Moonkin Spell Rotation ?

[Feider]

I have search the forums and haven't found an answer
With the short cast, I spam Wrath most of the time but I am lost as to when the best time to use Starfire is.


My current longer dps macro is something like this : (i don't have it in front of me)
/castsequence reset=11/target moonfire, wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath
to keep the dot up.

I am running a mixed group so I can't watch for procs to cast Starfire as some suggest.

so... Wrath vs. Starfire in a spell rotation?

Any thoughts at all would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[Bigfish]

If I recall correctly, the proc chance on wrath for starfire is so low, its not worth planning for. I'd stick with


/castsequence Moonfire, Insect Swarm,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
/cast Wrath

With wrath having such a short cast time, the sequence lag for a /castsequence involving wrath will really drag down your dps.

[genocyde]

The way I handle my moonkin in my mixed group is 2 action bars. I'm not at home to see my exact macros but they are something like:

Bar 1
/castseq [tar=etc.] reset=10/target moonfire, null
/castseq [tar=etc.] Starfire spam

Bar 2
/castseq [tar=etc.] reset=10/target insect swarm, null
/castseq [tar=etc.] wrath spam

I then map a button to /swapactionbar 1 2 or w/e and I just hit that button whenever I see the big eclipse moon over my moonkins head. That gets use of the eclipse proc which is huge DPS for a druid.

Another option I have used is, since you aren't watching for procs anyway, is to spec eclipse and just use a
/castsequence Starfire, Wrath That way when you hit your eclipse procs you use them thought free. Both spells very similar DPS and you might even try

/castsequence [tar=etc.] Starfire,,Starfire,,Starfire,,Starfire,,Starfire,, Starfire
/castsequence [tar=etc.] ,,Wrath,,Wrath,,Wrath,,Wrath,,Wrath,,Wrath

I believe I saw a thread somewhere saying you can use both in the same macro to eliminate cast sequence lag issues.
And the proc chances are
60% on wrath crit -> starfire buff
100% on starfire crit -> wrath buff
The buff has a ~45 second? internal cooldown and I proc this thing like mad.
Depending on gear of course but starfire spam is better for proc's until your gear passes a certain % crit, not sure what that number is though.

[Feider]

With wrath having such a short cast time, the sequence lag for a /castsequence involving wrath will really drag down your dps.
I believe I saw a thread somewhere saying you can use both in the same macro to eliminate cast sequence lag issues.


I have seen people reference this /castsequcence lag before. what is the deal?

[d0z3rr]

I have search the forums and haven't found an answer
With the short cast, I spam Wrath most of the time but I am lost as to when the best time to use Starfire is.


My current longer dps macro is something like this : (i don't have it in front of me)
/castsequence reset=11/target moonfire, wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath
to keep the dot up.

I am running a mixed group so I can't watch for procs to cast Starfire as some suggest.

so... Wrath vs. Starfire in a spell rotation?

Any thoughts at all would be appreciated.
Thanks.


On my 5x moonkin team I usually open with starfire, then follow with wraths.

You can see how I play them in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs5NLDmV4fQ

*edit* Nevermind, I didn't realise you had a mixed group. In a mixed group I'd probably just spam wrath. I didn't even bother putting talent points in the starfire/wrath proc thing. Too much effort on my part to watch for that, even in a 5x boomkin group. I'm lazy....

[JasonB87]

Talented into eclipse I've been using this sequence:

/castsequence reset=combat/target Insect Swarm, Wrath, Starfire, Wrath, Starfire, Wrath, Starfire, Wrath

With this my boomkins dps has been on par if not better than the rest of my team. I haven't tested a straight wrath spam since level 55ish so I'm not sure how it would compare.

[emesis]

Also, keep in mind that while Wrath and Starfire have similar DPS, Wrath is much less mana efficient.

Assuming talents to speed up cast time and SP bonus, here's the breakdown for Wrath versus Starfire spam at level 80, assuming 1500 spell power and ignoring crit:


Wrath
Mana cost 385
Base damage (avg) 588
SP coefficient (talented) 0.67
Spell power 1500
Average hit (without crit) 1593
Cast time (talented) 1.5
DPS 1062
MPS 256


Starfire
Mana cost 559
Base damage (avg) 1120
SP coefficient (talented) 1.2
Spell power 1500
Average hit (without crit) 2920
Cast time (talented) 3
DPS 973
MPS 186


These numbers don't change appreciably with increasing spell power. Wrath gives you about 9% more DPS at a cost of nearly 40% more mana per second. That's a pretty awful tradeoff for most purposes. I wouldn't touch Wrath in dungeons, anyway, unless you are specced into Eclipse and going to manage the spell rotation manually.

[badashh]

nice vid, I would have liked to see you take out the prince though :)

[d0z3rr]

Also, keep in mind that while Wrath and Starfire have similar DPS, Wrath is much less mana efficient.

Assuming talents to speed up cast time and SP bonus, here's the breakdown for Wrath versus Starfire spam at level 80, assuming 1500 spell power and ignoring crit:


Wrath
Mana cost 385
Base damage (avg) 588
SP coefficient (talented) 0.67
Spell power 1500
Average hit (without crit) 1593
Cast time (talented) 1.5
DPS 1062
MPS 256


Starfire
Mana cost 559
Base damage (avg) 1120
SP coefficient (talented) 1.2
Spell power 1500
Average hit (without crit) 2920
Cast time (talented) 3
DPS 973
MPS 186


These numbers don't change appreciably with increasing spell power. Wrath gives you about 9% more DPS at a cost of nearly 40% more mana per second. That's a pretty awful tradeoff for most purposes. I wouldn't touch Wrath in dungeons, anyway, unless you are specced into Eclipse and going to manage the spell rotation manually.

