I would strongly advise anyone to read the full post, which you can see by clicking on this link, and in the meanwhile, we will take a closer look at what moonkins can expect.

Right off the bat, Eyonix mentions that all spirit based gear will be for healers. All caster classes will have gear with different stats. All caster classes, except for elemental shamans and moonkins though. Hey, I’m all for only battling resto druids for my gear, as I am sure that mages and warlocks just love being the only ones needing on cloth DPS gear. I worry, however, that we will return to the itemization that caused a lot of issues back in The Burning Crusade, as with:

• Mages and warlocks will share cloth caster gear. Priests get all items with spirit for themselves.
• Resto druids and moonkins will share leather spirit gear. Rogues and feral druids will share their agility based gear.
• Hunters and enhancement shamans will share gear, while restoration and elemental shamans will share theirs.
• DPS warriors, death knights and paladins will share one pile of gear, and the respective tank specs will share another pile of gear.
• Holy paladins gets a pile of stuff for themselves.

This means that there will be items that are only attractive to holy priests and paladins. While this may not be a huge deal, we might still see item drops that are only useful to those classes, and it will pain anyone to see them go disenchanted.

To the rescue comes reforging. It will allow a mage to receive a cloth item with spirit, reforge it to remove some of the spirit, and recieve a, if not perfect, then acceptable upgrade none the less. For moonkins, spirit will be our way to gain hit – although I fail to see the connection – and once we are comfortably hit capped we can begin reforging some of our spirit, when we accumulate more, into intellect, crit or haste.

With the change to caster gear, I would assume that Blizzard plans to do something about mana regen for all classes. While mana is certainly not a problem for moonkins at the moment, chances are that we will probably be looking out for it again when Cataclysm comes out. Spirit will be converted into hit rating, so our regen will be covered by a moonkin-form-like aura that lets us regen, and innervate.

The most interesting change is the mastery stat. It can be found on gear and will increase “whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique”. I assume that it is some straight buff to our talents, so that with 100 mastery, eclipse will be 44% rather than 40% or something along those lines. It is interesting, I admit, because it offers some interesting choices: Do I increase my crit by 5%, or do I increase the value of my talents by 1%?

Finally, all spell ranks will be removed. I guess that removes down ranking for sure, eh? Spells will scale as we level up, and we will only have to visit trainers for new spells – they are adding more of those also, but if they will add an equal amount (or any) to all classes is currently unknown. I like this change.

One of the changes to spells that I really liked was when all spells were changed to be a percentage of base mana. I saw this change on my (still) level 40 mage alt, where I would just be comfortable with the mana cost of fireball when I would get a new rank that would drain my mana much faster. With mana cost being a percentage of our base mana pool, the mana goes up accordingly, and there was no more suprise mana costs and only more damage with each new rank.

Come this system, mana cost and damage will scale accordingly. We level up, get more mana and do more damage with spells that cost more mana. It makes sense, and as we gear up we will get more intellect compared to mana cost to be able to cast more spells with more damage, for the same mana cost.

In any case, it seems like we have a lot of very interesting changes incoming. How all of this works in practice, noone knows yet. Don’t get too comfortable with how your playing and gearing style is now. The changes incoming may be almost.. cataclystic!

- QQ

So it is a bit disheartening to see the following:

• Nature’s Grasp: Now has 3 charges, up from 1.

Great for PvP I suppose. Definately not bursty, but anything helps the dueling moonkins, I suppose.

• Starfall: Te damage done by this spell has been significantly increased.

Great. In reality, it increases the initial hit by an average of 140 damage, and the splash damage by 23 damage. This gives it another 2.800 damage on a single target, or 3.260 for two targets. Not a massive buff, but a buff none the less, though it can hardly be considered a burst to do 2,8k more damage over 10 seconds.

• Typhoon: Mana cost reduced to 25%, down from 32%.

Allow me to take a moment to jump up and down. We now save 245 mana on each Typhoon. Joy.

