The Art of Balance - 4.3.4 Moonkin PVE

Foreword

This was a guide I'd made back in August 2011 for my guild (shout-out to KotH of US - Aman'thul!). Our guild site is now defunct, but I managed to salvage the guide, and since there wasn't a PVE Balance Druid guide mentioned in the sticky thread on Warmane, I thought I'd post it here too.

The guide is copied almost verbatim with some formatting and language corrections. It was started in 4.2, but is up-to-date for 4.3.4. While it's certainly not terribly in-depth and largely doesn't meet my own standards of quality, it more or less fulfills its intended purpose of being an informational and (relatively) concise starting point for someone that's new to the spec. This guide should hopefully impart an adequate understanding of the Balance spec in 4.3.4. I created it mostly out of my passion for the spec. I mained a Moonkin for the entirety of Cata, witnessing with dumbfounded disbelief the power of Wild Mushrooms once they took the cast-time off the spell, QQing when they nerfed the t11 4pc just before Firelands, rejoicing when they buffed Wrath and Starfire to compensate us for that, and later frothing at the mouth with rage at the unbelievable stupidity of the initial t13 4pc design until they finally tacked on the Starsurge buff to it to make it less bad. I was never in anything close to a bleeding-edge guild, but I like to think I had nevertheless honed a deep and thorough understanding of the spec, and I even finished the expansion holding a couple of inconsequential top 60 parses in Dragon Soul 10hc to my name, despite not ever getting my hands on the legendary staff and being (probably) far more undergeared than most other people on the charts.

For players undaunted by even larger walls of text, a much more in-depth resource I'd direct you to, and something I turned to a lot to keep myself informed, would be Eluial's guide back on the official forums, since the guide was itself a compilation of the most relevant and necessary theorycraft work germane to Moonkin PVE purposes. Informative discussions were also had on themoonkinrespository, and on Hamlet's Moonkin guide on EJ. While this guide is not adapted to the present state of affairs on the server, it's very accurate to Blizzard's 4.3.4 patch of Cataclysm.


The Art of Balance

This guide is for you if you’re one of the following:
1) A Moonkin.
2) A raid leader with a Moonkin in your group.
3) You're planning to roll a Moonkin at some point.
4) You're not a Moonkin and are adamantly against ever making one because you think it's not worth it.

Which conveniently covers most people, huh? xD. Anyway, a fair question for most to ask would be why one should roll a Moonkin at all, or what a Moonkin brings to a raid group. To give a quick overview of some of the more salient attributes of a Moonkin that its raid will benefit from, we have the following:

- Solid above average single target dps.
- One of the best sustained AoE and multi-target damaging abilities in the game, which we achieve through an arsenal of Eclipse-powered spells. Wild Mushroom deserves special mention here. Typically, this spell alone is ~40% of your AoE damage spell if you’re unleashing the AoE bonanza in a solar eclipse. As of patch 4.2, Wild Mushroom causes the Earth and Moon debuff on all targets it hits, so all of your and your raid’s subsequent spell AoE after your initial set of shrooms are 8% better, something which previously could only be accomplished with an unholy dk, or an affliction lock.
- An excellent full health rebirth, which we can afford to use most of the time, unlike DKs and feral druid tanks.
- An excellent raid healing cooldown in tranquillity. Timed with Trinkets/Flasks, and Nature’s grace if possible, this is every bit as potent as a druid healer’s tranquillity.
- Tasty 5% spell haste raid buff, which isn’t unique to us, but it’s something that deserves a mention and is of particular consequence in 10 man raids.
- Being a sturdy, very durable dps. With an innate 15% reduction in all damage taken, our defensive cooldown Barkskin, and on-demand self and raid healing, moonkins are very low maintenance indeed (something which can be even further augmented with certain talents).

That said, the spec also some weaknesses. Part of the art of balance is knowing how to work around your weaknesses:

- Low mobility. Moonkins will have to learn to fill dead movement time with DoT refreshing, Wild Mushrooms, and Starsurge procs. You also need to know a fight well so you know where to position yourself so you don't move much.

- Low opening burst DPS. Moonkins just don't have many burst tools available compared to some other classes. Starfall isn't what it used to be. Worse still, Treants are exactly what they used to be. We're more about the sustained damage now. To add to this, most of the time you're going to start a fight at 0 energy, in no Eclipse state (remember how Moonkins would scour the Firelands for critters to Starfire to death just so they could start a fight with 100 Solar energy? Good times). Things like the troll racial and engineering gloves help a lot here, and you should also min-max in ways such as pre-casting Wild Mushrooms. For the most part, it's not THAT much of an issue, except for at Tendons on Spine of Deathwing.

Talent Tree
So let’s get started with the basics - your spec. As a raiding moonkin, there is no cookie-cutter spec set in concrete for you to pick. Instead, there are only a few talents that are imperative, and a lot of your remaining points go into how you feel they will best benefit your raid based on the main encounter(s) holding you back. Mandatory talents are underlined.

Balance Tree
Tier 1 Talents:
Nature’s Grace: Absolutely imperative. This is a big reason why haste is so yummy for boomkins. This has a 1 min internal cooldown, but reaching a new Eclipse State refreshes it.
Starlight Wrath: Lowers cast time significantly of your 2 main nukes. You’d have to have one hell of a brain ****-up to not put points in this.
Nature’s Majesty: Solid dps talent.

