Eclipse Changes in 4.2

Now that Patch 4.1 is here everyone is looking to patch 4.2. With the patch expected to hit the PTR any day now Blizzard released a preliminary version of the Patch notes and it's not looking good for moonkin.

• Insect Swarm now generates 8 Lunar Energy for druids with Eclipse.
• Moonfire now generates 8 Solar Power for druids with Eclipse.
• Sunfire now generates 8 Lunar Energy for druids with Eclipse

"for druids with Eclipse"?

When I first read the patch notes I assumed that Moonfire, Sunfire and Insect Swarm would generate Eclipse power all the time. Unfortunately, I don't think that is correct.

The patch notes are very specific. IS and SF will provide 8 Lunar Energy for druids with Eclipse. MF will provide 8 solar energy for druids with Eclipse. Those notes make a lot of sense. Of course MF wouldn't provide Lunar energy when a druid has Eclipse, because that would move the energy bar backwards. The IS and SF patch notes fall the same pattern.

The question is what happens when the druid is without Eclipse? At this point I have to assume that DoTs don't generate any power when you don't have Eclipse. As I said above the patch notes are very specific. If Blizzard intended to have DoTs generate power all of the time I would assume they would make a more general patch note like "Moonkin DoTs will now generate 8 Eclipse Power".

Plus, having DoTs generate power outside of Eclipse raises additional questions. For Wrath and Starfire it's simple. When you move from Lunar to Solar, Starfire generates power but Wrath doesn't and there is no reason you would want to Wrath in such a situation. For DoT's it's more complicated. The DPET of our DoTs is very high, so it could make sense to cast MF when transitioning from Lunar to Solar when you don't have Eclipse. Plus if DoT's did generate power, what kind of power would they generate? Would DoTs behave like Starsurge or the other Nukes? These problems can be solved, but it's not as simple as some may assume.

Single-Target DPS Impact:

We'll need to check out the PTR and do some simulations to know what the impact is for sure, but we can make some educated guesses right now. My bet is that this will be slight nerf for Single-Target DPS.

On the negative side, DoTs consuming power during Eclipse means you will generally get one less Eclipsed nuke per Eclipse transition. For example, at the moment we can get five Starfires and one Starsurge in during solar Eclipse. Adding in solar power from Moonfire means we will only be able to get four Starfires and one Starsurge without any Shooting Stars procs. The same is true Solar Eclipse, but having two DoTs only reduces the number of buffed Wrath's by one.

On the positive side, there are two things to consider. First, if DoTs generate power then we will be transitioning from one Eclipse to the other more quickly and procking Nature's Grace more often. That should be a slight buff. Second, Shooting Star procs lessen the negative impact a little. In my example above I said that we currently can get five Starfire's and one Starsurges during Lunar Eclipse. If we have a Shooting Star proc during Lunar Eclipse that changes to four Starfires and 2 Starsurges. The good news is if DoTs consume power in 4.2 a Shooting Star proc during Lunar Eclipse won't eat one of your Eclipsed Starfires, because we will still be able to get four Starfires and two Starsurges.

Overall, I think the negatives outweigh the positives, but from a single target perspective I doubt the nerf is huge. Though we can’t know for sure without testing.

Multi-Target DPS Impact:

Multi-Target DPS is where this change really starts to have an impact. On a fight like V&T where you have two viable targets casting additional DoTs takes a way additional Eclipsed nukes. As the number of targets increases the number of Eclipsed buff nukes decreases. This shouldn't in anyway change our rotation during Eclipse, because trading an Eclipsed nuke for an Eclipsed DoT is definitely a good trade, but I would much rather have both an Eclipsed Nuke and an Eclipsed DoT as we do now.

The biggest impact will be to our AoE rotation. If we need to do AoE DPS for an extended period of time then the DoTs will definitely lose their place in the rotation. As of right now there is no indication that Wild Mushroom, Hurricane or Typhoon will consume any Eclipse Power. The goal will still be to maintain Solar Eclipse, but the filler used between WM casts will be Hurricane and Typhoon instead of the DoTs.

