Alchemy Changes and more.

With the new Beta release there are to big changes regarding Alchemy.

Alchemical Blood: This is Awesome! I haven't seen an word on how much this will increase the affect of flasks, pots and elixirs, but it is a great change.

For a long time there was no real reason to have Alchemy on your main, but blizzard has made some changes to correct that. However, most people believe that the current benefits aren't enough. The Mad Alchemist's Potion really only benefits casual players. The new Alchemist Stones have t there ups and downs depending on your class and spec. The Tanking stone is horrible and the Melee DPS trinket leaves something to be desired from what I hear. The two caster trinkets are awesome with their spell bonuses and added mana from pots. However, there benefit will be reduced with the change I have listed below. Plus you could make an argument that there are better trinkets at the highest level of raiding making the benefit obsolete.

That isn't true with Alchemical Blood. You get the benefit from level 5 to level 80, and it isn't affected by gear upgrades. Which is the calling card of the best raiding professions. Tons of people have picked up Enchanting purely for the ring enchants. Whole guilds picked up leatherworking for the Drums. This change has the potential to move Alchemy up to those ranks.

Potion Sickness: My first reaction to this is that its bad, but to be honest it has both pluses and minuses.

Minuses:
* There goes a good portion of my mana regen. It is a fact of life that most moonkin will chain mana pots if they don't have an Spriest to give them mana. This makes that impossible.
* One of the best sources of income for Alchemists was making mana and health pots for raids. I personally can go through 20 on a long night and I have heard some people use as many as 40. This will cut those numbers dramatically. Therefore their value on the AH will drop quite a bit also.

Pluses:
* It will save time and money. I hate farming. This will reduce the amount I need to do and will save a lot of players money when they go to get their consumables.

The overall impact of this change is hard to see right now. Fact of the matter is Blizzard will not create content that is undoable. So, blizzard will have to make changes to compensate for Potion Sickness. This could mean more mana regen from talents and gear. It could mean tuning the fights so that they are less mana intensive. It could mean retuning spells so they use less mana. Who knows, but rest assured they will make up for it somehow.

Other Changes:
Improved Scorch (Mage) - More damage types added, now your Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Fire, Frost and Arcane damage, increasing damage taken by 2/4/6/6/10% and lasts 30 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times. - Huge boost for moonkin. I actually missed this but thanks to Phea over at Resto4Life for pointing it out. With all of the changes that had been coming out for moonkin I started to wonder if Starfire would still be the clear favorite a raiding moonkins spell rotation. Some of the changes like the new Natures Grace were shifting the debate a little bit in Wrath's favor. This buff clearly shoves it back in Starfire's favor.

Inscription - More Glyphs: MMO Champion has listed a bunch of new Glyphs and most of them are for druid abilities. Here is the link. There is some coolstuff in there, but nothing earth shattering for Moonkin in my opinion. There seems to be quite a few typos, so I would expect this list to change quite a bit.

What did I Miss?

As I mentioned in my last post I was on vacation all of last week, but I was checking WoW Insider and some of the other WoW news resources regularly just to see what was going on. I was also checking my e-mail quite regularly to see if I got a beta invite, and like most people I have not received one yet.

Anyway, here are some of the news items that stuck out to me over the past week. Some of these things may have happened before I left, but I didn't comment on them then so I wanted to now.

Patch Note Changes - I have seen several patch note changes on various news sites. They are all very similar but not exactly the same. The first one is the mana cost and cooldown of Force of Nature and Moonkin Form. They all suggest a reduction in mana cost and cooldown. The second set of changes concern Typhoon and Starfall. Here they are increasing range, mana cost, and damage it appears. Really none of these changes are all that big.

