I've Decided

I took some time to really think about it for the past 2 weeks. Azamath himself is not moving from his stance on not going Alliance. Due to this, I wanted to really sit back and think about what I have now and what I would have on Alliance Side.


Horde side Pros

• A Great Guild
• A husband to steal mats and gold off of
• Several farmer alts to help my main out
• Great Friends
• My Cow's Tail
• An Overpowered Emote ( /Moo)
• Lower Population (Easier to get to know people)

Horde Side Cons

• Expensive Prices to buy stuff off the AH
• Low Population (Hard to find people at certain times of the day)
• Large Hit Box (People can reach me from really far away, and I get stuck in doors easily)
• Blood Elves (/twitch)

Alliance Side Pros

• Cheap AH Prices
• Larger Population
• More Min/Maxing to raids (1% to hit anyone?)
• Smaller hitboxes (Night Elf)
• Shadowmeld
  

Alliance Side Cons

• Night Elves (are fat and ugly!)
• I'd lose my tail :(
• To large of a population (I don't like being on an overpopulated side, makes me feel like a copycat)
• Gnomes
• Night Elves again
• Did I say Gnomes yet?

Well, needless to say, The best things  for the Horde side are things I already have. Sure our Auction House prices are terrible and its much easier just to have an alliance alt and buy stuff off their AH and bring it over then work from our own, but its still nice. At least on Staghelm. While there are idiots on Horde side (and yes there are many on the Alliance side too) the small population makes me feel as if I know everyone. I can usually pick out familiar faces easily, know when to group with them and when to not answer and pretend to be AFK when I get tells.


Another thing I wanted to look at was my hitbox. I've been a Female Tauren for years now, I can't stand playing a character without a tail for every long. Unless its my Paladin Tank (Who is going tauren as soon as race changes come!) I tried leveling a gnome once. I couldn't stand that the grass in the area was taller than me. I missed the fact that when I would type /Moo...There was no moo sound. At the same time however, I love the fact while playing other toons about how I can fit through doors. Undercity owns Tauren, no doubt about it. I usually end up using Travel Form throughout the whole place since the elevators don't like Tauren.

Still going on with the hitbox, PVP doesn't help either. While some people think Warstomp in PVP is OP, its not very good for a Balance druid who has a melee raping their face in. Unless I'm gonna run over and warstomp a caster, I don't see me using it. Only time I've ever successfully used Warstomp was back in BC when I had high Armor and there wasn't all of those damn Armor Reduction Abilities on every melee swing.

Another thing that slowly nitpicks at me during the day is the difference between Horde and Alliance I have grown to hate is my forms. Being a druid, I'm stuck in forms 98% of the time when raiding. Because of this..The Horde moonkin form is terrible to me.  I even cheated and tried model edits once. Yeah, I wont lie. I really can't stand looking like this. I don't use them anymore though, I really didn't like taking the chance to lose all my hard work for something as stupid as looks in a video game.

I will admit, I tried to get used to it, I joke all the time about my Feathery butt, my ugliness scaring away the Alliance and more, but at the end of the day, I just can't stand looking at this form. BUT! I figured I should go on about what I have decided. I decided I will stay Horde. For my friends, my guild, my sanity, and my Husband. But I also made a second choice too. I will be going Troll come Race Changes for Druids. Thats right. Unless they make the new Tauren Racials Good, or something that I would atleast have fun with, I will just go Troll. Not because of the graphics (they are all getting redone anyway), but because I want to be able to fit through doors, look a bit better in my gear, and be able to dance like a suga momma!

FOOFY HAS A SECRET SHE DIDN'T TELL US!

Yeah, I have one toon I have yet to put on my character list for contacts. I'm actually going to redo the list here in a few days to update with all the toons I actually log on to more than once a month. But here is the thing I have been really keeping secret...

I have a little Night Elf Druid named Foofe on my server. Shes level 40 and I have been leveling her off and on. She was going to be my Reroll toon, then I stopped when they announced the Faction Transfers (see, I really was ready to go all the way kids!) Since the Faction Transfer announcement, I've kinda abandoned her, but I liked going into Low level BGS and owning as a little moonkin. Get my kicks in before I ever max her out.

So, yeah..

TL;DR

Foofy is going Troll come Race Change unless Tauren get an OP Racial.





ALSO! As a final note, WTB banner for this site! I used to be able to use photoshop and whatnot, but after I had to reformat due to a soundcard effort, I lost it. So, if you have some good skills with banners and would like to contribute, let me know! I'm just looking for a banner to fit across the top (until the dotted line)

I wanted, had to, did

Yeah, I went there! I wasted my time away making a quick 45 second video for TMR's Contest. Though I can't officially enter, doesn't mean I can't have fun either!





And yes, I know about the eclipse change, as soon as detailed info is available and testing is done on the PTR, I will create a video with the information as soon as I can!

Idol of the Crying Wind

A few people have been asking about this on the forums, as well as have been asking me ingame. Murmurs has already done the math so I'll just copy and paste it here. Please note, these are just with the basic stats.


