Moonkin Talents/Specs Discussion (www.elitistjerks.com
1. Introduction

In order to avoid massive the problem of massive megathreads where you have to sift through a lot of posts, which might be irrelevant to what you are looking for, I decided to create a thread dedicated to discussing Moonkin Talents only, with the emphasis on endgame and raiding.

The problem with a lot of talent discussions is that they usually become “What do you think of my spec?” and often focus on certain talents in isolation. What is lacking is the bigger picture, the comparison of various talents against each other.

So I made an attempt to try to provide a larger overview. I hope that this can stimulate discussion and provide some framework for it.

I tried to raise a lot of questions and I hope that over time we can come up with some answers and eventually get a quite detailed overview of Moonkin talents and their exact mechanics, as well as a sense of how they trade against each other.

I hope that other posters can correct my errors and fill the missing gaps. Please note that whilst I have started this thread and will try to continue to keep it updated as more information comes in, I do not take credit for its content as it has been compiled from contributions from the Elitist Jerks community (in this as well as previous threads). I would like to especially thank Adoriele and Erdluf.

2. "So what do I pick?"

The question we need to ask ourselves when picking talents is simple. Which talents provide the most DPS? The answer, of course, is much more complex. It's difficult to compare talents against each other, due to their very different mechanics and often not fully understood nature. The answer also depends on our rotations, gear, but most importantly the nature and mechanics of a particular fight.

Some talents will be very useful in most situations, others not so strong in a “general purpose” spec but very good in a
“specific purpose” spec for certain encounters. You should also keep in mind that the talents' effectiveness will vary depending on your gear level.

There are never any easy answers and a degree of personal testing will always be necessary to determine the talents suited best to the situation you find yourself in. Hopefully this thread will provide you with the necessary information to help you in making those decisions.

3. The Balance Tree

Tier 1

Starlight Wrath (5)
Cast time of Wrath and Starfire reduced by 0.1 sec per talent point/
A powerful talent and a must in any Moonkin build. It scales better with Wrath, however provides a significant damage increase to both of your main nukes.

Genesis (5)
1% damage increase on MF and IS per talent point.
This appears to be one of our weakest damage talents. Based on Adoriele's calculations here, it appears you get less than 0.2% DPS per talent point spent. It is very useful to Restoration Druids, however, who mainly use HoTs.

Tier 2

Moonglow (3)
Mana cost of MF, SF, ST, W, HT, REJ, REG reduced by 3% per talent point.
Moonglow is our weakest mana regen talent (you can find approximate numbers calculated by Adoriele below) and based on the experience of raiding Moonkins, shared so far, you shouldn’t need to spend any points here (other than the point required to advance further down the tree, obviously).

Nature’s Majesty (2)
2% Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, Healing Touch crit per talent point.
2% crit on your main nukes per talent point spent is one of the best investments you can make and a must in any Moonkin build.

Improved Moonfire (2)
5% MF damage and 5% MF crit increase per talent point.
As the initial MF damage is reduced by 90% by the [Glyph of Moonfire] (which I am assuming everyone uses when raiding), the value of this talent has decreased. The damage over time component does stack with the glyph but additively. Nevertheless, as taking Moonglow does not appear to be necessary for raiding, it seems picking this talent is advised. Also note that the increased crit chance increases your DPS regardless of the reduced initial damage by reducing the cast time of the following spell through Nature’s Grace.

Tier 3

Brambles (3)
5% Treants’ damage increase per talent point.
Treants deal considerable DPS now (Questions: How much exactly? How does it scale with our stats? What percentage of our DPS can we expect the Treants' to deal in a boss fight on average?), therefore this talent might be considered useful now in a raiding situation and not just in a solo/pvp environment.
However, it appears quite situational. You will only use them every 3 minutes (that’s if you remember to and if the situation allows) and they might not always live their full duration. Timing is very important. On bosses dealing lots of AOE damage, the returns from this talent will be reduced.
Still, it would be very interesting to see some calculations on what is the DPS increase per talent point spent, as WWS parses show Treants dealing a considerable percentage of Moonkins’ damage dealt.

