Tier 12 Set Bonuses

The information keeps flowing so here is my third post in three days. Today we are going to look at the Tier 12 Set Bonuses. Just want to remind everyone that this is data mined info and not directly from Blizzard.

Balance 2 Pieces - You have a chance to summon a Burning Treant to assist you in battle for 15 sec when you cast Wrath or Starfire.

At this time it's impossible to calculate how strong this set bonus is, but with the help of Wrathcalcs and some assumptions I think we can make a decent guess. In my analysis I made two assumptions.

First, I am assuming that a Burning Treant is similar to a Force of Nature treant in strength. Since the 2T12 set bonus comes with only one treant and lasts half as long as the FoC treants, I am assuming that the damage output from the 2T12 set bonus is a sixth of the damage out put from FoC.

Second, I am assuming that the proc chance of the set bonus is 20% (as indicated in the spell notes), and that none of the damage is wasted. The second part of that assumption isn't realistic of course, but I want to avoid making to many guesses at this point.

When I plugged these assumptions into Wrathcalcs (with the T11 set bonuses turned off) it increased the total DPS by 6.91%. That's not bad as far as set bonuses go generally, but it's a lot weaker then our current 4T11 set bonus that we would have to give up to use it.

Another concern with this set bonus is what level of control will we have over the Burning Treant. In the Tier 11 raids there are several fights were you don't want a pet beating on the wrong target. Let’s say we have this set bonus on Omnitron. What if a treant procs right before we have to switch targets? Will the treant run to our old target and start beating on the shield? This shouldn't be a concern for a majority of the fights, but it could cause headaches for a few of them.

Balance 4 Pieces - While not in an Eclipse state, your Wrath generates 3 additional Lunar Energy and your Starfire generates 5 additional Solar Energy.

My first reaction was negative. The Wrath side of the bonus seemed ok, but I thought I saw a problem with Starfire side. Here was my issue.

If you assume that you have to refresh a Moonfire and cast Starsurge on your way to Solar Eclipse then the 4T12 set bonus wouldn't save you a Starfire cast. Since you would gain only 23 energy from that DoT and Starsurge I thought we would have to cast a fourth Starfire anyway, but I made a mistake.

That mistake was assuming that we would start at zero energy, which realistically shouldn't ever happen. The more likely scenario is that you will end your Eclipse with 3 or more Solar energy depending on how many Moonfire's and Starsurges you cast during Eclipse. The only time I found the 4T12 set bonus to not be helpful was when three Starsurges were cast in the transition from Lunar to Solar Eclipse. In ever other scenario I looked at the extra energy you leave Eclipse with was enough to prevent you from having to cast an additional Starfire.

I did look at the Wrath side to see if it had any problems. All of the scenario's I ran on that side resulted in us having to cast one less Wrath. There may be a situation where that isn't the case but I doubt it is that common or realistic.

To look at strength I hacked Wrathcalcs once again to try and get an idea of what kind of DPS gain it would be. It estimated that the DPS increase of this set bonus would be about 2.1%. That is a little lower then I would like it to be, but it is significantly better then the DPS gain we are currently getting from the 2T11 set bonus. Therefore it's a good trade.

The only question I have regarding 4T12 bonus is if it's affected by Euphoria. I'm assuming that it is since the Euphoria tool tip says it doubles the energy provided by Wrath and Starfire. Since it doesn't give a specific energy amount I would assume that the set bonus energy is doubled as well.

Mailbag: Haste Breakpoints

I know it's been a while since I blogged last, I apologize for the lack of content. My real life has been very busy. In WoW, my guild situation has been very unsettled, and I've had a bit of writer's block when trying to come up with blog ideas. Luckily a reader reminded me of a topic that I had meant to tackle, but apparently had forgotten about. So, this week I am reaching into the mailbag and take a look at Haste Breakpoints.

The Question:

From what I understand and have read in several places is that although there are several haste "break points," after the break points haste is still a better stat to have than mastery or crit. Am I misunderstanding the information or is this correct? The "Top" moonkin on the server keeps his haste at 18 percent, right around a break point but currently I have mine a bit higher. Thank You.

Jason E.

What are Haste Breakpoints?

The short answer to this question is a level of Haste rating at which your DoT or HoT gains an extra tick of damage or healing.

You may remember in WotLK, Haste did affect some HoTs and DoTs by reducing the duration of the spell. The spells did the same amount of damage or healing, but did it in a shorter amount of time. This is pretty much the same way that Haste changed Nukes. The problem with this was that by the end of the expansion our haste levels were very high, and the durations of those HoTs and DoTs were nearly cut in half. This caused several problems for both DPSers and healers that I won't get into.

In Cataclysm, Blizzard fixed those issues by changing the way haste affects HoTs and DoTs. Now, at specific levels of haste HoTs and DoTs will gain an extra tick and extend the duration of the spell. This means that the duration of both Moonfire and IS will always be between 17 seconds and 19 seconds long no matter what buffs or how much haste rating you have.

What are the Haste Rating Break Points for Moonfire and Insect Swarm. The table below shows you how much Haste Rating you need to get an extra tick of damage. All of the columns assume you have Moonkin Aura, DI = Dark Intent, NG = Nature's Grace. If a column is blank then you would reach the break point with just the buffs indicated and no additional Haste Rating.

Extra Ticks	Std Buffs	DI	NG	DI&NG
+1	68
+2	1423	1009
+3	2778	2324	746	351
+4	4134	3640	1924	1495
+5	5489	4956	3102	2639
+6	6844	6271	4281	3783
+7	8199	7587	5459	4927

Why Haste Breakpoints are Significant:

The significance of Haste Breakpoints revolves around the Damage per Execution Time (DpET) of your spells. This is the Damage done divided by the time it takes to cast the spell. Since our DoTs are instant the Execution time is the Global Cooldown. Typically Haste affects your DpET by reducing the Execution time of your spell, and small increases in Haste result in small increases in DpET. Haste Breakpoints change this equation. When you reach a haste breakpoint, you not only reduce the cast time of the spell, but you also increase the damage of the spell by adding an additional tick of damage. This causes the DpET of your spells to jump when you reach a Breakpoint, and the output of a single spell cast increases significantly. Also, since your DoTs duration increases at the breakpoint, it means you are casting DoTs less and Nukes more. This should have a small impact on your DPS.

Haste Breakpoints matter most when you don't plan on refreshing the HoT or DoT. This is why healers care about the breakpoints so much. To a healer, it doesn't really matter if the healing happens over 11 or 13 seconds. If time is really important they are likely using a direct heal instead of a HoT. So, healers don't really care about the HPS of a spell, but the HpET can be very significant. When a healer reaches a breakpoint that extra tick means that their HoT heals for more. So they get more output from their spells because they typically don't refresh a HoT on anyone except a tank.

For moonkin, there is a similar situation when we are AoEing groups of adds. Hurricane is quite weak and mana intensive at the moment, and Wild Mushroom has a 10 second cooldown. Therefore, if you expect the adds to live more than 15-18 seconds it's typically best to multi-DoT the adds to do the most damage, and being just over a break point significantly helps in that regard.

Why Haste Breakpoints are Unimportant for Moonkin:

Passing a Haste Breakpoint is definitely a good thing, but it's important to not over value it's impact. Crossing a Breakpoint may be huge for the DpET of a DoT, but it has no special affect on the DPS of a DoT. Yes, an additional tick of a DoT will increase the damage of the spell but it also increases the duration of the spell. As a result the DPS of the spell before and after Breakpoint is virtually the same. You gain a little time by passing a Breakpoint, but the amount of time gain shrinks with each breakpoint you pass and becomes less significant.

The main reason you shouldn't care about Haste Breakpoints is overall stat valuation. Once your hit capped, Haste is the best secondary stat no matter where your stats are relative to the Haste Breakpoints. If your just above a breakpoint, Haste is still better than Crit or Mastery. Therefore it doesn't make any sense to keep your haste at a breakpoint. More Haste is always better if the alternatives are Crit or Mastery. So, to answer Jason E.'s question, there is no reason you or the other moonkin should hold your Haste levels at 18 percent. The only possibility I can think of is that he may switch to resto quite often and uses the same set of gear. In which case he is trying to optimize his gear for both rolls.

TL-DR: How I view Haste Breakpoints.

Haste Breakpoints, are a good thing to keep in mind when gearing your toon, but they shouldn't have a huge impact on your gearing choices. The only time they play a really significant roll in your DPS is when you are multi-DoTing adds and don't expect to refresh the DoTs. Plus, Haste Rating is always a better stat than Crit or Mastery. Therefore, it doesn't make any sense to sacrifice Haste for Crit or Mastery even if you just past a break point.

If at all possible I would prefer to be slightly above a Breakpoint than slightly below one, because there are advantages to being above a breakpoint. However, I wouldn't sacrifice anything more than very small amounts of Hit or Int to get there (i.e. 20 points), and I definitely wouldn't hold my haste levels constant until I could reach the next Haste Breakpoint.

The Impact of Euphoria and Wasted Power

It's hard not to think that we are getting close to the end of the beta and to the release of the next World of Warcraft Expansion: Cataclysm. The signs are all there. A hint from a high level Blizzard employee. Fewer and fewer structural changes to the classes and talent trees. Most of the Cataclysm content seems to have been released. Granted there is still a lot of work to be done, but it is hard not to get the feeling that we are closer to the end then we are to the beginning.

