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 DoTs: [Moonfire], [Insect Swarm]
- Proc Lunar Eclipse: [Wrath] until [Eclipse] procs
- Nuke: Cast [Starfire] while under the effects of [Eclipse]
- Refresh DoTS
- Proc Solar Eclipse: [Starfire] until [Eclipse] procs
- Nuke: Cast [Wrath] while under the effects of [Eclipse]
- 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.
- If WiseEclipse has allowed you to enter directly into Solar Eclipse, only worry about putting up Insect Swarm.
- While under the affects of [Bloodlust] or [Heroism], you may not want to refresh DoTs as they do not benefit from the added haste.
- 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.
- If you have 4pc Tier 8, be careful. It is quite easy to pull agro on certain fights like Vezax hardmode with [Elune’s Wrath].
Please feel free to post any questions/comments below.
11 Comments for this entry
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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.