Need some help with Insect Swarm...

[Froppy]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tMbuiI0sdIVuRuZ0x

This is the spec I'm going with.

Genesis isn't great if you don't have a lot of dots or aren't healing. We've decided that IS isn't great and I think the imp Hurricane damage is great for the amount of AOE'ing we do now.

Just my opinion!

I like Imp Fairie Fire a lot, as I said previously. I think it's better than IS, and I throw that into my rotation to start while the tank gets aggro.

[plasm]

How about glyphing for moonfire, taking genisis and dropping IS
the DoT's start to stack well with the Starfire glyph too

[Cardrel]

Nah, doesn't work. You glyphs have to be Moonfire and Starfire to max DPS. Even with a glyphed IS and the talent to increase it by 2 sec, its still no useable because of its GCD. If bliz removes the GCD on this skill then it will rate as one of the best there is. MF>IS>SF till you get Wrath Eclipse proc> W spam. Then just repeat. THe odds of bliz removing the GCD from the skill is next to none though, lol.

[Froppy]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what kind of +hit I need now?

I stacked it pretty heavily pre-3.0, but now with the +4% from the talent and Imp Fairie Fire (which is +3%), I should be at about 6% right? Just wondering if that seems right or not. For some reason it seems like I'm missing a lot more than I did pre-3.0 on raid bosses. Trash seems fine to me though.

Thoughts? Or am I just wrong?

[plasm]

Nah, doesn't work. You glyphs have to be Moonfire and Starfire to max DPS. Even with a glyphed IS and the talent to increase it by 2 sec, its still no useable because of its GCD. If bliz removes the GCD on this skill then it will rate as one of the best there is. MF>IS>SF till you get Wrath Eclipse proc> W spam. Then just repeat. THe odds of bliz removing the GCD from the skill is next to none though, lol.

What doesn't work?

I don't have IS talented, I use the MF and SF glyphs, my MF dot's at like 700 and last for 20s ish and I don't have to worry bout rotation, wrath is too mana expensive for long fights
I use the +crit Idol at the moment to see how it goes as this helps regardless with spell and since the changed to GCD on equipping Idols

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what kind of +hit I need now?

I stacked it pretty heavily pre-3.0, but now with the +4% from the talent and Imp Fairie Fire (which is +3%), I should be at about 6% right? Just wondering if that seems right or not. For some reason it seems like I'm missing a lot more than I did pre-3.0 on raid bosses. Trash seems fine to me though.

Thoughts? Or am I just wrong?

4+3 = 7?! not 6 if my maths is still working
you 17% hit in total now, they removed the 1% miss
with IFF and BoP - you need 126 +hit to hit cap
with a draenei with you in group as well, you only need 114

with only BoP you need 164 or 152 with draenei

[Froppy]

4+3 = 7?! not 6 if my maths is still working
you 17% hit in total now, they removed the 1% miss
with IFF and BoP - you need 126 +hit to hit cap
with a draenei with you in group as well, you only need 114

with only BoP you need 164 or 152 with draenei

Haha, sorry, I meant... my goal I should go for is 6%, not what I'm currently at.

So, we're shooting for 17% +Hit.

Talents give me 7%, so I need approximately 10% from gear to hit the +hit cap. That's not where I'm at, and that would probably explain it. I was there pre-3.0 but for some reason I thought I could reduce it. Obviously I just wasn't high enough for pre-3.0.

Thanks then, makes sense to me.

[Badeggplant]

Is it worth talenting insect swarm?

Yes because casting it is one of the best ways to increase your DPS anytime you have to move in a fight and because it is necessary to get Improved Insect Swarm since that gives 3% additional crit chance to Starfire, which is your primary nuke. There is not a better place to put those talent points and unlike Insect Swarm, keeping up Moonfire, is a dps increase, especially with the Starfire glyph, so you should put your points there. I'm not sure why some people seem to think you don't need to talent IS for a MF/SF rotation, my best guess is they just need to read the tooltip for Imp IS more carefully.

Is it worth casting?

Again, only when you have to move or get faced away from a boss for whatever reason. It is not worth casting for its damage alone or for the bonus damage to Wrath, both of which are negligible. It is certainly not worth glyphing at 70 and quite possibly is not worth casting even at 80 with a glyph because its scaling is so poor, plus it takes up a major glyph slot that could go to something else that might be more useful (Innervate, Starfall, or a new glyph). I'm not saying it definitely won't be worth getting the IS glyph at 80, but there will be other options to consider, and the poor damage of DOTs in general makes me suspect that even a glyphed IS will be a DPS loss or close to it at high levels of crit and haste.

