Cata Build 13033: Gear and Bugs

The last beta patch had a lot of changes for moonkin that were for the most part well received by the community. Therefore, it is not surprising that Build 13033 doesn't have a lot of big changes for moonkin to discuss. However, there are a few things you may be interested in and that I want to talk about.

Tier 11 Gear:

Stat	Chest	Head	Legs	Shoulders	Hands	Total
Intelligence	301	281	301	233	233	1349
Stamina	512	512	512	380	380	2296
Hit Rating/Spirit	0	0	0	0	0	0
Crit Rating	198	228	0	0	169	595
Haste Rating	0	168	228	149	149	694
Mastery Rating	218	0	188	169	0	575
Gem Socket	Yellow	Meta	Red	Yellow	Red	1M, 2R, 2Y
Socket Bonus	20 Int	30 Int	20 Int	10 Int	10 Crit	80 Int, 10 Crit

Prior to this build, some feared our tier set would have Spirit or Hit on every piece, and that we would have a hard time getting rid of hit chance. That apparently shouldn't have been a big concern because none of our tier set has Hit or Spirit on it currently.

I must admit that I am a little shocked by this itemization. I always assumed that some of our tier set would not have Spirit or Hit on it, but I also assumed that two or three pieces would. Combine this with the fact that most of the Hit buffs have been removed from the game, and it's a little difficult to guess where we are going to get all of our Hit from. If we assume that Tier 11 bosses need 17% additional hit chance the way raid bosses typically do then we will need 1742 Hit Rating to hit cap. If we use the 4 piece set bonus, then that will have to come from 12 pieces of gear for an average of 145 hit per slot. Of course, some of that burden will be relieved by Reforging, Gems, and Enchants, but that is a large number to expect from 12 slots when most of them are "small" slots with less itemization.

Personally, I would like to see these stats altered a little bit to include more Hit Rating on 2 or 3 of the items. I think it will make gearing a little easier and less awkward as we advance to the next tier.

Set Bonuses:

I know I already talked about these Set Bonuses before, but I want to talk about them again.

• Two Piece Set Bonus: Increases the critical strike chance of your Insect Swarm and Moonfire spells by 5%.

I'm still a fan of the two piece set bonus. It may not seem like much but DoTs are a huge part of moonkin DPS at the moment. I plugged this change into my simulator and it resulted in a 1.66% DPS increase. That may not seem like much but it is a pretty good bonus for a two piece in the first tier of raiding.

• Four Piece Set Bonus: Whenever Eclipse triggers, your critical strike chance with spells is increased by 99% for 8 sec. Each critical strike you achieve reduces that bonus by 33%,

I am still not a fan of the four piece set bonus. In my post two weeks ago, I talked about how the 8 second duration of the buff was too short. That is still an issue in my opinion, but I thought of a few other questions as well.

How are DoTs impacted by this set bonus? If they are impacted, will they hold the buff for the duration of the DoT? Will DoT crits reduce the bonus?

Our DoTs are two of our highest DPET spells. If they receive the 99% crit buff and hold it to duration without consuming any of the charges then this set bonus could be awesome. Conversely, if the DoT crits consume the charges then this set bonus is likely to be horrible since individual DoT ticks are relatively small.

It will be hard to get a definitive read on this Set Bonus until we can test it in game, but I am not getting a good feeling from it. If it only impacts Nukes, then the duration is way to short, and kind of pointless since it also has charges. If it does impact DoTs it could be awesome if the DoTs hold the buff for the duration, but that sounds very unlikely to me. What seems more likely is that the DoTs will consume the charges, and severely limit the effectiveness of the bonus.

The bright side is that this set bonus could be so bad that we don't care about it and we have two more item slots to pick up Hit Rating.

Documented Changes:

• Wild Mushroom now affects targets within 3 yards, down from 10 yards.

Wild Mushrooms now hit very hard, and a 10 yard radius was probably to large, but a 3 yard radius feels too small. First off, it is a 91% reduction in the area affected. That means you have to place them fairly precisely to get the maximum impact. Second, they are fairly complicated to cast. You have to place each Mushroom individually, and where you want to place them is likely a high traffic area. This means it's probably going to take significant time just to place them if you know where they need to go, and then you need to push a button to detonate them.

Wild Mushroom may be very strong but I'm not sure it's cost effective given their range and the complexity of the cast. It looks to me like there is a lot of potential for error at the moment.

• Entangling Roots now lasts 30 sec, up from 27 sec.

A lot of moonkin have been laughing at this change. My guess this is another CC standardization change, but I don't know for sure. That said, I haven't used Entangling Roots in a while, but I don't remember them ever lasting the full duration even when I wasn't hitting the target. Unless the roots are a little more resilient then I remember, this change does seem a little silly.

Undocumented Changes:

I haven't had a chance to test the most recent beta build yet, but this is what I've heard from various forums and such.

• Moonfire and Insect Swarm now scale with Haste. Moonfire is also still a 2 second tick.

I was beginning to have my doubts that Moonkin DoTs would scale with Haste Rating, but I am glad to hear that they do now. DoTs are such a large portion of our DPS, I wouldn't want them to not scale with any stat. Also, it sets Haste apart from Crit and Mastery in terms of value. It was beginning to look like it wouldn't really matter how we geared as long as we were hit capped and had the highest ilevel possible. That would have been no fun at all.