So Hey, Dual Spec
I know, I know, the cow hasn’t been around much lately. The cow has been spending his time treating WoW as World of Chatcraft, to be honest- thus I have no huge revelations about my escapades in Ulduar.
What I do have is some advice. See, Dual Specs came out in 3.1 and, delicious as they are, they presented me with a problem: Feral bear is something I haven’t played in two years. It was my dual spec of choice; I did not want to do it badly. Trying to find an easy dual-spec guide was an exercise in frustration…
So here we go!
Click here to see Llanion’s Recommended ‘Core’ boomkin spec.
So what’s so special about this spec? It’s the absolute bare minimum of talents needed to do decent (not extraordinary) boomkin DPS. It allows six points of leeway.
“What talents should I get with those six points, Llanion?”
That’s really more or less up to you. If you’re having mana problems, perhaps investing into Dreamstate or Intensity will be helpful. If you want more powerful AOEs, Gale Winds is nice. Typhoon and Starfall are fun but extremely situational spells; Improved Insect Swarm is a nice boost to DPS (roughly 2% overall).
ON NO ACCOUNT should you be investing points into Genesis, Brambles or Owlkin Frenzy; the first one is actually a healer talent in the Balance tree (the improvement to our dots goes beyond ‘negligible’ and straight into ‘laughable’); the other two are straight-up PVP talents.
“I notice you have two major glyphs and one minor glyph picked out. Why? What should I use as my other major and my other two minors?”
The Glyph of Starfire is a boost to both your mana efficiency (extra ticks of Moonfire without having to recast?) and your DPS (because you aren’t burning time to re-cast Moonfire as often).
The Glyph of Moonfire provides two important benefits: First, it is a net increase in your DPS (90% of your Moonfire slam is a much smaller amount than 75% of the dot portion, particularly after Nature’s Splendor extends it, and again after the glyph of Starfire extends it). Second, it allows you to backload threat- you can begin your casting rotation immediately without worrying about also, immediately, peeling the tank.
As for other glyphs: Minors don’t matter. Seriously. Unburdened Rebirth is so good as to be amazing. The other minor options are, for a boomkin at least, well, meh. Pick what you like.
For Majors:
If you want to be flat-out amazing DPS, Insect Swarm or Innervate are good choices. Focus and Starfall… the Starfall spell is pretty situational already; it’s your choice whether to glyph it or not.
Okay, I’m specced and glyphed- what’s my rotation?
Easy there, cowboy. First, check your gear- you need 263 hit for raids. Enough crit to get you 20% in form is a nice baseline. After that, you should be shooting for Spellpower and Haste in no particular order. Don’t turn down crit if you get it on gear, but don’t pursue it as such.
Llanion- my rotation, please?
Fine, fine- Faerie Fire, Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Wrath. Keep casting Wrath until the dots fall off or Eclipse procs. If the dots fall off, put them back up. Cast Starfire until Eclipse wears off, maybe take a couple extra shots (Well, more if you can time it- more on that below), then back to Wrath.
Some Notes:
- Keep your dots up.
- Don’t break casts. If you start casting, only bad positioning should cause you to break the cast (Example: Getting diseased on Grobbulus). Breaking a cast because you want to put a dot up or you’ve realized Eclipse procced is bad practice. Carry the cast through, then cast your next spell.
- Overposition. By this, I mean that chasing a moving target by closing to 30 yards for one cast, being out of range, moving forward, cast again, etc- bad idea.Take an extra moment to get a few extra yards, then cast. The less you have to move, the better.
- Remember what gives you mobility: Typhoon, Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm and Moonfire can all be cast while repositioning. It’s worth clipping your dots a little to avoid having to move later.
- Remember that you are an offensive caster and, as such, don’t have the positioning or aggro troubles a cat or bear might have with using innervate or battle rez. It is perfectly acceptable to refuse to give your innervate to a raidmate (Just make sure they know ahead of time that you need it yourself); your battle rez, however, should be considered a raid resource.
- Don’t forget to blow your Force of Nature when you can. Don’t drop them into AOEs if you can avoid it, but they’re a decent DPS boost.
Edited to add: Oops! Totally forgot about this. Check out the addon ‘Squawk and Awe’- it’s really useful for timing Eclipses. Also, you can ignore Faerie Fire on trash mobs. Cheers!
“ON NO ACCOUNT … Brambles …”
I think this is a reasonable “flavor” talent for PvE.
My most recent fight, Archavon kill, looking at my damage, and tank thorns damage:
IIS value: 12k
Brambles damage: 6k (extra damage on tank thorns) + 4k (FoN)
Typhoon + Gale Winds damage: 0
The fight was 3:19, FoN was only dropped once. This is a fight with no adds, and the boss only attacks one tank at a time.
My last Sarth kill, Brambles added about 16k to thorns damage (39k total thorns), again about 4k to my FoN. IIS would have been worth 6 or 7k (admittedly my Wrath + SF output was low that fight).
Erd makes an interesting point. It’s easy to lose track of the fact that the damage you should be tracking isn’t just the damage of your own making, but damage you contribute to the raid. My own build doesn’t include Brambles, but I’m beginning to consider some changes there.
When you think about it, your treants, even on a long fight, can be eclipsed in damage rather easily. They’re equal to what, one starfall on a long fight, even if it doesn’t crit? Brambles improves their damage mildly, but even that doesn’t even peak my interest, even though they now recieve 75% less AoE damage like all “pets” do now. What peaks my interest is the +75% to Thorns. Since 3.0.8 (or something like that) Thorns has gone off the spellpower of the user, not the person it’s been placed on. You trip out your spellpower and toss it on the tank, offtank, maybe yourself and a few of the melee (provided your tank is good), and while you may not increase ~your~ DPS on a boss by an enormous amount by looking at recount on your own, you can increase overall DPS of the raid quite a bit. It may not be the same on all bosses, naturally. Some are more magically attuned and physically, but when you consider the the possibilities and how fast most bosses usually hit the tank, it’s definitely worth a look. I’m pretty sure the Thorns damage would scale better with Spellpower as well, since the boss constantly hits, so it’s constant damage as opposed to a 3 minute cooldown. Then toss in the time and effort…. Brambles does seem to make a certain amount of backwards sense, doesn’t it? The only thing is, it’s absolutely a useless talent to you, and your numbers will look slightly lower, but likely that would be literally a fraction of a percent.
Alas, Thorns scales off the recipient’s (victim’s?) spellpower, not the caster’s.