Moonkin Raiding: DPS Rotation
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The moonkin DPS rotation is pretty much the same no matter what stage of gear you’re in. Our core DPS component is [Eclipse], so our rotation must be built around maximizing eclipse uptime. If you haven’t yet read my post about Squawk and Awe, I suggest you do so and then download this addon as it will assist you in maximizing your DPS.
If you have a shadow priest and a feral druid in your raid, you should not need to put up [Faerie Fire], as a Shadow Priest’s [Misery] will provide the spell hit, and a feral druid’s faerie fire will still activate [Improved Faerie Fire]‘s crit bonus.
A few definitions for going forward:
Lunar Eclipse: This is the [Eclipse] proc’d by [Wrath] that grants critical strike chance to your [Starfire]
Solar Eclipse: This is the [Eclipse] proc’d by [Starfire] that grants damage bonus to your [Wrath]
My “order of operations” for moonkin DPS is as follows:
- Cooldowns: Cast [Force of Nature] and [Starfall]
- Apply DoT: [Moonfire]. I only use [Insect Swarm] during movement and if the hit debuff is needed on the boss.
- Proc Lunar Eclipse: [Wrath] until [Eclipse] procs
- Nuke: Cast [Starfire] while under the effects of [Eclipse]
- Refresh DoT if needed.
- Proc Solar Eclipse: [Starfire] until [Eclipse] procs
- Nuke: Cast [Wrath] while under the effects of [Eclipse]
- If moonfire falls while under [Eclipse] you will want to refresh it to keep your idol up. It’s generally good to do this near the end of the spell, so hopefully the moonfire will carry over into [Eclipse] and will refresh via the glyph.
- Rinse and Repeat
Some notes to consider:
- If you have full points in [Improved Insect Swarm]:
- You may wish to refresh moonfire at the beginning of Lunar Eclipse, but once the eclipse buff is up, it’s important to switch to Starfire and nuke. This is your main DPS component.
- While under the affects of [Bloodlust] or [Heroism], you may only want to refresh moonfire as needed to maintain your idol.
- The rotation will change depending on the fight. If you find yourself moving a lot in a fight, that would be an excellent time to refresh DoTs to maximize their uptime, and if you have 2PC T10, you can force a Clearcast/[Omen of Doom] by casting [Gift of the Wild].
Please feel free to post any questions/comments below.
18 Comments for this entry
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Sunfyre the Light of Dawn
<Aftermath> of Lightning's Blade-US
Level 80 Tauren Druid
58 / 0 / 1364 / 0 / 7
October 30th, 2009 on 7:45 pm
you should always be putting up faerie fire over misery… a) lasts longer and will be up on the boss if you have to switch to adds/run away… also, 3% crit is 3% crit, always a good thing to have up
October 30th, 2009 on 8:36 pm
A wasted cooldown is a wasted cool down. You get the 3% crit from a feral druid putting up faerie fire, and shadow priests pretty much keep a constant misery on the target anyways.
January 8th, 2010 on 11:08 am
So helpful!! concise and to the point, I love it, thanks!
January 30th, 2010 on 5:05 am
What do you think about spamming SF during Bloodlust however Solar Eclipse procced ?
Wrath’s CD going to be less than 1sec during Bloodlust, but the GCD is 1 sec, therefore i think spamming SF is better choice until we are able to proc Lunar Eclipse again with 2-5 Wrath.
hm?
January 30th, 2010 on 9:12 am
I don’t see why you’d want to lose your 40% damage increase, being less then the GCD or not.
February 5th, 2010 on 7:41 am
Squawk and Awe is recommended indeed, but it’s time to remove WiseEclipse from the need-list. It just doesn’t work anymore. Thx blizz -.-
Anyway, I didn’t know a feral druids faerie fire would give me 3% crit though, feral druids don’t have it improved – and the [Faerie Fire (Feral)] tooltip doesn’t mention anything about it.
February 5th, 2010 on 7:49 am
The tooltip says “targets afflicted by Faerie Fire”. It doesn’t say “Faerie Fire (Improved)”. This has been debated about, and Ghostcrawler originally posted that feral faerie fire did not help. After the backlash of theorycrafters, he admitted he was wrong, and feral faerie fire does improve your crit chance by 3%.
March 2nd, 2010 on 11:14 am
What do you think about rotation now that Starfall is crazy buffed?
March 2nd, 2010 on 6:14 pm
You’ll obviously need to utilize it very often, and glyph of Starfall will be amazing.
March 11th, 2010 on 12:36 am
I dont see why you wouldnt refresh DoTs during eclipse? Basic calculation will show you IS for example does more damage per casting time than starfire even near 100% crit chance (from the eclipse) cause the GCD is affected by haste until it reaches 1 sec. Thus your starfire crit must do more than double damage of full duration of IS and thats not the case.
March 11th, 2010 on 7:34 am
Because at high gear levels it is the case. My starfires land for between 20k and 24k. A nonglyphed insect swarm, hell, even a glyphed insect swarm won’t do that.
March 12th, 2010 on 11:31 pm
You apparently are wrong. Its true my gear isn’t the highest level available but its mixed toc/icc10 now. I tested my dps on the dummy your way and my way – mine seemed to yeald 300-400 more dps. However, testing on the dummy can be inaccurate (different actual crit chance and so on…). So I did another calculation: my starfire crit without any trinket or other procs is around 13500 and my IS(glyphed of course, with earth and moon) is aorund 9100. As i said above – starfire crit must be at least double the IS damage so that your rotaion work but its around 1,48. Then i thought the ratio must change with different gear so i removed all of my gear and tested the 2 numbers again – 3400 for starfire and 2650 for IS – this time the ratio was 1.28. So the ratio does change but i dont see how it can go above 2.00 with your gear when i had 1.28 with 0 SP and 1.48 with 3000 SP.
March 13th, 2010 on 12:32 am
The DPeT of an Eclipsed Starfire is greater then that of a glyphed IS. I’m trying to dig up some forum posts to find the numbers, because I’m to tired to work them out. There’s not a whole lot of postings regarding it because it’s well known, the argument has been insect swarm vs Eclipsed Wrath. Either way this point is moot in 3.3.3.
April 5th, 2010 on 2:33 pm
Hi Sunfyre, My name is blueemerald most pplz call me Blue im Boomkin for life and i do about 5.5k dps about the Is Thing I use all my dots and Ff and my gs is 5.3k some times i refresh dots during eclispe but you rly shouln’t Eclispe is What makes Boomkins dps, refeshing your dots during that time is a waste
April 5th, 2010 on 3:10 pm
Hi Blue, I’m not exactly sure where you’re going with this. I never specifically state to refresh all DoTs during Eclipse, however, if you let your idol stacks fall off, it’s a DPS loss over putting up a DoT during eclipse.
April 6th, 2010 on 3:54 pm
Just a Question about Glyphs then i Recently Switched my Glyph of Insect Swarm To Glyph Of Starfall was that wise?
April 6th, 2010 on 4:09 pm
Yes. Its much better then insect swarm since 3.3.3.
April 20th, 2010 on 5:37 pm
hey guys i hope I’m not dbl posting in here, this is my armory link http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&cn=Shichifukuji . I’m looking for ways to better/improve on my dps, i average anywhere from 6.5-8k in ICC depending on the amount of movement with burst dmg of 10k for about 8-10secs as long as the Treants and Starfall is up while I’m nuking any of the bosses without having to move for the entire duration. After reading about dropping the wise-eclipse strat i’ll have to test it out to see if it does improve my dps overall, and yes i do know I’m kinda low on sp with the gear i have on. Feel free to post any suggestions.