WotLK Video. My attempt on Lich King as Balance.

[Biserkoo97]

Hello guys,

My name is Babkin. Here is a video, on my attempt on Lick King. Write replies down, for some tips and tricks if you see me doing something wrong feel free to say soo.

Spoiler: Show

[Invictum]

Hello Babkin,

Replace that Glyph of Insect Swarm with Glyph of Focus and think about positioning little bit closer to targets of your dps as Starfall range will decrease but it’s overall damage will go up by 10%.

If you’re skeptical, try it out and let us know if you see an improvement.

Edit: As far as LK fight, there’s not much I can say. Whole fight is in constant phase changes and required movement, I don’t think you have too much choice. Seems pretty good.

[Biserkoo97]

Hello Babkin,

Replace that Glyph of Insect Swarm with Glyph of Focus and think about positioning little bit closer to targets of your dps as Starfall range will decrease but it’s overall damage will go up by 10%.

If you’re skeptical, try it out and let us know if you see an improvement.

Edit: As far as LK fight, there’s not much I can say. Whole fight is in constant phase changes and required movement, I don’t think you have too much choice. Seems pretty good.

Hello Nibvictum,

Well my opinion on your advice is that its not good to lose 30 % extra damage, and you lose alot range when you use Glyph of Focus. So you would need to move more. More moving equals less damage done to target. It would be nice if boss fight was static.

[Invictum]

Hello Nibvictum,

Well my opinion on your advice is that its not good to lose 30 % extra damage, and you lose alot range when you use Glyph of Focus. So you would need to move more. More moving equals less damage done to target. It would be nice if boss fight was static.

Just a quick correction. You are not going to lose 30% of extra damage. You will lose 30% of Insect Swarms damage. Insect Sawrm isn’t a major player in your overall DPS like Wrath, Starfire and Starfall are.

10% Starfall dps bump > 30% Insect Swarm dps bump, if you know where to position yourself.
Starfall AoE range reduction shouldn’t matter in ICC, ToGC and RS at all as there’s not a single encounter (at least I can’t recall - even if it there were few, most of them are not) where you really need Starfalls range therefore it’s useless for everything except gathering unwanted aggro from mobs or bumping your overall damage done, which shouldn’t matter.

We all know that UHDK’s can’t be beaten there, and that dps is just for show.

Again, however you want. Just my suggestion to try it out. Worked for me.

[Kronosxviii]

Insect swarm does tickle all damage if you look at its %dmg dealt versus all your other damage sources, it's main purpose is its tremendous utility it brings. Indirectly boosting avoidance of tanks is great for their survivability as well as healer mana conservation. Improved I.S. directly boosts one of your hardest hitting and thus most damaging spells you will cast period.

After watching the video I see that you're with multiple Boomkins so we can determine that the avoidance loss from the IS glyph isn't that major, but I see that you aren't using the glyph of Starfire. It may seem minor but it saves you a lot of globals over the course of long boss fights allowing you to spam out your heavy hitters for a longer period of time before having to re apply dots.

[NainVert]

Here's the list of advices that I have:

Concerning gear and spec:

• Glyphs should be: Starfire, Moonfire and Starfall. These are the best glyphs for moonkins in ICC gear. This is a major improvement
• Spec should include Force of Nature. Treants do 40-50k damage, and the cost of that is 1 GCD. The talent is a must have.
• Gems are wrong. Use spellpower in all red slots and 12Sp/10Haste in all orange. Hit the best (+7SP if possible, else +5SP) with a +12Sp/10Spirit purple gem, else ignore blue sockets altogether. Do not use the +10 All Stats gem, it's incredibly bad. Do not ever gem pure haste or pure crit, it's also a DPS loss.
• Itemization is : spellpower > haste > crit >> spirit > intel. Prefer ilvl 264 crit/haste items over 277 crit/spirit or haste/spirit items.
• Drop Enchanting and prefer Engineering. It is by far the best profession for boomkins.

