Stop hitting it so hard! You’ll wear it out!
I was at this totally sweet rager a few months ago. There was Texas-style barbeque and Jell-o shots, pontoons and a bonfire stoked with jet fuel. We’d just lit a desk on fire and rode it Reverse Cowboy style down the hill into the canal when Mortality suggested that hey, maybe it’d be a great idea to reroll Horde on Mal’ganis. At least, I’m pretty sure I must have been drunk to A) play a cow B) play a Boomkin and C) start over with nothing. And although you could argue that I’ve only been playing the bomb owl part time, I first stepped into the Trial of the Champion raid encounters as ranged DPS. Interestingly, ranged DPS is the easiest role I’ve ever played in this game—don’t let those crazy-ass caster types tell you otherwise. Sure, you need to move around sometimes and that whole shrinking blue bar is problematic, but you mostly kick back, crack open a beer, and nuke.
Now don’t worry—this blog isn’t going the way of the chicken. I do, however, have a semi-helpful tip for all you Balance-things out there. As you probably already know, the Moonkin casting rotation has changed significantly; namely, it’s a lot easier. Instead of stacking Haste to 400 and following a lunar cycle, your goal is to actually proc both a solar and a lunar eclipse. Graylo calls this “twisting.” At a very basic level:
- FF, MF, IS
- Wrath until Lunar Eclipse
- Starfire until Solar Eclipse
- Make sure DoTs are up and shit.
Obviously the goal here is to make sure that you’re fluidly switching spells while keeping DoTs refreshed. Wrath makes this interesting. If you’ve got ~400 Haste, your Wrath spells are already casting at ~1.3 seconds. That’s pretty fast. With a Nature’s Grace proc (Wrath at ~1.0 seconds), you’re a veritable chain-casting machine. Chances are good that by the time you’ve gotten a Lunar Eclipse, you’ve already ripped off three to four Wraths. Grats, excitable Owl. You’ve just wasted four seconds of your Eclipse!
Here’s how to be a little more wary. Wrath, as you know, has a travel time. This means that when you cast Wrath, it doesn’t instantly hit the target. The ball of crackling Nature energy leaves your feathered grasp, zooms along, and then hits the target by the time you’ve already got another one or two queued up. Nature’s Grace (spell critical have a 100% chance to increase casting speed by 20% for 3 seconds) can proc when the spell leaves your hands. Nature’s Grace tells you that you’ve gotten a critical strike, meaning that you then have a 60% chance to proc a Lunar Eclipse. The Lunar Eclipse will not proc until the spell hits the target.
So if you’re using a mod such as Power Auras or even SCT, you’ll get a notification when you’ve procced Nature’s Grace with Wrath. That’s your cue to stop spamming your Wrath button like a squirrel on crack. By paying attention to your Nature’s Grace proc as the spell leaves your fingers, you can slow down and prepare to queue up a Starfire if you get the telltale Eclipse on the spell hit.
Is it a guaranteed win? No, but when you’re actively anticipating the switch, you’re able to maintain a more fluid rotation, which in turn means more DPS.
Goddamn, I love this blog.
You tend to put me in a
Fuck Yeah!
/high-five
/rip face
kind of mood.
This is probably the best comment I’ve ever received. Thanks, and rock on, dude.
No doubt. I once thought about switching mains to my lock.
WTB boss encounters where all range have to move on top of boss and melee or stop DPSing and then run back out… needs to happen at least every 30 seconds too.
It’s definitely not as fun as melee, although I do enjoy running around and fake-humping everyone with the Boomkin dance. The rotation is so much easier than anything else, and eventually the only thing I’m worrying about is gee, do I have enough mana?
There are fights when being ranged is a pain (i.e. Vezax). I just think that, traditionally, melee has always had the runaround job.
I’m glad you made this post; I just started getting into pussy form, and I was clearing up my bank and found all my random Critturkey gear. I was tempted to sell/delete it because of how irritating all the different rotation options that were out there (procing Lunar vs Solar eclipse etc) but now I think I’ll keep that gear and give Shoopdaowl a try!
Haha. It’s hard to manage multiple gear sets as a Druid; I literally don’t have room for a Resto or a Moonkin set on Runyarusco.
Regardless, if you’re thinking about really giving Balance a shot, I recommend going to Graylo’s site, Gray Matter.
I take offense…I play a mage and it really is rough. I gotta make a table, cast one buff on the raid, then when the raid is all done. I have to open a portal.
And no one really laughs when I send them to Stonard. I find it Hilarious.
Plus the Warlocks take our lunch money. IT SUCKS!
Listen, you guys get to summon up a clone army of slave labor. I call bullshit.
Those guys are my only friends….Don’t cry for me.
I’ve been looking for ways to break the 2k DPS barrier (in my non-raiding, semi-resto-pvp mishmash gear) and I think this might be the tip that see’s me there. Thanks heaps!
Hey, no problem.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing probably won’t get you all that far if you’re working with a strange set of gear. Graylo, over at Gray Matter has some old (but still useful) guides on how to get some decent prelim Boomkin gear. You can actually pick a lot of decent pieces up from rep vendors.
Between that and what’s essentially free loot in the Trial of the Champion five man, you should definitely take a look.
Nothing too new, although don’t forget the fun of CCing and ressing and spot healing. Also, might want to mention starfall for proccing constant NG uptime to let you nuke away during your preferred eclipse.
I also think you are oversimplifying it, I see no mention of how many seconds to remain at each eclipse before it is justified to just nuke away rather than refresh DoTs.
Finally, gauging eclipse from NG proc is old, and good for those who do well with it. But I’ve seen plenty of newbies who see their dps go down instead of up after focussing on too many things or prematurely swapped spells.
Aside from that, looks alright.. although to be honest, I’ve always found mouseovermacroing HoTs on little colourful boxes (ie, resto druid healing) to be easier.
As mentioned, this is most certainly not a blog dedicated to all things Moonkin, and I’m only really flirting with Balance myself. I am oversimplifying things, hence the “at a very basic level.” I appreciate your commentary, particularly RE: the Starfall NG procs (which is something I have utilized), but if folks are really looking for Balance information, they’re definitely at the wrong blog.
Healing is just never one of those things that interested me, regardless of how easy it may or may not be. Maybe the proper term might have been that ranged DPS feels the least “stressful.” Part of it might have to do with the fact that I particularly abhor the Druid tree-form; however, I’ve also done it enough to know that if you do it well, people tend to keep you slotted in that role. That being said, my Paladin has actually been Holy for some time. I suppose I just like keeping things separated.