With that the questions we ask start to change. No longer are we ask what new spells/talents/buffs am I getting? Now we have to ask ourselves how do I use this stuff that Blizzard gave me?

There are a lot of unanswered questions out there. We have no way of answering most of them at the moment, but a few things are becoming clear. To me it is very clear that Eclipse will remain the primary driver of moonkin DPS, and one of the best ways to maximize moonkin DPS is to maximize the uptime of Eclipse. This brings me to a very common question I see asked about moonkin in Cataclysm. What is the impact of Euphoria?

A Quick Note on Damage Theorycrafting:

I don't know how other theorycrafters feel, but I feel like I'm learning a new language when I try and crunch the numbers from Cataclysm. Not only are we dealing with new mechanics like the new Eclipse, but all the inputs are changing as well. Spell Power is gone. Crit and haste are likely to be dramatically reduced from what we see today. Plus, we have to figure out how to include mastery into the equation.

Since I am not in the Beta I have found it very difficult to find any hard data on how these things will work, the starting values of spells, or what I think we can expect when it all goes live. So it's very hard to answer a question like "what is the highest DPS rotation?"

In this analysis I try not to get to heavy into the damage calculations, because they are definitely incorrect. Instead I try to use something reasonable based upon the data available from the beta, and what we have historically seen from Blizzard.

The Impact of Euphoria:

This is probably the most common question I see. If you don't remember, when you have Euphoria your Wrath and Starfire critical strikes will generate a little extra Solar or Lunar power. At first this sounded great. It added a little randomness to the rotation, and it always helped you by reducing the time it took to proc Eclipse without reducing the uptime of Eclipse.

That changed when Eclipse was changed to a 45 second buff that was lost as soon as you reduced your Solar or Lunar power to zero. Now, Euphoria not only reduces the down time of Eclipse but it also reduces Eclipse's uptime. As you can imagine this raises a lot of questions, and it is hard to tell of Euphoria is good, bad or neutral just by looking at it.

To try answer this question I created a new rotation simulator using excel. As I said above the damage calculations used are not very good, but I was trying to get a good handle on how Euphoria affected the uptime of Eclipse. The model simulates a 500 cast rotation and I ran a thousand trials of the simulation.

When I ran the simulation with Euphoria, Eclipse had an average uptime of 55.38% with a standard deviation of 1.18% in a thousand trials. When I ran the simulation without Euphoria, Eclipse had an average up time of just 54.68%with a standard deviation of 0.93% over another thousand trials. I'm not sure what the statistical significance of these results are, but I ran the simulations several times and got similar results each time.

I am confident in saying that Euphoria is neither a good thing or a bad thing. It is completely neutral. Truthfully this doesn't surprise me much. The theory is that the negative impact of a crit during Eclipse is balanced out by the positive impact of crits while Eclipse is down.

The Impact of Wasted Power:

What did surprise me about the Euphoria analysis was that Eclipse's uptime was lower then I expected. I thought it would be higher because of what is being called "Smart" Eclipse.

When someone talks about "Smart" Eclipse they are talking about the way that Starsurge generates Solar or Lunar Power but always in a positive way. When you cast Starsurge your Lunar or Solar power always increases whether the Eclipse buff is up or not. Therefore, the power generated by Starsurge is always positive, because it either extends your Eclipse uptime or reduces your Eclipse down time. This should result in an Eclipse uptime greater the 50%.

The question then becomes, what is pulling the uptime of Eclipse down? I think the answer is Wasted Power.

Lets say you want to proc Solar Eclipse, and after a few casts you end up with 94 Solar Power. Obviously your next Starsurge or Starfire cast will put you over the edge and you will proc Solar Eclipse. However, when you proc an Eclipse, your power level is capped at 100. So by casting Starfire when you already have 94 Solar Power, you are losing 14 or 22 due to the power cap. This effectively lengthens you downtime when you are trying to proc Eclipse.

I tested my theory using the model I created. I modified it so that the Powers were not capped at 100, but would Eclipse would proc at 100. I did a thousand trials of a 500 cast rotation. The average Eclipse uptime when the Powers are not capped was 58.48% and had a standard deviation of 1.12%. This seems to confirm my theory given that it is a sizable increase in Eclipse uptime over the 55.38% I got with the caps.

To be clear, I'm not saying this is good or bad. I just didn't expect it. So, don't go grab your pitch forks and torches just yet if this angers you. As moonkin we do and should try to maximize Eclipse uptime to maximize DPS. However, as long as Blizzard recognizes the impact of Wasted Power and balances us around the lower level of Eclipse uptime, then we should still be competitive when compared to other DPS classes.

TL-DR:

Euphoria is in a weird position in that it both reduces the time to proc Eclipse and reduces the time that Eclipse is available. The question was if the impact was positive, negative, or neutral. After creating a model to test it, I think the impact is neutral. So, in the end Euphoria only serves to randomize the moonkin rotation a little and to provide mana.

However, during the analysis I noticed another interesting occurrence. When you proc Eclipse you lose some amount of Solar or Lunar power unless you hit 100 power exactly. As a result this reduces Eclipse uptime, and could reduce moonkin DPS if Blizzard doesn't compensate for the us for the loss somewhere else.

Why Genesis Still Sucks.

In my last post I said, "The only way to make Genesis significant would be to increase the buff significantly or increase our base DoT damage significantly." Some readers seem to have taken issue with at statement and posted comments in to support of Genesis. They implied that since DoTs are now impacted by Haste and Crit that DoT damage would significantly increase and thus Genesis would be come valuable.

I can't say whether or not Genesis will become a part of most Moonkin builds in Cataclysm. There are still to many moving parts to say that definitively, but I can say one thing. If the current version of Genesis is a part of most Moonkin builds in Cataclysm, it is not because it is a strong talent. Here's why.

DPS vs DPET:

I want to clarify what these two acronyms mean. I've seen a little confusion on the forums and such and want to make sure we are talking about the same stuff.

DPS - Damage per Second: DPS is a summary measurement. It tells you how well you did over a period of time. It's good for evaluating changes in rotation and spec, but it tells you very little about how to play your class without making those experimental changes.

DPET - Damage per Execution Time: DPET is purely a decision making tool. It tells you what spell to cast next. It's not as good at measuring overall damage because it is focused on a single spell. It can also cause you to overestimate the overall impact of a spell if you don't' understand the spells DPS value.

In this post I am going to be using DPS because I want to look at the overall impact of the Cataclysm changes. Yes, DoTs have very high DPETs. That is a good thing because we wouldn't cast them otherwise, but DPET doesn't tell us what they contribute to our overall DPS.

The Goal of the Test:

As I said above, we are still in a relatively early stage of development. It is impossible to say what will go live in a few months. However I want to gauge the impact of the Haste and Crit changes we've seen in the beta. To make things a little simpler, I am going to apply the changes to a level 80 moonkin. I will take a look at the current DPS of my DoTs. Then look to see how that will change with the Haste and Crit scaling of Cataclysm. I am not going to use all of the changes we've seen in Cataclysm because I think it would just muddy the waters. In the end I hope to show how haste and crit will in prove out DoTs. This in turn should allow us to estimate how significant DoTs will be for the Moonkin Rotation and finally show what impact Genesis will have.

Assumptions:

1. For these calculations I am going to base the stats off of a fully raid buffed Graylo. I will use 4650 spell power, 56.88% crit chance, and 36.40% haste without NG.
   
2. I am also going to exclude Glyph of Insect Swarm, Glyph of Moonfire and Glyph of Starfire from the calculation. A big glyph revamp is coming and who knows if these glyphs will exist. Also, GoIS and GoMF would only lower the value of Genesis since it is an additive bonus. GoSF is excluded because it would have no impact on the calculation.
   
3. I am going to apply NG at 15% rather then 20% since it has been specifically changed by Blizzard. I am also going to assume a 100% uptime. It's unrealistic, but it's easier and favors Genesis.
   
4. I am including the damage bonus of Imp Moonfire but not the crit bonus. I do this to keep the damage consistent between WotLK and Cata, but not to over value how Moonfire will scale with Crit when the crit bonus is not available in Cata.

The Current DPS of DoTs:

IS per tick DPS = ((215+(4650*0.2))*1.2831)/2 = 734.57 DPS
MF per tick DPS = ((200+(4650*0.1302))*1.2831*1.2)/3 = 413.38 DPS

These values probably look low to you. That is because they are. First they exclude the glyphs, but it is also good to remember that this is a DPS look. Thinks that extend a DoTs duration don't increase the DoTs DPS even though they do increase the DoTs value. I also want to define the 1.2831 number I used. That is a combination of Earth and Moon (raid), Earth and Moon (self), Arcane Empowerment, and Master Shapeshifter.

