Lots of things has changed in Cataclysm, most notibly the fact that Hurricane is terrible for both damage and mana at this point in the game, but also the fact that Typhoon is actually a pretty awesome spell now.

But alas, many people seem to look down on Typhoon and on Gale Winds as a talent. I opt to change that!

Since the change to our eclipse, where we are buffing either nature or arcane spells, rather than just Starfire and Wrath, typhoon has been close to my heart. It’s been an ability that I’ve tried to use as much as possible, whenever it made sense to use it.

Obviously, Typhoon is a highly situational spell, but it’s should not be disregarded as easely anymore as we did before. As it turns out, Typhoon is worth casting instead of a Wrath when you have three targets or more. A typhoon does just around half the damage of a wrath when neither crits, so three targets would be a definite damage increase.

As an added bonus, Typhoon doesn’t generate any eclipse energy, so if you can cast it while in solar eclipse, you can dish out a lot of damage. It should be noted, however, that Typhoon does not gain as much crit % as wrath does, but three targets or more is still a good guideline.

It should be noted, of course, that it’s only worth casting Typhoon if the extra targets has to die. Sure, you can inflate your DPS, but if the adds doesn’t have to die, you are inflating your DPS on the meters, but you are doing less damage to the boss – where it matters.

But there are quite a lot of fights where Typhoon is useful. I’ll write some suggestions here, on the fights that I try to use it as much as possible, to give you a bit of inspiration:

Magmaw: Typhoon is a killer on Parasites, when you do it on normal, or for Constructs when you do it on heroic. There are usually two constructs and a giant worm up on heroic, but you are not doing your raid a favor if you are showering the Parasites if you are just going to kite them.

Omnitron: There are a few uses for the Omnitron encounter, namely when Toxitron spawns his adds. There are enough of them to do Typhoon even if you are in lunar eclipse.

Maloriak: Be it the Abbirations on normal or the Vile Slew on heroic, Typhoon is going to add a massive amount of damage.

Halfus: Do I really have to spell this out? Several dragons, especially on heroic. A ton of damage on the Whelp pack between Wild Mushroom Detonates.

Cho’Gall: The Corrupted Blood and the Tentacles are great targets for Typhoon.

In the end, there are probably a ton more uses for Typhoon. If you haven’t used it yet, now is the time. And since we are swimming in mana, once you are comfortable with your regen, you should have the points to spare for Gale Winds.

- QQ

Of course, when people actually managed to get the 4-piece bonus, they started doing the math, and as it turns out, it’s really rather badass. But, I figured I might as well continue my epic-upgrading, and I have now finally managed to get my very last item from Valor Points.

Of course, had I actually run the random heroic every day, I would have gotten this a long time ago. Several guildies of mine has been making a killing on selling valor boots, and now that I’m finally finished, maybe I can catch in on some sweet goldmaking. But that is not the topic of this blog post.

With getting the 4-piece bonus, we get a rather significant change to our rotation. See, if we simply follow up with refreshing DOTs and casting starfall whenever we enter an eclipse, we will use up the bonus charges. It’s not that exciting to spend a +99% crit buff on a moonfire or three stars.

From now on, whenever you proc an eclipse, you simply follow up with a nuke no matter what. Starsurge is obviously an awesome spell to guarantee a crit on, but starfire and wrath still works wonders. You have to continue your casting, because if you don’t use the bonus before 8 seconds, it will run out.

In short, you have to avoid using anything that has direct damage that can crit – which is moonfire, sunfire and starfall. Instead, you simply make sure that you cast it before you exit eclipse, to be sure that you gain Nature’s Grace and eclipsed buffs up.

Sometimes, your DOTs will run out just before you proc eclipse. This is an ideal time to recast them, before you proc eclipse. The ~8 seconds of extra crit will transfer into your DOTs and make you very crit happy. In this case, recast your DOTs just before this eclipse runs out to proc NG. If your DOTs are still running as you enter eclipse, simply keep nuking and enjoy the big numbers. When your DOTs run out outside of eclipse, simply refresh them.

If you are using the Glyph of Starfire, you have to pay extra attention to your DOTs. Sometimes this rotation will keep sunfire up until you enter lunar eclipse, which is fine – starfire will increase the duration of sunfire as well, but do get that moonfire up before you exit lunar eclipse. Also, keep in mind that it is perfectly safe to refresh insect swarm – it won’t eat up the charges.

I like how this bonus changes our rotation. When I know that my next cast will proc eclipse, I can now continue with wrath/starfire/starsurge and continue on in the other direction. I don’t have to do an extra cast or wait for moonfire or sunfire to get eclipsed. This feels a lot more natural to me. And even though we have to focus a tad more on our DOTs now, I’m only happy to do that for the massive DPS gain we get.

Fun fact: Wild Mushroom acts a bit funny with the 4-piece bonus. If you have shrooms up and detonate them with the buff on, they will all crit on every single target. But if you have one shroom up which hits two targets, it will eat up two charges. I guess that since you detonate all three shrooms at the same instant, they all get the benefit of the added crit. Of course, it is a little bit difficult to time an eclipse right when you have to detonate your shrooms, but it’s a neat little trick.

- QQ

But it doesn’t hurt to be a bit forthcoming once in a while, so I thought I’d do a little post on the kind of changes I’d like to see for moonkins. I did do a post like this over a year ago, and if I stretch it a little bit, I can argue that a few of those ideas became a reality.

You already know about my thoughts on Wild Mushroom, and it’s nice to see that some of the suggestions came through. Of course, I have no delusions that my ideas are the pivot point for moonkin changes, but if Ghostcrawler should happen to stop by here while browsing for tips for his moonkin alt, I wouldn’t want him to be disappointed.

DOTs generating eclipse power

I have posted guards outside my door, and I pay a street boy to open my mail. You are not going to like this, but I really, really, really would like to see DOTs generate eclipse power.

My reasoning is very simple: I don’t like the idea that a concept of DPS is staying in an eclipse and keeping DOTs up on 10 mobs. I believe that each class has a system to their DPS, a way that they are “supposed” to deal different types of damage. For moonkins, the design is simple; For single target DPS, we use wrath, starfire, starsurge and DOTs. For AOE, we use hurricane, shrooms and typhoon. For moving, we use instants and spam moonfire with Lunar Shower active. That’s how it’s “supposed” to be anyways.

