Moonkin DPS guide

[PapaSmurf]

I am writing this guide to help my fellow moonkin druids maximize thier potential raiding DPS. First let's start off with what I believe is the optimal moonkin raid build.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...050000000000000

All my numbers that follow assume 700 + damage which I believe is achievable in pre-kara gear. My calculations also take into account all talents and crit effects. ( I assume 14% base crit which gets increased by talents)

Starfire 642 DPS 5.72 damage per mana
Wrath 787 DPS 5.09 damage per mana

The magic here is that wrath actually gets a larger boost from +damage than starfire. Starfire gets a full 100% of the +damage and at a 3 second case that translates into .33 DPS per +damage. Wrath gets 57% of the +damage but since it takes half the time to cast you get .38 DPS per +damage. The downside is that wrath is less mana effecient than starfire so there may be cases where you want to maximize mana effeciency. When that is not the case, wrath is clearly the nuking skill of choice.

Now let's talk DOTs. Since DOTs activate the global cooldown you must sacrifice a wrath cast in order to apply them. Is it worth it?

Insect Swarm 1352 damage over 12 seconds 7.86 damage per mana
Moonfire 1858 damage over 12 seconds 4.12 damage per mana

Since wrath provides on average 1140 Damage per cast both insect swarm and moonfire do more damage per GCD. Since insect swarm is so mana effecient you should always be refreshing insect swarm every 12 seconds. Moonfire, however, is less mana effecient than ether wrath or starfire so this one might be sacrificed on long fights.

Of course the most DPS a moonkin can do is moonfire spam. The HORRIBLE mana efficiency of this tactic immediately rules this out. That makes the highest DPS sequence a moonkin can do is Insect Swarm, Moonfire, followed by 6 wraths. Rinse and repeat. This provides a theoretical DPS of 830 DPS.

Now let's talk gearing.

We are starting at 700 DPS 24% crit and 95% hit. At this point the following increases translate into DPS

At level 70 we get 1% +hit for every 12.6 rating and 1% +crit for every 22.1 crit rating. To increase DPS by 1% you can add

14 +damage
12.6 +hit
28.7 +crit

As you add more and more damage and crit you will see diminishing returns on the DPS boost from +damage and +crit, while DPS boost from +hit is constant.

As you can see your biggest wins come from +damage and +hit. It takes twice as much +crit rating to get the same increase in DPS. Of course you will always want to stop stacking +hit once you've hit the 99% cap. Now you may ask, what about the synergy with Nature's Grace and crit? Well, we are limited by the GCD with wrath, so Nature's grace does nothing to increase wrath dps. And even at 2.5 second cast starfire still does less dps than wrath. Quite frankly Nature's grace does nothing for increasing moonkin DPS.

The last thing I want to mention is since we are completely GCD limited with the moonkin, get yourself a good GCD timer mod that will help you time the GCD. I find that I completely ignore the cast bar because of the varying latency and always time my casts off the GCD timer from quartz.

As some of my guild members can attest to I can do some pretty decent DPS in raids. This is done with a balance/resto spec that is completely geared towards healing. If have calculated that if I were to switch to the build shown above I would increase my DPS by a full 18% which would put me near the top of raid DPS.

D

[Jester]

This is, approximately, the way I play Jesana for DPS.

I'll have to look into a timer mod for wrath. I am also considering a slight variant on your build for PvP as well as PvE, dropping imp. faerie fire, natural shapeshifter, and one point of wrath of cenarius to pick up the remaining points in naturalist, 3 points in celestial focus, and force of nature.

I'd be curious how Force of Nature stacks up as a DPS talent. Strong, situational, or useless?

-Jester

[Taelas]

I disagree on the strongest Moonkin raid DPS build. I would go for this. More mana efficiency, no imp Faerie Fire because it's a crap gimmick talent that does jack for the druid.

As an aside, Wrath doesn't benefit from Nature's Grace whatsoever. The spell does get faster, but GCD is 1.5 seconds anyway, so you have to wait just as long as without it. This means that whenever you get a NG proc, it might be a good idea to switch to Starfire for increased DPS.

