I'm looking to maximize my damage through raid boss fights. Currently we are working on Karazhan, Gruul and SSC. I'm a little behind my guild in terms of gearing.

Here's my gear/spec in the armory (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Blade&n=Elziban)

For the Gruul fight, my spell rotation has been:
Insect Swarm
3x Starfire
Insect Swarm
3x Starfire

When we are coming up on a ground tremmor, I will apply insect swarm and moonfire. Also I will activate my trinkets when there is enough time before a silence or tremmor.

It seems if I substitute wrath for starfire I will go out of mana faster. With blessing of wisdom and using starfire, I generally don't need to innervate myself during the fight.

The latest rotation I have tried is using Insect Swarm/Starfire until my trinket is ready. Then swap idols to wrath idol, activate trinket and spam wrath until the buff is gone. Then swap back to IS/Starfire.

Judging by Omen (our threat meter) I generally have about 2/3 the threat of our ranged dps by the end of the fight. Admitedly some of this is due to running around looking for the priest to innervate or a battle rez. But I would like to close the gap in dps.

Does anyone use a different spell rotation to get more dps?

moonfire for DoT?

Insect swarm's debuff is more important than the bit more damage you get from moonfire. Also....moonfire engages the global cooldown which is a waste.....1.5 seconds to cast a spell that's not half the damage of a starfire and nowhere near as mana efficient. That's why he's correct to not be using moonfire.

I'm not really into moonkin much.....have a mage alt....though at times i feel the bug to do it for a while =P. I can't find much fault with your rotation however. You're also treating yourself as a support class (which is amazingly helpful to your raid...likely moreso than you acting more like a mage or warlock that is solely focused on maximizing their own dps), but it's reducing your dps. So if you accept that you're making the choice to help in those ways you shouldn't feel bad that you end up with slightly lower damage. A moonkin can't be expected to be equal dps to a mage while at the same time giving his innervate to priests or moving to battle rez people. After all.....a mage doesn't "evocation" other people, nor can they. Every little bit you put into support takes from your dps a smidge....but that's the useful choice you bring to the raid as a druid.

Also you're resto spec in your armory.....so I dunno what spec/gear you were using. If your moonkin gear isn't a whole lot better than your resto gear (which isn't a snub.....you're right where you'd be pre-raid there....) you'd have a hard time competing with mages in spellfire/spellstrike and warlocks/spriests in shadowweave. Those sets are customary to all mages/locks/spriests....hell my mage alt has full spellfire now....and they don't have much comparable for a moonkin that's easily obtained.

Later that evening I changed my spec to restoration. We had to reshuffle our roles and our restoration druid shifted to become an offtank. While a balance druid is a nice addition to a raid, we felt a restoration druid was more critical in a 25-person setting like Gruul.

y spec was 43/0/18. No force of nature, no imp faerie fire, but full subtelty and intensity. Also before I changed specs I had about 700 to 740 spell damage, 16.5% crit, 3% to hit before talents and a little bit of spell penetration. So as you said, it was right where it should have been for a beginning raider. My resto gear is a little worse than my balance gear, but getting there. :smile:

in this case of spaming starfire and insect swarm to save mana, say you doing a magtheridon fight, which takes about 10-12 minuts at most, a druid can Innervate himself twice(usualy) and use a potion everytime its up, you can manage to always have mana to Spam wrath and put moonfire/insect swarm on at all times. other fights like gruul hes not a verry long fight, maybe 7-8 minuts and 3 mana potions and an innvervate will always keep your mana up, Dreamless sleep is probably the best for this... because Spaming wrath will bring up your overall dps Than spaming starfire, first of all you have a better chance to crit(being it faster) therefore making it only 1 second cast as you all know but then again. gear can make all the difrence Fully buffed i have 11555 mana curenly(with flask of distilled wisdom)and 1022 spell dmg unbuffed. and it helps ALOT also if you are somone who spams Stafire. it can be great if you had alot of mana per 5 but still with using consumables and innervate on Yourself, other healers should be fine with theyre own consumables to keep mana up to NOT innetrvate them. in the end, i think spamming wrath is better. Good luck!

If you have high spell +dmg, Starfire is good. If you have good spell crit (say, 30% or so with or without moonkin aura) you might try some wrathspam. If you have the talents that boost your wrath crits and bonus damage, it is a very effective method of DPSing. You do have to watch your crits though because if you get a string of them, that mob is very likely to turn on you. My usual rotation was:

Insect Swarm
oonfire (with the improved chance to crit it would often proc a nature's grace)
WrathWrathWrathWrath
*repeat*

I'd toss in a starfire here and there if the mob were stunnable. I think I originally moved away from Starfire because things died so quickly that I couldn't get very many casts in. This would not be the case in KZ as much, except for some trash fights.

well 30% crit is ALOT out of form, that would be amazing lol, but i still crit 30% on wrath according to DMG meter on a whole boss fight but with my high spell dmg i usualy do about 5k+ starfire Crits in a raid, i do use it a bit but when i hear raid leader say dps is low ill jsut spam wrath like theres no tomorow... but yeah you are right in a way of crit chance and spell usage along with it, but it still depends on mana and regen that people have that would change that

Depends on the situation...

Starfire is a good fight starter... lots of damage and the chance to stun is nice..
then Insect Swarm, Moonfire, WrathWrath
I refresh Moonfire and insect swarm when they run low or end....

In long fights I use Starfire on stunable targets instead of WrathWrath

Also if i am in melee Wrath instead of Starfire...

Agreed that it depends on the situation. I'm only a 37 and solo about 50% of the time. If I can expect the target to rush me (outside), I'll do a Nature's Grasp on myself, then Starfire, Insect Swarm ("have some bees"), Moonfire. I'll save a Moonfire for a fearing target. For multiple targets close targets, I'll Roots one before tackling the other. Also Hibernate is slick.

I love starfire on longer fights. Fully raid buffed I have 1067 spell dmg. Lately though, I've been trying wrath more especially on trash that go down quicker and I must say my dps went up a bit.

On trash I start with insect swarm, moonfire, and then wrath till moonfire is gone. I then leave out IS and start my rotation w/ MF and then wrath.