I really hope that this is not the last thing we have seen to moonkin buffs this patch. A lot of other classes are getting some really nice buffs, and I do think we should get some love as well. Never the less, it’s not like the patch is out yet, so we might see more stuff coming soon.

Unfortunately, the answer is not always as clear cut as one might think. There is a lot of things to take into consideration, and to perform to our fullest we need to know what to aim for.

Our stat priority has changed a bit over the last few major content patches. It can be difficult to keep yourself up to date, so lets take a good look at our stats, once and for all.

First off, I would really suggest that you check out a few simulators. The best one, in my oppinion, is Hamlet’s Wrath Calc. It has the benefit over simulators like Simcraft that it is tailored for moonkins, and is made by a guy that does a lot for the druid community.

You could, ofcourse, follow his Moonkin DPS Compilation, which should give you all the basics you need to perform well. In this, the stat prioritation looks like this:

Hit rating (to cap) >> Haste rating (below GCD cap) = Spellpower > Crit rating (below Lunar cap) > Haste rating (above GCD cap) = Crit rating (above Lunar cap) >> Intellect > Spirit.

These comparasons are not 100% accurate, but they are close enough to give you a good reference. If you don’t like messing with Wrath Calc, this will do fine. But if you enjoy theorycrafting as much as I do, I would urge you to plot in your numbers in Wrath Calc and see what turns up.

In my current gear, with 4/5 tier 10, haste and crit soft capped, my stat benefits are something like this: (I’m sorry, I have to do it by memory. I will update this tomorrow)

• Spell power: 1,79 DPS
• Crit rating: 1,06 DPS
• Haste rating: 1,42 DPS
• Spirit: 0,5 DPS

The increase in the value of haste comes largely from switching to tier 10. More casts means more languish procs, and we are sitting on 60%+ crit no matter what when fully raid buffed, that haste wins by a slight amount compared to crit. There is still a lot of confusion going around about haste – people still can’t seem to shake the notion that it’s “bad because it doesn’t affect wrath”, and they forget that crit is “bad because it doesn’t affect starfire”. Both of these notions are untrue, since we don’t have a 100% uptime on Nature’s Grace, and we do cast starfire outside of lunar eclipse. With my stats, haste wins out over crit, but that doesn’t mean that crit is bad.

If you had to choose between an item with 50 haste and 50 crit, the difference in DPS would be around 18 DPS. Then again, an upgrade is an upgrade after all, and we have access to items that allow us to get both haste and crit. The way you go about it is to figure out the stat gains for each item, and calculate the effective DPS using YOUR values, to see which item is the better upgrade.

This also has an effect on how you should gem. I am currently using a lot of SP/crit gems, because crit was previously stronger than haste. I feel okay about not changing my gems for a very, very small upgrade until I exchange the gear – we can’t go and remove ALL of our crit, because we still need to mind our caps, and the difference between a SP/crit and an SP/haste gem is currently 2,3 DPS. But since I am aware of my stat values, I can plan ahead.

There is also the question about spirit. Should we take cloth pieces with crit/haste over leather pieces with spirit? Sure, if you can, and the actual benefit is better for you. But don’t disregard spirit completely. If you have the choice to upgrade to a spirit item, which will turn out to be an actual upgrade, by all means do it. My preference is cloth gear for most non-set slots, but that doesn’t mean that I would pass off on an upgrade.

So where do you go now? You go download Wrath Calc. You put in your stats (remember to add the effective bonus from any trinkets you have like Muradin’s Spyglass or Illustration of the Dragon Soul). Make sure your talents are set up correctly, and tell the spreadsheet if you have Nibelung, Reign of Dead, 4pt10 or 2pt9. Once it is finished calculating, you will have a solid guideline for which stats to look for, and how to gear up in the future.

DO NOT go into a haste frenzy. Remember that drastically changing your haste will effect the way it works for you. My advice for you is to try to increase your haste and crit as you go along, and whichever stat has the higher priority according to the simulator, you aim more for that, usually in the form of gems. Don’t simply assume that because my stats look like this, your will too.

