Balance of nature

Trail of Crusader raid: How to maximize your dps by starfalls and treants (1)

moonkinsafian — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:04:32 +0000

I am so productive today! Post 2 articles in this blog, writing the 3rd one, studied Japanese, also made a delicious garlic shrimps for my lunch!

Last night was the first attempt of 10 men Heroic Trial of Crusader raid for our guild. It was fun! Well we didn’t even down the first boss, but we almost made it. One of our healer was saying he pug it earlier this week, and they gave up after 12 attempts, and not even pass the second beast. He was joking: I just want to see yeti!

Oh well, we did fight with Yeti, but half of the raid died and did not finish it. But it’s a very good one and I believe we can do it after everyone gets the gear from 10 regular ToC.

For moonkin, ToC raid is really easy, and there are not many “no-no” for not to use Starfalls–sometimes starfalls just get too much threat so I have to hold it. I will try describe the fight and mention which part I use these talents.

Gormok the Impaler: Other than watch for the fire, and killing the jumping monkeys, this fight is as simple as tanks and spank. I used to pop Starfalls and Treants right at encounter, but now I save Starfalls for the Snowbolds because the first Snowbold usually show up 30 sec after encounter. Before tank pull, I pop the trees, and as soon as tank pull and turn Gormok around, it’s iFF-> IS-> MF. Also I usually make a macro of “/target Snobold” which helps to kill the monkey. Popping starfall when you see more than 1 monkey, it helps to accelerate the fight. I found it special useful to use Starfall killing these Snobolds in Heroic mode. Funny thing is these monkey hardly jump on me—(knock wood knock wood)—they loves cloth-wear casters.
How I do this fight during snobold? As I mention moonkin is not usually a target of these monkey, so I ask our raid assist me to kill them ASAP. My first cast is always moonfire, for me and the raid to see where the Snobold at, then just wrath it down. If you have mana issue, I would suggest use IS or wrath it, and don’t use MF. I usually keep DoTs on the boss in between the Snobolds, but to kill Snobolds would be my first priority.
Acidmaw and Dreadscale: These worms! I hate worms. Same, when tank grab Acidmaw, iFF->IS-> MF. We usually pop Heroism when fighting the Acidmaw, and I usually can get a chance to have my Starfire Eclipse proc before Heroism, or in the beginning of the Heroism, so I either pop Starfall before Heroism right at encounter (make sure both tanks have enough threat—I was killed one time just because the Dreadscale tank loose aggro from my starfall), or during the sun (wrath) eclipse. This way is better because the burrow comes very fast, and you don’t want to waste your stars. I usually can pop treants after Acidmaw down, but they usually won’t last long because of the poison cloud. So I usually save them for the Yeti.
How I do this fight when both Acidmaw and Dreadscale up? I don’t keep DoTs on both worms, because you really want that Acidmaw to die asap.

Icehowl: He’s so cute, and the fight is simple. Same, I pop Starfalls right at beginning, as well as the treants if I did not use it in the worm bosses (usually I don’t). The key for this fight is just not to get hit by the Icehowl, and run as fast as possible to get to the range you can attack him after he stick his head into wall. If he is not running towards to me, I usually run to the direction of where he’s going for fastest dps, and pop MF, Starfall, and IS during running, and just quickly wrath it. This fight is really not much tech detail to describe =)

My moonkin build and glyph

moonkinsafian — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:44:06 +0000

My moonkin talent is very standard 57/0/14 build. My hit rating was a bit too high, over 17%–the hit cap for heroic boss, not mention my 3% FF talent–couple weeks ago, but after I got some new pieces in 10 ToC raid, it’s about 14.5% now. Still a bit high but that leaves me the room to have other upgrades.

Moonkin 57/0/14 Build

Here is my moonkin talent build. I picked Force of Nature but not Typhoon, mainly because Typhoon knocks the target back 5 yards which may create problem for tanks. But it is a good talent to pick for some of the fight such as XT2000 at Ulduar, and Faction Champions at ToC raid.

I won’t suggest to pick Gale Winds for raid. Save that 2 points talent for something more useful. But it’s a good talent in leveling.

