Heroic Gearing: Poor Man's Enchants (and some glyphing)

Gear Update
Well, it's happened. A week or so ago, Jal finally got good enough gear to run heroics. I'm impressed with the new Armory's "advanced" view, shown above, which shows not only a quick snapshot with names of your current gear, but also yells at you for where you haven't enchanted. It's enough to drive even me to review my almost complete lack of enchants.

Most of the gear I've got comes from the Shifting Perspectives list I've been working from. I did finally shell out about 750g for the Bracers of Caustic Purification, and, after watching the AH for weeks, another 2500g for Blazewing's Furious Kilt. Those aren't horrible prices for good pre-raid gear, but I feel a little badly about the shortcut. But unlike the other slots, good pants and bracers didn't seem to be popping up without more work, so the squeaky wheels got the gold.

I've admittedly used a lot of Bloodied Wyrmhide to fill in spots I haven't earned yet. The resilience is worthless. The Wyrmhide has been slight upgrades over what I had anyhow, but I know on some level I'm using it not only to increase my leatherworking but also for the extra ilevel. I only have the chest and belt left. The belt will be replaced as soon as I'm done with Wildhammer rep, and the chestpiece will have to wait until I've got three Chaos Orbs and can fashion its replacement. I'm still running normals, and will try to run each normal at least once before going heroic, but running Grim Batol over and over with the "random" LFG is getting really really old. I'm up to four out of maybe six or seven runs now.

Poor Man's Enchanting
The enchanting lesson: Don't let your lack of time stop you from poor man's enchanting. I was going to run Therazane rep for the Cat shoulder enchant after I went exalted with Wildhammer (81% there now), and figured I'd do all my enchanting then. Dumb. I pity the fool who doesn't use Wrath enchants! I've had my Spaulders of the Endless Plains for weeks, and only now did it occur to me to run back by the Sons of Hodir for their enchants. The Greater Inscription of the Storm is 24 sp and 15 crit that I didn't have before. I bought two, just in case. Then I remembered that I was one arctic fur away from the spellpower fur lining for bracers. There's another 76 sp I was walking around without. I've also filled in too many slots with Savage Armor kits. I don't really need the extra STA, but with all the leather in Tol Barad, it's essentially free.

I did get a guildie to throw Avalanche on the Staff of Siphoned Essences. Stinks that the staff has its own glow and doesn't show the explosion of snow, but it looks like that should increase DPS by 3-4%. My next step is to install Recount again to see if I'm not doing better. Honestly, I've usually been just barely third on Recounts during PUG runs. I'm used to blowing folks out of the water in LK. I'm using Starfall and Typhoon a good deal. Though I do tend to off-heal when things get nasty, throw innervates when healz needs it, and "waste" my time on things that cause damage but don't hit my scale, I'm still lower than I'd like. I hope the enchants help enough to get me to second routinely (I've probably been an Avalanche behind), as well as the new gear (Blazewing, eg, is brand new).

Glyphs
I'll have to post on Glyphing later, but the quick lesson is that there are more purely positive glyphs than I remember from earlier. Before, it was a devil's deal. Get more damage, but lose range. Or typhoon gets more damage but doesn't push enemies back. Well, I often bank on those extra seconds to loot something (usually a keg of ale) or to throw half a starsurge. Now, there are (more?) unadulterated gains. The Wrath glyph is a must. +10% damage to Wrath. The end. Why I hadn't bothered before, I don't know. I'm hoping it changed from when I first played around with glyphs. Getting 50% of Innervate when you cast it on someone else is spiffy. And 50% faster swimming? Why not?

And here ends another unedited post brought to you by the panzerkin.

EDIT: Shifting Perspectives on enchants and glyphs. Sorry if this edit causes the post to pop back up in anyone's RSS feed.

Glyph of Moonfire, yea or nay?

I don't kno' nuttin' 'bout glyphs, except, starting today, that they exist. Hey, I'm a part-timer, yo.

So they do [exist]. That's what this new Inscription skill in LK is. So we find that there are a number of glyphs that a druid can use, including the Glyph o' Moonfire. Should we use it? Its sizable DoT bonus comes with a serious up-front penalty.

Increases the periodic damage of your Moonfire ability by 75%, but initial damage is decreased by 90%.

So here's the best looking comment from WoWhead.com:

As you can see - If you don't crit often, Moonfire with Glyph does more dmg. But if you're lucky for crits Moonfire without Glyph does more dmg.

Don'crit often? Are you kidding? Gimme that up front dmg, then.

Ah, but wait. Combine with another glyph and we're on to something, maybe.

... use glyphed Starfire to extend its duration indefinitely (with crit + haste you can land a Starfire every 2-2.5 seconds). Since you never have to reapply the DOT you can keep up the highest possible tick and won't miss the initial damage from the glyphed Moonfire.

I love Moonfiring the killshot. OH, BUT IT W4ZT3Z M4N4!!1! Yes, yes, I know. That's why my favorite comment in the thread about the Moonfire glyphs is this one...

A Boomkin spams Moonfire to finish off someone quickly. Yes, it does burn mana. But you see, the Boomkin can sit down and have a drink whilst sitting on the corpse of their enemy.

The /oom now so that we can drink later tends to be my attitude, the impatience of my PUG for whom I was going to try main healing as Balance spec nonwithstanding.

Still, I'm intrigued with the Moonfire glpyh. The Starfire glyph, however, is a no brainer. Let's go see how tough that is to get.

(Btw, if you're wondering why a panzerkin blog has so much general balance stuff, it's b/c DPS == panzerkin threat. What's good for the goose, given plenty of armor...)

EDIT: Icedragon weighs in that there is no infinite Moonfire extension now, just a 9 second buff if all goes well. So for my playstyle, at least, the Glyph of Moonfire is out.