Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your Balance Druid at 80
by Allison Robert 
Jan 20th 2009 at 6:00PM
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we start to wonder where the hell all the +hit from "Burning Crusade" went.Greetings, fellow Druids, and welcome to another installment on Wrath gear at 80, and this week it's the boomkins' turn. Next week I'm going to tackle Bear gear at 80; Dan O'Halloran will take care of our Cat colleagues.
As a number of people have observed, it's tougher to get +hit-capped pre-raid in leather as opposed to cloth, so you're going to find an awful lot of cloth on the list. I realize this represents a new and exciting development in the history of moonkin itemization. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. That's French for "We're screwed."
Supplementary reading:
- Elitist Jerks' threads on Balance trinkets, Moonkin DPS spreadsheet, general issues, and Balance talents and specs.
- As a note here concerning the recent news on Improved Faerie Fire (in a nutshell, you'll get the 3% crit no matter whose FF is up on a target, even a feral's), Gray Matter on why the talent's worth taking, and Macbook on the raid circumstances in which it might not be.
If you've read the Restoration piece, you'll be familiar with how I'm organizing gear for these guides, but for the sake of reference:
Best overall: If there's one piece that's just better than anything else you can get, I'll have it listed here. Most of these will cost you Emblems of Heroism or a truckload of gold, however.
Best drop/s: Self-explanatory, the best (typically heroic) 5-man drops you can get.
Best quest piece: Also self-explanatory, but fair warning -- if you're looking to get most of your pieces outside of 5-mans, many of the quests rewarding the best pieces are linked to dungeons (usually normal) or group quests.
Best faction piece: If a quartermaster offers a usable piece, it'll be here. You'll get convenience at the cost of having to deal with pieces that are usually a dog's breakfast of caster stats, though.
Runner-up: This is kind of a catch-all term for good, usable, or even excellent pieces you can get by other means. If there's a blue or epic BoE piece floating around the AH, or a workhorse 5-man drop you can also use, it'll be here. Some of the pieces in the runner-up slot may seem odd for inclusion there (e.g. epics like raid BoE's), but as far as I'm concerned, if it's going to cost you a metric ton of gold to get them, they are firmly optional. You do not need to be equipped in full epics to raid as long as you're not lazy about enchants and gems.
Enchant: Just in case you have any gold left after gearing up. You won't, but it's nice to dream!
With respect to item weight, I'm prioritizing +hit, then +spellpower, +haste, then +crit, in accordance with balance theorycraft concerning maximum-DPS builds.
HEAD
Best drop: Battlemap Hide Helm, off Prince Keleseth in heroic Utgarde Keep.
Best quest piece: Cowl of the Vindictive Captive, from the quest Vengeance Be Mine! in Utgarde Pinnacle if you're hit-capped. If you're not, use The Argent Skullcap, from the quest The Crusaders' Pinnacle.
Best faction piece: Helm of the Majestic Stag, available at honored with the Kirin Tor. This is really not a Balance piece, but it's the only helm you'll be able to get from a faction if all else fails.
Runner-up: Hat of Wintry Doom, a BoE piece from Tailoring.
Enchant: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, available at revered with the Kirin Tor.
Meta: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. Some prefer the Ember Skyflare, however.
NECK
Best overall: Encircling Burnished Gold Chains, available for 25 emblems of heroism.
Best drop: Necklace of Taldaram, from Prince Taldaram in heroic Old Kingdom.
Best quest piece: Emeline's Locket, from the quest The Admiral Revealed in Icecrown.
Best faction piece: n/a. You're out of luck here.
Runner-up: Titanium Spellshock Necklace, a Jewelcrafting BoE.
SHOULDERS
Best drop: Spaulders of Krystallus, from Krystallus in heroic Halls of Stone.
Best quest piece: Mantle of the Flesh Giant, from the quest The Flesh Giant Champion in Icecrown. If you prefer +crit to +haste, use Shoulderpads of the Adventurer, from the quest Halls of Stone in (where else?) Halls of Stone.
Best faction piece: n/a. Another dead slot.
Runner-up: Dark Runic Mantle, a BoE drop from heroic Halls of Stone, or Purehorn Spaulders, a Leatherworking BoE.
Enchant: Greater Inscription of the Storm, available at exalted with the Sons of Hodir, unless you're a level 400+ Inscriptionist and have access to Master's Inscription of the Storm.
Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives, Guides, Features, Analysis / Opinion, Items, Wrath of the Lich King, Instances, Tips, Raiding, Enchants
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Macbook Jan 20th 2009 6:19PM
Great post, and thanks for the link.
I know my not taking it has gotten people thinking I'm retarded, but, to each his own!
Macbook, http://Moonkin.info
nbcaffeine Jan 20th 2009 6:30PM
How about spam, eggs, sausage, and spam?
NR Jan 20th 2009 7:00PM
Hate to say this, but I've been a Boomkin forever. I hit 80 and had no problem getting hit capped. No a single gem/enchant or the like needed either. Sorry, but I think this article is written by someone who doesn't play a balance druid, or at the very least not by someone who is any good at one.
The Doomkin Jan 20th 2009 7:06PM
I agree. I'm entirely in leather and no problem getting the hit cap. Maybe the article writer forgets about talents?
Fairly poor article imo
Allison Robert Jan 20th 2009 7:48PM
I realize the sentence structure implies that you can't be hit-capped in leather (I'll go change it), but otherwise I'm not sure where you're seeing that it's impossible to do so within the article. I just don't think that the average player reaching 80 leveling in Wrath greens and a few quest/dungeon blues is likely to be fully hit-capped without recourse to 2/2 Balance of Power, some cloth pieces, and/or at least some manner of +hit allocation on the neck, rings, weapon/offhand, and trinket slots.
