Figured I'd follow suit and post some thoughts here, seeing as how it's the new thing going on. This will likely update whenever I find something to tweak or add.

UPDATES (mm/dd/yyyy)
--09/16/2009: Neglected this for a little too long ><. Putting immediately previous updates in a light green, updating Tier bonuses with t9, and putting a spoiler tag over the talents section to shrink the size of the post by quite a bit. Also modifying the rotation to include consideration for the new idol from Triumph Emblems.
--08/11/2009: Neato, making new info in a bright yellow for easier to find updates. Added glyph choices with item links and updated rotations section for 3.2.
--08/04/2009: 3.2 info and mostly updated with everything but the basic build, which needs reevaluating.
--08/02/2009: Some editing and added Tier bonuses. I totally did not steal the idea from Herpescorndog.
--07/10/2009: Talents section filled out with current Live build.
--06/25/2009: Added talents information up to Tier 5 and edited the basic build a little. Basic build may still need some tweaking.

Now, for some feathery basics.

http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t41030-moonkin_guide_dummies/

The basic guide that holds mostly true up to now. There are a few changes from the current build (Ash discontinued updating at 3.09), so I’ll be hitting the relevant points below.

1.0) Talent builds

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=5012203125031003213305301030000000000000000000000000000000205003002000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=10026

Above is the basic build that moonkins typically work with, then branch out as needed, by situation, between PvE/PvP, etc. This base build has 10 extra points that you can distribute as you see fit. My current spec is

******http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=5012203125331003213325311231000000000000000000000000000000205003012000000000000000000&glyph=111626000000&version=10192******

