[Moonkin] Guide :: 5.4 Edition

[brutallord]

Hello! Not sure if this is a right thread to ask, but ok...
I'm levelling my druid alt and i'm curious about my future gearing strategy. I always have resto as main spec but want to pick balance as off spec. The problem is, in mists of pandaria spirit is much more important for all healers than in cataclysm (my friend plays holy paladin with 8900 spirit and wants even more). So i'm aware of being over hit cap. How do you fellow resto\balance druids deal with spirit to hit conversion?

[Deleted]

Hello! Not sure if this is a right thread to ask, but ok...
I'm levelling my druid alt and i'm curious about my future gearing strategy. I always have resto as main spec but want to pick balance as off spec. The problem is, in mists of pandaria spirit is much more important for all healers than in cataclysm (my friend plays holy paladin with 8900 spirit and wants even more). So i'm aware of being over hit cap. How do you fellow resto\balance druids deal with spirit to hit conversion?

We reforge out of it when we have enough?

Spirit gives Hit.

[Juvencus]

Hello! Not sure if this is a right thread to ask, but ok...
I'm levelling my druid alt and i'm curious about my future gearing strategy. I always have resto as main spec but want to pick balance as off spec. The problem is, in mists of pandaria spirit is much more important for all healers than in cataclysm (my friend plays holy paladin with 8900 spirit and wants even more). So i'm aware of being over hit cap. How do you fellow resto\balance druids deal with spirit to hit conversion?

Well, the only way I see around the fact that you need and not need Spirit at the same time is to have at least some of the gear separate for each spec.

[whistlerkg]

One question should i replalace lfr version of light Cosmos with shock charger medallion(from new rep).Wil i loose or gain dps

[Sunfyre]

Light of the Cosmos gives much more averaged intellect (it has a 20 second duration with 45second cooldown versus a 15 second duration with 60 second cooldown). Unless for some reason you absolutely cannot reach the 5273 breakpoint and you NEED that haste, then no, I'd keep light of the cosmos.

[Deleted]

heh!

sorry for the bad english!

i have a simple question about macros for my owlkin:

Is it possibly to macro moonfire, sunfire and starsurge-proccs for heavy aoe fights? So that one button apply in a castsequence moonfire aswell as sunfire and instantly cast shooting stars if it proccs?

i am currently using a macro for wrath and starfire to instantly cast starsurge if shooting stars are proccing and it sounds like this:

#showtooltip Starfire
/cleartarget [help]
/cleartarget [dead]
/targetenemy [noexists]
/use 10
/castsequence reset=3 Starfire, Starfire, Starfire
/cast Starsurge
/petattack

Sometimes it doesn't do his job correctly and i have to press the starsurge button on my own but most of the time it works well and squeezes out a bit of extra dmg.

If i simply replace the name of starfire with moonfire and sunfire it wont work :-(

Any macro specialists out here?

thanks in advance!

[huth]

Of course it doesn't, you just queue up a new Moon/Sunfire each time you press it and then it fails when it reaches the Starsurge since you're in GCD.

[whistlerkg]

Does haste cape remains same with 4 set of t14 or does it lowers

[Sunfyre]

Does haste cape remains same with 4 set of t14 or does it lowers

It lowers to 3706.

You can bookmark this page for future breakpoint reference.

[Juvencus]

Does haste cape remains same with 4 set of t14 or does it lowers

3706, which is very easy to get by just following the normal reforge priority of Crit>Haste>Mast

Edit: Meh...too many distractions to press reply immediately these days :P

[BolognaAndCheese]

Hey xD This is my input on how to properly manage Moonfire and Sunfire as of 5.1

So our DoTs equate to about 25% (give or take) of our total dps on a Patchwerk fight. This post is just a (kind of) simple guide to managing your DoTs to optimize the GCDs that it costs to apply them.

The first thing that everybody should be aware of, is in the time it takes you to apply a DoT, you could have gotten off half of a Starfire cast or 66% of a Wrath cast. This is just something that everybody should keep in the back of their minds.

In an ideal world you want to be refreshing one tick before DoT expiration. Our DoTs do initial damage. The next best scenario for DoT refreshing would be to refresh it directly after its last tick. The only time refreshing early is okay is if the DoT will be falling off within 7 seconds, the DoT will be Mastery&Haste buffed, and you're about to leave the eclipse that buffs that DoT.

Let's start off at the start of your rotation after you have finished your initial burst cycle.
So we'll be starting at 0 eclipse energy (middle of the bar) going TOWARDS solar eclipse.
We'll also assume that your raid has decided to use Bloodlust/Heroism on the pull.

Now that all of that is out of the way, we'll move on to why everybody is reading:
You should have just re-applied your DoTs before Celestial Alignment ended. 15 seconds of DoTs should hold you over through almost all of Solar eclipse, if not all of it. Here is where we start making decisions based on different situations.

If we never got any DoT extensions through crits with hard casts, then our DoTs would never differ more than 1 GCD in duration.

