How to debug your Moonkin - boost your DPS post comment

The most common request on forums regarding Moonkin (or any spec) seems to relate to players who do not see what they can do to fix their Moonkin. In this post I hope to detail the process I go through to try to determine what is holding me back.

Important points to remember

1. Do not expect to finish at the top of many damage meters unless you outgear others in the raid substantially. There will usually be better geared players, better skilled players, or just classes that are more balanced out there.
2. Even if everyone in the raid is equal gear and skill do not expect to finish at the top. In a world where all classes damage output is equal then it is fair to expect to be at the top 1 fight in 16 or so.
3. Your DPS while testing will not be the same as your DPS while raiding.
4. Due to a lack of raid buffs, haste will not soft cap at the same point when solo. You can get around this if you have a bored shaman with you.

I'm afraid that a lot of what will help you adjust your setup is not a simple number that you can look at. Ideally you need to have a good instinct for when your character is performing well, and when it isn't. Having Recount showing you nice numbers is all well and good, but when your Moonkin is functioning well hopefully it should be apparent when testing. Runs of good or bad luck can easily skew your recount numbers.

Before you start testing

It is important to ensure that you do as much as you can to maximise the benefit from your stats. There is no point exceeding a hard cap. As a balance druid the only hard cap you need to concern yourself with is the hit rating cap.

Next up review your talents, glyphs, enchants all that kind of thing. For now you should not bother yourself with gemming with the possible exception of ensuring that you have an active metagem in any hat you intend to trial. It isn't worth worrying about swapping Ametrines just yet as any regemming will mostly involve swapping around Reckless, Potent, and Veiled Ametrines. If you have the cash available then it will make for a fairer test if you gem and enchant before testing. Some useful links if you missed them :

• Moonkin talents
• Moonkin professions
• Moonkin glyphs
• Moonkin enchanting

Visit your bank and gather up a good selection of gearing options. Hopefully you are not one of those players that disenchants everything as soon as a higher item level item drops. Trinkets are a great example where lower item level does not always equate to a worse item. Illustration of the Dragon Soul is an iLevel 200 trinket that has proven useful through multiple patches (for example).

The only things that you should aim to maintain are the following :

• 4 piece tier 10 bonus (if available)
• Tier 9 or tier 10 idol (tier 10 is superior)
• 10% hit rating

Everything else apart from those 3 points are viable for rebalancing. Just because someone has posted up some stats that shows that 1 spell power is equal to 2.4 crit (these numbers are ficticious) does not make it strictly true. Practicalities are not always as cut and dry as the theorycraft makes it look. Weapons, trinkets, and rings are the main areas where you can easily shift the balance between haste and crit. As a Moonkin any rebalancing is likely to involve shifting the balance between these 2 stats more than anything else.

Testing procedure

If you are not already familiar with the Moonkin rotation then it may be worth checking out this flow chart. By familiar, I mean able to perform it without thinking about it. Within a raid if you spend time thinking about your rotation too much then you will have less time to think about what you are doing.

Next up, do not change too much at once. Try to maintain the same rotation for all gearsets. If you wish to change your rotation, do not change gear at the same time. If you wish to change multiple parts of your rotation then do so but one at a time. The reason for this is so that if something improves or gets worse then you need to be able to identify what caused it. If you change 10 things at once then you have no idea what changes were positive and which were negative.

Make sure that any testing runs are longer than 30 seconds. Ideally you should have a nice long test run. Personally I tend to DPS until I have no more mana. If you have someone else putting debuffs on the dummy then chances are that they will influence your DPS one way or another and so make it impossible to tell whether the differences are due to anything you changed. Ideally you want to have a nice quiet dummy with noone else hitting it. Darnassus is good for this (if you are Alliance).

If you have a good run and see a 1000 DPS improvement then do not stop there. You may have been lucky. Check your stats. Does your crit rating match up to about what you would expect? Did you really expect to see 100% Wrath crit rate? No? Didn't think so. The more repetitions you do, the less chance there is for a fluke skewing your results. It will take time, but in the long run it will be worth it to boost your DPS.

What should get changed

The main stats you will be adjusting are your Haste and Crit. To a lesser extent you may be changing your Spellpower also either directly or indirectly (by changing your Spirit). In WotLK items seem to always have a healthy amount of raw Spellpower, Intellect, and Stamina. They seem to share the same set of points across Spirit, Haste, Crit, and Hit.

In any gearset you should be aiming for 10% hit rating, even if you are Alliance (see this post for the reason). After that you see all the advice about hitting the haste soft cap and crit soft cap. Treat this as advice, not a strict rule. The point of this exercise is to experiment and see what works for you. I highlighted weapons as a good place to start, and this is because they usually have a massive amount of stats on them. This can make it easy to shift the balance between haste and crit drastically in order to see what would happen.

Don't be afraid to do tests without a full set of armour. Try to keep Spellpower constant whilst reducing haste and crit to see what that does for the general feel of the rotation. Your DPS will most likely be down, but if reducing haste by 100 makes your rotation feel a lot smoother then chances are that you would benefit more from an increased amount of crit.

Conclusion : The rules of testing

As previously mentioned, there are only 3 strict rules that I would personally follow regarding gear choices.

• Get the 4 piece tier 10 bonus
• Get the tier 10 idol
• Get 10% hit rating

And to sum up the rest of the advice.

• Do not change too much at a time
• Do not be afraid to drastically change the balance between haste and crit
• Find an isolated level 80 heroic dummy that doesn't have someone else hitting it
• Repeat tests as much as is viable to reduce the effect of runs of good or bad luck
• Do not expect to be the top DPSer on every fight
• Do not do 30 second tests as they will not give a good illustration of sustained DPS. Aim for at least a few minutes.
• Don't use Starfall when testing, it will skew your results due to the proximity of other dummies
• Make sure you have plenty of water to reduce downtime between tests

There are no other strict rules. Never be afraid to try out new things. If you have anything to add to the above or any comments then I'd love to hear them. I hope that the above helps you find out what your weaknesses are so you are able to work on them and come out a stronger Moonkin.