Once you are done with that, you have all the tools you need to evaluate future upgrades. But don’t stop there; Wrath Calc has many features that you can play around with, and you should explore the spreadsheet to the fullest. Whether you are playing around in Naxx, or fighting the forces of Icecrown Citadel, a little bit of research can give you the edge and increase your performance!

- QQ

The first comment was to a suggestion to make Owlkin Frenzy be an on-use ability, such as Beastial Wrath or the like. Ghostcrawler didn’t seem to like that idea, stating that “I also don’t think it’s a great place to buff them for PvE. There are fights without a lot of predictable raid damage, and void zone diving shouldn’t be critical in keeping your dps up.”.

Thats all fine and dandy, Ghostcrawler. I understand if you don’t want to give us a burst ability, or if it’s too big a change to make at this point in the expansion. It would be rather easy to balance though, and would give us that little edge.

The second comment was aimed at a suggestion about changing Glyph of Wrath into something that increased its cast time by 0,5 seconds, and its damage by x%, to account for the longer cast time. This is a brilliant idea, because it would give us better scaling with haste, and it would remove a rather useless glyph. Ghostcrawler, however, stated that “I understand the intent and it’s clever in a way, but we would be hesitant to introduce a glyph that would actually be a bad glyph for players who weren’t capable of benefiting from a bunch of haste.”.

This makes no sense to me. We already have Glyph of Healing Touch, which is the excact opposite of what is proposed for Glyph of Wrath and that doesn’t seem to worry the developers. Even if new players did use the “new” Glyph of Wrath, it would probably not be a very big deal for them. Never the less, this is how the developers feel, and I suppose they know what they are doing.

However, the PTR forums are getting clearned up, which usually means that the PTR is coming soon. I find this curious, to say the least, because we usually don’t get many comments in moonkin threads.

This is pure speculation, but maybe – MAYBE – Ghostcrawler is passing on these two ideas, and being so “active” in moonkin threads, because they have something else in store for us?

- QQ

We were so disheartened that we simply released and ended the raid.

Lets talk about that fight for a bit…

So, Arthas is a really, really fun fight. Lots of things happening, very little room for error, and a constant pressure to maximise your damage, perfect your rotation and… well, not fail. I went to look at World of Logs after it was updated, because as with everything else, I want to see where I do wrong and where I can improve. On overall damage, I placed 13th on the meters. But lets not start an outcry for buffs just yet – I want to take a closer look at it.

There is a lot of potential for splash damage on this fight and sadly, we don’t have that much of it. Throughout phase 1 half of the raid will be able to do splash damage on several targets. In phase 2, you can spread splash damage on the valkyrs, if the raid controls them correctly. Phase three is a haven for anyone who can AOE the vile spirits in the air. We are resigned to an occasional starfall and typhoon in phase 3. We should also keep in mind that this was the first kill, so things will probably change for the better once we get a little bit more comfortable with the fight.

What I like to do, is to look at how my DPS compared to the general raid – this is really where you find your standing against the rest of the group. I have taken a screenshot of my DPS (orange) versus the average raid DPS (less-orange-more-yellowy).

1. General phase 1 nukage. It is expected that a moonkin would be lower on this phase, as we only really have starfall to do some splash damage on the adds.
2. Phase transition, general nukage, doing just fine.
3. Start of phase 2, being grabbed by a valkyr. Only dots ticking here. After this, a long period with limited movement from defiles and nuking down valkyrs. There is a small drop shortly after, which I think was the a-bit-too-big defile that had us moving around a little bit.
4. Fondled by Valkyrs again. The blue marking shows bloodlust during the second phase transition.
5. Really quite baffled by this drop. I’ll have to wait for the fraps to see why my DPS dropped that low in this segment.
6. Another unexplained drop. Could be me looking at Vile Spirits, waiting for them to start moving down, unable to DPS the Lich King if he was behind me at that point.

