1. The Erotic Adventures Of Solstafir (a.k.a. The Beginning)
   • Prelude
   • Your Role In A Raid
2. Starfire Vs Wrath
3. Spell Rotation And Gear
4. Intermission / Pee break
5. Talents
   • Improved Faerie Fire
   • Subtlety
   • Nature's Grace
   • Omen Of Clarity
   • Natural Shapeshifter
   • Balance Of Power
   • Force Of Nature
   • Brambles And Thorns
6. Hit, Crit Or Spell Damage?
7. Miscellaneous
   • Survivability
   • Positioning And Timing
   • Going OOMkin
   • Spell Haste?
8. Gear: Cloth Vs Leather
9. Professions
   • Tailoring Vs Leatherworking
   • The Rest
10. Enchants And Gems
    • Enchants
    • Gems

The Erotic Adventures Of Solstafir (a.k.a The Beginning)

Yarr, so ye wants to know the secrets of the Moon do ya? Well son, pull up a chair and I'll tell ye a story!

I think that's a pretty good start for this guide. It might not be conventional, but neither is deciding to specc Balance, so fawk off! Btw, what I'm writing here is aimed more for the Druids who are Restoration or Feral and have some spell damage items lying around in the bank, rather than for people who have been raiding Mount Hyjal and Black Temple for some months.

Prelude

First of all I would like to say this, if you get accepted to a serious raiding guild with this highly controversial spec you should consider yourself lucky. It's just a fact that most endgame raiding guilds only accept one Balance Druid, if even that. You have a far better chance getting into a guild if you are Resto or Feral. I asked my old riverdance partner Kuur what his suggestion would be to people who are interested in speccing Balance, his answer was: "Don't do it!". We didn't elaborate much deeper to why he chose those words, but I kinda understood what he meant.

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out and really clarify a couple of things here. I want you to keep this section at the back of your head while you continue to read this. I'm writing this guide out of my perspective. I don't have 5 other Moonkins in the guild to have discussions with. There aren't even other Moonkins on this realm that are farming MH and BT that I can have in-depth discussions with. The only guidelines I had when I started were a couple of miscellaneous forum posts on American and European Druid sections. Which in retrospect didn't help much since everyone had their own views. So just as Vanilla Ice, I was brought up on my own, on the street, without anyone to give me a helping hand. Keep it real homez! (Can I get a 'whoop whoop'?)

Your Role In A Raid

Let's talk about what your role in a raid will be. To cut it short you are there to buff the 4 other casters in your group with 5% crit aura, combat resurrect the noobs that died too early and sometimes you might even be asked to save your innervate for a healer (be sure to have a "No habla Ingles" macro ready for those occasions, if that fails just put them on ignore). You are not in the raid to top DPS meters, well you might once in a while on trash or even score high on a Boss fight. But you will most probably never be in league with Warlocks and Rogues for example, so get used to that. The only way I can see that happening is if you are the actual Guild Master and decide to take all the best loot before any other class. This I tell you so you are prepared and don't fall apart after 3 months of raiding and never being nr. 1 on DPS meters. Ofc there are Moonkins with exceptional gear and skill who can top their guilds DPS meter, even I have occasionally done good and received a cookie. But don't get your hopes too high.

So, where was I? Oh yeah...

Starfire Vs Wrath

This can be a touchy subject. There is one group of people who promotes Wrath, in most cases these people are pure "Theorycrafters", now that's fine. Second group are people who promotes the use of Starfire, now these people tend to be Moonkins who are actually raiding endgame content. There is a third group as well, who promotes a mixture of the two in their spell rotation. Personally I think they are a bit gender confused, but they are nice people and rarely swear. But let's look at what extra boost your Wrath and Starfire can gain:

Wrath:

• Wrath of Cenarius
• Stormstrike

• Wrath of Cenarius
• Curse of Shadows
• T5 Setbonus
• T6 Setbonus
• Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium

Wrath (Nature Damage)

Wrath of Cenarius (Rank 5/5): Your Wrath gains an additional 10% of your bonus damage effects.
Stormstrike: The next 2 sources of Nature damage dealt to the target are increased by 20%. Lasts 12 seconds. Stormstrike (as I'm sure most of you already know) is a debuff Enhancement Shamans place on a target every 12 seconds (if spammed). Most Enhancement Shamans will use Stormstrike and immediately after use Earthshock, so you will most probably get a chance to steal 1 Stormstrike every 12 seconds. If you also have an Elemental Shaman in the raid I can guarantee that he will steal both Stormstrike buffs with his insane combination of Lightning Bolt spam, Chain Lightning and Lightning Overload proc. When I played Enhancement Shaman and spammed Stormstrike and Earthshock after eachother the Elemental Shaman sometimes even managed to steal both debuffs in between my Global Cooldowns (thanks Fxp). In conclusion, even if you have an Enhancement Shaman in the raid you won't benefit much from Stormstrike and if there also is an Elemental Shaman in the raid you will definitely NOT benefit from it at all.

