2p T9 and Nature's Grace

I wanted to let everyone know about this topic as it has come up on the Moonkin Forums. Some people feel that if your moonfire can now crit, it should proc the spell Nature's Grace.


Lets first start off with the Nature's Grace Spell.

The spell itself as you can see from the link has the following tooltip,
All spell criticals have a 100% chance to grace you with a blessing of nature, increasing your spell casting speed by 20% for 3 sec.

This means, each time you crit, you gain 20% casting speed for 3 seconds. The old spell used to be with your next cast. The newer version allows us to get more than just one cast off with the benefit of the casting speed. Now, looking at the 2pc t9 bonus..

Your Moonfire ability now has a chance for its periodic damage to be critical strikes.

So, now to the main info at hand. More than some of you I'm sure read Graylo's Blog. Hes already posted an idea for gear on the 2pc and the 4pc. If you want to read it, you are more than welcomed to. However, several people are probably going to end up using the 2pc t9 for a long time to come.

There are also rumors going around that the Crit from the Moonfire Tick allows Nature's Grace to proc. I remember testing this personally on the PTR when it came available and here are my results.



From the screenshot, you can see I have underlined the times my Moonfire Crit. Now some people are going to say "Oh, you have such and such turned off in your combat log!"

Wrong, I had everything turned on for this and as you can see, I did not gain any benefit to Nature's Grace. You can also see that I gained no mana return either. Now, I can agree why this is the way it is. We nearly have a constant uptime of NG as is. There is no need to add anymore time to it.

Now, this is just from the PTR when I tested it, if its fixed, then..coolbeans..I guess we will have NG up more often. But, yeah..here is the information for those who are looking for it.

Moonkin Raiding Basics 101

I decided to make this video after seeing a post on the druid forums of a fellow druid trying to do the same...Ginseng, from the Llane server!

Either way..this is part one of a series I will be doing.

This part covers stats and talent specs. The second if all goes right will be glyphs and rotations.

Haste Chatter!

Lets Talk haste!

Since joining my new Guild Reawaken, I finally ran into a person I can chat with ingame about extensive moonkin theorycrafting. He brought up several good points which made me look at what we will be talking about today. Haste!

Moonkins love haste. Its like crack to us, but of course we like other stuff to. Its good to keep both even though (crit and Haste and not over stack one or the other). At the current point in the game, people are at 530-600 haste. Some people may not see how they do it, but others do. These people are also still dishing out some good damage. With Uldar around the corner, we need to start looking at the values again.

For those who don't know..the global cooldown for casters with no haste is 1.5 seconds. Haste can lower your global to 1 second. For Moonkin, 1 second starfires will make baby raptor jesus cry.

The basic haste forumal is as follows:

New Casting Time = (Base Casting Time)/(1 + (% Spell Haste / 100))

At level 80, we need 32.79 points of haste per 1%. A few points to keep in mind are as follows:

Moonkin have 6% haste from talents which: 32.79x6%=196.74

The Haste Cap/Global Cooldown Cap = 1639.5 (for 50%) based off Wow Wiki
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So, lets just say Uldar gear gives us around 700 haste. If we decide to say that bloodlust can be converted into haste, then it would become 987.3 haste rating.

So we'd take that and end up with this:

700+ 983.7= 1683.7

Adding a bit more into it, we will add our hidden haste from talents which is 6%..Remember, it takes 32.79 for 1% of haste, so it comes out to 196.74. So even with bloodlust, haste, and your hidden haste; you will have 1880.44 which is 200+ haste over the cap. This will cause clipping issues. Starfire before a crit will be 1.5 seconds. Nature's grace doesn't add itself from what I know if you are already at the cap (due to clipping issues)

So, with our hidden haste, Normal Haste, Bloodlust, and speed potion you would have the following:

196.74+983.7+700+500= 2380.4

Now, that is IF Bloodlust acted like that type of mechanic, but it doesn't.

So lets go on to another part. If your desired casting time is 1.5 seconds (starfire) then:

"desired casting time" = 1.5 seconds, ((3/1.5)-1)*32.79*100

So, you'd need a 3279 haste rating to yank SF down to clip the GCD not 16**

Since the cap on 1 second is 16** from Wow Wiki..we must keep in mind that it would only lower Starfire to a 2 second cast (which we see when we just get bloodlust..and it gets lower with haste pot)

So, going off these stats, A haste pot is still good during a bloodlust. If you are curious...

