Tier, Idols and the Dream

Ok, My First real post, lets get started.
Icecrown Citadel is coming to together on the PTR nicely and Moonkin tier gear is starting to emerge. So lets have a look at it.

Firstly lets looks at the most importance part of the tier, the look of it.

Look and Feel

I have to say that the tier gear looks really, really awesome. The evolution of tier gear is expansion is interesting. We have gone from an  ancient druidism look in Tier 7, to a more lunar feel in Tire 8 with a crescent moon strapped to our head and moons on our shoulders, and the bird man look for Alliance and a place rune feel for Horde in Tire 9, to now a chaotic looks in Tier 10 (I know, all ready up to Tier 10 and the Wow Expansions are still coming).


I tend to think of Tier gear as having some sort of reflection on the class in that place and time. Could the chaotic look in the tier gear be  a refection of the increase corruption of the Emerald Dream by an Old God? I creatively think so. With the barbed thorn coming out of the head piece and the 'maws' on the shoulders glowing with a faint and dare I saw evil green light (is it just me or does it kinda look like Yogg-Saron). With resent revelations that we seem to be losing the war in the Dream and the corruption of a member of the Green Dragonflight by the Scourge, it does seem to be a refection on the states of druids on world.

Tier Bonuses

Now its time to have a look at the tier bonuses that have data mined (Note: These are subject to change and will most likely change)

2 Pieces (Balance): When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 15% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 seconds.

4 Pieces (Balance): Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 5% of your spell's damage over 4 seconds.

Firstly, theses look like some really interesting bonuses, and it's good that they are not the stock standard increase Wrath and Starfire Crit/Dmg by XX%, which we have had in the last tier and a few tiers before that.

• Two Set Bonus 
  
  
  
  This is very interesting, every thing we gain a mana-free cast from Omen, we do more damage with all our spells. Now what does this mean? I can predict a few things, but it will all depend on if there is a CD and what length the CD is. Since Omen is a proc we can get randomly from our main nukes this may solve the Wrath and GCD problem.
  
  As you know after 400 haste Wrath gain no benefit from haste but Starfire still gain a huge amount from it, causing an imbalance in moonkin dmg. Having this buff may make up for missing a few points of a second not casting.
  
  
  
  
• Four Set Bonus
  
  Now this is really interesting, a Crit with our main nukes will cause a dot to be put on the target equal to 5% of the dmg done (as I read it). If there is no ICD on this proc and the proc rate of this is good, I predict that Crit will most likely rise above haste in it benefits. Currently after 400 haste, the benefit of Crit and haste around the same to a moonkin (though with haste still slightly higher then Crit, due to Starfire), but with this dot, crit may become a more important stat. We will have to see.
  

 Idol

Now lets have a look at the Tier 10 Idol, once again this is subject to change

Druid T10 Balance Relic (Moonfire and Insect Swarm) - The periodic damage from your Insect Swarm and Moonfire spells grants 44 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Now as you can see this is the same proc as the current Tire 9 idol, but with a few differences.

It is now a stacking buff other then a chance to bring it up, this does not matter too much since the proc rate of the Tier 9 idol was massive, so long as you kept MF up you had the crit buff, the down side on this is that if you loss the full buff you have to start from the 0 again and work your way up. It is also gives 20 more crit rating the previous idol, which now fully stacked gives an extra .44% crit then the other idol.

The main feature of this idol is that it procs of both IS and MF. This changes a few things in Moonkin rotations

Currently the standard rotation is this

Pre-Buff: MF,IS, Nuke*X
Lunar Buff: MF, SF*X
Solar Buff: MF, IS, W*X

But since it procs of IS now as well we can drop MF the rotation when Solar procs. Also if both dots can proc it at the same time, getting it up during Pre-Buff rotation should be easy. Overall all it seems that this should be a DPS increase over the other idol.