Mailbag: A Twisted Explination

I have raided a moonkin for a little over 2 years. I know some of you raided as a moonkin back in the dark ages, I mean during vanilla WoW, but I think 2 years is probably a lot longer than the average. I think that experience is one of the things that makes my blog successful. On the other hand it is sometimes very easy to forget that what seems clear to me my not make immediate sense to some one that is newer to the spec.

So when I got an email from Sydera from World of Matticus, I realized I may have made a mistake. Lets take a look at her email.

Hi Graylo,

As always I love your blog, and as our guild has lost our moonkin to summer school woes, I'm going to be changing over from resto. I have used your site to figure out what I need to do currently, but my question is about 3.2. You are suggesting a "Twisting" rotation. I'd like more exact details on that. If you get on the PTR (or once it goes live) can you sticky a little guide with EXACTLY what to do (moonkin for dummies, if you will). I haven't played moonkin long enough to intuit what the changes to my rotation will be, or even what I'll be looking for on Squawk and Awe now.

I'm not quite sure I understand how both Eclipse procs and both cooldowns will function.

Best,
Syd

Great question. First, lets take another look at what the change to Eclipse is doing.

With the old (3.1) Eclipse, you have two buffs on the same cooldown. The best example that I can think of to describe it is the old Potion mechanics used in TBC. You could have multiple pots in your bag for Health, Mana, or DPS, but once you used a one, all of your pots were on cooldown for 2 minutes. So you had to choose which was most advantageous to use.

With the new (3.2) Eclipse. you will have two buffs on two connected cooldowns. The perfect example of how this should work are "On Use" trinkets. Back in TBC I had two "On Use" trinkets, and both trinkets had a 2 minute cooldown. If I used trinket A it went on cooldown for 2 minutes. Trinket B would also go on cooldown, but only about 15 seconds. This prevented me from using both trinkets at the same time, but could effectively use both trinkets in a fight without losing any of the benefits.

Basically, we are currently choosing which Eclipse we uses. After 3.2 we will use both Eclipse buffs.

Twisting???:
So when I call our future rotation a "Twisting" rotation I mean that it switching or changing rotation, where we will "twist" or switch which of the Eclipse buffs we use with each proc.

I took the name from the old Shaman practice of Totem Twisting. Because of how the Windfury totem worked it was possible to have the Windfury buff and that of another Air totem for most of the fight. The practice is dead and gone, but when I was looking for something to call the new rotation Twisting seemed to fit.

So, how exactly will the new rotation work?

Actually, it is fairly simple. You will start your rotation the same way you do now. FF, IS, MF, Wrath until Eclipse, Starfire. The change comes when your Eclipse buff drops off. At this point you continue to cast Starfire until Eclipse, and then switch to Wrath.

What about DoTs:
The big question that no one really has a great answer for is when do you refresh DoTs. Obviously, you don't want to refresh DoTs before the old DoT drops off. You will always want to refresh your DoTs when neither buff is up, but there is some debate on what to do while you have an Eclipse buff.

Some people say, that you should never refresh DoTs during Eclipse, but that doesn't seem to be a popular opinion. I presented the most common opinion back in February with this post. The basic theory is that you refresh DoTs early in the Eclipse buff, but wait if they don't drop off right at the start of the buff. I don't think this is bad advice, but I'm no longer convinced that it will result in the absolute best DPS.

When I looked at this question before, I looked at it as if I was losing a Nuke GCD when I cast the DoT. However, I now think it is more of a trade. I'm casting a DoT now instead of in 8 seconds from now, and I will be casting a nuke 8 seconds from now instead of right now. So the cost of casting the DoT now is not the entire cost of the GCD, but only the change in DPS between a Nuke now and a Nuke later.

I will have to sit down and do the math some time, but this idea has changed the way I reapply DoTs. I will now reapply Dots very late into an Eclipse buff. As long as I have about 5 seconds on the buff I will reapply the DoT. I don't have any solid evidence to support my opinion yet, but I think the logic is sound.

Addons???:
Addons like Squawk and Awe (SnA) are going to be much less important with the new Eclipse. The most important piece of information that SnA provides is when the Eclipse cooldown is up. After the new Eclipse that won't matter.

This doesn't mean that SnA won't still be useful. If your using it as a DoT timer then that benefit will still be there. It will also be good for reminding you which Eclipse is up since the Blizzard animation fades fairly quickly. There also may be a couple of times when it is good to know when a buff is off cooldown.

I plan on keeping Squawk and Awe for the foreseeable future, but you could get the same benifit from a more global addon like Power Aura's or Scrolling Combat Text.