Tier 2 Talents:
Genesis: Another solid talent for dps. This plays a huge part in why moonkin multi-dotting is so ridiculously awesome.
Moonglow: This is the weakest mana regen/preservation talent we have. Never take this if you can put points into Dreamstate or Furor. At best, it’s a filler talent.
Balane of Power: This turns spirit into hit rating for us, and 2% more spell damage is nothing to scoff at.

Tier 3 Talents:
Euphoria: Our prime mana regen talent. This also facilitates getting into Eclipse States, thereby minimizing Eclipse downtime, thereofre mazimizing Nature's Grace uptime, and increasing single target DPS as a consequence. Do not pass on this talent, no matter how good on mana you are.
Moonkin Form: Because who doesn’t wanna be a gigantic space chicken with mad /dance skillz??
Typhoon: Highly recommended. For 1 point, you get a spell which is incredibly useful in any fights with adds (which is every fight in FL except Baleroc). The damage component of it is good too. It’s also fun to typhoon the occasional flagged ally you come across somewhere high up.
Shooting Stars: Our dots now get a chance to proc our best nuke as an instant cast spell. TAKE THIS.

Tier 4 Talents:
Owlkin Frenzy: Highly recommended. This procs a lot on fights like Rhyolith. That said, passing on this talent isn’t something that will terribly lower your dps. If you need other talents more, take them. Monitor how much this procs in any given fight and make your own judgement.
Gale Winds: Meh. The 30% damage bonus to typhoon is decent, but if those points can be more useful elsewhere, then put them there. The 30% damage increase to hurricane, on the other hand, isn’t exactly something to swoon over.
Solar Beam: For 1 point, you get to interrupt in moonkin form!! This isn’t something you’ll need for most fights, but it’s a good talent to have nevertheless.

Tier 5 Talents:
Dreamstate: Our best mana regen talent after Euphoria. If you’re not specced into Lunar Shower, you are probably going to need this for any fights where there is excessive dotting.
Force of Nature: Lacklustre, and the treants die easily, but for 1 point it’s a very good talent to have for the damage they put out.
Sunfire: GOD YES. Just ****ing take it. This is half the reason why our AoE is so awesome.
Earth and Moon: You will be wanted in raids for this debuff. The personal dps boost it provides is excellent too.

Tier 6 Talents:
Fungal Growth: Decent utility talent. Provides no dps gain whatsoever, but is helpful if you don’t have a hunter in your group. It also alleviates situations where your mushroom causes you to pull aggro off the tank in 5 mans, because the adds you aggro take longer to get to you xD.
Lunar Shower: Points in this take away your ability to indefinitely solar cleave - which by the way refers to how a Boomkin AoEs while in solar eclipse. There are certainly times when this can be helpful, like when you have to move, but for the most part, the fact that it eats your eclipse energy actually makes it a potential dps loss.

Tier 7 Talent:
Starfall: Alas, what was once a flurry of stars from the heavens that killed everything within 5 miles of the caster and caused splash damage to the moon and back is now something that doesn’t hit for a terribly impressive amount of damage at all, and lost its splash component to boot. That said, this is nothing to criticise. New Starfall, unlike it’s ridiculously OP predecessor, is still something that is very core to our dps rotation, for both AoE and single target purposes. Starfall shards still look pretty in high graphics, that much didn't change.

Feral Tree
Tier 1 Talents:
Feral Swiftness: Situationally useful.
Furor: The main thing in the Feral tree worth considering for a Boomkin. As a mana regen talent, it’s much better than the aforementioned Moonglow. It’s also something that scales with gear. Take this over Moonglow whenever you can.

Restoration Tree
Tier 1 Talents:
Blessing of the Groove: This is only worth considering if you’ve put points in Lunar Shower. If you have, then this alleviates some of the energy eating moonfire spamming causes by netting you more damage from its direct damage. Some Moonkins take this talent anyway for min-max purposes, but it's certainly by no means mandatory.
Natural Shapeshifter: Not itself a fantastic talent. The reason we take is because it’s a necessary prelude to something much better.
Naturalist: Not at all a boomkin talent. Don’t take it unless your healers are absolutely ****. Especially don’t take it if you have the almighty Zerathen in your group.
Heart of the Wild: 6% more intellect? Yes please.

Tier 2 Talents:
Perseverance: If you have points to spare, this is an excellent place to spend them. 6% less spell damage is going to help your healers more than you know, especially when it’s on top of our 15% damage reduction conferred by moonkin form. Most sources of incidental raid damage tends to be spell damage, and that makes this talent very powerful. This is invaluable for progression against most heroic bosses, though technically not mandatory for DPS purposes.
Master Shapeshifter: This is the reason we take Natural Shapeshifter. 4% more spell damage is something you very much want .
Improved Rejuvenation: See ‘Naturalist’ above.


If you don't care to read the talent descriptions above, something like the following will be adequate for most raiding purposes. Adjust the points at your own discretion. Just take note of the mandatory ones in the red boxes.

https://i.gyazo.com/7504016ee59c078d...7711be66a5.png




Glyphs
So that’s it for your spec. Now for the glyphs we use.

Prime Glyphs:
1) Glyph of Moonfire (Absolutely needed). Straight 20% damage buff to Moonfire's periodic damage.
2) Glyph of Insect Swarm (Absolutely needed). Straight 30% damage buff to Insect Swarm.
3) Our 3rd prime glyph spot has 2 candidates. Glyph of wrath (+10% damage to Wrath) is a decent damage boost on single target fights. On fights where a lot of multi dotting/AoE is expected, Glyph of Starsurge (reduces CD of starfall by 5 seconds whenever you use Starsurge) is preferred to increase your net amount of Starfalls used.

