Shay Shays Ultimate Boomkin How-To

I've spent a lot of time browsing random internet articles, talking to friends and fellow WoW players, and of course thumbing through Elitist Jerks articles on Boomkins, and I've come to the realization that despite their few dps abilities, they can be confusing as fuck to max out your damage. There are basically two things I want to talk about. The first, and the more complext (and important, imo) issue is spell rotation. Secondly, I'll talk a little about itemization.

Spell Rotation
This is where things get ugly in playing a boomkin; figuring out what spells are actually best for dps. First of all, there are many different ways to spec your boomkin, each with slight variations on how you max your dps; Whether you get Force of Nature, Typhoon, Starfall, etc. Here is my build.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Gorgonnash&n=Ibliss

Eclipse is the big one that potentailly skyrockets your dps, but also confuses the shit out of things. Lets assume for the moment you have ample mana regeneration (probably replenishment and wisdom, and all the talents I put into my build). You will literally, NEVER run out of mana unless you are just spamming Hurricane on everything. Given ample mana regen, here is your spell rotation

Moonfire X1
Insect Swarm X1
Wrath Ad nausem (till dots are about to fall off)
...repeat

If you get in one of those unlucky raids where they have no paladins, no replenishment, no shamen... you get the idea, your mana regen will suffer quite a bit more, especially on long fights.
At this point you want to switch up your rotation. If your mana pool and crit are horrible, and you are really scrounging for mana, Id recommend a simple

IS x1
Starfire Ad Nauseum
...repeat

Most times your mana wont be that horrible, and I'd replace moonfire for insect swarm. With glyph of starfire, this will bounce and extra 12 seconds out of your moonfire. And if you are lucky, you can use up a clearcasting strike on a moonfire to get out of using about 700 mana.

Now we get to Eclipse. Eclipse muddys the water a lot with moonkin rotations. From all I've read, its generally a good idea to Wrath spam till Eclipse procs, then spam starfire till eclipse fades. During Starfire Eclipse, I wouldn't waste time rebuffing dots, and especially not IS. Once Eclipse runs out, resume wrath spamming. If you end up with a Wrath Eclipse, its not the end of the world by any means. Just get to spamming wrath.

I should mention that with glyph of starfire and moonfire, often MF/IS/SF rotations put out pretty similar damage and is slightly more mana efficient. The one problem with this rotation is on fights where there is damage you take while casting, in which case you can lose casting time much more since you dont have talent reduction to spell interruption. I havn't tested a lot with a starfire rotation in raiding, especially since I have an idol to buff Wrath damage, but either way, your dps shouldn't be much different. So pick your play style and stick with it.

Gear

Here is the basic stat priority:

Hit(to cap)
Spell Power
Haste
Crit
Intellect
Spirit

From a pure theorycrafting point of view, stacking these stats based on certain weights (which I don't have available) will up your damage the most. However, as indicated in the section above, there are multiple play styles, and based on what you want out of your dps rotation, sometimes you may value certain stats more for your play style. Specifically there are two hang-up's I have with this priority.

1) Haste vs Crit
Looking at various theorycrafting sources haste and crit are close to identical in what they do for your overall dps. However, I tend to gravitate towards crit over haste for a few reasons. First, druids are built to benefit from crit. Natures Grace and Eclipse all up your overall damage whenever you crit. You also have talents to up critical strike damage. With my current gear, I usually get starfire crits of about 13,000 or more in raids. Obviously I can't constantly string starfire crits (except with eclipse... see why i like it?) but that alone is close to 4000 dps. Secondly, and admittedly this is less of a motivation, but certain classes can benefit from your critting. Arcane mages (which my fiancee is) can put Focus Magic on me to buff both of our crit chances when I crit. Prot warriors can put vigilance on me to get extra threat from my aggromancing abilities. While those second two are minor, since the scales are fairly balanced between Haste and Crit anyway, thats enough to push me into valuing crit more.

2) Spell Power Uber Alles
The theory behind stacking pure spell power, especially with gems, is to blow the crap out of everything super duper ultra mega fast. I believe the metaphor of a glass cannon becomes particularly relevant for this sort of itemization. Here's the issue I have with it: As of right now, there are no fights in the game where putting out 4000 dps as opposed to 3700 dps is a big deal (just adjust for the scale of your gear). Assuming you have a halfway decent group for everything, Naxxramas poses no real challenges, even on 25. The challenging fights rest more on the healers. And while you don't want to put out horrible damage, the difference between stacking pure SP gems for a few hundred extra dps vs actually getting the socket bonuses, getting a bit of crit/haste/spirit/whatever doesn't really make a difference. The two hardest (by item level) encounters in the game right now are EoE25 and OS25-3 Drake. Malygos is a pretty simple fight actually, and is more about mechanics than spamming damage. Granted there is a timer but again im assuming your group isn't retarded and you arnt fumbling to get the timer. If you are, you may want to consider stacking pure spell power to help get your raid over that DPS hump. OS25 is probably the closest thing to needing to crank out max dps as there is in the game today, but again, as a piece of a good raiding team, getting some of those secondary stats shouldn't lower your dps enough to make you useless. Perhaps when Uldar comes out there will be some challenging fights in the game, but for now, lets face it; lvl 80 raiding is not that challenging. If you value the glass cannon approach, stacking spell power will up your damage. If you like having a more balanced character, diversify your gems a bit, and have some fun.

I hope this cleared up some common questions about Boomkins. Please leave any comments you may have, and I'll try to address them. Peace yallz!