Concerning your rotation:

• Never ever use Insect Swarm unless you are forced to move and have already refreshed moonfire. You are using IS wayyyy to often.
• When going from solar to lunar eclipse, you should refresh your moonfire if (and only if) your previous Wrath cast proc'ed a Nature's Grace. Because a NG proc from a wrath means that it will critically hit and give a 60% chance of an eclipse. Hence when going from lunar to solar, your rotation is : Wrath Wrath ... Wrath (procs Nature's Grace) Wrath Moonfire (60% chance of Eclipse) Starfire/Wrath ... Solar to Lunar: Feels like you're not correctly doing the eclipse swap.
• When going from Lunar to Solar, DO NOT REFRESH DOTS! Just spam Starfire till you notice the Solar Eclipse. The reason is that, if your Starfire doesn't crit, your Nature's Grace is not extended. So if you use a GCD to refresh a dot, Nature's Grace will fade and your next Starfire will be cast without its effect. So your rotation is Starfire Starfire ... Starfire (procs Solar) Starfire (you notice Solar during this Stafire) Wrath ... Lunar to Solar: that one you are screwing up real bad, loosing Nature's Grace.
• "My idol will fade if I don't refresh dots". No. Remember, right before entering Lunar, you have placed a Moonfire on the boss (as you as your wrath procced NG). During the Lunar, the Moonfire will stack the buff the 5 stacks, and since Moonfire is 21s (when extended by Stafire), you're usually left with 6s of Moonfire at the end of the Lunar, so the idol stack will stay up for the next 21s, long enough for you to go through a full Solar.
• 4 targets or more (aka, LK + 3 Valkyrs) and Nature's Grace is up? Hurricane. It will do upwards of 15k DPS with your gear, nothing can beat that. This is only true if you are specced (and should be) into Gale Winds. You never used hurricane on LK fight?!
• 4 targets and no Nature's Grace? Continue your rotation till Nature's Grace procs and then use Hurricane.
• Casting hurricane and the number of targets gets down to 3 or less? Stop. Get back to your single target rotation.
• Starfall? As close as possible as on CD. Priorize using it when Omen of Doom is up, or PNL/CTS proc is up. Or the reputation ring proc, if no Omen, and both trinkets are on ICD. Never wait for CTS ICD since the proc rate is low, but if PNL is off ICD, and you have moonfire running, you can wait for its proc before you use starfall. In terms of priority: PNL proc > CTS proc > Omen of Doom > Reputation ring > Nothing for Starfall usage. Don't delay too much.
• Need to move? Sure? No you don't. DO. NOT. MOVE. Get engi and rocket boots the hell out if you get defile. Every second moving is 10-12k damage lost. Else, sprint. You're moving wayyyyy wayyyy wayyyyy to much.

Concerning your UI:

• You have a big screen but 50% of it is covered by your raid frames... Aren't they too big?
• You are tracking Nature's Grace and Omen of doom on the far corner of your screen, your castbar is in the center and your eclipses are middle-top left and middle-top right. And threat is bottom right and DBM timers are middle right and top-left corner. That's a lof ot place to look at...

[Beanlord]

...[*]Never ever use Insect Swarm unless you are forced to move and have already refreshed moonfire. You are using IS wayyyy to often....

If nothing else, especially on such a hard hitting boss like LK, he should be using insect swarm(assuming it's improved and it should be) and keeping it up all the time as it provides a 3% miss debuff to the boss. As far as I'm aware moonkins and hunters(non-marksmanship, idk which spec has scorpid sting) are the only classes that provide that. Not placing the dot might be a personal DPS gain but the miss chance is far more valuable than the small dps increase a certain player will have in a raid.

Edit: Scorpid sting might even be a hunter pet ability. But no hunter uses anything aside from wolf in PvE so my point still stands. Moonkins are pmuch the only ones that can bring that debuff to the table.

[NainVert]

... especially on such a hard hitting boss like LK, he should be using insect swarm(assuming it's improved and it should be) and keeping it up all the time as it provides a 3% miss debuff to the boss ...