Generally, I don’t think this is bad. On average, my DPS goes up and down in accordence to average raid DPS, and with our minimal splash damage, I would expect that while we are relatively low on the meters, our contribution is just the same as most other DPS classes.

Also – and I’ll have to wait for World of Logs to update – I think I placed as the 50th highest moonkin damage on Arthas. Fun stuff.

TL;DR: Moonkin damage is fine!

- QQ

Ahead of everybody else is Paragon from Lightnings Blade EU, and I hooked up with their very own moonkin Lappé for a little chat.

- First off, can you tell us your name, how old you are, and how long you have been playing WoW?
My real name is Niko Lappeteläinen – now you can try to pronounce it properly! I am 18 years old and I have been playing World of Warcraft since the summer of ‘06, although I did have a break before The Burning Crusade.

- Have you always been playing moonkin/druid?
My main has always been a druid. In The Burning Crusade I was “forced” to play as restoration if I wanted raid spots. When Wrath of the Lich King came, I was able to switch to moonkin.

- What is it that makes you play a moonkin? Why not another caster class?
I’ve always loved to play moonkin, as long as I can get raid spots with that spec. In case I get bored, I have a few alts that I can play. I haven’t really considered rolling a mage or a warlock as a serious main, cause I don’t believe there is nothing a mage can do that a moonkin can’t – except, perhaps, for proper PVP!

- Looking at the grand scale of things, how do you feel moonkins have progressed through the expansions?
I stopped playing around level 57 before The Burning Crusade, so I really can’t remember much of those times, and back in The Burning Crusade, I mainly played as restoration. It was easier to get a raid spot as a moonkin in WOTLK because of our raid buffs.

- How do you think moonkins compare to other DPS classes?
In regards to damage, we’ve always been a bit behind other classes, but never too much. Even if I hate the RNG part of eclipse, I still love it when I get the best possible RNG and top our other casters! Ofcourse, we will have to wait and see what happens once we all begin to wear heroic loot. We might fall a bit behind because of our scaling with soft haste and crit caps.

- What kind of difficulties have you noted with the bosses in Icecrown Citadel?
Actually, there is nothing that has really bugged me in Icecrown Citadel. I think we are quite strong and usefull for every fight. Sindragosa, for example, is a real badass, but that is the same for every caster. For all fights, you just have to figure out how to maximize your DPS without dying, but theres nothing we can’t handle.

- What do you think about the difficulty of the instances and the “casual catering” that people have been complaining about?
Icecrown Citadel on normal is okay for casuals, but the hardmodes are pretty well tuned right now. I’d just wish they would have removed limited attempts earlier and come up with something really hard for the heroic modes that would actually last for couple of weeks.

- What kind of changes would you like to see being made to moonkins?
Short answer would be “More DPS, less RNG”. I’d like to see a change to Nature’s Grace and Eclipse to make them something less dependable on crit.

- If you could take one talent from another class, what would it be?
That would be the old ignite for mages for sure. It would keep stacking up as long as you can keep up your crit streak, so if we add that to eclipse we would be able to reach huge numbers. Languish is similar, but it won’t refresh its duration completely if you lose a crit.

With the old ignite, you could have a tick followed by a crit, and it would retain the full effect, stacking it up to 100.000+ damage ignites! At least, that’s how I think it worked.

Once (and if) they remove eclipse my decision would probably be different, though.

- Are you going to be playing in Cataclysm, and what are you looking forward to?
I will try to play as much as I can, but I am scheduled to go to the army this summer. I am definitely looking forward to seeing what Cataclysm brings to druids.

- Are you going to change to troll in Cataclysm?
If it’s a huge DPS benefit, then I probably will, but I would rather not. We will have to see what kind of changes they bring with the new tauren racials as well, if they follow through with that.

- How does hardcore raiding effect your real life?
It’s not really “hardcore” raiding. It’s hardcore for just a few weeks, until we beat the content, but it’s not really that hard. Once we beat the encounters, it doesn’t take that long to clear the instances, and we go back to a much more casual raiding schedule.

