[Moonkin] Guide :: 5.4 Edition

[Yeahbaby]

You should probably convince your Rogue to use Expose Armor instead. I'm guessing it's less of a DPS-decrease for him than it will be for you.

Even if it was, he's one of those people that don't want to use unglyphed Tricks for increased raid dps because he would lose personal dps from it, so I doubt I'd convince him to use Expose Armor. Maybe I'll get him to start using ToT at choice times (durmu walls, Lei Shen balls etc) if I give him armor debuff.

[omri1212000]

I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.

with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over :P

[Deleted]

I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.

with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over :P

The guide isn't meant for Balance Druids with 520+ Ilvl and legendary meta gem, since you should know what to do by that time anyway.

With less than 500 ilvl, the pre-lunar opener is a lot better.

[Slippykins]

The guide isn't meant for Balance Druids with 520+ Ilvl and legendary meta gem, since you should know what to do by that time anyway.

With less than 500 ilvl, the pre-lunar opener is a lot better.

Yeah, this guide is intended for new Boomkins who don't really know the spec all that well. The newer opener with starting in/post-Solar only applies when you have RPPM trinkets from ToT or the meta gem, so most new boomkins will be going through the LFRs where this wont be applicable for a while.

---------- Post added 2013-06-09 at 09:17 AM ----------

I glanced through the guide and noticed that the glyphs section is quite lacking. True, there aren't any DPS enhancing glyphs but there are 3 specific raid enhancing glyphs: Glyph of Stampede, Glyph of Stampeding Roar and Glyph of the Moonbeast. Those 3 are basically the cookiecutter glyphs for a moonkin.

I find that mentioning these is quite handy for starting balance druids.

I can add that in! Glyph of Rebirth is also handy for ensuring your bres target wont be killed as they res.

[Kugs]

Minor detail, perhaps. If you use Glyph of Omens make sure to actually hit the target if you are using Ursol's Vortex. Placing it in a kite path or similar won't grant you the energy, even if the mob eventually will move over and activate it. Personally I only use FF with this glyph, I find it quite good. Spamming a few FF to get to eclipse while running can sometimes be better than spamming unbuffed dots. As on Jin'Rokh - it's better to start with a fresh eclipse and not hardcast to get into eclipse when you're in the water with the damage buff.

[Prisefighter]

Does Starfall hit the inactive golems on Dark Animus fight? I wasn't even thinking about it, and doing my normal rotation when I suddenly noticed a couple bigger adds activate (this was after Dark Animus had activated). I actually don't know for sure that my Starfall was what killed the small adds and activated the large ones, but if it is I find that highly annoying -_-

Do any top progression Boomkins put up videos of their ToT fights? On my lock it is really simple to read up on Brusalk, Evrelia, and Zinnin's guides/theorycrafting as well as watch their tutorials and kills videos. Lock forums also mention all sorts of different tips and tricks on a per fight basis. I've had more trouble finding these things for Boomkins and hoping someone can point me in the right direction?

[Alzu]

Starfall doesn't hit the inactive golems but can (at least could) steal easily aggro from unsuspecting players.

[huth]

Anything that kills an add can activate inactive golems. Easiest way to avoid that would be not having the unkilled adds be so low.

[Juvencus]

Does Starfall hit the inactive golems on Dark Animus fight? I wasn't even thinking about it, and doing my normal rotation when I suddenly noticed a couple bigger adds activate (this was after Dark Animus had activated). I actually don't know for sure that my Starfall was what killed the small adds and activated the large ones, but if it is I find that highly annoying -_-

Do any top progression Boomkins put up videos of their ToT fights? On my lock it is really simple to read up on Brusalk, Evrelia, and Zinnin's guides/theorycrafting as well as watch their tutorials and kills videos. Lock forums also mention all sorts of different tips and tricks on a per fight basis. I've had more trouble finding these things for Boomkins and hoping someone can point me in the right direction?

Only if someone (or you) attacks them and bring them in combat. People tab-spam dotting for example.

[Aoshi]

Has anyone a really good replace for Balance Power Tracker? It has to be predictive.
Since, the arrow is bugging sometimes and that's really annoying.

[Deleted]

Has anyone a really good replace for Balance Power Tracker? It has to be predictive.
Since, the arrow is bugging sometimes and that's really annoying.

Works fine here and BPT is predictive. Have you updated your addons?

Do any top progression Boomkins put up videos of their ToT fights? On my lock it is really simple to read up on Brusalk, Evrelia, and Zinnin's guides/theorycrafting as well as watch their tutorials and kills videos. Lock forums also mention all sorts of different tips and tricks on a per fight basis. I've had more trouble finding these things for Boomkins and hoping someone can point me in the right direction?

I personally have been thinking about dabbling into doing such kind of videos specfically for moonkins. But I am by no means in an top progression guild d(more like around the middle), but if there would be enough interest in it, I see why I couldn't put in some time and effort into making those guides.

[Deleted]

What he's referring to is that occasionally BPT won't flip the arrow when you hit an Eclipse, and takes an extra cast to realign itself. 99% of the time it works fine.

