EDIT #2: Goes to show how much I have been looking at Elitest Jerks lately. Apparently there is a thread there that details all of the Combat Ratings. You can find it here. Special Thanks to Phae and Erdluf for pointing it out.
EDIT: It appears that the picture I saw is wrong. Here is a link to the picture I was using (link). I posted a question on the WoW forums asking is someone could check it out and I got this response from Wisprunner. Apparently the ratings buster addon had it at 26.231. Of course I don't have any idea if this correct but it does bring it in line with the increases to crit and haste. Wisprunner also said that the ratings buster addon had melee hit at 32.7, so it is likely that addons are having trouble distinguishing between Melee items and Caster Items. Its not all that surprising given that that they have collapsed the melee and caster versions of each stat into one stat. Anyway, crisis averted.
P.S. Wisprunner is a very knowledgeable moonkin if your looking for answers on the WoW forums or Moonkin Repository. However, make sure you read the stickies be for you ask your question.
Disclaimer: I want to say that I have no concrete evidence that Hit is being devalued for casters. I don't have access to the beta and I haven't talked to anyone who does about this. This post is being created using second hand information and addons that may or may not be correct. So, don't get to worked up about this if it disturbs you. I could be completely wrong.
Is Hit Rating being devalued for spell casters?
I was reviewing the new dungeon drops on MMO-Champion when I noticed that one of the items had a crit rating and then a percent chance to crit next to the crit rating.
My first reaction was "cool, I can calculate the new stat values."
If you didn't know the ratings stats decrease in value as you increase in level. This gives blizzard a way to improve gear without increasing crit, hit and haste to unreasonable levels. At level 70, 22.06 Crit rating will give a caster a 1% chance to crit. However at level 80 the same amount of crit rating will give you a far less chance to crit.
So, I looked at all of the items that appeared to be caster items and tried to calculate how much of each stat you would need to give you 1% of that stat.
Currently you need 22.06 Crit rating, 12.6 Hit rating, and 15.7 Haste rating to get 1% of each stat.
According to these pictures from MMO Champion you will need 46 Crit rating, 32.7 Hit rating, and 32.7 Haste rating. If you compare these numbers to the stats at level 70, then there is a 103% increase in Crit rating, 108% increase in Haste rating, and a 160% increase in Hit rating.
160% That's HUGE.
Granted the stat numbers for Haste and Hit are the same, so this could very well be an error.
I'm not spouting any doom and gloom if it is correct. Obviously Blizzard is going to have to itemize for it and it will make Improved FF much more valuable. However, It will change my stat valuations quite a bit. Spell Hit might not be the king of all stats any longer.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
More Moonkin Blue Posts
Ghostcrawler graced the WotLK Beta forums over the weekend and had this to say regarding Improved Moonkin Form: (link)
"The plan is for it to go raid wide.
Given the talents avaiable to deep Balance, I hope it's obvious that we are trying to make the Moonkin a very competitive spellcaster. Some of the concerns from BC (e.g. running out of mana, lack of AE or CC, not enough group synergy) should be aleviated by now."
This is pretty big news for moonkin. I have been wondering if Moonkin Aura would go raid wide. Since most other buffs are now raid wide it only makes sense. Why would you bring a moonkin who can buff one party when you can bringa shaman who will buff the entire raid.
I have to agree with Ghostcrawler, in that Blizzard has addressed a lot of our traditional issues. Our mana regen is good, we have a repeatable (but somewhat underpowered) AoE, indoor CC, and improved raid viability. I think most long time moonkin will agree that these are good changed that address our main Pre-WotLK issues.
However, I am still nervously awaiting the Balance Revision that sounds to be almost complete. What are they going to do with Earth and Moon? Are they going to do anything to improve Eclipse? Are they going to do something to reduce the bloat in the balance tree? Stay tuned. As soon as I know something, you will see it here.
"The plan is for it to go raid wide.
Given the talents avaiable to deep Balance, I hope it's obvious that we are trying to make the Moonkin a very competitive spellcaster. Some of the concerns from BC (e.g. running out of mana, lack of AE or CC, not enough group synergy) should be aleviated by now."
This is pretty big news for moonkin. I have been wondering if Moonkin Aura would go raid wide. Since most other buffs are now raid wide it only makes sense. Why would you bring a moonkin who can buff one party when you can bringa shaman who will buff the entire raid.
I have to agree with Ghostcrawler, in that Blizzard has addressed a lot of our traditional issues. Our mana regen is good, we have a repeatable (but somewhat underpowered) AoE, indoor CC, and improved raid viability. I think most long time moonkin will agree that these are good changed that address our main Pre-WotLK issues.
However, I am still nervously awaiting the Balance Revision that sounds to be almost complete. What are they going to do with Earth and Moon? Are they going to do anything to improve Eclipse? Are they going to do something to reduce the bloat in the balance tree? Stay tuned. As soon as I know something, you will see it here.
Friday, August 22, 2008
WotLK Update: Beta Build 8820
Wow. Two posts in one day.
Anyway, I checked the build updates on MMO-Champion and looked at the beta forums hand found a couple of Moonkin things to comment on.
Talent Changes:
* Celestial Focus (Tier 4) reduces the casting time lost when damaged by 25/50/70% when casting wrath. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
* Control of Nature (Tier 2) reduces casting time lost when damaged by 40/70/100% while casting Entangling Roots and Cyclone. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
Nothing really earth shattering. The developers hinted at changes to these types of talents when they made the change to spell-push back.