Stat Changes - This had been hinted at for quite a while, and we are starting to see some info on how it will take shape. Blizzard is combining stats so that they are usable by multiple classes. For example, Healing and Spell Damage are now being combined into Spell Power. Healing spells will get more benefit from spell power then damage spells by having a higher coefficient. Hit Rating and Crit Rating will now affect both spells and melee, and the spell versions of these stats are being eliminated.
Overall I think this is a good change, but I see both pluses and minuses. On the plus side, this will reduce the amount of gear that is sharded and will help casters change their role if needed. This is good for the raid but I think it is bad for moonkin for a couple of reasons.
First we already have trouble competing for cloth gear from locks, mages and priests. Now healers will want that same cloth gear, we will have to compete with resto's for the decent leather gear, and cloth casters may start to assume again that we should roll on cloth because there is more leather gear available.
My second problem with this is that Resto gear and Moonkin gear are not similar. Resto's are big spirit users, but don't need much if any Crit or Hit. Moonkin are big Crit and Hit users, but don't need a lot of spirit. The druid gear that will be provided will clearly favor one spec over the other or neither. I worry that Blizzard and other players will just assume that because moonkin can now benefit from resto gear that they don't need to itemize for moonkin. I guess we will see what happens..

Achievements - There seems to be quite a few people that are excited about this but to be honest I don't really care. To me it is the equivalent of another rep grind. Having some extra titles and/or gear will be cool, but I can't imagine that it will be all that different then the rep rewards we currently get from factions. This could be a big help for guild management though. If this info is available on the armory then it will help guilds assess new applicants and who they need to get into raids to get attuned.

Mounts/Non Combat Pets - I am not a pet fanatic like some people but I do think they are kind of cool. However, I have destroyed several for bag space. I also don't like holding two mounts in my bags for air and land. So now we hear that blizzard is going to treat Mounts and Non Combat Pets as spells is great. It should save a little bag space for everyone and for the pet lovers out there it saves a ton of bag and bank space. This is a good change.

New Token System - It is obvious that blizzard loves tokens. We gather tons of tokens from various sources so that we can purchase items from items and other rewards. Frankly I have tons of things in my bank just sitting there in case I need them later. Every thing from Badges of Justice to Battleground Marks. I think treating tokens as currency is a great idea. You don't know how many times I have gone all the way out to the sunwell to purchase a gem only to realize I left my BoJs in the bank. Or how long AV marks have sat in my bags because I was called into an instance on short notice and I forgot to put them in the bank. Another good change in my opinion.

Leveling from 60-70 - Given the changes in leveling from 20 - 60 this isn't a big surprise. So far they only appear to have changed the amount of XP needed to go from one level to the next and the amount of XP awarded by killing a mob. Quest XP hasn't been changed get from what I have seen. This is a welcome change since I expect that Outland will become a ghost land after WotLK is released just as Azeroth has since BC's release.

Inscriptions - Very little is known about the new profession but there are some interesting bits of information available. Basically this profession will provide permanent enchants to a couple of your spells and several temporary buffs to your armor. You can find more info here. They haven't listed many of the Inscriptions yet but many of the few that they have listed deal with druids and moonkin. None of them are amazing but it is nice to get a quick peak at the way they they are thinking. You can find them here. The one thing that did catch my eye though was Scroll of Recall. Basically it is another hearth stone with a shorter cooldown. I assume that it will be consumed after use, but it will be nice to have a couple on each toon so that I can get them back home quickly if I need to hearth twice in short succession.

WotLK Gems - One of the things that upset a lot of people when BC came out was how green quest rewards immediately replaced some epic level raiding gear that took months to obtain. As a result Blizzard has said that there will not be a significant gear reset with WotLK and this seems to hold true when you look at the WotLK quest rewards. However I was caught by surprise when I looked at the gems available in WotLK. I have always assumed that Green WotLK gems would be similar to Blue BC gems, and wouldn't be more then Purple BC gems. My assumption was wrong. Take the [Runed Bloodstone] for example, It is two points better then the BC epic. BC gems will be officially worthless. I'm not sure how this will affect profession leveling since it will be hard to sell the gems, but at the same time the blue gems needed to level past 350 should be easier to purchase. Then again, who will be farming them to make them cheap.

Passive Gathering Buffs - This is the change that excited me most since my last post. In WotLK gathering professions will give the toon a passive buff. Minings is Toughness, and Skinning is Master of Anatomy. The buff for Herbalism hasn't been released yet. These aren't major buffs even at level 70, but it is nice to have a reason to keep a gathering profession on your main. I have often considered dropping Herbalism on Graylo so that i could pick up another profession like Leatherworking or Enchanting, but haven't done it because I don't have another flower picker. Here's to hoping that Herbalism gets a good buff like Spell Power/Attack Power.

Toon Update - Not a whole lot to say here since I was gone all last week, so I will only hit the high point.

