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

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

Before we do that, I want to try and make an important point. Best in slot lists are very discriminating. What I mean by that is that they asse that you have access to everything, normal and heroic, 10 an 25 man. If you don’t, the value of an item might change due yo caps and whatnot. Also, keep in mind that just because it is a best in slot list, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t alternatives out there. A good example is the Boots of Unnatural Growth. While they have spirit instead of haste, they are nearly as good as the Plague Scientist’s Boots.

An upgrade is an upgrade, so don’t go tunnelvision against these items in particular. If you an upgrade your stats with a nearly-as-good item, you should.

First things first, let’s take a look at my own 3.3 ICC BIS list. I am well away on getting these items. In fact, I’ve aquired them all on normal at least, and some simply needs to be upgraded.

• Head: Sanctified Lasherweave Cover
• Neck: Blood Queen’s Crimson Choker
• Shoulder: Sanctified Lasherweave Mantle
• Back: Frostbinder’s Shredded Cape
• Chest: Sanctified Lasherweave Vestment
• Wrists: The Lady’s Brittle Bracers
• Hands: Sanctified Lasherweave Gloves or Gunship Captain’s Mittens
• Belt: Crushing Coldwraith Belt
• Legs: Sanctified Lasherweave Trousers or Plaguebringer’s Stained Pants
• Feet: Plague Scientist’s Boots
• Ring: Ashen Band of Endless Destruction
• Ring: Ring of Rapid Ascent
• Trinket: Phylactery of the Nameless Lich
• Trinket: Dislodged Foreign Object
• Main hand: Royal Scepter of Terenas II
• Off hand: Shadow Silk Spindle
• Idol: Idol of the Lunar Eclipse

Because I have access to heroic gear, I get a little bit more out of the hit rating items. In fact, I am ble to achieve my hit cap using just four items: The rep ring, tier 10 pants and gloves and The Lady’s Bristle Bracers. If all of these items are from normal, I will be 3 hit rating under the cap. With just one from heroic – the bracers in my case – I am above the cap. If you are alliance, keep in mind that your hit cap is only 9%. However, it never hurts to go to 10% anyways, because you are not always covered by a draenei aura.

Come 3.5 and Ruby Sanctum, we will see three new items that could be relevant to us: A cloak, a trinket and a new pair of bracers:

• Trinket: Charred Twilight Scale
• Back: Cloak of Burning Dusk
• Wrists: Phaseshifter’s Bracers

We haven’t seen the heroic versions yet, but I think that it is safe to assume that they will be of an equal item level to items dropping from Lich King 25 heroic. So far, there are no sign of a caster ring – none that I have notices anyways. In any case, it will either be a hit + crit or haste ring, or a crit/haste ring. Either way, it will replace the two rings we have now, if it comes around.

It is likely to assume that the trinket is viable replacements for either DFO or Phyl. Because it has haste, it will probably replace DFO rather than Phyl. Haste is still stronger than crit, but barely, and when we are talking true best-in-slot, the differences would be minute. The best course of action would probably be to have one haste trinket and one crit trinket. The cloak is a straight upgrade from the Frostbinder’s Shredded Cape (or in my case, Aethas’ Intensity), so there is little debate in regards to this.

The interesting point are the bracers. We are finally looking at a leather wrist item with crit and haste. It is a wonderful item, but it has one drawback: No hit. Assuming that I have heroic hit pieces in other item slots, removing my Lady’s Brittle Bracers will put me at 239 hit rating (which is bloody well perfect for a night elf druid). I need to cover the 25 hit from somewhere, and I can do that with either a pure +20 hit gem or two Veiled Ametrine. Or at least, it can cover 20 hit rating.

The Veiled Ametrine is probably the safest bet, as they give spell power as well, and is slightly better than pure gems – much as it is the case with SP/crit and SP/haste gems. I may just use a third Veiled Ametrine and accept being 5 hit rating over the cap. This seems the best course of action, rather than being 5 hit rating below the cap.

