Moonkin Idols: Which one is Best.

With Patch 2.4.3 going to break in the next couple of weeks Idol Swapping macros will become a thing of the past. This begs the question which Idol should I use, and like any good question the answer depends on a couple of things. Below I have highlighted the for main idols you have to choose from and when you should use them.

[Idol of the Unseen Moon] - The only epic idol available to moonkin.
The Pros: It has a 50% proc rate with no internal cooldown. It also affects all spells cast and is affected by your Wrath of Cenarious talent.
The Cons: The down side is that you have only 8.5 seconds of the buff since the global cooldown takes away 1.5 seconds of cast time. Plus you you don't want to cut off your last moonfire tick so you can only get the buff once every 12 seconds. (15 seconds with two pieces of T6).
The Verdict: With Natures Grace you should be able to get 3 starfires off while the buff is up, and it is made even easier if you have any haste. You should use this Idol when you add Moonfire to your rotation until you have two pieces of T6 gear. The two piece set bonus makes this idol less valuable.

[Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess]
The Pros: It affects the primary damage spell of a moonkin on every cast.
The Cons: The additional damage is applied to the spell's base damage and does not benefit from Wrath of Cenarious.
The Verdict: Oddly enough you will want to use this idol two times in your raiding experience. The first is at the start, when you have very little mana regen and don't use Moonfire in your rotation. The second is when you have two pieces of T6 and start stacking haste. Two pieces fo T6 and Haste mean you will be able to get more Starfire casts in for every one moonfire cast. More Starfires mean more damage and pushes this idol past the Moonfire Idol in terms of total damage.

[Idol of the Raven Goddess] -
The Pros: Can increase raid viability and party dps.
The Cons: It is a personal DPS loss and the party wide gains are very dependent on your group and the fight you are attempting.
The Verdict: This is the hardest idol to quantify, and its usefulness best described as situational. Here are the things to think about when evaluating this trinket.
1. Your party - You need to have at least 4 casters in your party that benefit significantly from crit. Having five heavy crit users is best. This means that this trinket is fairly useless in most 5 mans and may not be good for 10 mans either. If you have 3 mages, destro locks, elemental shaman, or holy pallys in your group, consider this idol. If not move on.
2. Your party's gear level - Crit scales very well with spell damage, but spell damage doesn't scale as well with crit. So if your party has very high levels of spell damage then they will benefit more from crit then you will benefit from some extra spell damage.
3. The fight - This idol improves your aura, but unfortunately your aura has a range of 30 yards. For high movement fights like Void Reaver it will be very easy for your party to get spread out and not benefit from your buff. Other fights like Solarion are great for this idol since they cause everyone to clump up in one spot.

[Idol of the Avenger]
The Pros: This is the easiest idol to obtain since it is a quest reward.
The Cons: Buffs the least used spell by a raiding moonkin.
The Verdict: A very situational idol since moonkin shouldn't be using Wrath all that much. I like to keep it in my bags for the rare occasion that I do use wrath in raids. Other then that this idol is only good for PvP or soloing.

Blog Update: I really wanted to use the WoW icons for each of these idols in my blog post. Unfortunately I could not ind a good way to get them. I tried saving them off of WoWHead and WoWWiki but that didn't work. I also remember some data base with all of the icons in it but I couldn't find it. Anyway, if anyone knows a way for me to get a .JPG or .GIF of each of these icons please let me know.

Also, if anyone has some suggestions on how to improve my blog feel free to post them. I won't promise to implement them all, but I would like to know what you think.

Toon Update:
Graylo - Primarily Raiding, but raiding has been a little slow this week. We've had some absences and haven't had many attempts on Kael. I did run some ZA over the weekend. I had shot at the [Loop of Cursed Bones] but the guy rolling against me was the guy I beat for my new ring, and I didn't think it was fair if I rolled against him again. Not a big deal, We are clearing ZA fairly regularly now and it will drop again. My only really plan for Graylo now is to do those Fire Fest quests and get 550 free gold.

Graypal - As usual not much is going on here. I've had some opportunities to take him into Mag but there is nothing I really want there so I don't see the point. Like Graylo the only plan I have for him is free gold.

Grayfel - He is about halfway through 58 now. I haven't played him a whole lot, but he is progressing. It looks like I am going ot have to spend a 100g or so to get his Jewelcrafting up to 300. The gems just aren't dropping the way I would like them to and I want to be at 300 when I go to outland. I also plan to do all of the free gold quests on Grayfel. I won't be as much gold but it will be some good exp. My plan for the weekend is to get rid of his rested exp and hopefully get him to outland.

Graytom - He has built up quite a bit of rested exp. Hopefully I can use it all over the weekend. Shouldn't take to long.

My Thoughts on Patch 2.4.3

For those of you that don't know, blizzard released a new set of patch notes a couple of days ago. You can find them here.

With Wrath of the Lich King on the horizon, no body was expecting significant changes until the expansion is ready to release. While additional patches were expected, most people expected them to be fairly small bug fix patches. That is why this new patch caught me a little off guard. It is by no means a major patch like 2.4 or 2.3, but there are some significant changes in there that will change the way we play. Here are my highlights and thoughts.

* Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World's End Tavern! - With all of the new daily quests there is a lot of money laying around in Azeroth. So Blizzard has provided a new money sink to take some gold out of the market and prevent inflation. There isn't a lot of news from the PTR but it sounds like most of her items are expensive novelty items that few people will be interested it. However she will be selling a 22 slot bag for 1,200 gold. Not a huge deal for me because I can't see myself shelling that much gold for two bag slots, but I know that others will.

* Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold. - A nice change but nothing huge. As some one with several alts I have always found the first few levels frustrating because running is so slow. So, I am happy that I will get a mount for my shaman a little bit sooner.

* Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress. - This is huge for moonkin. I have not been on the PTR to test it, but I assume that this will mean the death of Idol swapping macros. I had stopped using them for a couple of reasons, but I know that they are still popular with quite a few moonkin. This of course prompts the question: "Which Idol should I use?" The answer depends on a couple of things and I will address it in a future post.

* Barkskin: The cost of this spell is now reduced by Tree of Life Form. - While this makes sense it honestly doesn't go far enough, and I have thought it for a while. They are Trees, Trees have bark, therefore Druids in Tree of Life Form should always have Barkskin up. Period.

* Curse of Shadows: This spell has been removed. / Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire. - Another huge change for moonkin, and it is a fairly significant change for raiding in general. From a moonkin point of view having CoS is not guaranteed in smaller raids, and if you have only one Lock with Malediction then you don't know which curse he is going to cast. This change should increase our personal damage and will make it more beneficial for all group situations. From a raid perspective this is awesome. Even if you currently have two locks with Malediction casting the curses, this will increase raid DPS because one of those locks will now be able to cast another curse like Agony or Doom. Great change. I'm a fan.

* Magisters' Terrace is being nerfed. - There are two many changes to list them all. Basically all four bosses were nerfed in some way. They either had their damage reduced or their health reduced. Even some of the trash was nerfed. To be honest this isn't that much of a surprise. I lot of people have felt that this instance is significantly harder then the other level 70 instances. It will be interesting to see how big of a difference these changes make.

* The most exciting change isn't in the patch notes - On PTR, the first parts for Stormwind Harbor are showing up, you can find the Harbor entrance at the northern canal wall between the Park and Cathedral districts in Stormwind. and various construction worker NPCs have been added to Stormwind for the Harbor. You can witness the new npcs two of which can open a chat dialog box explaining whats going on and the new construction zone between The Northern area of The Park and Cathedral Square. This is the first in-game reference we have seen to Wrath of the Lich King. For those of you that haven't been paying attention to the leaks, Stormwind is getting a new section in WotLK called Stormwind Harbor. Presumably this is one of the places you will catch a boat to Northrend. It doesn't mean anything in terms of our current game play but it is a sign of how close we are to the expansion.

Guild Update:
We have spent the last three nights in TK and on Kael. Tuesday we cleared the first three bosses relatively quickly and got a couple of attempts in on Kael. Wednesday and Thursday night we focused all of our attention on Kael with the exception of a quick trip to Mag on Wednesday after the Kael attempts were done.

Kael is going pretty well, and we have made progress each night.

In phase one we are consistently killing the 4 advisers in the correct spots. Thaldred kiting could improve a little bit, but that is being picky.

Phase two is going much better. We are consistently getting at least 4 (usually 5) of the weapons down before the advisers respawn and are starting to manage the Phase two to Phase three transition pretty well. Despite our successes I personally think our phase two can improve. I am sure that we can get the weapons down quicker and make the transition to phase 3 easier. The main reason I say that is I am beating some of the AoEers on DPS as a moonkin. Yes, I do out gear a couple of them but they should at least be closer to my damage and probably beat me by a little bit.

Phase three has been very up and down for us and is the phase where we currently need the most improvement. Since we usually have a couple of weapons still up the transition to phase three has been fairly chaotic and some people have had trouble picking up the weapons in before they despawn. Also, the kiting of Thaldred is much more complicated now that the other 3 advisers are up as well. The raid in general needs to work on their positioning so they don't get one shotted when he pops and kiting him north instead of towards the other advisers.

We did however have one really good attempt last night were we had two advisers down before Kael popped and a third was down soon after he popped. Unfortunately our inexperience showed after that and a lot of people made mistakes in the confusion.

We are getting to phase 4 consistently, but don't have the advisers under control enough to make a serious attempt at it.

Toon Update:
Graylo - I have something to say about Graylo for a change. We started a ZA run on Wednesday night and did the first 3 bosses on timed loot. Luckily for me the [Mana Attuned Band] dropped and I won the roll. It is a very nice ring that should do quite a bit for my DPS.

Graypal - Nothing to say.

Grayfel - I did a little questing with him but no big changes. He is still level 57 but about 4 bars away from 58. I will say this though. Now that I am getting closer to level 60 I am wondering if Affliction is really the best way to go. I don't have an overall problem with Affliction but my goal is efficient leveling. If any of you have some suggestions as to how I should level to 70 please let me know.

Graytom- Just gathering rested XP.

A Cornucopia of things.

Life has been a little busy lately and I just noticed that I have not updated my blog in over a week. Sorry for the long wait, here are a couple of thing that have been going on.

Guild Update:
We attempted Kael for the first time in over a month last week, but unfortunately our number of attempts was very limited due to tanking availability and some stupid wipes on the other TK bosses. The few attempts we did have didn't go quite as well has hoped but I still up beat about our prospects. It took us a little while to get through Phase one and get all of the adds positioned where we wanted them to rez, but in the end we were doing it with no problem. Our current issue is phase 2. We haven't been able to dps the weapons fast enough and get most of them down before the adds respawn.