[PapaSmurf]

I disagree on the strongest Moonkin raid DPS build. I would go for this. More mana efficiency, no imp Faerie Fire because it's a crap gimmick talent that does jack for the druid.

As an aside, Wrath doesn't benefit from Nature's Grace whatsoever. The spell does get faster, but GCD is 1.5 seconds anyway, so you have to wait just as long as without it. This means that whenever you get a NG proc, it might be a good idea to switch to Starfire for increased DPS.

I agree that having the improved mana regen would be a better build.

I'm not sure I understand your second point. I make the exact point in my guide. In fact I go as far as saying that you're better of not switching to starfire when NG procs because Wrath at 1.5 second GCD still does more DPS than starfire at 2.5 second cast when NG procs.

D

[PapaSmurf]

As a side note, I'm not sure I've accounted for how wrath of cenarius works. It says that the +damage component increase 20% for starfire and 10% for wrath. Is this percentage further modified by the damage scaling multiplier? I assume that it does in my calculations meaning that wrath ends up getting +5.7%/1.5 second or a 3.8% of +damage DPS Boost while starfire gets +20%/3 or a 6.7% of +damage DPS Boost. I've searched for the anwers without luck. I think I'm going to have to do expirements myself to find the real answer.

D

[Taelas]

I'm not sure I understand your second point. I make the exact point in my guide. In fact I go as far as saying that you're better of not switching to starfire when NG procs because Wrath at 1.5 second GCD still does more DPS than starfire at 2.5 second cast when NG procs.

Heh, I completely missed that part. Never mind.:)

[Mootang]

Great guide explaining moonkin raid mechanics. I've learned a bit myself.

Thanks for the tips, Dunar. Expect me to respec soon into a more raid suited build. (I'm running a PVP non-shifting build at the moment)

I was really intrigued about not switching to Starfire when Nature's Swiftness procs. I'll have to do some testing of my own and see how the DPS on that turns out. Would seem a little crummy on Blizzard's part if wrath was worth while over starfire, even through a NS proc.

Alliera, doesn't thorns generate threat for the player they're cast on when a mob hits them? If that's the case, would it be more effective to pull 2 points out of Control of Nature and into Brambles so thorns gets the damage boost? I practically never find myself rooting in a raid/group situation (Unless it's a CoT instance), and I can't really justify the interrupt protection with cyclone. It's already a fast cast at 1.5, and if you time it right, you can get the cast off without interrupt on many mobs. (That's considering you're even getting hit)

[Taelas]

Alliera, doesn't thorns generate threat for the player they're cast on when a mob hits them? If that's the case, would it be more effective to pull 2 points out of Control of Nature and into Brambles so thorns gets the damage boost? I practically never find myself rooting in a raid/group situation (Unless it's a CoT instance), and I can't really justify the interrupt protection with cyclone. It's already a fast cast at 1.5, and if you time it right, you can get the cast off without interrupt on many mobs. (That's considering you're even getting hit)

Ultimately, both talents are nothing but filler. The added thorns damage is nice, but it's miniscule. If you prefer Brambles to Control of Nature, there's no reason not to switch those two points. What matters is getting to the next tier.:)

[Mootang]

Ultimately, both talents are nothing but filler. The added thorns damage is nice, but it's miniscule. If you prefer Brambles to Control of Nature, there's no reason not to switch those two points. What matters is getting to the next tier.:)

Unfortunately, we're given filler talents in all of the wrong places. As far as force of nature goes, I'm a little skittish to give it up. The dps is great, for the mana cost. And the interrupt they provide in a pvp environment is nice. However they're too chaotic and fragile to use in a raid environment.

[Taelas]

Unfortunately, we're given filler talents in all of the wrong places. As far as force of nature goes, I'm a little skittish to give it up. The dps is great, for the mana cost. And the interrupt they provide in a pvp environment is nice. However they're too chaotic and fragile to use in a raid environment.