DoT DPS with Haste and Crit:

IS per tick Damage = ((215+(4650*0.2))+((215+(4650*0.2))*(0.545*0.5688)))*1.2831 = 1925
IS tick Duration = 2/(1.3640*1.15) = 1.2750 seconds
IS per tick DPS = 1925 / 1.2750 = 1509.80 DPS

MF per tick Damage = ((200+(4650*0.1302))+((200+(4650*0.1302))*(1.09*0.5688)))*1.2831*1.2= 2009
MF tick Duration = 3/(1.3640*1.15) = 1.9125 seconds
MF per tick DPS = 2009 / 1.9125 = 1050.46 DPS

As you can see having our DoTs scale with Haste and Crit has a huge impact. It would cause the DPS of Insect Swarm to increase by 205%. The DPS growth of Moonfire is even bigger at 254%. Now lets add Genesis to the Equation.

DoT DPS with Haste, Crit, and Genesis:

IS per tick Damage = ((215+(4650*0.2))+((215+(4650*0.2))*(0.545*0.5688)))*1.2831*1.06 = 2040
IS tick Duration = 2/(1.3640*1.15) = 1.2750 seconds
IS per tick DPS = 2040 / 1.2750 = 1600.00 DPS

MF per tick Damage = ((200+(4650*0.1302))+((200+(4650*0.1302))*(1.09*0.5688)))*1.2831*1.26= 2109
MF tick Duration = 3/(1.3640*1.15) = 1.9125 seconds
MF per tick DPS = 2109 / 1.9125 = 1102.75 DPS

So, Genesis increases the DPS of IS by 6.00% as expected in this model. Moonfire is increased by only 5.00% when you factor in the additive bonuses of Moonfury and Imp MF.

Why Genesis Still Sucks:

So far so good right? Our DoTs have improved by more then 200%. Genesis now improves them by 6% instead of 5%. Genesis has got to be good now right?

Wrong.

DoTs are only a portion of our DPS. One of the key reasons Genesis sucks is that our DoTs make up a relatively small portion of our DPS. In ICC WotLK, DoTs are about 13% of a moonkins DPS. If the improvements go exactly as I've outlined above DoTs would increase to about 29% of our DPS.

So, the 6% from Genesis would only impact 29% of our rotation. Not only that, Genesis has a bigger impact on IS then it does on MF. In the end, a 6% increase to our DoTs ends up being about a 1.64% increase to our over all DPS. Given that this is an idealized situation that is a pretty small increase. It is a less then 1% per talent point and is even worse considering that the number of Talent points have been cut in half.

Adding glyphs would limit the significance of Genesis. Remember that glyphs and Genesis are additive bonuses. This means that if the Glyph of Insect Swarm becomes favored again, the 6% increase from Genesis gets eclipsed by the 30% increase from the glyph. For Moonfire, I already showed above how just Imp Moonfire and Moonfury reduces the buff from 6% to 5%. Now think about how another 75% from Glyph of Moonfire would limit the value of Genesis.

The Glyph of Insect Swarm is not typically used current, but adding the Glyph of bonuses reduces the overall DPS increase of Genesis from 1.64% to 1.40%.

If the traditional glyphs are excluded then the DPS of our DoTs is greatly reduced. Excluding the Glyph of Moonfire would result in a 16% decrease in the overall DPS from Moonkin DoTs and thus reducing the impact of Genesis. If you exclude the impact of Glyphs the over all impact DPS impact of Genesis shrinks from 1.64% to 1.40% as well.

So, glyphs or no glyphs Genesis is looking more like a 1.4% DPS increase instead of a 1.64% increase.

TL-DR:

There is no doubt that having our DoTs scale with Haste and Crit will dramatically change how we value those spells. However, that does not mean every talent associated with a DoT is a good talent.

Some people are speculating that the increased value of our DoTs will breath new life into the much ignored talent Genesis. Unfortunately, the Math does not back that speculation up. In a very optimistic scenario I estimated the overall DPS bonus to be 1.64%. That is just 0.55% per talent point which is very low when compared to most of our other talents.

The most telling figure is that even if DoTs made up 100% of our DPS and Genesis would still only represent a 6% increase to our DPS or 2% per talent point. The average value of talent points is about 1% currently. Since Cata has half the number of talent points the average in Cata is probably 2%. Therefore, in the most unrealistic of circumstances the best that Genesis can be come is average.

It is very possible that the current version of Genesis could become a standard part of most raiding moonkin builds. If it is, its because we lack any better options, not because it is a strong talent.

Moonkin Stats and My New Model

Update: Found an error in my model. Crit is worth a little more then I previously stated. It has been updated.

Ahhhh. Remember the good old days in BC when the moonkin Rotation consisted of Moonfire and casting Starfire 4 or 5 times. That was when theorycrafting was easy. If you figure out how each stat affects each spell you can come up with a good estimate of how much each stat is worth realtively quickly.

That is all ancient history with the introduction of Eclipse, new set bonuses and Glyphs. If you look around the various forums you will see a lot of people saying how much each stat is worth and all the different versions are not as close as they used to be. As a result, I have built a new model to try and determine the value of each of DPS stats for a Lunar Rotation. Well, the results are in.

I'm going to do this post a little bit backwards then I normally do. I'm going to talk about each of the stats and give my results first. Then I'm going to talk about how I got the results in the end.

The Stats:
First off all, these results are for a perfect Lunar rotation with no lag, and no movement on a single target. I have also excluded both Force of Nature and Starfall from the analysis, and the results are based purely on DPS. Also, these stats are based upon a pre-3.1 BiS gear set with 4T7 set bonuses. I expect these numbers to change as our gear improves since our SP will go way up and our Crit and Haste will stay realtively the same. I will redo this analysis after we know more about what a BIS 3.1 Moonkin looks like.

The results aren't all that shocking. The values I came up with still fall into the standard Hit > Spell Power > Haste > Crit explanation.

Hit Rating: Relative Value = 1.54 - Hit Rating has the highest per point value of all the DPS stats assuming you are below the hit cap. This valuation just shows you how important it is to be hit capped. In my opinion, all raiding Moonkin should have the talents of Balance of Power and Improved Faerie Fire. This means we need to pickup an additional 10% hit chance from gear and other buffs to be hit capped.

So, what is the hit cap? 263 for Tauren and Night Elves with out a Draenei in their party. 236 for Night Elves with a Draenei in their party.

Spell Power: Relative Value = 1.00 - Spell Power is the standard by which all other stats are measured. After you are hit capped, Spell Power is the best DPS Stat on a point for point basis. This is why, it is always recommended to use Spell Power gems and food when possible.

Haste Rating: Relative Value = 0.80 - This is where the debate usually begins. Haste Rating is a great DPS stat the makes your spells cast faster and lowers the global cooldown. The down side to Haste Rating is that it also makes you consume mana faster and if you have mana issues the Haste will make them worse. Also, spells with short cast times like Wrath and the DoTs can reach the minimum global cooldown fairly easily with reasonable amounts of Haste Rating. You can find my post on the Haste Cap here.

Crit Rating: Relative Value = 0.62 - Crit Rating is the least valuable of the "pure" DPS stats, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good stat. Crit Rating also has the side benefit of helping you to generate mana using the Mana on Crit mechanic.

There are two important things to remember about crit. The first is that even though you don't want to necessarily stack Crit Rating, you don't want to completely avoid it either. The second is that you get a lot of Crit Chance from other Sources like talents and raid buffs. This is the main reason why Crit Rating is ranked so low.

Spirit: Relative Value = 0.34 - In patch 3.1.2, Improved Moonkin Form is being buffed so that your Spell Power will be increased by 30% (up from 15%) of your Spirit. Also, Spirit will help you regen mana if you have the talent Intensity.

As a general rule Spirit is a stat to be avoided, because Haste Rating and Crit Rating are so much better in terms of DPS. However, Spirit is becoming more and more unavoidable. Most caster items now have Spirit, and majority of the ones that don't have Hit Rating. It is fine to have spirit on your gear, but never intentionally stack it.

Intellect: Relative Value = 0.35 - Intellect is not a good stat in terms of DPS but it is almost completely unavoidable. Virtually all caster items have some amount of Intellect on them. Intellect has a lot of side benefits though in Mana Regen since it impacts all of our major mana regen talents. You will pick up enough Intellect just by making commonsense gear choices, therefore you should never intentionally stack Int.

(Edit: I updated the Spirit and Int numbers to take into account Stat Multipliers like Blessing of Kings. Thanks to Antonetz for pointing this out.)

Other Stats: Relative Value = 0.00 - All other stats have very little direct impact on your DPS. Stamina is the only other stat that you need in any significant quantity, but you should pick up plenty making normal gearing choices. Mp5 can also be helpful if you have mana issues. However, most moonkin don't have big mana issues that can't be solved with talents. Avoid Mp5 if possible. Spell Penetration and Resilience are useless in a PvE environment and should be avoided.

TL:DR
Hit = 1.54, SP = 1.00, Haste = 0.80, Crit = 0.62, Spirit = 0.34, Int = 0.35

The Model:
If you want to look at the model and check my work you can find it here. However, I want you to keep a few things in mind. 1. It is a very large file. Download at your own risk. 2. It does have a couple of macros on it but you don't have to enable them for the spreadsheet to work. 3. This is NOT a tool to help you model your DPS. If you want something like that go check out WrathCalcs. 4. In conjunction with #3, it is not userfriendly. It even confuses me and I built the damn thing.