So, where does that place us? Well, it gives us the following BIS list:

• Head: Sanctified Lasherweave Cover
• Neck: Blood Queen’s Crimson Choker
• Shoulder: Sanctified Lasherweave Mantle
• Back: Cloak of Burning Dusk (heroic)
• Chest: Sanctified Lasherweave Vestment
• Wrists: Phaseshifter’s Bracers (heroic)
• Hands: Sanctified Lasherweave Gloves or Gunship Captain’s Mittens
• Belt: Crushing Coldwraith Belt
• Legs: Sanctified Lasherweave Trousers or Plaguebringer’s Stained Pants
• Feet: Plague Scientist’s Boots
• Ring: Ashen Band of Endless Destruction
• Ring: Ring of Rapid Ascent
• Trinket: Phylactery of the Nameless Lich or Dislodged Foreign Object
• Trinket: Charred Twilight Scale (heroic)
• Main hand: Royal Scepter of Terenas II
• Off hand: Shadow Silk Spindle
• Idol: Idol of the Lunar Eclipse

And ofcourse, BIS gemming is important here: You must have Veiled Ametrine in three of your yellow slots. You still need two Purified Dreadstone for your meta gem. Red gem slots will obviously be for Runed Cardinal‘s and your remaining yellow slots will be for SP/haste gems.

Enjoy the Ruby Sanctum, and all the new, tasty gear!

- QQ

Keep in mind that the information we have on masteries is very limited. We will have to make some educated guesses and then simply wait and see who is right, before we can actually start theorycrafting much. But lets take a look at what we do know.

The deal is this: The more points you spend in a talent tree, the bigger Mastery you get. Mastery is a talent tree specific bonus which will increase the core purpose of the tree. This, for example, was that holy priests will get general +healing and mana regen, and a sort of “fun” benefit as well. This new effect would cause their direct heals to add a HOT to the target as well, probably scaling with how big the heal was, and how much mastery the priest has.

A frost death knight would gain damage, haste and their funzies would be to gain runic power faster. If an unholy death knight were to spend some of his points in frost, he would still gain the mastery, but not as much as one who had filled in 50-some points into it.

The Frost DK comment made a lot of heat. People were pointing out that Frost DK’s had no need for more runic power, that the bonus seemed unnessecary, and would be far better in another tree. What me must remember, is that we cannot apply future bonuses to how the talent trees are now. We can expect a massive overhaul, and it would make no sense that Blizzard gave Frost DK’s a bonus to runic power, unless they made them more dependant on it.

And we must also keep this in mind for balance druids. We don’t know yet what it will be, and even if we do hear about the bonus ahead of time, we musn’t make the mistake of crying out against it if it doesn’t suit our current talent tree. When we get the mastery stat, we will also get different talents, so it will probably work out just great.

So what can we expect for moonkins? I surely have no idea, but I’d like to venture a guess. We will most likely see a flat damage and haste increase, that much is a given. But what could our funzies be?

• A languish type effect on our starfire and wrath?

This might be an idea, but it would probably be a bit weird for those of us using tier 10 as we level up. Two languish effects is rather odd to have up. It could probably work in level 85, as we swap our gear and lose the bonus, but it doesn’t seem feasable to have it when 4.0 comes out.

• Initial damage on our dots?

Probably a great idea, and a way to make sure we keep using our dots. “Upon casting moonfire or insect swarm, the spell will do x% of its total damage, in addition to its damage over time component.”. That could work quite well, and it would scale with the other masteries (damage %). Dots are currently a bit of a grey area – we can barely justify putting them up, and only because they can buff starfire and moonfire. But they should definately be a central part of our rotation.

• Increases the benefit from eclipse by x%?

I know, we rely a lot on eclipse at the moment, and Blizzard wants to change that. That being said, it will probably still be a vital part of our spec, and the buff is unique enough to make me cling to it like a baby clinging to his mothers teat. Increasing the benefit of eclipse (much like tier 8 did), could be an interesting buff, especially if they fix eclipse so that we don’t suffer as much when moving or when we otherwise can’t benefit from the proc.

