As I mentioned previously, there are some skeptics when it comes to the Solar rotation. Most notably, Graylo continues to issue caveats about the Solar rotation and maintains a Lunar rotation, although a comment (yay!) on my blog explained that his preference of the Lunar rotation was out of both habit and the lack of mathematically overwhelming evidence that Solar is better. I will be taking an investigative look into the drawbacks and benefits of both rotations.

Round 1: Spell Queuing

Spell queuing presents a real problem for Solar rotations because of the low cast time on Wrath. With high enough haste and Nature's Grace buffs, it is possible to get the cast time of Wrath down below the one second hard-capped GCD. This effectively stops Wrath from casting faster than one second.

Blizzard introduced a system to help compensate for latency called Spell Queuing. This allowed you to queue a spell up for casting at the completion of your previous cast any time after 0.3 seconds remaining in the previous cast. The goal of this system was to eliminate any DPS differential based on player latency. After all, a better player shouldn't be better because s/he can afford better internet!

Now I'm sure you're thinking "But, Rel, that sounds great! I can chain cast and not worry that I have 200 ms latency!" And you're right, for Starfire. But for Wrath, we find a wrinkle in the Spell Queuing fabric. It turns out that we can queue any spell we want so long as the cast time of the original spell exceeds one second. As we all have experienced, Wrath often goes below a 1 second cast time. Thus, we are left without an effective Spell Queuing system for fast casts. What does this mean for us? Every 1 second cast of Wrath now has both reaction time AND latency added to the front of the cast time, extending the cast time of Wrath to OVER one second.

As you can imagine, this poses a serious problem for Wrath, particularly in high haste situations (heroism, BL, Hodir, Vezak, etc). There begins to accumulate a significant amount of non-casting time within the Solar rotation.

Chalk one up to the Lunar Rotation here. Starfire is the clear winner with the current Spell Queuing system because it allows for seamless chain casting. The impact on a Solar rotation could be devestating for those players with slow reaction times and/or high latency.

Round 2: Bloodlust & Heroism

Although I mentioned this earlier, I figured I would also cover it here. Casting Wrath during a BL/Heroism, even under the effects of an Eclipse, leads to major clipping and reduced DPS. However, you are using the Wrath Idol and more likely than not, you will proc Eclipse twice in the span of BL/Heroism. So while you could swap Idols, I never recommend swapping. Not only is the lost cast time an issue, but often you could forget to swap it back. It's just an extra thing to manage in an already eventful rotation.

I recommend casting Starfire under the BL/Heroism effects irregardless of your chosen Eclipse cycle. If Eclipse is up and BL just started, I fire off a few Wraths first but if I don't proc Eclipse I don't sweat it. I just Starfire all the way through BL and if things work out well, I will be able to change back to Wrath at the end and get some Eclipse uptime in. Another round to Lunar.

Round 3: RNG Monster - It's Gonna Eat Me Alive!

Allow me to start by quoting Xiera from The Moonkin Repository:

Under closer examination, though, I'm starting to think solar Eclipse is better for 3.1. The main reason is that it removes a LOT of the RNG from our rotation. For starters, we only have one roll for determining whether solar Eclipse procs (crit), versus two rolls for lunar Eclipse (crit and proc chance). Furthermore, lunar Eclipse is ONLY 1.3x damage when Mr. RNG decides to be nice to us; solar Eclipse -- 1.3x damage no matter what.

I think this does a good job of pointing out the issues I want to bring up, only I'm not nearly as polite with "Mr. RNG", my little monster friend . . .

Many of us have come to know the RNG monster quite well. Sometimes this monster is our ally, turning our normal rotation into a super-charged eclipse loaded DPS powerhouse. We've also had this monster turn it's back on us, chain casting 10 or 20 spells before a proc, turning our high DPS hopes into a bleak bottom-of-the-chart reality.

Well heres where the Solar rotation pulls slightly ahead of the Lunar rotation in my opinion. The Solar rotation is a 100% chance on Starfire crit to proc Eclipse. Then the Eclipse bonus is a straight 30% increase to damage. The only RNG involvement here is the crit percentage on Starfire. Everything else is guaranteed! This is different from a Lunar Eclipse where it is possible to see zero benefit from the buff.

On top of this (something Xiera had noticed as well) our 2T8 bonus increases Eclipse effects by 15%. This is again a guarantee for the Solar rotation and an average for the Lunar rotation. During some Lunar Eclipse procs, you could see 100% crit on your Starfire casts. Your DPS will look amazing. On others, you could see 50% crit and you'll wonder "Where's the beef?!". But on average, you'd experience your crit + 45% crit rate.

I'm actually chalking this category up to Solar. The less RNG the better because the sun isn't always shining and sometimes your best really isn't good enough. The less we leave to chance and luck the less we QQ about how disparaged our damage is.

Round 4: Gear - What to Wear, What to Wear. . .

Where as our highest Spellpower and int pieces were coming with oodles of haste in Naxx, we now begin to see gear with less haste. Since Spellpower has always been our bread and butter, we are chasing the high Spellpower pieces and in some ways are controlled by them. Allow me to elaborate.

