Shifting Perspectives: Moonkin in 3.02 and beyond, part 3
Ah, the glyph section. This is where things start to get a little hairy, because the bulk of arguing about the right balance DPS rotation hinges a lot on the glyphs you've got equipped and the type of fight you're doing. But first, some of what I think are going to be less important glyphs in the great scheme of things:- Glyph of Entangling Roots: Great for solo work and some dungeon work (if a mob can be safely rooted somewhere without attracting attention from a patrol).
- Glyph of Hurricane: Eh. Not really all that impressive, and I'm kind of stumped as to where or even how this will be put to good use outside of battlegrounds (most obviously Alterac Valley) while defending against a rush.
- Glyph of Innervate: Depending on how you typically use Innervate, this is either a Balance or Resto glyph, leaning heavily toward Resto. Most Balance Druids typically use Innervate for their own DPS unless there's a raid emergency, and with the current mana efficiency of Resto, I'd have to say this is typically going to be a Resto glyph (if it sees extensive use at all). There are only three classes -- Druids, Mages, and Priests -- for whom Spirit exists in sufficient quantity on their gear to make Innervate worthwhile anyway. This may wind up depending a lot on how good the Replenishment buff is over a lengthy raid fight.
- Glyph of Starfall: As a commenter on the Wowhead thread points out, Starfall limits you to no more than 20 stars regardless of the spell's duration, so the DPS gain from this is probably minimal at best.
- Glyph of Wrath: Another big eh. Very good for soloing work if you just nuke things down without bothering to Root them, and highly useful for PvP, but unlikely to find much application in PvE dungeon or raid content .
- Glyph of Insect Swarm: Insect Swarm is already the most mana-efficient DoT in the game -- this raises that efficiency to new heights but removes the very useful -3% hit component on its target. Is your guild dependent on that? In early raiding, you may not have as much wiggle room on this as you will later with everything on farm, and your raid leader's probably not going to be happy if your tanks need every possible advantage. With that said, at 70 when you'll have only two glyph slots available, this still isn't anywhere near the DPS increase provided by the following two glyphs --
- Glyph of Starfire: Yes, this indefinitely extends a preexisting Moonfire. Yes, this means that as long as you can keep getting Starfire off on a regular basis, you may very well only have to hit your Moonfire button once at the beginning of the fight and never hit it again.
- Glyph of Moonfire: This is very, very big, and essentially required for PvE purposes, especially as the DoT portion of Moonfire gains almost three times as much benefit from your spell damage as the initial hit does. Take this with Glyph of Starfire. Pop your trinkets as you apply the first Moonfire hit. Refresh it as necessary with Starfire. Point at boss. Laugh. This is the same thing resto Druids used to do to get crazy numbers on Lifebloom ticks, and I confirmed in the beta that, while it still doesn't work for Lifebloom, it DOES work for Moonfire, at least for the moment.
My guild's moonkin is currently looking at this as a potential general-purpose PvE raid spec at 80 but isn't sold on it. The sheer bloat of the tree in its existing form right now should be fairly obvious, and a number of Druid bloggers are hoping that many necessary talents (particularly Earth and Moon) will be downsized to free up points for a more reasonable PvE spec.
And I don't know if we have any Balance theorycrafters out there, but if you saw the earlier link on increased moonkin DPS from a PTR tester, you may have noticed a small note there the poster that has probably occured to most Balance players. My sense of things is the amount of +haste you're likely to see on Wrath gear -- and you will see a great deal of it -- is inherently prejudicial toward Starfire, rather than Wrath rotations. The global cooldown can never be reduced beyond 1 second, but assuming you have a 5/5 Starlight Wrath and 3/3 Nature's Grace, any crit you get will shave the cast time of Wrath down to 1 second anyway, with the unfortunate result of completely wasting the +haste itemization on your gear. Starfire will never have that problem, benefits extremely well from +haste, and is needed anyway to refresh the Moonfire DoT assuming you have Glyph of Starfire.
So for no other reason than the unfortunate issue with Wrath and upcoming itemization, you will probably want to continue an Insect Swarm + Moonfire + Starfire rotation, or Moonfire + Starfire at higher levels of gear. However, on high mobility encounters, Eclipse is a worthwhile talent to take in order to ensure that you get the most benefit from whatever spell you have the time to cast -- i.e.Wrath is going to be better DPS in any situation where you're moving constantly (Wrath is technically better DPS than Starfire period, which is why it's better for 5-mans and trash, but its mana cost makes it lower DPM and thus unappealing for most boss fights). This does require a lot of attention to your procs and will probably also require an addon like DoTimer to ensure you're not wasting global cooldowns having to refresh Moonfire. Happy nuking!






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Robert M Oct 16th 2008 4:45PM
I really hate the insect swarm glyph. I hope that most raid leaders will appreciate the loss of dps for the utility on the tanks here. Even in farm content, the moonkin is gonna pull the dps to maintain position in the group that I have already begged our moonkin to avoid the glyph at all for the sake of the tanks, of which I'm one.
Eric Oct 17th 2008 2:19AM
Great article would be great to see a leveling spec and pvp spec!
Rob Oct 16th 2008 4:51PM
This is great, along with the rest of the talent reviews, but what would be even better would be an example talent build for soloing, for raiding, for pvp, etc. Everyone knows it's not going to be perfect or optimal DPS, but almost anything is better than nothing.
