Keftenk

There are very little fights in vanilla 2017 where mana is ever an issue. I'd argue that Hunter is worse DPS than a correctly executed Moonkin.

>tfw you use Demoralizing Shout or Bleed and your raid flips shit for removing higher priority debuffs. Sounds like a good plan.

Mara Pincess, Rotgrip, and Tinker farm is easy and fast money. You can cap out the instance reset this way. Or just farm DMN bugs.

You guys better burn 4 Horsemen like I obsessed about so shit Elysium team changes to a non-vanilla mechanic like they did with AQ!

Papa ridin' my coat tails! Took my spot because I left lol D:

You don't really want to stack INT nor Crit for Starfire. Necessary and needed for sure, but SP is much more relevant to higher DPS. If you manage to OOM, which is difficult in a raid setup that is competent, you use Starfire R1 for mana efficiency. It's actually surprisingly good. Innervate always to your Shadow Priest to increase overall raid DPS. I even Innervated our Warlock's from time to time so they didn't eat a GCD on Life Tap HAHA...

I tried a Wrath/Starfire rotation. Wrath is great on trash. Starfire is great on bosses. Wrath is far more mana consuming too than Starfire. With that said there might be room to build a Wrath damage rotation. I quit playing during AQ40 PTR. Wrath will require a completely different gear setup than Starfire DPS though.

Moonkin doesn't scale better than Fire Mage, mainly due to Scorch. But yes, talents is the largest downfall to Moonkin more than anything. When you compare Moonkin to Fire Mage, not only do they have some awesome trinket and Tier set bonuses, but they have hit talents that allow them to prioritize more DPS stats on their gear. Where as a Moonkin you have to risk it to be competitive because gear is the only place you can receive hit from. Warlock is very similar as well, not to mention all of the insane shadow% increases they get from themselves as well as Shadow Priest's. Admittingly most of Moonkins negative stigma comes from old vanilla. I tried to change that and then Nost crapped out and I ended up deciding to focus on real life. rip the dream. Elysium mechanics slowly became a joke too when I tried to move over. Working on the project probably didn't do me any good to come to that conclusion. I still believe someone can prove my original theories on Moonkin, but it requires a high-notched guild. The faster the kills, the better your DPS will be, the better your Crit Aura becomes, and the less need to worry about mana issues. Which right there is why people don't even want to consider Moonkin because they aren't in a top tier guild. To note on Insect Swarm since it was brought up. Even if Moonkin could cast it, you wouldn't waste a debuff slot on it. Moonfire is superior. To note on Wrath. Even though it doesn't receive the damage modifier from a curse like all the other spell schools, Nature Resistance on monsters in vanilla is naturally capped lower except on a select few. Thunderfury lowers that cap even greater. Wrath spam is a very real thing. It won't out damage Fire or Shadow though.

Do some searches in this forum.

I'd have to honestly dig for my sources again. The Elysium team should have all my documentation before I left the team though, but seeing as how C'Thun wasn't even the pre-nerfed version. I highly doubt they even looked at class mechanics. Though...Staden is still around, so what do I know. The easiest way to get 1.12.1 sources for this kind of thing is to break open Theorycraft from back in the day. You should still be able to find it and download the version before the Pre-TBC patch.

I wouldn't be surprised if anything was working on Elysium. The staff is a far cry from the Nost team. Elysium is more fun-server than anything. So, my suggestion would be not to worry about coefficients and just abuse and exploit Pummeler with +weapon enchants if you want to make Feral Druid work.

What the shit... Who the hell do I spam about my dragons not working now? Rahhhh!! Nano, you were my other half. What the hell, man?

Funny how I'm the one who reported it. Get rekt', Coalition XD This is what you get for not giving me a Crystal Adorned Crown!!

Slayde, Ret will work... ...using Holy gear and running Sanctity for the Smite Priest

This guild isn't even recruiting Balance Druid; trash guild. If you want to play with top tier players, apply to NaCL!

All these people with misconceptions about Balance spec. *triggered*

I think we're all aware you were carried when you're touting that spec.

