Moonkin FAQ: Being the BEST Moonkin
For some reason or other, I’ve sort of become the moonkin-guru (Gurukin?) of my server. I get at least 3 whispers a day on what gear they should use, what my rotation is, what stats are better, what the hit cap is, and questions of that sort from other moonkins on our server. Being the curious druid that I am, I usually ask them why or how they thought to whisper me. Its usually either because they heard I was a good moonkin, or just inspected my gear and imaged I would know what I was talking about. I usually answer their questions, and then direct them to my blog for more information. So I am going to try and put up a little FAQ. Here goes.
1) Which piece of gear should I wear? [Insert Item here] or [Insert Item 2 Here]
Generally speaking, most upgrades you are considering on making while leveling are rather inconsquential. Epics you will receive in Naxx, which are incredibly easy to receive will usually be better than any blue/green you can find, so when I was doing the 70-80 grind, I pretty much kept most of my level 70 gear. If you are already level 80 and wondering what piece of gear is better, remember that gear is based on your particular situation and spec. If you are having mana issues, then sure, take the piece with Spirit and less Spell Power than that other piece of gear. Don’t just use gear because someone said it was an upgrade, make up your own mind. From what I read, my playstyle is rather different than some of the other moonkins I hear about, but its worked fine for me. Below is the way I generally categorize gear:
- If it is has Spirit: Its probably a piece of healing gear, and chances are, the Spirit itemization on it detracts some Haste or Crit or Hit rating that would suit you better. Still, if its an upgrade, or you could use the mana regen, don’t hesitate to take the upgrade, as Spirit is still great for moonkins.
- If it has mp5: Chances are, this will be a piece of cloth. On a personal level, I never liked having any gear with mp5. I feel it makes it look like I don’t know what I’m doing. mp5 isn’t anywhere as good as Spirit for a druid’s mana regen, so look carefully if a piece of gear with mp5 is actually an upgrade. If a healer needs this piece, you should probably pass, as there are probably better itemized pieces of gear for you not far up the road.
- Leather vs. Cloth: No difference to moonkins. Armor is a useless stat for PvE, so never base a judgement on a gear piece based on what its made of. The only time I swap out cloth for a leather piece of gear is if I want the armor bonus to tank Onyxia, or if I am going to PvP and don’t actually have a piece of PvP gear for that slot.
- Haste vs. Crit: It has been proved, multiple times, that Haste > Crit. That doesn’t mean, however, that dropping all of your crit for gear with haste is the best decision. You still need crit to proc your Eclipse procs easier. Althought Haste > Crit is mathematically proven, on a personal level, I treat them almost the same. IMO, if the itemization is the same, and the only difference is that one has haste and the other has crit, check the spell power. Chances are, I will have the one that has the higher spellpower.
What Spell Rotation Do You Use/What casting rotation should I use?
I’ve written at least twice on this subject, and this information should still be up-to-date. I would recommend checking my post on the Moonkin Spell Rotation, another post on the casting rotation I use, etc.
What is the Moonkin Hit Cap?
I’ve also covered this in a few places, the moonkin hit cap is 341 or 263. Or, you can read my hopefully more in-depth post on the Moonkin Hit Cap. Keep in mind that the hit cap is the single-most important stat to be aiming for if you plan to raid. If you are just doing heroics, you will need a lot less +hit.
What Glyphs Should I Use?
I wrote a post about playing around with moonkin glyphs, but I will be updating it soon (hopefully today). You should be able to read my post on Moonkin Glyphs by the end of today, hopefully. Glyphs will be very helpful and add a significant amount of DPS to your rotation. Make sure you have the appropriate glyphs on your toon for optimal DPS.
Insert Question Here
The above questions have been the most common. If you have any questions you’d like me to address, please comment on any post, or you can email me at moonkinblog [at] gmail [dot] com
Thanks!
Macbook
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Okay – Report Card time.
I ran Naxx for the first time last night. Raid Buffed up to about 1600+ spell.
Died only once. (Heigan Dance – they say you ALWAYS die the first time).