Major Glyphs:
1) Glyph of Starfall. Turns Starfall to 1 min cd spell, down from 1.5 mins.
2) Glyph of Rebirth. There is a world of difference between rezzing someone to 20% of full health and rezzing them to 100% of full health. (Remember the night we one-shot ChoGall, when Vandalist died? =p)
3) Your last major glyph isn’t set in stone. If and only if you’re in a fight where you can stay within 20 yards of the boss the whole time, take glyph of focus to min-max Starfall's damage. Otherwise just take whatever you feel suits you best.

Minor Glyphs:
Just take whatever the hell you want. Occasionally you might use Typhoon for damage purposes, in which case it's helpful if you don't knock any adds out of anyone else's aoe, so the Typhoon glyph can be helpful. You wanna swim faster as a ******ed seal, glyph that. Glyph of Dash enhances mobility a tiny bit, but not having the glyph is going to be far from game-breaking.


Stat Priorities
Now that we have Glyphs and Talents out of the way, we'll look at what sort of gear you should be keeping your eyes peeled for, and how you should be reforging it. Let’s break down what your main stats are first.

Stamina
Everyone needs a bit of this, yet it’s nothing that you will be aiming for on gear. Avoid ever gemming for stam, even with a purple gem. Getting hit/spirit purple gems are the better way to go whenever you need a blue socket bonus.

Intellect
Your best stat. This is both a mana-regen and a dps stat. Spellpower, and crit for dps, and the larger mana pool means we not only have more mana to cast spells with, but also higher gains from Innervate and Euphoria. In most situations, you will be gemming flat intellect in most sockets. It’s generally okay to forgo straight int gems for socket bonuses like Haste or more Int.

Taking into account MotW, Leather specialization, and Heart of the Wild,
1 point of intellect = 1.16865 spellpower
1 point of intellect = 17.52975 mana
555 points of intellect = 1% increased spell crit chance

Haste
Haste is just lovely. More haste increases how much you benefit from Nature’s Grace. It also increases the overall uptime of Nature’s Grace due to the fact that you rotate between Eclipses faster (recall that reaching an Eclipse state resets the ICD on Nature's Grace), which in turn grants even more haste. Nature’s Grace also drastically reduces certain haste breakpoint requirements for your dots, so as you can imagine, it's a stat we scale awesomely with. This is something that you will reforge to a lot, but never reforge out of.

128.05 haste rating = 1% increased spell haste. Haste breakpoints are detailed below (you are assumed to be specced 3/3 Genesis, as well as have Moonkin form on). Note that both dots have the same haste breakpoints.

For an 11th dot tick, you need 1423 haste.
For a 12th dot tick, you need 2776 haste, or only 743 with Nature's Grace
For a 13th dot tick, you need 4139 haste, or only 1929 with Nature's Grace
For a 14th dot tick, you need 5486 haste, or only 3101 with Nature's Grace

In the event that you happen to be raiding with an intelligent Warlock and they have the good sense to give you their Dark Intent buff, the haste breakpoints change up a bit.

For a 12th dot tick, you need 2322 haste, or only 349 with Nature's Grace
For a 13th dot tick, you need 3646 haste, or only 1500 with Nature's Grace
For a 14th dot tick, you need 4954 haste, or only 2637 with Nature's Grace


Spirit/Hit
You need to cap this. The only time when reforging out of haste is justified is when you have to cap this, but that should never happen. Also, the 2 stats are pretty much exactly the same for combat purposes. There was a myth widely perpetuated at the start of Cataclysm that Hit rating > Spirit, due to the fact that raw Hit rating provides both melee and spell hit rating, unlike spirit which only provides spell hit rating. It was then thought by some that Treants benefitted from the melee hit rating which raw hit rating gave us. Testing has proven this to be false. Apparently, capping your spell hit caps causes your treants to conveniently be hit and expertise capped.

Mastery
Increases damage output while in Eclipse states. Decent stat. Much better than crit, but slightly below haste in value. In fights where you intend to stay in an eclipse for close to 100% for most of the fight, e.g. Rhyolith Phase 1 or Magmaw, this becomes extremely valuable. That said, this shouldn’t be actively sought over Haste. It is, however, conceivable that certain fights might favor reforging into this. Spine of Deathwing is an example, as well as any other fight with a prolonged Solar Cleaving phase.

179.3 mastery rating = 1 mastery
1 mastery = 2% bonus dmg on Eclipse States

Crit Rating
Increases chance for our spells to crit. Crits do 209% of regular spell damage if you're correctly gemmed, with the exception of Hurricane, Typhoon, and Wild Mushroom, which do 154.5%. Current calculations show that Crit is our worst secondary stat. Unfortunately this is more pervasive on our caster pieces in t12 than we’d like. Always reforge out of this, and never reforge to this.

179.3 crit rating = 1% increased crit chance


All in all. We have,

Intellect >> Spirit/Hit(Until 1742) > Haste > Mastery >>> Crit


Balance single-target DPS rotation

The balance rotation, while not incredibly complex, is one that's neither simple nor intuitive. If you stick to the Wrath method of Casting Spell A in Eclipse A and Spell B in Eclipse B, you are going to do very mediocre dps. With the advent of the new Eclipse mechanic, a lot of our rotation now involves getting the maximum possible from eclipse states. On many fights, it’s also one that requires an immense amount of planning ahead, so a knowledge of the fight you are attempting is essential for every Balance druid. Balance can be an unforgiving spec if played wrongly, so beginners might have it somewhat rough. The learning curve certainly isn't easy!


