If you are a moonkin, chances are that you are here to read my blog. And thanks a lot for that. Unfortunately, this post isn’t for you! That’s not to say that you can’t read it, but it’s just not meant for your eyes. Instead, go look at the moonkin guide at the top if you are hungering for moonkin information.

If you are a raid leader or class leader of a guild, chances are that you have been given this link by someone who thinks you would benefit to get up to speed when it comes to moonkins. Or maybe you are out searcing for information yourself, to help a fellow guildie to improve his performance. In any case, kudos to you, this is excactly where you need to be.

I am beginning to lose count of how many times I have been contacted by chickens in distress. “My guild sais I’m doing too little damage”, “they say my gear is bad”, “Tya want’s to sacrifice me to the Gods of the Kill”. They ask for help, and many times it is not nessecarely the moonkin that is the problem. The major cause for this is that, with so few moonkins around, its not always easy for other classes to understand how we function. Its easier in guilds where you have three rogues and a handful of mages that can keep each other up to date – most guilds only emply one, maybe two, moonkins, and it is not always certain that these moonkins has the tools they need. Except for guilds that has a caster class master who has actually played moonkins, I get the feeling that very few guilds have any real sort of knowledge about moonkins. I opt to change that!

Why moonkins?

If you have little – or bad – experience with moonkins in your raid, you may argue that you don’t need a moonkin. Well, maybe you don’t. Or maybe you do not know what a moonkin can bring to your raid. A moonkin is first and foremost a support class. We are a freaking buff battery. With just a single moonkin in the raid, you will get:

  • +3% hit on spells
  • +3% haste
  • +5% spell crit
  • +13% spell damage
  • Minor armor debuff
  • And all the other things that a druid can bring!

Here follows another common argument: “Why would I bring a moonkin when I can get these buffs from other classes?”. I’d like to turn that around with “Why would you bring all the other classes when a moonkin can bring them all?”. Fact of the matter is, apart from buffs like Kings and such, most buffs are covered in one way or another by another class. Moonkins have the benefit gathering a lot of support spells for melee and casters alike, and most of the time these buffs and debuffs will be up by default. A moonkin will always ensure that there is a faerie fire on the target, because it increases his hit and crit. He will add the spell damage debuff just by attacking, and the crit and haste comes from just being in moonin form

“So what about damage?”. Short answer is, moonkin damage is fine. The longer answer is a complicated story to get you aquanted with some of the issues a modern moonkin will face. First off, RNG is a bitch, there’s no way around it. Our damage is dependant on a high uptime of eclipse, and with the current eclipse system, there will be times where we are purely out of luck. Even in high end gear, I can experience going a full minute or more without an eclipse proc, and it will hurt my DPS a lot. Eclipse is roughly a 40% damage increase, and the longer we go without, the less DPS we do. For the most time, a new eclipse will go up 3-5 seconds after the last one ended, but there are times when goodwill is all you have to get you going, and it will just not be enough.

Movement is also a big issue. When we move, we lose our 20% personal haste buff, and we also lose the time we should have taken advantage of an eclipse – and it usually takes longer to proc eclipse after you have stopped moving, because you lack the aforementioned haste buff.

All in all, however, moonkins can compete. They will rarely be at the very top of the meters, but then again, neither is 24 other members of the raid. As long as your moonkin is equal to the core of your raid group, everything is fine. Gear, tactics, random events on a fight can all affect your DPS, and it is the same for moonkins.

The applicant

So you got a moonkin application to join your guild, but you have no idea what to look out for. You heard something about caps, but you really have no clue if this moonkin is doing what he’s supposed to. Here is a quick checklist to see if your moonkin has geared correctly. I have added little instance markers so you know which level of raiding this becomes attainable, so you can see if your moonkin is ready – or just about ready – for the kind of raiding you do.

  • Pre-Naxx: 263 hit. This is the most important thing for a moonkin.
  • Naxx-Ulduar: 401 haste rating. This is the moonkins soft haste cap.
  • TOTGC-ICC: 42% crit rating mid combat, the soft crit cap. Unbuffed, this occurs around 32%+ crit, but it differs a bit depending on the intellect/crit rating ratio.