What we were trying to do was have ranged on staff, melee on mace, then AoE the rest except for non AoE ranged going on bow. This just wasn't fast enough. We also had a problem with the bow teleporting and Multishoting the raid. After some research I think we know what our problems were. First, it seems the bow tank was sending her pet in, causing it to move around. Obviously we won't do that anymore. Second, I think we are going to work harder to get the Staff into AoE and take the bow down first. We will probably try and get a rogue or DPS warrior to lock it out of spells and then drag it into AoE. Hopefully they will be able to keep it spell locked after that. AoE will start right after the bow goes down. This should give the tanks enough time to generate threat.

Hopefully this will be enough. If anyone that has done this fight has any suggestions post them in the comments.

Blog Update:
I have added a new blog to my blog roll. Chick GM is a blog about running a guild in High end content. She has recently done a series of posts on applying and getting into a new guild. I haven't read all of her posts but I like what I have seen so far. I like it because it has some good info and has a few of those horror stories of applications and guild drama that most of us like to read.

Alpha Update:
Not a whole lot to report here. It looks like a new build has been released and made its way to the leak page. You can find it here. There are a couple of what appear to be minor changes for druids but nothing to really comment on. It does look like they have included more changes for Mage's, Rogues, and Shaman if you are interested in those classes.

My Haiku:
The blog Unbearably Hot had a contest last week for Druid/Nature themed Haiku's. Normally I don't participate in these types of things but I did this time. Here is my entry.

Playing Moonkin rocks.
Moonfire Spammer I am not.
Tempt my Wrath and die.

Its not vary naturey unless you look at it from the stand point I talked about Wrath which is a nature spell. It is definitely very druidy though. The contest ended last Friday and the results are not out yet. I will keep you posted.

Toon Update:
Graylo - Same old thing. Just raiding. Since I don't PvP there isn't much to do with him. I did get him into ZA and I finally got a chance to kill Zul'jin. We took him down in one shot. Most of our ZA runs are on the weekend and not scheduled. So I have a hard time getting in on them. Hopefully I will get in some more soon.

Graypal - Did a full clear of Kara on Friday. Also did some heroics and finally got my Sha'tar rep up to revered so that I could head enchant. Still need to run Heroic MgT to get the trinket, and need to do some arena to get some bracers once season 4 comes out. Other than that there isn't much to do.

Grayfel - This is where most of my time has gone. He is now about halfway through 57 and in Eastern Plagelands. I skipped a good portion of my guide to get there, and I am actually a little bit behind the guide. As I said before I plan to finish out the WPL and EPL sections of my guide just so that I can see the zones even if that takes me a little bit into 60. I am very motivated to play him right now, but I think a lot of that is because I want to see EPL and WPL. I wonder what will happen when I hit outland. Profession wise he is doing pretty well. His mining is up to 300 and his Jewelcrafting is up to 271. I need to get him to outland to train his mining but I kind of want to wait until I can train his Jewelcrafting also. Anyway, he is doing pretty well.

Graytom - I think I mentioned this toon a back in January. I created him as a way to escape from everything during the time after the break up. I didn't play him much then and only worked on him slightly in the months since. However, I put a little work into him this past weekend. I leveled him from 10 to 13 over the weekend. I started playing him again out of boredom, having limited time, and accomplishments are so easy at the lower levels. I would have play Grayfel some more but I had used up all of his rested XP, and he is currently in IF. Just getting to EPL would have taken a little while. Since I had limited time I didn't want to get all the way up there and not be able to do anything. So, Graytom got my attention.

If you couldn't guess I put his 4 points in Elemental. I have a goal of having a level 70 in all 5 caster dps classes but don't have a real plan to achieve this goal. The chances of me completing it before the expansion comes out is very slim. In fact I would be impressed if I had 4 70s before the expansion let alone 5. Though I have put the points in Elemental I must admit that I have been very tempted to go the enhancement route. If I get bored with elemental I may switch over.

Azgalor Down

WA tried Azgalor for the first time this past Monday and did surprisingly well. They ended up getting him down to 16% on the first try, but had to call the raid after that. On Tuesday night we tried to do it again. We had hoped to down the first three bosses quickly so that we could get a couple attempts on Azgalor, but luck was not with us. We had a couple of unlucky wipes due to DCs at very bad times. So we ended up only getting one attempt in on Azgalor on Tuesday. On Wednesday we came back and three shotted him. In total it took us 5 attempts to get him down which I think is pretty good.

I had heard that Azgalor was the first hard boss in Hyjal. I do agree that he is significantly harder then the first three but I expected him to be worse. As long as your raid pays attention it isn't that hard. You just have to get out of the fire. Pay attention to Doom. Healers have to worry about silence, and warlocks have to worry about soul stones. Other then that it is a DPS race. One last thing I will say about the fight. All raid members have to have 375 First Aid. Bandages are very important for this fight and can be difference between life and death.

The funny thing about all of this is we hadn't planned on starting Azgalor this soon. The plan for Monday was to do the first three in Hyjal, but they killed them fast enough that there was time left over at the end. Since it was Monday, all of the really easy kills were done and there wasn't anywhere meaningful they could go. So they decided to try Kaz. This has put the guild is in kind of a funny spot. Here we are with 4 of 5 down in Hyjal and 3 of nine down in BT. I am fairly sure we could get Gorefiend down quickly to be 4 or 9 in BT. The problem is we still haven't downed Kael. In fact we have only attempted him a couple of times well over a month ago.