Spells involved

First, let’s breakdown your main spells, and how you will use them.

Starfire: Use when you’re transitioning from a lunar to solar eclipse. Generates 20 solar energy. Its animation looks especially gorgeous when used on large bosses. It has zero travel time so you get the Eclipse energy right after the spell ends, but there's some server-side Eclipse lag that makes it so that if you queue an instant cast right after a Starfire that procs a Solar Eclipse, the instant-cast won't be buffed by eclipse.

Wrath: Use when you’re transitioning from a solar to lunar eclipse. Generates 13-14 lunar energy. Went from being shiny space cabbages to shiny space pumpkins in 4.3. This spell has a noticeable travel time that can throw you off, especially on bosses like Ragnaros. If you're at 90 Lunar Energy, and you cast a Wrath, you don't get to Lunar Eclipse at the time the spell cast ends. You still have to wait for it to land on the boss, so be mindful of that.

Insect Swarm: Keep this up as best as possible. Does nature damage so is only buffed by Solar Eclipse but not lunar Eclipse. Has the same duration, haste breakpoints, and tick intervals as Moonfire. Does less dot damage, and doesn't have an initial damage component. Insect Swarm is therefore the weaker of your 2 dots. One perk of Insect Swarm you might find useful on occasion is the fact that you don't have to be facing an enemy to cast it. This can be useful when you're casting a nuke on a target and you want to queue a dot immediately after that cast on an enemy behind you that you can't currently fit into your character's view without interrupting the nuke.

Moonfire/Sunfire: Keep these dots up as best as possible. Maintaining a high uptime on Eclipse powered dots will cause a significant increase in DPS. Sunfire is just what your Moonfire button turns into while you're in Solar Eclipse. While the spells are of different schools, they still over-write each other. You can't have Moonfire and Sunfire up simultaneously on the same target. Eclipsed Moonfires and Sunfires are ridiculously powerful and form the cornerstone of your multi-target dps.

Starfall: Use whenever it’s off CD, unless Lunar Eclipse is less than 15 seconds away. Timing this with Lunar Eclipses is a way to maximize DPS for single target purposes. Delay using it if you’re less than 15 seconds from a Lunar Eclipse. While there are a maximum of 20 star shards, the maximum rate at which the shards pelt any target is 1 shard per second, so if you cast it and there's only one target in range, you only get 10 hits out of it. That's why you should align this with add phases, for AoE purposes. Outside of adjusting your distance from a target, you don't really have much control over what the targets the shards hit. This can be a limiting factor some of the time (most notably on Burning Tendons in the Spine of Deathwing encounter).

Starsurge: Our best Nuke. Highest Damage per cast time, as well as highest damage per eclipse energy. You will mostly use this whenever it’s off CD in place of the regular Wrath or Starfire, especially if you’re using Glyph of Starsurge. It’s generally good to delay casting it if you’re less less than 5 or so seconds from an Eclipse, so it goes off Eclipse-powered. Generates either 15 solar or 15 lunar energy, depending on which eclipse you’re headed towards. Our shooting stars talent gives all our dot ticks a 4% chance to reset its CD and proc this as an instant-cast spell, which is utterly amazing. If you cast this while at 0 Eclipse energy and in a neutral state, it will grant 15 solar energy, pushing you towards a Lunar Eclipse. Often when you open on a boss, you want to head for a Solar Eclipse first, so you avoid casting a Starsurge until you've cast at least 1 Starfire.

Wild Mushrooms: Not only do these do insane AoE, but they're also good to place down while moving. It's the best thing to do when you don't have a starsurge proc, especially when they manage to hit more than 1 target. You can also pre-cast 3 Mushrooms under a boss at the start of a fight and then detonate them in Solar Eclipse for some free damage (the Wild Mushroom: Detonate spell is off the GCD). Highly seasoned Boomkins will also place Mushrooms down pre-emptively whenever there is downtime in a fight, so as to cause some extra damage as soon as enemies are attackable again. This is a great use of the spell on transition phases during Ragnaros against his sons of flame, as well as on burning tendon exposures on spine of deathwing, and to a lesser degree even on Warmaster Blackhorn, etc.

Force of Nature: Our dps ‘cooldown’. The treants really just do about the same damage as one eclipsed starfire crit, but cast them whenever they’re off cooldown. Their fragility should be noted. These ****ers die too easily from raid AoE, so don't cast them when you know that something hard-hitting is going to be coming right up. They are expertise/hit-capped if you're spell-hit capped, and their attack power scales from your spell power.

Sometimes, in anticipation, you double hit the Force of Nature hotkey, which causes the spell to turn off, and you end up having to waste some time just to get it back on so you can summon them. There is a macro you can use in place of the Force of Nature spell that will remedy this:

#showtooltip Force of Nature
/cast !Force of Nature



The Eclipse Mechanic
This is the core mechanic of Balance. Eclipse states are states where certain of your spells gain a significant boost to their damage done, to make up for our less than desirable damage output while we’re outside of Eclipse. The trick to Balance DPS is getting the maximum possible benefit out of Eclipse states, and minimizing mistakes that prolong your time spent outside of an Eclipse. Currently, with their level of mastery, most people have a ~50% damage bonus in Eclipse. Following a very standard rotation of dot refreshing and hardcasting the appropriate spell based on your Eclipse currently just puts us in the middle of the pack dps-wise, although you should generally be aiming for much higher. In later patches, when our Mastery increases such that the difference between damage done in eclipse and out of eclipse becomes even more pronounced, following the standard Wrath-esque rotation will likely land you a very low place in dps.

