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Comment by Hyde

How embarasing is it to get moonfire spammed to death? If your specced balance and you have to chase someone.. usually thats what happens. Can't stop to cast roots, can't travel form to catch up.

Comment by 35857

Wow... I love this spell coupled with Starfire against rogues... This + Fairy Fire + Starfire Spam = No chance. All in all I love to spam this spell against flag carriers! Lol.

Comment by Foxpaw

lol, boomkins. lol, lazers from space.

This spell is the reason why when I see a moonkin in a BG, I will FARM kills off of it.

Comment by 69592

Moonfire spam is mana-inefficient and a poor way to deal damage. It's only advantage is in its speed. Imo, you should either Roots+Starfire, or Wrath+Moonfire if you're Balance-specced.

Comment by 72366

Basics of this Talent for new Druids:

-A simple damage spell used most often used after the initial cast.
-Very mana hungry, use only to assist your total output, not as a primary source. I is very helpful in burning down runners.
-Has a DoT (dmg/time) effect that will start three (3) seconds after the target has been effected.
-At higher levels, this spell should be downgraded if you decide to spam it. This will allow the DoT aspect to continue while the instant damage will be in place.

Comment by frmorrison

This is a mana intensive spell, but with talents (10% more crit), it gives you a good chance to proc Nature's Grace (0.5 off your casting time), which helps you cast Starfire.

It is also the only direct damage spell casting druids have, so it is infamous for being spammed by soon to be OOM druids.

Comment by 21328

Moonfire Spam is imba. Don't forget the best druid spell ;)

(just joking. Wrath spam it's much better for burst dmg)

Comment by 132335

Really to be honest this spell takes up mana and its just really really Noobish spell to cast.

Comment by 156400

balanced durids are for moonfare spam!

Comment by 218473

TIP:spamming this ability over and over again is NOT advisable in PvP

Comment by 152722

Moonfare is fore fite!

Comment by Teradon

For leveling, I'd say it's completely useless. (Burns mana ..)
As a Tauron, I'd rather melee fight - even as a Moomkin!

Comment by 124694

Talents which can affect the damage of this spell (directly, not counting improvements to spell power, e.g. Lunar Guidance):
Genesis - dot portion of damage increased by 5% :: 5 points (very marginal, most balance druids will skip this talent as it is very underbudgeted for damage)
Improved Moonfire - 10% increased critical strike chance :: 2 points
Nature's Splendor - 3 second increase of dot portion :: 1 point (not counting prerequisite
Vengeance - crits cause 200% base instead of 150% base damage :: 5 points
Moonfury - flat 10% damage increase :: 3 points
Moonkin Aura - 5% increased chance to crit :: 1 point
Earth and Moon - Flat 13% increase damage :: 3 points (although 2 may be passable).

The question: to glyph or not to glyph?
Glyph of Moonfire

Increases the periodic damage of your Moonfire ability by 75%, but initial damage is decreased by 90%.

Base damage calculations:
441 average initial damage - 36%
800 dot damage ---------------- 64%
1241 total average damage

However, the initial damage can cause a critical strike for double damage (talented). Additionally, the Nature's Splendor talent adds 3 seconds, which is 1 tick, an additional 200 damage.

Adjusted damage calculations (assume 25% crit)
441 * 1.25 = 551 initial - 36%
1000 dot damage ------- 64%
1551 total average damage
Unchanged. More critical strike will tip the scales toward the initial damage.

Applying the glyph, the damage calculations are as follows:
55.1 inital damage
1750 dot damage
1800 average damage, a 16% increase.
Considering that the dot portion already receives a higher % of the spell damage, a druid would have to approach very near a 100% critical strike chance to make this glyph anything but a solid dps increase.

This lends strong credibility to a different playstyle. That is, glyphing for Moonfire and Starfire and attempting to keep the moonfire dot up as much as possible. The major problem with this is the Eclipse talent, which I believe has been theory crafted to be a non-trivial damage increase, even if lost casts and latency are taken into account.

If the goal of the druid becomes to spend as much time on starfire and 100% moonfire uptime (i.e. using both glyphs), then said druid can essentially ignore the Eclipse talent. This opens up the following spec: 55/0/16.

I believe that the combination of Eclipse, Nature's Grace, and innate high Druid crit chance will make the power of Moonfire -> Eclipse (wrath, granting 30% starfire crit) -> Nature's Grace'd starfires too good to ignore.