- What is your favourite dungeon of all times?
I always prefer the one that holds the hardest difficulty level – so right now, I enjoy ICC the most. I don’t hold any favourites with all of the old stuff – if someone asks me to join, I’ll probably go!

- Finally, if Mumins were a playable class, would you switch to it?
Definitely – they’ll probably get better racials than taurens!

To catch up on Paragon’s progression in Icecrown Citadel, check out http://www.paragon-wow.com!

Because of that, I have quite high wishes for how I spend my playtime – I mentioned some of them in my “How to be Awesome” post. We have a responsibility to the people we play with, to do our best and make sure that everybody is getting their moneys worth. And it’s everybody else’s responsibility to make sure our game time is spent as best as possible. Escapism was in no way a bad guild, but in the end I did get the feeling that it was time to search other grasslands.

I sent an application to another guild a week before, and while I did get accepted around the weekend, I stayed with my guild until the end of the reset. And so it was that, on monday evening, I found that I had moved while still standing in the same place. The area looked indifferent, but I was in truth on a completely new server! I am now on Defias Brotherhood EU, hoping to start a long and prosperous life with The Hungering Cold – preferably filled with lots of slaughtering of evil monsters.

- QQ

Oh, and here’s a shout-out to the two people who whispered me within 20 minutes of being on the new server, asking if “I was that Qieth with the blog”. I really appreciate hearing that my silly rants are entertaining and interesting to read!

I would never dream of posting any sort of spoilers (Dumbledore dies!), the loot list got me thinking about my previous BIS list and how each weapon combination compares to each other, and on normal versus heroic difficulty. As it turns out, my initial sloppy guess that going from normal to heroic was just a straight upgrade, was invalid.

In my comparasson, I didn’t bother to include Abracadaver because it’s generally not a very good moonkin weapon. I also completely disregarded Nibelung, because it’s pretty difficult to calculate on. Including loot from Arthas, we have the following viable weapon choices.

Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas
Frozen Bonespike
Halion, Staff of Forgotten Love
Tel’Thas, Dagger of the Blood King
and the Royal Scepter of Terenas II.

What’s that, you say? A healer mace? What is this lunacy?! Well, as it turns out, its not actually a bad weapon, even if some of the item stats are wasted on mp5. You may remember Guiding Star from Ulduar, which was quite a good weapon in its time.

I went ahead and made a Google Spreadsheet, in my search to find out how these items actually compare against each other. Boy was I in for a suprise! You can see the spreadsheet here, and follow along: Click this link!

I went ahead and added up all the spell power, crit, haste and spirit across the items, and then calculated their value due to the weights set by Elitist Jerks. These are approximate values, ofcourse, but they should still give a fair overview of how the items compare against each other.

If you manage to kill Arthas on normal, and have full access to every piece of loot in the instance, Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas seems to be the best weapon you can go for. Closely followed by that is the Frozen Bonespike with a Shadow Silk Spindle. While there isn’t a massive difference between Archus and the FB/SSS, Frozen Bonespike is much easier to go for in terms of availability. If you can kill Arthas, then you can kill the bosses dropping Frozen Bonespike and Shadow Silk Spindle.

But the tables are turned when we finally kill Arthas on heroic. Archus heroic seems to be a little bit under budget. It doesn’t increase its stats more than 10,58% and it retains it’s two sockets. This means that the Frozen Bonespike and Shadow Silk Spindle surpasses it in value if both are heroic. But beating both Frozen Bonespike and Archus is the wild card of today: The Royal Scepter of Terenas II!

Royal Scepter of Terenas II has the biggest increase from normal to heroic. This mace, along with a Shadow Silk Spindle, will net you nothing less than 1012 spell power alone, provided you have access to the heroic versions. The stats from this combo are increased by a massive 18,55%, and even though it has some unwanted mp5, it comes out in a massive lead above anything else.

