Dec 09
13
Glyphs ‘R Us
I often get questions regarding which glyphs to pick for your all-round moonkin spec, and while some of them are pretty obvious, there are a few that always cause much debate.
So lets take a look at the current moonkin glyphs, and talk about which benefit us the most, and when to pick one over the other. This is, ofcourse, purely from a PvE perspective. Things are a whole lot different when it comes to battlegrounds or arena, and I will not cover them from fear of giving out some seriously bad advice.
There are 11 glyphs that we could possibly ever consider to use. These are Glyph of Barkskin, Entangling Roots, Focus, Hurricane, Innervate, Insect Swarm, Monsoon, Moonfire, Starfall, Starfire and Wrath. The list is actually quite long, but most of them have no real place in a PvE setting.
Lets look at them in order of usefulness.
Glyph of Moonfire
Since most of us will be in tier 9, or will be soon now that we are swimming in triumph badges, I would venture that Glyph of Moonfire is one of our strongest glyphs – heck, it even is without the 2pt9 bonus. Couped with talents such as Nature’s Splendor, we benefit greatly from the dot from moonfire, and this should be in every single moonkin spec.
Glyph of Starfire
Alongside with Glyph of Moonfire, this is a very nice addition. Up to 9 more seconds on a very powerful dot is just too much to pass up on, and this will ensure a good, long life on your moonfire. Not only that, the glyph also allows you to cast starfire even if moonfire is just about to run out, and as long as you get it in a second before moonfire runs out, you will keep the dot ticking for another 9 seconds, increasing your critical strike chance on starfire. This is a must have.
Glyph of Insect Swarm
Much focus has been on IS vs Starfall, so I recently set out to find out which one would actually give the biggest benefit. I did some quick calculations on MMO-Champion and found that a glyphed, raidbuffed, target debuffed insect swarm with 3400 spell power does about 9203,285 damage. Thats a lot for a 1 GCD spell. This is more powerful than an eclipsed starfire, which crits for 15.000+, but takes two GCD’s to cast. It does fall short of an eclipsed wrath that doesn’t crit, but it’s safe to say that if you have your insect swarm glyphed, its worth putting it up whenever it falls off.
Glyph of Starfall
Insect Swarms big contender. While starfall does more damage than insect swarm per second spent casting (both 1 second), with starfall doing over 20.000 damage on a single target and more if it can splash on to others, it’s breaking point is the long cooldown. In the time you can cast one glyphed starfall, you will have cast four insect swarms, but you will also have been through about two solar eclipses, given a great 3% buff to your wraths. Thats not to say that you shouldn’t take the ability for starfall, because it is still a great way to spend a global cooldown – in fact, its only beat by Force of Nature, which does anywhere from 30-40.000 damage on a single global cooldown, but I don’t think its worth glyphing for unless you are going into a AOE specific fight. Even then, you have to consider how often you can benefit from the glyph, and Anub’Arak heroic is a prime example of that. Some guilds AOE down the adds whenever they come, and this means that even with a 1 minute cooldown, starfall probably wont be up for the second group. My guild, however, hold the second pack of adds until Anub has burrowed, and this allows me to use starfall on every add pack up until phase 3. For this fight, I benefit from it, but I only include this in my AOE spec.
Glyph of Innervate
If you are just starting out, Glyph of Innervate can be a good help. It can give you a boost if you use Innervate on other classes, and an even bigger boost if you use your innervate on yourself. But as your gear progresses, you will drop more and more mana talents, and even innervate will be sitting untouched on your action bars on most fights. With no mana talents other than a single point in Moonglow, and the pitiful mana regeneration I get from my two filler points in Owlkin Frenzy, I hardly ever drop below 80% mana in a raid, so suffice to say, Glyph of Innervate would be a wasted slot for me.
Glyph of Focus
It might seem like a nice boost to get 20% more damage on starfall, but this loses its edge as starfall will still be on a 1,5 minute cooldown. It adds up to about 4000 more damage on a single target fight, but it only adds about 40 more DPS over the 90 seconds you wait until you cast the next. I’m not even sure I would take this if I had a fourth slot for my major glyphs, and I don’t think you should either. Another hinge for Glyph of Focus, is that you generally don’t want to be so close to a boss. 15 yards is just too close for comfort.
Glyph of Hurricane
This is beneficial on very few fights. Heck, the only time I have ever used this is on the new Saurfang encounter in Icecrown, where we we’re low on hunters and thus needed a way to slow the adds. As long as you have hunters or shamans to slow the blood beasts, you wouldn’t want to use hurricane, because while it does slow them down, they take very little damage from AOE. Your DPS will take a hit, and even though you are helping your raid get through the fight, it would be much more beneficial to slow them some other way if it allows you to single target them down.
Glyph of Barkskin, Entangling Roots, Monsoon and Wrath
No.
