Noblebeastx
07-03-10, 02:58 AM
The core of the spec will include the following talents:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid#ZyCn87IOkWH8,kdJ,9901
This leaves 5 points. Fill them in the following order:
Intensity: put points in as necessary to alleviate any mana concerns (unlikely that you'll need this unless you're quite undergeared and missing Replenishment). Note: if you're not using 2T9, you should first move two points from Improved Moonfire to Moonglow to get more mana, before taking Intensity.
Gale Winds: take this if you have any interest in speccing for AoE DPS; this is an enormous boost.
Typhoon: take this if you like having another instant spell to press, basically. See below for more on potential uses.
Improved Insect Swarm: Best remaining single-target DPS talent.
Brambles, Owlkin Frenzy, or Genesis: All of these are very tiny DPS increases. Put any leftover points into one of them of your choice after you've exhausted the talent tree of anything else you need.
If you need Gale Winds and Typhoon, and still want the 3rd point in IIS, you can potentially drop one point in Balance of Power to get it (raising the hit cap), depending on what your gear options are. This is a small DPS increase at best; check the spreadsheet if you think it might be useful for you.
Finally, there's the option to drop 2 points in iGotW or Furor to get Nature's Focus. This is a tradeoff between pushback resistance and the tiny DPS increase from the other talents. Furor provides slightly more DPS and regen per point than iGotW. But note that you want iGotW if there are no other Druids in your raid (all other specs currently take the talent), or if you want to use the Clearcast-forcing trick described below.
If you are in icc raiding something like this build may be better:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid#P9c5pseYjbTlz,krJ,9901
~Talent details~
Genesis: Affects Hurricane and Tranquility. Stacks additively with Moonfury, Improved Moonfire, Glyph of Moonfire, Glyph of Insect Swarm, and Gale Winds.
Starlight Wrath: Applies before any haste effects.
Moonglow: Mana cost is rounded down after multiplying. Applies after [Spark of Hope] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45703)-type effects.
Improved Moonfire: This damage bonus, Glyph of Moonfire, Moonfury, and Genesis all stack additively. The crit% bonus does affect DoT tick crits with the 2T9 bonus (PTR).
Nature's Grace: This procs off Wrath and Starfire when the spell completes, which is slightly before it does damage and shows a crit in the combat log (due to travel time for Wrath, but also a slight bit of latency in the case of Starfire). This does not proc from Hurricane or Moonfire DoT (2T9) crits, but it does proc from Starfall.
Nature's Reach: Stacks additively with the range reduction from [Glyph of Focus] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44928) to give Starfall a 21 yard range.
Vengeance: Due to the odd critical bonus stacking rules, the total damage you'll see on a crit with this and a Chaotic meta is 209%.
Celestial Focus: Multiplies with all other haste bonuses.
Insect Swarm: The 3% hit debuff on the target does not stack with the Hunter spell Scorpid Sting. It stacks additively with all other forms of avoidance.
Improved Insect Swarm: As with all damage debuffs, Wrath checks for this on arrival at the target. As with all crit% player buffs, Starfire checks this when its cast completes. The Wrath buff stacks multiplicatively with other damage bonuses.
Moonfury: Stacks additively with Eclipse (Wrath), Glyph of Moonfire, Improved Moonfire, Genesis, and the 4T9 bonus.
Moonkin Form: The mana return does not proc from Hurricane, Starfall, or Moonfire DoT (2T9) crits. The crit bonus does not stack with the Shaman talent Elemental Oath.
Improved Moonkin Form: The haste buff grants both melee and spell haste, and does not stack with the Paladin talent Swift Retribution.
Improved Faerie Fire: The hit debuff does not stack with the Priest talent Misery. The crit buff is active when any Faerie Fire, not just your own, is on the target.
Owlkin Frenzy: This can proc from physical or magical damage, but many boss abilities which hit the player frequently (e.g. Vezax's Profound Darkness or Mimiron's Rapid Burst) do not proc it.
Wrath of Cenarius: This adds 0.2 (Starfire) or 0.1 (Wrath) to the spell's spellpower coefficient. It does not apply to the effective spellpower granted by [Idol of the Shooting Star] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40321).
Eclipse: Unlike Nature's Grace, this procs when the associated Wrath or Starfire crit is processed on the server and appears in the combat log. In the case of Wrath which has a travel time, this results in a significant delay between the Nature's Grace proc and the Eclipse proc.
Force of Nature: If casting this immediately after an instant, you have to press the spell key and then click a targeting reticle in the world frame, losing a small amount of time. The Treants will attack whichever mob hates you the most, and can be easily redirected with the pet bar. They have 90% reduction against AoE damage in PvE, allowing them to survive some boss abilities. Bloodlust and Battle Shout, among other things, will particularly improve their DPS.
Earth and Moon: The personal 6% damage buff multiplies with all other buffs. The 13% damage debuff also multiplies with all other buffs (including the 3% buff from this same talent), and does not stack with the Warlock spell Curse of the Elements or the Death Knight disease Ebon Plague. As with other damage debuffs, spells check for presence of this debuff when the arrive at their target and log damage.
Starfall: This will not fire stars when your character is stunned, and the buff will drop entirely if you shift into a Feral form. The worst use is against a single target, where you only get 10 stars. Against multiple targets, you will get 20 stars. If those targets are tightly clumped, you will additionally benefit from splash damage.
Improved Mark of the Wild and Furor: These stack multiplicatively with each other and with Kings.
Omen of Clarity: Has a 3.5/60 = 5.83% chance to proc on spellcast. Does not proc from and is not consumed by shapeshifting. Gift of the Wild, if cast on 25 people, has a very high chance of proccing this.
Master Shapeshifter: The Moonkin Form bonus multiplies with all other damage bonuses
~Resulting Spell Coefficients and Damage Multipliers~
Some useful numbers to have, when fully talented and raid buffed.
Overall damage multiplier: 1.13 (Earth and Moon) * 1.04 (Master Shapeshifter) * 1.06 (Earth and Moon) * 1.03 (Sanctified Retribution) = 1.283.
Haste multiplier, before haste rating: 1.05 (Wrath of Air) * 1.03 (Celestial Focus) * 1.03 (Improved Moonkin Form) = 1.114. Multiply this by (1 + HasteRating/3279) to obtain final haste ratio.
Crit Chance, before Intellect and crit rating: 5% (Moonkin Form) + 5% (Improved Scorch) 3% (Totem of Wrath) + 3% (Improved Faerie Fire) = 16%. Adding in 4% (Nature's Majesty), 3% (Improved Insect Swarm) and 10% (Improved Moonfire) gives 20% for Wrath, 23% for Starfire, and 26% for Moonfire, added to whatever you see reported in your character sheet when out of form.
Effective Starfire coefficient: (1 (base) + 0.2 (Wrath of Cenarius)) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.1 (Moonfury) = 1.694.
Effective Wrath coefficient: (2/3.5 (base) + 0.1 (Wrath of Cenarius)) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.1 (Moonfury) * 1.03 (Improved Insect Swarm) = 0.976.
Effective Insect Swarm coefficient, per tick: 0.2 (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.3 (Glyph of Insect Swarm) = 0.333.
Effective Moonfire coefficient, direct damage: 1.5/3.5 * (1.5/3.5 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15)) (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * (1 + 0.1 (Moonfury) + 0.1 (Improved Moonfire) - 0.9 (Glyph of Moonfire)) = 0.0575.
Effective Moonfire coefficient, per tick: 12/15*(12/15 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15) / 4) (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * (1 + 0.1 (Moonfury) + 0.1 (Improved Moonfire) + 0.75 (Glyph of Moonfire)) = 0.326.
~Glyphs~
Major Glyphs:
Before 3.3.3: In most situations you will use [Glyph of Starfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40916), [Glyph of Moonfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40923), and [Glyph of Starfall] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40921).
[Glyph of Insect Swarm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40919) can be a small DPS increase, but it removes the 3% miss debuff, which is a nearly-unique raid debuff (Hunters can provide it, but at a large DPS cost). On any content that's not very easy, you probably provide the most benefit to raid by leaving it out. But if you replace [Glyph of Starfall] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40921) with it, you can gain roughly 2% DPS.
After 3.3.3: Always use [Glyph of Starfall] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40921). There are 4 other potential Glyph options: [Glyph of Starfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40916), [Glyph of Moonfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40923), [Glyph of Focus] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44928), and [Glyph of Insect Swarm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40919).
[Glyph of Starfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40916) and [Glyph of Moonfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40923) buff your Moonfire DoT. If you're using the 2T9 set bonus, these will be the best two. Otherwise, they do slightly less DPS than the other options.
[Glyph of Focus] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44928) adds good single-target DPS. But it reduces the range of Starfall (to 21 yards with Nature's Reach), so you'll have to decide whether it's usable on a per-encounter basis. Anytime you frequently get to use Starfall on multiple targets during an encounter, you definitely want to use it.
[Glyph of Insect Swarm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40919) can be a small DPS increase, but it removes the 3% miss debuff, which is a nearly-unique raid debuff (Hunters can provide it, but at a large DPS cost). On any content that's not very easy, you probably provide the most benefit to raid by applying that debuff.
The result is that our Glyph choice is slightly complex. I'll break it down here:
1) If you have the 2T9 bonus, Glyph Starfall/Starfire/Moonfire. If you want to apply the 3% miss debuff, cast Insect Swarm, otherwise leave it out of your rotation entirely.