Grayfel - I HAVE A DREADSTEED!!!!!!!! Finally I don't have to use the slow mount anymore. Now that no one runs Scholo and Dire Maul anymore it has been a real pain to find a group to do these quests. Many thanks go out to the guildies that helped me complete the quests. Onyxstar and Beevis spent 3 hours running me to the Scholo Alchemy Lab and then through DM east. We were unable to three man this portion of the quest chain so I summoned two more guildies, Gaylin and Ravendrache, and finished it quickly. Once again, I owe all of you many thanks. If you need help with anything please let me know.

BETA Patch Notes!!! OMG!!!!!

Edit: Added Imp Moonkin Form change not in patch notes.
Edit 2: Added Omen of Clarity and Blessing of Salvation comment.

What a great thing to wake up to. I didn't expect anything involving the beta for another at least a week or two, but I sign on this morning and what do I find?

BETA PATCH NOTES!!!!!!!! (link)

I haven't gone through everything in them yet, but I have taken a quick look at the Druid section. Most of the information is stuff that we learned from the Alpha wiki, but there are some major changes that we hadn't heard before. Here are my thoughts in red.

Note: Before I and everyone else gets to excited lets remember a couple of things. 1) These are just the beta notes. These are likely to change to some extent before Wrath is released. 2) Some of the changes are completely out of left field and are very similar to information we learned from the alpha. In these cases I can't help but wonder if its a typo.

* Brambles (Balance): Now increases the damage done by your Treants, and also damage caused from your Treants and Barkskin has a 5/10/15% chance to Daze the target for 3 sec. - First off, this must be in addition to the current talent. Otherwise there would be no point in having this talent at this level. You can't get Treants until level 50 and Barkskin until level 44. I also wonder if this is a typo. We have heard about thorns having a daze affect but not Barkskin. Including Barkskin in the daze effect isn't an off the wall idea, but given the information from the alpha the difference raises a few questions. The BIG change here is that brambles now increases your Trents damage. I don't think this will cause people to max this talent out for raiding, but it definately makes those two points I put in there more attractive.

* Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors. - This isn't new, but I still have to do the moonkin happy dance.

* Force of Nature (Balance): Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3. - Not huge, but nice. They can provide a nice little damage boost in PvE, and should be a big help for PvP.

* Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in addition to ranged and melee hit %. - Wait a minute. Did that say Feral? Again this could be a typo, but this would be a Major change if this is correct, and I am not sure how I feel about it. May people have advocated for this for a long time because it affected melee hit only. Now that it includes spell hit also I'm not sure they will feel the same. If it is moving to Feral, it will remove it from my rotation which is nice. Losing the global cooldown does decrease our DPS quite a bit. However, I am not all that excited about losing some of our raid viability. Moonkins haven't had enough in the past and I am reluctant to give any up.

* Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell. - WWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!! Heck Yea. If you have read my blog for a while you know that I have been advocating this change for a really long time. Finally, Blizzard is replacing one of the worst conceived mechanics in the game with a truely awesome ability. Think about it for a second. If you have 10,000 mana and 25% crit, this translates to 16 MP5 minimum with current gear, and that doesn't take into account Natures Grace or the New Imp Moonkin Form haste.

* Nature's Grace (Balance): Now also reduces the global cooldown of your Wrath spell by 50% while in effect. - WHAT????? Another huge change. Natures Grace is a huge reason why Starfire is better then Wrath in raids. Also, this may be a typo, but this would reduce the GCD below a second. The GCD is currently 1.5 seconds. This would make it .75 seconds. This could have a huge impact in PvP and PvE. Raid wise if you need some speedy DPS and don't care about mana this is your spell. Imagine how powerful this will be in Arena. We would be a wrath Machine Gun with Celestial Focus. As long as we get heals we will destroy people.

* New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added) - Its not a balance ability or even a suprise but it is a huge change that Resto's and all druids should be very happy about.

* Tree of Life (Restoration): You can now cast all Restoration spells (Healing Touch) in the form, but Tree of Life now only reduces the mana cost of your healing over time spells (Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Flourish) by 20%. - Again this isn't a balance ability but I think it is a great change. It made no sense for to have a healing spell that we couldn't use in our healing form. I also like the fact that Healing Touch doesn't get all the benifits of Tree of Life form. Druids should be HoT healers, and Healing Touch should only be there in case of emergency.

