#0 - May 14, 2010, 4:05 p.m.
Disclaimer: What is a moonkin?
Stats n' caps
Gems
Talents
Glyphs
Enchants
Consumables
Rotation
Eclipse
Tips and tricks
Resources
About Qieth
DISCLAIMER - WHAT IS A MOONKIN?
"If I wanted to be a caster, I could just have rolled a mage!". There are many reasons why we spec into moonkins. Some are resto druids looking for a damage spec they can easely transition to. Some are feral druids who want to explore different types of gameplay without having to level a whole new character. Others relish in the sheer awesomeness of being a giant chicken who can command the entire universe to shift around, with a mere thought.
Why would you roll a moonkin? Moonkins have a variety of very different spells and abilities in their arsenal, and cover a great deal of raid buffs. With two dots, two main nukes and some potentially devistating cooldowns, moonkins can adapt to many situations. A single moonkin in the raid brings a number of raid buffs that you would need to cover on several other classes: 3% spell haste, 3% hit, 5% crit, 13% more spell damage, minor armor reduction, rebirth and more. To cover all of these buffs, you would need 5 other different classes.
We are hybrids. But while we are not dominating the damage meters, we are in a very comfortable position, with great potential to secure our spot in a raid. A well played moonkin would and should do just as much DPS as the core of your raid group, while offering your raid the support needed to succeed.
STATS N' CAPS
To best equip your moonkin for whats ahead, you must have a basic knowledge of how each stat affects it. Here is a rundown of the stats and their caps:
Hit: The most important stat for any moonkin is hit. Each ~26,32 hit rating gives you 1% chance to hit. It is possible to get 100% chance to hit, ensuring that you never miss with a spell. This is the most important stat you can get, and should be your first priority. For alliance, you need 9% hit* (237 hit rating) to be capped, and for horde you will need 10% hit (263 hit rating). This is assuming you have both Balance of Power and Improved Faerie Fire.
*Alliance players require 9% hit rating only if they have a draenei in their party. Be mindful that this racial has a limited range, and you may find yourself out of range in encounters with a lot of room to move. Because of that, it doesn't hurt to hover around 9-10% hit, or even just aim for 10%.
Spell power: Spell power is the greatest stat after hit rating, unless you are not soft haste capped, but it is difficult to really "stack" spell power. It sort of just comes along as you upgrade your gear, and you can only affect this by gemming and enchanting. Point for point, it adds more damage than crit, haste and spirit.
Haste rating: Haste rating is a very nice stat, often worth more than crit. Assuming that you have full raid buffs, your soft haste cap is 401 haste rating. At this point, your wraths will have a 1 second cast with Nature's Grace up. Haste is still beneficial after 401, as it is a great damage increase to your starfire, and your Nature's Grace does not have a 100% uptime. Everytime you move, your Nature's Grace might probably fall off, and even while standing still casting, you might inevitably feel some non-crit streaks. You should aim on getting your haste to 401 after you have reached your soft hit cap. More on haste a little bit below.
Crit: Crit serves three purposes: More damage through bigger spell hits, to proc eclipse, and to regen mana. The mana regen from Moonkin Form is usually over 70% of your total mana regen, and once you get a comfortable amount of crit, you will never run out of mana. Crit as damage works towards - well, giving us more damage, and it aids several of our tier bonuses, most noticably our 4-piece tier 10 bonus. Crit is your direct route to faster eclipse procs, and eclipse is our main damage increase.
Once you are hard hit capped and soft haste capped, crit becomes more valuable than haste, until you reach your soft crit cap. After this point, haste and crit are worth more or less the same, with a slight favor to haste. To calculate your soft crit cap, use the following formula: 1575.5 - Int/3
Int is the value of your intellect as you view it in the armory, assuming you do not have Focus Magic, but does have all talents and raid buffs. Another way to determine if you are crit capped, is to look at your character sheet in midfight, with everything rolling. If your character sheet reads 42% chance to crit, and you have all buffs and debuffs as well as the correct talents, you will be soft crit capped, meaning every starfire during lunar eclipse will be a crit.
Spirit: Spirit is not a stat we would want to go for, but it is a perfectly fine substitute if we happen to get some. Most items have upwards of 80-100 spirit, and 30% of this gets converted into spell power.
Crit versus haste: It is important that you realize what happens with your crit and haste once they reach their soft caps. Additional haste will largely only benefit starfire, and additional crit will largely only benefit wrath. But haste does still benefit wrath after the soft haste cap, as your Nature's Grace does not have a 100% uptime. At the same time, haste helps you proc eclipse faster. Likewise, crit does benefit your starfire outside of lunar eclipse, and also helps you proc eclipse faster. For the most part, the rule of thumb is that haste is equal to crit after both soft caps, but there is a slight favor towards haste. You would want to increase both stats as you go along.
TL;DR: Your stat focus should follow the following priority:
- Hit cap, 237 for alliance, 263 for horde.
- Soft haste cap (401 haste rating)
- Soft crit cap (42% in-fight crit rating on your character sheet)
- After soft caps, Haste = Crit, but a slight favor to haste
- Spirit
- Intellect, stamina.
In other words: Hit rating (to cap) >> Haste rating (below GCD cap) = Spellpower > Crit rating (below Lunar cap) > Haste rating (above GCD cap) >= Crit rating (above Lunar cap) >> Intellect > Spirit.
GEMS
Gemming is fairly straight forward for moonkins. Gems are usually dictated by your current stats and the color of the gem socket.
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 SP/spirit gems, and preferably in blue slots only.
Red: Red slots should always, always, always be pure spell power gems.
Yellow slots: Yellows change a bit depending on your caps. If you are not hit capped, a SP/hit, or even a pure hit gem, will be the best to equip. If you are not haste capped, then haste is what you should focus on. After your soft haste cap, which is very easy to reach these days, you should gem yellow slots with SP/crit, if the socket bonus gives you +5 spell power or more. Once you have covered your soft crit cap, because of the slight favor to haste, SP/haste gems becomes the better choice in yellow slots.