How it Works: I built the model to choose which spell to cast based on the current situation. It uses the random number generator to determine crits, misses, and procs. The model assumes the linked Talent/Glyph build. The model assumes the following Cast priority:

1. If FF is not up, cast FF.
2. If IS is not up, cast IS.
3. If MF is not up, cast MF.
4. If Eclipse is not on cooldown, cast Wrath.
5. If Eclipse is on cooldown, cast SF.

This means that FF and the DoTs will be refreshed during Eclipse. I won't go into detail about it now, but I now think this will give you better DPS then weighting for Eclipse to run out.

The model uses a 60,000 cast sequence. This is equivalent to about 26 hours of continuous casting. This may seem like overkill but I wanted to smooth out as much of the randomness as I could.

Using base stats of 2900 spell power, 41% crit chance, 16.5% haste from gear, and 100% hit chance, I ran the model 1,000 times to find the average total damage, average total cast time, and average DPS for a control group. I then adjusted each of the stats by significant amounts and reran the model another 1,000 times for each adjustment to see how the DPS changed.

The adjustments were made in significant amounts and then averaged to a per point value. For example, to find the value of Spell Power, I increased the spell power used by 50 to 2950. This resulted in an average increase of 61.81 DPS or 1.24 DPS per point average. To evaluate Crit and Haste I increased both by 1%. To evaluate Hit Rating I decreased hit chance by 1%.

The stats where then weighted relative to each other, with Spell Power being the standard. These new values will be applied to my gear ranking and I hope to have it updated soon.

Whats Next: I am kind of excited about what I can do with this model. I plan to create additional models to evaluate a solar rotation. I would also like to add lag into the model to see the impact. I would also like to build a model that takes movement into account if possible. Finally I will be using the model to evaluate new set bonuses, glyphs and talents.

Guide to Moonkin Idols

Edit: As I continued to think about this I decided to post my argument and a couple of suggestions for this idol on the WoW forums. You can find the post here.

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about Moonkin idols with [Idol of the Crying Wind] becoming available from Ulduar. In this post I will do the math for all three WotLK idols and show you which idol is best in each rotation. As always, if you don't want to see all of the math please feel free to skip to the bottom for the TL:DR version.

Assumptions:
1. I am using my talent build. It is fairly standard and I don't think there are any variations that would significantly change the out come of my math. I did run the numbers with 5/5 in Genesis and the impact was minimal.

2. Fully Raid buffed, my Hypothetical Moonkin has 2900 Spell Power, 40% Crit Chance, 29.77% Haste, and is fully hit capped.

3. I am also assuming that the [Glyph of Insect Swarm] is in use and that the 2T7 set bonus is being used.

About Idols:
I want to say a little bit about how Idols work. It is a little confusing and caused me to make an error in my math. The Wrath Idol increases "Damage Dealt," therefore it is not affected by the spell coefficent. The SF Idol says it increases Spell Power, but is not affected by Wrath of Cenarius. So it acts as if it is just an increase to base damage. The IS Idol says it increases Spell Power and is modified by the 1.2 spell coefficent that IS has.

The Math:
First lets look at the [Idol of the Shooting Star].

Here is Starfire's DPS without the Idol.

NG Uptime with SF = 1-(1-0.4-0.03)² = 67.51%
SF Avg Cast Time = (3/(1+0.2977))*(1-0.6751)+(3/((1+0.2977)*1.2))*0.6751 = 2.0516 Seconds
Avg SF Non-Crit = (1120 + (2900 * 1.2))*(1.1*1.04*1.03) = 5420
Avg SF Crit = (1120 + (2900 * 1.2))*(1.1*1.04*1.03)*2.09 = 11328

Avg SF DPS w/o Idol = ((5615*(1-0.43))+(11735*0.43))/2.0516 = 3880 DPS

With the Idol math looks like this:

Avg SF Non-Crit = (1285 + (2900 * 1.2))*(1.1*1.04*1.03) = 5615
Avg SF Crit = (1285 + (2900 * 1.2))*(1.1*1.04*1.03)*2.09 = 11735

Avg SF DPS w/ Idol = ((5615*(1-0.43))+(11735*0.43))/2.0516 = 4019 DPS

So by equipping the SF Idol your increasing your Starfire's damage by 286 per cast or by 139 DPS.

The math for the [Idol of Steadfast Renewal] is very similar to the above math.

Without the idol it looks like this:

NG Uptime with SF = 1-(1-0.4)3 = 78.40%
W w/o NG Cast Time = (1.5/(1+0.2977)) = 1.1559 Seconds
W w NG Cast Time = (1.5/((1+0.2977)*1.2)) = 0.9632, Therefore 1 second since 0.9632 less than 1.
W Avg Cast Time = (1.1559*(1-0.7840)) + 0.7840 = 1.0337 seconds

Avg W Non-Crit = (588 + (2900 * 0.6714))*(1.13*1.04*1.03) = 3069
Avg W Crit = (588 + (2900 * 0.6714))*(1.13*1.04*1.03)*2.09 = 6413

Avg W DPS = ((3153*(1-0.40))+(6590*0.40))/1.0337 = 4263 DPS

Now with the Idol, Wrath's DPS looks like this:

Avg W Non-Crit = (658 + (2900 * 0.6714))*(1.13*1.04*1.03) = 3153
Avg W Crit = (658 + (2900 * 0.6714))*(1.13*1.04*1.03)*2.09 = 6590

Avg W DPS = ((3153*(1-0.40))+(6590*0.40))/1.0337 = 4380 DPS

So by equipping the Wrath Idol your increasing your Wrath's damage by 122 per cast or by 117 DPS.

Now lets look at the new idol, [Idol of the Crying Wind].

Insect Swarms math is a little bit easier. It currently looks like this without the idol:

IS Damage = (((1290 + (2900 * 1.2)) *(1.4*1.04*1.03))*(7/6))/14 = 596 DPS

Now, If you add the new idol in it looks like this:

IS Damage = (((1290 + (3274 * 1.2)) *(1.4*1.04*1.03))*(7/6))/14 = 652 DPS

Therefore when equipping the IS Idol, your increasing your IS damage by 785 damage, but that is over 14 seconds. In terms of DPS its only an increase of 56 DPS.

TL:DR Version:
In terms of a single spell cast the [Idol of the Crying Wind] looks decent because it increases your Insect Swarm damage by almost 8%. However, this ignores one very important problem. Since Insect Swarm is a DoT your only going to be casting it once every 14 seconds at most.

What the [Idol of the Shooting Star] and [Idol of Steadfast Renewal] lack in power is made up for by the fact that Starfire and Wrath can be cast multiple times over 14 seconds. You can see this difference by comparing the Idols DPS numbers. The DPS on the nuking idols are about 3 times larger then the DPS increase from the IS idol.

As long as your cast 3 or more Starfires per 14 seconds or 6 or more Wraths per 14 seconds on average, then the[Idol of the Crying Wind] is not for you. No moonkin should be below that level. The only time I would use the IS idol right now is for Flame Leviathan because it has a higher item level then the other idols. A commenter pointed out something I had forgotten, the "ranged" slot isn't used in the FL calculation so this idol isn't even good for that. However, I do want to say one thing. I still think all moonkin should pick it up if they can get it for free or very little DKP. You never know if Blizzard will buff it after they realize that no one is using it.

When deciding between the SF idol or the Wrath idol, the choice is pretty easy. Technically the SF idol is a little bit better, but the difference is pretty small. Therefore, if your using a Lunar Rotation, then [Idol of the Shooting Star] is the right idol for you. If your using a Solar Rotation, then [Idol of Steadfast Renewal] is the better idol.

One last thing, none of the TBC idols are worth equipping at level 80. Both the SF idol and Wrath idol are now purchaseable with Emblems and they blow anything the TBC idols offer out of the water.

The Moonkin Rotation

I've been recieveing a lot of questions lately about the proper Moonkin spell rotation. Well I've got bad news for you, Moonkin don't have formal rotation. Really what we have is spell priority. In this post I hope to give you a detailed understanding of the four main moonkin spells and when to cast them.

This post is very mathy. Please feel free to skip to the bottem to get the TL:DR version.

My Hypothetical Moonkin:
These are the talents and stats I used to calculate the numbers. I have modeled him after how I expect to look in the beginning of Ulduar. He has 2900 Spell Power, 40% Crit Chance, 16.5% haste from gear (29.77% total), and a mana pool with 21000 mana.

This is the spec I expect to use when 3.1 comes out. It's very close to my current spec but has a little extra mana regen. I'm sure some of you may argue with some of my choices, but overall I don't think there are any reasonable arguements that would affect the calculations significantly.

Spell Queuing:
I've talked about this a little before, but it is important for me to explain it again so that you understand some of the comments I will make later in the post. The spell queuing system helps you to minimize down time by allowing you to queue your next spell cast before your current spell cast is done. Erdluf did some nice research on the subject and posted his results on the EJ forums here.

Basically the spell queuing system allows you to queue your next spell if you cast it within 0.3 seconds of your current casts end. However, this process starts to break down as your global cooldown (GCD) gets closer to GCD floor of one second, because you can't queue your next cast within the first second of your current cast. So, the game has to wait for you to physically push a button to start casting the next spell.