Being that Eclipse-management is the most crucial aspect of Boomkin gameplay, it is strongly recommended that you get an addon (like Balance Power Tracker, linked towards the end of the guide) that lets you move your Eclipse bar to a position that occupies a central-ish position on your screen, such that you are always easily keeping your eyes on it.

Currently, Solar Eclipse benefits the following spells: Wrath, Insect Swarm, Sunfire, Wild Mushrooms, Hurricane, Typhoon, and Starsurge.

Lunar Eclipse on the other hand benefits: Starfire, Moonfire, Starfall and Starsurge.

Basic Balance Rotation

A very rough and simplified sketch of our single-target dps rotation, just so you have an idea of it, is something like the following. This deliberately omits some finer details to make it easier to follow for a new Moonkin, such as Euphoria procs (recall that Euphoria is your talent that gives you a chance to proc double the regular eclipse energy gain with your Wrath or Starfire when outside of an Eclipse). Note that I am starting by heading towards Solar Eclipse first, and that it's not mandatory you do this:

0) Pre-cast 3x Wild Mushrooms at the boss' feet, pre-pot, and take a deep breath

1) Insect Swarm
2) Moonfire
3) Starfire x2 (+40 Solar Energy)
4) Starfall. After 2 Starfires, you have enough procs up that you decide to use Starfall. Since we are heading to Solar Eclipse, we know that Lunar Eclipse is going to be really far away, so we don't want to wait that long to pop Starfall.
5) Starfire x3 (+60 Solar Energy), Proccing Solar Eclipse. We do NOT cast any Starsurges on the way to solar Eclipse. That's because it would've left us at only 95 Solar Energy, so we'd still need to cast 5 uneclipsed Starfires to proc Solar Eclipse.
6) Solar Eclipse Procs.
7) Wrath x1. The reason you queue a Wrath the moment Eclipse procs as opposed to anything else has to do with Eclipse lag, explained above.
8) Insect Swarm
9) Sunfire
10) Detonate Wild Mushrooms (the detonation is off the GCD, but it's being highlighted here anyway)
11) Wrath until Lunar Eclipse, use Starsurge on CD.
12) Upon proccing Lunar Eclipse, refresh Dots, but only if your previous dots have expired or have 1 tick left (Insect Swarm before Moonfire)
13) Starfire until Solar, Starsurge on CD.
14) Upon proccing Solar Eclipse, refresh Dots, but only if your previous dots have expired or have 1 tick left (Insect Swarm before Moonfire)
15) Repeat from step 11.


Repeat this, all the while (mostly) keeping starsurge, starfall and treants on CD. Remember that Starsurge always pushes the Eclipse bar in the direction it's heading towards.

If you find the above confusing, there’s only a few key things you need to take away from it:
- The Moonkin single-target rotation is characterized by constantly casting the appropriate nukes (Wrath, Starfire, and Starsurge) and keeping the Eclipse bar rapidly moving back and forth between Eclipses, so as to make the most out of Nature's Grace uptime. All the while, you also maintain high DoT uptime because of how insanely powerful they are, as well as for the Starsurges they proc you.
- Insect Swarm is always cast before Moonfire on reaching a new Eclipse state, so the more powerful dot, moonfire, benefits from Nature’s Grace. Insect Swarm is used first just to trigger Nature’s Grace.
- Dots are mostly refreshed upon reaching a new Eclipse due to the fact that the previous set of dots will have 1 tick or less left by that time. The exception is when you just reached a Lunar Eclipse, but because you might have refreshed a Solar Eclipse powered IS and SF at the tail end of your Solar Eclipse, you still have 2 Solar-boosted dots running. In this case, you hold off on refreshing dots, the reason being that you don't want to over-write a buffed Insect Swarm dot with a non-buffed one.



Advanced Balance tips: Making the best of an Eclipse State

Here’s an approximation of an actual single-target scenario we might do in a raid, right down to all the nitty-gritty details which we're going to slowly analyze step-by-step so as to understand why we took a certain action at a particular time. As we go along the simulation, I will point out what spells are being used, and what exactly it has to do with maximizing our gains from Eclipse. Note that once again, for the sake of illustrating Eclipse energy changes more clearly, I am going to be omitting Euphoria procs, as well as effects similiar to Euphoria like legendary staff procs. We are also going to start at zero energy, and are going to be heading towards Solar Eclipse first. If you can’t keep up with it, you don’t know boomkin well enough, so hit the Org Dummy =p. The rotation will be something like the following:

0) Pre-cast 3x Wild Mushrooms at the boss' feet, pre-pot, and take a deep breath

1) Insect Swarm, to Proc our 15% haste buff
2) Moonfire. Note that this is being cast AFTER insect swarm. Generally, we want to cast Moonfire after Insect Swarm, so it benefits from Nature’s Grace
3) Starfall. Since we’re heading to solar eclipse anyway, we want to pop this early-ish, since Lunar Eclipse is far enough anyway.
4) Treants. At this point we see that we might have some procs running, so we pop treants. Remember to use these whenever they’re off cooldown for the most part.
5) Starfire x2 (+40 solar energy)
6) OMG!!! Starsurge procced LOL! Should we use it?? The answer is a flat no. When we're heading towards solar eclipse from 0 energy, one thing to remember is that casting Starsurge will not reduce our amount of casts required to get into the eclipse. We would still have to cast starfire 5 times. So save it for the Eclipse state.
7) Starfire x3 (+60 solar energy, Solar Eclipse Activated)
8) OMG ECLIPSE PROCCED LOL. Well done to us. NOW we get closer to using that Starsurge, but not just yet.
9) Cast a Wrath. Due to Eclipse lag, when you end a Starfire cast that lands you in Solar Eclipse, you shouldn't queue a dot or Starsurge proc instantly after. This is why the first thing we'll do once Solar Eclipse procs is we'll cast 1x Wrath. Only after the Wrath will we use the Starsurge proc. That is also when we'll cast Wild Mushroom: Detonate.
10) Insect Swarm. we want to cast this first whenever we hit a new eclipse state, so it procs Nature’s Grace.
11) Once again, we want to follow up Insect Swarm with moonfire. In this case our moonfire will have morphed to sunfire.
12) (Situational) In solar Eclipse, we have 8 casts, of either starsurge or wrath. This means we can cast starsurge/wrath 7 times until we're almost out of eclipse. In the event that circumstances slow our hardcasts, we can refresh Sunfire and IS at the tail end of our Solar Eclipse before we cast the 8th spell that would push us out of it. In this case since we're just DPSing without interruption, we forego this.
13) Hmm, we've reached Lunar Eclipse, but the sunfire and insect swarm from before are still ticking. Should we refresh them right away? Another flat no. The Insect Swarm that is ticking is Eclipse-powered. We do not want to overwrite it with an Insect Swarm that’s not Eclipse-powered. Remember that Insect Swarm does not benefit from Lunar Eclipse. What we should do in this case, is hardcast starfire until those dots are close to falling off, and only then do we refresh our dots.
14) So we’ve managed to cast starfire twice before having to refresh those dots. Do we now cast starfire 3 more times and get out of Lunar Eclipse? A mega-loud no to this. There’s 2 ways to expend your Lunar energy. One, is by hardcasting Starfire 5 times, which costs 100 energy, thus obviously depleting the 100 Lunar Energy we had. Another is by Hardcasting 4 starfires, 1 starsurge, and THEN another starfire. See what we did there?? Casting 4 Starfires and then 1 Starsurge will leave us with 5 lunar energy. This means our next cast of either Starfire/Starsurge will also be eclipse powered. This essentially means we get 6 eclipse-powered hardcasts in a lunar eclipse, instead of just 5. This is why we do our level best to try to fit in at least 1 starsurge every lunar eclipse. This is how you make the best possible of Lunar Eclipse.
15) Hard cast to Solar Eclipse and repeat the rotation.

The whole gimmick to pulling competitive Single-Target DPS is to make the best you can out of each eclipse, which isn't as easy as it might sound. This is something that generally needs quite a bit of practicing. And keep dots eclipsed/nature’s grace buffed as best as you can.


Advanced Notes

- As often as humanly possible, you always want to try to cast 1 Starsurge in Lunar Eclipse. If you cast only Starfires, you only benefit 5 nukes in your Lunar Eclipse phase, but if you squeeze in a Starsurge, it becomes at least 6. This is because 4x Starfires + 1x Starsurge expend only 95 Lunar energy, leaving you with 5 Lunar energy left. Your 5th Starfire cast that takes you out of Lunar Eclipse will therefore also benefit fully from Eclipse. Due to Eclipse lag, if you queue an instant Starsurge proc immediately after this 5th Starfire, that will benefit from Eclipse too, making it so that you casted 7 Eclipsed spells, and essentially squeezed 130 Lunar energy worth of damage out of a budget of only 100 Lunar Energy! Not only that, but as a result you're now also only 70 Lunar energy away from a Solar Eclipse. This is a very ideal scenario.

- As a general rule, if you have Starsurge available, but you're still a couple of casts away from proccing an Eclipse, hold on to that Starsurge to use only when the Eclipse procs, ESPECIALLY when the imminent Eclipse is a Lunar Eclipse.

- If Starfall is up and Lunar Eclipse is more than 15 seconds away, just go ahead and pop it anyway. If you're running glyph of Starsurge for single-target purposes, you'll want to line up Starfall with lunar eclipses.

- Be mindful of travel times and eclipse lag on the server's end. If you cast a Starfire, and you know that Starfire is going to proc Solar Eclipse immediately as the cast ends, there is actually some lag before the server registers the Solar Eclipse being up. As such, you shouldn't immediately queue an Insect Swarm after the Starfire, thinking the IS would go off buffed by the Solar Eclipse. It won't be. Of course, there are ways to exploit this to your advantage. If you have 5 Lunar energy left, have a Shooting Stars proc, and you're casting a Starfire that will take you out of Lunar Eclipse, you can immediately queue a Starsurge proc after that Starfire, and the Starsurge goes off buffed by Lunar Eclipse. Essentially, you can benefit 7 nukes from a Lunar Eclipse instead of only 5 or 6. This also works with Moonfire too.

- Keep that Eclipse bar moving back and forth. If you delay moving it, make sure it's only either to refresh dots, or to apply dots on something else that's a relevant target. How quickly you flit back and forth between eclipses plays a huge part in how much DPS you put out. Effects which facilitate moving from one Eclipse to the next, such as Euphoria, the t12 4p bonus, and the proc from the Legendary Staff are therefore all very powerful.