*head explodes* It wasn't an insult. You shouldn't have brought it up while trying to defend Healing Touch. It shouldn't have even been mentioned. Healing Touch is still in a Regrowth Druid's tool-box, but as the only heal, it simply doesn't keep up with every other classes in a competitive situation. I'll agree with you though. It boggles my mind why anyone still runs Moonglow, let alone, 8/8 T3 lel. When you're already running over 10k mana in BWL it makes me wonder what people are actually doing with their mana pools that they need to utilize Moonglow.

I swear this guy is a troll or just someone really stuck in the past. Regrowth may not be an efficient heal when it comes to mana, but it's far better to use over Healing Touch in a game where "knowledge is power". Regrowth spec worked perfectly fine in AQ on Nost. It's easy to justify Regrowth when AQ40 fights don't even last 100 seconds. The only exception I was seeing was that I may have had to adjust for C'Thun due to the nature of a longer fight and the fact that Nost was releasing it as pre-nerf. It worries me that you ran 8/8 T3. Completely voided everything you said up to and after that point.

Alright, aside from miss labeling it. Does anyone have the old EJ sources that correct what Blizzard has on their official site?

Since I won't be playing on Nostalrius PvP going forward I'm going to dump most of everything that I researched and developed here. You can find most of this back on the Nost forums (http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=36638 and http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=36334) as well. Do not take what I have to say with 100% certainty that it is correct. The tests and validations which I completed weren't completely optimal, especially with everything in Patch 1.9 and onward. It's all speculative after that point. However I did get a fair amount of testing in a high-tempo raid setting with Coalition. I'm fairly certain everything up to 1.8 is more or less accurate. If someone wants to put together a more appropriate thread that can be stickied. Feel free to do so, just give credit where credit is due. Additionally, please note that DPSing with Starfire vs Wrath is a completely different mode of play. I never developed Wrath DPS too far, but just from initial tests I could clearly see that you wouldn't want to optimize your gear the same way you do for Starfire. With that said though I think it'd probably be hard to justify Wrath over Starfire due to the lack of damage modifiers for Nature in vanilla. Before Nostalrius died I was working on a spreadsheet which would give a "sweet spot" between the benefits of SP and Crit. Essentially, I was trying to find a marker as to when Crit started to diminish on its returns. This was never completed for obvious reasons. However, through this research it has led me to believe that Crit isn't the "staple" stat which everyone thinks Moonkin needs to stack. I don't have this spreadsheet anymore but I did find an old image of the initial workings of it on my imgur (http://i.imgur.com/ybicWej.png) The thing about Moonkin is that it seems no one actually talks about (or maybe they haven't figured out) is that Crit only becomes exponentially better with SP. It needs to scale. You can't just dump a bunch of Crit onto your gear with no SP. I'd argue that Spell Hit needs to come first over Spell Damage, but you shouldn't ever be aiming for 16%. A threshold should be met first or at least obtaining a number as close as possible. Then you start prioritizing Spell Damage. The reality is you can go with 0% spell hit through most of the game while just purely stacking spell damage. A risk no doubt. The correct stat priority should be: Hit > SP > Crit > Int > M5 > Spi Ideally ~9% spell hit should be suffice, but this really depends on how long the fights are. The longer the fights the better Spell Hit becomes, but as Balance spec we want shorter fights as we are a true-blue burst class* with Starfire. Spell Hit becomes much