4.0 / Cataclysm DPS Rotation & Glyphs
Glyphs
Glyph of Moonfire (this also affects Sunfire)
Glyph of Insect Swarm
Glyph of Wrath
Rotation (from 0 Energy)
I personally like to move towards Lunar first and get Starfall cooldown up and running ASAP.
Force of Nature
Moonfire, Insect Swarm
Wrath (this ensures your power is moving the right way to get your Starsurge going the right way)
Starsurge
Wrath until Lunar Eclipse (Starsurge whenever Shooting Stars Procs, or is off cooldown.)
Lunar Eclipse
Starfall (Starfall on cooldown from now on).
Insect Swarm, Moonfire
Starsurge (also cast whenever Shooting Stars Procs, or is off cooldown.)
Starfire until Solar Eclipse
Solar Eclipse
Berserking (if Troll)
Insect Swarm, Sunfire
Starsurge (also casting when Shooting Stars Procs, or is off cooldown.)
Wrath until Lunar Eclipse
Repeat.
Tips and Tricks
I always cast Starfall FIRST in my Lunar Eclipse, as Starfall is not benefited by haste, I do not want to waste one GCD while under Nature’s Grace (which happens when I moonfire)
I always cast Force of Nature when I’m NOT under Nature’s Grace (usually between Eclipse), for the same reason as Starfall.
Nature’s Grace is an odd talent, in that it doesn’t grant the spell haste to the spell that causes it to proc. That being said, you’ll want to Insect Swarm before Moonfire in Lunar Eclipse, and Sunfire in Solar Eclipse. Sunfire’s base damage is higher then that of Insect Swarm, when both are glyphed.
While Berserking does not specifically state “haste”, it does give additional DoT ticks.
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Druid Resource list for 4.0.1 | Restokin
October 11th, 2010 on 5:09 pm[...] Sunfyre’s Nest also has a 4.0 moonkin guide for rotation and such. [...]
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Latest on Wed, 09:21 pm: To answer Boomer's question I am running the 4T13 and I find it more beneficial to use starsurge on cooldown no matter what due to the 10% damage increase and the fact that you do get the instacast procs so often that there is no reason not to take advantage of the tier bonus
: *groan*
: A Combat-log is a druid meleeing in tree form. Think about it...
: Hey, i just got 85 on my druid and got basic balance gear and spec, got a 8k dps at the moment, and i am looking for some helpfull Addons to improve my dps. (or makes thing's easier.
: Stopping by from wow.joystiq, thought I'd say thanks for the symbiosis list, that's awesome.
: tooltips working, nice one =]
October 6th, 2010 on 1:20 pm
ok i’ve read from you and others agreeing you cast starfall during lunar. I’m just asking why, they all say it benefits and I knwo i’m missing something just dont’ know what. Whats the difference and benefit from casting starfall during lunar compared to solar?
October 6th, 2010 on 2:17 pm
Lunar Eclipse grants benefit to all arcane damage, and Starfall is arcane.
October 7th, 2010 on 2:26 pm
thank you, makes sense…
October 11th, 2010 on 1:00 am
I have a question. Is there any merit to refreshing the dots just before the eclipse ends so that you get eclipse bonus on dots almost 100%? since insect swarm is our highest dmg spell anyways.
October 11th, 2010 on 1:59 am
Nope, because you’ll end up clipping the DoT at the end of it — at level 80 we only go 3-4 seconds without DoTs. It may be longer at 85, but it’s still not worth it because you’re going to clip it when you get the new Eclipse.
October 12th, 2010 on 1:08 pm
When you proc solar eclipse do you have issues getting sunfire to land as a sunfire rather then as a moonfire? I finish casting my last starfire and usually if I spam moonfire(sunfire) too fast it ends up landing as a moonfire before it had switched to a sunfire. :/
October 12th, 2010 on 1:08 pm
Yeah — you have to pause briefly. HOWEVER, if Sunfire is still broken in this live build as it’s broken in PTR and Beta.. you actually want Moonfire instead of Sunfire. Of course, if they actually make it tick properly, you’d want Sunfire.