- You need to pay very close attention when an Eclipse is about to proc. The most common mistakes people make when new to the spec is they keep casting the wrong spell even after Eclipse has already procced, because they weren't prepared for it to proc due to poor Eclipse awareness. When you have 80 or more Solar energy, you KNOW that your next Starfire will proc Solar Eclipse, so you want to queue a Wrath or a Starsurge hardcast (but not a Starsurge PROC - recall that queueing an instant cast immediately as Starfire procs an Eclipse causes it NOT to benefit from the Eclipse) right after. When you have 75 or more Lunar Energy, you know that 2 more Wraths will proc Lunar Eclipse. If the travel time is short, you should queue a Starfire right after the 2nd Wrath, such that by the time the Starfire cast ends, the Wrath will have landed and the Eclipse will have already procced. If the travel time is very long, you can just cast a 3rd Wrath (even if it doesn't move the Eclipse bar) before queuing the Starfire. Sometimes, on bosses like Ragnaros or Sinestra, you might even get to cast a 4th.


Balance Aoe/Solar Cleaving

Balance AoE is currently in an excellent place. While we have to be careful with timing Eclipses (preferably solar eclipse) for AoE phases, if done right, this yields excellent results. As a Moonkin, it's your job in the raid to be an AoE powerhouse and carry everyone's asses. While some specs might burst more than us, our sustained solar-cleaving is mostly unrivaled. How well you execute AoE and multi-target DPS is one of the main measures of a Balance Druid. This is your forte like nothing else, you must learn to fully shine in this area!

Our current AoE rotation involves being gcd locked for the entire duration of the AoE.

Our AoE rotation, in order of casting priority is:
1) Plant and detonate 3x Wild Mushrooms
2) Starfall
3) Sunfire everything that doesn’t already have sunfire on it
4) If everything has Sunfire on it, begin spreading Insect Swarm
5) Typhoon. If this is talented, it does almost the same damage as 1 shroom detonating, so this is worth using for AoE, provided you have it glyphed.
6) Hurricane. This has the lowest priority, and ideally, this should never be used, unless adds have very low HP left.

You always want to keep Wild Mushroom: Detonate and Starfall on cooldown. Our AoE rotation is much the same in Lunar Eclipse, except without Typhoon and Hurricane, as those really aren’t worth using out of any Eclipse. In Lunar Eclipse, however, we miss out on Eclipse-powered mushrooms, so it’s considered the inferior Eclipse state for AoE.

A VERY helpful macro that lets you get all your 3 mushrooms down asap without wasting any GCDs is the following. Use it and replace it with your current Wild Mushroom hotkey. Basically, with this you spam hit your your Wild Mushroom Hotkey and spam click the spot you want the Wild Mushrooms to be.

#showtooltip Wild Mushroom
/cast !Wild Mushroom

Note: Having points in Lunar Shower will seriously impact your sustained AoE, due to the fact that you won’t be able to stay in Eclipse indefinitely. This is the main reason for my denouncement of Lunar Shower. If you want to work around this, you will have to weave in a lot more Insect Swarms between Sunfires/Moonfires to prevent your Eclipse energy from dropping too much.

Apart from AoE, we also have good multi-target damage (the distinction being that for multi-target damage, the enemies might not necessarily all be stacked close to each other), because of the insane strength of our dots. Any time there is a target on your screen whose health it is necessary to decrease, PUT YOUR DOTS ON IT. Sometimes, you get to pull off a Starfall in Lunar Eclipse, such that it's able to hit more than 1 target. This is the most ideal possible use of Starfall, and these instances where you get to exploit its full potential like this are the few niches where "lunar cleaving" can be said to be comparable to the more conventional solar cleaving.


General notes

Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest

The Legendary Staff is particularly nice for Boomkins. It has a chance to proc on all your nukes, all your DoT ticks, Starfall hits, Wild Mushroom explosions, Hurricane ticks, and Typhoon hits. In the case of Hurricane, each channel of the spell has a chance to proc an extra tick on all the targets currently getting hit. In the case of Mushroom explosions and Typhoon hits, it can proc on any of these casts and if it does, all targets get hit too.

Its proc chance is 10-11%, and it has no ICD. When it procs, it just copies an identical version of the spell that procced, that has its own chance to be a hit or a crit. Simplistically speaking, this is therefore about a 10-11% DPS increase over an equivalent ilevel 397 weapon. But WAIT! Because the nukes it procs also grant Eclipse energy, this Staff ends up assisting immensely with transitioning from 1 Eclipse state to the next. On average, moving from 1 Eclipse to the next will end up taking 1 cast less with this staff than it would otherwise. This therefore confers a bonus similiar to a Euphoria proc, and due to the higher Nature's Grace and dot uptime that results from moving between Eclipses quicker, the DPS increase from this staff is going to be a good amount more than just 10-11%


Thorns

The one spell that seems to be equally neglected by druids of all specs. Ever since Cataclysm, this is a spell druids barely use. While it is certainly fair for a resto druid to decide not to use it, due to its mana cost, for Balance druids (and to a larger extent, kitty druids) it’s another decent spell in your grimoire. Not decent enough to be in your standard rotation, but decent enough to put on your bars. At the very least, it’s the closest thing you have to a Misdirect.