more valuable in longer fights. I used to operate in a top guild so our fights were immensely faster than most guilds and because of that I evaluate the need for Spell Hit accordingly. On average I target for a 70-second fight (Blackwing Lair), which is roughly 23 Starfires. So 9% spell hit would theoretically result in only 1 resist, but 8% would result in 2 resists. TARGET THEORY: - Starfire 3.0sec with talent - Starfire 2.5sec after crit with talent - 70sec target fight duration - 23 Starfire's - 9% spell hit target = 1.84 resists It's probably worth noting that Moonkin isn't ideal in a raid setting because X, Y, Z class out DPS's it. However, if you're going to be viewing raiding in such a way then your raid really should just be class stacking. So, for optimal caster DPS you'd want 1 Shadow Priest and say 9 Warlocks. No Mages, no Moonkins, nothing else. Obviously this would change with Fire Mage being cycled in, but let's just keep it in the current content for now. Raiding generally isn't like this though. It's also worth noting that to be useful you need to consider your role as a DPSer and what the Crit Aura brings to the party you're in. That Crit Aura actually scales differently for yourself, Mages, and Warlocks and that's essentially "added DPS" to YOUR DPS total. It's a way to value the actual aura itself. This also means there is an established DPS threshold that you must meet in order to be more useful than a DPS that could come in and replace you. Initial testings can be viewed here: http://i.imgur.com/5pjfPGD.jpg You can actually look at Innervate the same way. For instance, when I Innervate our Shadow Priest in our raid he will do roughly ~80 DPS more on Nefarian opposed to not having it. It MUST be understood that you're a support-DPS class that does bring a lot more than what people actually think. Is it worth while though? I wish I had the gear to try and prove it. Unlike the actual Moonkins on our server I can only speculate and crunch numbers :\ I'll share what I've researched and documented through my findings for BiS 1.8. Patch 1.8 BiS Gear (9% spell hit) ----------------------------------------------------------- Weapon: Lok'amir il Romathis Off-Hand: Tome of Arcane Domination Head: Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer Neck: Choker of the Fire Lord Shoulders: Mantle of the Blackwing Cabal Chest: Bloodvine Vest Back: Cloak of Consumption Wrists: Bracers of Arcane Accuracy Hands: Bloodtinged Gloves Waist: Firemaw's Clutch Legs: Bloodvine Leggings Feet: Bloodvine Boots Ring 1: Ring of Spell Power Ring 2: Ring of Spell Power Trinket 1: Neltharion's Tear Trinket 2: Briarwood Reed* *: Interchange it with Talisman of Ephermal Power. All the spell hit gear in the current and upcoming patches: Patch 1.8 Spell Hit Gear ------------------------------------------- Jin'do's Judgement 2% Jin'do's Bag of Whammies 1% Bloodvine Goggles 2% Soul Corrupter's Neckalce 1% Abyssal Cloth Amice of Sorcery 1% Bloodvine Vest 2% Cloak of Consumption 1% Bracers of Arcane Accuracy 1% Bloodtinged Gloves 1% Angelista's Grasp 2% Bloodvine Leggings 1% Ringo's Blizzard Boots 1% Bloodvine Boots 1% Band of Forced Concentration 1% Zanzils Band 1% (+3% with set) Zanzil's Seal 1% (+3% with set) Neltharion's Tear 2% Patch 1.9 Spell Hit Gear ------------------------------------------- Blessed Qiraji Acolyte Staff 2% Staff of the Ruins 1% Royal Scepter of Vek'lor 1% Garb of Royal Ascension 2% Cloak of the Devoured 1% Rockfury Bracers 1% Dark Storm Gauntlets 1% Ring of the Fallen God 1% Patch 1.10 Spell Hit Gear ------------------------------------------- Lord Valthalak's Staff of Command 1% Scepter of Interminable Focus 1% Spellweaver's Turban 1% Star of Mystaria 1% Diana's Pearl Necklace 1% Shroud of Arcane Mastery 1% Ban'thok Sash 1% Clutch of Andros 1% Kayser's Boots of Precision 1% Rune Band of Wizardry 1% Patch 1.11 Spell Hit Gear ------------------------------------------- Brimstone Staff 2% Sapphiron's Left Eye 1% Cloak of the Necropolis 1% Seal of the