So to get SF to have a cast of exactly 1 second, it would be 6558 haste, assuming WoWWiki's formula is correct.
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So thank you to all the moonkins at the Repository for sitting down and chatting with me about this math. As well as Badeggplant and Atavus.

Starfall..Wait, I mean Starfail

Yup, that's the new name of it... Starfail! Say it with me! Starfail.....Has a nice ring to it eh? Well, this is what it has become. While people who play druids don't spec balance may not see an issue (let alone the rogues crying about it) we do. Starfall was our last real ability at getting melee away from us.

Sure, we have typhoon, that does damage and a knock back. A rogue can easily sprint back to us, shadow step, vanish and start up a very long and annoying chain stun or others. Warriors can intercept us as soon as it happens. Hunters are long range for it to happen so unless you are knocking them off cliffs..it doesn't happen much.

Then we have Death Knights who just use their silence on us when they are close for a free few hits. Let alone, if we try to cast thorns, we can get Mind Frozen as another silence to our Nature Spell section (out of 2). There are many more things that happens to us that Starfall was used for.

What is Starfall? Well, heres the tooltip of Starfall.

You summon a flurry of stars from the sky on all targets within 30 yards of the caster, each dealing 111 to 129 Arcane damage. Also causes 20 Arcane damage to all other enemies within 5 yards of the enemy target. Maximum 20 stars. Lasts 10 sec.
39% of base mana, 30 yd range, Instant cast, 3 min cooldown

Sounds all and good when you first look at it..right? You think it will be excellent to use. Both in PVE and PVP. However..this talent doesn't scale with Spelldamage. It does the same damage if you have 1500 spelldamage or 3000. Also, the splash damage only occured to mobs near the hitbox of the moonkin. Never near the stars making it a waste in that sense. (Ghostcrawler has confirmed this will be fixed)

Now, 39% base mana..its not to bad, but for a 3 minute cooldown..its terrible.

Now comes the PVP side of it, which is getting this talent nerfed! Before I go on however, lets look at what Starfall used to do!

IN PVP:

You could pop Starfall and run around as a Cat/Cheetah/Bear and keep the buff up
You could be stunned or CC'd and the spell will still occur for those 10 seconds
Random Stun proc which helped to remove melee off you for a second to cast Typhoon/roots

IN PVE:
None really..but it was good for a bit of extra damage..thats all it was


Whats going on with Starfall now?
Glad you asked! Starfall has already had some nerfs to it. Now if you get CC'd/Stuned, you keep the buff up, wasting its 10 seconds of free damage..however it doesn't go off. So its a wasted cooldown.

Random stun proc is being removed come patch. Ghostcrawler claimed that they wished to get rid of the RNG stun issue. Ok..So then that means Celestical Focus gets changed right? To what? Also, this leaves us with no stun in moonkin form (unless you are tauren)..meaning we have to waste mana..shifting into a bear to bash, then shifting again to continue on. Kinda a waste but its all we got now.

In PVE, this spell has been closely monitored by BadEggPlant over at the Moonkin Repository. She has been reporting in on it to state the damage it has been doing. She has also made several threads with suggestions on what to do with Starfall. Buffing the damage seems to be the major thing.

Here are some of the stats from Bad's findings

Starfall was 1.15% of my damage this week. I THINK I popped it on the Heroism.

Unbuffed stats for this week:
Spellpower: 1896
Crit: 18.26%
Haste: 493

PATCHWERK TOTAL DAMAGE: 857,209 (4684 DPS over 3'07")
STARFALL DAMAGE STATS:
Total done: 9,915
Crits: 5
Hits: 5

This was the first post. So..even with bloodlust Starfall was pretty much only 1% of the total damage done. Also keep in mind, if you use Starfall while you cast and pick up a crit to spark Nature's Grace...It will eat it during the final seconds of your cast. If you are a little confused, here is an explaination..

We'll go with Starfire being 3 second cast

You Cast Starfall
You begin to cast Starfire
Starfall Crits
You gain Nature's Grace
Starfire Cast finishes its normal (full 3 second cast)
You lose Nature's Grace


Yup..that is how its working right now if you want to use it in PVE. I have it for the little extra damage, but at this point with it barely even breaking 2% or being close, I figure I will drop it and pick up Typhoon so I can have some fun in Wintergrasp without respecing or finishing off my Owlkin Frenzy.