If I had to guess this is Blizzard's reason for making the change. Moonkin AoE damage was very strong, and my guess is it didn't sit well with them that moonkin were avoiding the traditional AoE spells. If I'm correct, this change might serve two purposes. First it likely makes Hurricane a part of the moonkin AoE rotation again. And second, it nerfs moonkin AoE DPS which is admittedly very high. That said, there are other classes/specs that are quite high as well that I don't see being nerfed.

Death of Lunar Shower:

I'm going to chalk this one up to unintended consequences but this is going to significantly reduce the usefulness of Lunar Shower. If I have to move during Eclipse there is no way I'm going to cast Moonfire. Consuming my Eclipse power with just the direct damage portion of Moonfire, is obviously a bad choice. The better moonkin out there were also using Lunar Shower and MF spam to delay Eclipse and line it up with significant DPS boosts to get an overall higher level of DPS in the game.

Spamming MF while moving without Eclipse will still be a DPS boost, but it makes our situation a bit more difficult. It creates another choice we have to make in an already complex rotation. It also creates a bit of a DPS trap which Blizzard said they want to avoid in the run up to Cataclysm. Is a new player really supposed to figure out that spamming Moonfire on the move is good without Eclipse but bad with Eclipse?

Final Thoughts:

It's important to remember that this is a very early look at the 4.2 patch notes and that they are in no way complete. A lot will happen between now and when the patch is released. The question I have is will there be a buff for us in the future.

I still don't think moonkin are over powered in any way, and if anything I think we are a little underpowered after the change to Starsurge in patch 4.1. If there is anywhere Moonkin are overpowered it's in our Multi-target DPS and this change definitely takes care of that, but Moonkin weren't alone at the top. Yet, I don't see those other classes getting nerfed as well.

Overall, I'm just confused. I'm having a hard time figuring out what Blizzard's goal is for the Balance spec at the moment.

Other changes:

Here are a couple of other little changes that you might be interested in.

• Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction.
• Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid's maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.

I like the crowd control change. It should make Trash a little bit easier. We do lose our Entangling Roots damage as a result but that isn't a big deal at least for PvE.

The Innervate change is good for Feral, but bad for Moonkin for Restos. As you know innervate is currently based off of the casters Mana pool. As a result when a feral casts it it provides very little mana because Ferals don't have a large mana pool. So Ferals should be happy about this change.

For moonkin, we lose a big piece of utility. Moonkin were in a unique position in that we didn't have mana issues and could give away our innervate without issue. Now the utility of our innervate is reduced by 75%.

For resto's, this is a bit of a nerf as well. I don't know how much it is done any more, but I know that early on in the expansion Resto druids were trading their innervates to get a greater amount of mana returned. The druids would use the Glyph of Innervate and then cast their innervate on the other resto druid. This way they would get both the mana from the Glyph and the other druids Innervate. Now this practice will result in less mana then just casting innervate on yourself. This basically makes the Glyph of Innervate useless.
Innervate and CC

Fun W/ SimulationCraft: WotLK Rotations

With Cataclysm right around the corner some of you maybe wondering why I'm writing about a WotLK rotation when we know everything is going to change. I agree. It seems silly, but I was recently challenged on the rotation I've been using and that prompted me to do some more research. In the off chance that some of you still care about WotLK, I thought I would post my results and how to do the tests for yourself.

The Theory:

If you are a reader of the Moonkin Repository you may remember a post that RandomSmo made a month and a half ago regarding when is the best time to cast Moonfire and Insect Swarm. The question he asked was: Is it better to cast the DoTs outside of Eclipse or is it better to only cast Moonfire at the beginning of Lunar Eclipse and only cast Insect Swarm at the beginning of Solar Eclipse?

The theory behind the question is that moonkin DPS is driven by Eclipse uptime. Therefore you want to do everything possible to maximize the uptime of Eclipse. Casting a DoT while Eclipse is down just delays procing the next Eclipse, and therefore reduces the uptime of Eclipse.

I agree that the theory is very counterintuitive. If moonkin DPS is so driven by Eclipse then why cast something that is not affected by Eclipse?