We have put him off for a several of reasons. First we wanted to down Vashj. We had more experience with that fight and felt like we were close to downing her. Second, since blizzard dropped the attunements for both Hyjal and BT a lot of people wanted to get in there and check them out. Once we got in there and were getting easy loot it was very hard to convince people to go backwards. Third, we wanted to solidify our recent progress. We had only killed Vashj once and missed her the next two weeks primarily due to attendance issues. We had also only gotten Supremus and Kaz'rogal down once and didn't feel like we had the fights mastered. We wanted to make sure we had those fights down before we moved on. Lastly, we all know that Kael is a hard boss and that he is really going to test the guild mentally. Quite a few officers blame Vashj and the way we went at her for breaking up the guild the first time, and are very leery of it happening again. So they don't want to push it to hard and possibly cause another break. All of this is about to change since we have scheduled TK and Kael for 3 days next week.

I am happy that we will be starting Kael soon, but having to wait such a long time as caused me to regret that Blizzard dropped the Attunements. I see how dropping them has helped us, but it has also made wow life a little difficult. Before 2.4 we had two instances we could run. Planning a raid wasn't all that difficult. Now we have four instances to choose from and don't have enough time to do them all. This has caused us to scatter our focus all over the place and has made guild management very difficult. I'm not sure I would be happy if they replaced the attunements, but part of me would be happy to have the focus back. This should all be made irrelevant once we get Kael down. Then we can focus on T6.

Toon Update:
Graylo - As usual he is primarily raiding, but is not having a whole lot of luck. We downed Vashj last night for the third time and not a single Defender token has dropped. We have had 7 Hero tokens drop and 2 Champion tokens but no Defender. In one Vashj kill there is a 71% chance at lease one defender token will drop. In all of our 3 kills there was a 97.6% chance for a defender token to drop, but we have gotten none. That sucks. To make matters worse is that this maybe our last Vashj kill for a little while. We don't have any scheduled in the future because we are focusing most of our attention on Kael. Hopefully we will find some time to come in and get her down. I want that helm.

Graypal - Absolutely nothing. Can't even get rested XP anymore. The only goals I have for him now require me to run Kara or Heroics and I just haven't had time for those lately.

Grayfel - Nothing since my last post but he does have the advantage of gaining rested XP. He won't be progressing much though. I have a lot of family coming in town this weekend and won't be on much if at all. And I don't level on the weekdays. He probably won't see any action until next weekend.

How to Gem a Moonkin.

There are two ways to look at this topic. What level of gems should I use and what stats should I look for in my gems? Both questions are fairly easy to answer but I am surprised at how many times is see people make the incorrect choices. Here are my thoughts.

Gem Level:
I assume that most of you already know this but I have seen quite a few posts that say "rate my moonkin" that fail some of these basic rules.

White Gems - Most people don't even know they exist but you can by white level gems from a vendor. My advice is to not do it. Yes, they are cheap and easy, but green gems are just as cheap and easy. The only time I would consider equipping a white gem was if I was about to do an instance with a new piece of gear and the AH didn't have the gem I needed. Even then I would replace it as soon as I could.

Green Gems - These are great for Green or Blue items that you probably will replace fairly soon. They are also very good for off spec and alt gear. No point in spending 50g for gem that you won't use often.

Blue Gems - Pretty much a must for Epic level gear. If you want to raid more than casually then having these gems are expected at a minimum.

Purple Gems - There are now several sources of epic gems. You can get them from T6 raiding, Badges of Justice, Instances, and PvP. High end raiding guilds are starting to expect you to be gemed with epic gems. So If your hope is to see all the game content before the expansion, then you will need these.

Gem Type:
This is where most people need help. I will look at it from the stand point of each socket type and then talk about some of the pitfalls you should avoid. I will also use blue level gems as my examples but you can use either the green or purple level gems if you like.

Meta - [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] is your best option. This is the one and only time I will say to stack crit over spell damage. I do that because the extra 3% crit damage is awesome. In actuality it improves your Crit damage by 4.5% due to blizzards crazy math. For a kara/gruul's level raiding moonkin it is equivalent to 20 - 30 spell damage. For T5 and T6 moonkin it is more like 50 spell damage and can go much higher. The runner up is the [Swift Starfire Diamond]. I only mention this because it is cheap and easy. Not a bad choice for socketing an alt or off spec.

Note: Meta gems have other requirements to activate them. The [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] requires two blue gems. This means you have to have two blue gem types socketed in other gear. However they don't have to be pure blue gems. You can meet the requirement using Purple or Green gems also.

Red - [Runed Living Ruby] is the best choice most of the time. Spell damage drives your DPS and this gem gives the most of it. [Veiled Noble Topaz] is another option if your below the hit cap. If you have 1400 buffed spell damage then [Reckless Noble Topaz] could also make sense if your are stacking haste.

Yellow - Spell Hit, Spell Crit, and Spell Haste are more expensive stats then Spell Damage. Gems are the perfect proof of this. The [Runed Living Ruby] has 9 Spell Damage where as the yellow gems for hit, crit, and haste only have 8 points in their stat. That is why I prefer to socket yellow sockets with orange gems. You should focus on the [Veiled Noble Topaz] until you are hit capped from gear. However, the [Reckless Noble Topaz], [Great Dawnstone], [Quick Dawnstone], and [Potent Nobel Topaz] are also decent options if they fit your situation. Don't stack Haste until you have at least 1400 Spell Damage buffed. Crit should only be stacked if you are hit capped.