Either way, Starfall is getting nerfs and the random stun is all it had going for it in PVP. Now..it will be useless in PVE and PVP. Thoughts..Concerns? Wanting to look into more information?

If you would like to join the Moonkin Mafia in their search on Starfall answers, you are welcomed to check us out at The Moonkin Repository.com. You can also join us on the World of Warcraft forums!

So what really happened?

There are always 3 sides to the story. The first person who tries to make a point, the second who tries and withstand it, and the third...The Truth. I don't think this post will hold any truth since there really is no third person on it all. So its going to go by my standpoint. Take it as you will. Not saying its completely wrong or right.

Everyone has those moments in the game where they lose interest in the game. Be it PVP, or PVE..or people just getting bored with the game itself. With the game being rushed out to meet the needs of the consumer, many high end raiding guilds have found themselves waiting around for the Uldar patch so they can test themselves once again.

Other guilds slowly die away. Those who weren't strong enough at the start of Wrath really begin to feel the weight bare down on them like a ton of bricks on some guy's head. Either way, it decided to happen to the guild I was in.

After being recruited as a Resto Shaman then asked to change to my moonkin after they kicked their current moonkin out..I got into Theorycrafting. I will always thank the GM for that. however, as time went, they found out I was an open person. I didn't like to sit idly by on alot of issues. I liked to be heard. I'm sure a alot of people do in this instance. However, I apparently was never told anything real serious on the matter. Just a few "Shut ups" which happened even if I didn't talk. It was more if I said a peep in vent or guild chat.

Our Officers weren't really there for anyone. If any, one was. He took over when our GM decided to take a vacation from the game. He handled anything and everything while the others sat around and did nothing. One even added to the issues but was never confronted about it. In the end, while the GM was on vacation, people began to fight. Why wouldn't they? It looked like their GM, their fearless leader who had had them transfer to another server with their own money just to stay in the guild had left them.

So, people got angry, words were said, people were on edge. Its human nature and yeah, it sucks sometimes. Either way, all that was said and done, the GM decided to reform the guild to his perfect standard. He kicked pretty much anyone and everyone who wasn't there for the SSC/TK days of the guild.

While some people got an explaination, others didn't. Some were kicked when they weren't even online. while he may do things his own way, I would have atleast sent them a letter, or demoted them until they were online so I could explain the reason for kicking. But of course, this always ends in drama.

While people know I'm open minded and will speak my mind (which is apparently why I was removed) I have received nothing but great comments from people within the guild and outside the guild, as well as my faction on how awesome a person I am and how I shouldn't let this put me down. Only people who are really trying to put me down are the GM and an Officer or two. However, I don't really mind. I told them how I felt, thanked them for letting me join as well as showing me theorycrafting and I'm on my way looking for a new home.

I wish them luck either way. So what if my personality and the GM's didn't work out well. Everyone has their own opinions, and we all pay our 15 a month to play this game. I just refused to sit there, idly on my hands watching as things happened. And for those wondering, other people got kicked for opening their mouths as well when things where wrong.

I really however look up to the top Horde guild on my server. After speaking with their Moonkin several times, its nice to see a guild that allows members to speak up, even if in an asshatious way that will allow people to see if they are doing wrong or right.

Well, thats it for now. See you guys when we finally get an Update from Ghostcrawler!

More Improved FF Testing

Update: Ghostcrawler responded to the question in regards to IMP FF working with FF

I am almost positive the talent is looking at your spells. So if you cast Wrath, it does a check to see if you also have FF up on the target.

The intent of the talent is to encourage you to cast Faerie Fire, compensating you a little for the fact that you are debuffing the target. It isn't intended to just be "here have some crit." The intent is that if you cast FF, even if the debuff is already on the mob, you are rewarded for it.

I suspect it isn't smart enough to detect Feral Faerie Fire now that it's a base spell, so we should probably fix the case of a Balance druid who casts FFF and then goes back to Wrath or whatever.

I am just guessing based on the way spells usually work. I did not try this myself so I could be wrong.

I will also admit that there are some inconsistencies currently in the game between whether you are supposed to apply a debuff again on a mob that already has it (because sometimes you get a "More Powerful Spell" error). This is something we're trying to clean up though.
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So its apparently a bug, but the game doesn't recognize it as such? Is there a way we could keep it? With all the replenishers in the raid, we have no mana issues. No reason to fix what isn't really broken..