* Omen of Clarity (Restoration): Now a passive spell. Now also works for spells (healing and damage). Proc rate is roughly 6% with a 10 second internal cooldown. - A really big change that I missed this change my first time through the patch. This makes the talent useful for all specs of Druids.

* Blessing of Salvation renamed Hand of Salvation, now reduces total threat on the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%. Only one - This is not a druid ability but this is such a big change that I felt the need to talk about it. Many players are calling this a nerf but I am not so sure. It depends on the cooldown and what they do with threat in general. This would be really for guilds that have a couple of really high flyers and a lot of people well below the cap, but it will be really tough on guilds that have a lot of people that are threat capped. Ultimately I see this as a way to give Holy paladins something to do besides heal. I think it also makes a couple of them requited for a raid.

Anyway that is my quick review of the Druid section of the patch notes. I won't be checking my blog as much coming up because I will be on vacation. However, I should have access to a computer and if something jucie drops, I will post about it.

Its not in the patch notes but there is a change to the new Improved Moonkin Form talent. According to the WotLK wiki the tool tip now says:

Improved Moonkin Form - Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 8 sec. This effect has a 30 second cooldown. - They reduced the buff duration from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. Plus they added an explicit 30 second cooldown. This is a nerf from the prior version but how much of a nerf is hard to say. According to the wiki, this talent had a 10 to 15 second individual cooldown and a 3 to 4 second party cooldown in the alpha. As long as the ability doesn't have a party wide cooldown any longer I am ok with this change. The maximum amount you will be able to have this buff up is a little over a fourth of the time, but given the nature of crits having it up about a fifth of the time is the best that can be hoped for. This would result in about a 4% haste average which isn't to shabby.

As you can imagine this is huge news around the blogging community. There are some thoughts from other bloggers:
Resto4Life - Official "Beta" Changes to Druids
Yet Another Warlock Nerf - WotLK Beta Patch Notes - Warlock

PS: No Toon Update because I posted just a couple of days ago.

Talent Focus: Eclipse

When the Wrath of the Lich King talents first leaked, I like most moonkin really didn't like the new talent Eclipse. In fact I called it "the dumbest suggestion I have ever seen." If you take a look around the WoW Druid Forums or the Moonkin Repository you will see that this is still a very popular opinion, but my opinion has changed.

Please hear me out before you call me a noob or think I'm an idiot.

I am not saying this a must have talents as it is currently written or functions. All I am saying is that it has some potential that I don't think many of us have considered. So here are my new thoughts on Eclipse with pros and cons. Please post in the comments if you disagree, have something to add, or see an error in my reasoning. I would like this to be a debate.

Disclaimer: This is all speculation based upon second hand info. I am not in the alpha and do not know anyone that is. This analysis is entirely based upon the info available from the alpha wiki. All of the information is subject to change, and will likely change some what before WotLK is released. This is just for fun and to explore the possibilities of our new talents.

Eclipse
Tooltip - When you critically hit with Starfire, you have a 60% chance of increasing damage done by Wrath by 10%. When you critically hit with Wrath, you have a 60% chance of increasing your critical strike chance with Starfire by 10%. Effect lasts 30 sec and has a 2 minute cooldown.

From Wiki - "The buffs cannot stack, however it is possible to gain one buff less than 2 minutes after you've obtained the other. In actual terms, there is a definitive one-minute period minimum of "dead time" currently with Eclipse."

Analysis
This appears to be an effort to complicate our casting rotation. It potentially gives us a reason to cast Wrath in raid and Starfire in PvP. How it would work is definitely complicated. I propose that we could treat Eclipse like a trinket buff that triggers off of a spell cast and only cast Wrath to buff Starfire. Here is how it could work.

1. Tank pulls Boss.
2. Moonkin starts casting Wrath until Eclipse procs the Starfire buff. Assuming you have a max rank Eclipse and 25% crit chance this will take 6 to 7 casts on average (10-12 seconds of casting time with no haste).
3. Switch to casting Starfire as soon as you get the SF buff and use your normal casting rotation. (You may want to just chain cast Starfire for 30 seconds also.)
4. Due to the "dead time" the Wrath buff should proc a little more then a minute after the SF buff procced. As of now we would ignore this buff.
5. Due to the "dead time" the Starfire buff won't be available until a minute after the Wrath buff procced. After the "dead time" ends start chain casting Wrath again for the SF buff and start the cycle over.