Of course, moonkin AOE is not very strong at the moment, which is why we so easely fall into the habit of DOT’ing up all targets instead of using real AOE spells. Hurricane costs way too much mana and shrooms are weak and uninteresting, so we will obviously go for whatever gives us the best output.

But when the best output lies outside of the design philosophy, something has to be done. The idea is simple, just make IS and sunfire generate lunar power, and moonfire generate solar power. Insect Swarm would not move the bar if you are in lunar eclipse, but that’s fine since it’s not buffed by eclipse.

This puts a small damper on spamhappy dotters, but not so much that it would hurt us enormously. It also means that if we have to move for an extended period, spamming DOTs can move us into the next eclipse – or out of eclipse if we happen to be in one.

Of course, this change goes hand in hand with…

Mana changes to hurricane

Right now, 15.000 mana for a cast of hurricane is devastating to our mana. We can get 10 hurricanes off if we use our talented innervate, but that leaves us dryer than a drawf in Tanaris, so realisticly, we can’t really cast that many if we want to sustain our DPS.

Even a slight reduction in the mana cost would go a long way to help us out. Most likely, we should see a bit of a damage increase as well, but hurricane would go well hand in hand with our soon-to-be-buffed shrooms – cast three shrooms, detonate, hurricane – repeat.

Of course, this problem will evaporate over time. As we get higher intellect, we gain more mana, and we’ll be able to cast more hurricanes. We could also pick up Moonglow for AOE intensive fights. Whatever the plans are, we are struggling a bit on the AOE side, especially when having to deal with warlocks moving with hellfire and melee classes with a never ending supply of energy.

Fizzling frenzy

Owlkin Frenzy is still one of the major underdogs in our talent tree. It doesn’t proc from half as many attacks that it should, and the gain from spending three talent points in it is rather disappointing. Owlkin Frenzy needs to be pepped up a bit.

An easy fix is to have it proc on all damage. God knows there is a lot of AOE damage going about in raids these days, and it would be a decent talent if it could proc off everything. A more interesting solution, which I’m sure is also an interesting alternative for moonkins PvP’ing, would be to simply make it a sort of enrage ability.

My reasoning for this is sort of tying us to beast mastery hunter pets, and beastial wrath, and the fact that many wild moonkins has an enrage effect.

I imagine that Owlkin Frenzy, as an ability, could remove all snares, roots and stuns – much like Beastial Wrath, and give a flat damage bonus. Moonkins doesn’t really have many defensive abilities, at least nothing compared to Ice Block, Disengage or Vanish. Aside from using a trinket or barkskin, we really have no “oh crud” button when we’re in a pinch.

I throw in the added damage to spice everything up for us PvE moonkins, of course.

Alluring euphoria

While I enjoy the concept of Euphoria, it is nothing but a random, static increase to our eclipse power. I don’t see why this couldn’t be tied to our crit chance, and increase as we gain more crit. It might make crit immensely powerful, but I’m fine with that. If I had to choose, I’d rather have a talent that scales as I go along.

Aside from that, if you haven’t heard, there is a rather depressing bug with euphoria, where it actually never grants double energy if you are past 35 energy in either direction. This should obviously be adressed as well.

And finally..

Glyph of Force of Nature. Pet treant. Mmm? MMM?

- QQ

Some of the changes to moonkins has already been announced, and they are pretty exciting to say the least. I wanted to take a moment to adress some of the more interesting changes (ei. I won’t be talking about soothe being instant!). Please note that we might still see a lot more changes on the PTR before the patch goes live.

Oh, and before I forget, I’m going to link to a page at the top of my site (way up at the top, in that little grey area, because that’s all I can do – maybe I’ll add a link in the side bar) where I’ll keep a list of PTR changes for this and future patches.

• Total Eclipse now increases bonus damage from Eclipse by 16%, up from 12%. Each point of Mastery now increases the bonus by an additional 2%, up from 1.5%.

Right off the bat, this is a nice little damage increase. We are basicly looking at 4% more damage during eclipse just by logging in, which is a 2-2,5% damage increase. More importantly, this is going to make Mastery more desirable than crit, but probably not as good as haste.

Please keep in mind, as I’ve been saying so far about mastery, this doesn’t make crit bad, it just means that you’ll get more damage from haste and mastery.

• Wild Mushroom is now instant cast, down from 0.5 seconds. In addition, the radius of detonation has been increased to 6 yards, up from 3, and damage done increased by 15%.
  Fungal Growth now has a 100 yards range, up from 30 yards.

Blizzard’s first attempts to fix Wild Mushroom. You will still have to place three shrooms manually, but you can do this while moving, or choose to move right after you target it on the ground. The range increase was greatly needed, and placing shrooms is a bit more forgiving now. The added damage will make shrooms a lot better for AOE. I am still sulking for a glyph that makes Wild Mushroom a bit more attractive in PvE, but a damage and range increase is a good start.

Just to avoid the confusion: The change to Fungal Growth is just to make sure that if you place down your treants and run away, they will still drop the snare when they die.

• Moonfire and Sunfire now costs 9% of base mana, down from 18% of base mana.

A minor correction to our mana usage. 3,3k mana for a moonfire, where insect swarm is only 1,5k mana is a bit steep.

• The Shooting Stars buff duration has been increased to 12 seconds, up from 8 seconds.

This might seem trivial, but this is actually a pretty neat change. Have you ever been in an encounter where you get frequent stuns, see Shooting Stars proc, and then disappear before you get out of the stun? This will get you back in the game fast after a stun, provided that you have your DOTs up and a little luck. It won’t break the game, but it’s a cute little change afterwards.

• Balance of Power now increases spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 50/100% of any spirit gained from item or effects. (Old – Just 50/100% of your Spirit)

As far as I know, spirit from food and the like did not increase your hit rating. I didn’t bother to test this though.

• Typhoon now deals nature damage to target in front of the caster within 30 yards.
• Soothe is now instant cast, down from 1.5 sec cast.

So?