Nature’s Grace (3)
Spell crits give you a 33/66/100% chance to reduce next spell’s cast time by 0.5 sec per talent point
Another staple Moonkin talent. Erdluf argues its value well below.

Nature’s Reach (2)
Range increased by 10% and threat reduced by 15% per talent point spent
Whilst threat does not appear to be an issue in raid instances available at the release of WLK, the developers have stated that it will become more significant later. And while you are usually safe on boss fights, it is still relatively easy to pull aggro in AOE/trash situations and in heroic instances. Increased range also helps on fights with AOE mechanics.

(I will continue to update the Balance talents section of this post soon. For now, please find the original version of the post below.)

“Recommended” Balance Talents

- Vengeance 5/5
- Insect Swarm 1/1
- Moonfury 3/3
- Balance of Power 2/2
- Moonkin Form 1/1 and Improved Moonkin Form 3/3
- Wrath of Cenarius 5/5
- Eclipse 1/3
- Force of Nature 1/1
- Earth and Moon 3/3

“Optional” Balance Talents

Nature’s Splendor (1)
Moonfire duration extended by 3 seconds, Insect Swarm duration extended by 2 seconds.
You will want to keep Moonfire up at all times, as well as Insect Swarm if you glyphed for it. As casting the DoTs makes you lose a Global Cooldown every X seconds, being able to cast them less often will increase your DPS.

Celestial Focus (3)
1% Haste per talent point (bosses are immune to the Stun effect but it can be helpful on trash).
At first sight, this talent appears to give a significant damage increase on all of your spells. Yet it doesn't seem very popular and I have seen it dropped from many builds. Dukes' suggested answer to that: Increasing your Haste by X% will increase your DPS but also mana consumption. Increasing your Crit by X%, on the other hand, will increase your DPS but also decrease your mana consumption thanks to mana returns from crits in Moonkin form. Hence potentially this talent could be stronger than Improved Insect Swarm (calculations need to be done to confirm that though).

Lunar Guidance (3)
Spellpower increased by 4% of total Intellect per talent point.
A very general estimate of how much DPS this talent will provide, thanks to Erdluf. Assuming you have 545 int, add Furor, Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild and Arcane Brilliance and you get (545+51+60)*1.1*1.1 = 793 (that is assuming that the Furor and BoK multiply and are added after the additive bonuses, can somebody confirm that?). A point in LG would give you 31 Spellpower, which probably equals about 37 DPS (simulationcraft shows a point of Spellpower equal to 1.19 DPS).

Improved Insect Swarm (3)
1% damage increase on Wrath (if IS is up), 1% crit chance increase on Starfire (if MF is up) per talent point.

Dreamstate (3)
Converts 4/3/3% of Intellect into mp5 per talent point.
Our third most useful mana regen talent (behind Omen of Clarity and Intensity). As with all mana regen talents, take it if you find you’re running OOM. Skip otherwise.

Improved Faerie Fire (3)
1% Spell Hit on debuffed targets as well as 1% Crit to your spells, per talent point.
This talent would be very useful in a 10-man environment where a Shadow Priest might not always be present but in a 25-man raid it shouldn’t be necessary. We are still waiting for more calculations to be done to see if the increased crit chance applies when someone else (like a Feral Druid) applies FF. It it does, then this talent would be very useful (having a Feral Druid apply FF makes sense because it now generates considerable aggro for them). If it doesn’t, then taking it isn’t really worthwhile. For now, due to the absence of proof to the contrary, I will assume the latter but watch this space.

