I’ve been doing a lot of testing and running a custom simulation for Moonkins (https://krokats.github.io/boomkin-sim/). With this post I want to extend Gralle's post on the needed Moonkin Class Change. Right now (and all the way up to Endgame), Moonkin DPS is sitting roughly 40-60% behind pure caster classes like Mages but also other "hybrids" like Retris or Enhancer, often placing right above the tanks on most fights.
Before diving deeper, I want to quickly address the elephant in the room: the "Hybrid Tax". People often argue that Moonkins shouldn't do as much damage as Mages because Druids are hybrids. However, almost every class in the game is a hybrid in some way, yet Moonkins consistently sit at the absolute bottom of the DPS rankings. We don't need to top the meters, but we shouldn't be competing with tanks either.
For some historical context, after the last patch and before the end of Turtle, the dev team already recognized this massive gap and planned to buff Moonkin scaling.
Based on sim data and community feedback, here is a breakdown of the core issues and how we could fix them:
1. The Eclipse Mechanic (Stopcasting, RNG & Bad Luck Protection)
Currently, Eclipse relies on a flat percentage chance (40% for Wrath / 60% for Starfire). The problem is the RNG is extremely punishing. If you get bad RNG, or if you have to move for a boss mechanic during your short 15-second window, your DPS plummets.
Possible fixes:
First, introduce a stacking bad-luck protection mechanic: if RNG fails us, Eclipse should automatically trigger after a set number of hits (e.g., 3 Wraths or 2 Starfires).
Second, convert the 15-second Eclipse timer into a charge-based (stacking) buff. Instead of a 15s window, Arcane Eclipse should grant 5 charges consumed by Starfire, and Nature Eclipse should grant 10 charges consumed by Wrath hits. This completely eliminates the frustration of latency, forced movement, and spell clipping. You get exactly the buffed casts you earned, and the gameplay becomes vastly more fluid and consistent
Third, remove the 30-second internal "Solstice" cooldown entirely, and simply make it so a new Eclipse cannot proc while another is already active. Once your Eclipse charges are consumed, you have the freedom to choose which Eclipse you want to proc next based on the encounter, rather than being locked into a forced pendulum.
2. Balance of All Things
In patch 1.18.1, the Balance of All Things talent was changed. The great part about this update was that it finally aligned the elements with Moonfire now buffs Starfire, and Insect Swarm buffs Wrath. This elemental synergy is great and should absolutely be kept. However, the specific buff given to Starfire (a 9% increased critical strike chance) is where the issue lies. The older version of the talent gave us a 0.5s cast time reduction, which provided control. The new version just adds more RNG to a painfully slow 3-second spell. Consistency feels much better than random crits. We should keep the new elemental pairing but revert the BoaT Starfire bonus from +9% crit back to a 0.5s cast time reduction while Moonfire is active on the target.
3. Trinket Procs and DoT Inconsistencies
Right now, Moonfire ticks, Insect Swarm ticks, and Hurricane do not proc trinkets or effects. Mages and Priests can proc their items effortlessly with instant AoE, while our DoTs and Hurricane give us nothing. Allowing DoT ticks and Hurricane to trigger trinket procs would instantly make our DoTs and AoE feel much more rewarding and consistent.
4. DoT Synergies & Rotation
Constantly reapplying DoTs manually feels clunky and costs too much DPS, especially when we are forced to keep Moonfire up for the Balance of All Things buff. To fix this, we should add a mechanic (via a talent) where your core casts automatically refresh your DoTs. For example: Starfire hits refresh Moonfire, and Wrath hits refresh Insect Swarm. This would smooth out the rotation massively and synergize perfectly with the rest of the toolkit.
5. The Spell Hit Starvation
Boomkins require a massive amount of spell hit, and getting it on gear is a nightmare.
Option A (Talents): Change the Natural Weapons talent. Keep the 3% melee hit for Ferals, but increase the spell hit portion to 6%.
Option B (Raid Utility): Rework Faerie Fire so it also reduces the spell hit required against that target for the entire raid.
6. General QoL Adjustments & Utility
Out-of-Combat Resurrection: Druids are the only healing-capable class that cannot reliably resurrect party members after a wipe. While Rebirth is a fantastic combat tool, its long CD leads to massive, unnecessary downtime in dungeons and raids. Giving Druids a standard out-of-combat resurrection spell wouldn't diminish the unique combat value of Rebirth, nor would it break Vanilla's design philosophy. It would simply be a massive QoL improvement. (Even if it has to be a deep Resto talent to avoid homogenization, it's needed, though a baseline version would greatly help Moonkin/Feral 5-man utility).
Hurricane: Please remove the 10-second cooldown. If a tank repositions mobs out of your Hurricane, your cooldown is wasted and your AoE output drops to zero for no good reason.
Entangling Roots: Allow it to be cast indoors.
7. Number Tuning & Scaling
Even with all the fixes above, we won't close a 40% gap. Moonkins need better scaling. We need a slight bump to the Spell Power coefficients of Wrath and Starfire. Alternatively, buff the Moonfury talent from a 12% damage increase to a 15-20% base damage increase.
These changes would make the spec fluid, rewarding, and actually viable for raiding, without making them overpowered.
EDIT:
To back up these proposals, I implemented and ran these exact changes through my custom Moonkin simulation to see how they would actually impact our damage.
Simulation Parameters:
Phase 0 BiS Gear (9% Hit, 22% Crit)
Fully raid-buffed + consumes/flask
~40-second boss fight duration (e.g., Golemagg)
Results:
- Moonkin Class Change calc.jpg (70.64 KiB) Viewed 440 times
1. The Eclipse fixes are pure Quality of Life:
Changes #1 through #3 completely fix the clunky, punishing feel of the current Eclipse design, yet they only result in a marginal ~2.2% overall DPS increase. This proves that fixing the Eclipse mechanics doesn't break the damage meters—it simply makes the spec reliable and fun to play.
2. Rotational flow is the real bottleneck:
Reverting BoaT to a cast time reduction (#4) and allowing our core spells to refresh DoTs (#6) provide the biggest leaps (adding roughly ~10% combined DPS).
3. The 40% Gap and the need for Scaling:
Cumulatively, applying all of these mechanical and QoL fixes results in an ~16% total DPS increase. Since we are currently 40-60% behind pure casters, a 16% boost modernizes the playstyle without making us overpowered in the slightest. More importantly, it proves Point #7: even with a perfectly smooth, modernized rotation and a 6% hit talent, we still need a slight bump in Spell Power coefficients or base damage to truly close the gap.