I agree. If you want to spec for both raid and PvP, drop one point in Resto to pick up Force of Nature (I'd personally choose Intensity) and make sure you have 2/5 Naturalist and 3/3 Natural Shapeshifter. The loss of 5% off Intensity doesn't hurt too much, and Force of Nature more than makes up for it in PvP.

Of course there are better PvP specs (many of which are some combination of 45/11/5), but it should serve all right.

[PapaSmurf]

As a side note, I'm not sure I've accounted for how wrath of cenarius works. It says that the +damage component increase 20% for starfire and 10% for wrath. Is this percentage further modified by the damage scaling multiplier? I assume that it does in my calculations meaning that wrath ends up getting +5.7%/1.5 second or a 3.8% of +damage DPS Boost while starfire gets +20%/3 or a 6.7% of +damage DPS Boost. I've searched for the anwers without luck. I think I'm going to have to do expirements myself to find the real answer.

D

I posted this over on the world of warcraft website and I got the anwser I was looking for. Here's a link to the thread

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...427878214&sid=1

Short answers is that they add not multiply like I assumed so the Wrath DPS goes up from 760 DPS to 787 DPS. Of course the mana effeciency goes up as well from 4.92 damage/mana to 5.09 damage per mana. I will update the original post with this new data.

D

[Concillian]

More mana efficiency, no imp Faerie Fire because it's a crap gimmick talent that does jack for the druid.

Huh?

Moonkin I've seen are generally threat limited early in a pull (where a crit string can mean accidental pulling of threat). most of the time someone pulls threat early in a pull it is due to either a crit string or a miss string from the tank. 3% hit is helpful on raising the threat ceiling as well as providing raid DPS.

3% hit gives a huge amount of flexibility to rogues if they know it's going to be there. Same for Hunters. Warriors less so because +hit is generally not as large a deal.

3% hit is about 15-20 DPS for a Fury warrior, if we assume similar gains on all physical DPS in a 25 man raid, you're essentially creating 100-200 DPS or so raid-wide with 3 talents... making it one of the most efficient talents you can put points into for point per raid-wide DPS. You're also distributing that damage to classes better able to deal with the threat ceiling (hunters and rogues), as well as raising the ceiling for yourself every other threat limited class since tanking warriors are rarely at the +hit cap in raid tanking gear.

I don't think you can consider Imp. Faerie as anything other than a must-have talent for a pure raid spec.

[Concillian]

The downside is that wrath is less mana effecient than starfire so there may be cases where you want to maximize mana effeciency. When that is not the case, wrath is clearly the nuking skill of choice.

You may want to also consider that Starfire is arcane and therefore will usually gain an additional 10% damage from Curse of Shadows, while no raid buff will enhance Wrath that won't enhance Starfire (unless you get lucky with timing on a stormstrike). Even 10 man raids will often have Curse of Shadows up, and you can pretty much count on it 100% of the time in 25 mans. I don't know if that changes the ranking of which spell to use, but I thought I might mention it as another factor to consider.

[PapaSmurf]

You may want to also consider that Starfire is arcane and therefore will usually gain an additional 10% damage from Curse of Shadows, while no raid buff will enhance Wrath that won't enhance Starfire (unless you get lucky with timing on a stormstrike). Even 10 man raids will often have Curse of Shadows up, and you can pretty much count on it 100% of the time in 25 mans. I don't know if that changes the ranking of which spell to use, but I thought I might mention it as another factor to consider.

Point taken, based on theory craft Wrath does 22% more DPS than Starfire, so while Curse of Shadows does narrow the gap, there is still a lead with wrath.

As a side note, it is nearly impossible to maintain a perfect 1.5 second cast on wrath. Due to latency issues starfire does get a boost from the longer cast time. In addition, Starfire DPS goes up with NG procs. With a 25% chance to crit that equates to a 4.2% increase to DPS with Nature's Grace. Between Curse of Shadows, NG procs, and cast latency they may be closer than I originally depict. I'll need to take these issues into account and re-calculate my numbers. Perhaps Wrath is not the clear winner.