I would love to hear counter-arguments.

Comment by 63558

The way your thinking is still the BC bias about wrath it sounds like. wrath is better dps from what i tested on the dumbies in org. the glyphs i use are Insect Swarm, Moonfire, and innervate glyphs. From what i have been able to see i start off the fight spamming starfire till i can get my eclipse to proc and swich over to wrath for the duration of the buff. While im doing this i keep up IS&MF best i can. After eclipse wears out though i continue to spam wrath untill ecplise proc's again and i continue to repeat this.

Please take into account that you will need to have some mana giving class (like ret pallies, shadow priests) as this uses up a lot more mana then the starfire spam spec. The reasons i think this is a better dps spec is because nature's grace is a static .5 faster casting no matter how fast the cast. so taking .5 off a 1.5 cast is a one third drop in casting time. Where as that same amount for starfire from 3.0 to 2.5 is only a one sixth drop. Throw in the fact blizz spesificly put in the fact nature's grace lowers wrath's GCD by 50% and thats how u make this a viable spec.

The only problem is I now can basicly only stack crit.

Also if its not a fight with a huge amount of aoe dmg i'll low in the treants along with starfall.

If you wish to debate (Moondude lvl 80 tauren) (server-Mok Nathal)

Edit: Marked down the above post because you didnt spec into imp moonfire. if you test the talent you actually find out it increases your DOT dmg which is pretty much what your trying to push in your post.

Edit2: Went back to test the dps on test dumbies.
my current stats are. Spell Dmg=1882 Hit chance=8.2%(not including talents) Crit chance=26.65% (In moonkin form, no other talents calculated in.) Haste=6.01%

I spammed spells untill i went oom. DPS was ~2.7k
Count Wrath casted 50times Starfire casted 11 times Insect swarm(dot tick) 59 times
Moonfire(dot) 39 times Moonfire initial dmg 10 times

Wrath Crit 38% of time Top hit=8233 Avg. 6084
Hit 62% of time Top hit=4190 Avg. 3121
Starfire Crit 45.5% of Time Top hit=9138 Avg. 9032
Hit 54.5% of Time Top hit=4561 Avg. 4497
Moonfire(dot) Top hit=1231 Avg.1076
Insect Swarm Top hit=897 Avg. 788

The reason there is a Top hit on my Dot's is because my passive trinket proc'd causing slightly higher ticks then normal.

Just a quick break down. the reason i try to get Eclipse to give me the 20% more wrath Dmg is really simple. I want This because since my chance to Crit with Wrath is over 30% chance the odds of me criting 1 of the 2 Wraths I cast during the 3secs starfire takes is actually more dmg. i'll give u an example starfire avg crit was 9032 compared to 1 wrath crit 6084+3121(1 non crit)=9205. So its actually slightly more DPS.

About Insect swarm, yes i do put it up. It looks like it does less dps but remember it ticks faster then Moonfire does.
Moonfire 3sec tick 12sec duration. 12/3=4 4 times 1076=4304
Insect Swam 2sec tick 12sec duration. 12/2=6 6 times 788 =4728 So it actually does more DPS then moonfire's Dot. This is not however counting the initial dmg which was Avg. 262hit 543Crit. (I am glyphed for both BTW) just showing you yet agian speed of somthing easily can make it better :P

The real thing u should be looking at is the Avg. dmg each spell was doing. Wrath did avg less dmg in both Crit and normal hit, but wrath is a 1.5 to starfire a 3.0. Wrath hitting at twice the speed was still only about 1000dps less, and the crit difference was only ~800dmg difference. I will say i did try to get wrath to fget that 20% bonus dmg and i hope after reading this you can see why this is much more affective then going for the 30% crit for starfire. Sure it is good it would bring me to over 60% crit chance. Compared to a spell that gives you 20% more dmg and has about a 30% crit chance its more dps. I know it doesnt look like its worth the effort for trying to Squeeze a few more dps out of your rotation. Remember this, this i am not even full epic'd yet and i can already see wrath outdoing starfire. Think about what it will be like with more gear and you'll see the difference alot more.

If you wish to debate (Moondude lvl 80 tauren) (server-Mok Nathal)

Comment by 124694

Edit: Marked down the above post because you didnt spec into imp moonfire. if you test the talent you actually find out it increases your DOT dmg which is pretty much what your trying to push in your post.

Yeah, I'd mark me down for that too. On to the edit button . . .