• “But Qieth, we are already soft capped on lunar eclipse!”.

Sure, but things will probably change. Who knows if we will be having so much crit in level 85 with tier 14? Just like I don’t worry too much about getting +haste from our mastery stat, because we may just see a change to Nature’s Grace, or the gear we have. You must also remember, that we can use reforging to reduce one stat and increase another. It could very well be that if we reach a soft cap on any stat, just like I pointed out with spirit/hit, we can simply reduce it – if it works on combat stats – and increase something that is not capped.

Whatever it will be, I am sure looking forward to the mastery stats. It seems like an interesting option to have to choose between clear combat stats (crit, haste, spell power), or increase our mastery stat for the mystery buffs we will get. But for now, we can do nothing more but wait and see what Blizzard has in store for us!

- QQ

I would strongly advise anyone to read the full post, which you can see by clicking on this link, and in the meanwhile, we will take a closer look at what moonkins can expect.

Right off the bat, Eyonix mentions that all spirit based gear will be for healers. All caster classes will have gear with different stats. All caster classes, except for elemental shamans and moonkins though. Hey, I’m all for only battling resto druids for my gear, as I am sure that mages and warlocks just love being the only ones needing on cloth DPS gear. I worry, however, that we will return to the itemization that caused a lot of issues back in The Burning Crusade, as with:

• Mages and warlocks will share cloth caster gear. Priests get all items with spirit for themselves.
• Resto druids and moonkins will share leather spirit gear. Rogues and feral druids will share their agility based gear.
• Hunters and enhancement shamans will share gear, while restoration and elemental shamans will share theirs.
• DPS warriors, death knights and paladins will share one pile of gear, and the respective tank specs will share another pile of gear.
• Holy paladins gets a pile of stuff for themselves.

This means that there will be items that are only attractive to holy priests and paladins. While this may not be a huge deal, we might still see item drops that are only useful to those classes, and it will pain anyone to see them go disenchanted.

To the rescue comes reforging. It will allow a mage to receive a cloth item with spirit, reforge it to remove some of the spirit, and recieve a, if not perfect, then acceptable upgrade none the less. For moonkins, spirit will be our way to gain hit – although I fail to see the connection – and once we are comfortably hit capped we can begin reforging some of our spirit, when we accumulate more, into intellect, crit or haste.

With the change to caster gear, I would assume that Blizzard plans to do something about mana regen for all classes. While mana is certainly not a problem for moonkins at the moment, chances are that we will probably be looking out for it again when Cataclysm comes out. Spirit will be converted into hit rating, so our regen will be covered by a moonkin-form-like aura that lets us regen, and innervate.

The most interesting change is the mastery stat. It can be found on gear and will increase “whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique”. I assume that it is some straight buff to our talents, so that with 100 mastery, eclipse will be 44% rather than 40% or something along those lines. It is interesting, I admit, because it offers some interesting choices: Do I increase my crit by 5%, or do I increase the value of my talents by 1%?

Finally, all spell ranks will be removed. I guess that removes down ranking for sure, eh? Spells will scale as we level up, and we will only have to visit trainers for new spells – they are adding more of those also, but if they will add an equal amount (or any) to all classes is currently unknown. I like this change.

One of the changes to spells that I really liked was when all spells were changed to be a percentage of base mana. I saw this change on my (still) level 40 mage alt, where I would just be comfortable with the mana cost of fireball when I would get a new rank that would drain my mana much faster. With mana cost being a percentage of our base mana pool, the mana goes up accordingly, and there was no more suprise mana costs and only more damage with each new rank.

Come this system, mana cost and damage will scale accordingly. We level up, get more mana and do more damage with spells that cost more mana. It makes sense, and as we gear up we will get more intellect compared to mana cost to be able to cast more spells with more damage, for the same mana cost.

In any case, it seems like we have a lot of very interesting changes incoming. How all of this works in practice, noone knows yet. Don’t get too comfortable with how your playing and gearing style is now. The changes incoming may be almost.. cataclystic!