D

[Concillian]

As a side note, it is nearly impossible to maintain a perfect 1.5 second cast on wrath. Due to latency issues starfire does get a boost from the longer cast time. In addition, Starfire DPS goes up with NG procs. With a 25% chance to crit that equates to a 4.2% increase to DPS with Nature's Grace. Between Curse of Shadows, NG procs, and cast latency they may be closer than I originally depict. I'll need to take these issues into account and re-calculate my numbers. Perhaps Wrath is not the clear winner.

Yeah, these are factors I've seen in my warrior DPS modeling. My Fury numbers are generally more below my spreadsheet expectations than my MS numbers. Fury requires use of every global cooldown, but Fury requires 3 skills per 5-5.6 seconds (depending on #of points in Imp. MS) and my numbers are closer to spreadsheet expectations. Thus while on paper the numbers between Fury and MS look pretty far apart, in actuality (if you have WF for both) they are not too far off in my experience actually using each spec.

There are always "intangibles" like judging the need for mana efficiency, mobility of the fight (where wrath may be better becuase sometimes you need to move NOW), if outside the 5 second rule it might make sense to squeeze out that last bit of mana regen by using starfire first then wrath after, etc... Stuff that's not easy to define... but I guess that's why they are called intangibles.

Also this guy has made tables for various rotations showing relative values of hit, crit, etc... for various builds:
http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.php?tit...onCraft/Scaling

I don't know how valid they are, but they are a point of comparison.

[Taelas]

Huh?

Moonkin I've seen are generally threat limited early in a pull (where a crit string can mean accidental pulling of threat). most of the time someone pulls threat early in a pull it is due to either a crit string or a miss string from the tank. 3% hit is helpful on raising the threat ceiling as well as providing raid DPS.

3% hit gives a huge amount of flexibility to rogues if they know it's going to be there. Same for Hunters. Warriors less so because +hit is generally not as large a deal.

3% hit is about 15-20 DPS for a Fury warrior, if we assume similar gains on all physical DPS in a 25 man raid, you're essentially creating 100-200 DPS or so raid-wide with 3 talents... making it one of the most efficient talents you can put points into for point per raid-wide DPS. You're also distributing that damage to classes better able to deal with the threat ceiling (hunters and rogues), as well as raising the ceiling for yourself every other threat limited class since tanking warriors are rarely at the +hit cap in raid tanking gear.

I don't think you can consider Imp. Faerie as anything other than a must-have talent for a pure raid spec.

It does nothing for the Moonkin. Zip, zada, zilch. It's physical hit, not spellhit.

It helps physical DPS classes, sure, but they shouldn't be dependant on a Moonkin in the first place. Yes, it'll give more flexibility with what gear they can use, but taking into account that it doesn't help the Moonkin one iota, I would never take the talent.

It's a crap gimmick talent, only designed to give Moonkins something to bring to a raid.

[Pantalaimon]

It does nothing for the Moonkin. Zip, zada, zilch. It's physical hit, not spellhit.

It helps physical DPS classes, sure, but they shouldn't be dependant on a Moonkin in the first place. Yes, it'll give more flexibility with what gear they can use, but taking into account that it doesn't help the Moonkin one iota, I would never take the talent.

It's a crap gimmick talent, only designed to give Moonkins something to bring to a raid.

I'm not sure I completely agree - as a shadowpriest, I often sit around (or jump around :P) waiting on threat, and see boomkin doing the same. Anything that can raise the threat ceiling will help our DPS; not directly, but it will.

That being said, since when is raid utility something to be frowned upon? That's something DPS classes have wanted forever (see rogues when they weren't kings of damage:whistling:).

Your argument is akin to saying healing priests, if they even exist anymore, shouldn't spec into improved spirit because they'd get more +healing out of slapping the extra 2 points into Holy. True, if you only look at your character, but I think most would appreciate the raid-wide buff more.

Or, to take it even one step furthur, that incinerate warlocks should never have to put up CoS, even if there are 3-4 shadow priests in the raid, because it won't help him; vice versa for shadow warlocks and CoE with a bunch of mages. They aren't talents, but the mentality is all wrong IMHO.