Starfire (Arcane Damage)

Wrath of Cenarius (Rank 5/5): Your Starfire spell gains an additional 20% of your bonus damage effects.
Curse of Shadows: Curses the target for 5 min, reducing Shadow and Arcane resistances by 88 and increasing Shadow and Arcane damage taken by 10%.
T5 Setbonus, 4 pieces: Increases your Starfire damage against targets afflicted with Moonfire or Insect Swarm by 10%.
T6 Setbonus, 4 pieces: Increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire ability by 5%.
Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium (Trinket): Starfire has a 25% chance to grant up to 150 spell damage for 8 sec.

In conclusion, if you are in a raid and have access to endgame loot there are more factors that can buff your Starfire than Wrath. I might have missed some imba rings, trinkets or other ways to boost the damage of Wrath, but this is what I managed to find. Also Starfire is (regardless of possible Nature's Grace proc) a 3 second cast and Wrath is a 1,5 second cast. Therefore Starfire gains more bonus damage from gear simply because of the casting time rule.

Spell Rotation And Gear

Your Spellrotation in comparisment to your gear can make a difference. And it's not just the gear in it self but the gear you are wearing will in most cases tell where you and your guild is in PvE Progress. Now of course this can be opened for discussion but if you are wearing T4 (or equivelent) you and your Guild are probably doing Karazhan, Gruul, Magtheridon and perhaps Zul'Aman. If you are in T5 (or equivelent) you and your guild are probably doing Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. And finally, if you are wearing T6 you're probably a no-lifer. Starfire is the main ability I use in my rotation at all time, but I didn't always used to.

Tier 4 Gear

Here you don't get anything but Mana back from your set bonuses, so just go mad. The instances you most probably are doing don't have trash packs that takes ages and the Boss encounters are generally short. So just go nuts, Moonfire spam, see how many times you can spam the wrath button between each Global Cooldown and then try to break that record. See how many Crowd Controls you can break before you get kicked from the raid, just go nuts. As long as you learn something from it.

Tier 5 Gear

Now things become slightly more serious. I've never been a personal fan of Wrath spam, but in most cases it's the best spell for trash, unless you know the trash fights inside out. Most trash in Serpentshrine Caverns and Tempest Keep have annoying abilities to interrupt your 3 second Starfire, such as AoE Silence and AoE Knockbacks (this can often be avoided by good positioning, sometimes not). Other annoying abilities are Spellreflection, Cloak of Shadows or retarded murlocs running all over the place and mobs that simply dies when you have 0.3 seconds left on your Starfire. When you take all this into account, Wrath spam is best in the beginning for trash. The Boss encounter on the other hand, they last quite long. You need to conserv as much mana as possible. Now I would recommend that you get 4 pieces of Tier 5 as fast as possible (for the set bonus) and also aquire your very own [Idol of the Unseen Moon] from Badge vendor. If you keep updating your Moonfire every 10-12 seconds then not only will your Starfire do 10% more damage, but you will also have a chance to gain another 140 spelldamage for 10 seconds and if that Moonfire crits, your next Starfire will only take 2,5 seconds to cast. If mana really is a problem for you, just use Rank 1 Moonfire. Unless they changed it this wednesday, it should still work.

Tier 6 Gear

I'm not going to write much here, because unless you bought your character on E-Bay, you should know your shit by now. Although, it might be good to add that according to pure Theorycrafting, the following spellrotation gave highest possible DPS in a Mount Hyjal/ Black Temple raid enviroment: "MF,SFX4". Grats to Starfire!

Intermission

If you are going to continue reading I suggest you have a pee break now. See you in five.

