And Thus, there was BOOM!

This weekend has been a profitable one when it comes to gear and progression.

From Gruul's on Thursday, I nabbed the Collar of Cho'gall a nice upgrade although it doesn't have a meta gem slot. From our Saturday Kara run, I cleaned up. I came away with

• Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran
• Handwraps of Flowing Thought
• Exchanged Violet Signet of the Great Protector for Violet Signet of the Archmage
• Ruby Slippers

I also completed my Windhawk set!

• Windhawk Belt
• Windhawk Bracers
• Windhawk Hauberk

They are all great upgrades! All told, I now have 887 damage unbuffed (along with 969 heal for those off heal stints) and with my Scryer's Bloodgem for boss fights, I am above 152 hit for the boss fights.

On our Tidewalker kill, I managed to hit 771 DPS for the fight. Awesome! It was a great increase from my run on Hydross where I hit 485 dps. I increased my dps by 286. Kick butt.

There is still room for improvement. Coming up next, I'll take a gander at some gems and what's good for Boomkins.

DPS: Theory vs. Practice

In the quest for moonkin ass-kickery, this moonkin still has a ways to go. Using the moonkin DPS spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks, my best DPS casing cycle is

Insect Swarm -> Moonfire -> Starfire x 3

When fully raid buffed, I should be hitting about 717.5 DPS. My numbers are dismally lower than theory. On our Gruul's attempt last night, I was hitting only about 447 DPS.

The difference could come from a number of places, my noobness at moonkin, bad gear, taking a longer than expected time to find our healer to battle rez, or not having enough spell hit. The rotations I did use where not the recommended ones. Part of the problem I see with this rotation is the cast time for Starfire. I was getting interrupted from the silences and the ground slams in the middle of casts. To mitigate that, I was casting Wrath more than Starfire.

According to theory, replacing Startfire with Wrath in the rotation should net me around 664.5 DPS, still 217.5 DPS off the mark. Why the big difference still if the lower cast time should result in less interrupts? Skill.

I am a moonkin noob still. In feral I know my stuff, know the rotations, have a feel for when I can toss what spell, and did not have a problem cleanly chaining spells together. In moonkin, I am still getting a feel for everything. I am not used to my dot timers yet nor used to range combat role yet. When casting wrath too, I keep trying to cast it before the global cool down is up.

So what I am going to do tonight to get some casting sequence practice is to wander over to Dr Boom in Netherstorm and practice, practice, practice.

Welcome to Cowmage!

Welcome, Welcome! If you wait a while, I will do the moonkin dance for everyone's enjoyment. :)

My name is Earthbane from Faultless on Hellscream. I'm here to help myself make sense of the world of moonkin and to share my experiences with those pondering or interested in the art of the Boomkin.

In the past I have played around with just about all specs of Druids. From feral to balance to resto, at one point I have done all of them. My main focus for the longest time was feral. I was tanking for T4 & T5 raids and had some pretty good gear. Let me correct that, have some pretty nice tanking gear. Even though my bag space is insanely limited by keeping my old feral gear around, I am not going to destroy everything that took me so long to accumulate. I did that last time I was balance, I destroyed all my balance gear for bag space when I had to switch to feral for the guild. I feel pretty stupid for doing that now I have to spend so much gold and time to get geared back up to an acceptable raid level. If I do end up going back to feral, I certainly do not want to do all that grinding and collecting again. One time is more than enough!

I am keeping feral as a plan B, my goal is to stay dedicated to the moonkin cause for at least 3 months. My favored outcome is to get my gear and skills built up to a point where I can be a regular member of T5 raiding again. This is going to be a fight since moonkin are not normally a desired raid member and my gear is only at the T4 level at best. The challenge will be a welcome change of pace as I was getting a bit bored and almost burned out on tanking.

For this blog in my balance experiment, here are my goals.

1. Update at least once a week.
2. Give and gather tips and advice for fellow balance druids
3. Share my balance experience, good and bad, as I drive on through and pew pew

More tips, updates, and details to come!