sharpshifts moonkin guide

[manowarlock]

[DISCLAIMER] this is not my guild, its from WoW-Europe.com Forums -> - Sharpshift's Moonkin Guide -


im just posting it becuase its helped me and a few friends so ill put it here, but all credit goes to sharpshif for making it.


ok the guild

1.0 His Guide
His name is Sharpshift from Aszune EU Horde. I’ve claimed over 2000 rating in 3v3 bracket and killed bosses including within The Black Temple. In this guide I will explain, point by point, how to play a Moonkin at level 70. I hope to help other players who are considering starting a balance druid a clearer view of what they’re going into or maybe give some of the more experienced Moonkins a few tips that may help them. This guide includes both the PvP and PvE aspect of a balance druid and is built on patch 2.4 - The Burning Crusade. The facts made in this guide is based on having 1190 spell damage and 21.8% basic crit chance, so it might be different to you if having less or more. Enjoy

LOS - Line of Sight
dpm - Damage per Mana point
dps - Damage per second
CC - Crowd Control
DoT - Damage over Time
HoT - Healing over Time
AoE - Area of Effect


2.0 Abilities and Effects
2.1 Moonfire
PvP: Balance druids are often known to spam moonfire, but any decent druid wouldn’t do that. Moonfire have the greatest damage considering it’s an instant cast and still ticks if you’re getting kited out of LOS. The only disadvantage is that you have to face your target when casting it. To finish of a running target that’s low on health it’s a good idea to use moonfire rank 11 if you already have rank 12 ticking on him/her. The damage over time of a moonfire is almost twice as much as the instant damage, so if rank 11 is used, the rank 12 will keep tricking without getting interrupted and you have a much better damage output. I will also recommend a moonfire rank1 in your action bars when fighting shamans or warriors (Read at 3.1 and 3.3).
PvE: Usually no good as it only have ~5.3 dpm. May be used on shorter fights or if nuke is required certain times.

2.2 Starfire
PvP: Should not be used in PvP and Arena as it has a long casting time, no prevent of spell interrupting and a bad dps. Only case would be preloading starfire (Read at 3.11) or WoE proc (Read at 2.14).
PvE: This will be your main damage in raids boss fight. What many are unaware of is that you should be down ranking this ability, like some healers down ranks their healing spells for more mana. With my gear, starfire rank 8 have a dpm on ~8.92, but starfire rank 6 have the highest dpm of all on ~9.99 which is 12% more mana effectivity. You may think that you’ll lose a lot of dps, but in fact you will only do 4.6% less leading me to the conclusion that starfire rank 6 is better than rank 8.

2.3 Wrath
PvP: Your nuke power against other players. Whenever you’re not busy with CC’ing and have both DoTs up you should be spamming this ability. Wrath is a slow bolt that needs to “catch” the target before doing its damage. This takes from 0.1-1.5sec to land depending on the range between you; however you can cheat preview critical hits meaning you will gain Nature’s Grace right after you cast a Wrath ability that will later land a critical. So how can you use this advantage? Simply: If target is getting low lets say 25% and you review this, you may use moonfire instead of another Wrath, which gives an instantly high damage and target will be dead before getting healed or escaped.
PvE: Should generally not be used in raids as it has a very low dpm and will overagro before you know of it. Though, like moonfire, it may be used if your mana is well high at the end of a battle or if nuking is required at some point of the fight.

2.4 Insect Swarm
This is “The Evil Warlock DoT”. It has ~9.7 dpm which almost catch up with starfire rank 6, but have additional 2% free avoidance to the tank. Also great versus players adding around the same damage over its full durability as a wrath does (with crit chance included). Insect Swarm is a great ability where ever you go.

2.5 Faerie Fire
PvP: Barely for any use. Can be used for escaping rogues/druids or longer fights with a lot of melee dps from your team mates.
PvE: With this ability 3/3 improved in talents, it’s a must for all hardcore raiding moonkins. The 610 armor reduced can any druids get, but the +3% chance to hit for all melees is a great overall dps add and 3% more agro to tanks. This debuff must be kept up all the time.

2.6 Force of Nature
PvP: Pop these three treants, while invisible, helps in three different ways. First of all they add a lot of damage and may very well be the season to your targets death. Next they have great spell interruption, though most spells in PvP have some sort of preventing the loss of casting time, the treants will interrupt a lot. At last they cause chaos. Many people are unaware what to do when they spawn from nowhere and right up in their face, it’s certainly a great distraction.
PvE: It’s an unfriendly ability versus boss fights. They die easily and don’t add such a great damage in the end. If you’ve taken it, use it wisely at the right spot.