2) If you do not that have the 2T9 bonus (for example, if you've upgraded to 4T10):
2A) If you do not need the Insect Swarm debuff (you are the second Moonkin or are doing content for which it's unnecessary), Glyph Starfall/Focus/Insect Swarm, and leave Moonfire out of your rotation entirely.
2B) If you do need the Insect Swarm debuff, Glyph Starfall/Focus/Starfire, unless Focus causes range problems at the fight you're doing. In that case, Glyph Starfall/Starfire/Moonfire.
Minor Glyphs: none of these add any DPS, so it's entirely up to personal taste. [Glyph of Typhoon] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44922) is the only one that affects combat mechanics, but it's still up to you whether you prefer it or not. [Glyph of the Wild] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43335) can save a little bit of mana if you ever have to rebuff people during a fight, or if you're trying to force a Clearcast during combat.
~Gear~
Stats
In roughly descending order of importance.
Hit rating:
26.23 hit rating gives 1% to hit with spells. If you have less than a 100% chance to hit your target, hit rating is the strongest DPS stat per point by a wide margin. As a result, you can expect that your optimal gear/gem setup will always place you at hit cap (see below). Beyond the cap, additional hit rating adds nothing and is wasted.
Spellpower:
Improves all of our damaging spells. See the coefficients in the above section on spells.
Haste rating:
32.79 haste rating gives 1% spell haste. Below the cap (see below), all of our spells feel the full value of haste. Above it, Wrath and instants no longer benefit from haste when Nature's Grace is active, but all other spells still benefit fully. Haste is a very strong stat under the cap (it will usually be beneficial to try to reach the cap, which is often easy to do in current gear), and even above it continues to be one of our best DPS stats.
Critical strike rating:
45.9 crit rating gives 1% to crit. With Vengeance and a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, crits with our main nukes do 2.09 times the damage of non crits. In addition to increasing the average damage of our spells due to more frequent crits, it provides two other DPS benefits: it increases the uptime of Nature's Grace, and shorten the average time required to proc an Eclipse (although both of these turn out to be minor terms in the marginal value of crit rating).
Crit is typically stronger than haste provided that you are over the soft haste cap, but still weaker than spellpower. Above the Lunar crit cap, crit becomes roughly equal in value to post-cap haste (remember to take [Idol of Lunar Fury] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47670) or [Idol of the Lunar Eclipse] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50457) into account when computing your cap).
In addition, crit provides a mana benefit due to increased proc rate of the Moonkin Form regen.
Intellect:
Intellect provides 0.006% to crit per point, and 0.12 spellpower per point with Lunar Guidance. With Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild, and Furor, it provides 0.0074% (135 points per 1% crit, roughly 1/3 of a crit rating) and 0.148 spellpower. This makes Int a weak, but not insignficant, DPS stat.
Similarly, with these talents, one point of Intellect increases your maximum mana by 18.5, your regen from Replenishment by 0.185 MP5, and your regen from 3/3 Dreamstate by 0.123 MP5
Spirit:
Spirit provides 0.3 spellpower per point with Improved Moonkin Form. With Blessing of Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild, it provides 0.337 spellpower. This makes it a weak DPS stat, very similar to Int.
Spirit and Int will both increase your natural regen, which scales like (0.016725 * sqrt(Int) * Spi) MP5. Int will increase the magnitude of your Moonkin Form proc by 0.37/point.
~Changes in stat values (caps)~
Some stats dramatically change in value at a certain point. Here's a list of these values with all typical raid buffs. You can also check WrathCalcs to see your exact caps in any setup.
Hit: Against a level 83 target, with all buffs, we need 263 hit rating (10%) to cap at 100% (Alliance with a Draenei in their party need 237 hit rating (9%)). Against any other target, we reach the cap with talents alone.
Haste: The haste cap is the point at which the GCD hits 1.0s with Nature's Grace active. This requires 1.5/(1.03*1.03*1.05*1.2) - 1 = 12.21% haste, or 401 haste rating. Without Wrath of Air Totem, the cap becomes 585 haste rating.
Note that for reasons related to latency, the change in value at the soft cap occurs over a small range rather than instantaneously (see "Casting Mechanics" below for more detail). Don't obsess over hitting 401 exactly.
Crit: With enough crit rating your crit chance during Lunar Eclipse will hit 100%, reducing the value of subsequent crit rating. Will all talents/buffs except Focus Magic, this occurs at 1575.5 - Int/3, where Int is your Armory value (1254.2 - Int/3 if using 2T8). Note that those values include crit rating from an Idol proc, so you'll probably want to subtract 200 or 220 to see how much you actually need from ordinary gear to hit the cap.
~Stat priority~
Stat priority for DPS will almost always run in the following order:
Hit rating (to cap) >> Haste rating (below GCD cap) = Spellpower > Crit rating (below Lunar cap) > Haste rating (above GCD cap) >= Crit rating (above Lunar cap) >> Intellect > Spirit.
~Gems~
In general, gem [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113) in all sockets (or [Veiled Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40153)/[Rigid King's Amber] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40125) to make the hit cap), save for two [Purified Dreadstone] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40133) wherever you can get the best socket bonuses to meet your meta requirement. You can potentially use a [Potent Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40152) to pick up a socket bonus of +5 spellpower or better.
Below the haste softcap, [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113) and [Quick King's Amber] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40128) are nearly identical in value. I'd recommend sticking with Runed to avoid constant regemming as your haste value changes. Definitely use [Reckless Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40155) to pick up any socket bonus.
Once you get above the Lunar crit cap, [Potent Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40152) and [Reckless Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40155) will be very similar in value. Reckless may become a better option to fill yellow sockets if you don't use the 2T9 bonus.
If you're looking to increase your HP for certain raid encounters, [Glowing Dreadstone] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40132) are a good way to do so without a large DPS loss (either by replacing Purified gems, or Runed gems in pieces with good socket bonuses).
In your meta socket (only use hats with meta sockets), use [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41285).
~Set Bonuses~
With the changes put into place in 3.3, set bonuses are of roughly equal power across tiers--you'll generally upgrade to higher-tier sets as they become available. The best two are the 4T10* and the 2T9, both providing upwards of 4% total DPS increase. The 4T9 or 2T10 will give around 2.5% (use spreadsheet for exact values).
Use the gear you have with the best stats (generally, whichever are the highest-ilvl tier pieces available to you), while maintaining either a 4-piece bonus or two 2-piece bonuses.
The 2T10 is the only bonus that will change how you play. Since Gift of the Wild can be used to force a Clearcasting proc, you should make a habit of doing this anytime you have to move, so that the next few spells you cast after you stop moving will have the buff. If you're moving for a few seconds and are going to cast both GotW and DoT's, cast GotW first, as the buff will affect the subsequent DoT's for their entire duration. Do not cast GotW while standing still.
~Idols~
[Idol of the Lunar Eclipse] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50457) for 30 [Emblem of Frost] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49426) is the best.
Until that's available to you, buy [Idol of Lunar Fury] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47670) for 25 [Emblem of Triumph] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47241) (which is nearly as good), otherwise [Idol of the Shooting Star] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40321) for 25 [Emblem of Valor] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40753).
Trinkets
Whenever possible, evaluate trinkets using the same metric you would any other item. Compute the average uptime of the proc or use effect to obtain an average stat value. WrathCalcs doesn't have a specific option for each individual trinket at the moment. Until then, here's a good estimate of the value of the spellpower procs of various trinkets:
[Muradin's Spyglass] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50345): 180 normal, 200 Heroic. ({18,20}*10)
[Dislodged Foreign Object] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50348): 210 normal, 242 Heroic. ({105,121}*5.5*20/55)
[Phylactery of the Nameless Lich] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50365): 195 normal, 220 Heroic. ({918,1032}*20/94)
[Flare of the Heavens] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45518): 155. (850*10/55)
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40432): 200. (10*20)
[Eye of the Broodmother] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45308): 125. (5*25)
[Sundial of the Exiled] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40682): 107. (590*10/55)
[Abyssal Rune] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47213): 120. (590*10/49)
[Talisman of Resurgence] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=48724): 100. (599*20/120)
You can use these values in the spreadsheet to get a good estimate of how much damage a particular trinket will add for you (remember to include the passive stats on the trinket as well the spellpower effect).
Haste effects are more difficult. Remember that even if you're under the soft cap, haste rating that's applied in a short burst (such as the [Embrace of the Spider] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39229) effect) will be mostly over the softcap. Don't make the mistake of averaging out the haste value from a trinket and then applying it all at a sub-softcap value. If you have control over the haste effect ([Scale of Fates] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45466) or [Talisman of Volatile Power] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47946)), you can mitigate this somewhat by activating the trinket only at the beginning of Lunar Eclipse. Even this is of only marginal value however--you sacrifice uptime by waiting to use it, and the Eclipse is only ~13 seconds of casting out of a 20 second buff. The result is that these trinkets are still disproportionately weak for us. [Talisman of Volatile Power] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47946) is especially bad in this way, as you lose the highest-stacked part of the buff when Eclipse ends.
Finally, the [Reign of the Dead] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47477) proc is very strong. Its value will decline slightly as you get high levels of haste and it stops proccing on consecutive Starfires due to the 2s cooldown.
With ICC loot available, [Reign of the Dead] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47477) and [Dislodged Foreign Object] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50348) are the two best trinkets. [Phylactery of the Nameless Lich] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50365) is roughly equal to them if you're under the crit cap. And until you can get two of those, [Muradin's Spyglass] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50345) is a good option from the 10-man zone.
3.3.3: Fill in exact value of Phylactery buff once known.
Consumables
Use [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46376) and a 46 spellpower food (such as a Feast).