If you're min/maxing, there's already precious little reason to bring boomkin - I'm not sure why you're complaining so vehemently about a "crap gimmick talent" that might help get a raid slot for at least one.

[PapaSmurf]

I'm not sure I completely agree - as a shadowpriest, I often sit around (or jump around :P) waiting on threat, and see boomkin doing the same. Anything that can raise the threat ceiling will help our DPS; not directly, but it will.

That being said, since when is raid utility something to be frowned upon? That's something DPS classes have wanted forever (see rogues when they weren't kings of damage:whistling:).

Your argument is akin to saying healing priests, if they even exist anymore, shouldn't spec into improved spirit because they'd get more +healing out of slapping the extra 2 points into Holy. True, if you only look at your character, but I think most would appreciate the raid-wide buff more.

Or, to take it even one step furthur, that incinerate warlocks should never have to put up CoS, even if there are 3-4 shadow priests in the raid, because it won't help him; vice versa for shadow warlocks and CoE with a bunch of mages. They aren't talents, but the mentality is all wrong IMHO.

If you're min/maxing, there's already precious little reason to bring boomkin - I'm not sure why you're complaining so vehemently about a "crap gimmick talent" that might help get a raid slot for at least one.

Once thing that has to be considered is what you give up to Improved Fairie Fire. You want 15 points in resto to get the reduced threat talent. A 46/0/15 build would give you improved fairie fire, but you would have to sacrifice intensity from the resto tree. This is a big loss to mana regen capability. Granted, DPS gear tends to be light on spirit so a moonkin will usually be low on spirit. But with raid buffs it's pretty easy to get over 300 spirit that would provide another 11 Mp5.

[Pantalaimon]

Once thing that has to be considered is what you give up to Improved Fairie Fire. You want 15 points in resto to get the reduced threat talent. A 46/0/15 build would give you improved fairie fire, but you would have to sacrifice intensity from the resto tree. This is a big loss to mana regen capability. Granted, DPS gear tends to be light on spirit so a moonkin will usually be low on spirit. But with raid buffs it's pretty easy to get over 300 spirit that would provide another 11 Mp5.

Granted - I don't play a boomkin, never even contemplated it, so I don't know your tree layout.

However, I will maintain unless I see some very persuasive arguments to the contrary that the talent is not crap by any stretch of the imagination. The placement in the tree, maybe, but the talent? Naw.

[Taelas]

I'm not sure I completely agree - as a shadowpriest, I often sit around (or jump around :P) waiting on threat, and see boomkin doing the same. Anything that can raise the threat ceiling will help our DPS; not directly, but it will.

That being said, since when is raid utility something to be frowned upon? That's something DPS classes have wanted forever (see rogues when they weren't kings of damage:whistling:).

Your argument is akin to saying healing priests, if they even exist anymore, shouldn't spec into improved spirit because they'd get more +healing out of slapping the extra 2 points into Holy. True, if you only look at your character, but I think most would appreciate the raid-wide buff more.

Or, to take it even one step furthur, that incinerate warlocks should never have to put up CoS, even if there are 3-4 shadow priests in the raid, because it won't help him; vice versa for shadow warlocks and CoE with a bunch of mages. They aren't talents, but the mentality is all wrong IMHO.

If you're min/maxing, there's already precious little reason to bring boomkin - I'm not sure why you're complaining so vehemently about a "crap gimmick talent" that might help get a raid slot for at least one.

It's not nearly as beneficial as any of those. Neither of them has a cap--+hit does. Sure, if they are aware of it and has gear without the +hit that provides more DPS, it gives more leeway for physical DPS classes. But it's just not a big bonus.

Sure, it's there, sure, it helps. But it's still a crap gimmick talent.

The one thing I will agree on is that it helps the tank build up threat slightly faster, as a tank shouldn't have +hit in his tanking gear (which should be focused on mitigation, avoidance, and health). Still, +3% just isn't much... especially since it's three talent points the druid can spend elsewhere.

Aside from that, you only need one of many warlocks/priests to provide Improved Divine Spirit and CoE/CoS, whereas a Moonkin will usually be the lone hen in the flock.