October 13th, 2010 on 12:22 pm
This actually seems like a very simple and easy rotation. I think the hardest part is figuring out which keybinds I’ll want for what spells.
Other than that, it’s basically just a back and forth wave from Lunar to Solar with the few blips that Starsurge provides.
Do you recommend the same idea for mob fights? Typically those are a lot shorter, even the mobs with lots of health.
October 14th, 2010 on 11:30 am
You said no because the DoT will be clipped. Did they not implement the “last tick no clip” yet as I read in other forums?
October 14th, 2010 on 11:37 am
I’m not sure, but either way you’re going to be re-casting the DoT before you get full effectiveness of the previous one. The main goal for our DPS is to get from Eclipse to Eclipse as fast as possible, re-casting DoTs when you’re ~75% into the other Eclipse is not beneficial when you’re just going to recast them in 5 seconds anyways.
October 14th, 2010 on 12:49 pm
Hey, i just brought my one and only character up to 80.
1. Could someone please just give me a target number for spirit, spell hit (total gear hit rating and translated % chance), spell crit (total gear crit rating and the % chance), and haste rating (total gear haste rating and translated % chance).
2. Whether penetration matters any more in pvp, whether resilience matters any more in pvp (with the completely unnecessary break rogues got for some reason).
3. Whether the combat mana regen is permanently fixed at a certain value (no matter how i reforge around spirit or change gear the combat regen number doesn’t move it up or down AT ALL) or if it is broken or just bugged (just not showing the changes in the pane).
Thanks guys, this would help more than anything else. Would like to know before i start wasting honor and justice points on, well, pointless gear.
But wait, Ive got a REALLY stupid question. Does leather specialization mean that we need to be wearing leather capes in our back slot (before we get the passive buff)? The flavor text says leather has to be equipped in every slot, but every back slot equipment piece in the game is cloth, so…
October 14th, 2010 on 12:55 pm
Hi Scott..
1) You need 17% spell hit. It’s around 445 or so. For crit and haste, you want as much as you can get, but haste is better, so if you can reforge crit to haste, do it. We no longer have “soft caps”, so you want to aim as high as you can go.
2) I believe spell penetration still works, and so does resilience, but it’s just a base damage decrease and not a crit chance decrease.
3) Combat mana regen is fixed, sort of. We get no mana back in combat, as we don’t have the resto mastery, so that’s base mana return, plus Blessing of Might (which now gives mp5) if we have it.
And no, any cloak will work in the back slot. Leather everywhere else.
October 15th, 2010 on 9:27 am
I have 2 questions…. when lunar shower procs, should we keep moving or is that sort of worthless for a boss…. also mastery rating, is it really necesary to get now?? or should i change hit and crit to haste???
October 15th, 2010 on 1:02 pm
Lunar shower always procs when you moonfire. You really only utilize it when you’re having to move (and thus unable to cast anything else).
October 18th, 2010 on 6:53 am
Haste = Priority once you have hit cap. If you can’t reforge to haste then do either crit or mastery. I just recently turned all my excess hit into mastery (when I couldn’t do haste) and I haven’t really decided if it was worth it or not. I want to do my next ICC and then will decide. I’m still a little above the hit cap, but it was ridiculous before (24% hit, haha!)