The best DPS potion is [Potion of Speed] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40211). You want to use it during a Lunar Eclipse during Bloodlust (if you have something like [Scale of Fates] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45466), try to use that here as well). Where you're trying to truly maximize your DPS, remember you can click a potion just before combat starts (ask your tank to count down), and then be able to use another potion later in the fight.
~Enchants~
Excluding profession bonuses.
Head: 30 spellpower/20 crit (Kirin Tor revered)
Shoulders: 24 spellpower/15 crit (Sons of Hodir exalted)
Back - 23 haste
Chest - 10 stats. 8 stats is cheaper option at a tiny DPS loss (roughly 2 DPS).
Wrists - 30 spellpower
Gloves - 28 spellpower
Leggings - 50 spellpower/20 spirit. 50 spellpower/30 stamina is another option if you want more HP.
Boots - Run speed/15 stam. Run speed/9 stam is a cheaper option until you need the HP.
Weapon - 63 spellpower to a 1H, or 81 spellpower to a staff.
~Professions~
Tailoring gives the strongest DPS benefit. Lightweave Embroidery gives 295 spellpower for 15 seconds, 35% proc on spellcast, 60 second cooldown. It can proc off DoT ticks, making the average proc time around 2 seconds. 70 spellpower is a decent estimate of the average benefit, minus the 23 haste you'd normally have on your cloak, so the total benefit here is worth roughly 55 spellpower (somewhat less if you're below the haste softcap, potentially slightly weaker than the other professions). Amusingly, the enchant also gives 1 Spirit for some reason.
A minor convenience of Tailoring is that for the cost of one [Eternium Thread] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=38426), you can swap your leg enchant between 20 Spirit and 30 Stamina for fights where a little extra HP is helpful.
Beyond that, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscription, Jewelcrafting, and Leatherworking all provide a roughly equal gain of 46-48 spellpower.
Alchemy: At any time, either [Flask of the North] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47499) or Mixology (with your [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46376)) will give you 47 spellpower.
A number of small conveniences: [Endless Mana Potion] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43570), [Crazy Alchemist's Potion] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40077), double-duration Flasks, and the ability to make your own [Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=36919).
Blacksmithing: An extra socket each in your wrists and gloves, each with a [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113), gives 46 spellpower.
Enchanting: 23 spellpower to each ring gives 46 spellpower.
Inscription: 70 spellpower/15 crit to shoulders in place of the Sons of Hodir enchant gives 46 spellpower.
Jewelcrafting: 3 [Runed Dragon's Eye] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42144) in place of 3 [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113) gives 48 spellpower.
Leatherworking: 76 spellpower to bracers in place of the usual 30 spellpower gives 46 spellpower.
Engineering and Skinning are weaker, both giving less benefit than the 46 spellpower.
Engineering gives Hyperspeed Accelerators (340 haste for 12s every minute = 68 haste on average) and 27 spellpower to cloak. The net gain is 45 haste - 1 spellpower. This can be improved slightly by syncing the Accelerators with Lunar Eclipses.
Skinning gives 40 crit rating.
Mining and Herbalism provide minor survivability benefits, but no DPS gain.
~General Gear Selection Principles~
I'm not going to set out full BIS lists here, for a few different reasons. It's best for you to read this guide until you understand the class well enough to choose gear based on the things I've said above. But here's some overall advice to help provide some guidance.
Caster epics have Intellect, Stamina, spellpower, and 2 out of the following: crit rating, hit rating, haste rating, or Spirit. Keep in mind a few rules of thumb, which are enough to get a quick estimate of the value of any piece:
Higher-ilvl gear is stronger. Spellpower usually increases very regularly with ilvl, so we have a predictable gain.
More sockets are better (since they allow us to stack more spellpower, primarily).
Spirit is weaker than the other options.
If forced to choose between crit and haste, crit will sometimes be a better idea due to the higher cap (see above). Similarly, the hit cap is easily reached, so pieces without hit are often easier to make use of than pieces with hit.
There are two main ways to judge gear in more detail and plan your upgrades:
1) Use Rawr. This has the advantage of ease of use, and automating the tedious arithmetic. The disadvantage is that it's a bit of black box, so a) you're simply trusting the model it uses, and b) you don't learn as much in the process. (a) is generally not too big a deal, since Rawr has been based on the WrathCalcs model recently and so should give very similar results.
2) Use WrathCalcs to determine marginal values of your stats, and then plug those into a service like Lootrank or the Wowhead item comparator which will use the stat weights to sort items. This would be a very quick and easy way to get quite accurate results except for one complication: the hit cap. The best way to handle the hit cap is to:
--Set the stat weight of hit rating in your item comparison tool to 0.
--Whenever you have multiple options for reaching max hit, compare the computed value of the hit item and the non-hit item in the slots you're considering. This tells you how much potential DPS you're giving up in that slot to acquire your hit.
--Equip the items with the best ratio of hit rating gained to DPS value lost.
--The same process can be used for set bonuses.
See below for more on WrathCalcs.
A few other things:
The [Nibelung] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50648) proc is strong. In an ideal situation, it will do somewhat more DPS than equal-ilvl weapons. The complication is that the Val'kyr can be killed by ordinary damage, so on some fights will they not add much DPS, making the weapon worse than a "normal" one. Overall a strong item, but keep your other options in mind at fights where it doesn't work well.
[Emblem of Frost] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49426): These can be scarce, depending on how diligently you set about acquiring them. Your exact gearing strategy is up to you, but keep in mind that the Tier 10 set pieces provide unique bonuses that you will use for the rest of this expansion. You will very likely want to get at least your 4T10 set bonus and [Idol of the Lunar Eclipse] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50457) before spending Emblems to get items for slots that can be filled in other ways.
Casting Mechanics
The first rule is to always be casting (or waiting out a GCD after an instant). Anytime a spell ends, you should already be pressing the key trying to start your next one (see below). Don't delay a cast to make a decision or react to proc--train yourself to start another spell regardless of what's going on, and change the subsequent spellcast if necessary after you've had another second to think.
As a preliminary note, this macro might be useful for automatically assisting with your nukes when you have a raid member targeted:
#showtooltip
/use [@target, harm, nodead][@targettarget, harm, nodead][] Starfire
Assumptions
The theorycrafting reflected in this article and in the associated spreadsheet uses the following understanding of spellcasting rules:
GCD: whenever you attempt any GCD-incurring action (including any spellcast), a client-side GCD begins to run immediately. If the action fails, the client cancels the GCD when it finds out about the failure from the server. If the action succeeds, the GCD runs to completion. The client will not transmit any action to the server while a GCD is running.
Queueing: when a spellcast ends on the server, if the server has recently (within 200-300 milliseconds) received a cast command from the client, it will begin that cast immediately.
How to Time Your Next Spell
First, recall that the client processes events when you release the key. Keep that in mind for learning your timing.
After a Starfire: You want to press the next spell such that it arrives at the server in the "queueing window" as your Starfire is ending. In constant latency, you'd press it just under one cast time from when you pressed the previous one (i.e. when Quartz hits the red part of the cast bar). But since you can't count on latency to be constant, you should start spamming your key a few tenths of a second before that point, and continue until you see the next cast begin.
After an instant: No queueing here, and the ability to cast the next spell is determined by the client-side GCD. Watch your Quartz GCD spark and press your key right as it ends. Pressing it early is a waste and will return a "spell not ready" error in your client.
After a Wrath, <1s cast time: Identical to an instant cast. In highly variable latency, you may want to spam your spell a few times to make sure it fires.
After a Wrath, >1s cast time: Since the Wrath cast time is equal to the GCD, you can't start spamming your next spell early like you do after a Starfire. Start pressing your key as the GCD ends (as with an instant), and continue pressing it until you see that the server has begun your next cast (as with a Starfire).
The above does mean that Wrath is more "lossy" than Starfire in actual use, since the client-side GCD prevents you from using the queueing window optimally.
Value of Haste
As a result of the above, Starfire always feels the full effect of haste. No plausible amount of haste brings it near a 1s cast time.
Instants feel the full effect of haste until the softcap, where they become fixed at 1s and feel zero effect from haste.
Wrath behaves mostly like an instant (since it's typically GCD-limited). But due to variable latency and Wrath's transition from cast-like to instant-like behavior at the softcap, there's a bit of a fuzzy zone where haste decays to 0 in value. The theorycraft here treats it identically to an instant.
Spell Rotations
The Short Version
Start by applying Moonfire and Insect Swarm. Whenever either of these falls off of your target, reapply it.
Cast Wrath until until a Lunar (Starfire) Eclipse procs, then switch to Starfire. Cast Starfire until a Solar (Wrath) Eclipse procs, then switch back to Wrath.
Repeat this Eclipse cycle, always keeping your two DoT's on the target and using Starfall and Force of Nature on cooldown.
For more detail, continue to the following sections.
The Eclipse Rotation
You will generally operate in a four-step cycle.
Pre-Lunar. Cast Wrath until the Eclipse buff appears (have some mod that will make it very obvious when you gain the buff).
Lunar Eclipse. When you see the buff, finish casting your current Wrath and then cast Starfire for the duration of Eclipse.
Pre-Solar. When Eclipse fades, continue casting Starfire. Note that a Starfire only gains the benefit if it is fully completed while the Eclipse buff is up, so if you only have time for a partial cast, your Eclipse is effectively over. Cast Starfire until the Eclipse buff appears.
Solar Eclipse. Cast Wrath for the duration. Continue casting when it ends to loop back around into step 1.
Basically, you cast Wrath until Lunar procs and cast Starfire until Solar procs. But once DoTs and other instants are involved, thinking in terms of the four-step cycle helps you plan your casts well.