• Glyph of Wrath now increases damage done by Wrath by 10% and no longer requires Insect Swarm on the target.

This change is probably most interesting to PvP’ers. I don’t generally shoot many wraths without IS being up already – not to mention the fact that I’m not using Glyph of Wrath.

–

There you have it folks, the PTR changes so far. More might be on their way, but aside from Wild Mushrooms, I quite like our current situation in Cataclysm. Damage is fine, rotations are well balanced and we are not a force to be ignored.

- QQ

Yesterday, we finally got Lich King down on heroic again after the patch. The first few weeks were sketchy, with people trying hard to get used to their new rotation, and it meant going from one-shotting Lich King to many, many wipes.

I must admit, I had my issues with my rotation as well. It’s hard to get used to the new rotation, when it’s so easy to fall back into old habits. I got a feeling, though, that its finally beginning to sit, but with only two raid days a week these days, I don’t excactly get a lot of practice.

The patch brought a lot of bugs and weird quirks, though, and I feel like I should address those.

Eclipse delay

As you might have noticed, there is a slight delay from casting a spell that should push you into eclipse, and when it actually does it. This is most clearly evident on lunar eclipses, because of wraths travel time. But it also seems to happen on many solar eclipses.

To get around this, I begin casting a wrath/starfire, counting on eclipse to kick in before the cast is over. That usually covers it up nicely, but I have seen instances, especially on proccing lunar eclipse, where I can go several seconds after the cast that should proc eclipse, before it actually kicks in. It is slightly annoying, because I get the feeling that I can’t completely trust my eclipse procs, and I have to compensate by either waiting, or casting starfire until the eclipse proc shows.

Of course, this could be due to any number of reasons. Addons, latency, some weird quirks on the boss. In the end I decided that it’s not really a huge case at present time. I’m still rocking the meters, and one cast gone wrong is not the end of the world. The issue will either be resolved in Cataclysm, or we will find a decent way to deal with it.

Hasted DOTs and Nature’s Grace

If you look at your DOTs, they look like they change the frequency of their ticks whenever your haste value changes. Unfortunately, it seems like this is just a tooltip bug, and the DOT will only tick as fast as whatever haste you had when it was casted.

This causes a few problems, as we would generally want to have our most powerful DOTs hasted by Nature’s Grace. I am guessing that DOTs should scale with haste as it changed, but that is simply not the case. Fortunately, sunfire and insect swarm are generally very close in damage, and on our lunar eclipses, insect swarm can proc Nature’s Grace for us, and that haste can benefit our eclipsed moonfire.

Still, I would like this to be fixed before we start raiding in Cataclysm. As with the eclipse delay, it is not something that I am terribly worried about, as our damage is more than fine these days. The differences are rather minimal, after all.

Combat ress

There seem to be a nasty, undocumented bug with combat resses. I had heard about it, but hadn’t experienced it myself until yesterday. On trying to combat ress, a little feral druid suddenly got the message “You can no longer ressurect in combat”.

Now, Blizzard aired some thoughts on limiting the amount of combat resses per match. None of this is confirmed by a blue poster, but it seems silly that they would do that and still increase the cooldown of our Rebirth to 30 minutes. What’s more currious is that when our feral druid couldn’t combat ress, another druid could. On some fights, we got it after using one combat ress, and on other fights, we used three resses with no problem.

When the problem happened to me, we had just pulled Lich King, and a paladin skillfully pulled aggro and died. We were no more than 20 seconds into the fight, so suffice to say, we hadn’t used any in that fight. What’s more currious is that when I pressed my combat ress outside of combat, like when running back after a wipe, I still got the bug, despite the fact that I wasn’t targeting anyone.

It is certianly a weird bug, and if Blizzard did try to mess with the amount of combat resses, I think they should revert to the previous system and keep the cooldown at 30 minutes, or add the restriction but keep the cooldown on 10 minutes. It can’t really be both.

Grumpy gryphons

Oh, and it’s not like this is a druid specific problem, but what is up with those damn gryphons from the graveyards? Heck, I’d rather run from the ICC graveyard than having to slowly drift through the nether air!

- QQ

Mana is not a problem at level 80. It’s only around level 84, where the mana costs of our nukes goes up by a factor of five, that our spells begin to seriously hurt our mana. In fact, reality was that we could barely get through two eclipse cycles before running out of mana.

The roundtable druids agreed that a fix to this problem would be to reduce the mana cost of our spells and perhaps increase the potency of Euphoria. And in fact, this is excactly what Blizzard has done now.

Wrath and Starfire has both gotten their mana cost reduced by 5%. That means that Wrath’s mana cost was cut by 35,7% and Starfire’s mana cost was cut from 16% base mana down to 11%. That is a reduction of 31,25%. At the same time, Euphoria was increased from 12% total mana return upon proccing eclipse, to 16%.

The big question is whether or not this is enough. Our main nukes costing ~33% less and Euphoria giving back more mana is a good place to start, and these numbers are thankfully easy to tamper with. If we need to adjust it more, then that is a fairly simple procedure.

We might have to employ some pretty elaborate innervate tactics once we get up to level 85, but that is a topic for another day.

- QQ

Patch 4.0 is right around the corner, and with it comes a whole lot of changes to our class. For some reason, I thought I had plenty of time before I needed to re-write the Moonkin guide, failing to realise the abundance of questions that are bound to come when 4.0 hits the live servers.

So I buckled up and started typing. Obviously, some things are still the same. Professions and enchants hasn’t been changed on the PTR, so I won’t meddle with them in the guide before the changes are active. I assume that most enchants such as +81 spell power will be changed to +81 intellect, but until they do, I’ll keep those sections as they are.

