The Moonkin Repository

Greetings. I was not able to get Beta access but I have been trying to follow the updates to our class on different websites. I am finding it a little confusing on how they are changing our spells and what has priority and when. Have any of you begun a "Spell Rotation" suggestion thread yet as of the most current beta build?

Also, it it to early to ask if anyone has begun putting a list together for BIS gear for 5 man heroic, Normal Raid and Heroic Raids?

Thank you all or your time.

Goodomens

Guides usually don't get posted until patch day. Graylo and I have recent posts about the latest round of moonkin changes if you want a brief overview of the biggest highlights at the moment:

http://www.restokin.com/2012/07/they-fi ... ild-15913/

http://graymatterwow.blogspot.com/2012/ ... ake-3.html

Hey thanks lissanna. Much appreciated.

@lissanna

Soul of the Forest is the worst talent on beta right now currently I am macroing Incarnation with Nature's Vigil and then CE with pvp trinket

Rotation:

Pre-Pot
Wrath 1 time to proc Lunar then Sunfire to get Lunar Shower buff on Moonfire
Incarnation + Nature's Vigil Macro
Starsurge
SF
Starfire till Solar
Then refresh dots by refreshing the non eclipsed one 1st
Then CE upon leaving your 1st Solar (Incarnation will be falling off)
Moonfire for double dot
Starfire until 1 sec of CE left moonfire to refresh dots
Then push lunar
/repeat

Lunar is just killing for single target and aoe

There is going to be one very specific gear point where SotF becomes the best talent, and thats when you have enough crit and haste to never refresh DoTs. Though to be fair I'm not sure that we will ever have enough gear to make that happen.

But yeah, with the Euphoria changes I don't think it really is guaranteed to save you a cast in either pre-eclipse, and just the ability to combine two cds with NV and Incarnation+CA is just too good.

Even at that lvl of gear tho you are still counting too much on rng for SotF + the right number of crits to allow you to keep your dots rolling on a target when Incarnation will IMO scale really well, that being said I would rather have a cd for say and "add" phase then hoping to keep my dots rolling on my main dps target I think blizzard is done with the "tank and spank" bosses that they had in DS.

From what I was reading at EJ, incarnation is best pre-raid gear, SotF is best in normal raid gear and incarnation becomes good again in heroic raid gear. I think the reasoning is, in pre raid gear, even with sotf you'd have to clip dots to get them to good uptimes. In normal raid gear you have the haste required to maintain 100% (or close to it) uptime as long as you have sotf. Once you get enough haste that you don't need sotf to maintain that uptime, you switch back to incarnation and DOC for a 1 dot per cycle rotation. At least, that's how it is now. I fully expect DOC to get nerfed soon.

As for saving a cast or not, SotF will always save you a cast in post lunar/pre solar. SS and SF have the same energy, so it will always take you the same number of casts to go from start of lunar to start of solar (7 with SotF, 8 without).

For post solar/pre lunar it's a bit more complicated.
You can end with 3 possible energies at the end of solar. 110 (1 SS) and 100 (2 SS) will be the most common, but occasionally you may end with 105 (3 SS).

If you end with 110, with SotF, you will save a wrath cast if you get 1 or 2 SS post solar, but not if you get 0 SS.

If you end with 100 or 105, you save a wrath cast if you get 0 or 2 SS, but not if you just get 1 (again, post solar).

So, half the time you are guaranteed to save a cast, and the other half of the time you're much more likely to save a cast than not.

However with SS as srong as it is right now, you might not want to use it post-solar (particularly if you are already close to Lunar). That consideration increases the chance of zero post-solar Starsurges.

You're very definitely not going to be in the 2 SS situation very often, if ever, because if you do get that 2nd proc you'd want to hold it, except under very rare circumstances (say, while moving, for example).

As for holding just the 1, I don't know. I've lost track of the proc rate with all the changes that have been done, but last I looked it was still pretty decent. And with the potential double dot extension properties of SS, it really might not be worth it to hold on to it for very long. You maybe still don't want to actually proc lunar with it, though.