Lunar is slightly stronger than Solar (slightly faster to proc and slightly more damage per proc, and makes full use of Glyph of Starfire). So in a situation where you can proc either (the beginning of the fight, or if you've failed to proc Solar for a few seconds and Lunar is coming off of ICD), cast Wrath to proc a Lunar Eclipse. It's good to have an add-on showing your Eclipse duration and cooldown (see below) so you can always tell at a glance which nuke to cast.
Subtleties of Transitions
Solar->Lunar: Wrath procs Nature's Grace when the cast completes, but procs Eclipse when it actually hits the target. This allows a sort of clairvoyance regarding Lunar Eclipses: if you see Nature's Grace refresh when you cast a Wrath, you know that that cast is a crit, and therefore that it has a 60% chance of proccing an Eclipse when it reaches the target (but be careful to remember that this doesn't work if Starfall is up, or if you've cast Moonfire at the same time that the Wrath completed).
If you switch to Starfire as soon as you see this happen (not interrupting a cast, merely swapping after the next Wrath), you have a 60% chance of effectively lengthening a Lunar Eclipse by starting to cast Starfire before it even procs. This is not in the spreadsheet yet, but some brief math indicates that it's worth trying to do, even though you waste a Starfire cast the other 40% of the time.
Lunar->Solar: As of 3.3, there is no longer a way to use latency to get your final Lunar Starfire to proc a Solar Eclipse. So nothing fancy in this direction.
DoT Refreshing
Make sure to read the Glyph section above for important information on Glyph selection and how that affects your DoT usage. Importantly, if you don't need to apply the Insect Swarm debuff, you will be leaving one DoT out of your rotation entirely (which one you leave out depends on whether you have 2T9). But in normal situations in progression content, you'll want the debuff and you'll use both DoT's.
Insect Swarm is weak in Icecrown-level gear. Using it is small DPS loss (less than 1%) compared to not using it at all, but you're casting it for the debuff. Try to maintain good uptime; refreshing between Eclipses works pretty well.
Moonfire is very good if you have the 2T9 set bonus, and should be refreshed whenever it drops. Without the set bonus, it's a very small DPS gain in Icecrown gear. You want to cast it whenever possible without interfering with your Eclipse rotation. The best times are (1) while moving (see "Movement" below) and (2) while waiting to see whether Eclipse procs. I'll explain what I mean by this here:
Ordinarily, when you proc an Eclipse, you have to cast one extra Wrath or Starfire before switching spells, due to the fact that you queue your next spell before seeing whether Eclipse procs. If you have a DoT to refresh, you can cast that instead, and use the GCD to see whether Eclipse procced. This way, the DoT only replaces the weak "wrong" spell during the Eclipse instead of delaying Eclipse or replacing an Eclipsed nuke.
For example, if Lunar is just ending and Insect Swarm is down, you can cast one extra Starfire and then Insect Swarm. During the GCD from the Insect Swarm, watch to see whether the Starfire crit (it's actually useful to watch for Nature's Grace, as that buff will appear before the Solar Eclipse will). If it did, you can immediately switch to Wrath for your next spell. This should become second nature eventually.
Other spells
Starfall: use this on cooldown against a single target (if there are others mobs in range, remember to make sure it's safe to cast). In AoE situations, try to use it as often as possible on multiple clustered targets.
Force of Nature: use this as many times as possible in a given fight. If you know when Bloodlust/Heroism is coming, try to cast this immediately beforehand (but not if this requires waiting so long that you can't use it as many times during the encounter). As you learn each fight, pay attention to things that kill the Treants and time your cast to avoid them if possible.
Typhoon: This spell has two potential uses:
1) The knockback. Occasionally it's useful in a raid encounter to spend a GCD pushing something away. For this it must be unglyphed.
2) AoE DPS. Typhoon on multiple targets has a high chance of proccing both Clearcasting and Nature's Grace. This can make it worth using in between Hurricane casts. For this it must be Glyphed.
Faerie Fire: Unless your raid has both a Shadow Priest and a Feral Druid, keep this on every mob. Even if it does have both, it doesn't particularly hurt to cast this at the pull if you think there's a chance either of the other classes' buffs will ever drop.
Rebirth: Remember that this drops Moonkin Form, so be ready to reshift as your next cast after Rebirth.
Innervate: Unglyphed, this returns 2.25 * 3496 = 7866 mana to the target. If you want to be able to cast it on yourself without detargeting your DPS target, use:
/use [harm, @player][] Innervate
Gift of the Wild: casting this virtually guarantees a Clearcast proc.
1) If you're very short on mana and want to cast an expensive spell such as Hurricane, you might consider spending a GCD for this.
2) If you're using the 2T10 bonus, the Clearcast gives a damage buff. If forced to move during a fight, you can cast this for the buff.
Bloodlust/Heroism
Under the effect of Bloodlust, Wrath will gain very little DPS since it's usually so close to the 1s GCD minimum in the first place. The goal during Bloodlust is to use Lunar Eclipse as much as possible. As of 3.3, we can no longer cancel Solar during Bloodlust to make it possible to proc Lunar more quickly, so the spell rotation is largely unchanged. You should get at least one Lunar Eclipse during Bloodlust if you simply maintain your standard rotation; you should use your [Potion of Speed] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40211) at that point. If you know when Bloodlust is coming, remember to cast Force of Nature immediately beforehand.
Overall, our benefit from Bloodlust is much smaller than most classes' (roughly 10-12% more DPS for the duration), since only Starfire is significantly affected by the buff.
Movement
Movement (or other spellcasting interruption) during boss fights significantly impacts our ability to use Eclipse well. There is little that we can do about this; Blizzard has indicated that they planning to rework Eclipse in Cataclysm to make this less of a problem.
It's important to manage our DoT's well during high-movement situations. If at all possible, you want to plan your casting so that you cast DoT's (or other instants) while moving, and nukes while standing still. This requires you to be highly aware of both your spell rotation and your surroundings, so you can anticipate movement. It's always worth delaying a DoT by a few seconds to cast it while moving, making use of time that would otherwise be wasted. This also holds true for other instants: Force of Nature, Starfall, and if you have the 2T10 bonus, Gift of the Wild.
Of course, you can't always plan things perfectly, and often you find yourself moving while DoT's are ticking. In this scenario, if you don't have other spells worth casting, it's better to cast a DoT and clip the old one than it is to cast nothing.
Multiple Targets
In multi-target situations, you'll mostly be selecting spells by your own judgment rather than any kind of formula. It's important to be familiar with the damage done by each of your spells so you can always cast whatever has the best DPET (damage per execution time). Overall, you'll be trying to maintain your usual Eclipse behavior as much as possible. Multi-dotting provides a small DPS gain at best. We actually have very little to gain from spreading our DPS across multiple targets. Some things to keep in mind:
Save Starfall for multi-target situations if there are any in the encounter.
If using the 2T9 bonus, Moonfire is your highest DPET spell, and worth casting on any target who will live sufficiently long (15 seconds).
Otherwise, our DoT's are so weak that multi-dotting is a poor strategy for us. The best strategy is to maintain your normal rotation on one target, unless there are enough targets to AoE.
Against five or more targets (4 with Gale Winds), it's more effective to AoE. Against four, it's quite close--use your judgement based on the situation.
If your raid does not have Ebon Plague, and is splitting DPS on multiple targets, you will want to keep up Earth and Moon on all of them. Rotate your nukes through the targets, while maintaining your Eclipse cycle. The DPS loss from changing targets will be outweighed by the benefit to the rest of the raid.
AoE
Aside from aforementioned Starfall usage, you'll basically AoE by chaining Hurricane. One little nuance is that you can start Hurricanes under the effect of Nature's Grace (procced by Starfall, for example), for significantly higher AoE DPS. Typhoon adds little damage but is another way of "forcing" Nature's Grace (but if you don't have it Glyphed, typically inconveniences everyone else in your group). With Idol of Lunar Fury, keeping one Moonfire ticking will slightly improve the DPS of Hurricane. A typical AoE sequence allowing you to maintain high DPS for around 30 seconds is:
Starfall -> Hurricane x2 (both with NG from Starfall) -> Glyphed Typhoon -> Hurricane (with NG) -> Moonfire (hoping to proc NG) -> Hurricane.
Open Questions
Things I'm still pondering or simply haven't gotten around to mathing out in detail--if you're looking to contribute, these are good topics to think about. Added bonus if you also give a suggestion for refining the spreadsheet model.
When exactly is it worth waiting through the end of an Eclipse to refresh a DoT? WrathCalcs model for this is really needed at some point.
Are the assumptions regarding haste, queueing, and the GCD accurate or is there some way to better model the realities of casting in latency?
Mods & Tools
SquawkAndAwe (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11436-SquawkAndAwe.html): A convenient set of bars for all Moonkin-related timers.
Quartz (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx): as a primary caster, you should have a proper cast bar. This is an excellent one.
Rawr (http://rawr.codeplex.com/): A good way to do complex gear comparisons that would otherwise be tedious. It uses roughly the same calculations as the spreadsheet.
Simulationcraft (http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/): A simulation-based approach to theorycrafting.
WrathCalcs (attached to this post). Moonkin theorycraft spreadsheet. Will give you the exact value of stats/talents/glyphs in your current setup, and lets you experiment with different rotations. Originally made by Adoriele here (http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t37800-wrathcalcs_moonkin_dps_spreadsheet). I've since taken it over and used it as the platform for my own theorycrafting, reflected in the version posted here.