Blue - [Glowing Nightseye] is the best choice. Spirit, Mp5, and Spell Pen are the only spell related stats available in blue, and all of these stats are either expensive or useless. Thus, the Glowing gems are always the best option.

Socket Bonus:
I find that you should equip for the socket bonus 90% of the time as a Moonkin. This is because a majority of socket bonuses are additional Spell Damage or Spell Hit. I think socket bonuses of Stam or Crit are a matter of personal preference and how far out of your way you have to go to get the socket bonus. Any other socket bonus you should ignore for the most part. In these situations I would equip Runed gems.

Pitfalls:
Intelligence - Gemming for Int is a common error for a lot of new moonkin. They see all of the damage, crit, and mana we gain from it and assume that it is our best stat. Well, it isn't. It is a very good stat but you will get more DPS out of straight spell damage then you will out of Int.

Mp5 - Moonkin have a history of having mana problems and therefore some moonkin are tempted to gem for a little extra mana. The problem with Mp5 is that it is so expensive. You can get 5 spell damage and 6 stam at the expense of just 3 Mp5. It just doesn't have enough bang for the buck.

Epic Gems from Instances - There are some very good gems that drop out of instances. [Glowing Tanzanite] drops in heroic BM. [Shining Fire Opal] drops in heroic Mech. However, these are the only two gems you should consider equipping out of instances. Don't feel like you have to equip the 5 hit/2 mp5 gem just because it dropped. Equip what gives you the best performance.

Alpha Update:
There have been some changes made to the Alpha leak Wiki. If you would like to look at the Wiki your self you can find it here. Just remember, that none of this is final and it may be fake. Browse at your own risk.

Eclipse - now lasts 30 sec (up from 12) and has a 2 min cooldown. - I didn't like this talent in the first place and this change doesn't make me like it anymore. My main question is what is there intent with this talent? Is it for PvP or do they expect it to be used in raids?
Owlkin Frenzy - 25% spell haste ditched, now gives balance spell pushback immunity on proc. - I'm not sure if this is a nerf or a buff. Probably a bit of both. The pushback resistance could save you as much casting time as the haste especially if you are trying to get a Starfire off. Anyway, this is still a very PvP focused talent and you all know I am not a PvP expert.
Imp Moonkin Form - 100% spell haste changed to 20%. - I said in my original comments that this was an overpowered talent and wouldn't make it to release. Well, as predicted it has been nerfed to a much more reasonable level of 20%. It would make my Starfires a 2.5 second cast. I think this is a good level, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was lowered a little more.
Soothe Animal - Now affects dragonkin. - Has anyone ever used this spell?
Celestial Focus, Vengeance, Focused Starlight, Moonglow - Now also affect Starfall. - Not a surprise.
Entangling Roots - Now ticks every second. - Just means a little more damage if it breaks early and makes it a little more affective on casters by causing more push back.
Lunar Guidance - Changed to 4/8/12% (down from 8/16/24%). - A HUGE nerf that will cause a lot of moaning and groaning in the Moonkin community. If it was implemented right now I would lose about 70 spell damage raid buffed. I don't like it but we will see what happens. Phaelia over at Resto4Life thinks this change is primarily focused at discouraging the Dreamstate build. If this is the case there has to be a better way to do it. Here is her evaluation of the new changes.
Starfall - Extra damage radius changed to 5 yards (down from 10). - A nerf but I still don't understand enough about how this spell works to voice much of an opinion on it.
Nature's Fury - No longer converts bonus healing into damage. - Not huge. This would make this talent useless in PvP, but leaves it still vary viable for Raiding.

Toon Update:
Graylo - I didn't play a whole lot over the weekend. I have a lot of family stuff coming up so my playtime will be limited. I did the first four bosses of ZA on Saturday, I wasn't able to get on early enough to try and finish it up on Sunday. Nothing special here I just got some more badges.

Graypal - He is really on the back burner now. I didn't do Kara with him because I was busy this weekend and I don't really have any other reason to play him right now. I did get a couple of heroic runs on him during the week and I am very close to revered with Sha'tar so that I can get the head enchant.

Grayfel - As is usually the case I had hoped to do more with him then I did. He is now two thirds of the way through level 52. I had hoped to get him to 53 but it didn't happen. I can really see the light at the end of the outland tunnel. I know that I am 8 levels away but i feel very close. His professions are doing ok. I think his mining is up to 269 and should easily be 300 by the time I hit outland. Jewelcrafting isn't going as well. I think I am up to 218 or so. I need a ton of [Aquamarine] to level it up and they were selling for 5 gold each over the weekend. I think I have some time to get it up but I hope to be 300 by the time I reach outland.

Alpha Leaks: My Comments.

The WoW community has been buzzing about the leaked talents and spells from the friends and family alpha. And as any responsible blogger I feel the need to cover it. However, I feel the need to preface my comments, because I don’t think there is any reason to get excited about what has been leaked for a couple of reasons.

1. We have no have no real way to determine what is real and what is fake. Yes, Media outlets have confirmed that some of it is correct with sources, and yes, Blizzard did give it a lot of credibility by forcing said media outlets to take it off their fansites. However, we don’t now what was confirmed. It is possible that two or three out of twenty were correct and the rest is just hopeful suggestions.

2. We are in the Alpha. We still have a long way to go until release. Even if all of these changes and additions are a 100% real, the chances of them making it to the release in their current form is slim to none.