- QQ

But it’s not all bad. I know I have scorned haste quite a lot in the past, but I have had a bit of change of heart after hearing a few arguments and checking through logs. But how do we go about handling haste and crit in ICC?

Why haste ISN’T bad:

Previously, I would have said that I would much rather stack crit over it’s soft haste cap than haste. Crit gives us faster eclipse procs, more wrath crits and helps our Languish from 4pt10. But haste is actually not too shabby either, because:

- Refreshing dots will drop your NG, putting your wrath cast time back to ~1,2.
- Simply running for 2+ seconds will mostly drop NG.
- Non-crit streaks on wrath (they are there, we all have them) will drop NG.
- Faster eclipse procs after lunar eclipse.
- The obvious, faster starfires = more damage.

That’s not to say that crit isn’t good. I will also be trying to get as much crit as I can, but my aim with my Better In Slot list is to pump up both my haste and crit to ridiculous amounts, and limit the amount of spirit I have.

But how do I compare stats then?!

Same as always. Up until 400 haste rating, haste is still what you would prefer. Then, up until you see a point where your crit is at 42% raid buffed and with your idol running, crit will probably be what you want to go for. At this point, crit and haste are worth more or less the same.

To put it in another language:

Pre haste cap: Hit > SP > Haste > Crit
Pre crit cap: Hit > SP > Crit > Haste
Post caps: Hit > SP > Crit = Haste

You might find yourself swimming in hit rating as you switch your gear – I certainly am. Hit over hit cap doesn’t really do anything for you, so you may consider taking a point from Balance of Power and put it into whatever else you want. I maxed out Owlkin Frenzy for a bit of a laugh. You can do this when you have 315 hit rating or more (as horde). Just remember to spec back once you reduce your hit. In my Better In Slot list, I am just 5 hit rating over the cap.

So, how are we doing?

I thought that with our stats only benefiting half of our spells, we would see moonkins creep further down the damage meters. In truth, I haven’t really seen this yet, other than on fights with a lot of movement – but I can’t blame the stats on that. A few months ago, 7k-ish DPS was pretty good on TOTGC25 fights in my guild, and I was at a comfortable place on the meters. I’m surprised to see how much my own DPS has increased, just over the last few weeks.

We went to TOTGC25 after our holiday break, and I was suddenly doing 8-9k DPS in the beginning of Northrend Beasts. My Jaraxxus DPS peaked at 8,9k DPS in the first minute, and ended on a good 8,1k DPS. And I am still wanting plenty of upgrades in ICC.

I think we’re still doing pretty damn well!

- QQ

I have never been a fan of Best-In-Slot lists. People tend to forget that, while a list of items might yield a set of stats that will give you the absolute biggest upgrade, there could still be other setups that aren’t very far behind. People get tunnelvision and start only going for those items. Instead, I look at it like a Better-In-Slot list; Upgrades that you would like to get, which would put you at a comfortable amount of stats.

So, I wanted to try and take a closer look at the upgrades available in ICC, and I’ve created a quick, very noobish spreadsheet with some of the drops. The list is mostly made from items from ICC25 (with only one item from ICC10, Muradin’s Spyglass). This is just a preliminary list, but I suppose ill work on it and tweak it as we go along.

One of the major issues with this list is the topic of caps. From doing this, and the discussion on MMO-Champion that followed, I realised that I am a mere 1,66% crit away from being soft crit capped during luanr eclipse. This is troublesome, because I don’t have the mental capacity to recalculate the value of crit after that.

I did, however, come pretty close to a number that supported that it would still be most valuable to stack crit. The deal is generally, according to what I found, that its worth stacking crit until you can swap to have 712 haste rating and still be soft crit capped. This is not impossible with ICC gear, but I need to do some more research before I can set an actual conclution.