If I had said "Hey guys, lets run Solar Eclipses with 600 haste!" I deserve to get laughed at. I'd be clipping the GCD so much that I'm bound to incur a DPS loss even if I do have a dramatically low crit for a dramatically low Nature's Grace uptime. Oh, but the tables have turned, my friend. Even Lunar BiS gear lists are hovering around that mystical 400 haste mark! Now, I'm not saying this implies that we should be running a Solar rotation. No, I'm suggesting that this gives the druid the utility and freedom to choose your rotation.

Aside from stats, we also have to look at our set bonuses. Now that we've got the latest final word on 4T8, it looks to be a sizeable DPS increase over just casting Starfire (circa 175 DPS). This set bonus produces a great deal of synergy with the Solar rotation because there are only 15 seconds in the Solar rotation (or ~13, as I showed for the effective buff) that we want to be casting Wrath and only Wrath. The rest of the time a Starfire is either okay (cooldown) or even desired (precasting). Since this insta-Starfire is going to act as a GCD in terms of cast time, we can compare it with a Wrath cast quite easily; it has the same cast time and does more damage. And the choir of Angels raise up their voices in praise of the synergy!

Let me pull out my warning stick again and say that I am not implying that the 4T8 bonus does not synergize well with a Lunar rotation. It does. In fact, it stands to do more damage inside of a Lunar cycle than inside of a Solar cycle because it is possible that some of the free casts could fall within the Eclipse buff time frame. However, a proc during the pre-casting phase could either be wasted or crit and proc the wrong Eclipse type. Both of those situations are bad and perilous to say the least.

I'm also gonna chalk this one up to Solar just because I am a huge fan of the non-RNG based mechanics. I'll take 45% more damage over a 45% increased chance to get 50% more damage any day. Remember, sometimes you take the house and sometimes the house takes you! But if you invest your money in a Fixed Rate Account (and the government doesn't collapse) you'll always know what you're walking away with!

Round 5: Fight Mechanics - The Rise of Positioning

The trend of fights in Ulduar is to force some type of movement from all players. Razorscale has adds and a boss phase. XT-002 requires you to move out of the raid to drop gravity bombs. Kologarn has frickin lazer beams for eyeballs! Freya has little plant bombs, Nature's Fury, mushrooms, Sunbeams (does anyone else hate that fight!?). Thorim had Lighting Arcs and Chain Lightning. Hodir has iciles, moonbeams, fires, storm power buffs. The list goes on and on. Being able to DPS effectively while in movement is a huge problem for us.

The shorter cast time of Wrath allows us to occasionally toss a Wrath while in transit, get a cast off before moving, or get a larger percentage of use out of that inevitable and inopportune Eclipse debuff. This one is clearly in the Solar rotations court where you would be buffing Wrath with likely both the idol and possibly the Eclipse proc. I award this round to Solar.

Round 6: Mana - Running on Fumes!

I almost don't need to say it, but the clear winner here is the Lunar cycle. Starfire beats the pants off of Wrath as far as mana efficiency is concerned. No, that's not true, because after Starfire beats the pants off Wrath, it has enough mana left to fill them with insects and drop in some fire before Wrath even has a chance of putting them back on. Yeah, it's that one sided. If you're having mana troubles, turn to Starfire. The Lunar Eclipse proc only increases the damage per mana of Starfire.

Theorycrafting - Well THAT Wasn't Supposed to Happen

As is often the case, theorycrafting happens in ideal environments that we rarely see in game. Even though the raw numbers might say "Wrath is better DPCT than Starfire" we may experience a different result in game because of any of the aforementioned reasons (namely latency). I once knew a warrior in BC that loved his parry to the exclusion of other things. Parry gear, parry gems, parry enchants (do they even make that?), parry coffee mugs, parry t-shirts, parry pajamas. I mean this fellow loved it. Why? Something about Revenge being the best threat per rage or some such. And he was right. It was. But it was such little rage and such little threat that we constantly pulled aggro from him. In the game, threat per rage did not translate into TPS. This was a case of theorycrafting going wrong.

What happened to that warrior, you might ask? Well, after showing him the light and even flashing him a few times, he still refused to abandon his parry suit (under which he wore his parry pajamas, say it, it's fun). So he parried his way right out of the guild! I like to imagine that he is off parrying in a field filled with Panzerkins and Evasion-tank rouges, talking about theorycrafting and days gone by.

TL:DR

Solar won out in the RNG world, being less dependent on chance. Solar also took home the gear round, but just barely, as I feel there is more room for error or bad judgment(both of which I am fond) in that cycle when it comes to gear and set bonuses. Movement went to Solar only because it allows you to squeeze out more casts before, in between, or after a movement, maximizing Eclipse's effective uptime.

Lunar took home the spell queuing, high haste, and mana rounds. It was pretty clear that a Lunar cycle took more advantage of spell queuing, suffered less in high haste situations (of which there are many now) and was more mana efficient. These aspects of the Lunar rotation make it very attractive in its own right.

There is no "best cycle" anymore. You should choose your cycle based on the fight, your gear, your preferred playstyle, and most importantly, whatever I tell you to do. Ok, that last bit was a joke (stand on one foot?), but the rest holds very true. You can be a successful and competitive top-end raider with either a Lunar or a Solar cycle. If you want to be pro spend more time working on good positioning, planing ahead, thinking on your feet, and minimizing non-casting time rather than choosing either Lunar or Solar rotations and mindlessly subscribing to one.

Now go, young fledglings! Boom and be merry, for I have taught you all you need to know (right now)!