From my PvE standpoint it probably won't have a huge impact. It is probably a bigger change for PvP, with the old talent push back would have been a lot more random and spikey. This change it will smooth it out and all wraths will cast in 1.8 seconds if your getting beat on. In my opinion consistancy is good, so I like this change.
PvP Gear Released:
They've released a lot of the PvP gear available from Arena and BGs. Here are some links: Honor and Arena.
As you probably know, I'm not a big PvPer, but the PvP moonkin I have seen on the forums seem fairly pleased with all of the crit on the gear. Oddly enough, the set bonuses are exactly the same as the current PvP sets. However, this isn't the reason I'm posting this info.
Check out the names on the items. I have heard moonkin called a lot of things, but I think it's funny that Blizzard is calling us "Nuker's." I don't know why it amuses me but it does. Of course, these names aren't the final names, and it is a good description of our role. It just struck me a little funny.
Blue Post:
There is a new moonkin related Blue post on the Beta Forums. Don't get excited. You can find the thread here.
Ashthra posted a fairly good summary of some of the talents causing our bloat issue. She primarily talks about the redundancy in our push-back talents, mana regen talents, and damage talents.
Koraa, a class designer, decided to grace the thread with his blue letters. While I like the attention from a Blizzard employee I find his response worrisome. He said:
"Currently working on a polish pass of the Balance tree. Get ready for more bloat! "
I may be reading into the statement to much, but it has me worried for a couple of reasons.
1) "Polish Pass" - While moonkin have had some very nice changes in some of the lower tiers of the tree, the top three tiers leave a lot to be desired. Eclipse, is almost useless. PvPers say that Typhoon doesn't work, Gail Winds will be ignored due to bloat, and Starfall seems very situational at best. Earth and Moon needs work also but Koraa already said they were going to relook at it.
I guess my question is, what does he mean by "polish pass?" Is it that they have done a lot of work on the tree and need to "polish" it before they release it to a beta build? The other possibility is, are they happy where the current tree beta build and are just want to make some small changes to "polish" it? The former would be great, but for some reason I suspect it is the later.
2) "Get ready for more bloat! " - This has to be a joke, but I'm not sure that it is. Koraa's prior comments on bloat made it seem that they wanted players to make choices and were not really interested in reducing the bloat. My worry is that he is hinting that the changes to Earth and Moon are going to make the Bloat worse. Most moonkin currently plan on putting only 3 points into E&M. If they improve the talent to where 5 points is desirable, I don't know where I will take the points from.
I keep telling myself this has to be a joke. Otherwise its just mean.
Anyway, I checked the build updates on MMO-Champion and looked at the beta forums hand found a couple of Moonkin things to comment on.
Talent Changes:
* Celestial Focus (Tier 4) reduces the casting time lost when damaged by 25/50/70% when casting wrath. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
* Control of Nature (Tier 2) reduces casting time lost when damaged by 40/70/100% while casting Entangling Roots and Cyclone. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
Nothing really earth shattering. The developers hinted at changes to these types of talents when they made the change to spell-push back.
From my PvE standpoint it probably won't have a huge impact. It is probably a bigger change for PvP, with the old talent push back would have been a lot more random and spikey. This change it will smooth it out and all wraths will cast in 1.8 seconds if your getting beat on. In my opinion consistancy is good, so I like this change.
PvP Gear Released:
They've released a lot of the PvP gear available from Arena and BGs. Here are some links: Honor and Arena.
As you probably know, I'm not a big PvPer, but the PvP moonkin I have seen on the forums seem fairly pleased with all of the crit on the gear. Oddly enough, the set bonuses are exactly the same as the current PvP sets. However, this isn't the reason I'm posting this info.
Check out the names on the items. I have heard moonkin called a lot of things, but I think it's funny that Blizzard is calling us "Nuker's." I don't know why it amuses me but it does. Of course, these names aren't the final names, and it is a good description of our role. It just struck me a little funny.
Blue Post:
There is a new moonkin related Blue post on the Beta Forums. Don't get excited. You can find the thread here.
Ashthra posted a fairly good summary of some of the talents causing our bloat issue. She primarily talks about the redundancy in our push-back talents, mana regen talents, and damage talents.
Koraa, a class designer, decided to grace the thread with his blue letters. While I like the attention from a Blizzard employee I find his response worrisome. He said:
"Currently working on a polish pass of the Balance tree. Get ready for more bloat! "
I may be reading into the statement to much, but it has me worried for a couple of reasons.
1) "Polish Pass" - While moonkin have had some very nice changes in some of the lower tiers of the tree, the top three tiers leave a lot to be desired. Eclipse, is almost useless. PvPers say that Typhoon doesn't work, Gail Winds will be ignored due to bloat, and Starfall seems very situational at best. Earth and Moon needs work also but Koraa already said they were going to relook at it.
I guess my question is, what does he mean by "polish pass?" Is it that they have done a lot of work on the tree and need to "polish" it before they release it to a beta build? The other possibility is, are they happy where the current tree beta build and are just want to make some small changes to "polish" it? The former would be great, but for some reason I suspect it is the later.
2) "Get ready for more bloat! " - This has to be a joke, but I'm not sure that it is. Koraa's prior comments on bloat made it seem that they wanted players to make choices and were not really interested in reducing the bloat. My worry is that he is hinting that the changes to Earth and Moon are going to make the Bloat worse. Most moonkin currently plan on putting only 3 points into E&M. If they improve the talent to where 5 points is desirable, I don't know where I will take the points from.
I keep telling myself this has to be a joke. Otherwise its just mean.
