Thursday, June 26, 2008

Moonkin Idols: Which one is Best.

With Patch 2.4.3 going to break in the next couple of weeks Idol Swapping macros will become a thing of the past. This begs the question which Idol should I use, and like any good question the answer depends on a couple of things. Below I have highlighted the for main idols you have to choose from and when you should use them.

[Idol of the Unseen Moon] - The only epic idol available to moonkin.
The Pros: It has a 50% proc rate with no internal cooldown. It also affects all spells cast and is affected by your Wrath of Cenarious talent.
The Cons: The down side is that you have only 8.5 seconds of the buff since the global cooldown takes away 1.5 seconds of cast time. Plus you you don't want to cut off your last moonfire tick so you can only get the buff once every 12 seconds. (15 seconds with two pieces of T6).
The Verdict: With Natures Grace you should be able to get 3 starfires off while the buff is up, and it is made even easier if you have any haste. You should use this Idol when you add Moonfire to your rotation until you have two pieces of T6 gear. The two piece set bonus makes this idol less valuable.

[Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess]
The Pros: It affects the primary damage spell of a moonkin on every cast.
The Cons: The additional damage is applied to the spell's base damage and does not benefit from Wrath of Cenarious.
The Verdict: Oddly enough you will want to use this idol two times in your raiding experience. The first is at the start, when you have very little mana regen and don't use Moonfire in your rotation. The second is when you have two pieces of T6 and start stacking haste. Two pieces fo T6 and Haste mean you will be able to get more Starfire casts in for every one moonfire cast. More Starfires mean more damage and pushes this idol past the Moonfire Idol in terms of total damage.

[Idol of the Raven Goddess] -
The Pros: Can increase raid viability and party dps.
The Cons: It is a personal DPS loss and the party wide gains are very dependent on your group and the fight you are attempting.
The Verdict: This is the hardest idol to quantify, and its usefulness best described as situational. Here are the things to think about when evaluating this trinket.
1. Your party - You need to have at least 4 casters in your party that benefit significantly from crit. Having five heavy crit users is best. This means that this trinket is fairly useless in most 5 mans and may not be good for 10 mans either. If you have 3 mages, destro locks, elemental shaman, or holy pallys in your group, consider this idol. If not move on.
2. Your party's gear level - Crit scales very well with spell damage, but spell damage doesn't scale as well with crit. So if your party has very high levels of spell damage then they will benefit more from crit then you will benefit from some extra spell damage.
3. The fight - This idol improves your aura, but unfortunately your aura has a range of 30 yards. For high movement fights like Void Reaver it will be very easy for your party to get spread out and not benefit from your buff. Other fights like Solarion are great for this idol since they cause everyone to clump up in one spot.

[Idol of the Avenger]

The Pros: This is the easiest idol to obtain since it is a quest reward.
The Cons: Buffs the least used spell by a raiding moonkin.
The Verdict: A very situational idol since moonkin shouldn't be using Wrath all that much. I like to keep it in my bags for the rare occasion that I do use wrath in raids. Other then that this idol is only good for PvP or soloing.

Blog Update: I really wanted to use the WoW icons for each of these idols in my blog post. Unfortunately I could not ind a good way to get them. I tried saving them off of WoWHead and WoWWiki but that didn't work. I also remember some data base with all of the icons in it but I couldn't find it. Anyway, if anyone knows a way for me to get a .JPG or .GIF of each of these icons please let me know.

Also, if anyone has some suggestions on how to improve my blog feel free to post them. I won't promise to implement them all, but I would like to know what you think.

Toon Update:
Graylo - Primarily Raiding, but raiding has been a little slow this week. We've had some absences and haven't had many attempts on Kael. I did run some ZA over the weekend. I had shot at the
[Loop of Cursed Bones] but the guy rolling against me was the guy I beat for my new ring, and I didn't think it was fair if I rolled against him again. Not a big deal, We are clearing ZA fairly regularly now and it will drop again. My only really plan for Graylo now is to do those Fire Fest quests and get 550 free gold.

Graypal - As usual not much is going on here. I've had some opportunities to take him into Mag but there is nothing I really want there so I don't see the point. Like Graylo the only plan I have for him is free gold.

Grayfel - He is about halfway through 58 now. I haven't played him a whole lot, but he is progressing. It looks like I am going ot have to spend a 100g or so to get his Jewelcrafting up to 300. The gems just aren't dropping the way I would like them to and I want to be at 300 when I go to outland. I also plan to do all of the free gold quests on Grayfel. I won't be as much gold but it will be some good exp. My plan for the weekend is to get rid of his rested exp and hopefully get him to outland.

Graytom - He has built up quite a bit of rested exp. Hopefully I can use it all over the weekend. Shouldn't take to long.

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