Since it is practically impossible cast a spell exactly when the prior spell completed, there will always be a little extra lag in the cast time due to human error.

The spell queuing system works great for longer cast spells like Starfire, but it causes big issues for spells like Wrath that can get really close to the one second GCD. Therefore this makes Wrath a little worse in actuallity then it is on paper.

The DoTs:
We don't look at DoTs form the traditional DPS point of view. Due to the long duration DoTs are obviously going to have a relatively low DPS when compared to Nukes. Therefore the best way to evaluate DoTs is with Damage per Cast Time (DPCT).

Both of our DoTs are instant casts therefore they technically don't have a cast time. However the GCD does prevent us from casting another spell for 1 to 1.5 seconds. In a PvE environment this is pretty much the same thing as having a cast time. Close enough for me anyway.

So, what is the GCD for my Hypothetical Moonkin? For this section I'm going to assume that Nature's Grace has a minimum uptime of about 67.51%. This is the uptime that NG would have with a SF spam rotation. In actual play it will probably be a little higher, but I'm trying to be a little conservative.

Therefore the GCD can be calculated like this:

GCD w/o NG = (1.5/1.2977) = 1.1559
GCD w NG = (1.5/(1.2977*1.2) = 0.9632, Therefore 1 since 0.9632 less than 1
Avg GCD = 1.1559*(1-0.6751) + (1* 0.6751) = 1.0507 Seconds

Insect Swarm:
I'm looking at it from the perspective of 3.1 assuming that the changes to it go live. I also assume that the [Glyph of Insect Swarm] is equipped. I am not using the new Ulduar Idol that affects IS because it sucks (more on that in a future post). I am also not using the 2T7 set bonus. Here is the math:

IS Damage = ((1290 + (2900 * 1.2)) *(1.3*1.04*1.03))*(7/6)
IS Damage = ((4770) *(1.39256))*(1.1667) = 7750 Damage
IS DPCT = 7750 / 1.0507 = 7376 DPCT

Now assuming that the Spell Queuing issue causes a 0.1 second delay in casting the Insect Swarm DPCT would be:

IS DPCT w/SQ = 7750 / 1.1507 = 6735 DPCT

Moonfire:
Moonfire is a little more complicated because it has both a Direct Damage portion and a DoT portion. I will assume that the [Glyph of Moonfire] is equipped but I will ignore the [Glyph of Starfire] since it is had to tell which spell that damage belongs to. Ultimately its not going to change my conclusions.

MF DD Non-Crit = (441 + (2900 * 0.1495))*((1.1-0.9)*1.04*1.03) = 187
MF DD Crit = (441 + (2900 * 0.1495))*((1.1-0.9)*1.04*1.03)*2.09 = 392
MF DD Avg = (187 * (1-.4)) + (392 * 0.4) = 269 Damage

MF DoT = ((800 + (2900 * 0.5209)) *((1.1+0.75)*1.04*1.03))*(5/4)
MF DoT = (2311) *(1.98172)*(1.25) = 5725 Damage

MF DPCT = (269 + 5725) / 1.0507 = 5705 DPCT

MF DPCT w/SQ = (269 + 5725) / 1.1507 = 5209 DPCT

The Nukes:
Obviously Nukes are the bread and butter of our rotation. For a Nuke, DPS and DPCT are the same thing so I wills stick with DPCT in this section for consistancy.

I've detailed how to calculate these numbers several times in the past. I assume that if you care about the math you probably have looked at those prior posts. Therefore, I am going to condense the math a little more then usual this time.

Starfire:
I'm assuming that the [Idol of the Shooting Star] is equipped. Once again I will ignore the [Glyph of Starfire] since it is had to tell which spell that damage belongs to.

NG Uptime with SF = 1-(1-0.43)² = 67.51%
SF Avg Cast Time = (3/(1+0.2977))*(1-0.6751)+(3/((1+0.2977)*1.2))*0.6751 = 2.0516 Seconds
SF Non-Crit = (1285 + (2900 * 1.2))*(1.1*1.04*1.03) = 5615
SF Crit = (1285 + (2900 * 1.2))*(1.1*1.04*1.03)*2.09 = 11735

SF DPCT = ((5615*(1-0.43))+(11735*0.43))/2.0516 = 4020 DPCT

Wrath:
I'm assuming that the [Idol of Steadfast Renewal] is equipped.

NG Uptime with SF = 1-(1-0.4)³ = 78.40%
W w/o NG Cast Time = (1.5/(1+0.2977)) = 1.1559 Seconds
W w NG Cast Time = (1.5/((1+0.2977)*1.2)) = 0.9632, Therefore 1 second since 0.9632 less than 1.
W Avg Cast Time = (1.1559*(1-0.7840)) + 0.7840 = 1.0337 seconds

W Non-Crit = (658 + (2900 * 0.6714))*(1.13*1.04*1.03) = 3153
W Crit = (658 + (2900 * 0.6714))*(1.13*1.04*1.03)*2.09 = 6590

W DPCT = ((3153*(1-0.40))+(6590*0.40))/1.0337 = 4380 DPCT

W w/ SQ DPCT = ((3153*(1-0.40))+(6590*0.40))/1.1337 = 3994 DPCT

Eclipse:
The math for this is to complicated to detail it again, so I'm going to take the easy route and just give you the results.

With perfect Spell Queuing a Lunar Eclipse rotation would do about 5030 DPS on average, while a Solar Eclipse rotation would do 5302 DPS on average. As you can see, in perfect environment Solar eclipse does about 5% more damage, but we do not play in a perfect environment.

If we assume that the Spell Queuing issue adds an extra 0.1 second to the Wrath Cast time the numbers change a little bit. In this situation an average Lunar Eclipse rotation has 4887 DPS, and the average Solar Eclipse rotation has 4962 DPS. Wrath still has a 1.5% advangate in DPS, but the difference is minimal. Therefore, from a DPS perspective which Eclipse you use doesn't really matter.

Hey, What about DPM:
Mana hasn't really been a concern in WotLK so far, and that isn't really surprising given the nature of Tier 7 content. However, that doesn't mean man isn't going to be an issue in Tier 8 or beyond. In Ulduar the fights will be longer. We are lossing some of our Crit Chance with the losses of Set bonuses and the nerf to Improved Scorch. Healers are going to have less mana so we won't be getting Replenishment as often.

If you combine all of this, its easy to see how mana could be a bigger issue for Moonkin in 3.1. Therefore, it is important to consider the mana efficency of each of the spells when we choose which spells to cast.

This section is also important because the way we should think about mana in WotLK is a little different then the way we thought about it in TBC. This is due to the new Mana on Crit mechanic. Lets look at the average mana costs for the Hypothetical Moonkin.

IS Mana Cost = 3496 * 0.08 = 280
IS DPM = 7750 / 280 = 27.6786 DPM

SF Mana Cost = (3496*0.16)*0.91-((21000*0.02)*0.43) = 328
SF DPM = 8246 / 328 = 25.1402 DPM

W Mana Cost = (3496*0.11)*0.91-((21000*0.02)*0.40) = 182
W DPM = 4528 / 182 = 24.8791 DPM

MF Mana Cost = (3496*0.21)*0.91-((21000*0.02)*0.40) = 500
MF DPM = 5725 / 500 = 11.4500 DPM

As you can see the traditional mana relationships from TBC are still holding true at this point, but they are a lot closer togeather then I think most of us would have guessed. I ran some numbers as if the Hypothetical Moonkin's stats increased by 10% and the traditional way of thinking is completely blown out of the water. Wrath becomes the most mana efficent spell with 34.1881 DPM, Starfire comes in second with 31.2159 DPM, and Insect Swarm drops to third with 29.7303 DPM because it can't Crit. Moonfire is still far behind the others with 13.7453 DPM.

How we use Eclipse also has a big impact on our mana effecency. As you can probably guess Lunar Eclipse is much more mana efficent then Solar Eclipse since it adds Crit chance instead of a straight damage increase. Without the 2T8 set bonus a Lunar Eclipse rotation had an average DPM of 45.0072, while Solar had just 23.9727 DPM. That means that Lunar Eclipse has a 88% advantage over Solar Eclipse. If you add the 2T8 set bonus into the equation Lunar's advantage jumps 132%.

TL:DR - Tell me what spells to cast already:

The DoTs are clearly solid additions to the Moonkin Rotation. They have significantly higher DPCT results then the Nukes. Therefore, if anyone suggests to you that you can get higher DPS by spamming a nuke, they are wrong. I'm seeing that DoTs are even good on Lotheb.

From a damage perspective, Wrath and Starfire are fairly even. Wrath is a little better on paper, but is troubled by the Spell Queuing issue at higher levels of gear. This brings Wrath closer to Starfire if not below it.

This also holds true when comparing the damage of Solar Eclipse to Lunar Eclipse. Again, Solar is a little better on paper but loses most of it's advantage when the Spell Queuing issue is taken into account.

From a mana perspective the clear winner is Starfire and the Lunar Eclipse rotation. Therefore, for most fights I recommend the IS, MF, W til Eclipse, SF rotation.