Anyway, due to a 1 yr sabbatical from the game, I just did my first ICC run on Sat. I started with a gear score of 4987 (at 5180 now). I was pretty lucky because I got into a run lead by a well versed raider who created the raid to gear up his alt. He seems to have a small weekly thing going with a bunch of noobs like me that he took under his wing. We did awesome clearing 9 of 12. Anyway, I am proud to say I topped the DPS charts the entire night, doing 19% of the raids overall damage and kept a solid dps of 6.8k the entire night (some fights I got to 7.1k)
We had another moonkin with us, with a higher gear score and I whopped his a$$. Honestly, the rotation is easier said than done sometimes. It can be hard to remember all the little things and even throughout the night I found myself making mistakes – like casting wrath when I should be casting starfall to make my way up to a solar eclipse or missing a starsurge during a shooting star. I think I am pretty good with it tho, as i saw by my raid on Sat. Granted we were quite the noob raid for my dps to be the highest out of it, but it felt good to out dps everyone.
Sorry for the rant. But, thanks for posting this rotation. I am slowly mastering it, and considering I out dpsed the other moonkin, I think mastery of this rotation is what will make the good stand out from the bad.
October 18th, 2010 on 7:39 am
Glad to see it’s working for you. You’ll want to reforge to crit when you already have haste on the gear. Mastery isn’t very good for us since we only benefit from it when Eclipse is active.
November 30th, 2010 on 8:22 am
I’m a little confused. when you enter lunar eclipse you say to refresh dots, what if they havent run their course yet? ( I haven’t timed this myself or tested because my druids 74 and I’m only doing enough damage to get by quest mobs )and do you only cast starfall in lunar eclipse because of the arcane damage boost (I assume because of the buff, just clarifying), also why does the order of insect swarm and moonfire/sunfire keep changing? is it to get your energy going the way you want it? I’m going to have test this on a dummy to get the idea of it tho, thats maybe my problem is i’m not seeing it in action to fully understand the reasons. Thanks for the post/blog or whatever it is C:
November 30th, 2010 on 8:26 am
You won’t clip your DoTs unless you’re running over 1500 haste which requires full BiS gear.
Even if you did, I’d advise to clip DoTs, because casting your first DoT is going to re-proc Nature’s Grace (Nature’s Grace is on a 1 minute cooldown, but that cooldown is reset by entering an Eclipse).
The reason why you are careful which order you cast your DoTs is also due to Nature’s Grace: Whatever DoT causes Nature’s Grace to proc is going to not gain the haste benefit from it, therefor, doing two ticks less of damage over the 18 seconds, so, you’ll want your least damaging DoT to proc Nature’s Grace (which in both Eclipses is Insect Swarm).
November 30th, 2010 on 8:27 am
Random, I also got excited when I saw “Beserking if troll” cause I made my drood tuesday and he’s already 74 w/o RAF
November 30th, 2010 on 8:28 am
my god you responded fast, wow. thanks lol.
November 30th, 2010 on 8:36 am
I get an email whenever a comment comes in
December 1st, 2010 on 8:26 am
I have a question, about natures grace when you responded to me. You said that you want to use your least damaging dot, which in both eclipses you said is IS, but wouldn’t Insect swarm do more damage in solar eclipse due to it being nature damage?
December 1st, 2010 on 8:28 am
The Sunfire talent turns your Moonfire into Sunfire when in Solar Eclipse. That becomes a nature spell and does more damage then insect swarm per tick.
December 1st, 2010 on 8:29 am
Nevermind, I think I know why it does less damage, moonfire turns into sunfire in solar right? which also increases the damage of that, alright nevermind.
December 10th, 2010 on 10:29 pm
I lovveyya Sunfyre=)
December 14th, 2010 on 2:46 am
YOu can use the Lunar Shower Talent while in the Solar Eclipse (the one that bootst your Nature Damage) and just hang in there while spamming Sunfire and Insect Swarm on all mobs while you just keep moving all the time.
That way you also do some decent DPS with your Sunfire casting hardly any mana, and since you will stay in the Eclispe indefinately, you can just keep going that way…
Used to heal/DPS that way at the end of WotLK. Doing 7k DPS while healing…
December 14th, 2010 on 6:05 am
That’s not a viable DPS rotation.
