Toon Update: 3/19/2009 - Immortal Follow Up

This is so freak'en frustrating!

We cleared Naxx last night on 25man, and are obviously going for Immortal. I don't know about you guys but when I think about the achievement I compartmentalize the bosses into Hard, Medium, and Relatively Easy. Some of the bosses like Anub'Rekhan I don't really worry about. I consider these bosses relatively easy. Yes, there are things that can kill you if you're careless, but it shouldn't be a problem for an experienced guild. The Medium bosses are those that have things that can kill you quickly but are manageable. They are more risky but if your focused everything will go fine. The hard bosses are the one's I worry about. I put Instructor Raz, Thaddius, Heigan, and KT in this group. These are bosses that have a lot of risk or bad luck can royally mess you up.

So I think of our odds of completing Immortal in terms of how many of each of these types we have left. In the beginning I bearly think about the achievement. With 12 to 15 bosses to go, there is so much that can go wrong its not worth stressing over. So we started with Instructor Raz last night and it was a very smooth kill. I think we have perfected him. It was good to get him out of the way but with 14 bosses left I'm not really thinking about Immortal. After that we cleared the Military wing with no problem. Then we go to the Spider Wing and clear it with no problem. Two wings down, but still 9 bosses to go. Immortal is on my mind a little more but I am still able to ignore it for the most part.

We then head to the Construct wing. For me, this is where things started to get a little tense. Patchwerk is easy, and the kill went smoothly. The kill of Grobbulus when fine also, but after you kill him the poison zones are still around and you are still in combat. I see someone standing close to an expanding cloud and I think. If someone dies now, do we lose Immoral? The person did move but it add a new level of worry and paranoia to my experience because there are a couple of bosses where you don't leave combat right after the boss dies. Gluth went fine also but he always worries me because Decimate takes every one so low.

At Thaddius, my tension shifted into high gear. This is the boss were we lost Immortal last week due to a DC. A couple of people had DCed already that night and a few other people had reported lag. We had a plan to deal with DCs but there was still a ton of stress. We take out the two adds without a problem and then some one misses the Jump. I think "oh crap," but they deal with it well and get back to the group with out dying or crossing charges. At this point I'm only thinking about 1 thing: DO NOT MISS A CHARGE CHANGE. DPS is completely secondary, and if you looked at a WWS of this fight It would look like I played horribly. I procced Wrath Eclipse several times, I let my DoTs drop a couple of times, but none of it really mattered because staying alive was the primary responsibility and we ended up getting Shocking for the one person in raid that didn't already have it.

At this point I've got a count in my head. Five bosses left: Two relatively easy, one medium, and two hard. We head to the Plague wing and kill Noth with out problems. One easy boss down, 4 to go.

Heigan is next. We actually have a member sit out because he has a history of connection issues. Phase one of the fight goes well as usually but as we all know the true danger is the dance. We are so focused on getting this right no one is allowed to DPS during the dance. As I'm running through it looks like a couple of people get close to clipping one of them but we make it though without anyone dying. We go back to phase one and try and kill him before the dance starts again. About half way through I hear the player dying sound and panic. Fortunately it was just the Mage Mirror images, and we kill Heigan without any deaths. One hard boss down, 3 to go.

The last boss in Plague wing Loatheb went down with out any problems. One easy boss down, 2 to go.

On to Sapphiron. I consider Sapphiron a Medium boss. With full frost resist it's pretty easy, but you can get messed up by an unlucky DC or if all of the Ice Blocks are cast on one side of the raid. We ended up killing him with no problem. One easy boss down, 1 hard boss to go.

There is just one boss between us and Immortality. Kel'Thuzad isn't all that tough to kill anymore, but he is tough to have everyone stay alive. There is just so much random stuff that can kill you quickly, from Ice Blocks, Mana Bombs, Void zones, Aggro drops.

Phase one went ok, I was playing very conservatively. Normally I would DPS the Soul Weaver as soon as it spawns, but last night I was on Skeletons and I waited for the Weavers to come out a little bit before I DPS them.

Phase two started ok. Then about 30% - 35% into the fight I hear a player call out "So and So Ice Tombed," and 3 seconds later my GM said "Oh Crap." The player had died. I'm not not looking to assign blame here. I don't know what happened. Maybe it was a fluke maybe someone messed up a little. I don't know, but Immortal was gone.

I don't know what is worse. Having a player die early in the night or a player dying so late in the night. I've had it both ways, but I can't decide which is worse. On the nights where some one died fairly early its very demotivating and just pisses me off, but it relaxes the rest of the run and I can move on easily. The late deaths are just demoralizing. I get over it fairly quickly. In fact i would love to try again tonight if possible, but I need to log off for a little while to recharge. I had planned on leveling my priest a little bit last night, but I wasn't motivated to do it. Anyway, I'll be back to normal and ready to play soon.

