Starfall and Typhoon: The Half-Brother in the Attic.

[Skagasm]

The choice between using the Starfire or Starfall glyph is based on your rotation.

It is an oversimplification to say you want to maximize your DoT uptime. You want to maximize your DoT uptime while maximizing Eclipse procs.

If you like to cast 2 MFs per full Eclipse-cycle use SFall; If you prefer 1 MF use SFire.

The 2 MF rotation generally equals a higher uptime. For the 1 MF rotation, you save a GCD at the expense of (at least) 2 MF tics. Unless your crit is low, if you run the 2 MF rotation with the SFire glyph you'll either have to clip your MF from time-to-time or you'll find yourself making more tough "should I refresh MF during Eclipse?" decisions.
--

As has been pointed out for a single target Typhoon is just plain less DPS than Wrath/Starfire if you have the luxury of standing still. Decisions about its horrendous DPM only come into the equation when both your DoTs are up (with some time) and you're on the move. When both those conditions are met, you need to know your mana pool and the demands of the fight to decide if it's worth casting.

[axxey]

I don't always spec typhoon, but it's nice utility.
There's no reason to glyph it negating the situations it's useful in.

When I use Typhoon it's primarily as an extra interupt on trash mobs or a deliberate knockback, it doesn't get used on bosses unless there's some demand for these effects(bomb bots come to mind).

[Deleted]

Typhoon : this spell should not be used for single target dps ever, unless you are moving, have already refreshed dots, have Starfall on GCD, and have mana vailable. Using it on OoC is not realistic because of continuous casting constraints (ie changing spells on proc is going to cost more than what you gain by changing spells).

However it is a very good aoe spell, and does more damage by GCD than Hurricane or Starfall. Which means it's a situational spell, take it if it fits your gameplay choices, you'll lose under 1% single target dps increase to gain a quite nice aoe damage increase. Whatever fits you.
Glyphing it isn't a problem in terms of dps since it is a minor glyph.

Starfall's damage + 10s NG proc is enough to make it worth casting on single target fights (during Eclipse iCD) which makes it more interresting as a base spell. On some Aoe fights there'll be more value to keep it for precise phases of the fights (Hodir, waiting on storm buff or during flash freeze) but the short CD will still allow us to use it more than once each fight anyway. Obviously it's even better when there is some AoE to be done.

Regarding the choice of wether to glyph Starfall (for 1min CD) or not, you can't just compare +x damage on Starfall and -y damage from MF ticks. As has been said by others, this is a choice that will affect how your rotation works and MF's global uptime. Using the SF glyph forces you in a 1-MF per cycle rotation, since we mostly don't want to refresh it during Eclipse (though there might be some work to be done on that yet)
Simply removing the SF glyph and changing to a 2-MF per cycle results in a very small loss of dps, the free ticks + 1GCD gain (which you might miss btw when unlucky with Eclipse procs) being mostly compensated by the increased MF uptime. The damage increase from the Starfall glyph comes on top of that.
(this is only to compare SF and Starfall glyphs, IS, MF and Starfall can be compared in a straightforward manner)

[FourofaKind]

I'm curious to know what 'half brother in the attic' refers to.

Consider Balance tree like a family tree in a sense, mother moon and father sun. The star children of the group would be those pesky twins of Wrath and Starfire with moonfire being the middle child and Insect Swarm the youngest spoiled brat (look at all the itemisation geared towards it as well as talents/glyphs/patch attention this spell gets). Hurricane would probably be the eldest child who's already finished college and off living his own life while entangling roots is off getting married to some shaman or something (Yeah, I'm a freakin nerd, deal with it).

Starfall and Typhoon are the halfchilds mommy and daddy seldom talk about, they don't have a spot on MaxDPS and as this thread shows, typhoon being used in raid is almost as taboo as a shadowpriest casting flash heal. (ugh...)

