Druid Guide, Part 5: Moonkin DPS [Outdated - BC]

Post by Celdhyrean

Fixed the wrath formula and added a section for the latency parameter in the annex to give a breakpoint between wrath and SF.
A 0.1s latency (which is quite reasonnable) is enough to double the difference in scaling between SF and Wrath, allowing SF to easily catch up with Wrath (good thing so i don't have to resort to the haste parameter).

Thanks again for spotting the mistake.

Post by 208283

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Post by Celdhyrean

1° Your post is unreadable.
2° There is no "unique best" spec. Starting your post with "any druids takes Nature's Grasp" is a sure way to discredit your post.

Now to critique the talent you are taking over some others in a pure PvE perspective.
(i'm not saying they are useless, but the benefit they give is so small that there's no point in taking one over the other except for other purposes than PvE or personal preference)

- 1/1 Nature's Grasp : 35% to root is useless in most instances and would result in a dead druid anyway in heroics or raids (getting hit 2 before having it proc and then once more before managing to get out of reach spells your death)
- Brambles 3/3 : the talent itself sounds good but the low damage done by Thorns makes it useless. It's approximatively 7-8 damage by hit if i remember correctly (and doesn't work if the tank dodges (not sure about parries), which results in less than 1% added threat. That's not going to save your agroing if the dps don't know how to throttle themselves.
- you are praising iFF but not filling the talent ? iFF is good but only in 25 man raiding. The increase in raid dps it brings for 10 man raiding is quite minimal, and let's not even talk about 5 mans.
- FoN is fun and good (i generally take it) but certainly not mandatory. Their impact on speed of boss kill is certainly very minimal and won't be noticed by the tank and healers. Also there are some bosses where you should never use them as more tagets in melee range can pose a threat to the other melee players.

- Mana on melee : it's written in the guide, go read it.
- AoE and leather : building gear based on a skill you can only use every minute and does not serve a main purpose in any boss fight is useless.
Our aoe is nice and should be used. Gearing purposefully for armor and health however is not the way to go, gear for damage and pray for good tanks and healers.

Post by 208283

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Post by Celdhyrean

Just ... no. I'm not saying your arguments are completely wrong, but the factors you point out as essential (survivability from leather, NG, FoN, Brambles) simply are just a drop in the bucket in most situations that prevent you from taking talents that are more universally usefull (or equally useless for raids). There are options in any spec but what you are trying to do is to pass those off as mandatory. They aren't.

DPS talents are, as they provide an upgrade in our main role whatever the case.
Mana regen talents are for the same reason, unless you can garantee yourself an spriest/shaman in which case you might be able to drop some.
Raid synergies aren't. If there are no meleers in your raid, your casters aren't threat capped or that the increase in raid dps/threat doesn't compensate your loss of dps, or whatever then they (brambles or iFF) provide 0 bonus.
FoN isn't even if it's iconic: 1 point in Subtlety can be a bigger increase to your personnal dps if you are often threat capped.

There are 3 points in balance that we have to throw at useless talents and 10 in resto. There are 5 points after having filled all "dps" talents that you can put in whatever you prefer for your own good or for the good of the raid. The talents you can choose for all those points are all more or less usefull stuff to take depending on the amount of PvP, farming, raiding (and raid composition),... you do, but my point is there are always situations where a specific one actually provides 0 increase. And those situations are quite easy to work out (except maybe iFF which is the most difficult case and as such the most worthy candidate for being considered raid-mandatory), which is why i'm talking about options.
It all depends on circumstances. Not recognizing that is what kills your arguments.

So now, to get back to each specific argument.

No, NG is not very usefull in PvE. CoN isn't either i'd say (though a little bit better), and neither is bramble. Give me specific cases ? I'll show you that they are very minimal and not worth talent points.
Root ? I root in Old Hillsbrad and that's about it. I could in Hyjal but that would mean someone else is doing something wrong. I never while farming because everything dies too fast (though i'd understand someone less geared than me wanting to use it, it's certainly not a spell that gets more used when you get more powerfull). Oh yes, i do use it for the Hellfire SSO daily quest where you have to channel at a fellblood initiate. Just to tag the mob without building too much threat in case someone wants to steal it from me. Not using roots means i have no use for NG either.
I do use Cyclone slightly more in raids or instances, but mainly when some squishy takes agro or to give the tank a bit more time to build agro. ie i don't have agro and don't profit from CoN.
Face it, root is mainly a PvP/solo spell at the moment (which will change in wotlk) and is not really worth any points, be it through NG or CoN.