The hit cap for caster is 17% for raid boss. With iFF (increase the chance of the target will be hit by spell by 3%), hit cap drops to 14%, with Balance of Power (increase your chance to hit by 4%), hit cap drops to 10% (wow so my 14.5% is REALLY high lol). If your party has a drainei, it drops to 9%, but I won’t count on that.

The major glyphs I equip is Glyph of Moonfire, Glyph of Starfall, and Glyph of Insect Swam. I always keep moonfire and IS up during boss fight, and with T8.5 bonus plus the Insect Swam glyph, IS can done about 10-13% of my total damage. Very decent.

I recently got the helm from Onyxia, which broke my T8.5 bonus—now I will have to see how’s that effect my DPS.

Moonkin addons

moonkinsafian — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:45:54 +0000

One thing I like about WoW is the “add-ons” in game, just like the extension and greasemonkey in Firefox, these little things made game play more fun. Here I am listing some add-ons I think good for moonkins:

Cooldowns: For the max dps, I need a CD watch on how much time is up for Starfall and treants. While with a Starfall glyph which reduce the CD time to 60 sec, this addon is very useful in some intensive fights. Also good to monitor for BR. I just love this little addon so much so it has to go to the top of the list.

Quartz: Essential for moonkin to monitor the Eclipse.

Decursive: I personally don’t use decursive becuase I use Vuhdo + mouse over key binding for cure poison and decurse. But I found it’s very easy to use for some moonkins that are not familiar with healbot or Vuhdo.

Outfitter: It’s just so convenient when I switch from Moonkin form to Tree form. Not only that, even I go fishing in Ignis’s pools at Ulduar when we do the raid prep, I won’t forget to switch the weapon from fishing pole to my staff. Simple but useful. Just remember to check the checkbox when you equip a new gear.

Omen: Alone with DBM and recount, to some point, especially when my dps is too high and the tanks are not experienced enough, Omen becomes essential. At least warm me to stop DPS to save my life, LOL.

Vuhdo: I just love Vuhdo way more than healbot because it can categorize the raid into different groups such as Tanks/Melee/Ranged/Healers. It gives me lots of information even when I am not a healer. (1) For BR: I can easily find if a tank or a healer is down, and quickly target them and BR. Save tons of time and won’t effect my DPS too much. (2) In certain fights such as the second boss in Northrend Beast of ToC raid, it’s very easy to identify people with burning bile and call out on vent for raids to heal and seek for de-poison. (3) Just easy monitor and quickly heal a dying tank or healer, from the group I set.

Moonkin, the power of balence

moonkinsafian — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:39:19 +0000

I started to play world of warcraft just about a year ago, as waiting for WTLK come out. At the time I had no idea of which class to pick, so I told Xaviam (aka Rudaraya and Zendori lol) I wanted to be able to transform to a cat. I was just saying that for fun and trying to give Xav a task, and Xav suggested me to be a druid.

” What’s good to be a druid?” I ask.

“Oh well, you can transform to a cat cat, and also a tree, maybe an owl too. At certain point, you can become a fish!” Xav answered.

I was completed fascinated with these transforms, and I started my leveling for my durid.

Druid dies very often, so my leveling route stopped when I reached lv55, and build a DK. I had a lot of fun playing Zafia, my DK, and made her became one of the realm best unholy DK. Then…I am bored of melee. Being a stupid-hand girl, melee fight is too confused to me, although my DK is good and pretty. So I started to level my druid again, and she climbs up very fast. I really enjoy playing moonkin, and it’s just so much fun in both PvE and PvP. Now she’s the #6 gear-score balenced druid in Shu’halo, does fantastic damage, and I am so proud of her.

I learned a lot from reading different moonkin blogs, but I found not all suit what I need. Lots of moonkins are at very good guilds and high-ranking realms, and they progress so fast. For me, a busy working adult in a late-night raiding guild, can’t ask too much. We are a small guild (usually have ~20 online during raid time, but still needs to pug some), raid for about 1.5-2 hours a day. Our progress is good, but not superb. We are currently at #11 in Alliance guild in Shu’halo, which I am pretty happy with it.

So I decide to start a moonkin blog and write down some of my experience and strat, try to help other moonkins similar to my situation. This is my 3rd blog, but my first English one, and I hope you all can enjoy it.

by Safian/Zafia at Shu’halo