Now back to your original viewing program!
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My first post ever in this blog (which is still on the front page) was talking about why not just take Imp FF for the 3% crit if you have the points left over? Well, even if you read the tooltip, its a tad bit confusing.

Improved Faerie Fire (Rank 3): Your Faerie Fire spell also increases the chance the target will be hit by spell attacks by 3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 3% on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire.

It requires your spell to be active on the boss for the 3% to hit, but as you read, it says it also increases your spell critical strike chance by 3% on targeted afflicted by Faerie Fire. So does that mean it doesn't need to be our own? From the wording, it sounds like it can be anyone's. But everyone is different when it comes to trying to understand the last sentence.

We did testing on this while it was in Beta. Bullocks had tested it and saw that is apparently worked off a Feral's FF. While he just kinda blurted it out, it made others think. Wisprunner who is another avid Moonkin Theorycrafter didn't believe it so stated there was no justification for taking 3/3 IMP FF unless you needed to make yourself and the raid hitcapped.

However, being the hard-head I am, I challenged Wisp. I provided the numbers, he did the math. Below are the numbers I presented him.

0 hit
2.66%Crit Rating (include 4% for my talent tree)
16 Bonus Damage
Casting Wrath 150 times for each test
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Test 1 - No FF - 150 casts, 11 crits, 7.3%
Test 2 - Feral FF on dummy - 150 casts, 15 crits, 10%
Test 3 - Moonkin FF on dummy - 150 casts, 11 crits, 7.3%
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While these tests are small, they still got people to think. Either way, Wisp took my numbers and began to crunch. Being that 3% is so hard to detect with the RNG, it was hard to get any real yes or no answer. However, his results pointed in the direction that yes...It works off Feral FF. A few others of course looked over the test results and have come to the same conclusion.

Wisp went as far as sending the numbers to a friend for a better conclusion( Some math major) which pointed to yes as well. I went as far as to petition a GM in the game and ask. After about 20 minutes talking back and forth about the talent and how playing a moonkin was like, he abandonded me for another 20 minutes before giving me an answer saying it was.

Now, usually..I would be like "Oh, I don't trust GM's. They know nothing about the game they are supposed to supervise." But this guy actually knew what I was talking about. I talked to him about the invisible buff to your haste which is Improved Moonkin form and Celestial Focus. He understood them all and responded to me in a fashion that would probably have made Wisp blush.

Either way, he stated as well that it worked. But people are still curious since numbers are pointing to yes but never giving a definate answer due to the way the numbers are layed. (Those wondering, its an infinite number, like 2.9x..it was for me when I did the math..so its never reaching the 3% qouta) So we are looking for GhostCrawler to be our friend and respond. However being how he is, GC has refused to respond to any questions in regards to this talent.

If you would like to join in our thread hoping to get a response from him, please feel free to respond asking for a straight answer in the read posted below. Until then, I will post the real math later on when Wisp wants to hand it over. I think hes trying to keep it away from me because I refuse to ever let it go. :)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14133419591&postId=142730127776&sid=1#5

Thanks for reading!

Foofy, over and out!

'Time-Lost' Proto Drake

As the Title says..Time-Lost. Are you sure about that? Definitely. This game is based to much on numbers to be generated. This is where you hope and pray luck to be on your side. Is it all the time? Hell no. Sometimes yes, but never for some people. I'm one of those people. I admit, I'm a mount whore. Even though I'm a druid and I have the Shapeshifting abilities no other class has..I barely use it.

Sure, instant mounting is fun, but I enjoy seeing the other mounts out there. Staring at a bird form all day isn't my cup of tea. Personally, I've been collecting since Tauren were able to ride wolves. I was so happy when that patch came out. I grinded the rep so fast..which was hard back then. (I feel so old saying that)

Anyway..back to this. With Wrath of The Lich King out...A new mount type has been added. Proto Drakes! Hurray...right? Wrong. These things actually take work to get. Its not like Netherdrakes where you can just quest and gain rep then get one at the end of the grind. Oh no, you need to work for these babies. You can get them from achievements which requires a group of 5 or more people. So great..have to rely on people to get something. Love you blizzard. Thanks for that.