His Insect Swarm is glyphed, aka, it does not provide 3% miss chance. And while I agree on the fact that 3% avoidance is overall a good thing, there are absolutely 0 reasons for a tank to die to boss damage, unless said tank makes a mistake (or the healers for that matter). But there, IS is not here to compensate for that. The only moment it was ever needed would have been the phase 1 of LK 25HC on Lordearon before the HP nerf, but the boss could not mathematically be killed before its berserk timer. But that's another story.

TL;DR; tanks are not going to die due to a missing insect swarm. Refresh when you move. Else don't bother.

Concerning the Improved Insect Swarm talent, here are some partial math (5000 SP, 63% Crit chance), but placing IS right upon entering your Solar Eclipse is a DPS loss (you loose a Wrath cast, worth around 12540 damage to place an IS that deals around 9950 damage and increases your next 11wrath (14s IS - 1s from IS GCD - 2s from Wrath travel time) by 2% (you can't take 3/3 there without loosing actual DPS talents), which is 2760 extra damage, resulting in a net loss of around 400 damage... More accurate math will show that the DPS loss is actually bigger than that.

Scorpid sting might even be a hunter pet ability. ...

No, it's a hunter's ability, but MM hunters are using Serpend Sting (sometimes Viper Sting) and should never use anything else.

[Beanlord]

-snip-

Him using Glyph of IS isn't really relevant. He'll be replacing it if he wants to improve his dps at any rate. There being 0 reason(for a tank to die to boss damage) doesn't mean that a mediocre dps/utility class shouldn't provide its utility first and foremost. The personal dps drop of simply not doing IS doesn't justify losing 3% miss chance.

[NainVert]

Him using Glyph of IS isn't really relevant.

It is. The glyph removes the 3% avoidance but increases its damage by 30%. It so happen that the 3% of IS was designed by blizzard in PvP-oriented perspective. Boomies were not providing it in a PvE environment from the Naxx to the ToC patch, at which point the gear becomes good enough for you to stop using the glyph as wall as insect swarm altogether. Miss chance was almost never there to start with, and avoidance tanking is never the way to go (besides Anub 10/25HC and a few fancy achievements), so there is no way to burry your DPS deep down the meters when you are actually very competitive on some fights (such as LK 25/25HC).

PS: I'm a boomie and I'm a prot paladin. And my prot paladin side will never ask my boomie side to have full IS uptime. It will have some uptime, but not full. Who cares. Tanks can't die ;)

[Beanlord]

It is.

Again, if he wants to improve his dps, he'll replace the glyph at any rate. Ergo it's not relevant.

It so happen that the 3% of IS was designed by blizzard in PvP-oriented perspective. Boomies were not providing it in a PvE environment from the Naxx to the ToC patch, at which point the gear becomes good enough for you to stop using the glyph as wall as insect swarm altogether. Miss chance was almost never there to start with, and avoidance tanking is never the way to go (besides Anub 10/25HC and a few fancy achievements), so there is no way to burry your DPS deep down the meters when you are actually very competitive on some fights (such as LK 25/25HC).

I don't know why you seem so sure of blizzard's intentions on how they wanted to develop the game, but whatever. It's besides the point if the 3% miss chance was added later/not used in lower tier content. For LK, the fight that the OP asked about, keeping that extra 3% miss on the boss is good for the tanks and as an extension the raid. The dps loss of keeping it up doesn't justify losing that.

PS: I'm a boomie and I'm a prot paladin. And my prot paladin side will never ask my boomie side to have full IS uptime. It will have some uptime, but not full. Who cares. Tanks can't die ;)

I don't know what kind of content you've been doing all these years, but tanks do die, to a variety of things. Reducing the chances of that is a good thing that any support dps class, such as a moonkin, should care about.

[Firzenn]

doesn't mean that a mediocre dps/utility class shouldn't provide its utility first and foremost.

a DPS gain is still a DPS gain, no matter if it comes from a top DPS spec or a "utility" spec like boomy. Insect Swarm is a net DPS loss as mentionned above (and it wasn't even taking into account the risk of losing NG if you have bad wrath RNG between IS cast, which would be a huge DPS loss if it ever happened).

The personal dps drop of simply not doing IS doesn't justify losing 3% miss chance.