Talents

Now we've been talking about Spell Rotation in combination with gear, which brings us to what spec is optimal, Which inevitably brings us to why the hell my appartment is so dirty?! I think most people can agree that no more than 15-18 points is really needed in the Restoration tree but there are so many factors that can play part in where to spend your Balance points. I personally raid with this specc: (43/0/18). Why? Because I rarely have a Shadow Priest in my group, I need all the Mana regen I can get. My group usually consists of 2-3 Warlocks and 1-2 Mages and on some fights, a Paladin. Too be honest, if you really want the Trees (Force of Nature) for PvP you could skip a point in Subtlety and just hold back a tiny bit longer in the beginning of each pull.

Now the specc I use is purely for PvE purposes. If you are married to a Shadow Priest I'm sure you could lose all the mana oriented talents such as Moonglow, Dreamstate, Natural Shapeshifter and Intensity and replace with Force of Nature, Celestial Focus, Improved Nature's Grasp or I don't know, Nature's Focus? Just so you can have some fun in BG's too.

Improved Faerie Fire

(Rank 3/3: Your Faerie Fire spell also increase the chance the target will be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 3%.)
Ooooh, this has been a hot potato from time to time. I've seen people go nuts over this saying that no "real" endgame raider would even consider removing this talent. Well let's break it down. For example, the Hit Rating cap for casters is at 16%, there is absolutely no point what so ever to go above this. So in theory with the help of Improved Faerie Fire everyone in the raid could change their gems and lose 47.31 Hit Rating and replace with whatver they feel like. Yeah sure, that sounds great, absolutely smashing! But what about those days that I'm not raiding? Or when I sometimes die. Everyone in the raid will suddenly have 3% less chance to hit. I'm sure the interrupters will have a laugh at Illidari Council with 3% less chance to hit. Of course it can be a good boost for a guild who are on it's way up in PvE progress and the general situation is that most people are low on hit. But to rely on it? That's just madness in my humble opinion.

Subtlety

Same here, a lot of people experience this differently. I personally have to start off with an Insect Swarm and a Moonfire before I can load up my Starfire, and I have a total amount of 22% threat reduction (+ Blessing of Salvation ofc). Eventhough I have such high threat reduction the pulls would be risky if I started casting Starfire at the same time as the Warlocks and Mages started to throw their nukes. So to me this is really important. As I said, different experiences about this. Try without, if it doesn't work then try a couple of points. If you still over aggro and are sure it's not tanks fault then go 5/5 and adapt.

Nature's Grace

Often dissed by the same Theorycrafters who prefer Wrath, and for good reasons! Not arguing with that. If you are going to spam Wrath there is no reason to have this at all because you can only spam as fast as your Global Cooldown (every 1,5 seconds). When patch 2.4 was up on test realms it was reported that Spell Haste would also reduce Global Cooldown, but Nature's Grace never qualified as a Spell Haste buff anyway, so screw that.

Omen Of Clarity

I have no idea why, but some people actually consider this worth having as Balance. It might be foolish and arrogant of me, but I'm not even going to speculate the pros and cons for this. My inner voice just yells "Are you retarded? Go and watch porn instead" when I try to think about it.

Natural Shapeshifter

Might as well get this because you will be asked to go out of Moonkin Form and Combat Resurrect someone as soon as it's ready, because people always die. Try to save as much mana as you can in the process.

Balance Of Power

+ 4% chance to hit with spells. Need I say more?

Force Of Nature

M-m-m-m-monster Trees! They look funny and are great listeners for those lonely autumn evenings, but they don't do much good in a raid. Mine don't even show up on the damage meters and occasionally bug and decide to go elsewhere. I might spawn them on the left side where I want them to attack some mobs but sometimes they seem to go "Hey, let's go and check out what's happening over here instead", then stop, change their minds(?!) and then run back to me and just stand there till they expire. I can get Vine to do that for half the Mana.

Brambles And Thorns

Have you ever gotten a Boss down to 1% and then wipe? Was Thorns on the Main Tank? If it was, did the Druid have "improved Thorns" (Brambles)? Would it have been a kill if Improved Thorns would have been up? Don't think about this for more than 3 minutes or your landlord will find you tomorrow lying on the floor in fetal position, sucking your own thumb. Ancient Greek philosophers have wrestled with this question for thousands of years. So don't bother trying.

Hit, Crit Or Spell Damage?