Hope You like ill be releasing one for each class and race
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid#ZyCn87IOkWH8,kdJ,9901
This leaves 5 points. Fill them in the following order:
Intensity: put points in as necessary to alleviate any mana concerns (unlikely that you'll need this unless you're quite undergeared and missing Replenishment). Note: if you're not using 2T9, you should first move two points from Improved Moonfire to Moonglow to get more mana, before taking Intensity.
Gale Winds: take this if you have any interest in speccing for AoE DPS; this is an enormous boost.
Typhoon: take this if you like having another instant spell to press, basically. See below for more on potential uses.
Improved Insect Swarm: Best remaining single-target DPS talent.
Brambles, Owlkin Frenzy, or Genesis: All of these are very tiny DPS increases. Put any leftover points into one of them of your choice after you've exhausted the talent tree of anything else you need.
If you need Gale Winds and Typhoon, and still want the 3rd point in IIS, you can potentially drop one point in Balance of Power to get it (raising the hit cap), depending on what your gear options are. This is a small DPS increase at best; check the spreadsheet if you think it might be useful for you.
Finally, there's the option to drop 2 points in iGotW or Furor to get Nature's Focus. This is a tradeoff between pushback resistance and the tiny DPS increase from the other talents. Furor provides slightly more DPS and regen per point than iGotW. But note that you want iGotW if there are no other Druids in your raid (all other specs currently take the talent), or if you want to use the Clearcast-forcing trick described below.
If you are in icc raiding something like this build may be better:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid#P9c5pseYjbTlz,krJ,9901
~Talent details~
Genesis: Affects Hurricane and Tranquility. Stacks additively with Moonfury, Improved Moonfire, Glyph of Moonfire, Glyph of Insect Swarm, and Gale Winds.
Starlight Wrath: Applies before any haste effects.
Moonglow: Mana cost is rounded down after multiplying. Applies after [Spark of Hope] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45703)-type effects.
Improved Moonfire: This damage bonus, Glyph of Moonfire, Moonfury, and Genesis all stack additively. The crit% bonus does affect DoT tick crits with the 2T9 bonus (PTR).
Nature's Grace: This procs off Wrath and Starfire when the spell completes, which is slightly before it does damage and shows a crit in the combat log (due to travel time for Wrath, but also a slight bit of latency in the case of Starfire). This does not proc from Hurricane or Moonfire DoT (2T9) crits, but it does proc from Starfall.
Nature's Reach: Stacks additively with the range reduction from [Glyph of Focus] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44928) to give Starfall a 21 yard range.
Vengeance: Due to the odd critical bonus stacking rules, the total damage you'll see on a crit with this and a Chaotic meta is 209%.
Celestial Focus: Multiplies with all other haste bonuses.
Insect Swarm: The 3% hit debuff on the target does not stack with the Hunter spell Scorpid Sting. It stacks additively with all other forms of avoidance.
Improved Insect Swarm: As with all damage debuffs, Wrath checks for this on arrival at the target. As with all crit% player buffs, Starfire checks this when its cast completes. The Wrath buff stacks multiplicatively with other damage bonuses.
Moonfury: Stacks additively with Eclipse (Wrath), Glyph of Moonfire, Improved Moonfire, Genesis, and the 4T9 bonus.
Moonkin Form: The mana return does not proc from Hurricane, Starfall, or Moonfire DoT (2T9) crits. The crit bonus does not stack with the Shaman talent Elemental Oath.
Improved Moonkin Form: The haste buff grants both melee and spell haste, and does not stack with the Paladin talent Swift Retribution.
Improved Faerie Fire: The hit debuff does not stack with the Priest talent Misery. The crit buff is active when any Faerie Fire, not just your own, is on the target.
Owlkin Frenzy: This can proc from physical or magical damage, but many boss abilities which hit the player frequently (e.g. Vezax's Profound Darkness or Mimiron's Rapid Burst) do not proc it.
Wrath of Cenarius: This adds 0.2 (Starfire) or 0.1 (Wrath) to the spell's spellpower coefficient. It does not apply to the effective spellpower granted by [Idol of the Shooting Star] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40321).
Eclipse: Unlike Nature's Grace, this procs when the associated Wrath or Starfire crit is processed on the server and appears in the combat log. In the case of Wrath which has a travel time, this results in a significant delay between the Nature's Grace proc and the Eclipse proc.
Force of Nature: If casting this immediately after an instant, you have to press the spell key and then click a targeting reticle in the world frame, losing a small amount of time. The Treants will attack whichever mob hates you the most, and can be easily redirected with the pet bar. They have 90% reduction against AoE damage in PvE, allowing them to survive some boss abilities. Bloodlust and Battle Shout, among other things, will particularly improve their DPS.
Earth and Moon: The personal 6% damage buff multiplies with all other buffs. The 13% damage debuff also multiplies with all other buffs (including the 3% buff from this same talent), and does not stack with the Warlock spell Curse of the Elements or the Death Knight disease Ebon Plague. As with other damage debuffs, spells check for presence of this debuff when the arrive at their target and log damage.
Starfall: This will not fire stars when your character is stunned, and the buff will drop entirely if you shift into a Feral form. The worst use is against a single target, where you only get 10 stars. Against multiple targets, you will get 20 stars. If those targets are tightly clumped, you will additionally benefit from splash damage.
Improved Mark of the Wild and Furor: These stack multiplicatively with each other and with Kings.
Omen of Clarity: Has a 3.5/60 = 5.83% chance to proc on spellcast. Does not proc from and is not consumed by shapeshifting. Gift of the Wild, if cast on 25 people, has a very high chance of proccing this.
Master Shapeshifter: The Moonkin Form bonus multiplies with all other damage bonuses
~Resulting Spell Coefficients and Damage Multipliers~
Some useful numbers to have, when fully talented and raid buffed.
Overall damage multiplier: 1.13 (Earth and Moon) * 1.04 (Master Shapeshifter) * 1.06 (Earth and Moon) * 1.03 (Sanctified Retribution) = 1.283.
Haste multiplier, before haste rating: 1.05 (Wrath of Air) * 1.03 (Celestial Focus) * 1.03 (Improved Moonkin Form) = 1.114. Multiply this by (1 + HasteRating/3279) to obtain final haste ratio.
Crit Chance, before Intellect and crit rating: 5% (Moonkin Form) + 5% (Improved Scorch) 3% (Totem of Wrath) + 3% (Improved Faerie Fire) = 16%. Adding in 4% (Nature's Majesty), 3% (Improved Insect Swarm) and 10% (Improved Moonfire) gives 20% for Wrath, 23% for Starfire, and 26% for Moonfire, added to whatever you see reported in your character sheet when out of form.
Effective Starfire coefficient: (1 (base) + 0.2 (Wrath of Cenarius)) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.1 (Moonfury) = 1.694.
Effective Wrath coefficient: (2/3.5 (base) + 0.1 (Wrath of Cenarius)) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.1 (Moonfury) * 1.03 (Improved Insect Swarm) = 0.976.
Effective Insect Swarm coefficient, per tick: 0.2 (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.3 (Glyph of Insect Swarm) = 0.333.
Effective Moonfire coefficient, direct damage: 1.5/3.5 * (1.5/3.5 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15)) (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * (1 + 0.1 (Moonfury) + 0.1 (Improved Moonfire) - 0.9 (Glyph of Moonfire)) = 0.0575.
Effective Moonfire coefficient, per tick: 12/15*(12/15 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15) / 4) (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * (1 + 0.1 (Moonfury) + 0.1 (Improved Moonfire) + 0.75 (Glyph of Moonfire)) = 0.326.
~Glyphs~
Major Glyphs:
Before 3.3.3: In most situations you will use [Glyph of Starfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40916), [Glyph of Moonfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40923), and [Glyph of Starfall] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40921).
[Glyph of Insect Swarm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40919) can be a small DPS increase, but it removes the 3% miss debuff, which is a nearly-unique raid debuff (Hunters can provide it, but at a large DPS cost). On any content that's not very easy, you probably provide the most benefit to raid by leaving it out. But if you replace [Glyph of Starfall] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40921) with it, you can gain roughly 2% DPS.
After 3.3.3: Always use [Glyph of Starfall] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40921). There are 4 other potential Glyph options: [Glyph of Starfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40916), [Glyph of Moonfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40923), [Glyph of Focus] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44928), and [Glyph of Insect Swarm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40919).
[Glyph of Starfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40916) and [Glyph of Moonfire] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40923) buff your Moonfire DoT. If you're using the 2T9 set bonus, these will be the best two. Otherwise, they do slightly less DPS than the other options.
[Glyph of Focus] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44928) adds good single-target DPS. But it reduces the range of Starfall (to 21 yards with Nature's Reach), so you'll have to decide whether it's usable on a per-encounter basis. Anytime you frequently get to use Starfall on multiple targets during an encounter, you definitely want to use it.
[Glyph of Insect Swarm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40919) can be a small DPS increase, but it removes the 3% miss debuff, which is a nearly-unique raid debuff (Hunters can provide it, but at a large DPS cost). On any content that's not very easy, you probably provide the most benefit to raid by applying that debuff.
The result is that our Glyph choice is slightly complex. I'll break it down here:
1) If you have the 2T9 bonus, Glyph Starfall/Starfire/Moonfire. If you want to apply the 3% miss debuff, cast Insect Swarm, otherwise leave it out of your rotation entirely.
2) If you do not that have the 2T9 bonus (for example, if you've upgraded to 4T10):
2A) If you do not need the Insect Swarm debuff (you are the second Moonkin or are doing content for which it's unnecessary), Glyph Starfall/Focus/Insect Swarm, and leave Moonfire out of your rotation entirely.
