Tastes Like Battle Chicken

This is a follow up post to Noobkin to Boomkin, and Noobkin to Boomkin Macros.

Do you remember those baby toys with the stacking rings? It’s a perfect visual for stacking stats. The stats with the biggest benefit to your damage must come first, and then each stat gets sequentially smaller.

Understanding Stats

Just in case I have any newbs (the new-to-the-game kind, not the idiot kind), this will be Newb Moment Number 1: What They Are. Stats (yes, it really is short for “statistics.” there is math in WoW, but it hasn’t stopped me from playing yet) are the basic building blocks to your abilities.

Newb Moment Number 2: What They Do

Bonus Damage: Exactly what you think it does.  It increases the base damage amount of your spells.

Hit:  Hit rating tells you how likely you are to hit a target 3 levels above you.  26.32 hit rating = 1% hit.  17% is hit capped, but I’ll go more into that below.

Haste: Increases the speed at which your spells cast by a percentage determined by your haste rating.

Crit Chance: Describes the percentage at which you can expect critical hits.  More critical strike rating = higher percentage = more frequent crits.

Intellect: Increases your mana and critical strike chance.

Spirit: Increases mana regeneration.

Important difference between intellect and spirit:  Intellect increases the amount of mana you START with, and for most casters, this is the most important mana-related stat.  Spirit, on the other hand, determines how fast your mana regenerates, and therefore is extremely useful for healers.

Stat Stacking

Okay, that being covered, let me give you an illustration of moonkin stacking:

I hear you, over there in the back. “But…but…Intellect and Spirit! Where are the rest?” Intellect and spirit will come with gear, so unless you are running out of mana on boss fights, don’t fret over these.  Let’s go a little more into detail about why I chose this order.

Hit

Hit is worth more than spell damage for one very simple reason: spell damage is useless if the spell misses.  You need to work on accumulating hit until you’re hit capped.  You are hit capped when adding any more hit would be useless, and that number varies with a couple of things.

The hit cap is 17% for spellcasters.  26.32 hit rating = 1%, so to be hit capped, you would need 26.32 x 17, or approximately 447 hit rating.  I know, it sounds like a lot.  But we get 4% from Balance of Power (should you spec Balance of Power? uh, yeah), so that drops the number to 13%, or 342.  If you have a shadow priest casting Misery or a feral druid throwing up Faerie Fire (if you have a feral druid but no shadow priest, you need to throw 3 points in Improved Faerie Fire for this to work), then you get a 3% hit bonus, making the hit you personally need to acquire 10%, or 263.

Bottom Line: Most heroic-raiding moonkin will need 263 hit rating to be hit capped.

Spell Damage

This is pretty easily understood, but since I made a ring for it, I guess I’ll say something about it.  Hit is your number 1 necessity.  Spell Damage is your number 1.5 necessity.  More spell damage = more pwnage.  It’s simple.  It comes with gear, and if you’re hit capped, you should be filling in gem slots with it.

Bottom Line: Spell damage = win.

[Updated 8/6/09]Haste & Crit

“Updated” is nicely putting it; I’m actually rewriting this entire section based on Patch 3.2.  Haste is still more important in my opinion, but not nearly as important as is used to be.  With the new rotation giving equal time to Wrath and Starfire (or more equal, anyway), overcapping haste for it’s SF benefits doesn’t seem quite the way to go anymore.  According to Graylo (don’t worry, he’ll correct me if I’m wrong.  We all know he’s much mathier than I am.  lol), the moonkin haste “cap” (I understand this as the highest amount of haste you can have before the Wrath cast equals the GCD and any extra haste is wasted on Wrath) is 400.  I think with the rotation change, it will be more beneficial to stack haste to 400 and then focus on accumulating crit.

Bottom line:   Get your haste to 400 (still pretty hot) and then focus on crit.

My son has a stacking ring that sings music and glows brightly, making it stand out from most of his other toys (well, it did, before he lost all the rings).  That’s what I want for us…well, not the music and glowing brightly, but definitely the standing out part.  However, if you want to carry an amp, guitar, and flashlight and put on personal light shows for your guild, don’t let me dissuade you.