Damned 1% I've been doing on going tests with Starfire and trying to get a proper stat weight for Balance. I'm not sure if this is the right way to even get them, but I collected a bunch of random green gear which had single stat values on them and went out testing. This is what I've recorded so far, but its frustrating collecting this data and then trying to predict what a certain piece of gear that has, in this instance, INT and SP on it. Only to see the prediction fall short of the actual number SW Stats cranks out. Read the following data as follows: Stat Value = SW Stats DPS increase from base standard test (averages) = DPS breakdown divided by the total Stat Value which was used. 1 int = .03dps = .03dps 2 int = .05dps = .025dps 3 int = .08dps = .0266666666666667dps 4 int = .11dps = .0275dps 5 int = .14dps = .028dps 6 int = .17dps = .0283333333333333dps 7 int = .20dps = .0285714285714286dps 8 int = .23dps = .02875dps 9 int = .26dps = .0288888888888889dps 10 int = .29dps = .029dps 11 int = .32dps = .0290909090909091dps 12 int = .35dps = .0291666666666667dps 13 int = .38dps = .0292307692307692dps 14 int = .4dps = .0285714285714286dps 15 int = .43dps = .0286666666666667dps 16 int = .46dps = .02875dps 17 int = .49dps = .0288235294117647dps 18 int = .52dps = .0288888888888889dps 19 int = .55dps = .0289473684210526 20 int = .58dps = .029dps 1 sp = .29dps = .29dps 2 sp = .59dps = .295dps 3 sp = .89dps = .2966666666666667dps 4 sp = 1.18dps = .295dps 5 sp = 1.48dps = .296dps 6 sp = 1.78dps = .2966666666666667dps 7 sp = 2.07dps = .2957142857142857dps 8 sp = 2.37dps = .29625dps 9 sp = 2.67dps = .2966666666666667dps 10 sp = 2.96dps = .296dps 11 sp = 3.26dps = .2963636363636364dps 12 sp = 3.56dps = .2966666666666667dps 13 sp = 3.85dps = .2961538461538462dps 14 sp = 4.15dps = .2964285714285714dps 15 sp = 4.45dps = .2966666666666667dps 16 sp = 4.75dps = .296875dps 17 sp = 5.04dps = .2964705882352941dps 18 sp = 5.34dps = .2966666666666667dps 19 sp = 5.64dps = .2968421052631579dps 20 sp = 5.93dps = .2965dps Multiple Stat Test 1: 7 int 20 Sp Prediction: 166.57dps Actual: 166.58dps Multiple Stat Test 2: 18 int 14 sp Prediction: 165.11dps Actual: 165.13dps Multiple Stat Test 3: 100 int 0 sp Prediction: 163.34 Actual: 163.36dps * 100 int = .292dps = .0292dps Below is complete theory with NO TESTS conducted: Starfire R6 + Moonglow R3 baseDPS = 160.44dps 1m/5 = .1121958041958042dps Hit trials. The only way I'll be able to test 13-16% is if I acquire more gear. Unfortunately ZG doesn't seem to ever drop the Gloves, Cloak, or other Zanzil ring, rip. We may not need that data anyways. Here are those results: 1 hit = 1.94dps = 1.94dps 2 hit = 3.89dps = 1.945dps 3 hit = 5.83dps = 1.943333333333333dps 4 hit = 7.78dps = 1.945dps 5 hit = 9.73dps = 1.946dps 6 hit = 11.68dps = 1.946666666666667dps 7 hit = 13.62dps = 1.945714285714286dps 8 hit = 15.57dps = 1.94625dps 9 hit = 17.52dps = 1.946666666666667dps 10 hit = 19.47dps = 1.947dps 11 hit = 21.42dps = 1.947272727272727dps 12 hit = 23.37dps = 1.9475dps 13 hit = ?dps = ?dps 14 hit = ?dps = ?dps 15 hit = ?dps = ?dps 16 hit = ?dps = ?dps Again, numbers were acquired under the assumption that the above INT and SP values are CORRECT. So, if they aren't correct then this makes these tests completely invalid. Bloodvine Vest Test 1: 13 int 27 Sp 2% hit Prediction: 172.72dps Actual: 172.95dps Bloodvine Leggings Test 1: 6 int 37 Sp 1% hit Prediction: 173.52dps Actual: 173.69dps Something seems a bit off. The discrepancy gets larger than expected with every test I do. It has to be some sort of scaling with Hit:SP. I'm assuming Crit will react the same. This might warrant even further testing with gear that is strictly just Hit and strictly just SP. Does such gear even exist? I can use items like Soul Corrupter's Neckalce, but that has INT on it.. It could be just a small margin, but I'm worried when say, I pop a Flask of Supreme Power and then 1 Hit acts completely different than what I've tested. Or it might not, who knows haha... Also, how does