I think I missed timed my innervate at Instructor Raszuvius – and I ended up going OOM towards the end of the fight.
Total fight over all – I came in #3 dps – though I lost a big chunk of damage when I died in Heigan.
I think peaked at around 1800+ dps for the fight. The top 2 guys (warlock and mage – raid geared) were somewhere over low 2 Thousands.
Wrath ended up being my top damage spell – as it becomes quite effective when Wrath Eclipse goes and you can just first one off after another really quickly to squeeze in during the buff window. I feel like they should extend the Exclipse time buff for Starfire buff… because a missed timed rotation during this buff is much more detrimental to your dps and wrath is less likely to be interrupted.
Max Starfire crit was somewhere broke over 10k
Max Wrath crit was 6.5-6.8k
Not bad for a first fight.
Wonder if I should respec to take IFF. (i’m at about 220 something +Hit)
Lastly – a question about spell rotation during Non-eclipsed periods. Most of the times people choose either SF,SF,repeated to proc Wrath ECL or Wrath, Wrath repeated to proc SF ECL…
But I wonder – if you have Starfire Glyph, whether it would be better to alter SF,Wrath,SF,Wrath to take advantage of the renewed duration of Moonfire… to help increase DPS?
If I have MF ticking away – and I’m just spamming wrath, it’s losing extra dps that I could be gaining from firing off a SF no?
@ Aju –
Grats on doing Naxx
, and lol, I still die on the Heigan dance sometimes, I hit these awful lag spikes and there’s not much I can do about it.
I’m worried your going OOM. Do you have all of the mana regen talents available to us? And yes, it may be worthwhile for you to use IFF if you don’t see yourself getting hit capped anytime soon.
Come to think of it, you may be going OOM a lot if you are using SF to proc Wrath, and using Wrath during Eclipse CD. I do the converse of that; spam Wrath till Eclipse, and use Starfire during Eclipse’s cooldown.
I wouldn’t worry too much about an extra MF tick here and there, the balance dps rotation is already hard enough as it is, no need to make it tougher
Grats again,
Macbook
I have intensity + dreamstate. We don’t have Replenish in the raid (no ret pally/surv hunter/ and I’m the only guy with Shadow Priest).
I was using frostwyrm flask – I’m thinking next time I use the +mana/5 flask.
If I spec for IFF – I’m most likely to take out Starfall + pts in Celestial Focus…
Something like this I guess.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xG0uicsIdIVhohZMxcub
@ Aju — Spec looks fine, I just can’t imagine a spec that doesn’t get CF though, but I guess you can’t really pull point from elsewhere if you are having mana issues.
Losing Starfall is fine in my book though. I hope you get out of the mana problems so you can get back to the DPS machine talents
Macbook
The 1 comfort that I take from going into IFF is that it’ll boost my spell crit by 3%. I don’t know if that offsets losing 3% haste.
@ Aju –
Don’t forget, that until your hit capped, each point of +hit is worth more than each point of spell power or any other stat.
3% +hit is going to help the most, and you get 3% extra crit as an added bonus.
Macbook
One thing I’ve noticed lately, haste seems to be somewhat dependent on your lag. I run at around 300-500 latency, sometimes spiking to 600, 800, 1000 and I just can’t take as much advantage of the haste as the lucky people who run at around 100-200 latency. So I stack much more crit than haste, on both my holy priest and moonkin, just because of my lag.
I’d love to see the numbers on exactly how much of the benefit of haste you lose per 100 latency, but my experience has been that the lag makes it not worth it for me.
@ Ani –
This makes sense to me, but only to an extent. Latency affects a Starfire-favored rotation much less than it would on a Wrath-based rotation.
I lag to hell very often, but the hast still helps, to an extent. I’d imagine it would be tough to calculate the lag, but maybe one day I will put on a +crit set and do some testing
Macbook
your a jew
all i know is in my naxx gear around a month after WotLK release i was hitting 5k on patchwerk so you must be doing something wrong if that was what you were getting. check my boomkin out, Hellzyboy