This also translates directly into we prioritize our stats. We aim to be hit capped, ofcourse. Next, we need to reach our soft haste cap, easely obtainable at the end of Naxx, and a must for every single moonkin. Following that, we prioritize crit over haste – if you have a moonkin with 800 haste but 23% crit, something is very wrong, and he needs to be on the lookout for new gear. Once both the soft haste cap and the soft crit cap has been reached, haste and crit is more or less equal, but there is a slight favor to haste.

Check his gems! His gemming should reflect the state of his caps. If he is below the hit cap and the haste cap, he should be using SP/hitorhaste in yellow slots. If he is above the soft haste cap, he should be using SP/crit gems, and when he is above both caps, he should be back at SP/haste gems. Red gem slots should always be pure spell power gems, and he needs two SP/spi gems to activate his meta.

When it comes to talents and glyphs, there is really only one choice: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0tMbuiIscdIVhouZbxczb:uir. You will notice that there are two talent points left out – there is really nothing much he can do with these, other than fillers, but most people put them into Typhoon “just to have it” and then Owlkin Frenzy or Gale Winds. Genesis and Brambles are not really worth anything, and no moonkin since Ulduar has ever had mana problems.

The weakest link

If your guildie moonkin seems to be falling behind, take a moment to consider if there is anything about a particular fight that might cause him to drop behind other DPS. A common mistake is to just look at all DPS for a full fight, and see where he places on the list. This can be a major mistake if there are elements on the fight that offers a lot of splash damage to other classes. Our starfall will splash as well, but it does not compare to that of other classes. Many damage meters will show damage done to a specific source, say, The Lich King, and root out all the useless splash damage done to the ghouls, and this will give a much clearer picture of where the moonkin is. Consider the amount of movement, and leave room for RNG, and you will be off to a good start.

Second, being 12th on the damage meters is not nessecarely bad. You need to look at how he compares to the rest of the raid. Usually, a raid group will have one or two people well ahead of everybody else – the shadowmourne wielders, the rogues trick’ing each other and so on. Being 12th on the meters is not bad, if the raid members from 5-14 is relatively close to each other. This goes for all classes in an equal setting, I suppose. Consider also the level of gear, and what you have them do during a fight – if you have him removing curses and poisons, you will obviously take him away from doing damage.

All in all, a well played, equal geared moonkin does competative damage, certainly enough to warrent them a spot, heck, you can even bring two if they know what to do. They can compare, and even beat, most other casters; Mages, hunters, priests and shamans, although from personal experience, warlocks are slightly ahead – of all ranged classes, though.
If you want to get really “down and dirty” with the kill log, take a look at the damage distribution. Usually, wrath and starfire will be very close, often taking account for 40% of the moonkins total damage each. This leaves around 10% for starfall, and 5% for each of his DOTs. His DOTs will – should – never have a 100% uptime, as he only uses one at a time in a stand still rotation, and the DOTs is mainly only there to buff his wrath and starfire respectively.

Moonkin loot

Your moonkin want’s loot as well. Usually, there is an acceptable leather piece for every slot, but as moonkins share loot with restoration druids, most of them will have spirit and then either crit or haste. While we do get spell power from spirit, it is a very weak stat for us, and we would much rather want items with both haste and crit on them – most of the time, these items are cloth, so if you can spare it, it wont hurt to throw those cloth boots at your moonkin. The leather version of an equal item level is usually 20% less strong than the cloth version, but moonkins generally know that they wont get first dibs at cloth items. This is a problem that occurs in Wrath of the Lich King, but it will promptly evaporate when Cataclysm comes.

Conclution

You should now have the tools you need to ensure that your moonkin has the tools he needs. If you want to dig in deeper, or if you feel that he should have something to read up on, please feel free to point him towards my moonkin guide, which can be found at the top of my site. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

- QQ