However, a MF, IS, SF til Eclipse, W rotation may be better for high movement fights where your spells are more likely to get cancelled or interuptted if your mana can handle it.

Mana Regen: Spirit vs Crit

Update: Since my last post on the Damage Dealing Forums seems to have had some affect. I've posted another thread there to highlight this issue. You can find it here. If you have something to contribute please post it there as well.

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You probably know by know that Blizzard has made some strange choices when itemizing our T8 gear sets. Namely, they more than doubled the amount of spirit on gear from T7 to T8. I bet many of you had the same reaction that I did after seeing this. My first thought was: "What the heck is Blizzard thinking?"

After thinking about it for a little while I can come to only one conclusion. In 3.1. Blizzard is making a lot of changes to the Mana regen system. On top of that all caster DPS are losing 5% crit chance with the Nerf to Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill, and blizzard probably assumes that we will be dropping our 4T7 set bonus and losing another5% crit chance. All in all that is a lot of mana regen going out the door. Therefore, Blizzard must be thinking that we need more Mana Regen, and Spirit = Mana Regen.

Some of you may scoff at this idea since Mana is clearly not an issue right now but that doesn't mean it won't be an issue in 3.1. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we do need more regen with the arrival of the next patch, but that doesn't mean it should come from Spirit. In this post I hope to demonstrate why most of that new Spirit should be changed to Crit Rating.

The Spirit Math:

First lets look at how Spirit base mana regen is going to be calculated in 3.1. For this exercise I'm going to assume we all have 3 points in Intensity.

The base formula for In Combat Spirit Based mana regen for moonkin is:

MP5 = (3 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int) * Spirit * Base_Regen)) * 0.5

The Base_Regen coefficient for a level 80 toon is 0.005575, and I'm going to use my stats to calculate the values for Int and Spirit. For Int, I have 925 Int unbuffed and in caster form. With full raid buffs that increases to 1243 ((925 + 60 + 51) * 1.2 = 1243.2). For Spirit I have 411 unbuffed in caster form. With raid buffs that increases to 596 ((411 + 80 + 51) * 1.1 = 596.2).

So my In Combat Spirit Based mana regen can be calculated this way:

IC SB MP5 = (3 * (0.001 + sqrt(1243) * 596 * 0.005575)) * 0.5
IC SB MP5 = (3 * (117.1468)) * 0.5 = 175.7202 Mp5

So, What happens if I increase my spirit by 1.

IC SB MP5 = (3 * (0.001 + sqrt(1243) * 597 * 0.005575)) * 0.5
IC SB MP5 = (3 * (117.3433)) * 0.5 = 176.0150 Mp5

So, by increasing my Spirit by 1, I increase my In Combat Mp5 by 0.2948 (176.0150 - 175.7202 = 0.2943).

The Crit Rating Math:

Now that we know what we are getting from Spirit, how much mana is generated by each point of Crit Rating?

Again, I'm going to use myself as an example. On my armory you can see that I have 17091 mana completely unbuffed. When I add Arcane Brilliance, Mark of the Wild, Blessing of Kings and Furor, my Intellect increases by 318 which translates to 4770 mana. Therefore, fully raid buffed my mana pool is 21861.

As you know every time one of our spells critically hits we regenerate 2% of our total mana. So, every time one of my spells crits I regenerate 437 mana ( 21861 * 0.02 = 437.22).

Now, each additional point of Crit rating gives you an additional 0.02179% chance to crit ( 1 / 4590 = 0.0002179).

Therefore, on average an additional point of Crit Rating will regenerate 0.09522 mana per crit-able spell cast (437 * 0.0002179 = 0.09522).

Now we need to translate this into Mp5 and to do that we need to calculate the average cast time of Starfire and Wrath.

A couple of Assumptions:
1. In raid, I have about 46% chance to crit. In 3.1 one that will shrink by 5% due to the Imp Scorch Nerf, and I will lose another 5% by dropping the 4T7 set bonus. So, I will assume that my crit chance is 36% for Wrath and 39% for starfire in this calculation.

2. I have 16.19% haste from gear. I assume that I will also have 3% from Celestial Focus, 3% from Imp Moonkin Form, and 5% from Wrath of Air. This a total haste value of 29.43% before Nature's Grace.

3. I'm going to ignore the increase crit chance from Eclipse for now.

4. I'm assuming that Starfire will represent 75% of our Damage and Wrath the other 25%.

Now, lets look at the uptime of Natures Grace:

SF NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.39)² = 62.79%
Wrath NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.36)³ = 73.79%

Therefore the average Starfire cast time can be calculated as:

Avg SF Cast Time = (3/(1+0.2943)) * (1-0.6279) + (3/((1+0.2943)*1.2)) * (0.6279)
Avg SF Cast Time = (2.3179) * (0.3721) + (1.9315) * (0.6279) = 2.0753 seconds

The average Wrath Cast time looks like this, but remember that it can't go below 1 second due to the global cooldown:

Avg W Cast Time = (1.5/(1+0.2943)) * (1-0.7379) + (1.5/((1+0.2943)*1.2)) * (0.7379)
Avg W Cast Time = (1.1589) * 1-0.7379) + (1^#) * (0.7379) = 1.0416 seconds
# - Actual value is less then 1, but the GCD sets a floor of a 1 second cast.

So, how much Mp5 is regenerated by each of these spells:

Mp5 from SF = (5 / 2.0753) * 0.09522 = 0.2294 Mp5
Mp5 from W = (5 / 1.0416) * 0.09522 = 0.4571 Mp5

So, by these calculations each point of Crit Rating is worth:

Mp5 per Crit Rating = (0.2294 * 0.75) + (0.4571 * 0.25) = 0.2863 Mp5

Please Note: I do not claim that this number is perfect. In actuality this number should be a little lower. Obviously not every spell we cast has a chance to crit and we are not casting 100% of the time, but I do believe that it is in the right ball park. Please remember that I have also excluded Eclipse from the analysis would would greatly increase the amount of Mp5 generated by Mana on Crit.

Conclusions:

Lets compare the two numbers I calculated. One point of Spirit will increase my In Combat mana regen by 0.2948 Mp5. One point of Crit Rating will increase my In Combat mana regen by 0.2863 Mp5. So, Spirit returns only 2.97% more mana then Crit Rating does by these calculations. Granted the Crit Rating number might be over estimated by a little bit, but the Spirit number may also be over estimated if you ever drop out of the 5 second rule.

If we look at it from a DPS stand point we know that Crit Rating is vastly superior. For my gear level, I've calculated Crit Rating to be worth 0.80 Spell power per point. Each point of Spirit is worth 0.15 Spell power. So, Crit Rating is 433% more powerful in terms of DPS then Spirit.

In short, by itemizing for Spirit instead of Crit Rating, Blizzard is making us give up quite a bit of DPS for a relatively minor amount of mana regen.

I am under no illusion that Blizzard will convert all of the Spirit on the T8 gear to Crit Rating, but I think it would be reasonable to take the spirit off of one of the items and convert it to Crit Rating instead. In my opinion this would improve the set significantly.

Patch 3.1 - T8 Sets Revealed (or Reviled)

While I was wallowing in my Immortal Pity Party I missed that the new T8 Gear Sets were revealed. My first impression of the new Tier 8 Set was easy.

It Sucked!!!!

I will admit that my first impression wasn't completely correct. After I did some math I realize that the set is a little better then I originally thought but it still has some serious Itemization problems.

My Analysis:

I won't go into all of the math but I have a model that estimates the relative value of each of the stats. I also have also entered all of the raid gear available into a spread sheet to and and then calculate a value for each piece using the relative stat values. I then use this value to rank each of the gear items to come up with a Best in Slot list for each gear slot so that I can make the best gear choices possible.

Anyway, I've inserted the new T8 items into the model to see how they rank in relation to the T7 set and other gear currently available in game. The results were not good.

Let me give you a little back ground before I go into the results.

1. My ranking is purely a DPS ranking. Stam and MP5 have no value in my ranking, and Spirit is only measured in how it converts to Spell Power. I'm not saying those stats don't have value, but they are very hard to quantify.

2. The relative value of stats will change depending on your gear level. The hypothetical moonkin I used had 2900 spell power, 41% crit chance, 29.4% haste before NG, and 99.9% chance to hit. All of these numbers include raid buffs. The hit chance is so high to minimize the marginal value of Hit rating. I also assume that SF is used 75% of the time while Wrath is used 25% of the time.

3. Using the stats above the relative value of stats comes out to Hit Rating = 1.48, Spell Power = 1, Haste Rating = 0.84, Crit Rating = 0.80, Int = 0.35, and Spirit = 0.15. As I said before Stam and Mp5 have no value because they cannot be directly converted into DPS.

The Results:

In short, Three of the five T7.25 items are better then their equivalent item in T8.25. This is in terms of pure stats. I have excluded the set bonuses from this comparison. The other two items are huge improvements over the T7.25 item and make the entire T8.25 set a little better then the entire T7.25 set.