2.7 Innervate
PvP: Simply adds a little amount mana to either you or a team mate. Watch out, not to use it if being attacked by a felhunter or in LOS of a purging/spell stealing class
PvE: You should not use this on yourself, but save it for a holy priest if they’re running out of mana. Priests have a larger mana regeneration while not casting and will benefit them much more than yourself. I’d suggest you make an Innervate macro so target know, their mana pool is raising and they’re free to cast spells:
For taurens:
/cast Innervate
/script msg="INNERVATE on you!"; SendChatMessage(msg, "WHISPER", "Orcish", UnitName("target"));
For night elves:
/cast Innervate
/script msg="INNERVATE on you!"; SendChatMessage(msg, "WHISPER", "Common", UnitName("target"));

2.8 Cyclone
PvP: Your main crowd control. Though it’s relative short range on 24yard it’s very effective against both casters and melee. It makes the enemy complete immune to everything except PvP trinket. Paladins can’t even bobble out of it. It has diminishing returns meaning the durability is reduced as followed: 6 sec -> 3 sec -> 1.5 sec -> Immune. You will be able to cyclone once again exactly 15 seconds after your last cyclone has ended. Can be used to prevent heals or preloading starfire (Read at 3.11 and 3.12).

2.9 Entangling Roots
PvP: Your secondary crowd control. Most effective against warriors and enhancement shamans. It has longer range (36yard) and durability than cyclone. It last 10 sec -> 5 sec -> 2.5 sec -> Immune. It’s less effective on rogues and retri paladins as they can Vanish, Sprint, Cloak of Shadow, Blessing of Freedom and dispel.

2.10 Hibernate
PvP: One of the minor crowd controls. It works like polymorph and last as long as entangling roots. The only problem is it only works on beasts. Mostly useful against a shape shifted druid, but can also be used to pull a MM/Surv hunters pet out of LOS and put it to sleep for short. Hibernate have no spell interruption unlike the other two CCs.

2.11 Barkskin
PvP: Should be used as soon as getting attacked by more than one, otherwise save it for Wrath of Elune proc (Read at 2.14).

2.12 Hurricane
PvE: The only AoE effect you have. It have one minute cooldown so should be used on the correct spot at the right time. It’s a good idea to use barkskin right before using Hurricane to prevent you from losing casting time if you should be attacked.

2.13 Elune’s Touch
Elune’s Touch is the mana generated through melee hits while in Moonkin form. The mana returned each hit is equal to 30% of your attack power. As you normally won’t have much attack power as balance druid you will need a feral weapon to switch with whenever going into melee. Earthwarden from Cenarion Expedition is a good start and will generate 250+ mana per hit, but there can be found better weapons in ssc and beyond. Savagery enchant is a good add to this weapon. In raids you will need to find the “silenced parts” of the fight where not much dps is required and use that to generate your mana. It takes around a minute to fill your mana pool up from scratch.

2.14 Wrath of Elune
When collected 4/5 of the Gladiator PvP set your wraths will have a 15% chance to reduce the next starfire casting time by 1.5 seconds. In some situation when not being attacked this is an insane set bonus. First of all you should have some kind of effect or sound that’ll show you whenever Wrath of Elune procs. To use it well is much more difficult as it you need to use it within 15 seconds and starfire have no way to prevent interruption. If you’re lucky you have Nature’s Grace and starfire will only take one second to cast and should be able to, even if getting attacked. If not, use barkskin that’ll give you 100% interruption immunity when taking damage.


3.0 Moonkin versus Player
These fights are based on 1v1
3.1 Warrior
Warrior is the easiest class to defeat. Not much skill is required, with around 17k armor the warrior has problems doing enough damage. Keep moonfire and insect swarm up while switching with cyclone and entangling roots to keep stay ranged of the warrior. If you’re getting low on health cast a few heals on yourself, but watch out your CC durability is not too short otherwise you might be intercepted and you’re very vulnerable in normal form. If the warrior should go defensive spell reflect mode, use moonfire rank 1 to “dispel” his Spell Reflect.

3.2 Paladin
When talking about retri paladins they’re a bit harder than warriors as they can dispel or Blessing of Freedoms roots. They also have +15% movement speeds and can use Judgement of Justice that makes travel form useless. A good thing though is they don’t have any slow or interrupt effects. Try to stay ranged; otherwise you should be able to kill him/her anyway by spamming wrath and having both DoTs up. If bobbles and starts to heal, use the free time to put some HoTs on yourself.