Interesting! Did you use a tool of some sort to calcute that? I'd like to see stats for other classes as well with their spells.

[Bigfish]

I have seen people reference this /castsequcence lag before. what is the deal?

When you use a /castsequence, the spells have to complete before the sequence moves on to the next spell in the order. This is tracked by the server, so there is a lag between spells while you are waiting for the server to send back a positive response that the spell fired off. As such there is a difference between /castsequence wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath and spamming /cast wrath. In the case of the sequence, you are continually trying to cast the first wrath in the sequence until you get a response telling you that the first wrath fired, and then you start casting the second wrath in the sequence. If your latency is 0, it non-existant. If it is 300 MS, you're waiting .3 seconds between casts while you are getting confirmation.

On the other hand, if you spam /cast wrath, it continually tries to cast the spell, and so as soon as the first wrath goes off, you are starting to cast a new one.

Now in small timed cases, the difference is minimal. In the case of short cast spells over a long period of time, where you would normally get off 40 casts in a minute, you are now getting off only 33.

[emesis]

Also, keep in mind that while Wrath and Starfire have similar DPS, Wrath is much less mana efficient.

Assuming talents to speed up cast time and SP bonus, here's the breakdown for Wrath versus Starfire spam at level 80, assuming 1500 spell power and ignoring crit:


Wrath
Mana cost 385
Base damage (avg) 588
SP coefficient (talented) 0.67
Spell power 1500
Average hit (without crit) 1593
Cast time (talented) 1.5
DPS 1062
MPS 256


Starfire
Mana cost 559
Base damage (avg) 1120
SP coefficient (talented) 1.2
Spell power 1500
Average hit (without crit) 2920
Cast time (talented) 3
DPS 973
MPS 186


These numbers don't change appreciably with increasing spell power. Wrath gives you about 9% more DPS at a cost of nearly 40% more mana per second. That's a pretty awful tradeoff for most purposes. I wouldn't touch Wrath in dungeons, anyway, unless you are specced into Eclipse and going to manage the spell rotation manually.

Interesting! Did you use a tool of some sort to calcute that? I'd like to see stats for other classes as well with their spells.

Microsoft Excel :-). There are a number of very good, class specific DPS calculation worksheets out there on the net, depending on your class(es) of interest. These take into account gear, buffs, spell rotations, etc. I just threw in some numbers from wowwiki to calculate the above, though.

[Feider]

This all kind of goes along with what I thought.
So aside from applying Moonfire and Insect Swarm, I'll spam Wrath in short fights and Starfire in longer fights. Keeping it real simple.

[Meeo]

My Boomkin out DPS's the rest of my team with weaker gear, a single button castrandom Starfire, Wrath, Wrath is what i use to get between 2400 to 3100 dps on my boomkin. Due to there being no cooldown on either spell a castrandom works really good on a boomkin when hasted/heroism/trinketing, unlike my shamans which all have cooldowns on all but lightning bolt.

I used to use castrandom starfire, wrath, but added a 2nd wrath so i cast that spell more often, which helped my dps with my boomkin, but did increase mana consumption, but that is offset by mana totem and wisdom.

On Boss fights i manually apply FF and IS.

[Bigfish]

Something about those DPS and MPS numbers strikes me as off. Something about Nature's Grace and Omen of Clarity. Potentially something else as well.

[weeep]

Also, keep in mind that while Wrath and Starfire have similar DPS, Wrath is much less mana efficient.
Good things about Wrath are:
1) It benefits much more from Nature's Grace talent than Starfire. Flat .5s cast time decrease is equal to extra 33.3% haste for Wrath and only 16.7% haste for Starfire. So Wrath is better for short burst encounters.
2) Since crits restore a fixed amount of mana, lower cast time spells (ie. Wrath) provide better manaregen than longer cast time spells. Of course it is not enough to compensate the DPM difference, but it should be taken into account.

[genocyde]

On that same haste % note, I've noticed under heroism my wrath seems to bottom out the GCD an make nature's grace procs 100% useless as I end up waiting on GCD anyway.

I would say if your not going to use the eclipse talent I would glyph for starfire and moonfire and just spam starfire while keeping insect swarm and moonfire up on long fights and on short fights just put up insect swarm and spam wrath, maybe moonfire occasionally.

[emesis]

Also, keep in mind that while Wrath and Starfire have similar DPS, Wrath is much less mana efficient.
Good things about Wrath are:
1) It benefits much more from Nature's Grace talent than Starfire. Flat .5s cast time decrease is equal to extra 33.3% haste for Wrath and only 16.7% haste for Starfire. So Wrath is better for short burst encounters.
2) Since crits restore a fixed amount of mana, lower cast time spells (ie. Wrath) provide better manaregen than longer cast time spells. Of course it is not enough to compensate the DPM difference, but it should be taken into account.

Point 1 is very well-taken; Wrath spam will definitely do better DPS than Starfire spam, and this will be increased by Nature's Grace which is not taken into account in my (super-simplistic) calculations. But still at a mana cost.

Point 2 for the boomkin crit -> mana regen bonus proccing more quickly off quick cast spells is also something I left out of my calculation.

The previous poster's point above about the Omen of Clarity proccing more often off a short-time cast spell and thus provide some relative mana saving when spamming Wrath may or may not be true. If you are truly spamming one or the other remember that in Wrath spamming you will be relatively-speaking wasting the free spell from clearcasting on a lower-mana cost spell (Wrath versus Starfire).

I guess this is what they made the test dummies for (though I sure wish there was a way to reduce the huge variation I see in dps based on crits).

[Shavi]

You should be able to make a cast macro where u start casting starfire every etc 6 sec and then check if its actully casting starfire and if it is stopcasting and begin wrath. Etc