New to Balance druid

[bennafflock]

I'm new to balance druid, just dinged 90 last night. Wondering how playstyle compares for raiding mostly, i'm used to warlock/ele sham, just looking to add another alt into the mix for our alt runs to gear up for SoO, any help would be appreciated.

13/13h guild if that helps, certainly not a "casual" player.

[Khamke]

Think Ele Shaman Pro (tm).

Keep up dots to get instant cast procs for your big nuke, use your filler spell in between. Dot clipping/refreshing will be similar (? haven't done much warlock) to lock, I'd imagine. Need to plan at least (at LEAST) 30-45s ahead for your eclipse management. Multi-target fights are your best friend, single target is alright, avoid sustained aoe like the plague, burst aoe is alright.

Single target is the straight rotation and eclipse cycling, multi you just dot everything and shit out procs.

[Zareth]

You can find most things you need to know in the Moonkin Guide here on MMOC and in the Balance thread on EJ. What I'd like to add to Khamke's list is predicting incoming movement, and utilising DoT refreshing/SS procs to your advantage when you have to move etc. A big factor when looking at how you can improve your DPS on a fight is to check, and reduce your eclipse cycling time. i.e., if you do a full eclipse in 30 seconds, you'll have 100% uptime on Nature's Grace, which is what you're generally aiming for. In practice, especially with multi-target or high movement fights, it may not be so easy to get 30 seconds, though.

Oh, and reducing SS proc wastage is also important. So reducing cycling time, refreshing DoTs at the right time and maximising Starsurge procs are the main three indicators.

[Deleted]

http://www.icy-veins.com/balance-dru...-pve-dps-guide for a pretty detailed guide on everything related to balance. Other than that, you are lucky you 're in a hc raiding guild as I'm guessing you 'll be boosted in getting some proper gear. Contrary to warlock and ele shaman, balance needs a minimum of 535+ ilvl gear in order to be able to be sort of competitive. You're playing two OP classes already so I'm guessing you'll dislike, at the begging, the low dps, although as you've said is just an alt, so give it a shot and see how it goes.

[bennafflock]

I figured for the first week or so i'll be having less fun due to not putting up huge numbers. Although i've noticed that i can still put up relatively big numbers even as low ilvl as i am. But i'm sure it'll help being pushed through ToT tonight, i'll probably be close to 500, and can start pushing better numbers.

As far as the guides go, i've read through them all, icy-veins/noxxic/mmoc, i've noticed on heavy movement fights it can be quite rough on the dps, as i cannot spam wrath/starfire, while on the move assuming there is no SS procs, would it be beneficial to overwrite my dots and re-apply repeatedly to at least continue to put out dps, or to just let them tick while i move to my new location and pray for procs?

[Zamn]

I figured for the first week or so i'll be having less fun due to not putting up huge numbers. Although i've noticed that i can still put up relatively big numbers even as low ilvl as i am. But i'm sure it'll help being pushed through ToT tonight, i'll probably be close to 500, and can start pushing better numbers.

As far as the guides go, i've read through them all, icy-veins/noxxic/mmoc, i've noticed on heavy movement fights it can be quite rough on the dps, as i cannot spam wrath/starfire, while on the move assuming there is no SS procs, would it be beneficial to overwrite my dots and re-apply repeatedly to at least continue to put out dps, or to just let them tick while i move to my new location and pray for procs?

It all depends on trinket proc(s) + Nature's Grace + Eclipse + Meta (which you probably don't have as you just hit 90)

If you have dots up that are already NG'd/Eclipsed/Trinket proc dots and you no longer have the trinket proc up, it is probably not worth it to redot on the move. It is never worth it to redot without NG. It MIGHT be worth it to redot if NG is up but no eclipse and no trinket proc on prior dots. <<< I'm not 100% sure on that.

Someone (I believe Slippy) said something along the lines of this for multi dotting as well.

Assuming NG is up
A general priority system would be eclipsed DoT > SS proc > uneclipsed DoT > Nuke (starfire/wrath)

Boomkin is a lot of fun, but to be a good boomkin it takes a lot of planning ahead.

[xtramuscle]

I figured for the first week or so i'll be having less fun due to not putting up huge numbers. Although i've noticed that i can still put up relatively big numbers even as low ilvl as i am. But i'm sure it'll help being pushed through ToT tonight, i'll probably be close to 500, and can start pushing better numbers.

As far as the guides go, i've read through them all, icy-veins/noxxic/mmoc, i've noticed on heavy movement fights it can be quite rough on the dps, as i cannot spam wrath/starfire, while on the move assuming there is no SS procs, would it be beneficial to overwrite my dots and re-apply repeatedly to at least continue to put out dps, or to just let them tick while i move to my new location and pray for procs?

That is the key to balance dps. If they were bog standard dots (ie with no trinket procs) as long as natures grace is up; you can spam them for lunar shower. However if they were placed with a trinket proc up; and/or nature's grace has dropped off refreshing them will be a dps loss. Either place mushrooms, or off heal during movement if SS doesn't proc. But on most fights; even those that have heavy movement (think durumu maze) you have enough time to move, stop cast and move again. Other than that, new eclipse allow alot of movement whilst applying new dots, especially lunar as you have a global to cast starfall aswell so thats 3 GCDs of movement with 0 dps loss

[Deleted]

As far as the guides go, i've read through them all, icy-veins/noxxic/mmoc, i've noticed on heavy movement fights it can be quite rough on the dps, as i cannot spam wrath/starfire, while on the move assuming there is no SS procs, would it be beneficial to overwrite my dots and re-apply repeatedly to at least continue to put out dps, or to just let them tick while i move to my new location and pray for procs?

If you have UVLS dots applied then wait for ss procs (which will be coming very fast), otherwise depending on how much movement you will have to do you might either spam eclipsed dot (which will be doing some dps thanks to 3 stacks of lunar shower) or if there is gonna be some aoe after the movement and it will not last too long you might as well plant 3 mushrooms.

Since you are used to ele sham and lock, biggest issue for you will be movement dps. As a boomkin you have very little of what you can do while moving so try to plan your position way ahead :P And yeah, on heavy movement fights boomkins aren't really very pleasant to play, but with good crit% you can get lots of ss.

Also few tricks for movement: try not to start big movement and dot spam as soon as you enter eclipse, but rather plan your movement so that you only 1 cast from leaving eclipse state. The reason for that is you will lose your NG and you want to be as close to next eclipse as possible so taht you can regain that haste buff asap.
When there is movment where you don't have anything to deeps (magera normal, lei shen transitions first that come to mind) do use astral communion to put you 1 cast away from new eclipse for same reason as above.