[Keiyra]

Using sims, it would be around a 5400 personal dps loss if we're using the 3% number (which is very close to what I was seeing when I added 1 second of movement every 30 seconds so it makes sense I guess).
Seeing as just our hunter gains about the same (~5400 dps) from just having the armor debuff on sims I don't really have a reason not to keep it up 100% seeing as we have the hunter, a rogue and 2 tanks (dk pala) gaining from it. And sometimes a dk dps as well.

Unless the hunter's pet is already bringing a needed buff to the raid - just make the hunter use a Raptor or Tallstrider to bring the armor debuff instead.

[Aoshi]

What he's referring to is that occasionally BPT won't flip the arrow when you hit an Eclipse, and takes an extra cast to realign itself. 99% of the time it works fine.

That's right! And the developer is not updating anymore.

[Deleted]

If I'm at a point where I have the 10k haste breakpoint and still sit at 13k crit rating, do I want to change crit-gems into intellect ones to reduce my SS-wastage or do I want to dump some secondary stats into Mastery?

[Slippykins]

If I'm at a point where I have the 10k haste breakpoint and still sit at 13k crit rating, do I want to change crit-gems into intellect ones to reduce my SS-wastage or do I want to dump some secondary stats into Mastery?

For the moment keep the crit rating. We're going to re-evaluate whether or not int gems are better than crit gems for 5.4 gear - it wont happen this tier due to Cha-Ye's and not too much crit rating attainable after the 10289 haste bp.

[Deleted]

Excellent guide. I'm just starting playing my boomy and this is very helpfull for new players

[durrtygoodz]

I've just dinged 90 on my first char (moonkin) and I've got some of the basics down but this guide left me with a couple of questions:

1. Is Incarnation always used at the start of a Lunar eclipse, with a Starfall?
2. Should Celestial Alignment always be used at 0 energy after a Lunar eclipse?
3. The guide says never to use more than one Starsurge in a solar eclipse because it will cause us to leave eclipse too early, but gives no explanation as to why this is bad. Can anyone elaborate?
4. Finally, I'm stuck with DoT refreshing. If sunfire falls off when approaching solar eclipse, should I wait until eclipse to re apply? Or should I be re-applying DoTs regardless of bar position.

[Zareth]

I've just dinged 90 on my first char (moonkin) and I've got some of the basics down but this guide left me with a couple of questions:

1. Is Incarnation always used at the start of a Lunar eclipse, with a Starfall?
2. Should Celestial Alignment always be used at 0 energy after a Lunar eclipse?
3. The guide says never to use more than one Starsurge in a solar eclipse because it will cause us to leave eclipse too early, but gives no explanation as to why this is bad. Can anyone elaborate?
4. Finally, I'm stuck with DoT refreshing. If sunfire falls off when approaching solar eclipse, should I wait until eclipse to re apply? Or should I be re-applying DoTs regardless of bar position.

1. Usually. Depending on your gear level and talent choices (read: taking Incarnation for starters), you might want to start 75 energy towards Lunar Eclipse. With lower gear levels, this is usually the preferred/most optimal DPS gain, partly because you don't have the ToT RPPM trinkets or the legendary meta gem etc.
2. Indeed! As you will use roughly 15 seconds from popping Incarnation to reaching 0 energy, towards Solar Eclipse, this is where you'll want to pop CA, refresh your DoTs etc. The time you take to reach 0 energy might vary, based on the availability of Heroism/Bloodlust, RNG/procs and movement, and as you get more gear it will naturally go down.
3. The info is somewhat outdated, in the sense that for better geared players, you will get (on average) so many SS procs that it won't matter. Anyway, the reason it is advised not to use more than one Starsurge in Solar Eclipse is simply because of how it changes your energy levels.
1 Starsurge per Solar: 100 - 20 - 15 - 15 - 15 - 15 - 15 = 5 , meaning you get another cast in Solar Eclipse (at this point, you can fire off your second Starsurge if available).
2 Starusrges per solar: 100 - 20 - 20 - 15 - 15 - 15 - 15 = 0, meaning you don't get another cast in Solar Eclipse.
Just for clarification, here is a quote from Sunfyre:

Yeah -- basically, you want to cast your second starsurge in solar eclipse at 5 energy, and not before, as Juvencus said, you'll lose one eclipsed wrath if you cast the second one beforehand. You'll still get the second starsurge IN eclipse, but it just depends where you do it.

4. It will depend on how close to the next eclipse you are. Ideally, you only want to refresh DoTs once per eclipse, and it's not the end of the world if you have to cast one or two Wraths/Starfires to get to a new eclipse without the DoTs ticking, but it will varies a lot. Movement and other delays will mean you might get in sticky situations, and dealing with this in a proper fashion is part of what separates a good moonkin from a great moonkin; making the right calls on the fly regarding DoT refreshing, movement DPS, utilising CDs etc etc.
If you know your DoTs are going to fall off, it's probably better to refresh them a few seconds early while Nature's Grace is still up. Obviously, you don't want to "clip" them without cause, and the act of re-DoTing will cost you cycle time, but you just have to try and make the best of it.

[durrtygoodz]

That was a great post Zareth, thanks a lot. Everything is much clearer to me now!