3.3 Shaman
The trickiest thing about shaman is Grounding Totem which you should always keep on eye of. The totem may eat up to two of your spells e.g. if you’re casting a wrath that’s heading towards the totem and you cast a moonfire, they both will be absorbed. When Grounding is up, use your moonfire rank 1 to quickly remove it.
Enhancement: Kite it same way as you kite a warrior with cyclone and entangling roots, while having both DoTs up. The biggest difference is the shaman can’t charge/intercept, but can interrupt with earth shock on ranged distance and deals more damage than a typical warrior. Use travelform a lot here. If he tries to heal, quickly start spamming wrath which should do more damage than he can heal up and go back to kiting as soon he starts to hunt you again.
Elemental: Stay in normal form and keep both DoTs up. Also cast a single lifebloom on yourself and recast it when it expires. If he purges it, it will only instantly heal yourself which is good. You might want to cyclone once in a while and heal yourself and/or preload a starfire.

3.4 Hunter
You should stay in melee range and keep both DoTs up. Only use wrath if you got time for it, though focus not to get into ranged range of him. If have a pillar to kite around you can use that while your DoTs tricks. You can hibernate the pet unless it’s a BM hunter, or if the hunter runs away to let the pet finish you, just kill the pet. It’s also a good idea to pop trees to eat an eventually trap when engaging in combat.

3.5 Rogue
Fighting against rogue is difficult. Whatever they’re subtlety or assassination it’s almost impossible to kite them. If you sense there might be a rogue nearby, just pop your Moonkin form instantly. Do never let yourself get stunned in normal form. The rogue will cheap shot you for last 4 seconds; this is more than enough time for you to enable barkskin. After that it is very possible you’ll get kidney shot for 5 seconds; it’s now you should use your PvP trinket. Pop your treants if you can, they are the main damage to a rogue (and evasion won’t help much). After that put both DoTs up and spam moonfire rank 11 as wrath will be interrupted far too much and harder to cast because you need to face the rogue when casting. If you’re dieing faster than the rogue, you should try to (warstomp +) cyclone and try to heal. But watch out, the rogue typically have his PvP trinket ready and will use it. Travelform and run a few yard away while keep watching the cyclone timer. If it breaks by trinket instantly change over to Moonkin form again. Repeating, do never let yourself get stunned in normal form - It’s the certain death. Now you can cyclone the rogue for 3 sec and be sure it won’t break. Right after cyclone have landed use travelform and walk ~5yard away, then use Regrowth and Rejuvenation and back to Moonkin. You should be able to finish the rogue now.

3.6 Priest
Shadow priests are doable. The thing is to kill them before they dots you up and starts to nuke. Watch out for their melee fear, if they’re running towards you; cyclone it, use three seconds to run away then preload a starfire. When fighting any priest, be sure to place yourself in a position where you can move out of LOS anytime for mana burn.

3.7 Warlock
A Siphon Life/Soul Link warlock with a summoned felhunter is the hardest class to kill. The only thing you can do is try to nuke it fast. A full affliction or demonology warlock is easier, though the felhunter prevents you from healing yourself well. If you should be so lucky they use a void walker or felguard, throw some HoTs on yourself once getting low.

3.8 Mage
When slaying frost mages you should pre-cast some HoTs on you and then DoT the mage up. Try to avoid wrath or regrowth as these can silence all your nature and healing spells for 8sec which may be the cause of your death. Always hold your hands over your Travelform button to break out of a frost nova as we all know mages burst come when being frozen. Some mages are trying to spellsteal your HoTs, if that’s the case just focus even more on healing. The mage will run out of mana after a several spell steals.

3.9 Druid
Feral: Fairly easy kill. DoT up and spam wrath. If getting low cyclone -> run away -> heal. Save your trinket for bash or cyclone.
Moonkin: In a mirror match its mana depending who wins. You should keep all your three HoTs up on yourself and both DoTs up on your target. Cyclone is not really necessary, but useful if your about to die or want to preload a starfire if he’s low.