Pros
* Provided you with a buff that can significantly increase your DPS from additional damage and Imp Moonkin form haste affects.
* It is possible that Eclipse would proc off of Rank one Wrath. This way you could spam it while the tank is still trying to gain aggro.

Cons
* It is extremely dependent on the random number generator. While it would take 6 or 7 casts on average for the buff to proc it could easily happen on the first cast or not until the 14th cast. Even after you get the buff there is no guarantee that you will benefit from it since crits are also determined by the random number generator. On average this should be nice but can be very feast or famine.
* I have not heard of any new buffs that apply to Wrath that do not apply to Starfire also. So Wrath still has all the same disadvantages that it currently does.
* Due to the "dead time" and the time it takes the buff to proc you will not get the buff every 2 minutes on cooldown. In practice it will probably take 2 minutes 30 seconds to get a new buff.

Recommended Changes
* Change the proc chance from 20%/40%/60% to 40%/70%/100%. This would reduce some of the randomness of the buff and make it more manageable.
* Allow the buffs to stack or reduce the "dead time" to 30 seconds. This would reduce the time between buff. You still won't be able to get it ever 2 minutes but it shouldn't take to much longer.

Conclusion
I think most moonkin get hung up on the fact that you have to cast Wrath to get anything from Eclipse. It is going to take a long time for people to get over the perception that Wrath is not a good spell for raiding. Just look at the Oomkin nickname. We haven't had significant mana issues for quite a while but quite a few people still assume that we do.

I am not convinced that this is a great talent that will significantly increase our DPS and should be picked up by every moonkin when WotLK drops. I am not down on it either. I think it has potential. Lets not write it off yet and see how it unfolds.

Guild/Toon Update
It has been a while since I wrote one of these and a lot has happened. Like many guilds this time of year we have had our share of attendance problems. We have actually put Kael on Hold for a little while because people seemed to be getting burnt out on the fight and we were running low on some of the roles required by that fight. The guild has also gone through some structural and leadership style changes. As of right now I am not 100% sure I am happy with all of the changes or how they were implemented, and I have heard similar thoughts from other members and officers. In fact a couple of people who I considered to be key members and officers of the guild have already /Gquit as a result. I am currently in a wait and see mode. If the new structure and tone of the guild help us to down new bosses and progress then I will be a happy camper. Even if it doesn't work out I don't have a whole lot of options. Most of the raiding guilds on Eitrigg have fallen apart or are having issues of their own. I also don't really want to transfer and leave my friends on this server. I am kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Graylo - As I said earlier, we have put Kael on hold for a little while and have done more in Hyjal and BT, including putting some attempts in on Gorefiend. Those attempts went pretty well but some people still need to figure out the mini game and that is wiping us currently. He as also been running ZA quite a bit and picking up new gear. I picked up [Shadowcaster's Drape] from timed loot and and [Loop of Cursed Bones] from Zul'jin. I also picked up the healing chest off of Lynx for my offset. As of right now the only thing out of ZA that I 100% need is [Hex Shrunken Head]. It did drop once but I lost the roll. I would also take the [Hood of Hexing] if no one else in raid needed it. It did drop once but I am still holding out for my T5 helm or something with a meta gem, and I can't take it if some else will get more use out of it. On a different note, I am starting to regret my decisions to pass on the [Hammer of Judgement] twice. It has dropped since I passed on it the last time but I wasn't in raid when it dropped, and I have been in Hyjal several times since then. I will get it eventually but it is starting to be a little frustrating.

Graypal - I ran a kara with him this past weekend and got enough badges to pick up [Studious Wraps] but a cloak still didn't drop. Other than that nothing. The only place I would be interested to raid him now is TK for the caster helm or caster pants, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. I will probably use him for daily quests once Grayfel gets close to 70 so that I can get him his epic mount right away.

