Moonkin dps help wanted, what's going wrong?

[Lexar]

Good afternoon my dear druids!
I believe a small introduction is in order, let me explain

I'm the raidleader of a small 10 man guild, currently 8/12 normal modes (which isnt too bad seeing as we only raid twice a week), which means that we'll soon arrive at the tougher bosses normal raids have to offer.
Progress has been fairly easy so far, but as the title suggests, I'm worried about our moonkin dps.
While I have a druid alt myself, I never played balance and thus am having a hard time figuring out what's going wrong.

Said moonkin usually pulls ~10-11k singletarget dps on a stand and nuke fight, but that drops to 6 to 7k on movement or add-fights.
I understand that moonkins (as most classes) have somewhat of a hard time maintaining their dps when they have to move often, but I do feel that his dps should be higher (both on tank and spank fights and while moving).

I know and understand dps meters arent all that matters when it comes to raiding, and my guild mostly raids for fun, but we do value progression, and I'm not alone in thinking that a lot of fights would be easier if he pulled dps comparable to the other players (who are somewhere between 15 and 18k atm).

Seeing as I am not the owner of the account, and thus it is not in my rights to make his armory profile public, I've gone through the trouble of composing a wowhead profile with the exact same gear, enchants and gems.

I'd really appreciate it if one of the more experienced druids here could take a look at it, and give some feedback.
Is it a gearing issue? is it the spec, gems, enchants?
Any feedback you guys could provide would be much appreciated

A few things that I've noticed myself:
He's wearing a lot of spirit gear. Now, I do know that you guys get hit from it, but isnt it more favorable to wear gear without spirit but with hit?
He gemmed for hit, but is way hit-overcapped?


Anyway, here's the link: http://www.wowhead.com/profile=22329027

Thanks a lot in advance,
A concerned raidleader.

ps, seeing as I couldnt figure out how to set reforges with the wowhead tool, I'll list them down here:

Head, spirit -> crit
Neck, mastery -> haste
shoulders, crit -> haste
cloak, crit -> haste
chest, mastery -> haste
bracers, mastery -> haste
gloves, crit -> haste
weapon, mastery -> crit

[Whiteshadow2000]

Haste is the most important stat after hit cap. Second alot of Balance DPS depends of the ability to maintain the rotation and use procs (I.E. Trinkets, weapon, and Pots) At the right time. Most balance druids are losing dps by using there starfall and force of natures at wrong times as well as using their dot refresh and uptimes wrong. I am not saying i am the best druid nor do i know everything but i maintain about 17-20k dps single target in a 10 man raid environment. Certain things gear wise i can see is hurting this boomkin is his trinket choice. The mastery proc is worthless since there is no way to predict when it procs and if it will line up with a eclipse. Second is everything should be done reforge wise to max haste without dropping under hit cap. Also he needs to have the proper rotation. Keeping dots up is important but refreshing them too early is a lose of dps and over all damage. I would suggest to him to read the page at EJ about Balance druids it has helped alot and if he doesnt understand something ask over there.

[Deleted]

heya,

First, you are right about haste being important for moonkins. Just don't forget the obvious: 'intellect is by far, the best stat for moonkins'.
That said, try to fill those yellow sockets with int-haste gems.

About the rotation: Keeping your dots up is a must. Working yourself to an eclipse state is basic. I guess you know that.
Try to remember that you proc a haste buff everytime you apply your dots after entering an eclipse state. Since moonfire is the better dot, always apply Insect swarm before Moonfire (sunfire). That way your -fires benefit from the haste and will tick faster.

In multi target fights, try to have /cast [target=focus] macro's for your dots. More dots ticking is more chance of the shooting star proc.
This means you'll have to have a focus target.

Further more, remember that the cooldowns you have (starfall, treants and even mushrooms) benefit from the eclipse state you are in. Treants and mushrooms will hit harder if you are in solar, while starfall hits harder in lunar.

If you want more information I suggest you check that link I pm'd you.

[aarondf2003]

I'm a moonkin and a 25man raid leader and I often rank in the top 50 on WoL, so I'm decently qualified to review a fellow 'kin.

Beyond what I'll list about his toon's profile, you may just have a player that isn't good. Whether it's a mental incapacity to do/respond well, poor ergonomic choices in how they play the game(clicker vs. keybinder), slow reaction time (personal or latency), some people are just bad.

#1. It's always favorable to gear/gem/enchant for spirit over hit since they are completely equal to a moonkin. The reason to prefer spirit is if you want to have a resto offspec that could use the same gear with no changes necessary.

#2. He needs to learn how to reforge correctly. 17% is the hit cap and there's no excuse to go over it by more than a few rating points. Get the Reforginator addon if he's incapable of simple math himself. Int>Spell Power>Spirit/Hit>Haste>Mastery>Crit

#3. Gems/Enchants - His meta isn't activated because of incorrect gem colors/choices and he's missing enchants... just lazy.

#4. He's wearing resilience gear which will severely lower your performance.

#5. Horrible trinket choices. There are much better trinkets that are readily available from reputation, heroics and the Auction House.

#6. Talents. He's specced to increase his own innervates which is a total waste. A moonkin in all 346 blues can easily maintain personal mana on a very long fight while still giving away ALL innervates (2 wasted points in Dreamstate). He's not specced into Gale Winds which would help dramatically on multi-target fights like Magmaw, Maloriak, Conclave, Halfus, etc. Blessing of the Grove is a very very small increase in damage for 2 talent points, so those could be redistributed as well.