Muckbeast: The Anti-Raider
All long time wow players have heard the arguments playing WoW from the Anti-MMO community. We have all heard about the jobs lost, the relationships ruined, and all sorts of problems caused by playing MMO's.
Over the past week or so there is a new player in this debate. Enter Muckbeast. His blog is here if you want to take a look at it. His primary focus seems to be the gaming industry as a whole but he has written a couple of anti-mmo articles with titles like "Raiding Provides a False, Deceptive Sense of Real Accomplishment" and "Fed up! Raiding sucks as a sole form of end game content." He has tried to promote these articles by posting comments on quite a few blogs and edited the WoWwiki page on Raids (It has since been removed by the WoWWiki folks). Also, he has not posted a comment on my blog as far as I know.
Normally I don't pay a lot of attention to this sort of stuff but after seeing this guy pop up in several places on the internet I wanted to comment on it. My opinion on this topic is fairly simple. Is it the game's/activities fault or is it the participants fault?
First off, why are video games worse then other activities? What about the guy that goes out and plays rec football 4 or 5 nights a week and watches games on TV all weekend? Is he not ignoring his family also? What about the parent that dedicates all of their time to their professional lives ignoring their spouse and kids? Why is that more acceptable in society?
The fact of the matter is that they all share the same problem. Life is about balance, and if you push it off balance it's going to cause problems no matter what pushed it off balance. I am not an expert but it is likely that these people with obsessive behavior would focus their attention on another subject if their current interest wasn't available. So why is it raiding's fault?
On the flip side, Muckbeast ignores all of the positive things that can and have happened because of MMO's. I have heard multiple stories, both online and from people in game, about how WoW has brought their family closer together. I know parents that have gotten to spend more time with their kids because they are able to play the game together. I know of one girl who uses her WoW time spend some time with her brother who is serving in the military in Iraq right now. I know of many married couples that play the game together. Sure, all of these people could have found another way to attain all of these goals, but if they like WoW, why do they have to?
My basic point is you shouldn't blame the MMO or an activity for a person's problems. The MMO may highlight or exagerate a person's problem, but it doesn't create the problem. So if you want to fix the problem, go to the person, not the game.
Reactions from other Bloggers:
Lume the Madd - A public response: Stop telling people how to game.
World of Matticus - One Way to Piss Off a Blogger (Don’t Do It).
Over the past week or so there is a new player in this debate. Enter Muckbeast. His blog is here if you want to take a look at it. His primary focus seems to be the gaming industry as a whole but he has written a couple of anti-mmo articles with titles like "Raiding Provides a False, Deceptive Sense of Real Accomplishment" and "Fed up! Raiding sucks as a sole form of end game content." He has tried to promote these articles by posting comments on quite a few blogs and edited the WoWwiki page on Raids (It has since been removed by the WoWWiki folks). Also, he has not posted a comment on my blog as far as I know.
Normally I don't pay a lot of attention to this sort of stuff but after seeing this guy pop up in several places on the internet I wanted to comment on it. My opinion on this topic is fairly simple. Is it the game's/activities fault or is it the participants fault?
First off, why are video games worse then other activities? What about the guy that goes out and plays rec football 4 or 5 nights a week and watches games on TV all weekend? Is he not ignoring his family also? What about the parent that dedicates all of their time to their professional lives ignoring their spouse and kids? Why is that more acceptable in society?
The fact of the matter is that they all share the same problem. Life is about balance, and if you push it off balance it's going to cause problems no matter what pushed it off balance. I am not an expert but it is likely that these people with obsessive behavior would focus their attention on another subject if their current interest wasn't available. So why is it raiding's fault?
On the flip side, Muckbeast ignores all of the positive things that can and have happened because of MMO's. I have heard multiple stories, both online and from people in game, about how WoW has brought their family closer together. I know parents that have gotten to spend more time with their kids because they are able to play the game together. I know of one girl who uses her WoW time spend some time with her brother who is serving in the military in Iraq right now. I know of many married couples that play the game together. Sure, all of these people could have found another way to attain all of these goals, but if they like WoW, why do they have to?
My basic point is you shouldn't blame the MMO or an activity for a person's problems. The MMO may highlight or exagerate a person's problem, but it doesn't create the problem. So if you want to fix the problem, go to the person, not the game.
Reactions from other Bloggers:
Lume the Madd - A public response: Stop telling people how to game.
World of Matticus - One Way to Piss Off a Blogger (Don’t Do It).
Monday, August 18, 2008
Forum Signatures
If your a Moonkin and haven't checked out The Moonkin Repository yet you are missing out. It is frequented by many of the exceptional moonkins that post on the WoW forums and all are willing to help answer Moonkin related questions.
However, that's not why I'm posting today.
Last week while looking over the forums there I noticed that quite a few of the regular posters had awesome new signatures. Turns out they were all being made by DragoNasty, and he was willing to make them for regular posters on the forums.
I asked him to make one for me and here is the result:
I think it looks awesome. Many thanks to DragoNasty. I think you have done an awesome job with all of the Sigs, and I think they have helped to pull the Moonkin Community togeather a little bit.
If your interested in getting your own sig, you can find the forum here.
However, that's not why I'm posting today.
Last week while looking over the forums there I noticed that quite a few of the regular posters had awesome new signatures. Turns out they were all being made by DragoNasty, and he was willing to make them for regular posters on the forums.
I asked him to make one for me and here is the result:
I think it looks awesome. Many thanks to DragoNasty. I think you have done an awesome job with all of the Sigs, and I think they have helped to pull the Moonkin Community togeather a little bit.