Considerations for the spreadsheet:

• I did not take any heroic items in the BIS list. Heroic items will just be a straight upgrade, and obviously, a real BIS would include all heroic items. While a few heroic items might offset the balance a bit (say, if you suddenly got too much hit and wanted to switch one item for another), I generally don’t think this will be a massive problem.
• I followed gem colors in the BIS list. I did not take socket bonusses or the meta gem into account (because I remembered halfway through, and couldn’t be arsed to change it). The choice of gems will hinge largely on how haste and crit rank after their respective soft caps.
• I wanted to make sure we got the Ashen Verdict (Exalted) ring into the fray. I don’t know the uptime on the proc, but I think its safe to assume that we will want it. We could trade it for another crit ring, but I think it would be a bad call. I will keep it as this until i see some math on it.
• I did not consider crafted items. They are damn expensive, and we will be using our badges for a long time anyways.
• Stats are without talents, buffs and outside moonkin form.
• Base stats not included.

Check out the spreadsheet here! See the bottom for current gear and comparason.

To give an overview of the increases *I* would see, the numbers are as follows:

Spell power: 2961 total. +181 * The small increase here is accounted for by the fact that I added the +125 SP from EotBM to my current gear.
Crit rating: 1421 total. +326 * Awesome! 7,1% crit increase! Woot wraths!
Haste rating: 560 total. +135 * We could drop another 64 haste rating if we ditch the rep ring, bringing it down to 71 haste rating over cap, but losing the sweet hit and the proc on the ring.
Hit rating: 268 total. -68 * I am way over cap at the moment. 268 is purrfect.
Spirit: 229 total. -10.
Intellect: 1232 total. +202

So looking at these stat increases, especially the nice bump to crit, I am very content with our gear choices. We will go over the soft haste cap in our pursuit of the rep rings SP bonus, and I personally wont see more than a marginal SP increase, due to trinket changes, but these stats support a PERFECT hit rating, lots of crit which will ensure more than a 100% starfire crit during eclipse as well as lots of nice wrath crits, and all of this with very little spirit.

The list still has to be tweaked, but it is a good starting point. I’ve probably missed a few things here or there, and I still need to figure out which of haste and crit is worth more after we reach 42% crit rating raidbuffed.

- QQ

For the blissfully ignorant, let’s just cover the caps: 263 hit rating, 400 haste rating, and then pump up your crit. Spellpower is not really something we can gear for – we try to get as much spellpower from our gems, but other than that, it pretty much comes along as we get gear upgrades.

Hit is obviously a great concern. While I wouldn’t lie sleepless at night about being 10 hit rating below the cap, I do generally want to stay above the cap – actually, because of my “luck” with gear, I was recently as high as 130 hit rating above the cap. I want to keep my haste around 400, but my general rule of thumb is to allow it to swing down to 350 and up to 450 – although if I reach that high, I can easely switch my haste ring for another ring with crit. But once these caps are met, the issues start surfacing.

After 400 haste, it stops being beneficial to wrath. It can still benefit starfire, but crit becomes better. However, at tier 9 gear, our crit is so high that it stops being a major benefit to starfire, especially since most of us are running with 2-piece tier 8. I am a few crit away from having 100% crit during lunar eclipse, but once I reach that point, I will only have heroic upgrades left in TOTGC and Icecrown Citadel will probably be just around the corner. But even without the added bonus from the tier 8 bonus, with 85% chance to crit during lunar eclipse will reduce the worth of crit. And we are going to get more crit in Icecrown, surely.

So what does this mean? My concern is that it will make us look at crit just as we do haste. It will basicly come down to crit not benefitting starfire and haste not benefitting wrath. There you have it: Two of our most important stats, will only be benefitting one spell each.

Other casters will still gain the full benefit from their stats as they are used to – they have instants, sure, but their main nukes remain unchanged, and the increase will be constant for them, but we are at a point where haste and crit lose some of their worth.

What can we do? Assuming Blizzard doesn’t turn around and make a class defining change, theres not much we can do other than bite it. I suppose a plus side can be that the added crit will benefit our T10 bonuses – especially the 4-piece bonus – and the extra haste will make sure we cast more spells which crits more. But it still doesn’t remove the feeling that we have to compromise the benefit we get from gear – all because of two talents.

- QQ