This build is something I’ve adapted based off of my gear and stats, and works well for either Solar or Lunar Eclipsing, but doesn't take a whole lot of mana efficiency talents, instead opting for AoE prowess and personal dps benefits.

~~~~~~~~GLYPH CHOICES~~~~~~~~~
Glyph of Insect Swarm
Glyph of Starfire
Glyph of Moonfire

The last two have great synergy with one another and should always be in any raiding moonkin's glyph slots. The first one, however, can be switched for Glyph of Innervate if anything, if you find yourself hurting for mana. Other glyph choices push more towards our AoE spells, such as Glyph of Focus, Glyph of Starfall, Glyph of Monsoon, and to very limited application, Glyph of Hurricane

MANA REGEN HIERARCHY

In order of most mana returns/gains/efficiency:

Omen of Clarity (resto)
Intensity (resto)
Dreamstate (balance)*
Moonglow

(*note, this could potentially top Intensity in high intellect cases, but I have not seen that point reached yet with the gear I'm in, then again I don't spec too much for mana efficiency)

Talents
(click to show spoiler)T(ier) 1

Starlight Wrath - Absolute must in any moonkin build, needs no explanation.

Genesis - It's kind of...eh. Dot damage in end game raids is a good portion of your damage, but nothing to talent for with this one. Although, if you want to put a pt here to move down the tree, it's not a bad choice against Moonglow, just not one I'd pick.

T-2

Moonglow- Reduction in mana cost is nice, but not necessarily needed. I choose this to help mana gains on Wrath crits (1pt here is usually enough). If you find yourself strapped on mana, though, see above about the breakdown of the Moonkin regen talents. It also helps if you happen to see an emergency need to heal, which Genesis wouldn't cover.

Nature's Majesty - Another no-brainer, increased crit chance results in more damage and more Nature's Grace procs, plus mana gains from moonkin form.

Improved Moonfire - I see a lot of moonkins skip this and question why...anyway, increased crit chance here helps with Nature's Grace and mana gains, and the increased damage helps when you increase it's duration with the Starfire glyph.

T-3

Brambles- Has some PvE application but is more or less meant for PvP. If you're good about your treants this is a great talent for you, question would be how many points to put into it. For me, I wouldn't spec with it considering the changes that've been made thus far, and with higher gear.

Nature's Grace- Get it, get it, get it! Incredible talent for us.

Nature's Splendor- This is an amazing talent for just a single talent pt, as it adds an extra dot tick to both Moonfire and Insect Swarm. While this might not sound too great at first, consider that it's extra damage per application of both spells, as well as enabling you to throw out one more nuke per spell rotation.

Nature's Reach - Increased range is nice so that you can engage further away from your target, but this talent gains much use from the reduction in threat. A must for any moonkin really.

T-4

Vengeance- No-brainer, get it.

Celestial Focus - This talent is great. Pushback reduction on Starfire and Hurricane helps a ton with raid-wide AoE damage effects, and the spell haste is fantastic.

T-5

Lunar Guidance- No-brainer, get it as it only gets better with more and more gear. Just don't gear specifically for intellect or you'll give up too much in other stats that are needed (so don't gem for Int either).

Insect Swarm- On its own, it's a decent spell that helps tanks (well, anyone really, but very much so to tanks), however a glyphed IS deals a great deal of damage, plus for 1 point it's a great spell to have in your arsenal.

Improved Insect Swarm- One of the optional talents in the tree, aimed at increasing personal damage. Choose accordingly to what you feel you want to bring to a raid. My personal view is that Eclipse cripples this talent's usefulness, so I'd recommend spending the points elsewhere.

T-6

Dreamstate- One of the mana efficiency talents available to us. Scroll up a bit to see the breakdown of this vs. the other ones available.

Moonfury- Absolutely must get it, no discussion necessary.

Balance of Power- This talent shines for the +hit percentage it gives, and if 3.2 is following through on the change as is, we actually will get a 3/6% hit percentage bonus from this talent instead of 2/4%, in which case we'll be able to effectively drop 2% off our gear, lowering our required hit from gear for raid bosses (and with FF or Misery up from a Shadow Priest) to 8%.

No indication of any hit percentage changes from the patch notes, so I can safely assume 2 things. This talent is still useful regardless for the +hit, and now we'll definitely be taking less damage from spells, be they AoE or otherwise.

T-7

Moonkin Form- No discussion necessary, this IS the reason you either specced or wanted to spec into this tree.

Improved Moonkin Form - And this is an obvious choice following the above. Extra haste to everyone affected by your aura (read: it does give haste to all attacks and spells), and gives a small bump in your spell damage with the spirit component to the talent.