There are a couple of possible reasons. First, in the case of Moonfire casting a DoT doesn't necessarily prevent a Starfire cast from getting Eclipse. If you have 1.5 seconds left on Eclipse there is no way that Starfire will benefit from that remaining buff. It would have been better to have Moonfire ticking the entire duration and gotten the same number of Eclipsed Starfires. Second, in the case of Insect Swarm there were synergies to consider. Wrath does 3% more damage when Insect Swarm is on the mob. So, it is possible that if you combine the 3% buff with the added uptime of Insect Swarm that you would make up for the lost Eclipsed Wrath.

Admittedly there were some problems with the simulations RandomSmo ran. However, when I ran some quick tests in July correcting for his mistakes I got smaller, but similar results. I then accepted the results, but as I said before was recently challenged regarding some of the strategies I was using. With that I desided I would redo the tests to see if the results had changed.

What SimulationCraft Says:
All simulations were run using Graylo with full raid buffs, as a 5 minute fight, and with 10,000 iterations.

A quick look at Starfall and the default set up: I ran 17 different rotations through SimulationCraft. In those tests I was primarily changing when and how DoTs were applied, but I do want to make a quick comment about the default set up for SimulationCraft.

If you import your toon right into SimulationCraft the default rotation assumes that you don't cast Starfall during Eclipse. When I ran Graylo using the default rotation I had a DPS value of 12,304. When I had it cast Starfall when ever it was off cooldown I had a DPS value of 12,351. This indicates that it is better not to delay casting Starfall to cast it out side of Eclipse. However, I would like to present a couple of reminders first.

First, the SimulationCraft tests I ran assumed a Patchwerk style fight, and 7 out of 12 ICC bosses have specific add phases where it is better to use Starfall. Second, big delays over long fights will add up quickly. If you delay Starfall 3 or 4 times for 10 seconds or more over a long fight you've probably lost a Starfall cast in that fight. Shorter delays and delays on shorter fights will have less of an impact.

Here is the general rule I would use. On a Patchwerk style fight try not to delay Starfall too much, but feel free to delay it a few seconds if it becomes available at the end of an Eclipse buff.

When is the best time to cast DoTs?
In all of the simulations below I assume that Starfall is cast when it is available.

These are some of the measures I used when I asked some similar questions last December.

Condition	DPS
Never Skip	12,298
Skip on Opposite	12,419
Skip Always	12,426

With "Never Skip" the tests refreshed the DoTs when ever they were down. Even if Eclipse is up with only a few seconds left. With "Skip on Opposite" DoTs were only refreshed during Eclipse if they take advantage of Improved Insect Swarm. Therefore, if Lunar Eclipse is up you would refresh Moonfire but not Insect Swarm. With "Skip Always" the tests skip both DoTs if either Eclipse buff is up.

If you remember that post you can see that the results are a bit different this time around. In December there was an obvious advantage to trying to keep a 100% uptime on DoTs. Now our DoTs are relatively week and it is better in some cases skip them in favor of Eclipse buffed nukes.

Smo's Theory: So how does RandomSmo's theory stack up against these baseline values?

Condition	DPS
Only at Start of Same Eclipse	12,320

When tested against my toon, Smo's theory comes about 106 DPS behind the Skip Always strategy above. That means the Skip All Strategy provides about 0.86% more damage. That isn't a huge difference but it is clear to me that it is an inferior strategy.

Can we improve on the Skip Always Strategy? Now that it is clear that Smo's theory is an inferior strategy, the question is: Can the Skip Always strategy be improved upon? As I said before I ran about 17 different rotations through the simulator. Here are the most telling results.

Condition	DPS
Cast Either DoT if Eclipse is Down or has more then 4 sec remaining.	12,338
Cast MF for 100% Uptime, Cast IS only when Eclipse is down.	12,392
Cast IS for 100% Uptime, Cast MF only when Eclipse is down.	12,335
Cast DoT if Own Eclipse has more then 4 sec remaining or if Eclipse is down	12,443
Cast MF if Lunar Eclipse has more then 4 sec remaining or if Eclipse is down, Cast IS if Eclipse is down	12,438
Cast IS if Solar Eclipse has more then 4 sec remaining or if Eclipse is down, Cast MF if Eclipse is down	12,427

Judging from these results there doesn't appear to be a way to significantly improve on the Skip Always Strategy. There do appear to be some slight improvements when casting Moonfire at the beginning of Lunar Eclipse, but these differences probably fall within the margin of error and are very slight even if they don't.

