Boomkin DPS lackingFollow

Hey all,
I've been playing boomkin since the beginning of time basically, but I'm not nearly as knowledgable as I'd like. I'm a raider in my guild. We have Naxx25 completely cleared, and we have it on farm except for Thad, Saph and Kel. We have OS25 cleared and last week we downed Malygos25. Yesterday we started on OS25 +1.

My main problem is my DPS. It is IMHO severely lacking in comparison to the other boomkin in our raids. First I thought it was because he has far better gear than I am, but a quick look at armory tells me, I've come a long way gearwise, and I am not that far behind him anymore. He's agreed to sit down and discuss my performance and see what can be changed, but I thought I'd ask for some advice here too.

Here is a closer look on my character:
Me on WoW-Heroes
Me on Armory

My rotation is pretty much as follows: MF-IS-SF*x [Eclipse procs] Wrath-till-CD-starts - Rinse and repeat.

I'd like to have pointers how to improve my dps. Aside from that I'm also trying to find out wether "Wrath spam till Eclipse procs->SF spam" might be better than "SF spam till Eclipse procs->wrath spam", which I'm doing now.

BTW, when it comes to idols, I have Idol of the Shooting Star, but use Idol of Steadfast Renewal instead since Shooting Star is bugged currently.

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the pointers! I feel I'm lacking in crit atm, but that's mostly because I was focussing on becoming hitcapped. Almost there (a few lacking enchants should take care of that). I don't have Force of Nature, but I might get it, dropping Owlkin Frenzy.

Thanks for the useful post! I've seen references to the WWS thingy before, but haven't looked into it closely yet. Is it somekind of addon?
As for your advice:
I'm taking hit gems because I need to be hitcapped, and I feel I can't rely on anything else than my own gear and talents for it. So in practice I'd need 342 hit rating. Of course IFF could take care of some of that, but I am wondering if keeping up IFF doesn't put a huge dent in my dps.

Talents: I left out OOC because I have no mana problems at all, and feel the point could be spent better elsewhere. I took Galewinds because I use Hurricane a lot while clearing trash. It speeds up the raiding :)
After some experience with Owlkin Frenzy, I tend to agree with your talent build there by letting it out. Even on fights with lots of raid damage like Sapphiron, it doesn't proc that often.

So in short, I see your points, but I'm reluctant to rely on IFF to make up for my hitcap.

My raiding experience as a Balance Druid is somewhat limited, having raided for 3 weeks or so, but here's what I can offer. Don't bother looking at my Armory cause I logged in my Bear gear (going back to Feral soon).

Gear-wise it looks rather good. The only two specific things that come to mind are:
1- If you are consistently raiding with a Shadow Priest, you're over what you need for Hit Rating. 10% would be enough with the SP's Misery and you with Balance of Power, which is around 263 from memory.
2- If you can get your hands on a head piece with a meta gem it would help your DPS nicely.

Where I see the most issues is your spec. I went through a lot of threads on the Elitist Jerks forums when I changed for Balance, and with that info I made my spec, though it is partly based on the fact that my gear isn't so good. It will also change a bit depending on the Glyphs you have.

Imp MF: If you happen to have the MF Glyph, this one might be worth a look at. The additional crit chance isn't much since with the Glyph you take away most of the initial damage, but the crit will proc Nature's Grace and that's always nice.

Moonglow: Out of all the mana regen talents, this is probably one of the least powerful as it scales very poorly with gear (i.e. not at all). The order from memory is Omen > Intensity > Dreamstate > Moonglow. You have to put 1 point, but I'd suggest using the other 2 in Imp MF.

Nature's Splendor: A must if keeping your DoT's up is part of your rotation.

Imp FF: Sadly a must if you have no regular Shadow Priest, as you'll find that 3% Hit tough on your item budget. It'll be a drop in DPS too, but for the benefit of the whole raid it needs to be up (or Misery from a SP, ideally).

EDIT

The 3% crit you get from keeping it up does not compensate for the loss of DPS. It is simply something that somewhat compensates if you *have* to use Imp FF (i.e. no Shadow Priest)

Owlkin Frenzy: Again based on what I gathered from EJ, this talent is not quite worth it. Too unpredictable and not useful in all fights. Would be good for soloing and PvP mostly, and maybe if you can afford to drop most/all the regen talents you could pick this up. (I think I remember reading that not all AoE damage in boss fights can trigger this)

Force of Nature: If used well, this can increase your DPS pretty decently during some boss fights. Of course AoE hazards can render it nearly useless in some encounters, but since it scales with spellpower, it's a decent ability for a single point.

Omen of Clarity: A must-have for pretty much any spec now. The internal cooldown was removed and this can now constitute your biggest mana-saving talent, for a single point.

As for the rotation, I think it is still discussed and none has been proven superior in all situations. The only constant seems to be that it is best to use Wrath to proc the Starfire Eclipse.

Other than that...

While Eclipse is on cooldown, you can either spam Wrath or Starfire while reapplying your DoT's. It is usually advised to spam Starfire, but from my experience, if your crit rate and/or haste isn't very high, it can be best to just spam Wrath (which is what I do currently).

On DoT's and reapplying them (considering you have Imp IS): While trying to proc Eclipse and while Eclipse is on CD, always reapply your DoT's. Make sure to let them run out cause the last tick occurs when they disappear from your target. If you proc a Wrath Eclipse, it is usually worth it to reapply IS at pretty much any point during the Eclipse to benefit from the additional 3%. Don't reapply MF though. If you proc a Starfire Eclipse, it is usually not worth it to reapply MF at any time, just Starfire away. Obviously don't reapply IS either.