If your interested in getting your own sig, you can find the forum here.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Moonkin Talent Suggestion
I have been fairly active on the Druid forums and Moonkin Repository lately talking about some of the changes that are currently implemented in the beta. As a result you have seen me change my opinion on Eclipse and I have also come to believe that many of the top level talents in the Balance tree are either useless or will have little impact on how I play.
That got me thinking. What kind of talent would I like to see?
Of course I would like the functioning I.W.I.N. button that they give every Warlock at level 1, but we know that's not going to happen. All joking aside, I think I have an idea that most moonkin would like.
My Suggestion:
Name: Celestial Shift or Celestial Earth (Name doesn't really matter but that is what I came up with.)
Effect: Temporarily combines the magic schools of Arcane and Nature so that Wrath is now affected by Arcane buffs. Put more simply, Wrath would receive all of the same buffs that Starfire does including Imp Scorch and Winter's Chill. This ability would have some sort of cooldown also.
Reason: Lets look at this hypothetical situation.
The boss is down to 10% health. You have a lot of mana and are well under the threat cap. All of a sudden, the raid starts to fall apart and people are dying all around you. The raid leader calls out to blow all cooldowns and put as much DPS on the boss as you can. What do you do?
Currently there is not a whole lot you can do. Obviously if you have a trinket up you can pop it, or if you have your potion cooldown up you can take a Destro pot, but there is not much you can do with your core abilities. Some people can switch to Wrath for a little extra DPS, but the amount is small and the mana cost is very high. If you have T5 or T6 set bonuses this isn't an option at all. So a majority of Moonkin just go on with their normal rotations and hope they can push out as much DPS as possible.
The reason why Wrath is so bad is because of the special buffs that Starfire gets that Wrath doesn't. In BC these buffs are Curse of Elements and Nature's Grace. Wrath will get the benefits of these talents WotLK, but new Arcane only talents like Improved Scorch and Winter's chill solidifies Starfire's status as primary raid nuke for moonkin. My proposed talent would give you the ability to increase DPS significantly but temporarily. The cost would be the lowered mana efficacy of your raid rotation.
Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments. Unfortunately I can't present my idea in game or on the official beta forums because I do not have a beta key. If you have a beta key I would appreciate it if you posted my idea in-game or on the official WotLK beta forums. Thanks in advance.
Toon Update:
Graylo - He has been raiding a lot. On Monday we worked on Reliquary of Souls (RoS). I think our best attempt got him down to 2 5% in the second phase. Our trouble there was not getting interrupts up and the tank losing aggro. Its a little understandable because we only had two interrupts but I was hoping that we would down him that night. Tuesday we started in Hyjal. Things were a little sloppy and we did wipe on trash once, but the first four bosses were all downed on the first attempt. Unfortunately the [Hammer of Judgement] did not drop. I am now regretting passing on it twice, but I will get it eventually. After Hyjal on Tuesday we went and did Naj'entus in Black Temple. On Wednesday I didn't raid but the guild cleared up to Gorefiend but didn't down him. On Thursday, we went back to Gorefiend and I got my first kill on him. After that we headed to Bloodboil and had a long night of wipes. I think our best attempt got him down to 25% or so. We failed to down him for a couple of reasons. First we had quite a few people that didn't down him with us last week so there was still some learning that needed to be done. Second, last week we had 10 healers this week we only had 8 for most of the night. Third, we got a little unlucky with the fel enrage. Bloodboil dept aggroing on to clothies and killing them. I know that that is a healing problem but It would have made it a little easier if a paladin had gotten it, or if the rogues could have gotten it a little more often. Anyway, we will get him Monday.
Graypal and Grayfel: To much of my focus is on Graylo right now and nothing has really changed with these guys.
That got me thinking. What kind of talent would I like to see?
Of course I would like the functioning I.W.I.N. button that they give every Warlock at level 1, but we know that's not going to happen. All joking aside, I think I have an idea that most moonkin would like.
My Suggestion:
Name: Celestial Shift or Celestial Earth (Name doesn't really matter but that is what I came up with.)
Effect: Temporarily combines the magic schools of Arcane and Nature so that Wrath is now affected by Arcane buffs. Put more simply, Wrath would receive all of the same buffs that Starfire does including Imp Scorch and Winter's Chill. This ability would have some sort of cooldown also.
Reason: Lets look at this hypothetical situation.
The boss is down to 10% health. You have a lot of mana and are well under the threat cap. All of a sudden, the raid starts to fall apart and people are dying all around you. The raid leader calls out to blow all cooldowns and put as much DPS on the boss as you can. What do you do?
Currently there is not a whole lot you can do. Obviously if you have a trinket up you can pop it, or if you have your potion cooldown up you can take a Destro pot, but there is not much you can do with your core abilities. Some people can switch to Wrath for a little extra DPS, but the amount is small and the mana cost is very high. If you have T5 or T6 set bonuses this isn't an option at all. So a majority of Moonkin just go on with their normal rotations and hope they can push out as much DPS as possible.
The reason why Wrath is so bad is because of the special buffs that Starfire gets that Wrath doesn't. In BC these buffs are Curse of Elements and Nature's Grace. Wrath will get the benefits of these talents WotLK, but new Arcane only talents like Improved Scorch and Winter's chill solidifies Starfire's status as primary raid nuke for moonkin. My proposed talent would give you the ability to increase DPS significantly but temporarily. The cost would be the lowered mana efficacy of your raid rotation.
Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments. Unfortunately I can't present my idea in game or on the official beta forums because I do not have a beta key. If you have a beta key I would appreciate it if you posted my idea in-game or on the official WotLK beta forums. Thanks in advance.
Toon Update:
Graylo - He has been raiding a lot. On Monday we worked on Reliquary of Souls (RoS). I think our best attempt got him down to 2 5% in the second phase. Our trouble there was not getting interrupts up and the tank losing aggro. Its a little understandable because we only had two interrupts but I was hoping that we would down him that night. Tuesday we started in Hyjal. Things were a little sloppy and we did wipe on trash once, but the first four bosses were all downed on the first attempt. Unfortunately the [Hammer of Judgement] did not drop. I am now regretting passing on it twice, but I will get it eventually. After Hyjal on Tuesday we went and did Naj'entus in Black Temple. On Wednesday I didn't raid but the guild cleared up to Gorefiend but didn't down him. On Thursday, we went back to Gorefiend and I got my first kill on him. After that we headed to Bloodboil and had a long night of wipes. I think our best attempt got him down to 25% or so. We failed to down him for a couple of reasons. First we had quite a few people that didn't down him with us last week so there was still some learning that needed to be done. Second, last week we had 10 healers this week we only had 8 for most of the night. Third, we got a little unlucky with the fel enrage. Bloodboil dept aggroing on to clothies and killing them. I know that that is a healing problem but It would have made it a little easier if a paladin had gotten it, or if the rogues could have gotten it a little more often. Anyway, we will get him Monday.
Graypal and Grayfel: To much of my focus is on Graylo right now and nothing has really changed with these guys.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Starfire vs Wrath
Note: This article was written several months ago before WotLK was released. While some of the general information is still correct, a lot of the specifics behind it have changed and Wrath is a much improved spell. I do plan on writting a new guide eventually, but haven't had a chance yet. I will make this one brief comment though regarding SF vs W. Starfire is still better DPM and does significant damage. Wrath on the other hand does do better DPS, but will chew through your mana quickly.
Some of you may ask what is the point of writing this article. Most moonkin know that Starfire is the better raiding spell and with all of the changes coming out in WotLK this analysis may be obsolete fairly shortly. Well, I’m writing it for a couple of reasons. First, I still see a lot of people insist that Wrath is a better spell DPS wise before you get the T5 and T6 set bonuses. Second, who knows what is going to go live in WotLK. There are a lot of changes that improve Wrath’s viability in raid, but until it is finalized we don’t know how to evaluate them. Anyway, here is the reasons why Starfire is the better then Wrath in a raid situation.
Assumptions/Disclaimers:
1. This analysis assumes a standard moonkin spec that buffs both Wrath and Starfire to their fullest potential.
2. This analysis is most relevant for a 25 man raid with all possible buffs. This will be less relevant to 10 raids, and much less relevant to 5 man instances.
3. Stormstrike will be ignored for most of the analysis. Due to its nature it is a hard buff to quantify and assume that it will be available. However, I will try and include it at the end of the analysis.
4. I ignore the resistance debuff from CoE because there is some argument if boss resistances can be lowered.
5. The T5 and T6 4 piece set bonuses clearly favor Starfire, but I will ignore those buffs since they are not necessarily available to all moonkin.
6. Crit damage is ignored since it affects both Wrath and Starfire equally. However, Crit is used to determine average casting time for part of the analysis.
7. All equations assume 1200 Spell Damage, Zero haste, and 25% crit unless otherwise noted.
Talents and Buffs Affecting Starfire or Wrath but not both:
Nature’s Grace – Talent - All spell criticals grace you with a blessing of nature, reducing the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 sec. Note: It currently does not reduce the GCD, so Wrath receives no DPS benefit.
Curse of Elements – Debuff – Curses the target for 5 min, reducing Arcane, Fire, Frost, and Shadow resistances by 88 and increasing Arcane, Fire, Frost, and Shadow damage taken by 10%.
Malediction – Talent – Increases the damage bonus effect of your Curse of the Elements spell by an additional 3%.
Stormstrike – Debuff – The next 2 sources of Nature damage dealt to the target are increased by 20%. Cooldown 10 sec.
Evaluation Criteria:
There are really only two ways to evaluate these spells. Damage per second (DPS) and Damage per Mana (DPM). The argument as to which spell is better really comes down to the priority you attribute to these criteria. The standard argument is that Wrath is better for DPS and that Starfire is better for DPM. I will argue that Starfire is better for both criteria.
Damage per Mana:
First we need to calculate the damage of each spell.
Starfire Damage = 657.8 + (Spell Damage)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)
Wrath Damage = 445.5 + (Spell Damage)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)
So assuming we have 1200 Spell damage these spells will on average deal the following damage.
Starfire Damage = 657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1) = 2241.8
Wrath Damage = 445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1) = 1331.8
After talents a Starfire will cast 336.7 mana and Wrath will cost 232 mana. So the DPMs of each spell are:
Starfire DPM = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1) )/336.7= 2241.8 / 336.7 = 6.658
Wrath DPM = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1))/232 = 1331.8 / 232 = 5.739
This clearly shows that Starfire has a higher DPM when comparing unbuffed spells. I have run this analysis for multiple levels of Spell Damage and the disparity only gets bigger as you increase your spell damage. I have also run this analysis with full raid buffs, and the gap is even bigger. This isn’t surprising since a majority of the available buffs are SF only and they clearly out weigh the one and only Wrath buff.