3. Before patch 2.4 some patch notes were leaked. Some of them made it into the patch. Some of them never saw the light of day again.

I am treating the leaked information as possibilities for discussion. More along the lines of is this good for moonkin or not. Here is what I think. Please feel free to respond to my comments. I would like to know what others think.

New Talents and Spells
Nature's Fury - Converts 2/4/6/8/10% of your bonus healing into bonus spell damage. In addition, your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of applying the Nature's Fury debuff on the target. The Nature's Fury debuff increases Nature and Arcane damage done to the target by 2%. Lasts 10 sec. Stacks up to 3 times. – This seems to be two talents crammed together. Raiding moonkin have little or no +healing so the first half has no use for me but I could see where it would be helpful in PvP or a healer going Dreamstate. The second half is very interesting. This would improve my personal DPS along with any elemental Shaman and Arcane Mages. My main worry though is how many of those will w have in raid.

Starfall (Rank 1, Level 80, 866 mana, instant, 3 min cooldown) - You summon a flurry of stars from the sky on all targets within 30 yards of the caster, each doing 500 Arcane damage, and an additional 170 Arcane to all nearby targets within 10 yards. Maximum 20 stars. Lasts 10 sec. – I will admit that I am a little confused by this spell. It sounds like it does more damage quicker depending on how many people you have in the AoE. i.e. If you have 20 mobs in the area then they each take 500 from a Star then another +3000 from the splash of the other stars. If you only have 10 in the area then they each take 500 damage twice and splash damage over a longer period of time. A very interesting spell, but with a 3 minute cooldown it isn’t going to be all that useful in raiding.

Improved Moonkin Form - Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 100% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 10 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every few seconds. – Maybe I am reading this wrong but there is no chance that this will make it to release in current form. 100% haste would make all spells instant cast and reduce the GCD for spells down to 1 second. This means you could spam 10 instant Starfires in 10 seconds. The damage would be godly but it would kill our threat and mana. It does provide an interesting idea though. I always liked the idea of receiving mana from crits but getting haste could be a good thing to.

Owlkin Frenzy - Attacks done to you while in Moonkin form have a 5/10/15% chance to cause you to go into a Frenzy, increasing your spell haste by 25% and increasing your damage by 10%. Lasts 10 sec. – A very reasonable talent that I think has a chance of making it to release. It would primarily be a PvP talent but may have some uses in PvE.

Eclipse - When you critically hit with Starfire, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing damage done by Wrath by 10%. When you critically hit with Wrath, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing your critical strike chance with Starfire by 10%. Effect lasts 12 sec. – I’m sorry but this is the dumbest suggestion I have ever seen. Switching back and forth between spells will make casting more complicated. It could also cause mana and DPS issued due to Wrath’s higher mana cost and lack of buffs.

Typhoon – You summon a violent Typhoon that does 745 Nature damage when in contact with hostile targets, slowing their movement speed by ?% If hit twice from the same typhoon the enemy will be knocked back 5 yards. Typhoon will travel 20 yards and last 8 seconds. – Has potential as an anti-melee PvP spell but I don’t see much use for it in PvE. Knock backs could have problems with pulling other mobs and I am sure that a lot of mobs will be immune to it. I also remember reading that it had a fairly long cooldown.

Gale Winds - Increases damage done by your Hurricane and Typhoon spells by 25/50%, and increases the range of your Cyclone spell by 10/20%. – What can I say? A talent that buffs two mediocre spells. Unless Hurricane is buffed and/or Typhoon has some use that I am missing, this talent will be skipped by most.

Master Shapeshifter – Grants an effect which lasts while the druid is within the respected shapeshift form. Bear form – Increases physical damage by 4%, Cat form – Increases Critical Strike chance by 4%, Moonkin Form – Increases Spell Damage by 4%. Tree form – Increases Healing by 4%. – Interesting possibility. Since I would go that far in to the resto tree for Intensity anyway, this is a good pick up as well.

Changed:
I assume you know what the original talents and spells do. So I have only listed the changes.

Entangle Roots – Will now be castable indoors. – I like this change and have advocated for it for a while. Some non druids will hate this because it gives druids a viable instance CC, but I think they are over reacting. Entangle Roots is not like Sheep, Sap, or any of the other CC spells. All other CC completely takes the mob out of play. Entangle Roots only holds them in place. So CC a ranged class with it does nothing. I hope this makes it to release.

Hurricane – Cooldown removed. – Another good change that will help moonkin in those must AoE situations, but it is so mana intensive and unpowerful that it is not a huge change.

Improved Faerie Fire – Improves Spell Hit also now. - This would significantly improve its viability, but it isn’t hard for moonkin to hit cap. It is harder to hit cap for Mages and Warlocks but not unreasonable to expect it. I would assume that this change would have a greater impact on early raiding.

Nature’s Reach – Reduces threat by 30% - Frees up some points in the resto tree since we won’t have to pick up subtly anymore and it improves the over all threat reduction. Not a bad idea.

Brambles – Trents and thorns have a chance to daze for 3 sec. - This would probably make brambles viable for PvP. I don’t think it would help PvE at all though.

Dreamstate – Moved down a level. – Would help “Dreamstate” Healers use more points in the resto tree.

Imp MotW – Two points instead of 5 and increases affect by 40% instead of 35% - A nice improvement, but they need to really buff Mark of the Wild to make it a required buff.