Taking 3/3 brambles and 2/3 iFF and pretending to do your best for the raid is wrong, the last point in IFF is clearly better than the last one in Brambles.

Leather items : of course if there's an equivalent item in both leather and cloth you should go for leather (be it only for being fair towards cloth casters). There are also some other reasons (spirit on leather caster gear which is not as frequent on cloth gear) to prefer leather to cloth. But armor is not one of them (or at least only if all the rest is equal). To use your own argument, you getting hit means someone else is slacking. Even in AoE situations, either the tanks or mages hold the pack well, or it's just getting them down as fast as possible in which case it's the healers role to keep you alive.
If you really want to emphasize your resistance for a particular event (which might be usefull at times though i really don't have any personnal example up to the middle of BT), get PvP gear. For the rest, get whatever provides more dps (pure dps + mana regen).

They would be to scared and busy praying for others. Boomkins are the mage line of druid. Act like one. You don't have frost nova for your aoe you have armor.Harharhar, I just can't not quote that.
With all the badge gear and stuff we do have enough options to gear up mostly with leather. I currently wear only 3 cloth pieces (wrist, waist, boots). I'd probably have shoulders or legs too if it wasn't for the 4T5 bonus. Do i lack armor compared to a full leather moonkin ? Maybe 1k or so... Do i have better dps ? Yes, by a certain amount as those few pieces i use as cloth are the best until SWP tier pieces. Do i die in AoE situations due to lack of armor ? No, unless the healers slack.
But even when i was mostly wearing cloth, it didn't change a thing. I've gone in the middle of packs to do AoE since Karazhan before badge gear where i was mostly in cloth gear and i continue to do so now. Considering leather gear as a prerequisite for AoEing is just wrong. Saying that i'm slacking because of that and causing additional work for the healers is denying warlocks any aoe possibility (and strangely they are the best AoE class in BC).
If an AoE class dies, it's either the tanks/cc fault, the healers fault, or because some stupidity of that player. Not because of armor.

Post by 208283

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Post by Celdhyrean

...
iFF's usefullness is dependant on melee/caster numbers + threat limitation situations. Brambles usefullness is dependant on threat limitation situations.

I do consider the 3 points in CoN to be useless, but i do need to waste 3 points ot get to higher tiers, and it's still better for me than 2 in CoN and 1 in NG. Which is why i chose my talent points that way. It is my choice, and does not mean that NG has no use for you. But as for myself, I HAVE NO NEED FOR NG IN ANY NON-PVP SITUATION, so stop trying to prove to me that i need it, there is NO PvE situation at all where i'd want to have it.
It's not a REQUIRED talent. It's an optional one.

Dropping dps to be easier to heal is not optimal. At that rythm, let's do all aoe situations with 10 protection paladins, that's the best after all since they are easier to heal (armor, block, parry, ...). Killing mobs faster results in less healing needed too, so stop focusing on that armor. Especially since healers are already wasting mana on overheal (or they should if they are serious about it), so 1k armor more or less won't change a thing.
On a side-note, healer mana is something to worry about if they are OOM before the end of the fight. As long as their targets are alive and they aren't oom, they can waste as much mana as they want and overheal as much as required, nobody cares.

Roots and agro for survival ? Where ? Please be more precise because i don't even now what argument i'm supposed to answer to. Especially since as i said, i mostly never use root (and when i do because for whatever reason i aggroed 3 mobs while being low on life and mana, i'm much more happy with CoN than with NG). Shifting to bear is only a solution if there's a tank to pick up agro or some neutral zone to reach. If you're alone, you're going to die anyway, shifting to bear won't change a thing.
Also, the mobs i'm talking about (if you are referring to that other post about healing and agro) are those who one shot you in caster form and 2 shot you in moonkin/bear form. Having 3 cloth pieces or full leather won't change a thing, unless you decide to do your instances in full PvP gear which is bad for a lot of reasons.

