Moonkin Buffed in Patch 3.1, build 9658
Wow. If you haven’t heard about it, here’s an overview of what’s happening to druids in 3.1. I read about it on this post at WoWInsider, and below is my take.
Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral) now reduces the armor of the target for 5 min.
When I first read this post, I actually skipped over this part, since most of you guys know that I was not a fan of Imp FF. Thing is, with this buff to 5 minutes, there is now, absolutely no reason to not take this talent. It was a decent talent before, but I did not want to be a slave to watching a 3rd timer, and since I always used to raid with shadow priests, casting it every 40 seconds was actually a DPS loss for me, even with the extra 3% crit. I can now safely say, since the duration of Imp FF has now been more then 5x’ed, it is a talent I am going to pick up, and use in my rotation. No question about it. It comes at an especially good time now, especially since I formed a new guild and shadow priests are hard to come by…
The only thing I worry about is Feral FF overriding it. I will still get my own personal 3% free crit, but now that I’m a raid leader, the 3% extra chance to hit is beneficial to the raid as a whole. I guess I’ll have to see how it turns out.
Starfall cooldown has been lowered from 3 min to 1.5 min.
Without actually blogging about it, I had been picking up Starfall in my PvE rotation. I wasn’t really using it on trash, I was using it for a little bit of added DPS on each boss fight. With the cooldown now halfed (no, I am not glyphing for it), Starfall is a nice talent to pick up if you don’t need all the mana regen or have a spare point. Easy free damage.
Eclipse now gives you a 33% chance of increasing damage done by Wrath by 30% (up from 20%) when you critically hit with Starfire.
I’m not sure how this affects us currently, or if it will change the moonkin spell rotation around to favor Wrath more. I have never been a fan of casting Wrath; my computer probably lags 1 out of every 5 seconds because I’m on wireless internet. Starfire was always the safer spell to cast, and I could easily type a quick message while it was casting (112 WPM ftw!). Although its a buff, and I do occasionally and accidentally proc the Wrath Eclipse, I hope it does not change around the moonkin spell rotation. Look for another post on this soon as I read up more.
Owlkin Frenzy now affects all attacks.
This is actually how it currently is in-game right now, I believe. They were going to change it to only physical melee/ranged, but they are leaving it alone it seems. Since I’ll be spending 3/3 in Imp FF, this talent is now purely for PvP.
Celestial Focus now reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Starfire, Hibernate and Cyclone by 23/46/70% and increases your total spell haste by 1/2/3%.
Blizz said they were looking at removing the Starfire stun; I expected it to happen. The Starfire stun was very nice (our only stun/real interrupt?), for PvP, but I won’t complain. 70% pushback reduced for SF can help on fights that have raid-wide damage. I’m still keeping this talent for both PvE and PvP.
Nature’s Grace now increasing your spell casting speed by 20% for 3 sec.
This is another awesome change. No more Wrath crits clipping GCD, this change, I believe, benefits Wrath much more than it does SF.
Planned Moonkin Talent Build for Patch 3.1 (PvE)
If the changes above hit live, I plan to use a 56/0/15 balance build for raiding. The only real change is the 3/3 in Imp FF, and dropping 1 point from Intensity and putting it in Starfall.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the changes, and I already thought moonkin DPS was at a pretty good spot. Let’s hope Blizz keeps taking care of us 
Macbook
11 Comments
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Macbook
I’d just like to let you know that as a beginner moonkin, this blog has helped me tremendously, and I hope you keep up the good work.
To this particular post,it’s nice to see some shiny buffs to what was my first class and has always held a high spot in my ranks of favourite classes. Imp. Faerie Fire is something I’ve been taking anyway – we have no SPriest and no other Moonkin – so to see it buffed to make my rotation a little easier is great.
Blizz gets my approval on these changes, whatever little difference it may make.
@ Draik — Thanks man
And yeah, I haven’t been picking it up, but now I have no excuse not to. I was a little bothered today when I ran in a 25 man group with 6 (not exaggerating) 6 other boomkins in group. Other than myself, none were hit-capped, and none had iFF. Kinda annoying me.
Anyways, I hope these changes hit live!
Macbook
Hi There,
Just wanted to say you summed it up pretty well.