The way I see it we have another week or two to try. If we do get complete the achievement of those all time great moments in the game. If that happens it will be worth the wait. If it doesn't, then I will have Ulduar to play with. Its a Win/Win.

Toon Update: 3/18/2009 - The Quest for Immortal

WoWInsider recently did an article on the toughest raiding achievements in the game and it is no surprise that The Immortal is number 1 on that list. According to GuildOx just 1.64% of rated guilds have that achievement so far. The next closest achievements are the two 6 minute Malygos achievements and they both have about 7% of the guilds having completed them. Couple this with the announcement that the rewards for Glory of the Raider and Heroic: Glory of the Raider are going to be removed from the game when 3.1 drops and you've got a very anxious Moonkin.

In general, I am not an avid seeker of achievements, (One of my in game friends calls them Nerd Points. I loled.) but I desperately want the raiding achievements. For the first 2 years or so of my WoW experience I raided as an "also ran." My guilds were working on SSC while other guilds were clearing BT. I never worked on content when it was cutting edge. That has changed now that I'm in Lords of Eternity.

I am now in a guild that is on the edge of content and we are competing to be one of the first guilds on the server to down bosses. While it is unlikely that we will get many if any server firsts due to our raiding schedule, its awesome to know that we did things almost as quickly, but raid only 9 hours per week. Other guild jumped out ahead of us by clearing Naxx and Sarth very quickly but we caught up by completing the harder achievements. Now the only thing standing in our way of clearing content before patch 3.1 drops is The Immortal, and we have been agonizingly close.

At first, it was odd to start looking at Naxx from the point of view of the Immortal. I had always looked at raid content from the point of view that the kill was most important. Losing one or two people along the way is no big deal as long as the boss dies. Now we have to pay close attention to things we have never really focused on before. We had to hone our skill on the Instructor Raz pull to minimize the risk of losing some one on the pull. We had to pay more attention to Holy Wrath on Four Horsemen so that we didn't chain it. We've also had our share of boneheaded moments, where someone pulls aggro or stands in the wrong spot, but if the Immortal was purely a demonstration of skill then we would have had it a long time ago.

I hate to blame luck for our failure because it sounds like an excuse, but it is impossible to deny that luck plays a huge roll in the achievement. When we first started working on the Immortal it was during the huge server lag from blizzard. It is impossible not to lose someone when a majority of the raid has 2000 latency. After that was cleared up we've started to get a lot closer but have had issues with small mistakes and unlucky DCs. A few weeks a go we were just 40% of KT's health away from getting the Immortal. What is so amazing about it is that we only had 20 people and a quarter of them alts because we were going for the Dedicated Few. Things were going great everything was going smoothly and then bad luck came and bit us. After the adds spawned the two add tanks picked them up and everything went to hell. Almost right off the bat one of the two add tanks got hit with Frost Blast. The other tank picked up his adds quickly but was then hit with Chains of Kel'Thuzad and mind controlled while the other tank was still in an ice block. The adds then proceeded to go munch on a Healer and blew our Immortal run.

We have run naxx a couple of times since then with frustrating results, but there are a couple of things that are hard to deny about the Immortal. On the negative side, it has a huge luck component. Even if no one DCs, the RNG can cause a boss to use multiple abilities in quick succession and kill some one. I've read some accounts of successful Immortal runs and some of them get lucky hand no one gets mind controlled during KT. On the positive side, I think the achievement has helped to make me a better player. I am much more aware of my surroundings now and I'm no longer hyperfocused on DPS.

Ultimately, I don't really care about the Black Proto-Drake itself. I have the Plagued Proto-Drake from the 10man version. It's nice to have a 310% mount but I'm a druid. Epic flight form is going to be more convenient 90% of the time. The reason I want the Immortal and Heroic: Glory of the Raider is the prestige. The last time I checked there was only one other guild on my server that had them, and it would be awesome to get there before 3.1. One last thing, I am happy that there are Immortal style achievements in Uluar, but I am also very happy that they are not a part of the meta achievements.

Anyway, probably have at least a couple of weeks before the patch comes out, so we have a few more chances. Hopefully we will pick it up tonight. Wish us luck.

Grayfel:
Things are going well for my lock. I've gotten him into a couple of Naxx25 runs that have been organized for our alts and to get the 20man achievements. Gear wise he is doing very well. I haven't gotten any tier items yet, but I have a respectable amount of Spell Power, and I am doing well on the DPS charts.