A couple things to add, first you will want to cast Starfall before that first Wrath cast, so you can immediately chain a second Starfall during Lunar Eclipse. Incarnation+NV should be used as soon as you finish your Wrath cast so as to buff your Moonfire. Finally Incarnation+CA are stacking on Beta (first they did, then they didnt, now they do again) so in order to ensure 100% Eclipse uptime during Incarnation you will obviously want to use CA immediately upon exiting Lunar Eclipse, not after Solar. Your first round of dots and your second Starfall should be expiring at this point so it lines up very nicely to refresh both dots and chain your 3rd Starfall.

I should add that following the nerf to DoC (50% now), Thedopefish has mathed out that DoC is in fact still ahead of HotW and NV. If DoC ends up being the way to go, then it will not effect the rotation above all that much. The only thing yet to be determined is whether one or two Healing Touches will be added per cycle to use DoC. With 2 per cycle you would simply cast HT before you cast both dots in each eclipse. With 1 per cycle the idea is to cast HT upon reaching Lunar, cast Moonfire, and then proceed casting to Solar and use Sunfire to eat the 2nd charge of DoC before the buff expires. You have 30 seconds to do this which will not be feasible in fights with high movement.

EJ didn't have any talent info available back at the end of July when I had my blog post. All the sims have been much more recent. We've also had a couple builds that have changed the priority on what talents are or aren't the best.

My mini update in July was mostly to spell out mechanics and how they were working (and our DOTs were on an 18 sec timer at that point plus 3 seconds from the set bonuses on T14).

The sims coming out have Incarntion & Nature's Vigil sitting about equal with Incarnation & DOC. So, since I refuse to put healing touches in my rotation, I'm going with NV

I can't agree with that more lissanna, from just dummy testing they seemed to be close enough to each other to call even. I'm glad that they nerfed DoC, because a dps having to weave heals into their rotation do max damage just seems like the definition of clunky gameplay to me.

While I definitely agree it feels clunky, I think in true raid situations DoC will be superior to NV (Discounting HPS entirely) assuming the numbers stay the way they are. The sims show them about equal currently in a Patchwerk style fight where you are getting 100% chain cast time for the 30 seconds of NV. The reality is there is no fight anymore where you will be able to stand still for that amount of time and be able to get the maximum damage increase from NV. On the flip side it you are much more likely to get the full benefit from DoC. There are obviously some issues where you can throw up two DoC buffed dots then have to move which would leave you unable to use LS for on the move DPS, but that's only extremely punishing if the DoC dot buff has 7-8+ seconds remaining. Otherwise you should be able to get full use out it since one HT will give you 30 seonds to apply the two instant cast dots. Also NS every 2 minutes is a nice little boost to DoC and DoC could potentially be extremely powerful on multi target fights (Heroic Spirit Kings, Garalon, etc) assuming it is beneficial to HT before you double dot each target. Even if it's not then you could still play it like normal for all the other benefits listed above.

Will not Vigel be better in a burn phase? Also if Dream Of Cenarius will be a dps increase without the benefits of the actual heals will it not be nerfed?

HoTW steady passive dps with some shifting gains, Dream Of Cenarius when wanting to dot things up and Vigil when you have a burn phase that needs to be executed. If one talent is always preffered then i guess it will be nerfed.

Regarding the rotation and Celestial Alignment, what is the best approach here? We cast it directly after leaving a Eclipse, making sure not to clip MF or SF when leaving eclipse/nature grace. We start Celestial phase with MF to get a Nature Grace buffed MF and SF. Cast Starsurge on CD, filler Starfire and we end with casting at the end. Is there something else?

Pretty much, except that you also need to cast starfall in there in the first 5s of CA. You also want to end it casting wrath so that you head to lunar eclipse, either making sure not to skip a lunar phase or skipping a solar phase for an extra lunar phase, depending on where you were on the eclipse bar when hitting CA.