2B) If you do need the Insect Swarm debuff, Glyph Starfall/Focus/Starfire, unless Focus causes range problems at the fight you're doing. In that case, Glyph Starfall/Starfire/Moonfire.
Minor Glyphs: none of these add any DPS, so it's entirely up to personal taste. [Glyph of Typhoon] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44922) is the only one that affects combat mechanics, but it's still up to you whether you prefer it or not. [Glyph of the Wild] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43335) can save a little bit of mana if you ever have to rebuff people during a fight, or if you're trying to force a Clearcast during combat.
~Gear~
Stats
In roughly descending order of importance.
Hit rating:
26.23 hit rating gives 1% to hit with spells. If you have less than a 100% chance to hit your target, hit rating is the strongest DPS stat per point by a wide margin. As a result, you can expect that your optimal gear/gem setup will always place you at hit cap (see below). Beyond the cap, additional hit rating adds nothing and is wasted.
Spellpower:
Improves all of our damaging spells. See the coefficients in the above section on spells.
Haste rating:
32.79 haste rating gives 1% spell haste. Below the cap (see below), all of our spells feel the full value of haste. Above it, Wrath and instants no longer benefit from haste when Nature's Grace is active, but all other spells still benefit fully. Haste is a very strong stat under the cap (it will usually be beneficial to try to reach the cap, which is often easy to do in current gear), and even above it continues to be one of our best DPS stats.
Critical strike rating:
45.9 crit rating gives 1% to crit. With Vengeance and a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, crits with our main nukes do 2.09 times the damage of non crits. In addition to increasing the average damage of our spells due to more frequent crits, it provides two other DPS benefits: it increases the uptime of Nature's Grace, and shorten the average time required to proc an Eclipse (although both of these turn out to be minor terms in the marginal value of crit rating).
Crit is typically stronger than haste provided that you are over the soft haste cap, but still weaker than spellpower. Above the Lunar crit cap, crit becomes roughly equal in value to post-cap haste (remember to take [Idol of Lunar Fury] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47670) or [Idol of the Lunar Eclipse] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50457) into account when computing your cap).
In addition, crit provides a mana benefit due to increased proc rate of the Moonkin Form regen.
Intellect:
Intellect provides 0.006% to crit per point, and 0.12 spellpower per point with Lunar Guidance. With Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild, and Furor, it provides 0.0074% (135 points per 1% crit, roughly 1/3 of a crit rating) and 0.148 spellpower. This makes Int a weak, but not insignficant, DPS stat.
Similarly, with these talents, one point of Intellect increases your maximum mana by 18.5, your regen from Replenishment by 0.185 MP5, and your regen from 3/3 Dreamstate by 0.123 MP5
Spirit:
Spirit provides 0.3 spellpower per point with Improved Moonkin Form. With Blessing of Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild, it provides 0.337 spellpower. This makes it a weak DPS stat, very similar to Int.
Spirit and Int will both increase your natural regen, which scales like (0.016725 * sqrt(Int) * Spi) MP5. Int will increase the magnitude of your Moonkin Form proc by 0.37/point.
~Changes in stat values (caps)~
Some stats dramatically change in value at a certain point. Here's a list of these values with all typical raid buffs. You can also check WrathCalcs to see your exact caps in any setup.
Hit: Against a level 83 target, with all buffs, we need 263 hit rating (10%) to cap at 100% (Alliance with a Draenei in their party need 237 hit rating (9%)). Against any other target, we reach the cap with talents alone.
Haste: The haste cap is the point at which the GCD hits 1.0s with Nature's Grace active. This requires 1.5/(1.03*1.03*1.05*1.2) - 1 = 12.21% haste, or 401 haste rating. Without Wrath of Air Totem, the cap becomes 585 haste rating.
Note that for reasons related to latency, the change in value at the soft cap occurs over a small range rather than instantaneously (see "Casting Mechanics" below for more detail). Don't obsess over hitting 401 exactly.
Crit: With enough crit rating your crit chance during Lunar Eclipse will hit 100%, reducing the value of subsequent crit rating. Will all talents/buffs except Focus Magic, this occurs at 1575.5 - Int/3, where Int is your Armory value (1254.2 - Int/3 if using 2T8). Note that those values include crit rating from an Idol proc, so you'll probably want to subtract 200 or 220 to see how much you actually need from ordinary gear to hit the cap.
~Stat priority~
Stat priority for DPS will almost always run in the following order:
Hit rating (to cap) >> Haste rating (below GCD cap) = Spellpower > Crit rating (below Lunar cap) > Haste rating (above GCD cap) >= Crit rating (above Lunar cap) >> Intellect > Spirit.
~Gems~
In general, gem [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113) in all sockets (or [Veiled Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40153)/[Rigid King's Amber] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40125) to make the hit cap), save for two [Purified Dreadstone] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40133) wherever you can get the best socket bonuses to meet your meta requirement. You can potentially use a [Potent Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40152) to pick up a socket bonus of +5 spellpower or better.
Below the haste softcap, [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113) and [Quick King's Amber] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40128) are nearly identical in value. I'd recommend sticking with Runed to avoid constant regemming as your haste value changes. Definitely use [Reckless Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40155) to pick up any socket bonus.
Once you get above the Lunar crit cap, [Potent Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40152) and [Reckless Ametrine] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40155) will be very similar in value. Reckless may become a better option to fill yellow sockets if you don't use the 2T9 bonus.
If you're looking to increase your HP for certain raid encounters, [Glowing Dreadstone] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40132) are a good way to do so without a large DPS loss (either by replacing Purified gems, or Runed gems in pieces with good socket bonuses).
In your meta socket (only use hats with meta sockets), use [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41285).
~Set Bonuses~
With the changes put into place in 3.3, set bonuses are of roughly equal power across tiers--you'll generally upgrade to higher-tier sets as they become available. The best two are the 4T10* and the 2T9, both providing upwards of 4% total DPS increase. The 4T9 or 2T10 will give around 2.5% (use spreadsheet for exact values).
Use the gear you have with the best stats (generally, whichever are the highest-ilvl tier pieces available to you), while maintaining either a 4-piece bonus or two 2-piece bonuses.
The 2T10 is the only bonus that will change how you play. Since Gift of the Wild can be used to force a Clearcasting proc, you should make a habit of doing this anytime you have to move, so that the next few spells you cast after you stop moving will have the buff. If you're moving for a few seconds and are going to cast both GotW and DoT's, cast GotW first, as the buff will affect the subsequent DoT's for their entire duration. Do not cast GotW while standing still.
~Idols~
[Idol of the Lunar Eclipse] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50457) for 30 [Emblem of Frost] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49426) is the best.
Until that's available to you, buy [Idol of Lunar Fury] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47670) for 25 [Emblem of Triumph] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47241) (which is nearly as good), otherwise [Idol of the Shooting Star] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40321) for 25 [Emblem of Valor] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40753).
Trinkets
Whenever possible, evaluate trinkets using the same metric you would any other item. Compute the average uptime of the proc or use effect to obtain an average stat value. WrathCalcs doesn't have a specific option for each individual trinket at the moment. Until then, here's a good estimate of the value of the spellpower procs of various trinkets:
[Muradin's Spyglass] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50345): 180 normal, 200 Heroic. ({18,20}*10)
[Dislodged Foreign Object] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50348): 210 normal, 242 Heroic. ({105,121}*5.5*20/55)
[Phylactery of the Nameless Lich] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50365): 195 normal, 220 Heroic. ({918,1032}*20/94)
[Flare of the Heavens] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45518): 155. (850*10/55)
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40432): 200. (10*20)
[Eye of the Broodmother] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45308): 125. (5*25)
[Sundial of the Exiled] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40682): 107. (590*10/55)
[Abyssal Rune] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47213): 120. (590*10/49)
[Talisman of Resurgence] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=48724): 100. (599*20/120)
You can use these values in the spreadsheet to get a good estimate of how much damage a particular trinket will add for you (remember to include the passive stats on the trinket as well the spellpower effect).
Haste effects are more difficult. Remember that even if you're under the soft cap, haste rating that's applied in a short burst (such as the [Embrace of the Spider] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39229) effect) will be mostly over the softcap. Don't make the mistake of averaging out the haste value from a trinket and then applying it all at a sub-softcap value. If you have control over the haste effect ([Scale of Fates] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45466) or [Talisman of Volatile Power] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47946)), you can mitigate this somewhat by activating the trinket only at the beginning of Lunar Eclipse. Even this is of only marginal value however--you sacrifice uptime by waiting to use it, and the Eclipse is only ~13 seconds of casting out of a 20 second buff. The result is that these trinkets are still disproportionately weak for us. [Talisman of Volatile Power] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47946) is especially bad in this way, as you lose the highest-stacked part of the buff when Eclipse ends.
Finally, the [Reign of the Dead] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47477) proc is very strong. Its value will decline slightly as you get high levels of haste and it stops proccing on consecutive Starfires due to the 2s cooldown.
With ICC loot available, [Reign of the Dead] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47477) and [Dislodged Foreign Object] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50348) are the two best trinkets. [Phylactery of the Nameless Lich] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50365) is roughly equal to them if you're under the crit cap. And until you can get two of those, [Muradin's Spyglass] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50345) is a good option from the 10-man zone.
3.3.3: Fill in exact value of Phylactery buff once known.
Consumables
Use [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46376) and a 46 spellpower food (such as a Feast).