So, to sum it up Starife is better then Wrath from a DPM perspective. Here is a graphical representation of the comparison.
Damage per Second:
We calculated the unbuffed damage of both spells above, and it applies here also. So a non crit cast will have the following DPS.
Starfire Damage = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / 3 = 2241.8 / 3 = 747.27
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.5 = 1331.8 / 1.5 = 887.88
So, at a base level it is clear that Wrath has more DPS then Starfire. The question then is how much can Starfire reduce that gap with the Starfire only buffs that are available?
Including Crit Rate
When a spell crits gets a Nature’s Grace buff that reduces the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 seconds. This buff does not affect Wrath’s DPS at all since it reduces the casting time below the global cooldown. Starfire receives the full benefit since its casting time is well above the global cooldown.
When you factor this in, Starfire’s casting time is now:
Starfire Average Cast Time = (3 – (0.5*Crit rate))
Starfire Average Cast Time = (3 – (0.5*.25)) = 2.875 Seconds with a 25% crit rate.
If we plug this into the equation above it changes the numbers like this:
Starfire Damage = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / 2.875 = 2241.8 / 3 = 779.76
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.5 = 1331.8 / 1.5 = 887.88
It is clear that the numbers still favor Wrath even when you include Crit into the equation.
Including Curse of Elements
First of all, CoE should always be up during a boss fight. If its not your Warlocks and Raid Leaders are epic failures. It may lower personal DPS for the lock but it is a huge bonus for the raid. CoE increases your Starfire’s damage by a minimum of 10%. If the warlock has Malediction then it increases your Starfire by 13%. I will look at it both ways in the next set of equations.
Starfire Damage (w/o Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.1) / 2.875 = 857.73
Starfire Damage (w/ Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.13) / 2.875 = 881.12
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.5 = 887.88
So, at this point Wrath and Starfire are becoming very similar in terms of DPS when you include all of the Starfire buffs. This is where most of the debate comes in. Some people will argue that Wrath is the better spell because of this 6.76 DPS despite the benefits of Starfires DPM. They are correct from a pure theoretical view. However, real life doesn’t always perform like the theory says it should, and this brings us to the next adjustment.
Including Spell Lag
This is what most people forget when they evaluate the two spells, and most people don’t know what it is. Spell Lag is the unavoidable time between spell casts. Melee has it easy. They tell blizzard to wack the boss with a sword and blizzard does all the work for them with the auto-swing. Casters don’t have the same ability with their spells. We have to cast each individual one. Since we are human, the time between casts will be longer then the actual cast time even with addons like quartz. We can minimize it but we can’t eliminate it.
So how does this affect the analysis? Lets assume you have an average spell lag of 0.05 seconds. This is a fairly low number. Your Wrath’s cast time is now increased by 0.05 seconds when calculating DPS for a time between casts of 1.55 seconds. Your Starfires cast time would be affected by the same amount of Spell Lag, so there would be 3.05 seconds between each Starfire cast. As you can see Spell Lag affects the faster cast spells much more then the slower spells. In this example Spell lag makes up 3.23% of the time between casts for Wrath but only 1.64% of the time between casts for Starfire. As you can see Spell Lag affects Wrath almost twice as much as Starfire. Lets put into the equation.
Starfire Damage (w/o Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.1) / 2.925 = 843.07
Starfire Damage (w/ Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.13) / 2.925 = 866.06
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.55 = 859.24
As you can see Starfire passes Wrath in DPS if you have full raid buffs (excluding Stormstrike) after you include Spell Lag. Even if you don’t have a lock with Malediction in your raid, Starfire is very similar to Wrath in DPS.
Looking at Stormstrike
In this section I will take a look at Stormstrike, listing its problems and showing how it affects the analysis under the best of circumstances.
I really don’t want to include Stormstrike in this analysis at all because it is such a limited buff. However, I’m sure that some readers would discount my analysis if I don’t look at it from all angles.
What is Stormstrike?
It is a debuff placed on the boss by an enhancement shaman where the next 2 sources of Nature damage dealt to the target are increased by 20%. It has a 10 second cooldown before it can be reapplied. Since Wrath is a nature spell it is affected by this Debuff.
Problems with Stormstrike
1. It only affects a finite number of spells. It doesn’t matter how many nature abilities hit the boss in those ten seconds, only the first 2 spells will be buffed. Under the very best of circumstances, only two of your wraths would be affected every 10 seconds.
2. The benefits are not exclusive to Wrath and can be consumed by other players in raid. You will be competing with all Nature Damage dealers for these two procs every ten seconds. However, I do not know if Rogue Poison or Insect Swarm periodic damage ticks consume one of the 2 buffs.
3. When you consume one of the buffs you are preventing another raider from receiving the buff. So, it may increase your DPS but it lowers the DPS of another raid member.
To sum this up, since you can only get 2 buffs every two minutes the average buff will be a maximum of 6.4% since you can cast 6.25 spells per 10 seconds with 0.05 Spell Lag. On top of that, the chances you will get both procs is minimal because the shaman who cast it will take at least one of the procs. If you have an Elemental Shaman in raid you will benefit even less. Finally, to increase your DPS you are lowering the DPS of the shaman who cast it.
So lets say you get one of the two Stormstrike procs. How does it change the numbers? Well you can cast 6.25 spells per 10 seconds with spell lag and no haste. That means you Wrath will get an average increase of 3.2%.