On a side note, the arguements against typhoon are plentiful and valid, so things I would like to point out however are as follows.
-Yes, the GCD makes typhoon not as attractive as some other spells.... But, givin the on-the-fly usage as well as the AoE aspect of the spell makes it more attractive then say... another Moonfire or even a wrath on most (from what I have read) of the encounters in WotLK as a whole.
-Yes, MYtyphoon hits for ~3.6k and YOUR wrath hits for ~4k but again, thats your gear vs mine. I have 2 into Gale winds, my wrath will hit for 37~~ assuming I've got E&M and NOW IS THE TIME. (with Solar I get about 4.2~~ with a shaman near by 5k.) Given those same conditions my Typhoon hits for 5.5K (I've seen the occasional 6-6.3k) critting anywhere from 7.7-9k(Sadly Typhoon does NOT gain vengence T_T). So that should be calculated into the damage mashups.
-Yes It uses mana, but I already said I typically will only cast this spell on OoC procs. I insist the same to all others considering this spell.
~And finally, AND VERY LEASTLY~~~~THIS IS A BUG AND AS SUCH SHOULD BE ONLY MINORLY CONSIDERED IN FACTORING THE UTILITY OF THE SPELL TYPHOON! BY NO MEANS AM I SAYING THAT BECAUSE OF THIS BUG SHOULD EVERYONE GO AND SPEC TYPHOON! I AM NOT AN IDIOT! THIS WILL NOT WORK 100% OF THE TIME! I AM MERELY STATING THIS BUG AS IT CAN BE (AND HAS BEEN) QUITE CRITICAL TO MANY BOSS ENCOUNTERS!!!~~~~ Sorry for the disclaimer, but somehow I see people deleting their druids in anger at what I am about to post none-the-less... Typhoon has been known to score multiple hits on targets with a hit box larger then 10 yards, it extends to 30 (36 with reach talent) yards on all axis(X Y and Z) and as such can hit certain bosses (for example KT, KilJaeden, and Kologarn) multiple times in multiple places (I think the biggest hit recorded was on Saph for 400k~ish). Now, while I am calling it a bug (and most places I have read up on it consider it as such) Blizzard has made no effort to correct this and have not yet taken any sort of action against players under the grounds of "Exploitation". Weither this means that this particular use was intended for the spell, or Blizzard currently cannot resolve this issue is entirely speculation. Just thought I would throw that out there incase these forums havent encountered this juicy use of the spell my guild has affectionately calls "The scotch mist"

[chantu]

Starfall Is absolutely worth speccing into. Its a dps increase of a total of ~125 (depends on gear).

Typhoon Is NOT worth speccing for PvP. Unless you priority is on having a huge DPS on trash.. You say that it hits for an average of 3.3k. This can be made to ~3.3k DPS, because that there will be ~1 sec of GC. Most of moonkins is above 4.5k dps, and therefore Typhoon is not worth using. Simple math Even if you have to move at a bossfight, you very often have to refresh your IS, MF and rarely FF. And Furthermore. Typhoon should ONLY be used when you have clearcasting. This will take your consentration away from the bossfight, because you have to look at your buffs all the time (Even if you have a combat text, and "Clear asting" pops up in the middle of your screen it will take a bit away of your concentration). And if you are casting, and notice the Clearcasting in the middle of your SF cast, you will HAVE to stop casting, for keeping clearcasting for typhoon, and therefore loose alot DPS that way (If we say, that your SF have an average of 7.5-8k, you will loose ~4k damage).
So.. All in all. Its NOT worth speccing.. Only for PvP, trash, and having fun, pushing people over edges, so they die from fall dmg ;D

[FourofaKind]

http://gallery.filefront.com/Yenadar//1077044/

added to quell the inevitble wave of "Bullshit" on my Typhoon bug.

It's lovely when this happens to a boss... soooo lovely. (5digit single-boss dps ftw)

[FourofaKind]

In reverse order.

1- Not sure, as it was taken after he had died and fall damage was not listed, I could have been one of many things. -He could have been on a mammoth mount, flying mount, or other vehicle which would have increased his hit box. He could have had any number of Size increaseing buffs that would incrase his hit size. That is an unknown.

2- I think this screenshot was infact taken in beta, however as you can see, the combat log does not attest for multiple casts of the spell, so it is doubtful this bug was used for this screenshot (however, that was an amazing bug from what I have seen.)

3- I have personally had the multi-hit bug occur while playing, most I have gotten was 7 hits for 3.2k~ a hit (about 24k) on Sarth.

Hope that helps ^_^
-4

[Spiritus]

Starfall Is absolutely worth speccing into. Its a dps increase of a total of ~125 (depends on gear).