You most certainly should talent it for any raid build, but don't bother casting it unless you're out of other options.

[Badeggplant]

Also for crying out loud people Genesis is such a waste of points for a moonkin, if you look at a WWS for any t6/Sunwell moonkin and you'll see that around 90% of the damage they are doing right now is Starfire (assuming no Eclipse, but that wouldn't change the equation for DOTs). So for 5 points, Genesis gives you a 5% bonus to the around 7% of your damage that comes from your Moonfire DOT. In other words, for 5 points invested, Genesis will net you about a 0.35% total DPS increase, or 0.07% per point.

Compare that to Improved Moonfire, which for 2/5 of the points nets double the effect, yet is still considered one of the poorest overall talents in the Balance tree for increasing damage and one of the last talents worth taking. I.e., the most mediocre damage talent taken in most raiding Balance builds is 10 times better than Genesis, point for point.

[Talrey]

Compare that to Improved Moonfire, which for 2/5 of the points nets double the effect, yet is still considered one of the poorest overall talents in the Balance tree for increasing damage and one of the last talents worth taking. I.e., the most mediocre damage talent taken in most raiding Balance builds is 10 times better than Genesis, point for point.

Isn't a 10% increase to Moonfire's damage a good thing? My Moonfire at 74 ticked for 500 (with the Glyph) and with Imp. Moonfire ticked for 550.

[Badeggplant]

Yes, the point I was making though is that of the talents that are worth taking, Imp MF is of close to the smallest benefit, and that benefit is still 10x larger than what you get for each point in Genesis, so Genesis is a bad talent for a raid-focused Moonkin. Of course in theory, in a perfect world, we would like to have that 5% extra damage on our DOTs too, since it is a nonzero DPS increase, but obviously every point invested in a talent comes at the expense of a point in some other talent. So it's not enough to ask "Is this talent good?", we have to also ask "Is this talent better than all the other talents we might choose?" Improved Moonfire falls just above that threshold that makes it worth taking; Genesis falls well below it. Insect Swarm and Improved Insect Swarm are well above the threshold and should be taken in any raiding build.

[plasm]

Isn't a 10% increase to Moonfire's damage a good thing? My Moonfire at 74 ticked for 500 (with the Glyph) and with Imp. Moonfire ticked for 550.

my MF ticks for almost 800 with the MF glyph and I have spec'd genesis too :-O

[Froppy]

Genesis is good if you take IS and Imp IS.

I personally see so much AOE and the only time IS really benefits is when you are on a boss fight.

Trash/5 mans/10 Mans IS is almost useless because everything dies fast now.

However, in a week when Wrath is out, who knows... I think a lot of things will change.

Basically, I think the point is: Unless you are taking IS and Imp IS for your Starfires, and are using a GCD to keep it up (possibly when you need to move or something) that IS is less dps than a Wrath (comparable cast time due to GCD). If you take Genesis and Imp IS and keep your dots up, then I think it makes sense.

Currently on Live though, IS is a waste as things die too fast, and it hurts the rotation when you need to keep it up.

That's my opinion. I think both Genesis and IS are great for Hybrid/Resto/PVP specs, but for straight PVE 5-10 mans and even some 25 man specs, they fall short and talent points are best spent somewhere else.

[Semi]

If they would increase the bonus IS gets from imp. IS to 10% or something I'm sure that the best rotation for trash would be IS+wrath spam.
Then it also would be worthwhile getting ecplise; MF+SF till eclipse procc -> IS+Wrath spam till MF wears off.

But then again this would be overpowered in pvp.

DAMN YOU PVP

[Ranor]

You know I only skimmed this thread, and i'm probably COMPLETELY off in what i'm about to say but here goes.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...33213305300030


Using this spec.
Using ONE elemental shammin for totemz.

My rotation went as this

FF -- IS -- Wrath til' Eclipse -- Moonfire -- Starfire til' Eclipse is down. After eclipse goes down, count 30 seconds with whatever you need, I used my FF timer. Refresh FF, IS, Wrath til' Eclipse. Repeat.

It's kind of an odd rotation and it requires you to be counting a little bit more but in half boomkin\half resto T6\Sunwell gear I consistantly hovered around 2700 DPS and spiked over 3200. : shrug :

Take from this what you will.