Here are the Rankings:

Legs
T8.25 Conqueror's Nightsong Trousers - 325.7606
T8.10 Valorous Nightsong Trousers - 302.6301
T7.25 Valorous Dreamwalker Trousers - 218.9037
T7.10 Heroes' Dreamwalker Trousers - 194.9011

Head
T7.25 Valorous Dreamwalker Cover - 402.1844
T8.25 Conqueror's Nightsong Cover - 393.3498
T8.10 Valorous Nightsong Cover - 373.4473
T7.10 Heroes' Dreamwalker Cover - 353.7805

Shoulder
T7.25 Valorous Dreamwalker Mantle - 216.1341
T7.10 Heroes Dreamwalker Mantle - 188.4584
T8.25 Conqueror's Nightsong Mantle - 179.3919
T8.10 Valorous Nightsong Mantle - 167.2165

Chest
T7.25 Valorous Dreamwalkers Vestments - 257.1615
T8.25 Conqueror's Nightsong Vestments - 256.4061
T8.10 Valorous Nightsong Vestments - 239.0354
T7.10 Heroes' Dreamwalker Vestments - 227.6252

Hands
T8.25 Conqueror's Nightsong Gloves - 219.1752
T8.10 Valorous Nightsong Gloves - 202.2246
T7.25 Valorous Dreamwalker Gloves - 164.2674
T7.10 Heroes' Dreamwalker Gloves - 147.4499

Total
T8.25 - 1374.084
T8.10 - 1284.554
T7.25 - 1258.651
T7.10 - 1112.215

Using this quantitative approach to evaluating the gear I come up with mixed conclusions. In total, T8 is better then T7 if you ignore the set bonuses, but how we get there is strange. Here are the stat differences when comparing the Heroic versions of the two tiers:

Int: 394 - 345 = 49 Gain
Stam: 381 - 345 = 36 Gain
Spirit: 216 - 94 = 122 Gain
Crit: 132 - 254 = -122 Loss
Haste: 81 - 122 = -41 Loss
Hit : 176 - 83 = 93 Gain
SP: 542 - 453 = 89 Gain

* T8 is the first number.

As I said above, T8.25 is better the T7.25 in terms of pure stats, but that doesn't mean that T8.25 is as good as it could be. Really, T8.25 is getting its superior ranking more due to the item level of the gear then the itemization on that gear. The T8.25 does have a huge increase in Hit and Spirit, but that is worth 155.94 (93 * 1.48 + 122 * 0.15 = 155.94). On the flip side we loose a lot of Crit and Haste. It is worth 132.04 (122 * 0.80 + 41 * 0.84 = 132.04). As you can see what we gain in hit and Spirit is almost completely wiped out by what we lose in Crit and Haste. So most of improvement in T8.25 comes from in the relatively standard increases in Spell Power and Intelligence.

Another good indication of how poorly designed T8.25 is by comparing looking at the relative difference between T7.25 and T7.10. The Heroic set has an item level 13 above the item level of the normal set. This is the same level difference as level difference between T8.25 and T7.25.

T7.25 has a value of 1258.651, T7.10 has a value of 1112.215. So by going from the normal set to the heroic set you gain 146.436 in value. If Blizzard had just upgraded the T7.25 set with similar stats as the upgrade from the T7.10, then the new heroic set would have a value of 1405.087 instead of 1374.084 from the actual set.

Conclusions:

The situation isn't as bad as I originally thought. At first I thought Moonkin might completely skip T8.25 but in actuality T8.25 is an improvement over our Dreamwalker sets. However, that isn't our only option.

The main attraction to gear sets is the set bonuses. If the set bonuses aren't useful then most classes can build a better set out of non tier pieces. The jury is till out on the moonkin T8 Set Bonuses. It looks like the 2T8 bonus is getting increased to 15% (as I suggested. :D ), but the 4T8 is a complete unknown. As it stand right now I wouldn't be surprised if most people skip 4T8 bonus and just use the Hand and the Legs from T8.25. I haven't evaluated all of the new gear in Ulduar, but I am sure that there are better itemized pieces for the other three armor slots.

If Blizz really wants Moonkin to use the full T8 set then they need to change the itemization. The T7 sets are an excellent example of what our set should look like since they are itemized very well.

Patch 3.1 - Build 9684: Set Bonuses

Update: I put a post on the Damage Dealing forums to try and talk to Blizzard about this issue. If you have a comment (positive or negative) regarding this set bonus please post it there also.

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The PTR was updated with build 9684 last night and it included a couple of the T8 set bonuses. Luckily for us the Druid Balance Set is one of them.

Item - Druid T8 Balance 2P Bonus -- Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 6%.

Item - Druid T8 Balance 4P Bonus -- Each time your Insect Swarm deals damage, you have a chance to make your next Starfire cast within until cancelled instant.

My first impression is that they are underwhelming.

Obviously we can't really evaluate the 4 piece set bonus until we know the proc rate and if it has any type of internal cooldown. Though I will say that it needs to proc quite often to be valuable.

The 2 piece set bonus can be theorycrafted and now that I have done a little math I find it very underwhelming.

Assumptions:
1. First I am applying the bonus in an additive fashion (0.30 + 0.06 = 0.36) to give it the most potential.

2. I'm assuming a well geared, fully buffed moonkin with 2900 spell power, 100% hit chance, 45% crit chance in T7, and 16.5% haste from gear (29.8% total with full buffs).

3. I am also assuming the changes to Natures Grace and Eclipse go live.

4. I'm only going to detail Starfire, but I will give you the results for my Wrath analysis also.

The Math:
I talked a little in my last post about how to calculate the up time of Natures Grace. Since this is so important to calculating average cast times I will say it again. Since you can start 2 Starfire casts in the 3 second buff we want to see what the probability is that we will reapply the Natures Grace buff in those two casts. The formula for that is:

SF NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - Crit Chance)²
SF NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.45-0.03)² = 72.96%
- the extra 0.03 is from Imp IS

So to calculate Starfire's average cast time we can say:

Avg SF Cast Time = (3/(1+Haste)) * (1-Up Time) + (3/((1+Haste)*1.2)) * (Up Time)
Avg SF Cast Time = (3/(1+0.298)) * (1-0.7296) + (3/((1+0.298)*1.2)) * (0.7296)
Avg SF Cast Time = (2.3117) * (0.2704) + (1.9264) * (0.7296) = 2.0306 seconds

So to calculate Starfire's average damage we go back to the formula:

Avg Non-Crit SF = (((1285 + (2900 * 1.20))) * 1.1) * 1.0712 = 5614.69
Avg SF Crit = ((((1285 + (2900 * 1.20))) * 1.1) * 1.0712 ) * 2.09) = 11734.71

Therefore:

Avg SF DPS = ((5614.69* (1 - 0.45-0.03)) + (11734.71* (0.45 + 0.03)) / 2.0306 = 4211.71 DPS

With Eclipse the Starfire looks like this:

Eclipse SF NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.75-0.03)² = 95.16%
Avg Eclipse SF Cast Time = (2.3117) * (0.0484) + (1.9264) * (0.9516) = 1.9450 seconds
Avg Eclipse SF DPS = ((5614.69* (1 - 0.75-0.03)) + (11734.71* (0.75 + 0.03)) / 1.9450 = 5341.03 DPS

Now that we have set the base lets look to see what happens if we flip the 4T7 and 2T8 set bonuses, by reducing the crit chance by 5% but increasing the Eclipse bonus by 6%.

A normal Starfire cast with 2T8 set bonus will look like this:

2T8 SF NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.40-0.03)² = 67.51%
Avg 2T8 SF Cast Time = (2.3117) * (0.3246) + (1.9264) * (0.6751) = 2.0509 seconds
Avg 2T8 SF DPS = ((5614.69* (1 - 0.40-0.03)) + (11734.71* (0.40 + 0.03)) / 2.0509 = 4020.84 DPS

An Eclipsed Starfire cast will look like:

2T8 Eclipse SF NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.76-0.03)² = 95.59%
Avg 2T8 Eclipse SF Cast Time = (2.3117) * (0.0441) + (1.9264) * (0.9559) = 1.9434 seconds
Avg 2T8 Eclipse SF DPS = ((5614.69* (1 - 0.76-0.03)) + (11734.71* (0.76 + 0.03)) / 1.9434 = 5376.92 DPS

Summary:
Wow, that is a lot of math

What this boils down to is that dropping the 4T7 set bonus of 5% crit results in a 4.5319% DPS nerf to our normal Starfire casts ((4020.84 - 4211.71)/4211.71 = -4.5319%) .

Picking up the 2T8 set bonus of an additional 6% to Eclipse results in a 0.6720% buff on are Eclipse Starfire casts ((5376.92 - 5341.03 )/5341.03 = 0.6720%).

I've run these numbers for Wrath as well and they are comparable if not a little worse. Basically, since Eclipse lasts 15 seconds and there is about 35 seconds between Eclipse procs, we are getting a 0.672% buff to about 40% of our casts but a 4.5319% nerf to the other 60%. This is a net loss.

If this set bonus goes forward as is then we will see a repeat of the transition from T5 to T6 where most moonkin stuck with the T5 set bonus until they had 4 pieces of T6. In fact, depending on how good the the 4T8 bonus is you may see moonkin skip T8 all together.