Rest assured that I will keep updating this as 4.0 comes out, and naturally throughout Cataclysm as well. I’ll add this guide to the button at the top once 4.0 hits the live servers. I’ll also post this guide out to MMO-champion and the like when 4.0 comes around – you get to read it now, because you are here

Table of contents

1.0 Disclaimer – The 4.0 moonkin guide (new)
2.0 How to get help
3.0 Stats n’ caps (new)
4.0 Gems (new)
5.0 Talents (new)
6.0 Glyphs (new)
7.0 Enchants
8.0 Professions (slightly new)
9.0 Consumables
10.0 Rotation (new)
11.0 Eclipse (new)
12.0 Tips and tricks (new)
13.0 Useful addons (new)
14.0 Other moonkin guides (new)
15.0 Things to check (new)
16.0 Contributors (new)

1.0 Disclaimer – The 4.0 moonkin guide

Welcome to the 4.0 moonkin guide. Before proceeding to read this guide, I need you to read this paragraph very carefully. There are two things that you must keep in mind:

• This guide is for a level 80 character playing patch 4.0. What this means is that this guide is current for what is on the live servers, and not on the beta servers. As new patches are released, the guide will be updated.
• Information changes all the time, and we are still working hard on figuring out the finer points. Some of the information in this guide will be based on the research of others, while other parts are merely my own interpretation. I strongly encourage everybody to discuss and give feedback in this thread.

2.0 How to get help

If you have a moonkin related question, feel free to post a reply to this topic, and the community will attack it like hungry piranhas. However, to make it easier on yourself – and on everybody else – follow these tips first:

1. Read the guide. Most basics are covered here.
2. Identify your problem. Are you asking about gearing up, gems, enchants, rotation, addons, how to get girls or something else?
3. Check the guide again – maybe you missed something that answered your question!
4. Post as much detailed, relevant information as you can; Armory link, maybe a raid log, and an explanation of what your issue is.
5. Are you sure it’s not in the guide? It goes a lot faster if you just read the guide, rather than you waiting for us to repeat what is written here.

We love to help, but many times the information is readily available, and you can save a lot of time by scrolling down to whatever area might give you problems. If that doesn’t help, or something in this guide isn’t clear, don’t hesitate to post in this topic, and we’ll help you out!

3.0 Stats n’ caps

You should always attempt to only use leather gear. Wearing only leather items will increase your intellect by 5%. Equipping just a single piece of cloth gear will remove this bonus, and that is a massive hit to your intellect, and thus spell power and critical strike chance.

To best equip your moonkin for what’s ahead, you must have a basic knowledge of how each stat affects it. Here is a rundown of the stats and their caps:

Hit rating: Hit is an important stat for every single class. Thankfully, it is fairly easy for us to attain hit, so this should always be your first priority. Each ~26,32 hit rating gives you 1% chance to hit. Additionally, each point of spirit gives you 1 point of hit rating, meaning that 26,32 spirit increases your chance to hit by 1%. Because of this, we can simply assume that spirit = hit, and treat them both as the same.

You will need 17% hit (446 hit rating) to never miss a spell. You can also hover your mouse over your spell hit rating to see your chance to miss against mobs of equal level, or boss level monsters.

Intellect: Intellect is our strongest stat after hit rating. This is obviously something you want a whole lot of. Intellect gives you the following:

• More mana
• Additional spell power. One point of intellect gives you 1 spell power.
• Higher chance to score a critical strike with spells. One point of intellect gives you 0,006% crit chance. In other words, you need 166,667 intellect for 1% chance to crit.

Haste rating: Haste is a very powerful stat for us, as a lot of our spells have been changed in 4.0 to benefit greatly from it. Haste will affect the following:

• Reduces the global cooldown of your spells.
• Reduces cast time of your starfire, wrath and starsurge.
• Increases the frequency of your moonfire, sunfire, insect swarm and hurricane ticks.

Crit: We are no longer as addicted to crit as we have previously been. The most noticable change to crit is that we are no longer dependant on it to proc Eclipse or Nature’s Grace, and crit has become more easy to understand. Crit will affect the following:

• Increases your chance to do double damage with direct nukes.
• Increases the chance that each tick of your DOTs will do double damage.

Please note that critical strikes from hurricane only do 50% more damage.

Mastery: Mastery is a new stat introduced for patch 4.0 and Cataclysm. Once learned from your trainer, mastery will increase the potency of our “Mastery: Total Eclipse”, which is visible under the summary of our talent trees.

Total eclipse initially increases the bonus from Eclipse by 12%. Each point of mastery increases this bonus by 1.5%. In other words, a point of mastery increases Total Eclipse to 13.5%, making your Eclipse increase the damage of your spells by up to 38.5%.

For one point of mastery at level 80, you need 46 points of mastery rating.

Crit versus mastery: Prelimenary theorycrafting show that crit and mastery rating, at level 80, are fairly close to each other, but not as strong as haste is. There are arguments for both stats:

46 crit rating increases your crit chance by 1%. 46 mastery rating increases your mastery by 1,5%, but your mastery is only active for about 60% of the time. This puts crit rating at a very slight advantage over mastery rating, but this might very well change as we level to 85.

Reforging:

Reforging allows you to change 40% of one stat on an item into another. You can only swap between spirit, haste, crit and mastery, and you can only change one stat into another stat that isn’t already on the item. This means that if you have an item with haste and crit, you cannot turn 40% of the crit into more haste, but you can turn it into mastery rating if you are so inclined.

When reforging, you should work from these principles:

• If you are below the hit cap, convert some crit or mastery into spirit or hit. Either stat is fine, although spirit would give you a bit more mana regen outside of combat. If you are above the hit cap, try and reforge some spirit into more useful stats. Just make sure that you stay above your hit cap, rather than below it.
• If your items has no haste on it, you could reforge some crit or mastery into haste, as haste is generally stronger than crit and mastery.
• As crit and mastery are generally very close at the moment, either one is fine. If you want to play around with a lot of mastery or a lot of crit, then knock yourself out.

4.0 Gems

Gemming is fairly straight forward for moonkins.

Meta: Always use the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.
Blue: You will want to only use two blue gems to activate your meta. You should be using an Intellect/spirit gem and a Nightmare Tear. Preferably in blue slots only.
Red: Red slots should always, always, always be pure intellect gems.
Yellow: Intellect/haste should be your current preference

5.0 Talents

Your talent spec should largely be decided by one factor: Your mana. If you do a lot of damage, but run out of mana after 2 minutes, then your overall damage is going to suffer. On the other hand, if you can keep casting forever and never run out of mana, you can probably spare a few points in damage talents.