The simple formula to follow while gearing up is this: Hit>Spelldamage>Crit.
The naked caster has a 17% chance to get his spell resisted by a lvl 73 Boss (Which is marked with a Skull or "??"). Something that might be good to point out is that Blizzard made it so that no matter how much + hit rating you have, you will always, no matter what, regardless of nothing have a 1% chance to miss. So for everyone who took their socks off to count on their toes will notice that 17% (Chance to miss) - 1% (no matter what) leaves us with a gap of 16% that needs to be filled. I've seen many people write that you only need 151 hit rating, but I currently have 151 Hit Rating atm and it comes out 11.97%, I don't know if that last 1 hit rating is considered unecessary according to Theorycrafting, but I will continue to write the number 152. In the beginning I was really sceptical to everyone saying "Hit über alles", but it's actualy true. I used to think that if I missed one spell, surely my next Crit would make up for that, but sadly it doesn't work like that in the long run. "You need to Hit before you can Crit". I'm not sure how it works for all the other Casting classes, but you will need 152 (~12%) hit rating and another 4% from the talent Balence of Power!

As soon as you've obtained this you can start to stack up on Spelldamage and Crit.

Miscellaneous

Survivability

In the Gem section you will see me listing [Glowing Nightseye]. The reason for this is not just because it's the most decent one to cover a blue socket. Stamina in it's self is very important for a Moonkin, too some extent. It's not like we can Life Tap or something, but still quite important. I've seen many people writing that "Moonkin Druids are great off-healers". Now I'm not gonna argue with this either, in theory they are very good off-healers and are very much capable of healing themselves if needed, but you shouldn't allow yourself to get into that situation where your percentage HP is lower than the average raid member (a mistake often made by Mages and Shadow Priests). This is connected to what I wrote in the very beginning, about being lucky if you get to join an endgame raiding guild. Since you will be among the lower people on DPS you will be completely useless if you die. You won't DPS enough either if you have to shapeshift and heal yourself all the time. Moonkin Druids aren't fragile, far from it. But try to be among the last 5-8 people standing on each wipe just to increase your own value in the Raid.

Positioning And Timing

Your position and your timing will have the biggest influence on your DPS. This is probably more important for Moonkins (using Starfire as main ability) than any other DPS class. I know that everyone likes to use that phrase, "*my class* more than others!", but in this case I'm convinced that it's true. I have played other classes both before and after this character, so I feel very strongly about this. With no other class have I had so many cases where there is just 0.2 seconds left on my ability (in this case Starfire) when either a Mob dies, moves (blink, vanish) or simply becomes invulnerable (Cloak of Shadow, Spell Reflect). Same with with Bosses, just as the nuke is about to land it either moves or I get teleported somewhere, new phase starts (STOP DPS, MOVE AWAY QUICK!) or some other crap happens that prevents me from finishing my cast.

Going OOMkin

We are sometimes called Boomkins, we are sometimes called Oomkins and we are sometimes called a WasteOfSpaceKins. Two of these can be brought up for discussion but the Oomkin part is pretty true. In between Karazhan and towards the end of Tempest Keep I personally had huge amounts of problems regarding mana (and threat). I don't really know for sure if this was because of bad spell rotation or lack of MP/5, because I had the talents to increase mana regen. But if you find yourself constantly low on mana with both innervate and mana pots on cool down you might wanna think hard about how you rotate your spells and how much MP/5 you have. And ofc make sure that you have the talents for mana regen, but that pretty much goes without saying.

Spell Haste?

On this point I must admit that I come ill-prepared. I've read some Theorycrafting about spell haste conserning other casters and it seems to be something worth striving for. But when I tried this out I failed. I knew that I wanted to see decreased casting time on Starfire but I didn't manage to balance out all my other stats. When Zul'Aman was about to be released they announced the new loot that would be available from badges, so I farmed badges and I farmed Heroic Slave Pens for [Quagmirran's Eye]. When Zul'Aman was released I bought 2 items and I think that made it a total of 4 items with spell haste. I brought the new gear to our next raid to try it out but it just didn't work. As I said, I didn't manage to balance out my stats properly, I lost too much of the other important stuff which just resulted in failure. I'm hoping to loot some spell haste items soon that won't compromise my other stats as much, but at the moment I don't have anything positive to report. Now this doesn't mean that spell haste is bad, not at all! I'm just telling you that I failed and thus I can't give you a more interesting report. I'm sawry!