this all react to things like Power Infusion and Nightfall, etc. Is it just a straight % increase? Aghhh!! Quite frustrating results. A brief note on the M/5 stat weight. I did not do any testing on it. I just theorized 1mana every 5 seconds coming back on a Rank6 Starfire under Moonglow R3 and converted it into potential DPS increases (assuming you ran out of mana). When Rank7 comes out, this value will decrease to .1038446601941748dps. If that is even accurate. It would be completely different for Wrath and even the inclusion of Moonfire in a rotation (if your guild would even allow it). It needs to be understood that M/5 and SPI are only "dps increases" if and only if you run out of mana. Otherwise the stats are useless and don't contribute to an actual DPS increase. I'm actually just going to submit my Crit findings now. They're incomplete as of now... 1 crit = 1.75dps = 1.75dps 2 crit = 3.51dps = 1.755dps 3 crit = 5.27dps = 1.756666666666667dps 4 crit = 7.04dps = 1.76dps 5 crit = 8.81dps = 1.762dps 6 crit = 10.59dps = 1.765dps 7 crit = 12.37dps = 1.767142857142857dps 8 crit = ?dps = ?dps 9 crit = ?dps = ?dps 10 crit = ?dps = ?dps 11 crit = ?dps = ?dps 12 crit = ?dps = ?dps 13 crit = ?dps = ?dps 14 crit = ?dps = ?dps 15 crit = ?dps = ?dps 16 crit = ?dps = ?dps 17 crit = ?dps = ?dps 18 crit = ?dps = ?dps 19 crit = ?dps = ?dps 20 crit = ?dps = ?dps - Tests were done with 0 SP. - Any tests that were done with >0 SP were then subtracted from previous test results. - A scaling issue was determined with Hit AND Crit. It was documented when testing various gear checks. - Even INT has a different scaling mechanism, but it's incredibly small compared to the Hit/Crit scaling. Patch 1.8 BiS Gear (9% spell hit) ------------------------------------------- Lok'amir il Romathis Tome of Arcane Domination Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer Choker of the Fire Lord Mantle of the Blackwing Cabal Bloodvine Vest Cloak of Consumption Bracers of Arcane Accuracy Bloodtinged Gloves Firemaw's Clutch Bloodvine Leggings Bloodvine Boots Ring of Spell Power Ring of Spell Power Neltharion's Tear Briarwood Reed PURELY-SPECULATIVE STARFIRE BIS Patch 1.9 BiS Gear (836sp 417int 37%crit 11%hit) ------------------------------------------- Lok'amir il Romathis Royal Scepter of Vek'lor Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer Amulet of Vek'nilash Mantle of the Blackwing Cabal Bloodvine Vest Cloak of the Devoured Rockfury Bracers Dark Storm Gauntlets Eyestalk Waist Cord Bloodvine Leggings Bloodvine Boots Ring of the Fallen God Ritssyn's Ring of Chaos Neltharion's Tear Briarwood Reed Patch 1.10 BiS Gear (836sp 417int 37%crit 11%hit) ------------------------------------------- Lok'amir il Romathis Royal Scepter of Vek'lor Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer Amulet of Vek'nilash Mantle of the Blackwing Cabal Bloodvine Vest Cloak of the Devoured Rockfury Bracers Dark Storm Gauntlets Eyestalk Waist Cord Bloodvine Leggings Bloodvine Boots Ring of the Fallen God Ritssyn's Ring of Chaos Neltharion's Tear Briarwood Reed Patch 1.11 BiS Gear (933sp ---int --%crit 9%hit) ------------------------------------------- Brimstone Staff Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer Gem of Trapped Innocents Rime Covered Mantle Crystal Webbed Robe Cloak of the Necropolis Rockfury Bracers Dark Storm Gauntlets Eyestalk Waist Cord Leggings of Polarity Boots of Epiphany Ring of the Fallen God Band of the Inevitable Neltharion's Tear The Restrained Essence of Sapphiron Thoughts about Spell Penetration (source: http://vanillagaming.org/forum/index.php?topic=16983.0)

I'll come back to this thread when I have time on Friday or the weekend.

Should be interesting to see how fast Grizzly gets themselves banned. Then cries and leaves the server...again.

This guy clearly doesn't look at any of the media content or future project releases that the project creators have talked about.

I'm assuming this was server first on Nost PvE? What guild was that out of curiosity.