to the tune of The Gambler (thanks BBB!)
Well you gotta know when to DoT 'em
know when to nuke 'em
Eclipse is a'tickin
When do you DoT 'em?


Ok ok, sorry. I actually did sing it to the song too, but reading that is probably torture enough. But the focus of this post is to help you decide if/when to refresh your DoTs during the Eclipse. I would say that I will present empirical data and then give you a black and white view of things, but our rotations and therefore our choices are fluid, based upon procs and uptimes. Consider this as my attempt at a guideline.

Before we dive into the math and start dissecting the eclipse bonuses and whatnot, it is important to get a conceptual idea of what our DoTs do and why we would ever want to sacrifice a cast (or part of a cast) for a DoT refreshment. Because of Improved Insect Swarm, our DoTs increase our two main nukes. Thus acting as not only a damage dealing spell but also as a target-based debuff. Naturally, we would want to benefit from this debuff for as long as possible while we are casting the relevant spell. In an infinite amount of time, this boils down to DPS gained by the debuff plus DPS of the spell itself vs. the DPS of what you would have cast instead. However, in a fixed amount of time (say 1 eclipse buff) this gets a little trickier to account for damage done. I will do my best to explain why I chose to work with DoTs and timeframes the way I did while I lay out my math.

My theoretical druid is still rocking out that 3k spell power, 45% crit and 389 haste. I actually ran these calculations with drastically higher haste (~650) and none of the overall results were changed.

Lunar Eclipse and MF

Moonfire directly benefits Starfire by increasing Starfire's crit chance by 3%.
Here's a glimpse at what is happening within the Eclipse cycle with and without Moonfire on my target. Since I decided to use timelines instead of DPS to construct my DPS gains/losses, I chose to look at all of my spells in terms of damage per cast (DPC)
As I looked at my Eclipse phase, I continued to reduce the effective Eclipse time by one Wrath cast, giving me a total Eclipse time of 13.9629. This gave me 6 Starfire casts that benefit from Eclipse with a total casting time of 12.1611. Notice, this leaves 13.9629 - 12.1611 = 1.8255 seconds of spare time in the Eclipse phase. At this point I did a LOT of math, all of which will be rendered irrelevant by my next point, so let's just skip to it. Because I have over 1 GCD of spare time in my Eclipse phase (due to Starfire cast time) it is ALWAYS a benefit to cast Moonfire since I will still receive the same number of Starfire casts.

Naturally, if I change the values of haste and/or crit I change my results. So my guide, as promised, is to calculate the average effective portion of the Eclipse phase and subtract from that the average cumulative cast time of your Starfires. If this is greater than the average GCD during your Eclipse phase, ALWAYS refresh Moonfire. (With the same level of crit, haste between 445 and 725 lead to the loss of a Starfire to cast Moonfire). If the number you get when you subtract is less than the GCD, only refresh if the Moonfire DD plus the Moonfire DoT is greater than the lost Starfire (approximately 10 seconds remaining on eclipse).

Well, wasn't that a messy answer? Sorry about that, but it turns out it's entirely dependent on how much spare time is in an Eclipse phase once all possible Starfires are cast.

Solar Eclipse and IS

Insect Swarm directly benefits Wrath by increasing damage by 3%.

The Solar Eclipse model is simpler. Every Wrath cast is equal to the GCD at that time. Therefore, one IS cast takes the same span of time that one Wrath takes. Thus, to see if we should recast IS during the Eclipse phase, we need to look at the DPS of the wrath cast we lose vs. the DPS of the IS that we gain in addition to the boost it provides the subsequent Wrath casts.


Since the average Wrath will deal 6267.485 we would need that much damage from the IS tick plus the increased damage in wrath. As we can see above, IS adds 160.4392 DPS to wrath. IS itself does an additional 567.4862 DPS, but only does damage every 2 seconds.

Since we see that IS ticks every two seconds, to get a true benefit within the Eclipse phase we would need to refresh with 10 seconds left under Eclipse.

TL:DR

So it turns out that the Lunar Eclipse is much more difficult to work with in regards to DoTs. The answer of whether to refresh or not is entirely dependent on the speed with which you are casting Starfire. The quick answer is

If casting Moonfire causes you to cast one less Starfire, then only do it if there are >10 seconds left on Eclipse. If casting Moonfire does NOT cause you to cast one less Starfire, refresh Moonfire when it runs out.

The Solar cycle was easier to conceptualize because Wrath and IS have the same cast time (I view the GCD penalty as cast time for DoTs). To see a DPS increase within the Eclipse phase you should only refersh if you have 10 or more seconds left on Eclipse. However, the DoT continues after the Eclipse phase has expired, and so that also counts as a DPS increase. The overall net effect should be that it increases your DoT uptime.

Now it's time for my caveat: These increases are dependent upon the time window that we have available to us. Since Eclipse is a fixed time window, we can talk about a pure DPS increase. This is much harder to do in terms of a never-ending or even non-static timeframe.