These items may, ofcourse, be changed in the future. Archus seems to need some love, and The Royal Scepter of Terenas II seems to be a tad over budget. But if you are wondering what kind of upgrades you should dream about when you go to bed, here is the rundown:

From normal Icecrown Citadel 25, your best in slot will either be Archus or FB/SSS, with a small lead for Archus. If you are tough enough to get down Arthas on heroic 25 man, and then survive a rigorous attack from your healers, the Royal Scepter and Shadow Silk Spindle wins by a massive lead, but before you get this, you will probably pick up a Frozen Bonespike before.

UPDATE! There seems to be some debate on Archus’ stats on 25 man heroic. Sigrie reports it to have three sockets, while Wowhead sais it has two. I have changed the spreadsheet to reflect three sockets, which brings it slightly over FB/SSS.

These seem to be your options if you really want to min/max your stats. On a positive note, the Royal Scepter of Terenas II looks really, really neat. Tel’Thas looks excactly like Frozen Bonespike, and while Archus has a special look as well, the 10 man staff from Arthas looks excactly like Nibelung.

Looks are important, aight?

- QQ

PS. On a sidenote, it seems that Nibelung got a stealth nerf. It no longer seems to proc off starfall, which is too bad, but not a terrible loss. I still saw it proc plenty of times off regular attacks, but I do feel overall that I would be a bit more confident with a solid weapon compared to Nibelungs current.. defects.

PPS. Don’t you just love upgrades? I am always completely on the boss when we do Lady Deathwhisper, and despite a mind control, I’d say I did quite well for a stand-and-nuke fight. Ofcourse, the buff to Earth and Moon probably isn’t solely responsible for this, but it’s still the right kind of nice.

Introduction

Welcome to the Icecrown Citadel Survival Guide. I am Qieth, and I will take you through the first seven boss enouncers in Icecrown Citadel. This is not a stategy guide for the bosses per se, nor is it a 101 on Moonkin Damage. This is meant to give casters, and especially moonkins, a few tips and tricks to improve their DPS on the fights in ICC. Depending on how your guild handles these fights, the tips may or may not be of any use for you – if you have other tricks you feel like sharing, please leave a comment below.

Lord Marrowgar

I wouldn’t expect many guilds to have any major problems with Lord Marrowgar, but there are still a few ways to increase your DPS. For starters, your whole raid should be fairly close to him so you can easely take care of any Bones popping up. My guild choose to simply AOE them down, but with the mana cost of hurricane, this might not be the best idea for a moonkin. When you are close, it is simply a matter of turning around and clicking the health bars, cast a few wraths and go back to the boss.

You can avoid the Coldflame completely by standing inside his hitbox, and you won’t have to move in phase one at all – just beware that you are still far away from your tanks, as the cleave will hit anybody near the target. When he goes into phase 2, you move out ahead of time – his whirlwind doesn’t do much damage, but having four flames spawn right on top of you will do a nasty amount of damage. Be sure to put your dots up as soon as he goes into phase 2, as they will then run out just before phase 2 stops, and give your tank a second or two to secure aggro.

Lady Deathwhisper

On Lady Deathwhisper, i am usually tasked with getting her shield down, so movement for me is very limited. If you are on the adds, try to position yourself so that you can always reach lady deathwhisper. There is really no need to move more than a second or two, as long as your tanks gets the adds close enough for you to reach them, move a bit to the side, and then reach the adds on the other side. Try and keep your dots up on Deathwhisper rather than the adds, as your dots wont run the full duration on them, and they would generally be a DPS loss. A key trick to the fight is to not stand close to other people – if several people are all very close to each other, the chances of getting death and decay is much greater, and you will have to move more often. In phase 2, try to stand away from the group so you are sure to notice if a ghost is going for you, rather than the player standing next to you. If you are unsure, you will have to move, and that might be unnessecary DPS loss. When you are far away, you will know when a ghost has targeted you, and you will only move when you have to.

