The Ways of the Talon: Stats and Gearing

Maybe you’re thinking about rolling a druid, or dusting off that one alt from months ago. Perhaps you’re a bear, cat, or tree and pondering about the mysterious crit-chicken ways. If you’re level 80 you can’t exactly respec and go waddling around in feral gear, though you won’t do very well in resto gear either. So what’s a newly-feathered Moonkin to do?

Well there are ways to fudge it so you can strut your stuff as if you’ve been doing it for years. First you have to dress the part! Say you have some off-spec gear in your bank or from spare quest rewards, but aren’t sure how to go about building your set. Hopefully I can help out!

Moonkins are closer to trees than cats or bears, so a resto gone chicken might be able to cross pieces between sets. It’s not preferred, but it’s better than having attack power gear :P

Your Best Stat Ever

Spellpower is your bread and butter, and it’s one of the simplest stats out there. Every point of spellpower makes your damaging spells stronger by a certain coefficient. For example if you have 2000 spellpower total, it would change your spells like this, barring talents:

Insect Swarm (each tick) = 20% = (2000 * 0.2) = +400 damage per tick 
Starfire = 100% = (2000 * 1.00) = +2000 damage

It’s the single most important stat to stack. Under no circumstances should you have an item slot with zero spellpower, other than the oddball trinkets. Ferals who are switching to balance should at least score some items off the auction house before respeccing.

Welcome to the Hit Cap

All DPS have a hit cap for raids. Moonkin have a hit cap of 17% just like all other casters. This is before talents, buffs, and gear, so it’s not as horrendous as it looks. I did an article on reaching the Moonkin hit cap a while back when Seline made the feral-to-feathers jump. Rather than writing out all of that info and math here, I’ll be lazy and link it instead. Sorry I was hunting a flamingo last night, so I’m tired and don’t feel like doing math this morning :P

Hit trumps spellpower until you’re capped. Any hit rating over the cap is useless, though the cap for each Moonkin will vary based on raid composition and talents.

Intellect and…Spirit?!

Intellect is pretty easy to figure out. More intellect = more mana = more happy chickens. At level 80 your gear will have enough of it so you don’t have to worry about specifically stacking it. In addition to 15 mana per point, intellect gives some spell crit. It takes ~168 intellect to make 1% spell crit, so it’s not a major crit source (but still nice). All Moonkins will have (or should have) picked up [Lunar Guidance], so you get 12% of your intellect converted into spellpower. Yay spellpower!

Some Moonkins might pick up [Dreamstate], which increases your mana regen based on your intellect. So in total this stat can give spellpower and spell crit, but with talents it gives spellpower and MP5. Learn it. Live it. Love it.

Spirit is convoluted and strange, but a nice stat. It’s relatively common on caster gear without hit rating, so those awkward “healer or DPS” caster pieces have some crossover weight for Moonkins. Spirit increases your mana regen (roughly 1 point of spirit = 0.6 mana regen), but properly-talented Moonkins will pick up [Improved Moonkin form] and gain 30% of their spirit as spellpower.

And in an awkward plot twist, Intellect and Spirit have a lovechild called mana regen. Spirit gives more mana regen if you have high intellect. Usually they’re on gear in similar amounts so it’s nothing to focus on, but nice to know anyway. There’s not really one stat that’s better than another – both are nice to have.

Crit and Haste

Oh yes, another crit vs haste discussion. Graylo over at Gray Matter can cover this a thousand times better than I possibly could. He covers the haste portion pretty well. Generally the stats are weighted the same, with haste inching a little past crit before you hit the 400 soft cap for Wrath. Any more haste than that is going to make Wrath clip the GCD (whereas Starfire is happy until you hit 2000+ haste, which is imposible). That’s when crit takes a lead.

It’s not a good idea to stack one stat and ignore the other, but for the purpose of throwing a gear set together, haste > crit until 400 haste rating. Keep in mind this assumes you have enough mana to handle the faster casts (so feral critters – shoot for crit if you’re still in AP gear). Resto respeccers will most likely have the caster gear to support it and will need more crit.

And I already know I’m going to get emails about this, with at least one person saying that my math is off. If anyone can crunch the numbers, more power to ya – email me the results and I’ll post it :)

Fledglings Below Level 80

You have easy, guys. Get intellect and spirit on your gear, with some stamina for higher health when mobs break roots and start beating on you. Around level 35-ish is when spellpower starts to crop up.

There was a question on the Getting Started forums a while ago regarding when to stop stacking intellect/spirit and just shoot for spellpower. From what I remember leveling Icedragon and what I’ve seen leveling Icebird, it’s about 5 intellect = 3 spellpower, with this conundrum popping up around level 62-65 in Outlands. That’s the awkward transition time where you might get rings and neckpieces with just spellpower and no base stats. Spellpower is worth more once you hit Outlands, but until then your mana pool is a problem so intellect is better.

Don’t worry about reacing the hit cap, as it’ll change as you level up. Also don’t fret over haste and crit – some of both is nice but don’t short yourself on spellpower or intellect for it.

The main reason I put a lot of weight on intellect while leveling is because mana regen was hurt badly in the Spirit nerf of 3.1, so you’ll be running oom a lot faster. A large mana pool can help ease that issue.

Summary

For level 80: hit (until capped) > spellpower > haste/crit > intellect/spirit

For Northrend (not yet 80): spellpower > haste/crit > intellect/spirit
This will prepare you for when you hit level 80 and need to add hit rating into the mix.

For Outlands: spellpower > intellect/spirit > haste/crit

For below Outlands: intellect/stamina > spirit

The last article will go over rotations for raiders and leveling Moonkins!