We are no longer the manakins we were in Wrath of the Lich King, but at level 80 in patch 4.0 you should still be fine. You will need to find a balance between damage and mana talents, though. At best you should be able to end a boss fight with 10% mana. If you have less, you will run out of mana, and if you have more, then you can try reducing your mana regen through talents.

From the talents currently available to us, we can produce two talent specs: Focus on mana and focus on damage.

As you will notice, these specs are very similar.The only real difference between the two is that you are moving points from Moonglow and Furor into Owlkin Frenzy and Blessing of the Grove. The impact of mana-to-damage changes will be a lot more significant at level 85 where you will be able to grab Master Shapeshifter and ditch talents like Dreamstate in favor for Gale Winds. Even so, apart from Master Shapeshifter, the other damage choices are fairly slim.

You can freely choose to spend the single point in Typhoon in Solar Beam or similar talents if you are so inclined.

6.0 Glyphs

Glyphs are fairly straight forward. With the addition of Prime Glyphs, it’s pretty hard to go wrong. Some combinations are slightly stronger than others, however.

For Prime Glyphs, you have the choice between two sets:

Insect Swarm/Starsurge/Starfire:
This setup gives you slightly more damage than the one below. However, it has a major “but” tied too it. Glyph of Starfire is a suprisingly strong glyph, even if it only does increase moonfire. However, as soon as you start clipping your extended moonfire, this glyph combination loses its advantage. Glyph of Starfire does theoretically increase the duration of sunfire, but you would never cast starfire while sunfire is up, because that would always be during lunar eclipse.

What this means is that, if you have enough haste to cast your moonfire at the beginning of an eclipse, and can reach the other end of the meter where you have to cast sunfire, before the moonfire gets to run out, you will not gain anything from this setup.

Insect Swarm/Starsurge/Moonfire:
This combination of Glyphs generally gives you the strongest damage increase if you have a lot of haste. If you are clipping the extended moonfire with the combination above, you can with confidence swap out Glyph of Starfire to Glyph of Moonfire. This is assuming that Glyph of Moonfire affects sunfire.

For major glyphs, Glyph of Starfall is the obvious choice. The remaining two glyphs is a free choice. You can go for Glyph of Focus, but then you have to be aware of your range. The limitations on your movement might be too much to sacrifice – I would personally not give up half of my range on spells, just for a 10% increase to starfall.

All other glyphs can be choosen based on your preferences and the encounter you are doing.

7.0 Enchants – nothing changed here so far

Enchants are usually pretty straight forward. Here is what you should generally go for:

Head: 30 spellpower/20 crit, or 30 spellpower/20 spirit if you are low on hit – obtained from Kirin Tor at revered reputation
Shoulders: 24 spellpower/15 crit obtained from Sons of Hodir at exalted reputation
Back: 23 haste
Chest: 10 stats
Wrists: 30 spellpower
Gloves: 28 spellpower
Leggings – 50 spellpower/20 spirit
Boots: Tuskarr’s Vitality (for the speed increase)
Weapon: Black Magic for 1-handed weapons, 82 spell power for 2-handed weapons.

But what about…?

An alternative to Tuskarr’s Vitality is to get 12 crit/12 hit on boots. However, it is generally accepted that the 8% run speed increase from Tuskarr’s Vitality is a bigger increase in damage, as it allows you to move from A to B faster, giving you more time to stand still and nuke.

8.0 Professions – nothing changed here so far

The short answer to which profession you should choose is “Whatever you like”. Professions generally give you roughly the same bonus. Two crafting professions will give you double the bonus, but is obviously more costly. The general difference between most professions turn out to be nothing more than ~8 DPS. There are two professions that are largely giving a higher bonus.

From each profession, you can expect to gain:

• Alchemy: +47 spellpower
• Blacksmithing: +46 spellpower
• Engineering: -1 spellpower, -23 haste, + Hyperspeed Accelerators *
• Enchanting: +46 spellpower
• Inscription: +46 spellpower.
• Jewelcrafting: +48 spellpower
• Leatherworking: +46 spellpower
• Tailoring: Lightweave Embroidery **
• Skinning: +40 crit rating

** Tailoring comes out slightly stronger than other professions due to the the Lightweave Embroidery you can put on your cloak. It will generally turn out to be a 55-70 spell power increase.

* The biggest winner when it comes to professions, however, is Engineering. While you sacrifice a little bit of spell power and haste, you gain access to the Hyperspeed Accelerators. Using these during a Lunar Eclipse will greatly increase your DPS, much more so than what other professions can offer. You should use the Hyperspeed Accelerators primarily as you start a solar eclipse, as the haste buff can increase both your wrath, insect swarm and moonfire. Should it be available during a lunar eclipse, however, feel free to cast it. Waiting 10 seconds to get to solar eclipse reduces the benefit from it by 1/6.

You can use the following macro to automaticly cast your Hyperspeed Accelerators whenever they are ready, and you are casting an Insect Swarm:

TL;DR: The biggest DPS increase from professions would obviously be Engineering and Tailoring. But to be fair, if you enjoy being a Blacksmithing Inscriptor, then just go with that.

9.0 Consumables – nothing changed here so far

Flask of the Frost Wyrm is by far the best choice over elixirs. For food, grab a fish feast or a bite of Firecracker Salmon.

To boost your damage in an encounter, use Potion of Speed. Keep it ready for a lunar eclipse when you know that you can stand still for the full 15 seconds, and use it as soon as you are showered in blue moonlight.

10.0 Rotation

Our rotation is fairly simple on paper. Getting used to it is a whole different matter. I suggest that you spend a while on target dummies to get used to your new rotation. It is one thing to do a rotation as you are standing still, hurting a poor dummy, but it’s entirely different once you are in a PvE setting. Practice is key.

Our rotation works from three principles:

• Cast wrath until you proc lunar eclipse. Cast starfire until you proc solar eclipse.
• Keep both DOTs up and cast them when you have just procced eclipse. Cast Insect Swarm before sunfire/moonfire, to allow your moonfire time to morph into sunfire before you cast it.
• Use starsurge whenever it is off cooldown, and always when Shooting Stars proc.