TL-DR:

In my most recent testing Smo's theory of casting DoTs only at the beginning of Eclipse does not appear to be beneficial. I was able to get noticeably better results from SimulationCraft using a strategy where you always skip DoTs during Eclipse. SimulationCraft did show slightly improved results using a strategy that would cast Moonfire at the start of Lunar Eclipse, but the results probably fall within the margin of error.

For Starfall, SimulationCraft defaults it to only be cast when Eclipse is down. However, I got better results from SimulatonCraft if Starfall was cast when it was off cooldown. However, I would be careful when applying these results. It is probably advantageous to make small delays in casting Starfall during shorter fights because you are unlikely to reduce the number of Starfalls you will get in the encounter. Making longer delays, or delays during longer fights is more risky because you risk losing a Starfall cast during an attempt.

Do It Yourself: If you would like to run this analysis for yourself. Here is how you do it.

Go download SimulationCraft from here. The Import tab will allow you to download your toon from the Armory, Rawr, or WoWhead if you have a profile set up there.

The Default Setting for Moonkin in SimulationCraft does not cast Insect Swarm unless you are moving. So for the first simulation you run you will want to add a line for Insect Swarm below the line for Moonfire. For every test after that just replace the Moonfire and Insect Swarm lines with the lines I provide below.

For 100% DoT uptime (Never Skip Strat), replace the lines with:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking

For the Skip Always Strat, replace the lines with:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&!eclipse
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&!eclipse

For the Skip on Opposite Strat, replace the lines with:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&(buff.solar_eclipse.down)
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&(buff.lunar_eclipse.down)

To run Smo's Theory, replace the lines with:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&(buff.lunar_eclipse.react)&buff.lunar_eclipse.remains>10
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&(buff.solar_eclipse.react)&buff.solar_eclipse.remains>10

For the Cast DoT if Own Eclipse has more then 4 sec remaining or if Eclipse is down Strat:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&(buff.lunar_eclipse.down|buff.lunar_eclipse.remains>4)&(buff.solar_eclipse.down)
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&(buff.lunar_eclipse.down)&(buff.solar_eclipse.down|buff.solar_eclipse.remains>4)

From here you can mix and match the different bits of code to get the other results I had. One thing to remember is that this is a simulator so you may not get the same results each time you run it.

Fun w/ SimulationCraft: Eclipse and DoTs

I'm starting a new series I am calling "Fun with SimulationCraft." I have two goals for this series. The first is to answer some of the more common rotation and proc questions that are difficult to answer with simple math. The second goal is to make myself and hopefully you guys more familure with SimulationCraft. The better we understand the tool the better we understand the results and our DPS.

The Question: Eclipse - Nukes vs DoTs

As we all know Eclipse is a major part of Moonkin DPS. It is also very unpredictable, and impossible to fit into a nice rotation where all the buff's, cooldowns, and dot timers line up. It is inevitable that you will face a situation where your Eclipse has just procced, but your DoTs have only 5 seconds left on them.

What do you do in this situation? Do you spend a GCD and pressious Eclipse time on a spell that is unaffected by the buff, or do you continue to nuke and let your DoTs fall off?

It's a tough question, that I have changed my mind on a couple of times.

My Theory:

I've thought about this issue many times. A while ago I decided that the best course of action was to refresh DoTs if Eclipse had more then 4 or 5 seconds left on it, but skip the DoTs otherwise. My reasoning is fairly simple. When you ask a couple of questions.

What do you lose by casting a DoT when the Eclipse buff is up? - You lose a GCD that could have been used to cast a Nuke buffed by Eclipse.

What do you gain by casting a DoT when the Eclipse buff is up? - You gain the damage that the DoT will tick for until the end of the Eclipse buff.

When I asked myself these two questions I realized something. I'm not asking if I should cast a DoT. I'm asking when I should cast a DoT. The choice is do I cast it during Eclipse or right after Eclipse expires. I can extend this logic a littler further also. If I make this choice regarding the DoT, I'm making a similar choice about the Nuke. If I cast the DoT during Eclipse, I will be casting a Nuke right after Eclipse expires. If I skip the DoT during Eclipse, then I'm losing a Nuke after Eclipse expires because I need to refresh the DoT.



