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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
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 | 16 Comments »

Feb
21
2010

Elder Lissanna finishes her long strange trip

Last year I was too busy to finish honoring all my elders for the Lunar Festival. So, it ended up being the last holiday that I needed to finish What a Long Strange Trip It’s been. So, I trekked all over Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend, and dungeons across the land. Finally, I finished the Lunar festival achievements, earning myself the title of Elder. At the same time, I also finished What a Long Strange Trip!

I got my violet proto-drake, which I showed off on the landing in Dalaran. Then, I remembered something that my character would have wanted to do after earning that big of an achievement. So, here’s Lissanna’s rendition of what happened next:

After completing my holiday celebrations, I returned to moonglade, what is usually my sanctuary away from the struggles of Northrend. What is usually a place of meditation and my connection to nature is now a festival ground for all of Azeroth to celebrate their elders. Since I had been awarded the title of Elder, I saw it fitting that I should go out to my home land, so that people could come to honor me. I went to my favorite place beside my friend Loganaar, where we can train young druids together. I started off training a young druid by showing him how to return back to Darnassus after he first learned how to come to my sacred home. However, I can not stay here for long, since there is little time to rest while the Lich King is still allowed to terrorize the frozen lands of Northrend and threaten all of Azeroth. The time of resting will soon come to an end and I will return when I am called to battle.


Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

Feb
15
2010

Blog Spotlight: Revive & Rejuvenate

So, today is the “big reveal” for the Secret Admirer project. The blog that I was assigned to stalk all weekend was Angelya from Revive & Rejuvenate. Over the course of the weekend, I’ve gotten to know her blog a little better. First, she’s a druid blogger, who started writing in December.  She seems to have leveled this druid up over the course of her blog, and just hit level 80! Congrats! Along the way, she has posted a lot of helpful advice (this isn’t her first character). She posts pretty frequently, and she writes very well. If you haven’t seen this one before, you should check it out. Also, it was nice stalking you this weekend.

Also, I want to say thanks to my very own stalker, Poneria of Fel Concentration! Okay, this is a funny story. Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been helping recruit new players to my guild. Poneria’s guild had just blown up in her face, so she applied to mine. She posted the absolute longest recruitment post I’ve ever seen, and also had orange & purple colored headers/highlights that stunned my officers. Of course, her recruitment post was so wonderful that my officers invited her into the guild. This weekend, Dristanel (who didn’t know about the big guild move Poneria had made) assigned her to be my blog stalker. Of course, since I had just recruited her to my guild, I knew enough about her writing style that I guessed who she was just based on the length of my first comment & the fact it had warlock-type references.  Oh well, it was a fun event, and it was fun running instances with her over the weekend and pretending that I didn’t know she was my stalker. In her defense, she joined my guild before she knew she was going to be stalking me, which is what makes it funny & not creepy.

Also, this is what the SA event made me think of.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Feb
12
2010

It’s all fun & Games – Blog Azeroth’s Secret Admirer

So, today kicks off the blog-stalking in honor of the Love is in the Air holiday. Over at the Pysician’s log, is the rules and the list of blogs that are going to be part of this event. Yes, this is a Secret Admirer event!

The event is sponsored by Blog Azeroth, since there’s a post on Blog Azeroth and Twisted Nether about it. So, this means I get to stalk someone’s blog over the weekend. It should be a lot of fun. *deviant giggle*

So, in full Blog Azeroth holiday style, the blogging community gets a chance to come together and do fun things. Whoever guesses their stalker first wins!

On a different note, I finally finished my holiday achievement for Love is in the Air.

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Feb
04
2010

I like puppies.

Okay, so I tried to run a Heroic Random dungeon once a day for my frost badges. Some days, I didn’t have time. Other days, I probably did more than one.

However, while everyone around me was getting pug pets, I wasn’t even close for a long time.

Why? Because I mainly ran 5-mans with guild members. Once we could get together a tank and a healer, finding DPS was relatively easy. One of the things I like about my guild is that they make running the 5-mans for frost badges pretty easy (though some days I don’t like having to run the old-content 5-mans in the first place).

So, after 2 months of running dungeons without very many pugs in them, I finally got my PUG pet reward. I think he’s pretty cute, but he doesn’t listen to me very well. Given that most runs had 1 or 2 pugs in them, the drawn-out process made me feel sometimes like I’d never get this reward.

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Feb
01
2010

Conspiracy Recruiting again!

Okay, so now that we have gotten through the holiday slump, and we are progressing our way through Icecrown Citadel, the officers of my guild have started more actively recruiting again. My guild is Conspiracy, Alliance side on the Elune (US) server. Elune is a fairly active PvE server, which I am happy to call my home.

There is a recruitment post up on our realm forums here, that has more information about what my officers are looking for. You can apply to the guild by posting on our forums.

Our raiding schedule: We are currently progressing through Icecrown Citadel. We raid 25-mans on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. We raid 10-mans on Sundays (sometimes Mondays). Our raids run from 8:00 to 11:30 pm EST.

I have talked before about how much fun I have raiding with them. We’re looking to beef up our numbers so that we can have the numbers to keep progressing through the 25-man content, without the risk of possibly having to cancel raids just because someone is having internet problems, or too many people want to call in with “RL stuff” for a night.

We progress at what I think is a good pace through normal-mode instances (though we choose not to spend the extra time it takes to learn hard-modes because we are more casual-friendly than that).  We’re not super-hard-core, but that’s the way I like it, because it creates a more fun & friendly atmosphere, rather than an atmosphere of “must raid ’til our eyes bleed”. I like it here, and I hope that other people who are looking for a guild to call “home” will talk to me or the officers in my guild about seeing if we’re the right fit for you!

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

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