If you can anticipate it, try to be inside an eclipse when you have to move. Throw up both of your DOTs and spam your moonfire/sunfire. The damage from Lunar Shower, and eclipse if you have it up, will provide a decent amount of damage even while moving. Make sure that your Insect Swarm is up as well, for a higher chance of proccing Shooting Stars on the run.

Cooldowns: Cooldowns are great for burst, and your benefit from them is increased depending on when you use them. We only have three spells with a noticable cooldowns, so there are just a few pointers to remember.

• Starfall is the most powerful spell in our arsenal. Against single targets, you can get 10 stars off at your target. If you know that more targets will spawn soon, you can hold it off as long as you are not in danger of pulling aggro, which will allow for all 20 stars to fall. Don’t hold back too much though, as you would want to cast starfall as much throughout a fight as you can.
• Treants is a lot of damage in one global cooldown, if they can stay alive for the duration. Usually you can cast these as you run in, and then 3 minutes later when they are off cooldown. If you know that a bloodlust is coming, try to spawn them just before the bloodlust to give them the haste benefit as well.
• Typhoon is fairly decent to use if there is more than a handful of targets. You can glyph it to remove the knockback, and cause a lot of damage to trash packs or during encounters that spawn adds that needs to die. Typhoon is particulary strong if you are under the effects of solar eclipse, and have a handful of mobs to fire at.

11.0 Eclipse

Eclipse benefits almost all of our spells. Keeping this in mind allows you to gain a higher benefit from some spells. Don’t go out of your way to delay a spell on a cooldown, but if you are 3 seconds away from a lunar eclipse when starfall is ready, you might want to hold back a bit.

Lunar eclipse increases the damage of:

• Starfire
• Moonfire
• Starfall
• Starsurge

Solar eclipse increases the damage of:

• Wrath
• Insect Swarm
• Sunfire
• Typhoon
• Starsurge
• Hurricane

Please note that our two AOE spells, starfall and hurricane, are arcane and nature damage respectively. If you are doing AOE damage, a solar eclipse would be a bigger increase, but if you are caught in lunar eclipse for an AOE pack, it is not the end of the world.

If you are in solar eclipse, and your starfall is ready, you should still cast it, even if it doesn’t gain the bonus from eclipse. Delaying it for too long would, at best, make you come out even, but it will delay your cooldown significantly.

Eclipse doesn’t decay. This allows you to stay inside an eclipse indefinately. So if you are eating through those ICC trash packs, put yourself under a solar eclipse and fire away that hurricane.

12.0 Tips and tricks

Practice, practice, practice. Target Dummies are generally not that great for comparing damage, but spending some time there to get really comfortable with your rotation is golden. Focus on being able to cast your rotation perfectly. Then try to distract yourself by moving around, looking at something off screen or drop hot tea down into your lap.

The aim is to teach your rotation to your muscles. Thats right, this is a full-blown finger workout! Your hands need to be able to click starfire without you really thinking of where the button is, and your brain must be used to adapt itself as you go through your eclipses.

The purpose of this is to prepare you for high paced raid encounters. Once you are so adapt to your rotation that you can follow it with little thought, it frees up your eyes to look away from your action bars. Instead, you can be staring at the damage meter, your character sheet or – if you are so inclined – look out for any hazardous events happening in the fight. Tunnel vision is not very good for your health, and if you are able to do the damage you have to do, while looking out for Malable Goo’s, you will increase your survival rate, and thus your contribution to the raid.

You can use your Thorns as a mini-misdirection. On a boss swinging at your tank every 2nd second, the base damage adds around 21.000 damage. The damage scales with your targets spell power or AP, whichever is highest. The damage done by your thorns will be credited to your target. Thorns is very powerful on AOE packs, if you want to give your tank a bit of a boost. You can have your tank as a focus target, and use the macro “/cast [@focus] Thorns” to quickly cast thorns on him or her.

If you are casting your starfall inside a lunar eclipse, cast it before you cast any DOTs. It doesn’t benefit from haste, so if you cast your DOTs before starfall, you lose a GCD on a non-hasted spell.

13.0 Useful addons

There are plenty of addons to choose from, and most are merely a question of preference. You don’t need all of these, but here is a list of common addons you could and should consider using:

Proc tracking:

• Balance Power Tracker: A highly configurable mod designed to track Lunar and Solar energy for Balance Druids in 4.0.
• Squawk and Awe: Useful for tracking eclipse, eclipse cooldowns, DOTs, trinkets and the like.
• ClassTimer and ClassTimer Eclipse: Offers the same as Squawk and Awe, in a different layout.
• Power Aura’s: My personal favorite, Power Aura’s allows you to add visual notifications to practically everything. Eclipse procs, DOTs with timers, debuffs on a specific fight and so on. It does take a bit of time to set up, but it is an awesome addon that allows for much customization. Big visual effects when eclipse procs allow you to notice an eclipse out of the corner of your eye, and helps you get an overview of your buffs. If you need suggestions for customizing Power Aura’s, check out Jamara’s post here.

General raid addons:

• Omen Threat Meter: Nearly invaluable in a raid setting, allows you to avoid pulling aggro.
• Deadly Boss Mods: Adds alerts and countdown bars to literally every encounter in the game, from 5 mans to raid bosses. This is such an old, stable addon, and is so useful in any raid setting. DBM has been around the block for a long, long time.
• Recount or Skada: Damage meters. Recount is the most popular, but I prefer Skada as it requires a lot less system memory. It doesn’t have fancy graphs, but it does include a lot of interesting features, such as segment saving and looking up raid members damage to a specific target.

Miscellaneous:

• Unit frames such as Grid, VuhDo and the like, gives a great overview of your raid allows for quick decurses, innervates, rebirths and so on.
• Gearscore: lol
• Quartz: A well used cast bar for tracking casts, cast times, DOTs and HOTs on various targets and so on.
• ForteXorcist: A fun little addon that adds a bar showing you the time before your cooldowns are ready to use. This addon is very customizable and gives you a good overview of cooldowns, debuffs and so forth.

14.0 Other moonkin guides

Graylo’s Moonkin guide for 4.0.1
Elitist Jerks moonkin discussion

15.0 Things to check

Problems I have either noticed myself, or which has been pointed out by other players. This all needs to be tested a bit more thoroughly as 4.0 comes live.