Typhoon Is NOT worth speccing for PvP. Unless you priority is on having a huge DPS on trash.. You say that it hits for an average of 3.3k. This can be made to ~3.3k DPS, because that there will be ~1 sec of GC. Most of moonkins is above 4.5k dps, and therefore Typhoon is not worth using. Simple math Even if you have to move at a bossfight, you very often have to refresh your IS, MF and rarely FF. And Furthermore. Typhoon should ONLY be used when you have clearcasting. This will take your consentration away from the bossfight, because you have to look at your buffs all the time (Even if you have a combat text, and "Clear asting" pops up in the middle of your screen it will take a bit away of your concentration). And if you are casting, and notice the Clearcasting in the middle of your SF cast, you will HAVE to stop casting, for keeping clearcasting for typhoon, and therefore loose alot DPS that way (If we say, that your SF have an average of 7.5-8k, you will loose ~4k damage).
So.. All in all. Its NOT worth speccing.. Only for PvP, trash, and having fun, pushing people over edges, so they die from fall dmg ;D

Reading this was like riding on a rollercoaster: "Yeeeaaahhhh--wait what?--Noooooo."

Starfall: though it was a general statement, was correct.

Typhoon: I think you meant PvE, not PvP btw ... but, all I can say is: "what?" You can't just equate a straight shooting 3.2 damage for an IC since it takes a GCD. Essentially, DPS is a calculation of the time you lost doing your most effective damage. When you cast an eclipsed Starfire, you are at the highest of your damage output. I could say that since I hit a target for 18.5k (which I, for some reason, have been hitting quite regularly [lucky RNG?]) that I have an 18.5k DPS increase. Per moment damage is not DPS, its just Damage. It is the derivative of the DPS function. The other "simple math" error you made was generalizing one spells output to a boss-fight's worth of DPS? "If my average DPS is 4.5k, but I just hit something for 3k, I must be doing something wrong." <-- is horridly wrong logic. DPS is a collection of highs and lows. Now, don't take that comment and say "well 3.2k + 6.4k / 2" ... sample your overall output before generalizing. Also, not to continue to bag on you, but, you used a major fallacy in English. I am not "grammar policing" you, I'm just pointing out a "what-not-to-do" in arguing/providing information. You say multiple times "since this, you must do this." Most of those statements are untrue. One does not have to wait for a clearcast to Typhoon; neither does one have to break an Eclipse rotation to use said clearcast. You then again generlized Damage to DPS.

[Spiritus]

I still won't say there was nothing like it, but the fact that I haven't read about it until now (and it should have been there since beta then I guess) and that this screenshot does nothing at all in proving this, I stand suspicious.
But nevertheless, if you cannot provoke this to happen reliably enough, this is no support for justifying Tyhoon in single target damage. It has it's niches where it comes in handy as a tool, but that boils down to a mere hand full (not even) of hard modes at best. So if you're going for an evening full of these, be my guest - a relatively usefull tool. But it'll never be a spell taken for the mere DPS, nor mana efficiency. And I somehow do not find a TP to spare for it too, although I currently only spec 1/3 MG and 1/1 OoC for manareg.

Summed my thoughts up quite nicely.

[khornate68]

Why is it that so many people tend to dismiss these two spells as "situational".
By no means do I consider myself the "best of balance" but I do call out DPS opportunities when I see them.

Typhoon
Yes it eats your mana, BUT only if you don't like watching your screen. Most druids agree Omen of Clarity is worth taking, so I guess the "situational" factor is if you are going 11 into Resto. If so, I have learned that launching a Typhoon whenever you get an Omen proc is HIGHLY advantageous and worth the 1 talent point. My typhoon hits for around 2.8~k and crits for 3.6-4.4~k depending on what raid buffs/debuffs are present (on 'situational' bosses, it has hit for 56k ((Lol netherspite)) ).
So basically I have averaging 3.3k instant cast Aoe cone spell (that can or cannot have the knockback, some raid tanks "request" you glyph it) for 1 talent point... why is this situational? (topic 1)

Starfall
Read above except you should always give yourself a glyph of focus to not only save the raid from the occasional bugged star but also increase the damage to a much more significant figure. I typically find myself casting Starfall whenever I cast Force of Nature (I.E Boss fights) and when there is a good number of AOE targets. Why is this called a "pvp talent"?(Topic 2)

Any opinions (if construtive) are welcome as well as any additional questions or comments. I just ask one thing, don't turn this thread into a pissing contest... I just want to hear some ideas, if you don't want to change your spec because of my opinion, don't; and don't be offended if I do the same.

this topic has been discussed extensively in the moonkin guide thread.

As far as starfall being a pvp talent - it was when it knocked people out of stealth. Blizz changed it and now its really just a PvE thing.

this.


and the only place where typhoon is usefull in pve.. is SOMETIMES on medium IC on summoning portals when some people are low on mana so you can help keep the balls away so they dont explode

else its a dps loss, if you cancel a starfire for a typhoon you are completely stupid