I am kind of anxious to see how all of the PTR changes are going to affect him. I realize Blizz is trying to make Affliction easier you removing Siphon Life and Immolate from our rotation but I don't think Affliction is that hard as it is. My GM posted some macros and things that make the rotation much simpler. By removing the two spells from my rotation blizzard hasn't reduced the number of buttons I will push. My big questions revolve around gear though. In affliction's current form Crit and Haste are very low in value relative to Spell Power. Now that Shadow Bolt is going to become much more important to the Affliction rotation those values should increase. I've been looking for some new math but haven't seen any. If you know of some please point it out.

Graypal:
I finally started to level my priest again and got him to just over 74 over the weekend. I'm really looking forward to having Dual specs with him. For some reason I want to try healing as a priest, and the dual specs will allow me to do that without abandoning Shadow. I still hope to get him to 80 by the end of March but that doesn't look likely. It might be possible if I can get him 3 levels this coming weekend. Then I will have my epic flyer again and leveling will go much quicker.

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.

Patch 3.1 - Build 9658: Huge News

Update: Saw this on MMO Champion. Obviously it is a placeholder since the tool tip is the excact same as [Idol of the Shooting Star]. It will be interesting to see if they recycle an old Idol or come up with something new. I personally would like to see something that affects our aura like the pre-nerf [Idol of the Raven Goddess], but I wouldn't be surprised if it was something completely new. Something like an Idol that would bring the SF Eclipse proc chance up to 100%. Then again it could be something lame that primarily affects MF or IS.

It figures that this would drop on day that I'm on vacation and don't have regular access to a computer. Idol of the Shooting Star

Needless to say there are some huge changes for Moonkin in the most recent build of the PTR. Lets take a look at them.

Starfall cooldown has been lowered from 3 min to 1.5 min.

This is a definate improvement to the spell. It doubles the spells affectiveness but I'm not sure this will statisfy its critics.

Insect Swarm: The spell coefficent for this spell has been significantly increased to bring it in line with similar spells.

Nice. The current Coefficent is 0.76, and I expect them to bring it up to 0.80. If this is the case then it's about a 3% - 4% increase in damage. Not huge but not horrible either. I'll have to check it our on the PTR.

Eclipse now gives you a 33% chance of increasing damage done by Wrath by 30% (up from 20%) when you critically hit with Starfire.

This isn't a huge surprise. Ghostcrawler said a couple of weeks ago that they were going to take a look at the Wrath portion of Eclipse and this is what I expected them to do. I think this kind of shows that they have unrealistic expectations on how Moonkin will be played but I will talk about that a little later.

Owlkin Frenzy now affects all attacks. (Old - Physical melee and ranged attacks only)

Again, not a huge surprise since Ghostcrawler said that they would probalby leave OF the way it was.

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

WOOT!!!!!!! The stun has been removed but I can live with that.

To some of you this may not seem like a big deal but its impact is pretty significant. Naxx doesn't have a huge amount of spell pushback but on the fights that do have a lot of damage like Sapp it really hurts our DPS. Plus, if the Burning Crusaide is any indication we will be seeing more raid damage in T8 and T9. On the flip side this makes Owlkin Frenzy less valueable in PvE.

Nature's Grace now increasing your spell casting speed by 20% for 3 sec. (Old - Reduced the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 sec.)

An excellent change. For Starfire, you will get the same cast time reduction as the old version but the buff will now last 3 seconds. That means you can probably get it for the next two Starfires you cast. For Wrath, the cast time reduction is cut in half, but you can probably get off 3 buffed wraths in the 3 seconds. This does increase the value of Haste Rating since it will be harder to reach 1 second global cooldown for haste, but Haste will still be haste capped at the higher levels of gear.

Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral) now reduces the armor of the target for 5 min. (Up from 40 sec)

WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Awesome. There is no reason now not to pick up Improved Faerie Fire. It's basically a static 3% increase to crit. In fact, I think Faerie Fire is now a superior buff to all it's competitors. At virtually no cost you give the raid a 5% armor reduction, 3% chance to hit, and you get the 3% personal chance to crit.

My Reaction Overall:

Overall this is a buff if it makes it to live. Most of it's not huge but there is a lot to be happy about here.

My biggest curiosity here is how is this going to affect our spell rotation. Blizzard seems to think that they can balance Starfire and Wrath to be of equal importance but they can't. One of them is always going to be the primary spell, and the changes to Eclipse and Natures Grace could push the advantage to Wrath.