"I'm talking about overall speed of getting through an instance with the build I posted."
- NG doesn't speed up instances. 95% of them you can't use it anyway.
- Brambles doesn't speed up instances (unless your tank is that bad).
- OoC doesn't speed up instances. Actually i just noticed you took it, it's a ridiculous talent for a moonkin to have as you should never whack things in melee (ie you should never go OOM, it's bad) and the proc rate is low.
- iFF doesn't speed instances : the length of fights in a normal instance (and the amount of life on bosses) makes such 3% increases a paltry.
- NS and NF don't speed up instances either
All the talents we are bickering about are NOT core dps talents. They are optionnal threat increase, control, mana savings/... whatever talents. There are a ton of situations in which any of those is simply useless. There are a ton of situations in which any of those is better than the others. Which is why they are ALL OPTIONNAL.

You still push your build as the sole best and only solution to PvE. Such a claim is simply ridiculous as they are always situations where a different build will work better.

Actually, did you read the sticky instead of just bickering about the build i linked in there ? Because i clearly state that 3 points in balance (NG, iNG, Brambles, CoN) and 10 points in resto (IMotW, Furor, Naturalist, NF, NS) can be put wherever anyone prefers it. I had to put them somewhere but i certainly never said that the way i put them was the best and only way.

This gets really tiring, in order to try to see wether we are progressing, could you please confirm that what you are trying ot prove is that your talent build is the best in any and all PvE situations ?

Post by 210205

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Post by deustele

I jI just want to thank you, both of you, for creating such a comprehensive thread on Doomchickens; I'm a DPS sucker and always wanted to roll one but previously was having issues on brain-picking play style, so once again, thank you for the great thread,

Post by toastmaster7727

Very useful information indeed. About yout suggested full PVE raiding moonkin build though...Control of Nature won't help you at all in almost all raiding instances (exceptions include ZA and Hyjal). I would take that talent out of the "must have" category and reccomend its three points be placed in the "spend freely" category. Some moonkins might want 3/3 Improved Faerie Fire or even Brambles if they are buffing the tank with Thorns (which actually does more dps for you than you think).

My personal build is consisted of Nature's Grasp for grinding purpouses and a few others i find handy when alone. Feel free to comment on in at....http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Hydraxis&n=Toastmasterd.

Post by Celdhyrean

CoN is marked as being part of the optionnal talents (ie the 3 mandatory points to reach the higher tiers) : The optionnal lower tier point allocations goes as follow:
3 points in balance, either in Control of Nature, Nature's Grasp or Brambles.
...I just had to chose a talent where to put them in order for the template to work, and thus put them where i do have them on live.

Regarding Brambles, you can read this analysis by a tank : http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16840#comments:id=333941
It's simply not worth the talent points for a balance druid (it's strangely quite easier to reach for resto druids).

Not much to say on your build, core talents are good, on the optionnal side you chose Subtlety over iFF and put the "mandatory useless" points in other places than me, but that's not something i can comment upon as it's up to the way you play your game.

Post by 234765

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Post by Celdhyrean

Thanks, though many parts aren't up to date anymore with the new talents/mecanics. There is some newer information in the other threads that'll have to suffice as there's o point in reworking it now (3.0 lvl 70 is only there for 2 weeks).
I'll try to do that a few weeks after wotlk hits (ie somewhere middle or end of december, i'll be away from wow during november).

Post by 130628

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Post by Celdhyrean

I'm on a 1 month trip in NZ, so as the post just above yours says, i will update but only around mid-december.

Regarding E&M, it's 12% more damage to the mob, that part works as a debuff. E&M should be considered a core talent, as it provides 16% increase to damage.

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Post by Evergreen

Regarding the above few posts...

If we are talking about 5 mans and Raids here, Should you be getting hit anyways?
If your getting push back when casting wrath/SF Your most likely going to 1-2 shotted by the mob you shouldn't have pulled aggro on in the first place.
Maybe it's just me. That's my thought on that little bit.

Aside from that, this thread has been excellent and I've been keeping track of it for a while now. Thanks

Post by Celdhyrean

BoP almost covers all your needs for 5 man instances (should be 6% needed for lvl 82 mobs). As soon as you go into raid you want the hit cap.
As for pushback, there are also some encounters where you get magical ae damage or whatever without being directly targetted. An extreme example would be the Sunwell where pushback protection was worth a massive dps increase.

Druid Guide, Part 5: Moonkin DPS [Outdated - BC]

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