Gear: Cloth Vs Leather

It boils down to vanity wether you choose to embrace yourself exclusively with Leather or not, because there is absolutely no valid argument to restrict youself to Leather when you start gearing up, or at anytime for that matter. I kinda did it myself to some extent, which was just retarded. The simple fact is that Moonkin loot doesn't really start appearing until you enter Mount Hyjal, Black temple and possibly some items in Zul'Aman, but when I started to gear up Zul'Aman and the new Badge rewards wasn't even around. You need Hit, Crit and Spell Damage like any other caster and most of the time Cloth is your best choice. You're not going to tank anything anyway, so why care about armor? Because that is the major difference in most cases. The only advantage the Leather has is that no Mage, Warlock or Shadow Priest can wear it/ ninja it.

Professions

Tailoring Vs Leatherworking

Skinning and Leatherworking, Herbalism and Alchemy or maybe Tailoring and Enchanting? I'm sure alot of people would disagree to this, but I wish I had picked Tailoring instead of Leatherworking from the start. Sure, if you are going to be Feral for life I suppose the Primal Strike set and miscellaneous patterns from SSC and TK would be good. But for Mooknins the Winhawk set is crap compared to the Tailoring set Spellfire. Let's compare the useful stats (Taken from Wowhead.com):

The big difference is that the Windhawk armor gives 56 Spirit and the 3-set bonus is 8 MP/5, but Spellfire increases your spelldamage by 7% of your total Intellect, which means that if you have 450 intellect you will get 31,5 more Spell Damage. So in conclusion the Spellfire set gives more Arcane Spelldamage and more Spell Crit, less Intellect and less Mana Regen. Yes it's Arcane Damage only, but you better start learning to do that Starfire rotation early if you wanna make a career, there is just no way you can enter Black Tample and start spamming Wrath 24/ 7. Even the Primal Mooncloth is (according to Heavenfalls guide) a set that you can go far with as a Resto Druid. How far I'm not so sure about, but further than the healing you get from Windhawk Armor I am pretty damn sure of.

The Rest

Leatherworking

Can't say that this profession has given me much personal use. I have mostly crafted stuff for others. Of course [Drums of Battle] have proven to be very useful, so yeah...

Tailoring

At one point I dropped Skinning and replaced with Tailoring, that was mostly for the 20-slot bags. But I know that this would have benefitted me alot in the beginning. There are some nice cloth patterns dropping in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, quite frequently as well.

Enchanting

The ring enchants (+ 24 total Spell Damage combined) would to me alone be worth getting this profession for. Also it would have been easier keeping myself updated with enchants. But, I have a couple of rare LW patterns so I have to wait a while.

Jewel Crafting

Even if you're not a Miner, buying the uncut gems from AH and then have them cutted will always be cheaper. I've changed alot of gems. Not only gemming new gear, but sometimes regemming old gear after looting just to be able to balance out the stats.

Alchemy

Here is what I think would be the biggest pay off for the Moonkin Druid. Being an Elixir Master or Potion Master will help ease the cost of consumables. Also, the [Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone] would be godlike on those really long fights.

Enchants And Gems

Enchants

6mp/5 or +6 All Stats on Chest is really up to your current mana situation. 15 Hit Rating on gloves is not that expensive, so I would recommend that in the beginning when Hit Rating generally is hard to find. Subtlety on Cloak will probably be the best option in the long run. Vitality, Stamina or Boar's Speed on Boots are all good options. There isn't really a right or wrong choice in this matter, at least not as obvious to NOT put 30 intellect on your weapon. Now weapon enchant! 40 Spell Damage will suffice. Even in instances as Mount Hyjal one tends to have a large repertoire for ones Spell Rotation. I personally won't bother with Sunfire untill I get my very own Squid-on-a-stick, not just for economic reasons, but for the fact that I still let one or two Insects Swarms and Wraths slip through

Gems

I've been asked many times "How would you gem this [Imba Chest]?" There isn't a right or wrong way to gem any gear. Although I would redcommend following the colors in order to get the Socket Bonus(es), unless it's something completely useless like "+2 Intellect" from 2-3 gems. So if you follow the formula "Hit>Spell Damage>Crit", and follow the socket colors (which means that a couple of [Glowing Nightseye] will be used), everything will pan out in the end. As soon as you have capped hit rating with 152 you can start to prioritise spelldamage and crit. As you and your guild progress in PvE your gear will upgrade and by keeping the stat formula I personally have never really become unbalanced regarding stats in any way.

Crafted Gems

Other Gems