Owlkin Frenzy (3)
5% chance of receiving a 10 second buff increasing damage by 10% and removing pushback when attacked per talent point.
There is no internal cooldown, however it seems that not all damage effects will trigger it (some DoTs applied by bosses count as self damage). This ability seems very situational. Lots of bosses will cast AOE spells but aren’t you supposed to avoid them? The buff from this talent is also very random. First, you have to be targeted and hit by a mob's ability. Then, the talent has to proc. Taking this into account, it doesn’t look particularly beneficial compared to talents which are active at all times, in a general build. It would of course be very useful in a specific build designed for a boss that uses attacks affecting the entire raid or AOE spells which are virtually impossible to avoid (eg. Razuvius).

Eclipse (3)
After Eclipse's effect has been doubled and the duration extended, the DPS returns from spending more talent points in it have increased significantly so spending two or three points in this talent does make sense now.

I do realise there is a number of players who would rather skip Eclipse due to preferred playstyle, however it has been proven here and here that Eclipse rotations have signifinicantly higher DPS).

AOE Talents
Typhoon (1)
Gale Winds (2)
Starfall (1)

The above talents increase your AOE capability, thus obviously helping on trash encounters. But how much do they help during boss fights? It appears that only 6 out of 14 boss encounters in Naxxramas will call for AOE spells to be used.

Therefore is it really worth spending 4 talent points on talents that you will only use part of the time when instead you could pick others that would affect your DPS always? Or will the significant DPS increase during the AOE encounters off-set the loss of DPS elsewhere?

Once switch specs are introduced, having an AOE/Trash spec and a General spec might be an idea. In the General spec, those four points could be dropped and applied to other talents.

So now we have all the talents listed above, the question is: Which ones provide the highest DPS increase?
It would be great too see some calculations so that we could very roughly rank the talents in order of the DPS contribution they provide. Of course, it would have to be very vague as it depends on many factors but a general ranking, with more in-depth specific comments could be very useful, I believe, as it would help to decide which talents to trade against which.

4. Restoration Tree

Tier 1

Improved Mark of the Wild (2)
MotW and GotW effects increased by 20% per talent point
Rank 9 MotW provides a significant buff therefore this talent is much more useful now, than it was in the past. It won’t be needed in 25-man raids where you are practically certain to have a Restoration Druid available, however it can be useful for 10-man raiding and heroic instances.

Nature’s Focus (3)
Pushback whilst casting Wrath (and various healing spells) reduced by 23/46/70% per talent point
An alternative to Imp MotW, it can help to reduce pushback on fights where boss mechanics mean you often receive damage. If you mainly, or exclusively, raid 25-mans than it might be a better choice.

Furor (5)
Total intellect in Moonkin form increased by 2% per talent point
Increases your mana pool, critical chance and also the effect of other talents benefiting from Intellect, like Lunar Guidance or Dreamstate.
(Question: Is it additive or multiplicative with BoK?)

Tier 2

Master Shapeshifter (3)
Reduces the mana cost of all shapeshifting by 10% per talent point
Useful when shifting out to battle res or heal, however mostly taken in order to gain access to Master Shapeshifter and advance to the next tier.

Tier 3

Intensity (3)
Allows 10% of your mana regen to continue while casting per talent point
Our second most effective mana regen talent (you can find approximate numbers calculated by Adoriele below).

Omen of Clarity (1)
Each of your spells has a chance to reduce the cost of next spell by 100%
Whilst the exact proc chance is unknown, as far as I am aware, this talent has no cooldown and based on Adoriele’s calculations, it is our most effective mana regen talent by far.

Master Shapeshifter (2)
Spell damage in Moonkin form increased by 2% per talent point
A very considerable DPS increase per talent point spent.

All Tier 3 Restoration talents are extremely strong and definitely make it worthwhile to go that deep down in the tree. Whilst some people may dislike the idea of spending that many points here, based on the experience of raiders so far, OoC and Intensity alone are enough to cover your mana regen needs, especially in 25-man raids with all the buffs present (of course with mana regen talents, personal testing is always required to find the right balance that works for you). And you also get Master Shapeshifter as a bonus which is one of the biggest DPS increases per talent point spent, especially at high gear levels.