The fact of the matter is that players are going to try and maximize there damage any way they can. Starfire's primary advantages are that it is more mana efficent, can't realistically be haste capped, and has less exposure to latency. Well, as we all know Mana hasn't been much of an issue in WotLK. The change to Natures Grace makes Wrath less affected by the Haste Cap, and Wrath has about a 10% advantage in Damage. This should be intersting.

Mailbag: Should Moonkin Loot Cloth?

I am writing as a raid leader in a fairly casual guild. In the days of Karazhan, we limited most loot to armor class - but given the lack of leather that was appropriate for moonkin, I opened up moonkin to roll on other loot. (I was considering doing this for plate DPS too, since there was very little gear out there, but we didn't really have any plate DPS and it didn't come up.)

In Wrath, I'm noticing a lot more leather gear that seems appropriately budgeted for Balance. I am also feeling bad that our cloth DPS have so much contention for gear, and there have been loot issues from time to time that weren't prominent in WotLK. Would I be asking our Balance druids to sacrifice a lot of best in slot gear if I were to restrict them to Leather again (where they could get cloth if no clothies needed it, but otherwise priority would go to cloth)?

I don't want to prevent them from getting cloth all the time, but at this point there have been loot issues and it is driving me crazy - and boomkins are the only class/spec causing this, since everyone else sticks within their armor class. (I don't know what it is like for elemental shammies, but we don't have any.) It is
definitely frustrating for our clothies because they have to compete vs all other cloth and balance druids - whereas our balance druids only have to fight with resto druids over gear (and if it has crit on it, our resto druids don't seem to care). I do realize though that there is absolutely zero +hit leather in Naxx 10 or 25, and that is one thing among others that is holding me back from making any sort of decision.

Thanks for any insight you can
give me :)

Ayashi

Wow. Loaded question. There is some debate on this with in the moonkin community, but I will try and give my take on it.

First, lets get one thing out of the way. There are some moonkin out there that will say that Moonkin can wear leather therefore they should never wear cloth at all. The basic premise is that Leather is always better then cloth and that is just stupid. Assuming similar stats the only difference between cloth and leather is Armor. Armor is almost useless for moonkin in a raid environment since almost all raid damage is Magical. Therefore, if a cloth item has better DPS stats then your current leather item, use the cloth.

That said, determining whether Moonkin should be allowed to roll/bid on cloth items is an entirely different question. In the Burning Crusade it was easy. I could count the number of Leather Caster DPS items before Sunwell on one hand even if one finger was amputated. With the merger of spell damage and healing into Spell Power there are a lot more options for moonkin. However that doesn't mean that the options are good.

Itemization:
In general I think that cloth is better itemized for caster DPS then the leather currently available. In my opinion a majority of the non-Tier caster leather favors resto druids over moonkin. Almost all of it has 3 base stats (Stam, Int, Spirit) and 2 DPS stats. This is a very resto friendly design, and Moonkin have different needs then Trees. On top of that about half of the pieces with just two base stats have 2 DPS stats and Mp5. Mp5 is a useless stat for moonkin currently. That doesn't even mention the complete lack of non-Tier leather pieces with Hit rating.

In my opinion the ideal itemization for a moonkin is 2 base stats (Stam, Int) and 3 DPS stats. Spirit does help moonkin but it is far from the ideal stat. Those itemization points would be much better spent on Crit, Haste or Hit. You don't see it much in leather but you see a lot more often in cloth. If you think about it that makes sense.

There is only one or two classes that wants caster leather. On top of that most guilds will have only one moonkin and/or one ele shaman in raid. On the flip side those same guilds are much more likely to have multiple resto druids or resto shaman. So, it is understandable that the gear favors healing more then DPS.

From the cloth perspective, there is only one class that heals using cloth, but 3 classes that DPS using cloth. It is not unusual for guilds to run with multiple mages and warlocks and have a Shadow Priest or two, but only have two or three healing priests. Therefore the cloth has to be much more balanced and you see a lot of pieces with three DPS stats.

Finally, there is an imbalance in item level. There are only 3 bosses that currently drop items with a 226 item level. (KT, Maly, & Sarth2D). Obviously any piece of gear with a higher ilevel will likely be better then the options at a lower level. Currently there are only three leather caster items at ilevel 226 and all of them favor resto in my opinion. For cloth there are 8 items at ilevel 226 and some of them are clearly DPS items.

What this all boils down to is that there is more cloth out there and it is generally better then the equivalent leather.

Responsibility:
While I don't think Moonkin should be barred from cloth, I do think they should be responsible about their looting.

In my opinion, all raiders should know what gear is available and what are the good upgrades for them. If you look back at my posts from December, you will see a post I called my Christmas Wish list where I listed all the piece I considered to be Best in Slot. That list has changed a little bit since then, but you cans see that I knew very early on where my key upgrades were. I new that I should fight for cloth legs, but let cloth boots pass.