• DOTs doesn’t tick faster if your haste is changed after they are cast, even though the tooltip sais so.
• That moonfire/sunfire isn’t affected by Nature’s Grace.
• Sunfire isn’t affected by haste at all (verified on PTR)

16.0 Contributors

Thanks for these people for comments, suggestions and corrections that turned into actual changes to the 4.0 moonkin guide. Sorry, all of those commenting before 4.0 isn’t listed. Names are not necessarily MMO-Champion user names, but the user names from the source or site where people have posted it.

Psynister, Emilios, Tilgare, Luna, Sunfyre, and that “ghost” in a dream I had. Yes, really.

Some of the changes are basic tweaks to the modifiers, but Blizzard has also introduced some really interesting new talents. I’m going to run through them and try to percieve how these changes will affect our future gameplay.

Please keep in mind that we are still working on a beta. Blizzard are trying new things out, which we should give them credit for, but further tweaks and changes might still be needed before Cataclysm is released.

Wild Mushroom changes

Basic tweaks, nothing really exciting there. Before, when Wild Mushroom went boom, it now goes BOOM, with 400% more base damage. The range on their detonation has been reduced to 10 yards, which is probably fine. We are able to spread out our Shrooms quite far and cover a large area, and simply by having 3 of them to place, we are offered a lot of strategic options.

Starsurge

Now grants 15 energy instead of 10. We were wishing for something like this, because it seemed like a spell made up by pure solar and lunar energy should probably have some sort of key placement in our rotation, and at least generate a substancial amount of eclipse power.

Euphoria

The first part of Euphoria has been changed, and I am really liking this change. It now gives us a 24% chance to gain double eclipse power when we are not in eclipse. This means that the time we spend inside eclipse will be longer than the time we spend outside of eclipse. It is a bit static, though, but it should still give us a higher eclipse-to-normal ratio.

Earth and Moon

Just a tweak. I know it’s a nerf, but we really don’t know how this will impact us at level 85, and it’s probably alright.

Genesis

I actually thought that Genesis was fine as it was, but it has now been changed to a simple increase in the duration of our DOTs. This is fine, because longer DOTs mean more damage, and when DOTs scale with haste as well anyways, it can only be beneficial. The numbers might have to be tweaked, but we can’t run around with 2 minute insect swarms, after all.

Nature’s Grace

Is now called Nature’s Torment – it took me a few moments to figure this out, since it was listed as “Nature’s Grace”. NT gives you 15% spell haste after casting IS or MF for a whooping 15 seconds. This effect has a 1 minute cooldown, however the cooldown will be cleared whenever we get eclipse.

That’s really really neat, because it basicly means that we can decide to get a 15% haste buff for 15 seconds between every single eclipse proc. We might choose to just cast it after we gain eclipse, or we might throw up our DOTs before we get Eclipse (where NT will be on cooldown) then fire away and use our eclipse, and then throw up a DOT when we reach the middle of the meter in order to get to the next eclipse proc sooner. Or, we could use it for quick nuking, throw a DOT and get a massive spell haste.

Lot’s of options for strategies, which is what we like!

Dreamstate

Completely revamed. If we innervate ourselves, we gain an additional 30% mana back. This makes personal innervates extremely powerful. You might think that we don’t need it, but remember that our mana regen is going to be different in Cataclysm. It’s very possible that you will want to use innervate often, and the choice to get a more powerful one is very interesting indeed.

Sunfire

This is a very interesting talent. Whenever solar eclipse is up, moonfire is instead sunfire, which burns for nature damage rather than arcane damage. It seems to be so that we would actually cast moonfire during solar eclipses, and it would probably award Lunar Energy as to help us gain eclipse. I don’t know if something like this is in the works for Insect Swarm as well (Starswarm?), but that probably won’t happen. IS will most likely be up all the time, and with this change, so will Moonfire.

I don’t know what’s up with the naming of this talent. I think it should be renamed to Qiethfire, or maybe The Will of Qieth, as to not give any notion of a refrence to our fellow moonkin blogger (who is called Sunfyyre, though) *wink*

Shooting Stars

New talent, right where we would want some more damage talents. Whenever we deal damage with MF or IS, we have a small chance to remove the cooldown on our Starsurge and have it instant cast. Although it is only a 4% chance, it should happen several times each minute, especially with both of our DOTs rolling on our target all the time. The added bonus to this, is that the more haste we get, the more we are going to proc Shooting Stars, because MF and IS will obviously tick more often.

Overgrowh

I’m sure I called it somewhere – on a blog, or on some forum. A few days ago, I posted that AoE roots would be sort of fun. And while I don’t think that Blizzard are picking my blog for ideas, it does seem like we get the option to superroot. Just imagine the fun we can have with this, rooting everything within 8 yards of our original target. This will probably be more of a PvP talent, but it could still give us a lot of fun times in PvE, if there are any encounters with a lot of trash that needs to be controlled.

Still in the works!

All of these changes are really awesome indeed, and I can’t wait to see what kind of comments comes out from the beta servers. Further tweaks might be needed, so please remember to look at these changes for their concepts, rather than how they apply to our current moonkin life.

- QQ

As Balance Druids, we have a number of spells with cooldowns and damage over time spells to keep track of, not to mention our signature mechanic, Eclipse. Keeping up with all these different timers is a challenge for any class, but there are a few addons around to help us make it easier.

While some people prefer the Dot-timer-bar format of Squawk and Awe, I prefer a more visual (and colourful) interface. Power Auras Classic can take a bit of fiddling to set up, but it is extremely customisable. I use it on several different toons to notify me of a whole range of different types of events.

The types of events Power Auras can be used for is not just limited to your own spells and buffs, but can be used to show events on any mob or raid/party member around you as well. You could use it to show you when your focus has a debuff, or when your target has cast a certain spell. The possibilities are almost endless.

One really nice thing about Power Auras is that you can import other people’s configurations into your copy. If you have something that you’d like to show with a power aura, do a search for it – chances are someone else has posted something similar up already that you can use.