3.10 Arena
When teaming up for arena games you should be aware of what tactic you’re going to use. The Moonkin deals very high and intensive damage, but will run out of mana in longer fights before the enemies. In 2v2 you should never team up with a healer if aiming for a higher rating, but get some kind of healing reductive effect. I find 20/0/41 shadow step rogues best to team up with as they are the best to catch and slow. With this combo you should go for their healer, unless it’s a paladin, and hold the other one cycloned for at least two chains. There’s a lot of 2x dps combo’s and by the time you will learn what to do.
In 3v3 there are a lot of good working combos. I’m playing with holy paladin plus warrior which we’ve gotten over 2000 rating with. The warrior needs to use mace and have Imp. Hamstring for this tactic to work properly and the paladin need to master Judgement of Justice and Hammer of Justice. Basically the paladin will BoP the Moonkin, giving both the warrior and druid enough time to nuke one. Again you should kill their healer first unless it’s a paladin and use your cyclone and entangling roots as much as possible.

3.11 Preloading Starfire
Preloading starfire is used together with cyclone and means you’re casting the ability while target is immune to any damage, but will be vulnerable once the spell have finished it’s casting time. If you cast a cyclone on its full durability (6 sec) you will need to start casting starfire once the spell is a tiny bit more than half complete leaving you with a high damage and can be followed by moonfire for death if target is low. You can also preload a starfire second time when cyclone last 3 sec. It’s important that you wait till cyclone is cast before spamming your starfire button; else you WILL land it too early. Be sure to calculate if you have Nature’s Grace on (-0.5 cast time).
Short clip of preloading starfire: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrbFpq3p-AE]YouTube - Preloading Starfire[/ame]

3.12 Preventing Heals
Preventing heals is also used together with cyclone and means you’re making a target immune to heals by cycloning while you wait for some effect to expire or cooldowns to be ready. This is mainly used in 2v2 against paladin teams. If you got melee dps with you and the paladin use Blessing of Protection (Complete physical immunity) you should cyclone the target two time, in total 9 sec, and the bobble will be over. You can also use it if target is about to be healed, then preload a starfire.

3.13 Gear, Gems and Enchants
Gear is simple, get the newest gladiator and honor vendor gear, there are a few better upgrades through. Instead of Gladiator Idol and Sergeant Cloak, you should save some badges for Idol of Unseen Moon (20) and Cloak of Subjugated Power (60) both available from G’eras. For gems you should go for as much stamina and resilience as possible. The Gladiator head and honor necklace offers a socket bonus if you gem it with either resilience or a mix of resilience and stamina. I’d suggest you go for pure stamina gems for the rest. If you have meta gem available get the cheap, but good +18 stamina +5% stun resist. Best PvP enchant is as followed:

Head
18 stamina +20 resilience - Shattered Sun Offensive (Revered)
Shoulder
Dmg/Crit - Scryers or Aldor (Exalted)
Cloak
20 Spell Penetration
Chest
15 Resilience
Bracer
12 Stamina
Hands
20 SpellDmg
Leggings
35 Spell Damage and 20 Stamina
Feets
Minor Run speed and 9 Stamina
Rings
12 SpellDmg (Enchanters Only)
Weapon
40 SpellDmg


3.14 Talents
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
This is the spec I recommend for Arena/PvP. It’s works well in raids and dungeons too, but not optimal for hardcore endgame raiding. If you want to focus more on Nature’s Grasp, you should take the points from Intensity and a single from Nature’s Focus, but leave the balance points alone



4.0 Raiding
4.1 Your Role
Why should any raiding guild want a Moonkin? The Moonkin is not a primary caster class, but a “support class” that has five specialties that’s all very handy in 25man raids. First of all they have two standard abilities: Innervate and Rebirth. They may come “overseen” in the discussion of whatever a Moonkin is enough beneficial or not, but if you were replaced by e.g. a mage or warlock, the raid wouldn’t gain this. Now the Moonkin have further three balance specializations that all should come into use. First of all, the Moonkin aura that gives all group members +5% chances to land critical hit on spells. If the groups are sorted well it can add up to 20% of average casters damage. Secondly from Faerie Fire that gives all melee, tanks and hunters a +3% chance to hit. If the majority haven’t reached the hit cap this deals a large overall dps depending on how many physical dps’er in raid, but it certainly give the tanks 3% more agro. At last the little 2% avoidance to tank, trough the spell Insect Swarm, that’s suppose to be on boss all time. The sad thing is those specialties are unable to be tracked on damage meters and may cause the raid leaders to deny balance druids into raids. It’s purely up to you to convince other players about our superiority