Bobbo Oct 16th 2008 5:08PM
Re: bloat, note a few changes that didn't make the patch but should make wotlk. In short, we should at least get 4 more talent points to spread around since they're looking to move both Moonfury and Earth & Moon down to 3 points each (vs. 5 each now), so that's at least something. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10638063159&pageNo=1&sid=2000#13
Shanic Oct 16th 2008 5:22PM
It's worth noting that the Innervate Glyph will work even if you cast it on yourself. You get both effects. I have tested this in Beta.
Neodarkmatter Oct 16th 2008 5:38PM
Shanic: Innervate Glyph would be helpful if you did run out of Mana and already used a Mana pot.
I cleared Kara last night and Earth & Moon completely devastated everything we encountered. The combination of Starfall and Hurricane has been helpful in larger pulls since they can be used at the same time but Starfall can also accidentally pull other mobs as well. I accidentally pulled Attunement when I used Starfall on the final mob pull.
Hunahpu Oct 16th 2008 5:48PM
Can anyone confirm that the +3% haste from the improved moonkin aura is properly being applied? With limited testing last night, neither I nor my party members were seeing any difference in haste on our character screen, buffs, nor was it noticeable while casting. I'm wondering if I'm missing something.
Very nice overview of the new talents, and glyphs in particular. Thank you!
Kymali Oct 16th 2008 6:39PM
Check your spell tooltips they should show the reduced cast time from the haste effect. If you have CF it should show 1.41 in Moonkin for wrath, if you don't have CF then around 1.45 (Starfire is 2.82 with both)
asgaroth Oct 17th 2008 12:34AM
Hey there,
Yeah it works.
Hunahpu Oct 17th 2008 10:31AM
Thank you, I looked at the spell tooltips and tested it out again last night and it is indeed applying correctly.
vhdblood Oct 16th 2008 7:14PM
I did a lot of DPS testing last night, and even with 885 spell power, wrath spam does less DPS, as you have to stop to recast Insect Swarm, therefore lowering DPS. My number came out as follows (Note: This is popping neither of my trinkets.) :
MF>SF - 1278 DPS
Mf>Wrath - 1250 DPS
IS>wrath...>IS>... - 1120 DPS
IS>Starfire...>IS>... - 1150 DPS
This also means that there's no reason to take Nature's Splendor, as Moonfire is always up with Starfire spam. Also, Eclipse is so dependent on switching casts quickly, lag is a major issue, so it isn't a viable talent as of right now.
Anyway, this is all opinion, but I thought you might like to know my personal experiences.
skarlet Oct 17th 2008 9:48AM
But most raid rotations (atleast pre-3.0.2) included both IS and MF. With the IS glyph how do those rotations compare with an ISx1 MFx1 wrathx6 (depending on haste) or IS MF SFx3 rotation.
Zali Oct 17th 2008 1:55PM
Grrr... I wish this this had hit the blog the day before patch when I had my free respec to work with.
Really first rate write ups though Allison.
Lori Oct 17th 2008 7:22PM
Great post. Thanks for the moonkin love :) I think I am finally ready to respec after the patch.
Echoris Oct 18th 2008 2:44AM
A great post, very insightful.
A valuable resource for those new to Balance Spec post 3.0.2 as well as seasoned Boomkin.
My one complaint would be the lack of write-ups pertaining to Moonkin spec'd Druids found here on Wow Insider.
I love the blog and read it daily, but I feel that I find more information on each of the other 29 specs in the game and less on my beloved Balance spec.
I'd LOVE to see a weekly blog on WI pertaining to all things Balance Druid, hell I'd even volunteer to write it..
Any other Moonkin out there feel the same way?
Lunadia Oct 19th 2008 10:13AM
Hi there, first time commenting. I had to take the time to say thank you for the moonkin write-up. I have been checking every day for it. I agree with Echoris and would love to see more about Moonkins, but I think we are still the minority spec for druids, so I understand the lack of love.
I am very interested in reading more about how the various talents work for pvp vs. enviro... I am also trying to understand the difference between Vengence (what is crit strike damage BONUS?) and Moonfury (damage done) with the new gear stats.
Thanks to all the moonkin commentors - we need to let WI know that we are out here!
Celamorne Oct 21st 2008 8:20AM
Glyph of Starfire: Is Moonfire subject to diminishing returns on this spell? I noticed in Hyjal the other night that I would apply the MF and proceed with Starfire. The MF started to go faster, and if left alone would have been faster than a Starfire eventually. The only reason I ask is because I saw "you may very well only have to hit your Moonfire button once at the beginning of the fight and never hit it again." So is this essentially false? Would you have to actually hit the MF button again to reset the 12 second CD?
This is kinda late I know, but I'm just wondering.
asgaroth Oct 21st 2008 10:36AM
I think what you experienced was a phenomena of it going faster because you didn't have to apply the initial strike....when you use starfire glyph. Keep in mind that it refreshes moonfire up to nine seconds, it contines to tick through the starfire hit. Whereas, when you cast moonfire, you have to wait for the ticks to start, before it counts down (i hope you follow me on this). So no, there are not diminising returns on moonfire. if you were to cast it on a mob 10 times, it would (theoreticall) hit 10 times and tick its entire length.
Mixplit Oct 21st 2008 2:13PM
One thing I noticed about Owlkin frenzy. It procs a lot if your AOEing large numbers of mobs down. This actually lets you pretty effectively AOE grind. We'll see if that still works on wrath mobs. But in BC I can easily burn a sizable group down. Owlkin frenzy procs make it much faster.