For optimal DPS, how should one handle these situations?
Sunfire or Moonfire expire in the middle of your beefed up Eclipse. Do you refresh them immediately, or continue to milk your Eclipse first?
You’re in the middle of a Solar Eclipse, boosting Wrath’s damage, but you’re fighting a cluster of enemies. Do you use Wrath for the empowerment, or Starfire for the cleave?
You have enough Astral Power to cast Starsurge, but your current Eclipse is about to end. Should you Starsurge?
Make use of the pandemic window. You can refresh the DoTs when they have 30% of their duration left without losing dps (it’ll add to the duration). Try timing refresh casts on appropriate dots within appropriate eclipses for maximum dps. If for any reason they’re legitimately about to fall off that second, just refresh it. Dot uptime is important. If you have enough time to cast another empowered spell first, do so. I’m assuming you mean say you have 10s left in solar eclipse and moonfire just entered it’s pandemic window. It’ll expire completely before solar ends. In this circumstance, refresh moonfire anyway. Unless the mob of course won’t live long enough by this point to have it matter. I can’t recall the exact duration but I want to say the reverse pandemic length. So unless they’ll live around ~7s don’t bother re-applying.
100% keep casting wrath. I’ve done extensive testing on this and wrathing is still more dps even without casting spenders. Keep in mind starfire’s cleave isn’t that potent without SotF and SotF’s cleave aspect is only active during lunar eclipse anyway. The superior damage, faster cast, and higher AP gen outweigh it significantly. Always cast the empowered spell regardless of the circumstance.
No, unless you have like 100 which you shouldn’t. I assume you mean you’re about to end an eclipse and just got 30 AP. Ideally you should pool AP so that when you start the next eclipse you have around 90. That way each eclipse beginning starts with 3 modifiers attached to whichever spell. You can of course make judgment calls because you want to starsurge as often as possible during the eclipse to buff it but also leave it with around 90 AP. You may choose to leave with less if in a solar eclipse on a boss for instance and short change your lunar. Personal preference/testing there but ideally stick to the pattern. The only time you may squeeze a last starsurge out is during CA/Incarn to take advantage of double mastery damage, or if the fight is about to end like, that hit.
Don’t let them expire. Don’t bother refreshing unless mobs will live for 6 or 8 secs I think it is. Advice is generally to dot during eclipse, not out of it, since you should have starfall rolling and eclipse buffs that (on AOE anyway). Get into eclipses ASAP in between.
Stick to your eclipse.
No. Starsurge should be used at the start of an eclipse (2x or 3x) and as soon as you can cast more. You want to enter the next eclipse with around 90 AP for that triple starsurge though, so takes some judgement. Prioritize buffing the most optimal eclipse the most. E.g. on AOE you’ll want to empower lunar as much as you can while keeping starfall up 100%.
Note: all of these answers are in the guides.
actually you avoid refreshing dots when not in an eclipse. the reason being is that when not in an eclipse state your priority is to get into an eclipse state asap. so if a dot drops off while not in eclipse you wait until your next eclipse and after you dump your starsurges to reapply it.
also, in multi-target (anything 4 mobs or over really) you only refresh moonfire in solar eclipse and with 6 or more targets (with soul of the forest) you forget about moonfire entirely and just keep up starfall and cast starfires for the most part.
once you are at 6+ targets it has recommended by some to use starfire even when in solar eclipse. not sure exactly how much of a dps gain this is. some people say to use wrath unless you are 7+ targets and some not until 8+, so it’s probably close.
starsurge is suppsed to be dumped at the beginning of eclipse. especially if you are using the balance of all things legendary. after that you pool astral power so you can dump starsurges on your next eclipse. optimally you will have 90 astral power for your next eclipse so you can dump 3 starsurges in a row while you have the crit buff from balance of all things.
Does the balance of all things legendary increase starsurge crit chance as well? I did wonder that. If it follows mastery rules, does it also double that crit chance when incarn/CA is popped?
And to this advice about casting starfire on ST and wrath on aoe, higher mastery values are going to keep pushing the required mob numbers up and up. I mean they probably have tested it more than me but I’d imagine it’s all but not worth it.
According to the wow head page it looks like BOAT does increase starfires crit, but I dont have beta to test for myself =(.
Well the discord has been talking about it as the bis legendary power and that the rotation is to try to make sure you have 90 AP so you can get off 3 starsurges during the crit buff. So it definitely looks like it increases astral crit also.
Yes as far as the StFr during solar…
I’m just going by what I’ve read and what is said in discord. What you’re saying sounds like it would be right though
This doesn’t gel with a bunch of the other theorycrafters and tettles, etc, who say that basically never happens, and if it does it’s at like 8 stacked targets.
I seriously doubt it happens at 5 or more. During solar eclipses we generate a lot more AP, so can buff starfalls damage a lot more with starsurges. Starfall is most of our AOE damage.
The reality is that casting starfires through solar eclipse doesn’t just affect right now, it has knock-on effect as well. There isn’t really going to be a simple answer to what is the right thing to do, unless you are never, ever going back into single target again (like, even when you get the mob count down in the current pull, or if you pull a boss).
Not rotating eclipses means you are going to be locked into lunar eclipse as your next eclipse at whatever point you decide to activate it, so you have to time it at some point to trigger that lunar eclipse into a solar eclipse for the next time you want to single target.
I feel like it’s going to be one of those things that you need to get a good feel for how your group plays and your pacing before you could even consider making the decision, let alone a hard rule from the math.
I’ve read this a lot and understand the logic, but I assume quite often as you’re starting a new pack you either wouldn’t have Starfall up or it would be just about to fall off…it’s my understanding that even if fighting 3+ mobs but they live the full 8 seconds, Starfall is better than Starsurge.
So let’s say you pooled 90 AP heading into 3 mobs who you expect to survive 8+ seconds, you’d dot up and then Starsurge once at the very start to empower eclipse and then Starfall (80 AP)…instead of triple Starsurge right?
Just get starfall going, the eclipse empowerment from starsurge doesn’t affect starfall. You should aim to have as many wraths/starfires affected by as many starsurges as possible, but it doesn’t matter if starsurge comes before starfall, starfall doesn’t get buffed further than the initial eclipse buff from mastery.
Starfall needs 100% uptimes on 2+ targets. Use starsurges as often as possible in between windows while maintaining it.
Ah cool so even 2 targets.
So when we read to ‘pool AP to dump 3 Starsurges on next eclipse to empower it’ it really only applies to ST, since whenever facing 2+ mobs you’d use 50 AP on Starfall instead.
Thanks just wanted to clarify.
Not necessarily. Even after dumping 3 Starsurges to empower your eclipse, you use Starsurge to keep from capping on AP (or Starfall if it’s about to fall off).
Could be that you refreshed Starfall towards the end of your last eclipse, and still able to bank 90 AP going into your new Eclipse in multi-target situation in which you’ve got a fairly new Starfall going, a new eclipse state, and enough AP to fire off 3 Starsurges in your new Eclipse
Yeah, above is solid but just to clarify, you should still be able to starsurge in between starfall re applications.