Improved Faerie Fire - Initially this talent was kind of...eh, we could get it, but it wasn't necessary if there was a Shadow Priest around, however now it is definitely worth spending 3 points in, even if there's a Shadow Priest and a Feral druid around. Why? The second portion of the talent: "Increases the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 1/2/3% on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire", meaning that a Feral could apply it and you'd still receive this benefit! So, this allows us to be able to cast it if we need to, or still gain benefit from it if we don't.

T-8

Owlkin Frenzy - This talent works in a funny way, since "damage" doesn't necessarily proc it. I've run into a few places in Ulduar where you engage in combat, yet the talent will proc immediately without having any damage taken (most notably this happens upon entering Thorim's arena). Anyway, putting one point here is definitely worth it (especially with the mana regen buff it'll give with 3.2), but then the question becomes whether it's worth it to spend another 2 in here. It's personal preference really, as putting more points only increases the chance for OF to proc, which will increase the uptime of mana regen and increased damage.

Wrath of Cenarius - No-brainer, this talent only gets better with more gear, and helps even while gearing up to pump out a little more damage with your primary nukes.

T-9

Eclipse - The talent in the tree that makes this spec viable in endgame. Its a near necessity for mana efficiency in endgame or to beef up Wrath, if you prefer to go Solar (Wrath-benefit eclipse). It's a near must to fill this talent, however some builds may choose to only put 2 points into this talent. I'm on the boat for filling it out. Since it is an RNG talent-proc, its a bit tiresome when it DOESN'T proc, which can happen even with 3 points in and going for Lunar (Stafire-benefit eclipse). However, by increasing the chance it'll proc, you also increase the chance you'll have some mana regen, Nature's Grace uptime, and a damage boost for 15 seconds.

Typhoon - I've had some mixed feelings about this talent/spell. It's usefulness is limited (speaking about the knockback) to a few situations, and the mana cost is rather extreme, unless you have an Omen of Clarity proc to use it on, in which case it's a great spell. That said, you'll likely never want to use this on a boss, simply because you'll have greater benefit from casting either Wrath or Starfire than you would with Typhoon. However! In AoE situations you could use this following a hurricane (and piss off your tanks and other AoE) for a massive burst attack, essentially making it a decent AoE execute spell. This spell benefits from a major glyph (reduces the cooldown) and a minor (reduces the mana cost by 8% but doesn't cause knockback).

Force of Nature - One of my personal choices, as it is a cast and somewhat forget spell, if you know how to manage the treants well. With a proper group makeup, you can max out the damage this guys can do, though the timing of casting them becomes key, as well as making sure they won't die right off the bat. The mana cost is fairly insignificant for a spell that can considerably increase your damage by a noticable amount, as long as you cast them in a smart manner. See the Rotations section for some more info.

Gale Winds - One of the optional talents in the tree. This talent makes you an AoE machine with Hurricane hits, which will help clear out trash and make you a significant player in a few fights, such as Kologarn (with the rubble) and Auriaya (when she summons a bunch of adds). It also gives a damage increase to Typhoon and increased range to Cyclone. While this may not sound so great at first, consider that there are a few mobs in Ulduar who can be cycloned, and being able to do so from a further distance may save a healer or a dps when one breaks free. It also prevents the target from taking damage, meaning that no one will be able to apply dots or anything to the target during its duration (so you can cast from further away in order to help another CC to setup their spell, such as a Polymorph or Freezing Trap).

T-10

Earth and Moon - A lovely talent to have at a very cheap cost, this shares the same benefits as Curse of Elements from Warlocks and Ebon Plaguebringer from Unholy Death Knights. Your warlocks will love you for having this, as they won't have to use their Curse slot for a non-damaging curse, and could use Curse of Doom or Agony instead. Again, the minor benefit from the second component of the talent just makes it a little bit sweeter, increasing spell damage per point.

T-11

Starfall - One of my favorite spells now for multiple reasons. The damage it deals is actually not too significant, but when you do cast it on AoE packs you'll see lots (read: TONS) of numbers fly up on your screen per hit/pulse of the spell. It does regular AoE damage and has a special second component: splash damage that can crit. The strange part about the splash damage, though, is that it says "Causes 78 Arcane damage to all other enemies within 5 yards of the enemy target." The thing about this spell is...you cast it and forget about it, and you don't need a target in order to cast it. Through this interpretation, I've thought of it this way (and I'm sure other guides who have taken up more time to look closer at the spell can confirm or deny this to be true) is that per hitting the targets in the effective area, it does splash damage around each enemy hit. In which case, the spell's splash damage multiplies wildly with other enemies nearby!