What I realized was that when I cast a DoT, I am not preventing a Nuke from being cast. However, I may be preventing a Nuke from being buffed by Eclipse. So, the question is which is more valuable: damage from increased DoT uptime or the addtional damage from an Eclipsed Nuke?

I won't detail the math but i will use a quick example to show you how I made my choice. On average my Wrath casts hit for 6377 damage without Eclipse. With Eclipse they hit for 9030 damage on average. There for I lose 2653 damage if a wrath cast is pushed out of the Eclipse buff by a DoT. My Insect Swarm ticks for 1280 damage on average. It would take roughly two ticks of IS to make up for the lost Eclipse damage. Since IS ticks every 2 seconds, if I had more then 2 seconds left on Eclipse then casting the DoT made more sense.

Obviously this is an over simplification of the issue. This is why I haven't published anything in the past regarding this question. Now SimulationCraft hs here to make me look like a genius or an idiot.

What SimulationCraft Says:


Once again I used my self as an example and I asked multiple questions. Here is the results from the first set.

Condition	DPS
Never Skip	8267
Skip on Opposite	8175
Skip Always	8061

Never Skip means that I refresh the DoT when ever it is down. Even if Eclipse is up with only a few seconds left.
Skip on Opposite means you refresh the DoT only to take advantage of Improved Insect Swarm. Therefore, if Lunar Eclipse is up you would refresh Moonfire but not Insect Swarm.
Skip Always means you skip both DoTs if either Eclipse buff is up.

As you can see from the table above, the results are leaning towards refreshing your DoTs instead of skipping them, but we have another question to ask. As I said before I will skip the refresh if I have only a few seconds left on Eclipse. Is that the right choice?

Seconds Remaining	DPS
1 sec	8278
2 sec	8277
3 sec	8277
4 sec	8279
5 sec	8273
6 sec	8264
7 sec	8273
8 sec	8252
9 sec	8255
10 sec	8236
11 sec	8219
12 sec	8186
13 sec	8180
14 sec	8142
15 sec	8058

These results show that I can do slighly better DPS by skipping the DoTs whe I have 5 or few seconds left on Eclipse, but the DPS increase is very minor. Even if you start skipping your DoTs with 9 seconds left on Eclipse your only losing a tiny amount of DPS.

TL:DR

Well, the good news is I don't look like an idiot, but my method wasn't a huge success either. Skipping my DoTs with just a few seconds left on Eclipse did result in a slight DPS increase, but its not anything that will make or break our rotation.

The main conclusion I will draw from my tests is that the loss of DoT uptime is a bigger DPS loss then not having a nuke affected by Eclipse. If you skip your DoTs entirely while Eclipse is up it is roughly a 2.49% DPS loss.

Do It Yourself: If you would like to run this analysis for yourself. Here is how you do it.

Go download SimulationCraft from here.

SimulationCrafts GUI interface has gotten a lot better since I last posted on the tool. On the Import tab you can down load your toon from the Armory or WoWhead. Importing your profile will populate the Simulate tab with your script. The default setting is to always refresh DoTs.

To always skip DoTs replace the Moonfire and Insect Swarm lines with:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&!buff.lunar_eclipse.up&!buff.solar_eclipse.up
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&!buff.lunar_eclipse.up&!buff.solar_eclipse.up

To skip DoTs when the Opposite buff is up change the lines to:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&!buff.solar_eclipse.up
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&!buff.lunar_eclipse.up

To skip DoTs when when there is only 4 seconds left on either Eclipse change the lines to:

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&(buff.lunar_eclipse.downbuff.lunar_eclipse.remains>4)&(buff.solar_eclipse.downbuff.solar_eclipse.remains>4)
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&(buff.lunar_eclipse.downbuff.lunar_eclipse.remains>4)&(buff.solar_eclipse.downbuff.solar_eclipse.remains>4)

Finally, I would like to say thanks to Dedmonwakeen and Starfox the Creater and Druid developer of SimulationCraft for walking me though some of the changes that needed to be made.