Guest Post: The Job of a Raiding Moonkin

Macbook is a raiding moonkin on the server Stormscale US. You can read about his journey as a moonkin over at his blog, Moonkin.

If you're reading this, you must be a little interested on being a PvE moonkin. That's fair, though, because the latest patch with new talents and the WoTLK expansion have made moonkins a very viable source of raid buffs, single-target DPS, and AoEing.

Most people underestimate the difficulty of raiding as a Moonkin. They say, all Moonkins have to do is push 3 buttons, what else? I've never heard a statement more false than that one.

For starters, the main job of a moonkin is to provide its buff to the entire raid. Since the patch, your Aura of 5% crit now affects the entire raid group, and if you specced in Improved Moonkin Aura (which I believe every raiding Moonkin should), you're also throwing an extra 3% spell haste to your raid, which may not sound like much, but is actually huge. Your Insect Swarm will decrease the chance of the enemy to hit the tank by 3%, and your Earth & Moon talent will basically increase the DPS of the casters in the raid by 13%. As you can see, many of your talents really help the raid out, and you should have most or all them even if they don't directly increase your DPS.

Since the patch, I've seen a lot more moonkins floating around my server, probably because resto gear with a balance talent spec is almost as good as just having balance gear. Even with all the increase in Moonkins on my server, and even going up against Moonkins in better gear than me, I am still putting out more DPS. Why? I know my role, and I am specced appropriately for it.

99% of raid leaders have moonkins for single-target DPS, not AoE. If your guild is any good, you're not having problems downing trash, its the bosses that are hindering you. Still, I see moonkins who spec points in improved AoE spell damage, which doesn't affect your single-target DPS. I see moonkins with weird casting rotations that are not mana-efficient, meaning they have to pop their innervate on themselves, instead of giving it to a healer.

The key word in balance druid is, well, balance. You need to find the middle ground between having high DPS (aka Boomkin/Doomkin), and still helping the raid out substantially. For example, dotting Moonfire on a boss doesn't really help the raid out, and isn't really mana efficient. My casting rotation involves simply keeping Insect Swarm up, and spamming Starfire, and then rinsing and repeating. Its simple, yet very high-dps and very mana efficient. I never run out of mana even on 5-10 minute fights -- if I get low, I pop a Mana potion on myself and save the innervate for a healer.

You should always make sure to have enough mana to battle rez someone as soon as its needed, and obviously always carry the appropriate reagents. In fact, if you get the Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, you never even have to worry about carrying the seeds for your BR, which cleared up 2 slots in my bags.

Anyways, this was a pretty large overview, but in the grand spectrum of being a raiding moonkin. I usually manage to stay within the top 3 of the damage meters in my 25-man raids, even while using up tons of mana on Battle Rezzing and Innervating healers. Make sure you build your talent tree on something that you are comfortable with, but always make sure to realize your primary roles. In most cases, AoE should come secondary, so points in AoE talents or buffing existing ones are essentially wasted, in my opinion.

Thanks for the opportunity to post here, and hope you enjoyed it!

Macbook

Macbook blogs about being a moonkin, and he keeps a Moonkin blog.