State of Boomkin

[ghoselle]

Useful links for someone wanting to play a boomkin:
* Elitest Jerks Think Tank - kind of the place to start for getting a handle on all things Boom
* Gray Matter - one of best boomkin bloggers.  Chances are if you have a serious question, he's probably written an analysis with numbers.
* Moonkin Gemming in a handy chart
* http://wow.danomatic.com/thedailydruid/ - basically a site that links to other mostly useful druid articles

Original post:
Currently there is some discussion on 2T9+2T10 vs 4T10 on movement heavy fights.  4T10 is very dependent on standing and nuking to get the benefit.  Personally, I think learning how to manage movement well is a challenge of boomkin dps.  To maximize dps you need to be always casting, and figuring out how you can do that in movement fights can be hard.  Boomkin are probably the ranged dps class most sensitive to being forced to move due to the high reliance of eclipse procs to get maximum dps, since we lose our procs while moving whereas most classes just delay using them.

There has been increasing discussion about possibly skipping IS entirely from rotations, except during movement.  And that at least one boomkin per raid should un-glyph it to provide the 3% miss chance debuff for the boss on progression content, since boomkin lose the least to provide it.

There has been a lot of discussion on how to make boomkin scale better, since we are hitting soft caps on both haste and crit.  The developers have basically said "yes we know that is there" and that they want to fix it.  It is unclear if it will be fixed before the cataclysm.  Ideas for fixes included add a "glyph of wrath" which would double wrath's cast time in exchange for more damage per spell to remove the haste soft cap and allow for better spell queuing on laggy net connections.  Other suggestions included letting our dots crit, swapping the benefit of improved insect swarm so it provided +crit to wrath and +dmg to starfire (since starfire is crit capping) and changing the +haste talent to being +% damage -- though both of these only raise the caps by 3% which is at best a short term fix and not actually a fix for 25-man heroic mode raiders.  There is some hope that the upcoming patch will have something in there for boomkins, but I'm not holding my breath.

[ghoselle]

Interestingly, they posted a change on the PTR that is increasing the damage on Starfall, the 51-point boomkin talent.  The non-obvious part of it is that in addition to the relatively small increase in base damage they also increased the spell's coefficient dramatically meaning it will scale much better with spell power.  Blizzard's comment was that they felt that boomkin had a lackluster 51-point talent so they wanted to improve it.  

Because of this new scaling, math is suggesting that the new "3rd" best-in-slot major glyph will be the [wow]glyph of starfall[/wow], replacing the [wow]glyph of insect swarm[/wow].

Overall, this will be a small boost to boomkin dps.  It will also cause the 3% miss debuff from insect swarm to be generally available without a dps loss to use it.


Edit:
Additionally typhoon got cheaper, and nature's grasp went from 1 charge to 3 charges.  These are both almost purely pvp changes.  Typhoon is to low damage to be worth a GCD except while running when you've already refreshed both dots and both starfall and treants on cooldown.

[AdmiralShardy]

Wait, Starfall is going to have a use besides exploiting terrain irregularities to pull entire dungeons on top of your hapless party?  That's like icing on the cake!

[ghoselle]

Wait, Starfall is going to have a use besides exploiting terrain irregularities to pull entire dungeons on top of your hapless party?  That's like icing on the cake!

Starfall is already very much worth using any time it is off cooldown.  It is already the highest damage ability you can cast with 1 GCD by a good bit -- hence the 90 second (60 glyph'd) cooldown.

And I think I've only pulled the entire first room of ICC once...

[Aviel]

But you still have to look silly when you do it. Yea, I know most of you like the boomkin look. Aviel does not. I really wish I could do all the same stuff and have the same abilities as a nelf or I dunno a cat with a wizard hat.

[ghoselle]

In the next patch, Boomkin glyphing will change.

I'd suggest you read:  http://druidreliquary.blogspot.com/2010/02/starfall.html

I could summarize it, but I think the blogger did a nice concise summary of the decision tree.

[ghoselle]

So with 3.3.3 going live, boomkin will need to decide how they want to glyph.

A relatively nice summary:
http://graymatterwow.blogspot.com/2010/03/if-you-pay-attention-to-moonkin-related.html

Choices are:
Starfall / Moonfire / Starfire
+
  provide the -3% hit debuff
-
 

Starfall / Focus / Insect Swarm
+
  Slightly higher theoretical dps
  only 21 yard radius on starfall makes it more friendly for trash packs
  makes moonfire spam while running slightly more reasonable
-
  need to be within 21 yards of the boss for 10 of every 60 seconds, which is not spread out friendly
  due to range requirements & nature of ICC fights, may require a lot more movement


Me personally, I'll be staying with the Starfire/Moonfire/Starfall glyph set initially.  I think to much of ICC involves needing to be spread out and the lost dps time running in to 20 yards will be problematic.


At the moment, I've swapped to the "1 dot" rotation -- which is basically to only keep the dot up that interacts with the current phase of eclipse.  I still apply both any time I'm moving.  But this is because I've gotten to the point where I have so much haste and crit that the fact that my dots do not scale off of either of these in meaningful ways means that they are only worth it when they are either augmenting/being-augmented by my main nuke, or being used when I couldn't normally cast (aka movement).

[Aviel]

Wait moonfire and insect swarm interact with the phase of the moon you get procced?

[ghoselle]

Wait moonfire and insect swarm interact with the phase of the moon you get procced?

So this rotation is only valid if you are not using T8 or T9 or the ilvl 245 idol.  Its for the folk who have gone to 4T10 and the new idol.  It is also only useful at high gear levels, because before that the dots scale well enough to always be worth keeping up.

For a stand and nuke fight the 1 dot rotation is:  you only cast moonfire during the starfire phase of eclipse, to get the moonfire extended (and in theory get +3% starfire crit from improved insect swarm, but at this gear level you are probably already at 100% crit with starfire during eclipse). And you only cast insect swarm during wrath phase of eclipse assuming you have the improved insect swarm talent which causes your wrath to do 3% extra damage.

If you have to move, you still put both dots up.  It just that during an eclipse an unextended moonfire or an insect swarm that is not providing extra damage to wrath is not a net gain in damage done.  If you are going to get 2-3 starfires off, it is worth casting a moonfire.  Which means if you have a moonfire ticking when you go in to the starfire eclipse, and it ends, it is worth casting another assuming you'll get at least 2 starfires off before the wrath eclipse starts.