I would say that the change to Natures Grace is actually a bigger buff to starfire instead of wrath. You now get 0.6 seconds off starfire and 0.3 seconds of wrath where before it was a flat 0.5 seconds for both.
I actually raid with a slightly different setup to you i thought you might be interested in my setup to help improve your dps. The rotation is correct but you get more mana from dreamstate than you do intensity. You can also let a resto druid take the improved MOTW since its part of that build. Anyway here’s my build for you
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xG0uiIoIkIquRuZMxc0b
Note that you don’t need improved insect swarm, you aren’t wrathing much anyway, owlkin frenzy procs alot and gives a significantly bigger dps increase especially with the change in 3.1
Just stick one point in balance of power. 260 hit rating gives 10% + 2% balance of power + 1% dranaei + 3% improved FF = 16% cap.
Improved moonfire is not worth the two points better to improve your mana regen. Tested this on 3.1 test realms with a slightly changed rotation
Faerie Fire (5 minutes)
Insect Swarm (Applied at beginning for full dots hoping for a quick eclipse proc)
Moonfire
Wrath (till eclipse procs)
Renew moonfire (if required)
Starfire (till eclipse buff out)
Renew moonfire
Starfire (till eclipse cooldown nearly over, you usually have a second or two because to cast starfire over the cooldown could cause wrath eclipse)
Renew Insect Swarm
Wrath (till eclipse procs)
Renew Moonfire
Starfire (till eclipse buff out)
etc
@ Tarifefalas –
Thanks for the comment, but there is a problem or two in your comment:
- Improved Insect Swarm — I don’t pick up the ability because of the buff it does to Wrath, as much as its pretty much 3% free crit to Starfire whenever MF is up (which is always). Not sure if you read the tooltip wrong, but iIS is pretty much a must-have for all moonkins.
- Improved Moonfire – Live, I have no mana issues in any 5/10/25 man, so the Imp MF, however small of a DPS increase, was an increase nonetheless. I have played around on the PTR a little bit, and with the mana regen changes, I probably will drop Imp MF and get more mana regen.
- Balance of Power – Only problem with your logic there is that you need 17% of hit, not 16%. And, since I hardly am one to make sure we always have a Draenei in each party, I don’t count that 1% either. I will be keeping 2/2 BoP.
Let me know what you think, and thanks for commenting.
Macbook
As of right now (3.0.9), Ferals can’t even use Feral Faerie Fire when IFF from a Moonkin is up, because yours is “better”, just like how a Blessing of Might can’t overwrite an Improved Blessing of Might. So you won’t have to worry about losing your +hit when your spell is overwritten, unless it’s from another IFF specced Moonkin.
(Of course, that could change in 3.1, but that’s how it works now!)
@Baconhax – Beautiful. I have hardly had the chance to ever raid with a feral druid, and even if I have, I probably didn’t have iFF anyways.
Thanks for the clarification, I can’t wait for 3.1 to hit live if these changes stick!
Macbook
@Tarifefalas
I really dont like your rotaion and spec at all. some things you should know:
insect swarm and moonfire should be up ALWAYS, as they are your best dps spells, even WITH eclipse proced!! refresh them as soon as they drop always.
note: in 3.1 we will get even more damage from spellpower, thus making it even better.
also, when patch comes out if you can get your buffed casting speed to 1 second(after totems talents haste and natures grace 20%) then using wrath at all times except when eclipse off the cooldown, would be much better, as 30% increased damage is vhastly superior to 30% crit, you may not actualy get 30% more crits during that time due to it being a duration effect and you can only get a limited number of results in that time, where 30% damage will always work incrediby well. having 1 second buffed cast time works best for this due to not loosing effective time after crits that drop your cast below 1 second gcd.
also wrath is more mana efficient than starfire.(this was not true before they made moonkin form amazing) more casts = more crits = more mana back. do that math and you will see that wrath with 2380 spellpower and 31 crit unbuffed has incredibly higher DPM than starfire. (this is true for almost any combination of crit and spellpower but i have not done that much testing to find a converging point)
this does not change the fact that during bloodlust you should spam starfire to gain full benefit, as you can easily drop your cast time down to 1.3 seconds.
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