Or you can hope RNG loves you with the Mysterious Egg! Its a 7 day cooldown after getting reveered with the Oracles. You can get a mount from it which has about 3-4% drop rate. I'm personally going on my 5th egg now trying to get this thing. Then you have Heroic Utrgarde Pinnacle's rare mount drop. A Blue Proto Drake which has a chance to drop off the 3rd boss. It has a low drop rate but everyone has one! Everyone but me. I ran that thing for 4 weeks everyday and got nothing. Luck based RNG...Told ya so!

Then we have the best one yet. The Time-Lost Proto Drake! This guy's name speaks for itself. You can sit there for days and days on end..and never see a thing. Once you leave..someone else gets it. I have personally sat for over 34 hours watching for this guy. Nothing spawned. I know his spawns and his pathing. But nothing! One day for a Tuesday Maintence they decided to only do rolling restarts. Every Tuesday I usually log on to look and wait for him until I get to work or do something else.

Well, the alarm went off and I was dead tired..I decided..34 hours and I finally got some sleep..he shouldn't spawn within the next 4 hours of me catching up on rest...right? Boy was I wrong. I logged in to be laughed at by a guildie who told me he watched him spawn and get killed by someone else. In the same spot I always sit. So, after slamming my head against my desk I decided I should take a break. That only lasted a few days before I sat for another several hours on end. However it was strange this time as nothing, no Time-Lost or even his rare spawn friends. Apparently the GM's had broken it when they did the Mage Spellsteal Fix for Naxx and refused to admit to it. So I had spent another 30+hours sitting out there for nothing.

Of course this reset came around and he spawned 1 hour before I got home from work. Thats ok though, I'll get him eventually. Least I know I should feel proud riding him since I actually had to work for it. I just wish I had the luck of those guys who got it when they wasn't even looking for it.

If only...

22 days and counting!

Improved FF or Misery? Why not both?!

I decided to finally start up a blog. While I may suck at numbers, I know how to read them. Sure it takes me awhile. Sitting there, scratching my head in confusion, but it gets done. I work with Graylo, Wisp, and others when it comes to the Moonkin class.

I love the Class and enjoy the aspects of it. Since this is my first post in regards to this, I figured I would go ahead and tell you about myself. My character is Foofy, once named Grandstorm for 3 years, I decided it was time for a change (Some naked art pictures where coming up with that name...oi) I'm an 80 Tauren druid who has been playing the game since March 05. I've been mainly resto or Balance my whole game life while rerolling a paladin for a few months before deciding it wasn't something I liked. Pre Bc, I was a resto druid like pretty much everyone else. I saw from MC in to Naxx. I leveled as resto and remember having to spec into Innervate just to be able to raid.

I actually meet my Husband/Soon to be in World of Warcraft while I was gone for Basic/AIT. We leveled together (I healed..he poked stuff) our way to 70. During BC I rerolled for a paladin to try something new. I didn't like it but was stuck with it until I could convince my guildmaster to let me try out moonkin on my druid. It was there I became hooked. While I didn't know much about moonkin, I knew about the hitcap and everything like that. Just not rotations. I was horrible. Then again, I was made to cast IMP FF and IS for the raid..so my dps didn't go much over 1300.

It was then when I started moonkin theorycrafting. I found The Moonkin Repository and began my mass learning experience. Anyway, enough about me..its time for the topic at hand! I don't troll the Wow Druid forums much, but I do love to go there and mess with people. Upon stumbling onto a "Rate the Owlkin Above you" I was rated by another Moonkin who told me to spec out of IMP FF since I probably have a shadowpriest to cover it for me.

Now, I got to play in beta so I got to test stuff along with everyone else. I knew math was already done in this so I decided to post towards him. Of course he wanted a bit more. I couldn't find the exact numbers, but I did find him the main topics of dicussion with others stating what I stated already.

http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t37048-moonkin_talents_specs_discussion/p7/ --A Topic on EJ in regards to this talent. Was it worth it?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=28312.msg480724;topicseen --A Topic on MMO-Champion in regards to the talent.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11676578789&sid=1&pageNo=1 --Druid Forums post with the man who tested it. While he couldn't provide numbers, I came up with the near same results. Then again, RNG is RNG.

There are many more out there. So if you are curious, you can look into it. You just have to go to Google or any Search Engine of your choice and type "FFF over IMP" or any variation of it. Anyway, I thank you for reading and hope to see you again!