barkskin: your prickly lil' savior

I'm sure any druid can tell you barkskin is no ice block, divine protection or dispersion as far as defensive CD's work go, but by no means does that make it underpowered or useless. It may only be a 20% reduction, but it takes no gcd which makes it the only defensive cd to not cause a dps loss if you time it right. It also has a shorter cd then all the previously mentioned so that makes it very versatile for fights where there are a few bursts of damage. The one problem with it is since its only 20% it cant always save you from death so knowing when to use it can be difficult, but overall I've come to enjoy using it quite liberally to save me or even to reduce the risk of death, dead dps is no dps and it is way better to know that you wasted that 1 min cd just in case instead of face first on the floor smashing your head on your keyboard saying WHY DIDN'T I JUST HIT IT. The best way to learn when to use it is to KNOW TH FIGHT MECHANICS, that is actually the best way to survive in general on any boss of any expansion. So here is a rough outline of ICC bosses and Good times to use barkskin.

If its marrowgar(assuming HM since NM is retarded easy) when would you cast it? Well if you were not paying attention or just got cornered by being in the wrong place at the wrong time you need barkskin to live through a tick or 2 of Bone Storm, but hopefully you just learn to be not bad. for LDW you would use it most likely if you get a DND cast right on top of you or maybe if you randomly were an idiot an got hit by a ghost(though out of shame you should just kill yourself anyway). With DBS you wouldn't have as much of a chance to use it unless you had the mark and got below 50% health, but if that happens that can really make the difference between a wipe and a kill.

FesterGut is a great example of where you can actually gain dps time by using Barkskin, for this fight you only need to waste your time getting two debuffs and you can neglect the third and just use barkskin on the inhale since there is no other time you could even use it really( especially since you can't cast it while disoriented with the puke). RotFace is great to us when you get the slime on you an need to run out its a little random as to how much that can help you but it really gives a bit of reaction time to the healers. Professor Putricide doesn't really have a super good time to use this besides green ooze explode or maybe on p3 if you absolutely need to run through slime to get back with the raid.

Blood Princes is another fight that really doesn't have much damage that will affect you that you cant avoid or it wont kill you(unless your randomly a tank for the ranged dude). During Blood Queen's air phase it is awsome to use this once again more of a healer helper, but if your missing health then its a must have for each air phase, you can even use it if your about to b bitten and your not at full health.

Dreamwalker really doesn't have much of a use for it at all except if your stupid enough to kill an exploding zombie right on top of you. Sindragosa really only has one use as well, for if you get ice blocked and your asphyxiating or if your about to get blocked and you aren't at full health, but you cant use it with unchained magic as it adds an extra stack thus making it counter productive XD.

Unfortunately since i just stopped raiding for a while due to a schedule change at work, I have not had the pleasure of killing arthas and therefore would not be able to tell you from experience when a good time to use Barkskin is lol, but don't worry I'll still be posting even during this break and I make sure to keep as up to date as can be as far as the moonkin business is O_O. And on a side note remember to use barkskin for predictable incoming damage, but its usually better to use a health stone for when you get taken very low since once your at low health chances are barkskin wont really save you anyway.

TL;DR
1.prof has a huge epeen

you can dance if you want to, but i prefere more dps time

Movement... the moonkins most hated of enemies, heavy movement fights have plagued the dreams of moonkin for years, but player skill can really compensate for the loss of dps time, so this is the guide to moonkin movement.
First off if you don't have tuskars vitality then get it. 8% movement really can make a difference when it comes to minimizing movement time. Next you wanna make sure that on the pull you find a spot on the floor that is as close to the boss as mechanics allow, the reason for that is if and when they move the boss you have a lot more range no matter what direction they move him. Another big big one is staying spread out(as long as the fight permits) the more people you stand by the higher the chances void zones,fire or what ever crazy circle of death spawns will land on you and since you cant just sit there and take it like a man(though I'm sure most of you have at some point) you need to make sure that when u need to move out of that, it was due to it targeting you not the dude 6 yards away because you didn't /range or any other excuse.When you move make it worth the time you wasted don't just inch in till your range indicator says pew pew take a few more steps and watch if the boss will be moved again and where. Last, know the fight mechanics if its possible to predict when or where fire happens then be prepared to move or just find a spot you know it cant hit you.
BUT no matter how good you are at positioning you still need to move throughout most fights so when you do move make sure its not wasted. the sure fire why to avoid a huge dps loss while moving is to follow what i call the ABC rule: "ALWAYS BE CASTING". If you need to move and you have either dot about to fall off reapply it(yes you do lose DPET[damage per execution time] of that dot, but you will still save gcds later on when you are standing still). If those dots don't need reapplying then your next best option is typhoon if you take it, personally I always include it in my raiding spec for all the utility it offers and its our only real damage on the move spell. Bosses don't get knocked back(I don't glyph it) so it has very little potential for negatives as long as you are aware of what you can and cant push back(the daze still can affect targets that aren't knocked back ex. val'kyrs on LK fight). Then if all that is on cd/still ticking then your last way to make use of that time is GotW in a 25 man raid its a near 100% Chance to get that to proc omen of doom the 2t10 set bonus from clearcasting which is a nice bit of extra damage on your next spell or 2
TL;DR
1. avoid unnecessary movement by choosing good positioning from the start
2.when you move make it worth the time you spent doing it
3.ALWAYS BE CASTING
4.don't be a buffoon spec into typhoon

INTRO TO AWSOME

Hello, and welcome to Owlkin bitchfit, this is my first post of what I hope will be many. for anyone who actually will be reading this i should probably inform you as to what this blog will be in regards to. the general purpose is to to talk about the moonkin pve experience although I hope to include some pvp talk later on once I get more acquainted with arena as balance. There are quite a few other moonkin blogs out there, but I think you will find this to be quite different then your typical gear lists and number crunching, although I plan on getting a bit of that in for people that want to know more about the details, this will be focused mainly on strategy and practical game play for those moonkins that feel like they know the theory, but fall short in game. There also might be some other class/spec things involved if moonkin news is pretty slow, but still I will keep it pretty focused on the main theme when I can.

TL;DR
step one. read my blog
step two. ???
step three. profit!