Starfire Damage (w/o Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.1) / 2.925 = 843.07
Starfire Damage (w/ Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.13) / 2.925 = 866.06
Wrath Damage = ((445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1))*1.032) / 1.55 = 886.73
As you can see Starfire is still very competitive with Wrath in terms of DPS even when Stormstrike is included in the analysis.
Conclusions:
I think this analysis clearly shows that Starfire is clearly the better spell in almost all raid situations. From a DPM stand point Starfire is far superior to Wrath. The DPS view point is a little more complicated. However, with normal raid buffs Starfire is very competitive with Wrath in terms of DPS and even passes it in some cases. When you couple this with the mana efficacy, Starfire is clearly the superior spell of the two.
How this will change in WotLK:
I have run some of the numbers comparing Wrath to Starfire in WotLK. I have often wondered if Starfire would still be the spell of choice in WotLK after Wrath receives buffs from Curse of Elements, Natures Grace, and gets more mana from Moonkin Form. However, with the recent additions of Improved Scorch and Winter’s Chill, the relationship between Wrath and Starfire seems to maintain the status quo.
Some of you may ask what is the point of writing this article. Most moonkin know that Starfire is the better raiding spell and with all of the changes coming out in WotLK this analysis may be obsolete fairly shortly. Well, I’m writing it for a couple of reasons. First, I still see a lot of people insist that Wrath is a better spell DPS wise before you get the T5 and T6 set bonuses. Second, who knows what is going to go live in WotLK. There are a lot of changes that improve Wrath’s viability in raid, but until it is finalized we don’t know how to evaluate them. Anyway, here is the reasons why Starfire is the better then Wrath in a raid situation.
Assumptions/Disclaimers:
1. This analysis assumes a standard moonkin spec that buffs both Wrath and Starfire to their fullest potential.
2. This analysis is most relevant for a 25 man raid with all possible buffs. This will be less relevant to 10 raids, and much less relevant to 5 man instances.
3. Stormstrike will be ignored for most of the analysis. Due to its nature it is a hard buff to quantify and assume that it will be available. However, I will try and include it at the end of the analysis.
4. I ignore the resistance debuff from CoE because there is some argument if boss resistances can be lowered.
5. The T5 and T6 4 piece set bonuses clearly favor Starfire, but I will ignore those buffs since they are not necessarily available to all moonkin.
6. Crit damage is ignored since it affects both Wrath and Starfire equally. However, Crit is used to determine average casting time for part of the analysis.
7. All equations assume 1200 Spell Damage, Zero haste, and 25% crit unless otherwise noted.
Talents and Buffs Affecting Starfire or Wrath but not both:
Nature’s Grace – Talent - All spell criticals grace you with a blessing of nature, reducing the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 sec. Note: It currently does not reduce the GCD, so Wrath receives no DPS benefit.
Curse of Elements – Debuff – Curses the target for 5 min, reducing Arcane, Fire, Frost, and Shadow resistances by 88 and increasing Arcane, Fire, Frost, and Shadow damage taken by 10%.
Malediction – Talent – Increases the damage bonus effect of your Curse of the Elements spell by an additional 3%.
Stormstrike – Debuff – The next 2 sources of Nature damage dealt to the target are increased by 20%. Cooldown 10 sec.
Evaluation Criteria:
There are really only two ways to evaluate these spells. Damage per second (DPS) and Damage per Mana (DPM). The argument as to which spell is better really comes down to the priority you attribute to these criteria. The standard argument is that Wrath is better for DPS and that Starfire is better for DPM. I will argue that Starfire is better for both criteria.
Damage per Mana:
First we need to calculate the damage of each spell.
Starfire Damage = 657.8 + (Spell Damage)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)
Wrath Damage = 445.5 + (Spell Damage)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)
So assuming we have 1200 Spell damage these spells will on average deal the following damage.
Starfire Damage = 657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1) = 2241.8
Wrath Damage = 445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1) = 1331.8
After talents a Starfire will cast 336.7 mana and Wrath will cost 232 mana. So the DPMs of each spell are:
Starfire DPM = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1) )/336.7= 2241.8 / 336.7 = 6.658
Wrath DPM = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1))/232 = 1331.8 / 232 = 5.739
This clearly shows that Starfire has a higher DPM when comparing unbuffed spells. I have run this analysis for multiple levels of Spell Damage and the disparity only gets bigger as you increase your spell damage. I have also run this analysis with full raid buffs, and the gap is even bigger. This isn’t surprising since a majority of the available buffs are SF only and they clearly out weigh the one and only Wrath buff.
So, to sum it up Starife is better then Wrath from a DPM perspective. Here is a graphical representation of the comparison.
Damage per Second:
We calculated the unbuffed damage of both spells above, and it applies here also. So a non crit cast will have the following DPS.
Starfire Damage = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / 3 = 2241.8 / 3 = 747.27
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.5 = 1331.8 / 1.5 = 887.88
So, at a base level it is clear that Wrath has more DPS then Starfire. The question then is how much can Starfire reduce that gap with the Starfire only buffs that are available?
Including Crit Rate
When a spell crits gets a Nature’s Grace buff that reduces the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 seconds. This buff does not affect Wrath’s DPS at all since it reduces the casting time below the global cooldown. Starfire receives the full benefit since its casting time is well above the global cooldown.
When you factor this in, Starfire’s casting time is now:
Starfire Average Cast Time = (3 – (0.5*Crit rate))
Starfire Average Cast Time = (3 – (0.5*.25)) = 2.875 Seconds with a 25% crit rate.