So, hypothetically, let's assume that you got a Starsurge crit and 2 Wrath crits between Celestial Alignment ending, and you LEAVING Solar eclipse (You have the best RNG). Well by now your Moonfire has 3.5sec left on it and your Sunfire has 6.5sec left on it (it is hypothetical guys) with 5 Solar energy left. So how do you go about refreshing your DoTs. Well you're going to start by refreshing your Sunfire since it will be both Mastery AND Nature's Grace buffed.
Make sure that you always get at least one Mastery&Haste refresh per eclipse.
So you're going to be refreshing Sunfire so that it stays Mastery&Haste buffed for another full duration. Since Sunfire doesn't have enough time left on it to carry over to Lunar anyways, you're better off refreshing it now. Now since Moonfire still has 2.5seconds left on it (3.5 - 1GCD) you have time to hardcast a Wrath before refreshing it.
Understand that since Moonfire doesn't benefit from Solar, you don't have to refresh it before you leave Solar. You merely have to refresh it while you still have Nature's Grace. This is where a lot of people go wrong, they think that "Eclipse is good, so this is when I should refresh my DoTs."

Now let's keep going. You've now refreshed both of your DoTs and have saved one hardcast and 2seconds on Moonfire.
You're continuing your rotation and get into Lunar. Another common mistake that is made, is people refresh their Mastery DoT the moment they enter its respective eclipse. This is something of the past, it's what was best to do in Cataclysm. It's a dps loss now in Pandaria. You save 4-5 seconds on the DoT if you don't refresh immediately and you STILL get the FULL duration of a Mastery buffed Moonfire, you just have to be patient.
What should be done, rather, is Starsurge (if off CD), followed by Starfall, into normal rotation. After 2-3 hardcasts your Sunfire should be falling off, refresh it one tick before expiration. Refresh your Moonfire when you have 20 Lunar energy left and continue to hard cast as usual.

If your DoTs fall off at the same time, refresh the NON-Mastery buffed DoT first so the Mastery buffed one will get added damage from Lunar Shower.

I hope most of this made sense xD

[huth]

I think you need to condense that down a lot more. It's not bad advice, but it's way to wordy.

[BolognaAndCheese]

I completely agree with you xD. I write WAY more than I have to, and I do the same thing in my videos. I could probably condense that into a few sentences but it just makes more sense to me this way.

[Sunfyre]

I think refreshing DoTs once per Eclipse with NG up is kind of silly, especially considering that DoTs already carry you into the next Eclipse as it is. With 4pc bonus, I'm sometimes making it down and back. I'm having to clip a sunfire I cast in Lunar before I leave Solar, so I get a chance of having that empowered solar dot up.

[Thorim]

I think refreshing DoTs once per Eclipse with NG up is kind of silly, especially considering that DoTs already carry you into the next Eclipse as it is. With 4pc bonus, I'm sometimes making it down and back. I'm having to clip a sunfire I cast in Lunar before I leave Solar, so I get a chance of having that empowered solar dot up.

Right now I'm at 5273 haste and I would have to refresh my dots before I leave eclipse with NG up, or they would run out a cast or two leaving eclipse unless i get really lucky with a haste proc or SSs, would you suggest just letting them drop off and refreshing them only when entering, or clip them before leaving?

This is worse during lunar I think, Moonfire if I refresh it when entering, is on about 3 seconds left when I'm about to exit or something, this is with about 24% crit raid buffed.

[Sunfyre]

Right now I'm at 5273 haste and I would have to refresh my dots before I leave eclipse with NG up, or they would run out a cast or two leaving eclipse unless i get really lucky with a haste proc or SSs, would you suggest just letting them drop off and refreshing them only when entering, or clip them before leaving?

This is worse during lunar I think, Moonfire if I refresh it when entering, is on about 3 seconds left when I'm about to exit or something, this is with about 24% crit raid buffed.

Personally I let them fall. As you get the 4pc bonus, which is going to extend your DoTs, increase your crit (since you can reforge a ton of haste to crit), thus giving you more starsurge procs (and more crits to extend dots even further), you'll definitely not refresh them by the end, because they're going to run into the next eclipse anyways.

[BolognaAndCheese]

It's all about judgement. If you have 6+ seconds left on a DoT right before you leave an eclipse, it might not be worth it to refresh. The reason I always get one refresh in before leaving eclipse is just the way it works out. 7-11seconds of travel time from 0 energy to 100, and 8-12sconds of travel time from 100 to 0.

7sec+8sec=15sec. Assuming only 1 or 2 procs, this works out pretty well since you refresh in an eclipse, not at 0 energy. I'm only sitting at about 3900 haste (I can't reforge out anymore and choose not to go to the 8k breakpoint) and this method works out pretty well for me.

This of course will change in 5.2 since we'll be taking different talents.

[Sunfyre]

This of course will change in 5.2 since we'll be taking different talents.

WrathCalcs is still showing Incarnation to still be more DPS than SotF, so I'm not sure why any talent change (and swapping NV with HotW shouldn't change anything in our rotation) would affect our DoTs.

[BolognaAndCheese]

I think Soul of the Forest will start win over more of the population. They will reduce the burst of Balance Druids by spacing out the damage of NV. Sims aren't showing a huge difference in dps between the two in BiS. Blizzrd's goal is to make our choice in talents completely preference.

[Sunfyre]

I think Soul of the Forest will start win over more of the population. They will reduce the burst of Balance Druids by spacing out the damage of NV. Sims aren't showing a huge difference in dps between the two in BiS. Blizzrd's goal is to make our choice in talents completely preference.

Soul of the Forest only potentially shortens Solar to Lunar by one cast -- it does nothing lunar to solar. If you get Starsurge procs in there, it's not even shortening your solar to lunar.