This quick guide will go over the general rules of thumb for moonkin in gemming, reforging, and enchanting your gear.

Gemming

Meta: Burning Shadowspirit Diamond

Red: Brilliant Inferno Ruby

Blue: Purified Demonseye

Yellow: Reckless Ember Topaz

As far as determining which gem to use in which scenario, it is a good general rule of thumb to gem for the socket bonus if it is for int (especially 20 or higher).  In some situations, it may be a DPS increase to match sockets if the bonus is haste or spirit, but that is on a case-by-case basis.  Otherwise, blanket Brilliant Inferno Ruby is your best choice.  Wrathcalcs at Elitist Jerks is a great spreadsheet (once you can figure it out) to help determine what options would provide the greatest DPS benefit.

Reforging

Firstly, your priority stat value as a balance druid is INT>SPIRIT/HIT>HASTE>MASTERY>CRIT.

So you would be focusing on maintaining 1742 hit rating, or 17%, which is the hit cap.  After this point, hit is worthless, so haste is priority from thereon out.  When haste is not a reforging option, reforge into mastery.

A great tool for reforging that I highly recommend is ReforgeLite.  There was a post about it on MMO-Champion here giving us a (more…)

So, I thought it would be interesting to write up a post explaining the mechanics of the fights in Firelands from a moonkin-specific point of view, and any tips or hints I have from my own experience. I will add heroic modes as time goes on, but normal modes are all that will be covered for the time being. Also, I hope to update this page after each tier is released reflecting new raids. Please note: this is written from the 10man raid perspective.

Shannox

For this fight, my raid usually positions itself in the area before Beth’tilac’s pathway, which gives us room to move away from the numerous crystal prison traps (more…)

Second highest DPS this tier

So…balance druids, as indicated in this post on MMO-Champion from last week, have the second highest DPS on average so far this tier.  It is my opinion, as well as many others’, that this is at least partially attributable to our reliance on DoTs for DPS (most of the top rated DPS are DoT-based classes) and the padding of meters on some multi-DoTing fights.  That being said, there is a general consensus that our play-style has become very complex, with a lot of questions and variables we must consider on-the-fly.  Because of this level of variability, only the very skilled balance druids can accomplish DPS at these levels with any degree of consistency.

The question becomes: is our rotation/priority system too complex for the average Joe Schmo laser chicken? Do similarly geared/skilled mages do comparable DPS to these more average players? Or are only those of us who can very accurately determine when to refresh DoTs, when to clip DoTs, when to extend eclipses, when to pop trees/starfall, etc. capable of (more…)

Hi all, my name is Titnichal and I’m a balance Druid on US-Scilla, alliance side with a focus on endgame raiding. Welcome to my balance druid blog!

Let’s start with a little bit of history about myself and my WoW career… I’ve been playing the game since shortly after release, with breaks here and there when real life rears its horns. My Druid was my first toon but I stopped leveling him during vanilla and leveled my paladin up to 60. I raided all of vanilla on him, then switched back to my laser chicken once TBC was released. I was specced balance for leveling, and have maintained that as my primary spec ever since (usually with a resto offspec).

I’ve been a long-time follower of fellow moonkin like Graylo over at Gray Matter, Hamlet at Elitist Jerks, Lissanna at Restokin, and various forums and blogs relating to moonkin and Druids in general. I also enjoyed Relevart’s and Quith’s blogs as well, but as I’m sure most of you know they no longer play and/or write. I am extremely excited to start this blog, because when I’m not killing (more…)