[Talrey]

My rotation went as this:
FF -- IS -- Wrath til' Eclipse -- Moonfire -- Starfire til' Eclipse is down. After eclipse goes down, count 30 seconds with whatever you need, I used my FF timer. Refresh FF, IS, Wrath til' Eclipse. Repeat.
<snip>
Take from this what you will.

I take from it that you could have cast Starfire or Wrath in place of the Insect Swarm and Faerie Fire and come up with larger DPS numbers.

Edit: Also that you forgot to refresh Insect Swarm and you should keep Moonfire up all the time (it is your best DoT spell.)

[Ranor]

I used IS only when I was casting wrath for the extra damage on it til' I got eclipse.. I'll work on keeping moonfire up the entire time. This isn't in a raid envrionment though, just on a training dummy. I'm still playing around with rotations though. Thats just what i've got so far. Thanks for that tip though.

[Talrey]

I used IS only when I was casting wrath for the extra damage on it til' I got eclipse.. I'll work on keeping moonfire up the entire time. This isn't in a raid envrionment though, just on a training dummy. I'm still playing around with rotations though. Thats just what i've got so far. Thanks for that tip though.

If Eclipse had charges, it would be so much better for keeping damage. You could proc Eclipse with SF and then toss IS up before spamming Wrath. The length of time would be approximately equal, and you wouldn't waste Eclipse time.

[Svidza]

Best rotation atm is mf,wrath to eclipse,sf to the end of eclipse cd,wrath to eclipse... refreshing mf. For eclipse cd tracking http://www.wowinterface.com/download...awkAndAwe.html is must have.

[Deanimal]

I am having a problem with cast rotations with the eclipse build everyone is showing. I currently use the MF>SF spam but I can't see the point in throwing in a IS when your SF eclipse procs. I'm not a theroycrafter and I don't pretend to be one, I just wouldn't mind some help with this. Let me show you what I mean...
IS has a 12 sec dot so...
12sec - 1.5sec GCD = 10.5 sec.
10.5sec - 1.5sec Wrath = 9sec.
At 9 seconds you just now getting your first hit in with it to do dmg. Even if your wrath does 2500dmg non-crit, 3% of that is 75dmg, so if you can get 6 wraths out in 9 sec (9/1.5) then the total extra dmg would be AROUND 525 extra dmg through IS. Now when you add in IS dot with the 525 extra dmg, you will have around a 2500-3000 12sec dmg spell. The problem that keeps hitting me here is if it is only doing a max of 3000 dmg in 12 sec, why not take your inital 1.5sec GCD from casting IS and put that in a Wrath instead? Since the wrath eclipse now increases its dmg by 20%, at 2500dmg non-crit it would be doing 3000ish. So, getting to the end of my post here, wouldn't it save time and be more effective to take the 4 points you spent in IS on your talent tree and put then into Genesis (increases periodic dmg done by 1/2/3/4/5%)? Since Genesis would effect your Moonfire, it seems as though it would do more to me.
If anyone spots an error in the math or anything, PLEASE tell me so that I can correct it. I'm not trying to be smart, I'm just trying to be a useful Thunder Chicken by putting out as much dmg as I can.

This is the build I am going to try out to see how it does, any helpful ideas?
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...13213005301031

For your lvl 70 spec I'd start with http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

which leaves 10 points for optional talents:

Genesis: dps boost is too small to justify, most of your dps will come from starfire or wrath... 5% may seem big to some but it's 5% of a small percent of your total DPS
Brambles: good for PvP, not so good for PvE
Dreamstate: most players will need this, good for both PvE and PvP
Improved Faerie Fire: do not even consider this talent unless you raid and your guild has no shadow preists
Owlkin frenzy: great for PvE as many encounters have raid damage, even better for PvP or farming (procs constantly in Strat for me)
Eclipse: not a well implemented talent, current theorycrafting and in game testing shows 1 point may be worth taking
Typhoon: mainly a PvP talent, also useful for farming or for annoying your guilds tanks
Gale Winds: good for AoE DPS(duh!)
Starfall: good for AoE DPS, Single Target DPS and PvP

Resto Talents: not really worth taking at lvl 70

[Badeggplant]

If your Moonfire ticks for 800 without Genesis, then if you spec 5/5 Genesis it will tick for 840. That is an increase of 13.33 DPS for 5 talent points or a little over 2 dps per point.