 100% sure we’re speaking the same language here. If I have time, maybe I will just log in with a moonkin and compare the before and after and post numbers.

Main star
Old coefficient: 4.8%
New coefficient: 37%

Splash damage
Old coefficient: 1.2%
New coefficient: 13%

As I said, these numbers are very generous. If Balance druids melt the world we may have to back off of them.

Posted in Moonkin Balance DPS, Patch 3.3 WotLK, Patches, Player Versus Player | 11 Comments »

Feb
18
2010

Can moonkin be fixed before Cata?

Okay, so Ghostcrawler has posted in multiple balance druid threads in the damage dealing forum in the last week. He shot down two ideas (ie. a glyph for wrath haste scaling, and Owlkin Frenzy buffs). He seems to be paying attention to moonkin, and to changes that will come before Cataclysm, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut way to fix moonkin’s problems without major talent tree overhauls.

What are the problems?

  1. Wrath scales poorly with haste, causing there to be a soft-cap of around 400 haste rating, where after that rating level, your wrath cast time drops below a second and clips the GCD (when Nature’s Grace is active). Also causes problems when Heroism is up.
  2. Eclipse has been buffed too many times, and now makes the crit cap for Starfire be too low, and Eclipse makes up too large of a % of our overall DPS. Eclipse is also a clunky & uncontrolled mechanic, leading to big RNG swings in our DPS not being reliable (ie. we have good RNG days and bad RNG days, with larger DPS swings up and down  than other classes have to deal with).
  3. Moonkin have to stand rooted in place to do good damage. For example, on Festgergut in ICC, I’ve deemed myself a “melee moonkin” so I can pump out between 2,000 and 3,000 more DPS than if I was in range (a bigger swing than any of our other ranged damage dealers). Lack of mobility effects both PvP and PvE moonkin.
  4. Given that the fight mechanics require a lot of moving around and we scale poorly with stats, we tend to fall behind on DPS compared to people who don’t have those same movement or scaling problems. In some fights in ICC 25-man, I can come in 4th place on the meters & in the same instance, I can also come in 11th place; since my DPS goes up and down all over the place, which isn’t happening to the other people in my raid (ie. they stay relatively the same & I move up and down willy nilly).
  5. Moonkin don’t do well in PvP. Given that all of Moonkin’s mechanics are designed around doing good PvE damage, moonkin have very few good PvP abilities, and lack the defensive cooldowns or escape mechanics that other classes have. Combined with clunky damage dealing mechanics and no burst-damage cooldowns they can use on demand (and how hard it would be to maintain an Eclipse rotation in pvp), moonkin haven’t been doing well overall in Arena teams all expansion (with very few exceptions of moonkin who have managed to “stick it out).

Are there ways we can fix these problems before Cataclysm? What are the real fixes these problems need?

  1. No. Well, not without some clunky mechanic like the glyph that GC doesn’t like. The real fix for poor haste scaling is that Nature’s Grace needs to be removed for Cataclysm’s talent changes, where the trees can be designed around the talent’s removal without being a huge nerf. Anything else is just going to likely to be clunky (like the glyph option).
  2. No. Eclipse can’t be fixed until Cataclysm either. What moonkin’s rotation needs is about 2 more spells that we can mix into our rotations, in which case Eclipse would be much more easily modified at that point. In addition, other talents can be put in the mix to reduce our dependency on Eclipse forcing us to do more than just cast starfire. In addition, Eclipse wouldn’t need to be as strong if Wrath didn’t clip the GCD so much (ie. wrath was actually desirable to use in PvE). They could also take wrath out of our rotation and give us something else that was a medium cast-time nuke, and save Wrath for being a PvP spell (where fast cast times are more favorable).
  3. No. To fix our problems with movement-heavy or target switching fights, the changes they could make to our overall rotation and new spells could help address that “rooted” problem. For example, an instant-cast direct damage spell that did decent burst damage could be timed to use while moving when movement was predictable (and typhoon or refreshing DOTs just doesn’t fill that role well enough).
  4. Yes, the developers can boost our overall DPS so that we don’t fall behind the other classes.
  5. Not really. Moonkin PvP needs the talent trees redesigned, new abilities implemented, and new “on use” defensive/offensive cooldowns to stand much of a chance in pvp. Moonkin could also use an imp barkskin talent like exactly what they gave to resto druids instead of moonkin. There are little things Blizzard can do to make life for PvP moonkin more tolerable, but there’s no fix for a spec that is totally broken for PvP.