Spell Power - 2244
Haste - 18.15%
Crit - 22%

Base Damage - No Idols applied

Insect Swarm Damage
(215 + (2244 * 0.2)) * (1.03) * (1.04) * (1.13) * (1.03) * (1.3) = 1075.88743 per tick

Insect Swarm Cast Time
1.5 / 1.16 = 1.29

Starfire Damage
(1130 + (2244 * 1.2)) * (1.1) * (1.03) * (1.04) * (1 + (.26 * 1.09) * 1) * (1.13) = 6532.58854

Average Starfire Cast Time
(3 / ((1 + (18.15 / 100))) / (1 + (.2 * (1-(1-.26)^2)) = 2.33

Idol of the Crying Winds -

Insect Swarm Damage
(277 + (2244 * 0.2)) * (1.03) * (1.04) * (1.13) * (1.03) * (1.3) = 1176.37706

This is an increase of 101 damage per tick. At 7 ticks, that's a total of 707 damage over 14 seconds or 50.5 DPS.

Idol of the Shooting Star
(1295 + (2244 * 1.2)) * (1.1) * (1.03) * (1.04) * (1 + (.26 * 1.09) * 1) * (1.13) = 6814.54865

This is an increase of approximately 282 damage per cast (technically it's 281.96011, but I digress) at an average cast time of 2.33, that's an increase of 121 DPS. But that is merely a raw DPS increase to the spell, since we're attempting to maximize damage you have to look a bit deeper.

As I said, Idol of the Crying Winds is 707 over 14 seconds, nothing you can do will increase how fast you get this additional damage, it will always occur over 14 seconds.

Idol of the Shooting Star only adds 282 damage per Starfire cast. It takes 2.5 Starfire casts in order for the damage added from Idol of the Shooting Star to equal the damage increase given by Idol of the Crying Winds. Since you can't really do 1/2 of a cast, we'll just set it to 3.

So, it takes 6.99 seconds for Idol of the Shooting Star to increase your damage by more than Idol of the Crying Winds. This still leaves approximately 7 seconds, half of Insect Swarm's duration, to further increase the gain.

Clearly, the Starfire Idol is better.

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For those who like more indepth math, here's Graylo's

http://graymatterwow.blogspot.com/2009/04/guide-to-moonkin-idols.html
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So please, understand, this idol is terrible. Don't get it. Maybe for ilvl, but really now...

Retardin alts..and Opness Meet+ Eclipse chatter (short)

A little offtopic from the normal Moonkin blogness I do, but I was so tickled to death about this, I had to talk about it.

I decided to transfer my paladin over to the new server since I was leveling Jcing. Yeah..shes a miner as well as a Jc'er (double dailies! More dragonseyes! WOOT!) and well, I decided to hit up Wintergrasp at level 70 to try and mine up what I could. I knew I was going to die no matter what. As long as I got a few nodes, I didn't really care.

Well, this is my paladin. I ghetto spec'd her so to speak a full 61 without picking up Imp Might. Real Ret Paladins are probably laughing at me or wanting to bust my skull in. Probably both. Her gear isn't that good either, especially since I was originally holy, then prot on her back in TBC.

Anyway, heres the story. I go to hit up Wintergrasp and the battle starts. Great..now alliance will be around..right? Amazingly I didn't really get bothered but by this one NE Warrior. He had full PVP gear on and he seemed to know what he was doing.

Of course, I had tenacity by 7 but that made us even, and I was missing half the time with little to no hit against a level 80. Yet it was amazing. He came at me and we fought it out. Being the nub ret paladin I am, I did what all paladins do when I got half health..I bubbled. 

This warrior seemed to me like he knew what he was doing because he tried his best to get out of melee range, even tried to get away from me enough to intercept me. However, I'm not that much of a pvp nub and kept within distance of him.

It was a good 5 minute battle. Healing myself every second I got with my free heal proc off Divine Storm. In the end..he got whooped by a level 70 in terribad gear. After laughing about it a bit, I ran off to hide..why? There was a large group of alliance coming after me now (Yeah, he brought friends)

Needless to say, We lost WG that time but I got out of there with 5 stacks of Saronite :D

Now for the Moonkin part of this blog. A topic arose on the Moonkin Repository questioning which Eclipse proc is better. Solar or Lunar?

Solar increases your wrath damage (which with Imp IS, 2pc, and Glyph is very awesome)

Lunar increases your chance to crit with starfire

Looking at these, first thing for those who may be new to moonkining might think that Solar is the way to go. This is where we bring up the points.

Solar requires wrath spam. The problem with that is, If you have any haste..any whatsoever or are spec'd into Nature's Grace (0.5 second taken off your next cast) then you will be clipping the Global Cooldown. That isn't a good thing. Wrath also doesn't scale that well on its own with spelldamage. Also, wrath can be very mana inefficent thus making you require replenishers as well as mana regen talents. 

Starfire scales with its spelldamage and works great with haste. It works point for point with haste. It also cannot clip the Global Cooldown. Its also very mana effiecent. (short and sweet, I know)

Even though with all the buffs to Wrath you can get, Starfire still pulls ahead. Though we are always testing this theory as theorycrafters so this could change down the road. You never know!

Responses: I pretty much stand corrected, while Badegg is correct and I should have worded myself better.

Wrath does scale very well with spell power, but its scaling with haste and crit is awkward due to GCD clipping, the Lunar eclipse does minimize the amount this happens. But in any case the spellpower coefficient itself of Wrath is actually a bit better than Starfire, although not enough to make the Solar eclipse better.

--Badeggplant

He is correct. Wrath does scale  but due to the gcd clipping, its a pain in the arse to even try and use.  Thank you for the correction. :)

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!