As moonkins, most of our our damage is dependant on keeping eclipse up as much as possible, and get the most out of it. That means making sure we cast as many wraths and starfires during eclipse as we can, and try to do other things outside of eclipse.

But while eclispe is a great boost to our damage, it is also the concrete wall we run into during every single fight. When our DPS is dependant on casting as much as possible during eclipse, it hurts us even more when we can’t.

Sure, every class lose damage when they have to move, but they can usually pick up their rotation straight after. A mage that moves for 10 seconds can simply start his rotation over, while we are almost certain to lose eclipse and have to spend time on proccing it again. At endgame raiding, proccing eclipse doesn’t take very long, but we are still talking about a few seconds every single time we have to get eclipse going again.

But I can live with that. We are somewhat balanced around it, and as our gear improves, this problem diminishes. But as our gear improves, it gives us a much bigger problem.

You know how it is – the boss is going down nicely. You glare at the damage meter and smile at your own performance. Then comes the call: Bloodlust! Rawrawrawr!

Bloodlust is a great spell. No doubt it increases our damage, but it doesn’t quite offer the same benefits to us as it does to other classes. It’s like getting the smallest piece of cake. Sure, you get some cake, but not as much as all the other kids!

Why am I complaining about bloodlust? During a 40 second bloodlust, we can expect to have two eclipse buffs – 15 seconds of lunar eclipse, 15 seconds of solar eclipse and give or take 10 seconds to spare. While we are spamming starfire under lunar eclipse, with almost a 100% chance to crit, with a cast time of under two seconds, and our damage flies upwards. That’s great, and its great for everyone. But then the long haste buff is ripped away from us, like the class bully stealing our lunch money, when solar eclipse procs.

What to do? Continue casting faster starfires with 45% less chance to crit (with tier 8 2-piece bonus) or switch to wrath to benefit from the +45% damage increase. Our damage is dependant on taking advantage of eclipse, and while Mr. Mage and Mrs. Rogue gets a flat benefit to their damage for the full 40 seconds, we are at a loss once lunar eclipse falls off.

Bloodlust is absolutely useless when we are spamming wrath, because we will usually have a constant buff from Nature’s Grace, bringing our cast time down to the global cooldown, regardless of having bloodlust or not. We gain absolutely nothing from the 30% haste increase when we are spamming wrath, and we have to either let go of half of the duration and gain from bloodlust, or continue casting starfire without the benefit of eclipse. Fast starfires are nice and all, but 1,7 (ish) second starfires still struggle to live up to +45% damage 1 second wraths.

So while the fireball spamming mage will enjoy the full 40 seconds of bloodlust, we can play around with 15 seconds worth of cake during lunar eclipse. It’s all fine and dandy that our damage is balanced around eclipse, but when we can’t benefit as much from raid buffs as everybody else does because of eclipse, we lose the race. I doubt we will see any massive changes to eclipse before Cataclysm, but I sincerely hope that Blizzard is planning on coming up with a way to allow us to enjoy bloodlust as much as everybody else.

The cake is not a lie – but you only get the crust!

- QQ

Tags: bloodlust, eclipse, heroism, nature's grace, starfire, wrath

This entry was posted on November 3, 2009 at 9:43 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Posted in Raiding by Qieth 4 Comments