What can be changed before Cataclysm?

  • This is something that a newer moonkin blogger, Random Moonkin Generator, has been mulling over, and suggests things like: removing haste from celestial focus, changing improved insect swarm (ie. making wrath crit more & starfire do more damage to help increase the crit cap for Lunare Eclipse starfires), making nature’s splendor increase duration of IS & moonfire more, having our DOTs scale with haste or crit from talents. Some of these I’ll talk about below, but you should go read that thread, too.
  • The fastest solution to falling behind on DPS is just to give flat damage increases to talents like Earth & Moon that can easily be removed for Cataclysm, and work great without having to do too much testing. That’s what they did with Earth & Moon once already in 3.3. They could just tack on an additional damage bonus to imp moonkin form or something.
  • The easiest solution would be to do nothing and make us “wait until Cata”, so that in Alpha/Beta testing for Cata, the whole talent tree can just be re-designed from the ground up (or something like that).
  • Better scaling with gear? I like the idea of having DOTs scale better with gear.  Our tier 9 set bonus allowed moonfire to crit, which was a nice temporary way of DOTs scaling with our crit. However, once you upgrade to T10 gear, none of our DOTs scale with either haste or crit. It might be interesting to have one (or both) of our DOTs scale better with either crit or haste. It doesn’t fix the immediate problems of wrath and starfire scaling, but it’s something interesting that could be examined.
  • Reducing Starfire’s Crit chance? If the possibility of crit-capping Starfire on Eclipse procs is problematic, the crit bonuses given to starfire through imp insect swarm or improved Faerie Fire could potentially be changed to flat damage increases instead of crit increases. Imp insect swarm would be the most obvious candidate, since only starfire gains crit from that talent. The crit for starfire on imp IS could also be turned into X% haste, and then the haste from Celestial Focus could be removed and turned into something else.
  • Celestial focus – If the haste was removed from CF, then it could be possible to give some PvP effect that helped with their survivability or offensive ability. Moonkin PvP could still really use something to give them a chance to be more than just a training dummy out on the field of battle.
  • Owlkin Frenzy is another talent that could be changed to help moonkin PvP. I’m sure the devs could think of something (ie. make it reduce how much damage the moonkin are taking from players as they get beat on, for when they’re not able to take advantage of the damage boost). They could also just put a clone of Imp Barkskin into the balance tree so moonkin could actually shift out of moonkin form some time, and increase the usefulness of barkskin for them. They could also give moonkin the ability to cast heal spells in form (maybe just 1 or 2).
  • Changing the moonkin Tier 10 2-piece bonus? This is somewhere that they could adjust something that would effect high-end raiders more than everyone else at this point. The OOC proc damage increase mechanic contributes to the randomness of damage swings, since you could have OOC proc 5 times in a row, or not proc at all. It would also keep moonkin from finding ways to “force” OOC to proc (even mana expensive ways that consume reagents). The damage bonus also doesn’t last very long, so you could miss out on it while moving too much. It doesn’t matter too much what  they changed it to, so long as it gave a more steady damage boost, rather than more random burst. They could also just swap the T9 2-piece with the T10 2-piece, since people at lower gear levels are likely less concerned with gear scaling problems (ie. people wearing all T10 could really use the crit scaling for moonfire). People at lower gear levels would also be able to better absorb the RNG-nature of the OOC proc bonus, and would have absolutely no effect on people wearing 2 pieces of each.

Conclusions:

  • There are many other changes the developers could decide to do to help moonkin PvP and PvE. However, only the developers can really decide what they want to change now versus what can wait until Cataclysm.  Anything from minor changes to large changes could be done at any time, and it’s really up to them to decide what it is they actually want to do. GC seems to want community feedback at the moment, but he isn’t really giving us directions on what we should be focusing on for our suggestions. It feels more like trying to shoot at moving targets in the dark, where we only know when we missed the target.

Posted in Cataclysm, Moonkin Balance DPS, Patch 3.3 WotLK | 14 Comments »

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