It is also important to remember that the 4T7 moonkin set bonus is awesome. Therefore, it would be irrational to put up a big fight for [Heigan's Putrid Vestments] when you're just going to replace them with [Valorous Dreamwalker Vestments] a little bit down the line. We don't know what the T8 set bonuses look like yet but they have always been pretty good since T4 and moonkin need to keep set pieces in mind before they go to the mattresses over a piece of loot.

I am also a big proponent of doing what is best for the raid. Just because an item is an upgrade for you or even best in slot for you doesn't mean you should get it right away. Here is an example.

Currently there is only one caster weapon usable by Druids at ilevel 226. It is the [Torch of Holy Fire]. It is the current Best in Slot weapon for a moonkin, but that is because it is really the only option at its item level. If you take a look at it you will see that it is really better itemized for a healer. Moonkin don't want Mp5 but the 520 Spell Power is a huge upgrade over the caster weapons at ilevel 213 with 461 Spell Power. So, my guild has had a few of these drop. I want it but I realize that a healer would use it better then I would. So, when bid for it I always bit one under the max bid, to allow the healers to pick it up before me if they want it.

Ultimately moonkin need to learn to pick and choose their battles. If you go all out on every cloth piece that drops then the clothies will resent you and you will likely lose the key battles you want to win.

Finally, responsibility is a two way street. If you look at my Armory you will see that I have the [Torch of Holy Fire], but it's not because every healer in raid already had it. The healers who I outbid for it haven't said a word to me about it, but I've had a couple of other people tell me I shouldn't have gotten the mace. I will also admit that I was very surprised that I got it, but I don't feel bad that I got it before a couple of healers. It is best in slot for me and if they wanted it then they should have bid the max amount. No one should expect such a good item to just be handed to them

I also find that the most vocal people against Moonkin wearing cloth tend to be clothies that don't want competition for gear. It's not about whats best for the raid. Its about what is best for them. When an item is a clear upgrade for a moonkin and there isn't any equivalent leather then clothies should have a big problem competing for the item.

A Note to Raid Leaders:
Ayashi, you say that your the raid leader of a "fairly casual guild." That is a fairly ambiguous statement since casual seems to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. However, I want to say that your guilds structure should also have a pretty big impact on how you award loot.

My guild has a very stable raiding membership, and a majority of the regular raiders have an attendance over 90%. This makes loot a lot simpler because if I don't get an item this week that means there is less competition for it the next time it drops. Its hard to get to bummed about not getting an item because chances are I will get everything I want eventually.

A guild with a less stable structure is going to have more issues. One of my former guilds raiding set up was much less stable. It wasn't unusually to have people that only made 50% of the raids and recruitment was a bit of a revolving door. I was one of the more active members and I had been with the guild for a long time. In my opinion it wouldn't have been fair for the guild to prevent me for getting an item because a new clothie with low attendance could use it more.

You have to think about who your policies hurt and who they reward. If you reward wrong people then your just going to make the situation worse.

TL:DR

In short, I think moonkin should be allowed to roll/bid on cloth since in general it is better itemized then the caster leather that is available. However, all raid members need to think critically about their choices. Is the guild better served by someone else getting this item? Is there a leather item that is equivalent or better then this item?

Asking yourselves questions like these will help your guild to run more smoothly and with less drama. It will also cause your guildies to be more considerate of your needs when there is an item that you really want.

The Banners

When I made the post two weeks ago asking for a new banner, I was a little nervous. I get a decent number of hits each day but you never know how people will react. I was worried that my readership might be a little more casual then I thought and not care about my banner. Luckily for me it turned out awesome.

The one I choose came from Tsunamee on the US-Firetree Server and you can see it above. I like the silhouette of the moonkin in the Moon and the color of the letters is great. At first I would have liked a change in the font, but when I saw the little moonkin head attached to the "G" in gray I was sold.

The other submissions were great also, and I really wish I had something to give you guys.

From William C. - I really liked the clean look of this one, and the brain in the moonkin is a nice play on the name.

From Cusper - Very nice and it was the first I received. A huge weight was lifted off my ego.

From Aphexdash - The only one to use a Horde image. Which is fine I don't discriminate.

From Christian G. - I really like the Horns on the letters.

Finally, Sarbakan says that he discovered my blog on a couple of days ago and didn't have time to come up with a banner but he did send me this picture that he uses as his signature.


Thank you again to everyone that made submissions. These were better then I hoped for and the choice was tough. Since Phae is closing her doors I have to take up some of her screenshot competitions.