The best DPS potion is [Potion of Speed] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40211). You want to use it during a Lunar Eclipse during Bloodlust (if you have something like [Scale of Fates] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45466), try to use that here as well). Where you're trying to truly maximize your DPS, remember you can click a potion just before combat starts (ask your tank to count down), and then be able to use another potion later in the fight.
~Enchants~
Excluding profession bonuses.
Head: 30 spellpower/20 crit (Kirin Tor revered)
Shoulders: 24 spellpower/15 crit (Sons of Hodir exalted)
Back - 23 haste
Chest - 10 stats. 8 stats is cheaper option at a tiny DPS loss (roughly 2 DPS).
Wrists - 30 spellpower
Gloves - 28 spellpower
Leggings - 50 spellpower/20 spirit. 50 spellpower/30 stamina is another option if you want more HP.
Boots - Run speed/15 stam. Run speed/9 stam is a cheaper option until you need the HP.
Weapon - 63 spellpower to a 1H, or 81 spellpower to a staff.
~Professions~
Tailoring gives the strongest DPS benefit. Lightweave Embroidery gives 295 spellpower for 15 seconds, 35% proc on spellcast, 60 second cooldown. It can proc off DoT ticks, making the average proc time around 2 seconds. 70 spellpower is a decent estimate of the average benefit, minus the 23 haste you'd normally have on your cloak, so the total benefit here is worth roughly 55 spellpower (somewhat less if you're below the haste softcap, potentially slightly weaker than the other professions). Amusingly, the enchant also gives 1 Spirit for some reason.
A minor convenience of Tailoring is that for the cost of one [Eternium Thread] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=38426), you can swap your leg enchant between 20 Spirit and 30 Stamina for fights where a little extra HP is helpful.
Beyond that, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscription, Jewelcrafting, and Leatherworking all provide a roughly equal gain of 46-48 spellpower.
Alchemy: At any time, either [Flask of the North] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47499) or Mixology (with your [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46376)) will give you 47 spellpower.
A number of small conveniences: [Endless Mana Potion] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43570), [Crazy Alchemist's Potion] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40077), double-duration Flasks, and the ability to make your own [Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=36919).
Blacksmithing: An extra socket each in your wrists and gloves, each with a [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113), gives 46 spellpower.
Enchanting: 23 spellpower to each ring gives 46 spellpower.
Inscription: 70 spellpower/15 crit to shoulders in place of the Sons of Hodir enchant gives 46 spellpower.
Jewelcrafting: 3 [Runed Dragon's Eye] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42144) in place of 3 [Runed Cardinal Ruby] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113) gives 48 spellpower.
Leatherworking: 76 spellpower to bracers in place of the usual 30 spellpower gives 46 spellpower.
Engineering and Skinning are weaker, both giving less benefit than the 46 spellpower.
Engineering gives Hyperspeed Accelerators (340 haste for 12s every minute = 68 haste on average) and 27 spellpower to cloak. The net gain is 45 haste - 1 spellpower. This can be improved slightly by syncing the Accelerators with Lunar Eclipses.
Skinning gives 40 crit rating.
Mining and Herbalism provide minor survivability benefits, but no DPS gain.
~General Gear Selection Principles~
I'm not going to set out full BIS lists here, for a few different reasons. It's best for you to read this guide until you understand the class well enough to choose gear based on the things I've said above. But here's some overall advice to help provide some guidance.
Caster epics have Intellect, Stamina, spellpower, and 2 out of the following: crit rating, hit rating, haste rating, or Spirit. Keep in mind a few rules of thumb, which are enough to get a quick estimate of the value of any piece:
Higher-ilvl gear is stronger. Spellpower usually increases very regularly with ilvl, so we have a predictable gain.
More sockets are better (since they allow us to stack more spellpower, primarily).
Spirit is weaker than the other options.
If forced to choose between crit and haste, crit will sometimes be a better idea due to the higher cap (see above). Similarly, the hit cap is easily reached, so pieces without hit are often easier to make use of than pieces with hit.
There are two main ways to judge gear in more detail and plan your upgrades:
1) Use Rawr. This has the advantage of ease of use, and automating the tedious arithmetic. The disadvantage is that it's a bit of black box, so a) you're simply trusting the model it uses, and b) you don't learn as much in the process. (a) is generally not too big a deal, since Rawr has been based on the WrathCalcs model recently and so should give very similar results.
2) Use WrathCalcs to determine marginal values of your stats, and then plug those into a service like Lootrank or the Wowhead item comparator which will use the stat weights to sort items. This would be a very quick and easy way to get quite accurate results except for one complication: the hit cap. The best way to handle the hit cap is to:
--Set the stat weight of hit rating in your item comparison tool to 0.
--Whenever you have multiple options for reaching max hit, compare the computed value of the hit item and the non-hit item in the slots you're considering. This tells you how much potential DPS you're giving up in that slot to acquire your hit.
--Equip the items with the best ratio of hit rating gained to DPS value lost.
--The same process can be used for set bonuses.
See below for more on WrathCalcs.
A few other things:
The [Nibelung] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50648) proc is strong. In an ideal situation, it will do somewhat more DPS than equal-ilvl weapons. The complication is that the Val'kyr can be killed by ordinary damage, so on some fights will they not add much DPS, making the weapon worse than a "normal" one. Overall a strong item, but keep your other options in mind at fights where it doesn't work well.
[Emblem of Frost] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49426): These can be scarce, depending on how diligently you set about acquiring them. Your exact gearing strategy is up to you, but keep in mind that the Tier 10 set pieces provide unique bonuses that you will use for the rest of this expansion. You will very likely want to get at least your 4T10 set bonus and [Idol of the Lunar Eclipse] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50457) before spending Emblems to get items for slots that can be filled in other ways.
Casting Mechanics
The first rule is to always be casting (or waiting out a GCD after an instant). Anytime a spell ends, you should already be pressing the key trying to start your next one (see below). Don't delay a cast to make a decision or react to proc--train yourself to start another spell regardless of what's going on, and change the subsequent spellcast if necessary after you've had another second to think.
As a preliminary note, this macro might be useful for automatically assisting with your nukes when you have a raid member targeted:
#showtooltip
/use [@target, harm, nodead][@targettarget, harm, nodead][] Starfire
Assumptions
The theorycrafting reflected in this article and in the associated spreadsheet uses the following understanding of spellcasting rules:
GCD: whenever you attempt any GCD-incurring action (including any spellcast), a client-side GCD begins to run immediately. If the action fails, the client cancels the GCD when it finds out about the failure from the server. If the action succeeds, the GCD runs to completion. The client will not transmit any action to the server while a GCD is running.
Queueing: when a spellcast ends on the server, if the server has recently (within 200-300 milliseconds) received a cast command from the client, it will begin that cast immediately.
How to Time Your Next Spell
First, recall that the client processes events when you release the key. Keep that in mind for learning your timing.
After a Starfire: You want to press the next spell such that it arrives at the server in the "queueing window" as your Starfire is ending. In constant latency, you'd press it just under one cast time from when you pressed the previous one (i.e. when Quartz hits the red part of the cast bar). But since you can't count on latency to be constant, you should start spamming your key a few tenths of a second before that point, and continue until you see the next cast begin.
After an instant: No queueing here, and the ability to cast the next spell is determined by the client-side GCD. Watch your Quartz GCD spark and press your key right as it ends. Pressing it early is a waste and will return a "spell not ready" error in your client.
After a Wrath, <1s cast time: Identical to an instant cast. In highly variable latency, you may want to spam your spell a few times to make sure it fires.
After a Wrath, >1s cast time: Since the Wrath cast time is equal to the GCD, you can't start spamming your next spell early like you do after a Starfire. Start pressing your key as the GCD ends (as with an instant), and continue pressing it until you see that the server has begun your next cast (as with a Starfire).
The above does mean that Wrath is more "lossy" than Starfire in actual use, since the client-side GCD prevents you from using the queueing window optimally.
Value of Haste
As a result of the above, Starfire always feels the full effect of haste. No plausible amount of haste brings it near a 1s cast time.
Instants feel the full effect of haste until the softcap, where they become fixed at 1s and feel zero effect from haste.
Wrath behaves mostly like an instant (since it's typically GCD-limited). But due to variable latency and Wrath's transition from cast-like to instant-like behavior at the softcap, there's a bit of a fuzzy zone where haste decays to 0 in value. The theorycraft here treats it identically to an instant.
Spell Rotations
The Short Version
Start by applying Moonfire and Insect Swarm. Whenever either of these falls off of your target, reapply it.
Cast Wrath until until a Lunar (Starfire) Eclipse procs, then switch to Starfire. Cast Starfire until a Solar (Wrath) Eclipse procs, then switch back to Wrath.
Repeat this Eclipse cycle, always keeping your two DoT's on the target and using Starfall and Force of Nature on cooldown.
For more detail, continue to the following sections.
The Eclipse Rotation
You will generally operate in a four-step cycle.
Pre-Lunar. Cast Wrath until the Eclipse buff appears (have some mod that will make it very obvious when you gain the buff).
Lunar Eclipse. When you see the buff, finish casting your current Wrath and then cast Starfire for the duration of Eclipse.
Pre-Solar. When Eclipse fades, continue casting Starfire. Note that a Starfire only gains the benefit if it is fully completed while the Eclipse buff is up, so if you only have time for a partial cast, your Eclipse is effectively over. Cast Starfire until the Eclipse buff appears.
Solar Eclipse. Cast Wrath for the duration. Continue casting when it ends to loop back around into step 1.
Basically, you cast Wrath until Lunar procs and cast Starfire until Solar procs. But once DoTs and other instants are involved, thinking in terms of the four-step cycle helps you plan your casts well.