Nature’s Focus – Moved down a level – No big deal. Just give you a way of advancing in the resto tree without putting points into a feral talent.

Subtlety - Moved down a level and only works on resto spells – Would have no impact on moonkin with the change to Nature’s Reach.

Toon Update:
Graylo: Was a little bit of a ruff week for the guild. Due to the holiday and other things our groups were a little light this week and we didn't try Vashj or get any of the BT bosses down. I didn't raid much of at all because I had family in town. So there is nothing really knew to say about graylo. We did do Hyjal last night and the [Hammer of Judgement] did drop but I passed it to a Shadow Priest. Its not that big of a deal because there are only a few of us in the guild that would use it. I will get it soon. The only other thing Graylo did over the weekend was make bandages. A couple of posts ago showed you a way to make money off of First Aid. Well this weekend I made over 1000 bandages and probably made close to 100g.

Graypal: Ran Kara with him and got enough badges to pick up the [Carved Witch Doctor's Stick]. Most of the sites I have seen say this is the best DPS wand for quite a while. Not much to say other than that

Grayfel: He was pretty active this weekend. He is now level 51 and climbing fast. My goal is to have him to 70 by the end of August. His mining is doing pretty well also. It is now up to 250. The only nodes I can't mine now are the Rich Thorium Veins and I shouldn't have a problem getting them. As I have said before my main goal is to get his mining to 300 by the time he is in outland so that he can pick rocks there. With 9 levels to go I don't think it will be a big problem. Jewelcrafting on the other hand is lagging behind. I it is up to 200 now and I had to buy a bunch of Truesilver to get it there. I am almost positive that I am going to have to drop some cash at some point to power level it to 300. Once I am in outland I don't think it will be a huge problem.

Spell Damage vs Spell Hit (For Moonkin)

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

This is the most accepted rule within the Moonkin community. I don’t think I have ever seen it argued. However, it isn’t uncommon to see questions on the forums regarding Spell Hit. The general rule of thumb has always been that one spell hit is equal to 1.2 spell damage and that you should maximize your spell hit as soon as possible. I don’t disagree with that but I would like to provide a little more detail to explain why.

Assumptions/Disclaimers:
1. Spell casts that crit can also miss, therefore Spell Hit and Spell Damage are equally affected by spell crit. So, for the purpose of this evaluation Spell Crit can be ignored.

2. Spell Haste does not impact the amount of damage caused by Spell Damage or Spell Hit. It only affects the speed at which the damage occurs. Therefore it affects both Spell Damage and Spell Hit equally and will not be included in this analysis.

3. This analysis has been written using Starfire but all moonkin spells are equally affected by Spell Hit and our available Spell Hit buffs. Therefore this analysis can be applied to Wrath and other Moonkin Spells.

4. Calculations are made assuming the caster is max level and the target is a skull level raid boss.

5. All calculations will assume that Balance of Power is maxed out.

Talents and other Buffs Affecting Spell Hit:
Balance of Power – Talent - Increases a spells chance to hit by 4%.
Inspiring Presence – Buff – 1% chance to hit. Draenei racial group buff if Driaenei is a Priest, Mage, or Shaman.
Totem of Wrath – Buff – Increased chance to hit by 3%.

General Spell Hit Info:
* A spells base chance to hit is determined by the caster’s level relative to the target’s level. A spell is less likely to hit if the target has a higher level then the caster. Conversely a spell is more likely to hit if the caster is a higher level then the target.
* A caster cannot improve his spell chance to hit above 99%.
* Skull level bosses in raids are considered to be 3 levels higher than the caster. Therefore the caster has a base chance to miss of 17%.
* One point of Spell Hit equals 0.07927% chance to hit. Put another way 12.615 spell hit equals a 1% chance to hit.

The Math:
The value of Spell Hit and Spell Damage are highly dependent on each other. The value of Spell Hit is largely determined by how much Spell Damage you have, because Spell Damage is plays a large part in how hard your spells hit. The value of Spell Damage affected by your Spell Hit because if you cast long enough, eventually as spell will miss. So we can reduce the damage caused by the miss rate to find how much your spell will hit for on average..

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

Damage = ((1 + 0.2)*1.1)*X, So if your hit chance is 95%, Then
Damage = ((1 + 0.2)*1.1)*0.95
Damage = 1.32*0.95 = 1.254 actual damage per point of Spell Damage with a 95% hit chance.

How much additional DPS will you receive from an additional point of Spell Hit?
First we need to figure out how much damage Starfire does when it doesn’t miss. It has two components, base spell damage and bonus spell damage. Base spell damage is the damage that comes with the trainable spell with no bonus from gear. A max rank Starfire can hit for between 550 and 646. It is increased by 10% because of Moonfury, so the average base spell damage for Starfire is 657.8. Bonus spell damage is what you receive from gear and is calculated on your character screen. It is modified based upon the base casting time of the spell and talents. Starfire has a Spell Damage Coefficient of 1, and it is modified by Wrath of Cenarius and Moonfury as I said before. So the damage of your average non-miss Starfire is equal to:

Damage = 657.8 + (Spell Damage)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1)
Damage = 657.8 + (1000)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1) = 1977.8, If you have 1000 Spell Damage

To get the damage of your average Starfire you have to include Hit. To do that, multiply the entire equation by your hit chance:

Damage = (657.8 + (Spell Damage)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(Hit Chance)
Damage = (657.8 + (1000)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(0.95) = 1878.91, If you have 1000 Spell Damage and a 95% hit chance.