#7. None of this matters without seeing a log of his raids. A decent moonkin could do all of this wrong ^^ and still pull 15k dps in his gear. Correcting these issues and assuming he's actually capable, he should be doing high teens.

The main things to look for if you parse your logs on wowmeteronline or worldoflogs is his
1. DPS presence percentage
2. the Damage Done breakdown of his spells to see what he's using and how often.
3. The Buffs Gained page to view his cooldown usage.

GL

[Tyraena]

First, there is little (none that I have seen) leather caster gear with hit rating. It is all shared by balance and resto druids, so spirit is the primary source of hit.

Talents are right, similar to a guy from the world-first Al'Akir kill, who was 2nd in dps (yours has better mana management, at the loss of a minimal dmg increase talent).

He has 5.29% too much hit (17% is the target spell hit. If gear allows, such as gear that already has haste so you cannot reforge to it, or gear where you *have* to keep the spirit for hit, reforging spirit->hit provides a slight dps increase to treants, as they use the casters melee hit in combat. If you have a resto offspec, don't do this, the base spirit will be more useful. He needs to switch his gems out for the orange int/haste gems, green int/crit gems, or pure red Int gems where applicable, and where the socket bonuses are worth it. If the socket bonuses aren't good, go pure Int if you don't need more haste. He shouldn't need the spirit on the bracer enchant.

The next part takes some judgement. Once you get haste to a certain level (the soft cap is 3102 rating, which gives a 1s GCD with Natures Grace up, and enough haste is believed to be being able to go from one eclipse proc to the other in a single cast of moonfire/insect swarm, or so I have read, which is not the softcap), it becomes good to focus on crit or mastery (they are roughly equivalent). All of the reforges he has currently should be adjusted to spirit->haste, and then spirit->crit or spirit->mastery depending on which way he wants to go, without going under the hit cap of course. If he comes down to around 17.2% hit, he can then swap the bracer enchant out for haste or crit depending on where he is at. If he doesn't get that far, he may be stuck with too much. It will take some creative reforging to get this right, but you never want to be below 17% hit on lvl 88 creatures if raiding.

On my druid, I have reforged spirit->haste (), hit if I have to keep all the spirit to hit cap, and crit when I cannot do either. Gems are all orange Int/Haste or red Int (no blue slots yet, or I would go green Int/Crit). I'm at an avg iLvl of 337 right now (1 epic, most 333, with a couple sub-325) and I pull 10-12k on boss fights, and 6-8k on trash.

Rotations are significant, they are covered well on the balance forums here, which closely mimics the Elitist Jerks guide.

Hope this helps, and maybe some folks who know the specifics better will chime in as well.

I would ignore aarondf2003 - even with some of his info being correct, he is a jackarse. There is a difference between stupid and uninformed, and elitist idiots like him aren't helping anyone - just jerking their e-peen in public to show how great they are.

[Lexar]

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their fast and helpful replies so far, this was more feedback than I had dared hope to recieve in such a short time
I will take all of your information at heart and do my best to help my feathered friend.

Secondly, (for aarondf2003):
Deep down inside I had already realised that it could possibly be a player-issue, but I'm not one to simply tell someone that they cant raid anymore from now on because their dps sucks, without trying to find the underlying problem first.

I'll be pointing out all these tips you guys gave tomorrow and see if his dps improves. If it doesnt, I'll go digging through logs

Thanks again guys! ^_^

[Kallume]

A lot of the information you seek is in Qieth's Moonkin Guide sticky at the top of this forum section.

Int>Spell Power>Spirit/Hit>Haste>Mastery>Crit

This is incorrect until 4.0.6, then it will be accurate. Int>Spell Power>Spirit/Hit>Haste>Crit~=Mastery is the correct priority system until the Eclipse Buff (thank goodness!).

It appears this druid raider of yours does not realize that you get 100% of your Spirit converted into Hit as a Moonkin. If his stats are accurate, he is >6% over the needed hit cap. Anything over the hit cap = ZERO DPS increase.

The gemming should match Qieth's Moonkin Guide. I would only deter from that if the individual needed hit (where Yellow socked would become Veiled Ember Topaz over Reckless); however, reforging works just as well. Furthermore, even though it doesn't really matter, Gem/Enchant into Spirit over Hit if necessary. Spirit gives the same value as hit, but also out-of-combat regen... ya not much, but still more than pure hit.

@aarondf2003 - You cannot assume that in a 10man group Replenishment is given; therefore, additional mana talents may be needed. If this druid is suffering from DPS loss, it may be mana issues. 2/2 Gale Winds for fights you would actually use Typhoon could not compare if the druid is going OoM. Moreover, using 2/2 Gale Wind'd Typhoon will not "Dramatically" increase one's DPS.

[Lokiwartooth]

Multistrike, definitely multistrike

[arr0gance]

Multistrike, definitely multistrike

ಠ_ಠ

Necro-bumped a 4+ year old post to add a comment about a stat which wasn't even a developer's wildest dream at the time of this thread's relevance. Well done.

[Disinvolto]

ಠ_ಠ

Necro-bumped a 4+ year old post to add a comment about a stat which wasn't even a developer's wildest dream at the time of this thread's relevance. Well done.

I was gonna say. Not quite in those words, but yeah...