I've tried several different values to see what what value is needed to make this set bonus at least comparable to the T7 bonuses. In my opinion, the set bonus would need to be increased to at least 15%, meaning Eclipse increases your Starfire crit chance by 45% instead of 30%. A this level the Starfire Eclipses would do about 6.6% more dps then they would do with the 4T7 bonus. For Wrath the buff would be about 5.7%. In the meantime, our non-eclipse casts would still be receiving the 4.5319% nerf. So, 15% is where I think it starts to balance out.

Other Changes New and Old:

Celestial Focus now reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Starfire, Hibernate and Hurricane by 23/46/70% and increases your total spell haste by 1/2/3%. - (Switches Hurricane for Cyclone)

This makes sense since Cyclone is already affected by Natures Focus in the restoration tree, and Hurricane could use some pushback resistance.

[Idol of the Shooting Star] Will be purchase about with 25 Emblems of Valor.

I missed this, but a reader Epidemais sent me an email saying it is true. I haven't verified it on the PTR but I expect that it is true. Ghostcrawler has said many times that they don't like having Idols drop from bosses because there are generally few people in the raid that can use them. It doesn't have an impact on me personally since I was fairly lucky and one dropped in the first few weeks of raiding Naxx. However, I know there are other moonkin out there that have had extremely bad luck and they must be doing a /dance right now.

Patch Notes 3.1: Ok, We've had some time to think.

Update: Erdluf did some testing on the Spell Queuing system. You can find his results here. The short version of his results is that you can cast a spell upto 0.3 seconds before your prior spell is finished casting and have the next spell be queued. This gets a little more complicated when the Global Cooldown becomes involved. Apparently you can queue a spell during the global cooldown but the GCD, but you can't queue a spell during the first second of the GCD.

So, this means that spell queuing works well with Starfire and Wrath casts with little haste. However, once you start getting close to the 1 second GCD, haste starts to have real issues with the spell queuing system.

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Like a lot of you I was excited by the possibilities of all the changes changes introduced to the PTR last Friday. Its the first time I've every seen a significant number of buffs introduced outside of an expansion and I liked the changes, but it also made me nervous. Moonkins have stuck by the Starfire for Raiding/Wrath for PvP mantra for years, and all of a sudden this core principle of our spec seemed to be threatened. However, the more reading and math I do the more I realize things are going to stay the same. That is not to say that these changes are insignificant, I just don't think they are going to change our core play style as much as it seemed at first.

Before I get into specifics lets get one thing clear. These changes are only on the PTR. It is very possible and somewhat likely that changes will occur. Don't get your heart set on anything until it goes live. Now, lets look at some specifics.

Insect Swarm:
In my last post I speculated that the Coefficent would be brought up to 0.8 from 0.76. Well, Dukes on the EJ forums did the testing (link), and saw the coefficent has been increased to 1.2. Obviously this is much more then I expected and it is now obvious that IS will be staying as a part of the Moonkin Rotation. Realistically this was probably necessary to keep the spell relevant. IS dropped out of our rotation in T5 content because it didn't scale as well with Spell Power, and it was in danger of having it happen again in T8 or T9 content.

Natures Grace:
I think Randomsmo said it best on the WoW forums:

NG is exactly the same for Starfire in 3.1, except it will effect multiple spells.
NG is exactly the same for Wrath in 3.1 (unless you had really horrible haste), except it will effect multiple spells and it *might* (this is unconfirmed, so don't get too excited) lower the GCD to prevent clipping.

There are two angles from which you need to look at this change. The first is a cast time perspective, the second is an uptime perspective.

CT Perspective:
From the cast time perspective this does almost nothing for Moonkin raiders. For Starfire, 20% haste brings an unbuffed starfire down to 2.5 seconds just like the live NG currently does. For Wrath, it brings the cast time down to 1.25 which is a nerf when compared to the live version of NG. However, the impact is minor once you start considering raid buffs and haste from gear. Assuming your specced correctly a moonkin is going to have an additional 11.41% haste from talents and Wrath of Air, and that brings our haste total to 33.67%. Now you need just12.21% haste from gear to reach a 1 second Wrath. That is just 400.45 Haste Rating. If your raiding 25mans consistently then your most likely already past this point. If your not I'm sure that raiding Ulduar will push you past it quickly.

Sure, you could gear differently so that you take more Crit and minimize your Haste rating, but I don't think that is very likely. I have a spreadsheet that I use to value gear items. I built it to eventually provide a comprehensive list of gear choices with a relative value attached to each. When I updated the model for these changes I was surprised at how little changed. The values changed but the ranks didn't for the most part. The fact of the matter is that haste is unavoidable, and anyone who gets to the higher levels of raiding will blow past 400 haste whether they like it or not.

UT Perspective:
From an Uptime Perspective this is huge. Lets remember one important thing. Cast time is determined at the beginning of the spell cast. So a 3 second buff will affect multiple spells even if it takes more than 3 seconds to cast those spells.

Without haste from gear, your Starfire will have a cast time of 2.24 seconds (3/(1.03*1.03*1.05*1.2) = 2.24). Therefore I think it is safe to assume that you will usually be able to start two Starfires in 3 seconds.

Wrath will be down to 1.12 seconds without any haste from gear (1.5/(1.03*1.03*1.05*1.2) = 1.12). Therefore I think it is safe to assume that you will usually be able to start three Wraths in 3 seconds.

So, we can calculate the theoretical Natures Grace uptime like this assuming a 40% crit rate for both spells:

SF NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.40)² = 64.0%
Wrath NG Up Time = 1 - (1 - 0.40)³ = 78.4%
(source)

Actual uptimes will be lower then this because of movement and casting spells that don't crit, but this is a significant increase over the live version of Natures Grace which would be a little less then 40% for both spells.

Overall:
So to sum up the section, from a cast time perspective this change change has little impact, but it will affect a lot more spells because Natures Grace will have significantly more Uptime then the live version of the spell. This is a buff for PvE moonkin.

Spell Queuing:
I hesitate to talk about this because I don't have any formal understanding of the mechanic. I only know what I know from personal experience and random comments on various forums. So, this is a warning, I believe that what I'm about to say is correct, but I don't have a solid foundation to base it off of.

It is my understanding that WoW has a Spell Queuing system to help minimize the impact of latency and human error. The way I think it works is if you try and cast a spell a little bit before your current cast is completed, then the game will Queue the spell to start casting when your current cast is completed. It's kind of like a caster version of auto-attack, and it works great for longer cast time spells like Starfire.

However, for shorter cast time spells like Wrath the system starts to breakdown because the global cooldown get is the way. If your Wrath cast time goes below 1 second the queued spell will be unable to cast because the global cooldown blocks it. So the timing of your next spell cast is determined by when you press the button reintroducing the impact of human error and increasing the average time between Wrath casts. Even a small increase in cast time like a tenth of a second will increase Wrath's average cast time by 10% and have a significant impact.

I'll say it again that I don't completely understand the process, but this is one of the main reasons Starfire is currently considered to be a superior dps spell then Wrath.

There have been some interesting posts on the EJ forums discussing this subject. It is a little spread out over the thread but it starts here with post 485. Update: Erdluf did some testing on Spell Queuing. You can find his results here.

Eclipse:
I don't want to rehash everything I did in my four part Eclipse series, but obviously with the changes to Natures Grace and Eclipse there is an impact. If these changes go live I will update the analysis, but I want to just give you a summery now. Murmurs also did some nice math regarding this change on the WoW forums. you can find it here.

Spell vs Spell:
I've run the numbers for the hypothetical moonkin I used in my Eclipse post who had 2000 Spell Power, 35% crit, and 6% haste from gear. Under these conditions the average Starfire with Eclipse will do 3,499 DPS. A Wrath cast using the same stats will do 3,791 DPS on average. Spell vs Spell a Wrath cast with eclipse will do 8.3% more damage on average than a Starfire cast with Eclipse.

Rotation vs Rotation:
While the Spell vs Spell view is all fine and dandy we don't cast spells by themselves. We cast them as a part of a rotation, and the rotation view of Eclipse is not kind to Wrath. Using the hypothetical moonkin, an Eclipse rotation that favored Starfire did on average 3297 DPS. An Eclipse rotation that favored Wrath did only 3301 DPS. I ran the numbers at higher levels of gear and Wrath did improve relative to Starfire, but at most Wrath's advantage was at most 2.5% to 3% and this is ignoring the impact of Spell Queuing. If you add a tenth of a second lag to Wrath its advantage is completely erased and then some.

Conclusion:
I can't help but concluding that the Starfire rotation is still the superior rotation if these changes go into affect, but that does not mean that this change is meaningless.

This change helps us in three ways.
1. First, if your looking for a more stable DPS rotation then the Wrath rotation is for you. It has a 100% chance on a SF crit and the buff is a straight damage buff. Therefore it is not affected by RNG nearly as much as a Starfire rotation is.

2. Second, this change limits the impact of mistakes. We've all been in situations where we get to focused and accidentally proc the wrong Eclipse. Now that the Wrath buff is 30% this mistake isn't as costly as it is on Live.

3. Each boss has its own issues and the all favor one style of casting over another. Stand and Nuke bosses are great for long cast spells like Starfire, but in high movement fights like Thaddius, Starfire can be an issue because you have to move before you can complete the cast. Therefore Wrath may be better for high movement fights because you will be able to get more casts off.