Now, if we had one point of spell hit rating to the percentage then we increase the average damage per spell cast. To increase your hit chance by 1% you need 12.615 points of hit rating. So one point of Spell Hit increases your chance to hit by 1/1261.5 or 0.07927%. If you slip this into the equation you get the following results:

Damage = ((657.8 + (Spell Damage)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(Hit Chance + 0.0007927))
Damage = ((657.8 + (1000)*(1 + 0.2)*(1.1))*(0.95 + 0.0007927)) = 1880.48, If you have 1000 Spell Damage and a 25% base crit rate plus one more point of Spell Crit.

So from one point of Spell Hit you gain 1.568 actual damage with 1000 Spell Damage and 95% base Hit rate. Lets compare this value to the actual damage value I calculated for one additional point of Spell Damage.

1.568/1.254 = 1.25

So, at 1000 Spell Damage and 95% Hit rate, one additional point of Spell Hit is worth 1.25 points of Spell Damage.

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

Conclusions:
1. My results do confirm the relative value of one Spell Hit to be worth about 1.2 Spell Damage for your average raiding Moonkin with about 1000 to 1100 Spell damage.

2. Moonkin should start picking up Spell Hit very early in their raiding experience since it passes Spell Damage in value at around 600 Spell Damage. Moonkin should also try and Hit cap fairly early in their raiding experience since it pays to cap at about 750 Spell Damage. Both of these values are very easy to reach with out raiding. If you include normal raid buffs 99% raiding Moonkin should be past these levels of Spell damage.

3. Even the top tier of raiders need to worry about being really close to the hit cap. At the highest levels of Spell Damage, Spell Hit is significantly better than Spell Damage. Dropping a couple of points of Spell Hit for a little Spell Damage can be risky.

Additions thoughts on Spell Hit:
1. It has been suggested by some on the forums that you can drop a point or two from Balance of Power if you are 25 to 50 points over the Hit cap. It is true that if you are 25 points over the hit cap that an additional point in Subtlety, Imp FF or some other talent will server you better. However, I recommend against ever dropping points of Balance of Power. I say this because we really don’t have any other talents that significantly increase our DPS, and it is generally very easy to drop Spell Hit and increase other stats like Spell Damage and Spell Crit. If you are in a position where you have to make this choice, my first suggestion is to change all of your Hit gems to Crit or Haste. My second suggestion is that you look for lower level gear in Kara and other raids that is better than your current item if you exclude the Spell Hit from the item you currently have equipped.

2. Try and build a set of Spell Hit items and items without Spell Hit. I suggest this for a couple of reasons. First, it makes adding new pieces of gear to your set a lot easier. If a new piece pushes you over the Hit cap then you can switch around some of your other gear to lower your hit and increase your Crit and Spell Damage. Second, having a Draenei or a Elemental Shaman in your group will increase your sell hit and probably push you over the hit cap. In such a situation being able to change out a couple of items can increase your DPS.

3. Spell Hit only helps when you are fighting a mob that is a higher level then you are. Balance of Power will bring you up to the hit cap fighting a mob that is the same level as you. Plus, you don’t need much Spell Hit to Hit cap against a mob that is only one or two levels higher then you so you don’t need that much when instancing or doing raid trash. This is why I don’t ever put pure Spell Hit gems. Spell Hit may be more valuable against a raid boss but Spell Damage will help me in every fight including PvP.

Wrath of the Lich King News:
If you troll the forums and news sites you already know about the "Leaked" Talents and such. Obviously Blizzard wants to keep this stuff secret and have pressured many of the News sites to remove it from their sites and most have done so. If you would like to look at some of the "Leaked" info you can find it here. I do want to stress that this is a Wiki site so who knows how much is real. Also this is very early Alpha phase information. It is very likely that the real info will change before the release or may not be included at all. Don't get excited about what you see until we get more concrete info. That being said I will post my reaction to this info in the near future.

Toon Update:
Graylo - Raiding as usual. We ended up not getting Vashj down this week because we didn't have a good group for it. We tryied her on Thursday and did pretty well but had trouble getting the adds down quick enough. The difference would probably have been a shadow priest. An additional 15% for our warlocks and 5% for the rest of the raid is amazing. If you are a Shadow Priest looking for a guild. Click my Guild website link and App. We need more of them badly.
On a positive note we did get Shade of Akama down for a guild first kill. That fight is a joke. It took us a couple of trys to figure out the adds but once we did he went down with a quickness.

Graypal - Nothing really to say here. I didn't run kara with him and didn't get any heroics in.

Grayfel- Did a lot with him over the weekend. Got him up to level 47 and used up most of his Rested XP. His gear is pretty sad because I haven't really run any instance with him. I could go buy some from the AH but I don't really think it is needed. Anyway, He will be 60 in a month or two and will get tons of good gear. I think I have desided that I am not going to go to outland until he is 60 this time. I am doing this for a couple of reasons. First, I want to see WPL and EPL. I didn't do much in these areas with Graylo and none with Graypal. I have seen so much of the zones I have quested in so far it will be nice to see something new. Second, I hate grinding, and I had to grind in HFP a little bit with Graypal because I went there at 58 and some of the quests were not available until I hit 60. Third, the primary reason I have leved this guy is for gems. I want to make sure my mining is up to 300 before I get to outland and I am not sure I will make that if I go there early.