Other things worth noting: If you have a Shaman to Bloodlust/Heroism, make sure he warns a bit in advance before he uses it. If you have Force of Nature, get your trees out before he pops it as they will benefit from it. Also, during a Bloodlust, it is generally advised to spam Starfire. My suggestion about that would be to apply your DoT's before Bloodlust then spam Wrath quickly to proc Starfire Eclipse as Bloodlust begins and spam Starfire for the rest of the Bloodlust duration.

I hope this helps a bit. Of course it's not exactly cookie-cutter stuff so feel free to try some of that out and use what you feel is best and drop what does not suit you.

EDIT: Btw, to find out which rotation is best for your gear, I'd suggest trying them out on the dummies in the major cities. Get a stopwatch and just keep your rotation going for 2 or 3 minutes.

Edited, Feb 20th 2009 10:25am by Selverein

Flawed* :P

Ideally you don't want another Moonkin casting FF, you want a Shadow Priest talented for Misery.

And the 3% crit, while somewhat worth the 3 points (following the idea that 1 point should equal 1% DPS), is not worth the GCD for casting Imp FF, at least once you reach a point stats-wise which is low-ish from memory.

Also add the fact that: If you're the Moonkin "in charge" of keeping it up for the raid, you might have to skip a cast during an Eclipse just to renew Imp FF, or during Bloodlust, etc. That makes your DPS drop even more.

A Shadow Priest's Misery, on the other hand, will be applied automatically when he cast some of his damage spells and the talent gives him other self-benefits so it's win-win for everyone.

EDIT: Not saying this is a bad talent/spell. It may be crucial to your raid, in fact. But if you want to boost your personal DPS as much as possible, Imp FF is not the way to go.

Edited, Feb 20th 2009 11:05am by Selverein

Idol of the Shooting Star definitely, even if you were to spam Wrath during Eclipse CD's. By proc'ing Starfire Eclipses you acknowledge that most of your damage will come from Starfire, so might as well enhance it as much as possible.

As for which spell to spam during the cooldown, I'd say try both.

In my case, I find that Starfire non-crit does about 50% more damage while taking 100% longer to cast. I don't have a very high crit rate, nor haste rate so I can neither spam it fast or get it to crit very often which makes it feel like a poor spell to use on its own.

I am also kind of a distracted person during boss fights, focusing too much on one aspect, so spamming Wrath prevents me from triggering a Wrath Eclipse with a few too many Starfires after the Eclipse CD is up.

I tend to agree with what youy said Arex, but there is some theorycrafting going arond that depending on the amount of time left on eclipse it is still worth it to put IS or MF back up, though never both and only the one needed to buff the cast your eclipse procs. However, i will try to do a comparison next raid i do and see the differences.

For you yes, the raid no.

Well, I got the same DPS lack during raids. From what I've read here, and experienced from my guild raids, having 2 SPriests allows me to skip IFF. But..

is my spec good enough? Or it needs some adjustment there?


On this aspect, I, even if wrong, saw that Crit is almost as good as SP. But either way, I need training about these stats.


My armory link doesn't work, can't understand why. When possible, will link it here. (have to say though, that I'm not uber geared)


EDIT: this is me

Edited, Feb 22nd 2009 12:31am by dragonscale

Hey all! Rate ups for everyone for the great advice so far! Some really helpful pointers there. If you check my armory etc you'll notice some changes. Still debating the IFF with my classleader (also a Boomkin), who is the guy with the insanely high dps compared to me. But the rest of the talent suggestions are there.



After reading this, I did some dummy testing, and not only does it seem fixed indeed, the results agree wholeheartedly with you there, so I decided to go with the starfire idol.




This is really really helpful, because clipping it for keeping dots up was exactly what I was doing. On tomorrows raid I'll try and see how much of a difference it makes.



Already got those glyphs pretty much from the beginning. Took the talent when I changed my spec yesterday, and it makes rotations much easier, because of the prolonged dots!



Already have that addon, got it a couple of weeks ago, and can't imagine anyone getting much use out of Eclipse without it :)

Anyways, thanks again for the help! And any more discussion is encouraged, seeing that there wasn't a proper boomkin-raid thread here :)

This is exactly what i said earlier. It sounds as if the OP has more than one moonkin or even feral druid in his raid group, which means one of them should be able to keep FF up, you decide amongst yourself who. I would prefer a feral to do it as they have room in their rotations for it, from what i hear. The reason at least one of you should cast FF (the spell, not IFF) is that it will increase raidwide melee dps and allow moonkins that have the talent (and dont need to cast FF) gain 3% crit.

The benefit to the raid is larger then the loss of dps to the FF caster (feral or moonkin).

Now the question changes. I have to read up on EJ what the concensus is. If we assume FF is up on the target without us having to cast it ourselves. We have no mana issues. Another druid casts IMotW. We take these builds, which one would yield the highest possible dps.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xRfuiIscdhVhRuZMxczb (With supported trees, no IFF)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xRbuiIscdIVhRuZMxczb (With unsupported trees, IFF)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xRbuiIscdhAhRuZMxczb (Just for the hell of it, With Owlkin Frenzy, No IFF, Trees. Frenzy has been said not to be worth it in naxx, but perhaps Sath+3?)

I'd think it wouldn't be worth it DPS-wise, especially considering the cost for the spell. I'd keep it for AoE pulls and PvP, little more.

Typhoon has been shown to not really benefit dps if taken up in a rotation with or without the glyph. It is mainly a pvp oriented spell. Situational at best in PvE, e.g. Zombies getting close on that Grum (forgot the damn name) boss, during decimate.

And i can understand that that hit debuff is appealing and i would advice strugling groups to indeed not take up this glyph, but when it is clear you dont need the mitigation that much ...