Grayfel - He is now about 3 bars from level 63. I have made a lot of progress since my last update on him at level 58. He is in Outland, but I am very bored with HFP. I've seen it two many times now and I'm tired of getting ganked by a Fel Reaver. Good news is I will be out of the zone soon if I follow my guide. The down side to Grayfel at the moment is his epic mount. I have done all of the quests up to the Lab run in Scholomance, and haven't been able to get a group together to do it. I will admit that I have mainly been looking for some one to run me through it instead of getting a real group, but I had hoped to be done by now. I'm not blaming anyone because I know every one is busy and doesn't' necessarily want to do that sort of thing after a raid. Its just frustrating to go slow when I could be faster.

Graytom - Haven't put a ton of effort into him but he is up to level 14 now.

Spell Damage vs Spell Haste (for Moonkin)

Note: This guide was written well before WotLK as released. The information and modeling done here is based completely on a BC version of WoW. While I thing this information is still generally correct, It does not apply direct any more. I do plan on writting a new guide and will post on my blog when it is done.

Spell Haste is the most misunderstood stat within the Moonkin community. If you watch the WoW druid forums regularly you see plenty of Spell Haste questions. The sad part about his is many of the people answering these questions provide incorrect or miss leading information. With this post I hope to provide the answers providing the Pros, Cons, and Breakeven points of Spell Haste.

Assumptions/Disclaimers:
1. Spell Crit is excluded from the calculation due to the fact that it affects Spell Damage and Spell Haste equally in terms of DPS. I ran the numbers with several levels of crit and the ratio between Spell Damage and Spell Haste is the same for all levels of Spell Crit used.

2. Spell Hit is excluded from the calculation due to the fact that it affects Spell Damage and Spell Haste equally in terms of DPS. I ran the numbers with several levels of hit and the ratio between Spell Damage and Spell Haste is the same for all levels of Spell Hit used.

3. This analysis has been written using Starfire but all moonkin spells are very similarly affected by Spell Haste. Therefore this analysis can be applied to Wrath and other Moonkin Spells.

4. Calculations assume that the caster is level 70.

Talents and other Buffs Affecting Spell Haste:
There are several items and spells that temporarily buff haste, but none of these last longer then 30 seconds. Therefore they will be excluded from the calculations.

General Spell Haste Info:
* Spell Haste lowers a spells casting time and lowers the global cooldown. Haste cannot lower the global cooldown below 1 second. However it would take 785 Spell Haste to lower the global cooldown to 1 second. This level is not possible to achieve long term with gear currently available in game.

* Spell Haste has no affect on the damage caused by a single spell. It only changes the casting time.

* Spell Haste has diminishing returns. Your first point of Spell Haste will affect your cast time more significantly then your second point.

* Cast Time Calculation: Base Cast Time / (1+(Spell Haste / 1570)) = Actual Cast Time. Ex: 3.0 sec / (1+(157/1570) = 2.73 sec for Starfire with 157 Spell Haste.

The Math:
As with all of the Spell DPS stats the value of Spell Haste and Spell Damage are highly dependent on each other. Obviously the amount of DPS you gain from one point of Spell Damage increases the more Spell Haste you have since Spell Haste will decrease your cast time. The amount of DPS you gain from one point of Spell Haste increases with the amount of Spell Damage you have because Spell Damage increases how much damage your spells do per cast.

How much additional DPS will you receive from an additional point of Spell Damage?
Moonfury, Wrath of Cenarius and your Spell Haste all affect the amount of DPS you gain from Spell Damage. Starfire has a base Spell Damage Coefficient of 1, and let X equal your Cast Time. So the additional damage from one point of Spell damage is:

Damage = ((1 + 0.2)*1.1)/X, So if you have zero haste Then
Damage = ((1 + 0.2)*1.1)/3.0
Damage = 1.32/3.0 = 0.4400 DPS per point of Spell Damage with zero Spell Haste.

How much additional DPS will you receive from an additional point of Spell Haste?
First we need to figure out how much DPS Starfire does on a normal cast. It has two components, base spell damage and bonus spell damage. Base spell damage is the damage that comes with the trainable spell with no bonus from gear. A max rank Starfire can hit for between 550 and 646. It is increased by 10% because of Moonfury, so the average base spell damage for Starfire is 657.8. Bonus spell damage is what you receive from gear and is calculated on your character screen. It is modified based upon the base casting time of the spell and talents. Starfire has a Spell Damage Coefficient of 1, and it is modified by Wrath of Cenarius and Moonfury as I said before. Of course all of this need to be divided by your Spell Cast Time. So the DPS of your average non-miss Starfire is equal to:

DPS = (657.8 + (Spell Damage)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / Cast Time
DPS = (657.8 + (1100)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / 3 = 703.2667, If you have 1100 Spell Damage and zero Spell Haste.