Lunar is slightly stronger than Solar (slightly faster to proc and slightly more damage per proc, and makes full use of Glyph of Starfire). So in a situation where you can proc either (the beginning of the fight, or if you've failed to proc Solar for a few seconds and Lunar is coming off of ICD), cast Wrath to proc a Lunar Eclipse. It's good to have an add-on showing your Eclipse duration and cooldown (see below) so you can always tell at a glance which nuke to cast.
Subtleties of Transitions
Solar->Lunar: Wrath procs Nature's Grace when the cast completes, but procs Eclipse when it actually hits the target. This allows a sort of clairvoyance regarding Lunar Eclipses: if you see Nature's Grace refresh when you cast a Wrath, you know that that cast is a crit, and therefore that it has a 60% chance of proccing an Eclipse when it reaches the target (but be careful to remember that this doesn't work if Starfall is up, or if you've cast Moonfire at the same time that the Wrath completed).
If you switch to Starfire as soon as you see this happen (not interrupting a cast, merely swapping after the next Wrath), you have a 60% chance of effectively lengthening a Lunar Eclipse by starting to cast Starfire before it even procs. This is not in the spreadsheet yet, but some brief math indicates that it's worth trying to do, even though you waste a Starfire cast the other 40% of the time.
Lunar->Solar: As of 3.3, there is no longer a way to use latency to get your final Lunar Starfire to proc a Solar Eclipse. So nothing fancy in this direction.
DoT Refreshing
Make sure to read the Glyph section above for important information on Glyph selection and how that affects your DoT usage. Importantly, if you don't need to apply the Insect Swarm debuff, you will be leaving one DoT out of your rotation entirely (which one you leave out depends on whether you have 2T9). But in normal situations in progression content, you'll want the debuff and you'll use both DoT's.
Insect Swarm is weak in Icecrown-level gear. Using it is small DPS loss (less than 1%) compared to not using it at all, but you're casting it for the debuff. Try to maintain good uptime; refreshing between Eclipses works pretty well.
Moonfire is very good if you have the 2T9 set bonus, and should be refreshed whenever it drops. Without the set bonus, it's a very small DPS gain in Icecrown gear. You want to cast it whenever possible without interfering with your Eclipse rotation. The best times are (1) while moving (see "Movement" below) and (2) while waiting to see whether Eclipse procs. I'll explain what I mean by this here:
Ordinarily, when you proc an Eclipse, you have to cast one extra Wrath or Starfire before switching spells, due to the fact that you queue your next spell before seeing whether Eclipse procs. If you have a DoT to refresh, you can cast that instead, and use the GCD to see whether Eclipse procced. This way, the DoT only replaces the weak "wrong" spell during the Eclipse instead of delaying Eclipse or replacing an Eclipsed nuke.
For example, if Lunar is just ending and Insect Swarm is down, you can cast one extra Starfire and then Insect Swarm. During the GCD from the Insect Swarm, watch to see whether the Starfire crit (it's actually useful to watch for Nature's Grace, as that buff will appear before the Solar Eclipse will). If it did, you can immediately switch to Wrath for your next spell. This should become second nature eventually.
Other spells
Starfall: use this on cooldown against a single target (if there are others mobs in range, remember to make sure it's safe to cast). In AoE situations, try to use it as often as possible on multiple clustered targets.
Force of Nature: use this as many times as possible in a given fight. If you know when Bloodlust/Heroism is coming, try to cast this immediately beforehand (but not if this requires waiting so long that you can't use it as many times during the encounter). As you learn each fight, pay attention to things that kill the Treants and time your cast to avoid them if possible.
Typhoon: This spell has two potential uses:
1) The knockback. Occasionally it's useful in a raid encounter to spend a GCD pushing something away. For this it must be unglyphed.
2) AoE DPS. Typhoon on multiple targets has a high chance of proccing both Clearcasting and Nature's Grace. This can make it worth using in between Hurricane casts. For this it must be Glyphed.
Faerie Fire: Unless your raid has both a Shadow Priest and a Feral Druid, keep this on every mob. Even if it does have both, it doesn't particularly hurt to cast this at the pull if you think there's a chance either of the other classes' buffs will ever drop.
Rebirth: Remember that this drops Moonkin Form, so be ready to reshift as your next cast after Rebirth.
Innervate: Unglyphed, this returns 2.25 * 3496 = 7866 mana to the target. If you want to be able to cast it on yourself without detargeting your DPS target, use:
/use [harm, @player][] Innervate
Gift of the Wild: casting this virtually guarantees a Clearcast proc.
1) If you're very short on mana and want to cast an expensive spell such as Hurricane, you might consider spending a GCD for this.
2) If you're using the 2T10 bonus, the Clearcast gives a damage buff. If forced to move during a fight, you can cast this for the buff.
Bloodlust/Heroism
Under the effect of Bloodlust, Wrath will gain very little DPS since it's usually so close to the 1s GCD minimum in the first place. The goal during Bloodlust is to use Lunar Eclipse as much as possible. As of 3.3, we can no longer cancel Solar during Bloodlust to make it possible to proc Lunar more quickly, so the spell rotation is largely unchanged. You should get at least one Lunar Eclipse during Bloodlust if you simply maintain your standard rotation; you should use your [Potion of Speed] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40211) at that point. If you know when Bloodlust is coming, remember to cast Force of Nature immediately beforehand.
Overall, our benefit from Bloodlust is much smaller than most classes' (roughly 10-12% more DPS for the duration), since only Starfire is significantly affected by the buff.
Movement
Movement (or other spellcasting interruption) during boss fights significantly impacts our ability to use Eclipse well. There is little that we can do about this; Blizzard has indicated that they planning to rework Eclipse in Cataclysm to make this less of a problem.
It's important to manage our DoT's well during high-movement situations. If at all possible, you want to plan your casting so that you cast DoT's (or other instants) while moving, and nukes while standing still. This requires you to be highly aware of both your spell rotation and your surroundings, so you can anticipate movement. It's always worth delaying a DoT by a few seconds to cast it while moving, making use of time that would otherwise be wasted. This also holds true for other instants: Force of Nature, Starfall, and if you have the 2T10 bonus, Gift of the Wild.
Of course, you can't always plan things perfectly, and often you find yourself moving while DoT's are ticking. In this scenario, if you don't have other spells worth casting, it's better to cast a DoT and clip the old one than it is to cast nothing.
Multiple Targets
In multi-target situations, you'll mostly be selecting spells by your own judgment rather than any kind of formula. It's important to be familiar with the damage done by each of your spells so you can always cast whatever has the best DPET (damage per execution time). Overall, you'll be trying to maintain your usual Eclipse behavior as much as possible. Multi-dotting provides a small DPS gain at best. We actually have very little to gain from spreading our DPS across multiple targets. Some things to keep in mind:
Save Starfall for multi-target situations if there are any in the encounter.
If using the 2T9 bonus, Moonfire is your highest DPET spell, and worth casting on any target who will live sufficiently long (15 seconds).
Otherwise, our DoT's are so weak that multi-dotting is a poor strategy for us. The best strategy is to maintain your normal rotation on one target, unless there are enough targets to AoE.
Against five or more targets (4 with Gale Winds), it's more effective to AoE. Against four, it's quite close--use your judgement based on the situation.
If your raid does not have Ebon Plague, and is splitting DPS on multiple targets, you will want to keep up Earth and Moon on all of them. Rotate your nukes through the targets, while maintaining your Eclipse cycle. The DPS loss from changing targets will be outweighed by the benefit to the rest of the raid.
AoE
Aside from aforementioned Starfall usage, you'll basically AoE by chaining Hurricane. One little nuance is that you can start Hurricanes under the effect of Nature's Grace (procced by Starfall, for example), for significantly higher AoE DPS. Typhoon adds little damage but is another way of "forcing" Nature's Grace (but if you don't have it Glyphed, typically inconveniences everyone else in your group). With Idol of Lunar Fury, keeping one Moonfire ticking will slightly improve the DPS of Hurricane. A typical AoE sequence allowing you to maintain high DPS for around 30 seconds is:
Starfall -> Hurricane x2 (both with NG from Starfall) -> Glyphed Typhoon -> Hurricane (with NG) -> Moonfire (hoping to proc NG) -> Hurricane.
Open Questions
Things I'm still pondering or simply haven't gotten around to mathing out in detail--if you're looking to contribute, these are good topics to think about. Added bonus if you also give a suggestion for refining the spreadsheet model.
When exactly is it worth waiting through the end of an Eclipse to refresh a DoT? WrathCalcs model for this is really needed at some point.
Are the assumptions regarding haste, queueing, and the GCD accurate or is there some way to better model the realities of casting in latency?
Mods & Tools
SquawkAndAwe (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11436-SquawkAndAwe.html): A convenient set of bars for all Moonkin-related timers.
Quartz (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx): as a primary caster, you should have a proper cast bar. This is an excellent one.
Rawr (http://rawr.codeplex.com/): A good way to do complex gear comparisons that would otherwise be tedious. It uses roughly the same calculations as the spreadsheet.
Simulationcraft (http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/): A simulation-based approach to theorycrafting.
WrathCalcs (attached to this post). Moonkin theorycraft spreadsheet. Will give you the exact value of stats/talents/glyphs in your current setup, and lets you experiment with different rotations. Originally made by Adoriele here (http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t37800-wrathcalcs_moonkin_dps_spreadsheet). I've since taken it over and used it as the platform for my own theorycrafting, reflected in the version posted here.
Hope You like ill be releasing one for each class and race