4.2 Dealing damage
Dealing damage in raid boss fights aren’t some random spamming of certain abilities. First of all you should keep Faerie Fire up all the time, if you have it improved as you should. The main damage rotation is Insect Swarm, 3x starfire rank 6, repeat. While doing this you need to calculate how fast your mana and the boss health is dropping to find out if you got enough mana to use moonfire, if you need to go melee for Elune’s Touch (Read at 2.13) or if you need to drink potions and get the potions cooldown starting. Additional you should always have at around 2000 mana left if you should be needed to Rebirth and change back to Moonkin form. You should also have a mod where you can see friendly targets mana bar for innervate (Read at 2.7)

4.3 Gear
Gear is about balance your spell damage, critical chance, spell haste and hit chance. You should go for 12% extra hit chance as you will get the last 4% from talents. When that’s obtained you need to balance your spell damage, critical chance and spell haste. All of these stats benefits you a lot, though spell damage will do slightly better as Insect Swarm isn’t effected by crit and spell haste only reduce its global cooldown. When looking for item you also need look for intellect as it benefits you much more than other classes. Besides the normal +mana pool and +crit chance effect, you will also gain a one spell damage for each 4 point of intellect and also 1mp5 for each 10 point of intellect. This stat is great for longer battles, but should keep focus on spell damage gear. Tiers aren’t always the best options, there may very well be random drops that gives much better stats than tiers and remember it don’t matter if the item is leather or cloth.

4.4 Gems and Enchants
If you haven’t reached the hit cap yet you should always socket Red and Yellows with SpellDmg and hit. If it’s reached you should socket red slots with either pure SpellDmg or a mix of crit depending on your current crit chance
Red: Pure SpellDmg or a mix of SpellDmg and hit/crit
Yellow: A mix of SpellDmg and hit/crit
Blue: A mix of SpellDmg and Stamina

Best PvE enchants:
Head
22 SpellDmg +14 Spell Hit - The Sha’tar (Revered)
Shoulder
Dmg/Crit - Scryers or Aldor (Exalted)
Cloak
2% Threat Reduction
Chest
6 All Stats
Bracer
15 SpellDmg
Hands
20 SpellDmg
Leggings
35 Spell Damage and 20 Stamina
Feets
4 mana and health per 5 sec
Rings
12 Spell Damage (Enchanters Only)
Weapon
40 Spell Damage

4.5 Talents
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
This is the best raiding spec. If you don’t have issues with overagro or want a more hybrid PvE/PvP spec you should take the points from Subtlety and move around, as long as you keep 3/3 Imp. Faerie Fire




ok thee you go, ready the pasted version i put here, or go to wow forums to ready.


(the reson i put this here is 2 reasons. WOW Us on these forums wont have seent his guild, and also it helped me and a few mates a lot!)


ok /flame on

[Get Bent]

Attemping to get rep for Work you didn't do?

+This is a horrible guide. Lol

Read the US Moonkin Common Misconceptions guide before this.

[Binary]

So many threads expect to be flamed ;(

[manowarlock]

Attemping to get rep for Work you didn't do?

+This is a horrible guide. Lol

Read the US Moonkin Common Misconceptions guide before this.

LOL, kindly fcuk you dickhead. when did i ask for rep? not one time, dont rep me i dont care, i can get rep for stuff i can contribute by myself, maybe you diddnt notice?


Read the DISCLAIMEr at the top, and the writing at the very bottom, and then maybe, just maybe you realise i diddnt do this for rep, i did this to help other boomkins as its hard enough to find a raid spot till your decked in T6 shit.... and also, i guess you have been at BT and SWP so you wil know all about how horrible this guide is... yeah ofc you have, and above 2k ratign in pvp also.

/end sarcasm



go get bent mr 12 year old flamer

[Brutal bear]

make a warning about
wall of text next time you post something

[Get Bent]

LOL, kindly fcuk you dickhead. when did i ask for rep? not one time, dont rep me i dont care, i can get rep for stuff i can contribute by myself, maybe you diddnt notice?


Read the DISCLAIMEr at the top, and the writing at the very bottom, and then maybe, just maybe you realise i diddnt do this for rep, i did this to help other boomkins as its hard enough to find a raid spot till your decked in T6 shit.... and also, i guess you have been at BT and SWP so you wil know all about how horrible this guide is... yeah ofc you have, and above 2k ratign in pvp also.

/end sarcasm



go get bent mr 12 year old flamer

Actually, I'd know a SHIT load alot more then you do.

I do Raid as a Moonkin in BT, and have cleared up to Felmyst in SWP.

I've been 1860 in 3v3 as moonkin, but 2150 as Resto in 2v2.

So Yes, I know what I'm talking about.

And no, I'm not 12 years old.. But by the look of your grammar, I'd think you are.