Relying on avoidance for tanking is (as said above) a terrible idea unless it is your last resort (it isn't).
Avoidance is:
-Not predictable by healers besides special cases that don't happen in ICC
-Not predictable by tanks
-RNG dependant on enemies with high damage and slow rate of attack (aka bosses)

You're not giving your tank "3% more survivability" with IS, because it will neither affect your healers if they're doing a decent job (=trying to preheal LK's damage/straight up spamming), nor your tanks

So yeah, the DPS gain does justify losing the % hit chance

[Beanlord]

a DPS gain is still a DPS gain

duh.

Relying on avoidance for tanking is (as said above) a terrible idea unless it is your last resort (it isn't).
Avoidance is:
-Not predictable by healers besides special cases that don't happen in ICC
-Not predictable by tanks
-RNG dependant on enemies with high damage and slow rate of attack (aka bosses)

You're not giving your tank "3% more survivability" with IS, because it will neither affect your healers if they're doing a decent job (=trying to preheal LK's damage/straight up spamming), nor your tanks

So yeah, the DPS gain does justify losing the % hit chance

I never said that I'm relying on avoidance. It's just a non-trivial improvement to a tank's quality of life. Healers doing a decent job isn't an argument. If we assume healers do a decent job you might as well just go full dps gear and gems once you reach the 540 def cap. It doesn't justify the % hit chance drop unless the raid is severely lacking that dps drop which in most cases it isn't.

[Firzenn]

duh.

Yeah, duh, although it needed to be said apparently. Quite condescending..

I never said that I'm relying on avoidance. It's just a non-trivial improvement to a tank's quality of life. Healers doing a decent job isn't an argument. If we assume healers do a decent job you might as well just go full dps gear and gems once you reach the 540 def cap. It doesn't justify the % hit chance drop unless the raid is severely lacking that dps drop which in most cases it isn't.

You are partially right, these things might not actually matter when you're playing with 30% buff, 6k3 average gs and 5 Smournes, but then again, if thats the case, 3% avoidance doesn't matter either so what's your point ?
Just because the boss becomes trivial at a certain level of gear and with the oh so helpful ICC buff doesn't mean that there is not a right and a wrong way to do it.

People actually working on progress runs (like the original poster of this thread who just achieved NM and might soon try his luck in HM) need those little optimizations and the extra-dps against LK HC will actually matter.

And I will repeat myself: 3% avoidance is not even quality-of-life tier, as a healer I'd much rather have my guild push LK faster thanks to extra-dps, rather than have the boss have 3% chance to miss.
The real struggle for progress is mana management on LK hero, not keeping the tanks alive (especially in 30% buff), and nothing helps mana-management more than having your group killing the boss faster

[NainVert]

Well it is true that placing Insect Swarm will reduce the chance of the tank getting 3 hits in a row from 21.6% to 18.5%, that's around a 15% reduction, which is not bad, we do agree.

But:
LK phase 1, you are running from Shadow traps so you'll be placing IS regularly. Well ok, it's not the case on normal difficulty... maybe you do that. I haven't been on that fight in years so who knows what's needed.
LK phase 2, you are better of nuking a Valkyr / 3 Valkyrs + LK than putting an Insect Swarm on the boss, you'll help your tank much more. Besides, you are a class without any ramp-up time so you're best at this job. And in 25man, you're also one of the best cleaver in game, so you'd better cleave hard, as it'll help your tank more by freeing healers faster and by making sure they don't get dropped off the edge. You're also the one providing the 13% magical damage on the Valkyrs if your UH DK is grabbed, so you really don't want do waste time with that IS.
LK phase 3, all healers are spamming the tank like crazy, he's the only one taking damage, he shouldn't die. Better nuke the boss hard to beat the enrage. Besides, you'll be running from side to side so you'll have some IS uptime.

I don't know what kind of content you've been doing all these years, but tanks do die, to a variety of things

Lordearon 25HC, and tanks don't die! Ok, maybe I'm far away from the reality of PU groups. So go for full IS uptime if you don't trust your tanks and healers, else don't.