Now, if we had one point of Spell Haste to the equation then we increase the average DPS per spell cast. Using the equation

DPS = (657.8 + (Spell Damage)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / Cast Time
DPS = (657.8 + (1100)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / (3/(1+(1/1570))) = 703.7146, If you have 1100 Spell Damage and zero starting Spell Haste.

So from one point of Spell Haste you gain 0.4479 DPS with 1100 Spell Damage and zero starting Haste. Lets compare this value to the DPS value I calculated for one additional point of Spell Damage.

0.4479/0.4400 = 1.0180

So, at 1100 Spell Damage and zero starting Haste, one additional point of Spell Haste is worth 1.0180 points of Spell Damage.

I have calculated this value for several levels of Spell Damage and Spell Haste. Here is a graph that shows the results.

Break-Even Point:
As you can see from the graph above the value of Haste is below that of Spell Damage ever for some reasonable amounts of Spell Damage. Not only that, but as your starting haste increases the value of an additional point of haste decreases relative to Spell Damage.

This brings up two important questions. When should you start picking up haste? How much haste is too much haste? If we ignore the mana concerns that come with Haste, these questions are very easy to answer from a mathematical standpoint.

When should you start picking up haste?
Assuming that you are starting with zero Spell Haste, one point of Spell Haste, will provide more additional DPS then one point of Spell Damage when you have 1,072 Spell Damage fully raid buffed. This is a fairly easy level to reach if you uses flasks and other consumables, but hasted should not be equipped before you reach this level.

How much haste is too much haste?
Unlike Spell Hit, there is no reasonable level of Spell Haste where Spell Haste becomes worthless on its own. However, if you collect to much Spell Haste you can push its value below that of Spell Damage as we can see from the graph above. You can find this break even point with a simple equation.

Spell Damage > Spell Haste + 1,071

If that equation is correct for your toon, then you do not have to much haste. So for example, if you have 75 Spell Haste, then you should have at least 1,146 Spell Damage fully raid buffed.

Gemming for Spell Haste:
Another very common question is when should you gem for spell haste. And it is a little more complicated to answer. It depends on stat your not gemming because your gemming haste, and what quality of gems you are using. Lets look at each of the stats and see how they affect the choice.

Spell Hit – Assuming you are not hit capped. Spell Hit is always more valuable then Haste. If you are not hit capped do not gem for Haste.

Spell Crit – Spell Haste will always improve your short run DPS more then Spell Crit. My math showed that Spell Haste was better then Spell Crit even if you had very low crit and very high haste. So don’t be afraid to put a Reckless gem in those yellow sockets instead of a Potent gem if your above the break-even point.

Spell Damage – This is the complicated one. Unlike the other stats Spell Damage has a lower stat value then Spell Haste. So you will get more Spell Damage on a gem then you will Spell Haste. For Example The Runed Crimson Spinel will give you 12 Spell Damage. The Quick Lionseye on the other hand will give you 10 Spell Haste. So right off the bat Spell Damage has a 1.2 greater value then Spell Haste. This cause us to have a different break-even point when gemming for Spell Haste over Spell Damage. It is:

Spell Damage > 1.2 * (Spell Haste) + 1,386

If that equation is correct for your toon, then you can gain more DPS by gemming for Haste instead of Spell Damage. So for example, if you have 75 Spell Haste, then you should have at least 1,476 Spell Damage fully raid buffed before you gem for haste over damage.

Conclusions:
1. My results show that moonkin shouldn’t consider equipping haste until they have at least 1072 Spell Damage raid buffed. This however is an absolute minimum and higher levels of Spell Damage are recommended to be safe.

2. You can always gem for Haste over Spell Crit to increase your DPS, but should never gem for Haste over Hit if you are not hit capped.

3. You need at lease 1,386 Spell Damage raid buffed to gem for Haste over Spell Damage, but should probably have significantly more.

4. This whole article ignores the mana issues associated with Haste. If you find that you are running out of mana at the end of long fights then you should probably hold off on equipping haste until your mana situation is more stable.