Not only that, but upon casting this, you should almost immediately see that Nature's Grace will proc, and it's uptime is damn close to 100% while you have Starfall up. This means that you will basically have 20% haste on all your spells for the duration of the spell on trash...SO, popping this immediately before casting a Hurricane results in a fast hitting Hurricane, wildly pumping up our AoE output.

For single targets, this is still a wonderful spell to cast, as it still has the ability to proc Nature's Grace (albeit it'll be far more reliant on your crit chance) and Omen of Clarity.


2.0) Gearing up

As with most casters, you want to become hit capped for whatever situation you encounter. Presently, Moonkins get 7% from talents with Improved Faerie Fire (IFF) and Balance of Power. Of course, the target would have to have IFF on it to benefit, which is really only applicable to bosses.


For level 82s, which includes heroic bosses and most raid trash, you need 6% total hit to never miss with your spells. This means, from your gear alone, you need 2% total hit (4% off of BoP, and you're not tab-targeting mobs just to put up IFF...).

For level 83s, which would be raid bosses, a total of 17% hit is required, so you need 10% from gear. For Alliance Moonkins with Draenei around, this gets dropped to 9%.



**I revoke this view now. It's back to good ol' Spell Power > Haste > Crit > Int > Spirit, of course after you're spell hit capped for whatever situation you face.**

The above (quoted and strikeout) has been pretty much thrown out the window after getting my shot at a lot of the Ulduar gear/raiding conditions, etc. Haste will be, point for point, better for us until somewhere around 400 haste, at which point it evens out a little against crit, but for the most part is marginally better. To give a better idea of what to gear for (and you have some knowledge tanking theory), haste vs crit is very much like dodge vs parry Pre-3.2 (as they've made some adjustments now to put the two more in line), just the mechanics are different (for obvious reasons).

The GCD wall I referred to in the first paragraph in the box above comes into play once you get your Wrath casts below 1sec, which is very possible with Bloodlust/Shadow Crash/Starlight and others going, on top of Nature's Grace. During these times I'd recommend getting Lunar Eclipse up asap, as the damage you'll pump out from the Starfires won't get affected by the GCD wall (or at least, if you manage to get that much haste on it, it gets pretty ridiculous anyway with how fast you're casting Starfires, that Wrath just falls flat against it)

2.1) Tier set bonuses

T7, 2pc - Increases the damage from your Insect Swarm by 10%

It's nice, and while building up your Moonkin it'll be incredible to have on boss fights

T7, 4pc - Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath and Stafire spells by 5%

This is absolutely great as it'll surely help with the frequency of Eclipse procs, which is where you'll derive most of your damage. However, if you have access to the T8 2pc bonus, use that over this.

T8, 2pc - Increases the bonus granted by your Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 15%

Essentially, this gives Starfire an extra 15% crit chance while Lunar is active, or give Wrath 15% extra damage when Solar is up, on top of the standing effects. Thus, Starfire gets a whopping 45% crit chance on Lunar, and Wrath gets a 45% damage bonus on Solar. This is definitely worth breaking T7, 4pc over.

T8, 4pc - Each time your Insect Swarm deals damage, it has a chance to make your next Starfire cast within 10sec instant.

Wow...more RNG. So, the choice on this one is up in the air, but I like using it. When it procs (and there is no internal CD, so you could see it happen multiple times within one Insect Swarm timer), it's absolutely awesome, especially with trinkets going and Lunar Eclipse up. I've actually been lucky enough to have 2 proc during an Eclipse, which bumps up your damage by a noticeable amount. Anyway, you won't be hurting if you're missing it, but do consider it if you get a chance at it. I'll be using it since...well, moonkin dps is risky as hell to begin with it, another wrench thrown at RNG won't hurt...right?!

T9, 2pc - Your Moonfire ability now has a chance for its periodic damage to be critical strikes.

I find this worthwhile to break T8, 4pc over for a number of reasons. A lot of the gear I've been finding from ToC has crit on it...dreadfully high amounts, to the point where the upgrades I'm getting has dropped me below 400 haste (which I'm cringing over, but alas). Plus, the stat bonuses from the tier pieces themselves are worth it over t8.5.

The bonus itself has insane synergy with these, plus the new Idol, Idol of Lunar Fury. This idol has a 70% chance per Moonfire tick to grant 200 crit rating (roughly 4% crit), with no internal cooldown so it can proc multiple times within one moonfire timer. Add this to the Starfire and Moonfire glyphs, plus the talents Improved Moonfire, Vengeance, and Moonfury...you can see where this ends up. Plus the RNG factor here is equal to your crit chance with Moonfire (talents + your crit chance), which is of higher value than the t8 bonus. Take note, the crits from MF ticks will not grant mana gains or the Nature's Grace buff.