Damage-wise, this does up to 30k damage per cast in your average heroic dungeon trash pull. On something like Pre-High Priestess Azil trash in stonecore, it easily contributes 200k. On a fight like Alysrazor, where the tank receives a significant damage buff, it just becomes ridiculously awesome. It shouldn’t matter that the damage from Thorns is showing up as the tank’s damage, rather than your own on recount =p


Innervate

As of 4.2, Innervate now restores friendly targets 5% of their maximum mana over 10 seconds, when cast on a target other than oneself. While this change certainly robbed us of some of our utility, it’s a change that was very justified. For one thing, Boomkins already have an incredible array of utility at their disposal, on top of our above-average dps. For another, Innervate would inevitably become a very potent mana-recharging spell later in the expansion, when healers would have a higher mana pool. Boomkins were doomed to be relegated to mere mana-batteries, but Blizzard stepped in and saved us. That said, this is still a spell worth using on your healers, especially when the total mana restored accumulates to a significant amount over a fight.

What Patch 4.2 didn’t change, on the other hand, is the amount innervate restores when cast on yourself. You still generate 20% of your maximum mana over 10 seconds, or 50% if you have it glyphed. Generally, mana is not an issue for Boomkins in your average single-target, patchwork style fight. It’s when AoE and Multi-dotting come into the picture when you have to start watching your mana. You should never feel guilty about not giving your healers innervate when you can’t afford to. 7-8k more mana to them won’t be as gamebreaking as the DPS of your incredible Eclipse-amped DoTs. Boomkin Multi-dotting is good.


Hurricane

Cataclysm saw this spell getting kicked right the **** out of our AoE rotation. Even when it’s talented, this isn’t a spell you should use often. Its high mana-cost and paltry damage make it something you won’t use for AoE phases, unless adds are close to death and you're just trying to pick them off. One of the few things that this is good for, however, is boomkin kiting. This requires that you have hurricane glyphed, which causes it to slow the movement speed of its victims by 50%. That, coupled with Fungal Growth and glyphed typhoon can make boomkins very viable kiters, although it’s an art that requires some level of finesse in execution. Due to the existence of Frost DKs though, your average Boomkin shouldn’t need to learn about how to kite.


Lunar Shower

What was loved and celebrated by Boomkins all over the world when it made its debut is now shunned aside like a red-haired stepchild. This received a major change with 4.2. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, moonfire/sunfire generates 8 eclipse energy. This change all but rendered this talent a major liability. The extra direct-damage component of moonfire/sunfire is too pathetic to make up for the damage you lose when you get forced out of Eclipse states. With this talent, you basically get to spam moonfire/sunfire 14 times before you’re pushed out of an eclipse.

If you insist on taking it, you can work around the energy eating by weaving in more Insect Swarms in your AoE rotation, to allow Lunar Shower stacks to fall off before you use your stronger DoT again, but that’s still a DPS loss compared to the indefinite Solar Cleaving you can carry out if you’re not specced into Lunar Shower.

The only thing you really lose by not speccing into Lunar Shower is mobile DPS. Without this talent, our sources of mobile-DPS are now pretty much limited to Wild Mushrooms, to some extent Thorns, and whatever Starsurge procs we get. Doing whatever DoT refreshing can be done during Movement periods is another excellent way to minimise the DPS loss you suffer from moving.


Races

If for some inexplicable reason you’re compelled to roll an Ally druid, Worgen are the slightly better choice for DPS, due to the extra 1% crit, and a racial that helps with mobility. While Shadowmeld+Flight form always makes for a nice escape as a night elf druid, Night elves don't have any racials which directly increase DPS.

As for Horde races, while I would love to say that your personal preference based on Aesthetics or other factors should take precedence over any racials, that 20% haste Troll druids have is just incredible. This adds 2-3 more dot ticks of death if you choose to time it with a multi dot phase, and timing this with bloodlust in Lunar Eclipse just makes for ****ing crazy damage. Not only does the 20% haste stack on top of Nature’s Grace, but you also end up saving 2 GCDs from having to refresh DoTs one time less. 20% haste for 10 seconds every 3 minutes and increased damage to beasts just hands down make trolls the best race for Boomkin DPS, although it must be noted that this DPS increase isn’t as impactful as one you’d get from near-flawless execution of our rotation. Personal skill is still a far bigger factor. This is also gamebreaking on Spine of Deathwing, because it's one of your only burst DPS tools in a toolset that isn't exactly heavy on burst.

The beast-slaying racial is also OP on Magmaw, Chimaeron, Beth'tilac (works on most adds and the boss), and Shannox (works on his dogs). Being able to do 5% more damage on something just because it's a Beast is pretty incredible.



Balance Addons

Note: The following will only be a list of AddOns that will help your DPS, and improve your general performance. Standard raid AddOns like DBM, or something of that sort are still mandatory.


Power Auras

This is one fine DPS AddOn. It might be a wee bit iffy to set everything right for your needs, but it's worth all the trouble. You can set it to scream at you when a CD(Starfall/Force of Nature) becomes active, have it tell you when there's something you need to dispel, and alot more.


Balance Power Tracker

Excellent for all balance druids. This predicts what your Eclipse energy will be when the spell you are casting lands, so you know when you'll be close to transitioning out of Eclipse, and when you'll be getting into one. This is utterly invaluable. GET THIS and move the Eclipse bar somewhere in the middle of your screen where it's always in view!


Tidy Plates

These are basically modified nameplates, which you can customize to show you threat, % health left, etc, on a mob. What's awesome is that it also shows your dots on the target above the nameplate, and how long they have got left. This is a lovely AddOn for solar cleaving, as it prevents you from recasting dots on something that already has them ticking on it.