I'm normally a Resto druid (Tier-5 & Tier-6 healing gear) and I've spec'd fully into Moonkin to level. I'm having a blast (once I went deep enough to get the fun-toys) and I can AoE kill things like no ones business! I'm finding I still have enough healing gusto that I can heal the 5-mans with my old healing gear.

But... I'm not finding any gear with both critical strike and hit rating. My hit rating is virtually zero, due to my healing gear.

Any recommendations? Should I trade out spell power and gain either HR or crit (can't seem to find pieces with both).

How much HR should I aim for just soloing? Crit?

Thanks!

Ok for leveling purposes my opinion is that hit rating has no purpose. Hit rating is there to stop you from missing higher level mobs which while leveling rarely happens. Its nice, but its not a must have. When you get to 77-78, then start keeping a close eye out for hit rating.

I'd stack crit and spell damage at lower levels. Spirit for the MP5 is great too. Less downtime is more time spent killing.

Mana has been zero issue for soloing. I can AoE kill 3-4 groups of 3-4 things before having to drink, and single target is no worries at all. I was aoe killing seals for meat yesterday.

I was missing during soloing mobs that were my level or 1-2 levels lower. So I think I need some hit rating there. Nothing more frustrating than to see that long casting starfire miss. *grrrr*

Yeah that's true, but my point was I wouldn't go out of my way to find hit rating. Mixing in a few mage pieces may fill the gap nicely.

Ok thanks! Would you trade in spell power for crit? Or is spell power better?

Right now my crit rating in my healing gear is about 8%. :(

Crit rating will come once you replace pieces. I wouldn't kill yourself for it. I tend to think Druids won't need to stack it quite as much. With talents to convert Spirit into Spellpower, that is going to go a long way toward giving us better base DPS, higher mana regen and more steady DPS overall. I don't think Boomkin are supposed to be quite so bursty as they used to be. I highly recommend the Moonfire and Starfire Glyphs. They did amazing things for my DPS while lowering my mana usage.

Agree with Allahanaster.

Dont get caught in thinking about hit while leveling.
For questing the most important thing is: Never drink!
So spirit gives u a nice boost to your damage and your mana-reg, so i would take it without thinking.

yeah i'd have to agree on spirit/drinking given my experiences recently in my other thread.

my sprirt was under 200 iirc so regen was low and mana usage high = soo much downtime compared to my feralness build.

my sprirt was under 200 iirc so regen was low and mana usage high = soo much downtime compared to my feralness build.

i see your problem now with downtime issues(in the other thread).
i leveld with spirit-gear. had around 600-700 spirit. so that could explain that :-D

hehe S3R - i guess i never really worried about spirit, i wanted +hit, spellpower and mana !

maybe i should have traded in some of those stats for spirit !

Spirit is the new black for boomies. Our mana regen is pretty insane with the changes to spirit and the addition of Spellpower from spirit makes it even better.

when they introduce the dual spec system i could be looking to have a oomkin still along with my feral spec.

i just need to get some good gear as i level and keep it in the bank.

when they introduce the dual spec system i could be looking to have a oomkin still along with my feral spec.

i just need to get some good gear as i level and keep it in the bank.

im thinking the same about feral - resto. im the only druid in our naxx-group, so all the nice leather-healing things are mine.
And it would be not a bad idea to have an emergency healer for backup if 2 of our 4 healer-pool cant raid.

Anyone arrived at the optimal dps rotation? Boomkin is going to be my dualspec so I've been playing around a bit. Seems like the old rotation doesn't work anymore, so I've been doing this:

Starfire
Instant Moonfire for the "double hit"
Wrathspam until either
a. I get an Eclipse proc then switch to Starfire or
b. Moonfire has 3 seconds left to tick so back to SF/MF/Wrathspam.

I feel like I am missing something. Any tips?

I think the optimal DPS rotation depends on your theory. Really right now they've opened it up for two possible ways of DPSing. One emphasizes crit and counts on earth and moon. The other focuses on what I'd deem the "warlock theory" where you DoT the crap out of stuff and watch it die.

So for instance for leveling I've gone with a theory of DoT. So I open up with a Moonfire, lay down an Entangling Roots, Insect Swarm and then Starfire, Starfire. The DoTs alone are enough to do about 50% of a mobs health in damage.

I'm not sure math wise though which will come out ahead on longer boss fights. I suspect the DoT based might, but that's just based on gut instinct and has no basis in numbers. I suspect the DoT theory will turn out to be better mana wise.

From what i've been reading some Boomkin's that have begun the NAXX-10/25 are pushing close to 1k-1.5k int/spirit, which to me sounds like insanity but at those levels you would probably only need 3/3 intensity and be absolutely fine but i can imagine that you may not even need that since i believe the "Replenishment" buff that Hunters/Pallies/SPpriests is based off a % of your INT, in addition to Boomkin now getting mana back on crits i'm personally rolling at about 22% crit in boomkin form and thats not even counting the crit bonuses to spells from talents. Some of these upper-tier boomies must be sitting on something close to 50% (purely speculative). Elitistjerks.com is a good site if your very hardcore into the numbers game, it looks like they rate Haste above crit in terms of how it benefits DPS but clearly haste hurts mana regen moreso.