If we plug this into the equation above it changes the numbers like this:
Starfire Damage = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)) / 2.875 = 2241.8 / 3 = 779.76
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.5 = 1331.8 / 1.5 = 887.88
It is clear that the numbers still favor Wrath even when you include Crit into the equation.
Including Curse of Elements
First of all, CoE should always be up during a boss fight. If its not your Warlocks and Raid Leaders are epic failures. It may lower personal DPS for the lock but it is a huge bonus for the raid. CoE increases your Starfire’s damage by a minimum of 10%. If the warlock has Malediction then it increases your Starfire by 13%. I will look at it both ways in the next set of equations.
Starfire Damage (w/o Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.1) / 2.875 = 857.73
Starfire Damage (w/ Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.13) / 2.875 = 881.12
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.5 = 887.88
So, at this point Wrath and Starfire are becoming very similar in terms of DPS when you include all of the Starfire buffs. This is where most of the debate comes in. Some people will argue that Wrath is the better spell because of this 6.76 DPS despite the benefits of Starfires DPM. They are correct from a pure theoretical view. However, real life doesn’t always perform like the theory says it should, and this brings us to the next adjustment.
Including Spell Lag
This is what most people forget when they evaluate the two spells, and most people don’t know what it is. Spell Lag is the unavoidable time between spell casts. Melee has it easy. They tell blizzard to wack the boss with a sword and blizzard does all the work for them with the auto-swing. Casters don’t have the same ability with their spells. We have to cast each individual one. Since we are human, the time between casts will be longer then the actual cast time even with addons like quartz. We can minimize it but we can’t eliminate it.
So how does this affect the analysis? Lets assume you have an average spell lag of 0.05 seconds. This is a fairly low number. Your Wrath’s cast time is now increased by 0.05 seconds when calculating DPS for a time between casts of 1.55 seconds. Your Starfires cast time would be affected by the same amount of Spell Lag, so there would be 3.05 seconds between each Starfire cast. As you can see Spell Lag affects the faster cast spells much more then the slower spells. In this example Spell lag makes up 3.23% of the time between casts for Wrath but only 1.64% of the time between casts for Starfire. As you can see Spell Lag affects Wrath almost twice as much as Starfire. Lets put into the equation.
Starfire Damage (w/o Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.1) / 2.925 = 843.07
Starfire Damage (w/ Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.13) / 2.925 = 866.06
Wrath Damage = (445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1)) / 1.55 = 859.24
As you can see Starfire passes Wrath in DPS if you have full raid buffs (excluding Stormstrike) after you include Spell Lag. Even if you don’t have a lock with Malediction in your raid, Starfire is very similar to Wrath in DPS.
Looking at Stormstrike
In this section I will take a look at Stormstrike, listing its problems and showing how it affects the analysis under the best of circumstances.
I really don’t want to include Stormstrike in this analysis at all because it is such a limited buff. However, I’m sure that some readers would discount my analysis if I don’t look at it from all angles.
What is Stormstrike?
It is a debuff placed on the boss by an enhancement shaman where the next 2 sources of Nature damage dealt to the target are increased by 20%. It has a 10 second cooldown before it can be reapplied. Since Wrath is a nature spell it is affected by this Debuff.
Problems with Stormstrike
1. It only affects a finite number of spells. It doesn’t matter how many nature abilities hit the boss in those ten seconds, only the first 2 spells will be buffed. Under the very best of circumstances, only two of your wraths would be affected every 10 seconds.
2. The benefits are not exclusive to Wrath and can be consumed by other players in raid. You will be competing with all Nature Damage dealers for these two procs every ten seconds. However, I do not know if Rogue Poison or Insect Swarm periodic damage ticks consume one of the 2 buffs.
3. When you consume one of the buffs you are preventing another raider from receiving the buff. So, it may increase your DPS but it lowers the DPS of another raid member.
To sum this up, since you can only get 2 buffs every two minutes the average buff will be a maximum of 6.4% since you can cast 6.25 spells per 10 seconds with 0.05 Spell Lag. On top of that, the chances you will get both procs is minimal because the shaman who cast it will take at least one of the procs. If you have an Elemental Shaman in raid you will benefit even less. Finally, to increase your DPS you are lowering the DPS of the shaman who cast it.
So lets say you get one of the two Stormstrike procs. How does it change the numbers? Well you can cast 6.25 spells per 10 seconds with spell lag and no haste. That means you Wrath will get an average increase of 3.2%.
Starfire Damage (w/o Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.1) / 2.925 = 843.07
Starfire Damage (w/ Mal) = (657.8 + (1200)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(1.13) / 2.925 = 866.06
Wrath Damage = ((445.5 + (1200)*(0.5714 + 0.1)*(1.1))*1.032) / 1.55 = 886.73
As you can see Starfire is still very competitive with Wrath in terms of DPS even when Stormstrike is included in the analysis.
Conclusions:
I think this analysis clearly shows that Starfire is clearly the better spell in almost all raid situations. From a DPM stand point Starfire is far superior to Wrath. The DPS view point is a little more complicated. However, with normal raid buffs Starfire is very competitive with Wrath in terms of DPS and even passes it in some cases. When you couple this with the mana efficacy, Starfire is clearly the superior spell of the two.
How this will change in WotLK:
I have run some of the numbers comparing Wrath to Starfire in WotLK. I have often wondered if Starfire would still be the spell of choice in WotLK after Wrath receives buffs from Curse of Elements, Natures Grace, and gets more mana from Moonkin Form. However, with the recent additions of Improved Scorch and Winter’s Chill, the relationship between Wrath and Starfire seems to maintain the status quo.
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