T9, 4pc - Increases the damage done by your Starfire and Wrath spells by 4%.

This bonus is incredibly bland and isn't (by itself) worth breaking T8, 2pc over. However, at BiS gear, it should win out over the t8 (so ilvl 258 in every slot, at this point in time).

3.0) Rotations and the logic behind them
-------NEW ROTATION FOR THE POST 3.2 RAIDING WORLD-------
Due to the number of changes (particularly with Eclipse and Innervate) moonkins have, our rotations take even more of a priority system than before, albeit somewhat simpler...sorta. It's hard to explain, but almost every part of your cast "cycles" will be based around whether you have Eclipse up or not. This is the optimal cycle that pays little attention to mana efficiency.

1) Make sure Improved Faerie Fire is up if required.
2) Keep Treants and Starfall off of cooldown at all times, unless a situation for the encounter would otherwise make them far more optimal (timed Bloodlust, AoEing for part of the encounter)
2a) If you have Idol of Lunar Fury, make sure MF is up as often as possible. The buff is so insanely good for Solar Eclipse, but I'll leave it to your discretion as to whether it's worth using a GCD over for during Lunar Eclipse. Personally, it's dependent on the situation: if I have to move, I'll make sure it's up, if not, it depends on the health of the target. I believe I factor in a few other things but can't think of them right now.
3) If one of your Eclipses are up, cast appropriately (Solar = Wrath, Lunar = Starfire)
4) If your Eclipse is near falling off, go ahead and finish your cast (or start up the next one, as long as Eclipse is up). If Eclipse procs off this cast, go back to 3).
5) If 4) does not happen, apply dots, with the order usually being **MF then IS if you haveIdol of Lunar Fury, otherwise do IF first then MF.**
6) Following 5), cast for your Eclipse that's not on cooldown. (Wrath if you just had Solar so you can proc Lunar, and Starfire if you just had Lunar so you can proc Solar).

Through all of this, watch your mana bar carefully. I think the total mana regen from Innervate now is 7870ish. Once you hit a 8k mana deficit, go ahead and weave Innervate in to your rotation and then continue casting. If you want a bit of wiggle room (considering you'll be critting [hopefully] during Innervate's uptime), wait until you're about at a 8.5k - 10k deficit. I wouldn't recommend it, but up to you and how you feel about mana needs and whatnot. With the innervate change it's almost completely eliminated my need to use mana potions (or even consider using them) on pretty much every encounter now.

Solar Eclipse
IFF, IS, MF, SF to Solar Eclipse, Wrath until the end of Solar Eclipse, reapply dots, Starfire until next Solar Eclipse. Try to time treants with Bloodlust if possible, if no shaman then keep them off CD. Keep Starfall off of CD at all times.

This rotation is pretty simple to follow, and with the change to FF you only need to apply once (or not at all if you have a shadow priest that stays alive and a feral druid buddy who keeps up FFF). IS before MF since MF will be closer to the benefit of Starfire…this was true before 3.1 when Lunar Eclipsing, however I’ve kept up this same rotation and don’t see much difference in switching it up. This is decently mana efficient with high amounts of crit, doesn’t benefit heavily off of haste, does more damage, and is less RNG based than Lunar Eclipse.

Lunar Eclipse
IFF, IS, MF, Wrath to Lunar Eclipse, SF until the end of Lunar Eclipse, reapply dots, Starfire until Eclipse CD is up, Wrath for Lunar Eclpse. Try to time treants with Bloodlust if possible, if no shaman then keep them off CD. Keep Starfall off of CD at all times.


Highly mana efficient and relies on haste more than crit (since Lunar Eclipse gives 30% crit to Starfire). Relies on RNG with a 60% chance off of a Wrath crit. This is the rotation I still run, as it is highly mana efficient (which allows for more casts) and fits my itemization well. At lower gear levels, I highly recommend using this rotation.

If you're feeling lucky and have your T8 4pc bonus, you can try keeping IS uptime nearly 100% (basically recast it as soon as you can after it falls off, without cancelling a cast already going), even through an Eclipse. I'm not entirely sure if it'd be worth it all the time (one instance would be if it fell off with 3-4secs left on Lunar, in which case it wouldn't do you a whole lot of good), so I'll be messing with it a bit until I can get a comfortable feel for it.

3.1) Rotations + (situational factors)
AoE – Pop starfall, hurricane, and go wild!
Bloodlust and/or Haste potion– Ignore dots and go for nukes.

4.0) Useful addons I run

Squawk and Awe - The godliest of all mods for moonkins, gives bars for DoT timers, a counter on the number of times you've increased MF's DoT length, and (most importantly) Eclipse Timer with Eclipse Cooldown!

OmniCC - Puts big counters over your spells with CDs, such as Rebirth, Starfall, and Treants

---Below will be some info regarding any and all patches as they hit live or are introduced on the PTRs---