December 27th, 2010 on 12:05 pm
Hi,
I have a quick question, during a solar eclipse the sunfire spell often doesn’t seem to show as being applied to the boss despite my casting it on them – any ideas? Is it just a bug and it is really applied? Does it work differently from Moonfire, which does show up each time it is applied?
Thanks again Synfyre for your help. I am doing so much less dps than my peers I am hoping your rotation and practice can help.
December 27th, 2010 on 12:10 pm
I’ve never seen Sunfire not apply. Are you using a specific unit frames addon? Possibly an outdated one that’s not set to filter Sunfire as one of your “own” spells? The way my unit frames are set is to only show my debuffs on a target, and if yours is the same way and was not updated for the 4.0 spells, that may be the issue.
December 27th, 2010 on 1:15 pm
Great – I didn’t think to check my unit frames, but can certainly update them as needed. Mucho thanks again.
December 28th, 2010 on 7:01 pm
This is a great guide for moonkins just starting out like me. Before reading this, i had trouble reaching 10k dps even though my gear was on par or better than my fellow raid members. After reading through and doing some testing of my own, i can consistently reach 11k dps now.
Also i find that refreshing dots before your eclipse ends will boost your dps. Also by doing this your dots should last until right before eclipse procs, which by then you can refresh them for Nature’s Grace
December 28th, 2010 on 7:06 pm
DoT duration is 18 sec…not sure how you’d make it take two durations to hit an eclipse
December 28th, 2010 on 7:18 pm
Haste makes the dots duration shorter doesn’t it? Combined with nature’s grace, when i refresh dots right before eclipse ends, the dots are already about 3/4 of the way done.
What i mean by this is that by refreshing dots right before eclipse ends, your next dots with eclipse damage buff should last until your next eclipse, which by then you refresh dots again for Nature’s Grace
December 28th, 2010 on 7:21 pm
Haste doesn’t shorten duration..just increases how many ticks you get during it’s duration. Personally I prefer to put up dots at the beginning of the eclipse and push the next asap.
December 28th, 2010 on 7:27 pm
Ah i see, what i do is that in addition to your guide (Putting IS first then Moonfire/Sunfire when eclipse procs) I refresh them again before eclipse ends so that the buffed dots carry over into the phase where you don’t have the eclipse buff and are pushing for the next eclipse.
December 29th, 2010 on 2:40 pm
Do you think that the 4 piece T11 bonus will affect your rotation? To me it seems that with the current rotation, you will waste the crit bonus when you reapply IS and MF as the crit chance modifier will be eaten up by them.
December 29th, 2010 on 2:42 pm
It will affect the rotation somewhat. Insect Swarm should not eat up a charge as there is no direct damage, so I’d still cast that first for the haste buff, then I’d starsurge if it’s up, then use the appropriate nuke, then Moonfire/Sunfire, then return to my normal rotation.
January 5th, 2011 on 7:25 am
what is the addon that you use to view your cool downs. I can see it above Bartender
January 7th, 2011 on 10:17 am
ForteXorcist
January 13th, 2011 on 9:34 am
Hi, i’m a french moonkin player. I used to use your DPS rotation since WotLK but for few days i’m asking me if is it more optimized to refresh DoTs when they’re finished except if an Eclipse proc is coming in one or two casts.
It’s the cycle adviced by Elitist Jerks and I would know your opinion about this ’cause i tested the two different cycles on mannequin but i didn’t see a real difference because of the random shooting stars procs and crits.
Excuse me for the possible english mistakes.
January 14th, 2011 on 6:35 pm
I think if you’re doing something where you’re running around a lot so you have a long time between Eclipses, you should probably refresh. (You should be spamming moonfire anyways on the run, which is going to refresh the DoT for you). I personally don’t like to always refresh Insect Swarm because of it’s low damage and high mana cost. (Moonfire gets really cheap because of lunar showers). On a standard tank and spank rotation, at any modest haste value at all (1200), you should only really have 3-6 seconds between DoTs falling off and re-application after Eclipse, and due to the mana costs associated and the very few ticks you’d get before you clip again, I don’t think it’s worth it.