Gunship

Lol

Deathbringer Saurfang

Saurfang is not a terribly difficult fight, and there are very few ways to up the DPS here. Be sure to refresh your dots a few seconds before he spawns his blood beasts, and then simply continue using whatever eclipse you have up. If they reach you, turn around and run as to not give Saurfang too much blood rage, and let the rest of the raid nuke them down. You can pop your starfall just a second before the beasts are spawned – blood beasts take only 10% AOE damage, but the initial hit from the stars are counted as direct damage, and that means that the beasts will take full damage from the initial hit, and then a very small damage from the splash.

Festergut

Festergut is a bitch for all casters, and especially moonkins. The task is mainly on your melee DPS and your tanks to burn him down, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to do as much damage as possible. If you know that spores are going to go up soon, hold back on refreshing your dots. If you have just put up a new moonfire and insect swarm right before you have to move, then you may have nothing else to do while moving. Remember that there is a fairly long time from when the spores come up until they actually burst, so if you judge that you can cover the distance, try and get a few more casts out if you have eclipse up. Refresh your dots as you run to the spore, use your starfall on the way back, and obviously save your treants for bloodlust – this should happen when your first tank is done tanking, and has a huge damage increase.

Rotface

Having everybody standing close to Rotface will greatly reduce the amount of movement you have to do on this fight, and speading out in either two groups or simply a semi circle is a great way to minimize movement. This will also keep you clear of any slime pools on the floor. When you are this close to the boss, the width of the spray will be very narrow, and you only have to move a step or two to the side to be completely clear of it. There is no need to run to the other side of the boss, but do refresh your dots as you move away. I would strongly suggest that you get an addon like Power Aura’s to show when you have the infection, as this is critical to the encounter. I have mine set up to play a big sound and display an exclamation mark, so I am absolutely certain that I will notice if I get the debuff. Many people fail when they move away from the Big Ooze explotion, as Rotface will still throw up Infections – it takes only a moment of confusion to have a few small Ooze’s in the raid group, which will merge into a big Ooze and put pressure on your tanks, healers and the rest of the raid.

Professor Putricide

Putricide has a lot of movement, but most of this is scripted on set timers, and you can therefore plan ahead and ensure that you get the most out of your abilities. On the pull, fire away with everything you’ve got while you move into position: Faerie Fire, treants, insect swarm, moonfire and starfall, and work towards proccing solar eclipse as fast as possible. This is generally a bit more stable than trying to proc lunar eclipse, and you can usually go through a full eclipse, and still have time to run from the center of the room down to where the boss is being tanked, before the green ooze can be targeted.

Position yourself in a way where you will be far enough away from the Ooze, but still be able to reach it fairly quickly, should it target someone else. We have ranged run ahead and nuke it down, and melee following it to share the explosion – when you won’t be thrown back, it should give the raid ample time to get the ooze down before it reaches the next target. On the red Ooze, be sure to switch over to it as soon as you can, as you will generally have a few seconds of DPS before it picks a target. If the ooze is going on low health, but is being kited away from you, simply dot it up and run back to the boss. There is no sense in repositioning to nuke down the last 10% if enough people are near the ooze to get it down.

Phase 3 is a real killer. You will want to stay close enough to the boss to not have slime pools go down near the middle of the room, but far enough away to ensure that you have time to react if a Malable Goo is coming your way. Try to stay at the side of Putricide, or even behind him as the raid moves along, to minimize the slime pools being thrown on the raid. In phases two and three, keep an eye out for Malable Goo at all times. Deadly Boss Mods will tell you if a Goo is coming your way, but not if you are moving into the path of the Goo after it has been cast. Refresh dots and use instants while moving as much as possible.

Closing

Thank you for watching this video. I hope that you enjoyed it, and is able to bring along a few tips and tricks for your next Icecrown raid. As always, if you have any tips you want to share with the rest of us, or simply have a question about an aspect of an encounter, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

Also, be sure to check out my blog, Qieths-Quips.com, to get the latest news on moonkin affairs and obscene rants about World of Warcraft.

This is Qieth, signing out.

- QQ!

Also, for those who care, I am now the moderator of MMO-Champions druid board. Consider this a heads up for when I start collecting tax… …