~~~3.2~~~
--Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.

# Balance

* Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.
* Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30-second cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.
* Owlkin Frenzy: Now also restores 2% base mana every 2 seconds for the duration (10 seconds) in addition to its current effects.

Basically everything's the same as the post as I had a little ways down. I do expect that the Balance of Power change won't be properly reflected in the tooltip (regarding the +hit), just going from past experiences in other classes.

Wow I come back to see what is happening and what do I find. Moonkin talk I had this spec for a long time even when it wasn't so popular. Here are my thoughts on the subject.

The second build is interesting. I for one always put the two points in improved MOTW. As far as the rest. I would use the most of the Balance tree. Getting what you can from mana regen is good. Especially if you are a raider. Also the points in Genesis are good because a good chunk of your damage comes from DOTs. Improved Insect Swarm is also a good one because you always have your DOTs up and this just increases the damage from your Wrath spell and the crits on Starfire as well.

Now there are two items I can give or take...

1) Typhoon. This is a handy spell to have in PVP or when you are leveling. It is great when you are fighting mobs for great burst damage and it gives great pushback to your foes when questing. On the flip side it can be very negative too. Very high threat and it is very bad to cast it during a raid for that exact reason.

2) Trents. I have never really been a big fan. It is a nice novelty but I never really used it. It was a nice panic button but, seemed kind of useless to me. I believe I might be in the minority on this point. Again not a really raid helper with this spell.

Anyway that is my two cents on the infamous Boomkin. It is my favorite spec of all that I have played. And for those who remember me I had one of everyone. By the way how are you guys?

You can try to keep selling the thunder chicken till the cows come home, but it doesn't make it anything but a glorified thunder chicken sir.

I personally don't care whether the thunder chicken's dps make it "viable" in pve or even superior to all other dps classes. The thunder chicken is a plague on the WoW landscape and should never be played by anyone at any time!

Oh, and what's up Chrono? lol!

Imp MotW is a near must now, what with the 2% to all stats, especially for raiding. Mana regen at high gear levels (if you can pretty much fit an epic into every slot minus trinkets and have the hit to cover it) are very close to being unnecessary, considering the recent Innervate change (450% of the druid's base mana, nearly tops me out when I'm empty), raid wide mana spring totem (or blessing of wisdom), Replenishment, and the 2% mana returns on crits we get from Moonkin form now. I'll get together a mana-regen spec soon, but it's really up to what the individual moonkin feels is necessary for their playstyle and environment. =)

Genesis is...meh. Filling it out might be nice, but at what cost? I could see putting perhaps 1pt in it if you don't want to put a point in Moonglow, but other than that it's not nearly up to par with a number of the other talents further in the tree. Imp IS, on the other hand, is one of those preference talents. Again, depends on what you want to sacrifice (if I had to choose with my spec, I'd take 2pts from Gale Winds and 1pt from Owlkin Frenzy) in order to obtain higher single target dps - 3% damage to Wrath and 3% crit to Moonfire, as long as those dots are up. The only problem I see with that is the way in which the talent works, requiring there to be your IS or MF on the target. In my experience, I've found my dots running off during Eclipse, which I don't bother to reapply during Eclipse (it'd be a major dps loss and not maxing the buff's benefits), unless I'm required to move. 3% to Wrath is nice, but won't be too noticable, and Starfire gets 30% crit from Lunar Eclipse. Just my thoughts on that.