Edit: You seem to think the 20% increased wrath damage effect is more powerful than the 30% increased starfire critical chance. Why?

Disclosure: I am fairly stuck in TBC for moonkin as my druid is only level 73 atm and will likely switch resto upon dinging 80. My interest is purely academic, and as such solid information pretty much trumps everything I can say. (I'd love some numbers from your target dummy tests.)

Comment by 169285

The spell power coefficient currently functions on two aspects.
Damage over time and Direct damage.

DOT-52%
DD-15%

http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell_power_coefficient

Comment by tarunloko

This says it all..

Comment by Iamnatman

As of patch 3.0.8, they've changed the moonfire animation.

Here's a link to what it looks like now:
(deleted link)

imo, I think it looks a whole lot cooler now. ;)

Edit*
i deleted the link, it was dead. there's a pic of it in the photos above though. =)

Comment by 326508

also at early lvls MF is VERY inefficient. Its too expensive and does not add much dps use only after you get some significant int from gear

Comment by 421339

^&*!@es don't know about my moonfire spam

Comment by 457013

On a (lore) mechanic note: It appears that moonfire "works" by first sending up an initial blast of energy: hence, why it appears to hit the enemy with a smaller beam that then grows upon the actual hit - quite similar in mechanic to a lightning bolt in the real world. Thus, i devised the following scenerio of its mechanic (for anyone wanting to have a snobby know-it-all character for RP servers):

The druid sends a concentrated bolt of arcane energy into his/her target, and beseeches Elune. Due to the affinity of the moon and arcane energy - and druid connection with the emerald dream - some of this initial bolt is drawn up toward the moon (this is when the upstroke occurs), and this "closer" moon reflects the upstroke of arcane energy back onto the target with the addition of the power of Elune (the initial strike). Any of the remaining arcane energy within the foe is slowly burned away (hence the dot).

/rp off.
//downrate if need be... i just found the fact blizzard included an upstroke to the attack was very, very interesting

Comment by hypehuman

Check out the new Wrath of Cenarius talent from the Cataclysm alpha. Moonfire spam, here I come!

Comment by 597315

I agree as far as the spamming goes... But don't get caught up in Solar Eclipse Mode When you are in an area that has Elemental NPC's such as Ionar in the Halls of Lightning for example and other places. What happens is it turns your Moonfire Arcane Damage into Sunfire Nature Damage in which Elementals are Immune to it. It should allow you to decide what DOT spell you can use. It seems that this patch has not been for the better so far. And don't even get me started on Thorns. A 20 sec Buff with a 45 sec CD. C'mon now, Druids got the short end of the stick here.

Comment by MordainThade

Duration has been increased to 18 seconds as of 4.0.1

EDIT: This is due to the Genesis talent.

Comment by 303818

Restoration druids in Cata:

Note that Insect Swarm is considerably cheaper than Moonfire or the very expensive Regrowth. Use your free haste trinket (1-minute cd) from Nature's Grace wisely while you wait for Tree of Life (3-minute cd) to become available.

Comment by guatafu

It's the only way to be sure.

Comment by 1017496

In MoP, Starfire and Wrath crits will now extend the durations of Moonfire and Starfire respectively by 2 seconds.

Also Starsurge will proc off of DoT crit ticks rather than all ticks.

It's looking like crit will become a good stat for us to have again.

Will we possibly be seeing the return of the Crit-chicken?

Comment by perculia

Links

Moonfire

Moonfire	Level 90

8.4% of base mana	40 yd range

Instant

Burns the enemy for 625 Arcane damage and then an additional 1839 Arcane damage over 14 sec. [Eclipse: Your Starfire and Starsurge critical strikes on the target will extend your Moonfire's duration by 2 sec]

Buff

Moonfire	Level 90

Suffering 263 Arcane damage every 2 seconds.
14 seconds remaining

Spell Details

Duration

14 seconds

School

Arcane

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

Magic

GCD category

Normal

Cost

8.4% of base mana

Range

40 yards (Long)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Periodic Damage
Value: 1 every 2 seconds (SP mod: 0.24)
PVP Multiplier: 1

Effect #2

School Damage (Arcane)
Value: 1 (SP mod: 0.24)
PVP Multiplier: 1

Flags

Cannot be used while shapeshifted
Does not require shapeshift
Spell Haste Affects Periodic
Periodic Can Crit
Aura Points On Client
Spellcast Override In Spellbook

Moonfire

Buff

Spell Details

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