Unless you're talking about the soft hit cap between 3/3 IFF or Misery, which is fine, but a little misleading as you're only hit-capped insofar as you have a Shadow Priest or 3/3 IFF in a raid.
I do not have the privilege of playing balance as a raider, so I do appreciate input from experienced balance players. Do you mind shooting over an Armory link? If there's any piece I've missed I'll add it to the post.
Vertidingo Jan 20th 2009 7:16PM
Same. I keep reducing the amount of hit on my gear bc i'm never missing. IMO it is a lot easier to hit a reasonable cap than it was in BC.
Allison Robert Jan 20th 2009 7:30PM
If you're to the point of wasting +hit allocation on gear that is otherwise a clear damage upgrade, you could make a reasonable case for dropping a point in Balance of Power in favor of a damage or mana efficiency talent elsewhere.
It's not normally something I'd suggest - and it is, obviously, dependent on whether it's truly a net DPS gain, subject to your gear - but the Balance tree still suffers from a fair amount of bloat, and most raiding moonkin are jettisoning talents that they would otherwise have taken.
joey_da_bubbles Jan 20th 2009 7:45PM
or.... we can all just say screw boomkins and go resto :) WoW already has enough DPS....most servers need more heals. so i say all druids respec to resto!!! i just wish Healtrees could use entangling roots in tree form. :(
xhrisman77 Jan 20th 2009 9:11PM
or you can spec resto and shut up telling others what to do
h8rain Jan 21st 2009 9:32AM
Thank you for this listing of gear. I have always been a feral tank, so I always passed on caster leather. I am not very happy with the state of bears (gear and mitigation is what I am displeased with, threat for the most part I am good with), so I was thinking about going moonkin. In our guild raids, I am always asked to DPS, because our pally tanks are dominating the tank spots. I personally dislike melee DPS, so I thought I would give moonkin a try.
This saved me some time on wowhead. Thanks.
graylo Jan 21st 2009 12:25PM
Thanks for the Links, but I have a couple of points.
Meta Gem DPS:
Any Moonkin that suggests the Ember Skyflare Diamond is better then the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond needs to have there head examined. Its not even close. The comparison is like saying my old D2 College basketball team could beat an NBA team.
The only way to make them close is to use ridiculously low numbers. For instance lets take a moonkin with only 1300 Spell Power raid buffed, and 20% crit chance. Any moonkin trying to raid should have much more of both of these stats fully raid buffed.
In this situation the 3% increase to crit damage is equivalent to 37 spell power for Starfire and 32 spell power for Wrath. Now I know that not all of our spells can crit. For my raids about 80% of my damage can crit. So if you want to reduce these numbers further Starfire is equivalent to about 29.5 spell Power and Wrath is equivalent to about 27 spell power.
Those numbers by them selves almost eclipse the benefit of the Ember Skyflare diamond and we haven’t even included the 21 crit rating yet.
For a normal moonkin with about 2000 sp and 30% crit, the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is equivalent to around 50 spell power.
For a well geared moonkin like me with 2500 sp and 45% crit, the chaotic Skyflare diamond is equivalent to around 77 spell power.
Meta Gem Mana:
That is just the DPS look. Some of you may be thinking that the Ember Skyflare Diamond is better for your mana. That is not true either. Lets look at another example.
Lets say you’re a moonkin with 800 int, 20% crit, and 11% haste fully raid buffed.
The Ember diamond will increase your int by 16. This will increase your MP5 by 1.6 and your mana pool by 240. I think we can all agree that this isn’t much.
The Chaotic diamond on the other hand will make you crit more and therefore have more mana returned. The math is complicated so I won’t get into it, but with a mana pool of just 12000 each crit returns 240 mana. The additional 21 crit rating on the chaotic diamond is equivalent to 1.6 Mp5 for starfire and 3.8 mp5 for wrath. A that is just for the poorly geared moonkin I’ve described.
For a well geared moonkin like myself the numbers get worse, but well geared moonkin aren’t having mana issues.
In short there is no reason for a moonkin to use the ember diamond unless they are cheap or lazy.
Graylo
Hammer Jan 21st 2009 4:40PM
Thanks a lot for the great blog on gear. I think the people who say it's easy to become hit capped in all leather are probably clothies trying to prevent moonkins from rolling on their gear :) But seriously, it seems like the vast majority of leather gear I've been finding has crit and haste, but not much hit. So it's great to have a list of gear with + hit.
And the link to graymatter's blog about how +hit and haste are so important was great too.
Snarfer Jan 26th 2009 6:33PM
As stated, you can get hitcapped with leathergear, it just takes the right pieces. However, doing so will greatly lower your stats on other issues.
Its easy to tell this passage was done by someone who never played a moonkin before. Graylo has several points as well as Macbook when it comes to IFF. Its more about personal choice and raid comp. However, if people are serious about getting into moonking, there are other forums out there besides EJ.
The Moonkin Repository as well as the Wow Druid forums actually hold several moonkin in its presence with knowledge (Especially Murmurs who is the moonkin god so to speak) are always waiting to answer, theorycraft and give advice.
Thon Mar 11th 2009 11:47AM
I use the Silent Spectator Spaulders, which drop from Svala Sorrowgrave in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. They are a fairly useful pre-raiding shoulder item in my opinion.