Point taken, again I tried to make this endgame focused =). However, I can say that this spell is situational and is an awesome burst spell, but is difficult to work into rotations for single target, and acts as an aoe-execute (if timed correctly) for aoe-packs. Plus the knockback is crazy nice for fights like XT.



Treants put out major numbers now. Had 3 crit just tonight, at the same time, of 1.2k each. Their damage is an awesome use of a gcd, as long as you know placement and fight mechanics so that they don't die right off the bat. Especially if you manage to get them up with a Rampage/Leader of the Pack, Unleashed Rage/Abom. Might/ Trueshot Aura, Icy Talons/Windfury, and Bloodlust. Their numbers soar and pump up your dps by a noticable amount.

It's great to hear from you Biggie, saw you login for a little bit earlier, sorry I couldn't chat a bit since we were in the middle of the raid and all. How are things with you?

I don't need to tolerate your mocking anymore Fayld. Only in-game would I might feel a smidgen of interest in putting you in your place =P. And how the hell have you been man?!

---3.2 Tentative changes---

Current notes for the PTR changes, which are subject to change.

--Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.

Thoughts: We get something above 7500 mana with this change (over the 10 secs, previously it was above 15k, and yes I'm terrible with exacts on this). This change is great for us, as we'll be able to use Innervate more often, even in a slightly weaker state.

Talents
--Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.

Thoughts: Just some added protection, difference here meaning we lose avoidance for a flat damage reduction against incoming spells. Arguably a nerf for some, buff for others, though we have this talent anyway for the +hit it provides, PvE-wise.

--Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30 second. cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.

Thoughts: I'm personally excited about this, but this is somewhat of a nerf for starter moonkins who don't have the gear to support the demands of a Solar Eclipse. If by some crazy chance you don't manage to proc it during Lunar's cooldown, at least you can switch back over to Lunar. For higher geared moonkins this change basically evens out my earlier assessment of haste vs crit, putting haste back a bit more ahead. This doesn't mean ignore crit entirely, just means you'll get more benefit from haste when choosing gear. Best thing to do is balance out the two a bit when making gear choices when going for upgrades, more or less. Being able to have Eclipse (Solar or Lunar) up all the time, however, also makes it trickier to reapply dots, so it'll be interesting to see what forms from this. 4pc Tier 8 would demand you to reapply IS whenever Lunar Eclipse is down. Otherwise, it's certainly possible to be able to ignore dots entirely it seems...

Oh, to starter moonkins, you could just forget about Solar Eclipse entirely, even when it procs if having mana issues. Though...considering the next change plus the Innervate change, I'm hardpressed to say to do just this. Will have to wait for live to see.


--Owlkin Frenzy: Now also restores 2% base mana every 2 seconds for the duration (10 seconds) in addition to its current effects.

Thoughts: A grand change to a talent that has varied uses in PvE. I personally spec for it, as random incoming damage will sometimes proc it, resulting in a dps boost for me every so often. For something like Patchwerk, you won't see it at all. The Thorim encounter in Ulduar, however, seems to proc Owlkin Frenzy like crazy, essentially making this great for the arena where you could easily get through the AoE packs and the various mobs there while waiting for the gauntlet team to get to Thorim. Having the mana regen bonus as well is nice, though remember this is off of base mana, so the regen itself isn't scaling with anything, it comes up to something like 300 mana (little bit higher) every 2 seconds I think.

Updated with talents info up to Tier 5 in balance and updated the basic build to reflect the changes that've been made thus far.

Updated with all talents info.

And another update. Changed the haste vs crit view, and added in Tier bonuses.

Another update, with 3.2 related info. I should probably change the text in some way to reflect changes in the guide a bit better...a project for another time though.

Updates!

Neglected this for a little too long ><. Putting immediately previous updates in a light green, updating Tier bonuses with t9, and putting a spoiler tag over the talents section to shrink the size of the post by quite a bit. Also modifying the rotation to include consideration for the new idol from Triumph Emblems.