Eclipse

For Balance Druids, Eclipse is one of the most important procs to be tracked. It is useful to have a visible and obvious reminder of which type of Eclipse has procced and what spell we should be casting, as well as how much longer the Eclipse is active for.

Lunar Eclipse procs when we cast Wrath, increasing the crit chance of Starfire. Solar Eclipse happens when we cast Starfire and increases the damage done by Wrath. I always get mixed up between the names of each type of Eclipse, so I stick with colours.

Lunar Eclipse

I use a white aura to remind me to cast Starfire. I also included a countdown so I know how long Eclipse is active for.

When setting up the aura we need to enter the specific spell name “Eclipse (Lunar)”, or the spell identification number. For Lunar Eclipse, the ID is [48518] (including the square brackets). It’s the same number that’s at the end of the Wowhead link.

Solar Eclipse

For Solar Eclipse, I use the same aura but in green to remind me to cast Wrath. Use “Eclipse (Solar)” or the ID [48517] in the spell name field.

Import Strings

The nice thing about Power Auras is that you can import other people’s configurations directly into your copy. All you need to do is open the main window with “/powa”, click the Import button, then copy and paste the import string.

Here are the import strings for my two Eclipse auras.

Lunar Eclipse (white aura – cast Starfire)

Version:st3.0.0J; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_Eclipse; size:nu1; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; begin:nu0; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; alpha:nu1; aurastext:st; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu15; mine:bofalse; spec1:botrue; multiids:st; randomcolor:bofalse; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; sound:nu0; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; TimeToHide:nu39550.484; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; id:nu7; HideRequest:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; Active:botrue; anim2:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; soundend:nu0; beginSpin:bofalse; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; GTFO:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; combat:nu0; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; buffname:st[48518]; y:nu-30; off:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; party:bofalse; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.lastShownLarge:nu14; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.h:nu1; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.ShowActivation:bofalse; timer.Showing:botrue; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.lastShownSmall:nu66; timer.y:nu-80; timer.x:nu22; timer.a:nu0.90000003576279; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.Start:nu39535.484; timer.id:nu7; timer.cents:botrue; timer.enabled:botrue

Solar Eclipse (green aura – cast wrath)

Version:st3.0.0J; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.10588235294118; anim1:nu1; g:nu0.87843137254902; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_EclipseOrange; size:nu1; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.023529411764706; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; begin:nu0; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; alpha:nu1; aurastext:st; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu15; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; spec1:botrue; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; sound:nu0; randomcolor:bofalse; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; TimeToHide:nu37137.013; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; id:nu8; HideRequest:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; Active:bofalse; anim2:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; soundend:nu0; beginSpin:bofalse; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; GTFO:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; combat:nu0; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; buffname:st[48517]; y:nu-30; off:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; party:bofalse; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.lastShownLarge:nu48; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.h:nu1; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.ShowActivation:bofalse; timer.Showing:bofalse; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.lastShownSmall:nu14; timer.y:nu-80; timer.x:nu22; timer.a:nu0.90000003576279; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.Start:nu37122.013; timer.id:nu8; timer.cents:botrue; timer.enabled:botrue

Other Power Auras

Some of the other auras I use include:

• Circular aura for Nature’s Grace, to help me avoid clipping the GCD
• Clearcasting
• An indicator for a missing Mark/Gift of the Wild
• Timers for Insect Swarm and Moonfire
• Cooldown timers for Force of Nature and Starfall

You can find import strings for these other auras on my Power Auras for Moonkin page, and also some other auras for Resto Druids here. I hope you find them useful!

What I really want to know is:

• Do we get to keep moonkin form as a permanent shapeshift, or are you planning to empose the same deal on us as with restoration druids?
• Will we get more choices for customization than what we have in our current talent tree?
• Will there be more options in the restoration tree, rather than the current 5 points we can put in?
• Will balance and restoration always be tied to each other, or might we ever see options in the feral tree for our last 10 talent points?
• What’s the deal with Nature’s Grace?

In any case, Blizzard did answer a lot of questions, but some of them very quite vague. There was no questions about our moonkin form, which means that either nobody was concerned about us maybe losing our forms, or that they didn’t answer because they haven’t decided.

Blizzard responded to two questions regarding eclipse:

Q: Will Arcane spells do more damage with higher Lunar power on the scale? And will more Mastery increase that bonus damage?
A. Currently, the plan is for Mastery to increase the damage bonus of Eclipse (both Lunar and Solar).

Q: Moonkin: What are your plans for Eclipse, and why does it infect so many of our talents? What are your plans to make Moonkin fun?
A. The model we are trying now lets Solar and Lunar Eclipse procs last for about 45 seconds, and each spell of the appropriate type that you cast moves the bar back closer to the middle again. The buff is canceled by reaching the middle. This should let Moonkin “hold” the buff for short periods of time when they need to move or get out of the fire.

Kinda weird. Kinda vague. Kinda don’t know what to make of it. My biggest concern is with this new eclipse system they are testing out. Obviously, its not even on the beta yet, they are just playing around with the ideas. I loved the previous (currently on beta) system, as it allowed us to scale perfectly with both crit and haste, and with better gear we would get more out of eclipse and proc eclipse faster.

With the new system, no matter what we do, half of our time would be spent inside eclipse and the other half out of eclipse. With more haste, we would just get back to the middle of the meter faster, but with the same amount of spells, and we would reach the other end faster, but with the same amount of spells. Whats worse, the more crit we get, we would actually reach the middle faster, as crits generate more power, and we might actually lose a cast. This is the sort of non scaling and negative scaling that we’ve been struggling with in WOTLK.

Allowing eclipse to last 45 seconds does give us room to move without losing too much eclipse. And maybe, with this new system, we would use starsurge in a different way. When we are close to the middle, but still under eclipse, a starsurge would in theory push us back towards “the way we came”, giving us a few more casts. And then, when we pass the middle, we go all out towards the other end as fast as we can.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what Blizzard decides. If they feel like they have a decent system, it will come out on the beta servers and people can start cracking down on it. Then, we might come up with new ideas to deal with this. Still, I like the current beta system more, as it will give us control, better scaling and a fun tool to deal damage with.

- QQ