January 28th, 2011 on 3:08 pm
Hey Sunfyre, I have a quick question. I understand that when we proc an eclipse we cast Insect Swarm first so that Moon/Sunfire gets the haste buff from Nature’s Grace. Do you know/think that it would be worth it to recast Insect swarm so that it gets the haste from Nature’s Grace as well? And if so would we want to go MF > IS > MF to squeeze out a bit more dps from MF initial damage?
Great work on the rest of the site btw
January 28th, 2011 on 5:06 pm
It’s really not worth the global cooldown for an extra two ticks of Insect Swarm when you could have an entire wrath cast or starsurge cast during that time.
February 7th, 2011 on 7:30 am
I am happy for this rotation on tank and spank fights but what is the best rotation for smaller mobs.
eg trash with 150K hp, 400K hp and 1M hp.
too many times i am near the end of a SF when the mob dies or i only get a couple of ticks from IS.
)
i tend to use IS as it still gives wrath a bonus when glyphed and it procs SS instant. (i think its SS
most of the time i use IS SF for 1 or two casts then wrath till dead.
February 22nd, 2011 on 1:07 pm
What are the addons your using in this video.
September 9th, 2011 on 4:05 am
Hi Sunfyre,
First of all thanks for the guides and updates!
Recently now my gear’s slowly but surely transisting into heroic tier 12 content, hence why I’ve given up my tier 11 4-set to get my tier 12 2-set. Even though the crit bonus at the start of a new eclipse got nerfed, i still feel like my dps has gone down significantly now I’ve lost the 4-set bonus.
Now I’m wondering, without the T11 4-set, would there be any chances as to what secondary stat would be best after Haste?
I can imagine Crit becoming more beneficial due to the currently harder hitting Wrath + Starfire. Esspecially after missing out on the T11 4-set, I believe crit is creeping up to Mastery again.
All in all I’m definetly not a theorycrafter by any means, so I’m very curious as to what your opinion is about the eclipse rotation and esspecially the stats to go for in this tier.
Thanks in advance,
- Dio
September 9th, 2011 on 9:33 am
Actually, mastery is still very much above crit for weightings. Especially when you get 4T12!
November 7th, 2011 on 12:02 pm
I saw your message that you’re away, have fun.
Anyway, I had a question or a few. I’ve recently been leveling a balance druid, it’s level 42 right now and I’ve been following your guide.
When I know I’m on the last cast before a new eclipe, I precast the next spell according to the new eclipse, I also recast my dots to refresh “Natures grace”
My question is…what if the timing is odd? What if I have to refresh my dots inconveniently close to a new eclipse? It seems like a waste of two GCDS because I have to refresh the dots because I’m keeping 100 % uptime, yet I’ll be refreshing them in a cast or two to take advantage of Natures Grace. I’m just wondering is it even worth it to refresh my dots if I’m a few seconds away from a new eclipse thus I’ll be recasting them anyway for the haste buff?
I’m only asking because I just wonder how other druids deal with this..it seems like odd bad timing. How should I handle this situation?
I think I saw someone else ask this but should we be recasting dots right before an eclipse ends to make the dots benefit from the passive bonus? I personally usually only do this in solar because sunfire and IS are so strong.
I’m finding the rotation/priority system to be REALLY fun, there’s just a few mechanics that seem quirky.
Thanks
November 8th, 2011 on 11:18 am
Hi Sunfyre,
Was just wondering what addon you use for your action bars. I’m currently using bartenders but I like yours better.
I have a question regarding Lunar Shower. Since it now costs energy to spam moonfire during movement or multi-dot AoEing, is it worth taking this talent? Some people say move out of it, some people say take it, some people say take it and cancel the buff with a macro when you don’t want it.
What are your thoughts on Lunar Shower? Thanks.