Boomkin 101 - Pre Raid BiS, Consums, Enchants & Talents.

[Yacopok]

Hello Everyone,
I have noticed a recent spike in the number of Boomkins on the Horde's side. Sadly, the majority of them rock greens with some stats, tier 1 and few actually useful items. I decided to make this post and place here a list of Boomkin Pre-Raid BiS, consumables and enchants and talents you should get, and hopefully help the new Boomkin players out a bit. Just because you play a spec with the primary task of buffing 4 other casters does not mean you can't put out decent dps and compete with other players. As to what you should build your gear around later: 8% hit should be a steady value for you, afterwords prioritize Spell Power and Crit, lastly mp5.

Pre-Raid BiS:
Head: Crimson Felt Hat (Stratholme - Magistrate Barthilas)
Neck: Tempest Talisman (Dire Maul East - Hydrospawn)
Shoulder: Abyssal Leather Shoulders of Sorcery (Silithus Bosses) or Burial Shawl (Scholo - Minibosses) - Some people prefer high +arcane dmg. I go for stats.
Back: Heliotrope Cloak (Dire Maul North -Mol'dar)
Chest: Bloodvine Vest (Crafted - you don't have to make them yourself, but being a 300 Tailor and having the full set will give you another 2% Crit)
Wrist: Sublime Wristguards (Dire Maul North - Guard Mol'dar)
Hands: Brightspark Gloves (Dire Maul West - Tsu'Zee)
Waist: Belt of the Archmage (Crafted)
Legs: Bloodvine Leggings (Crafted)
Boots: Bloodvine Boots (Crafted)
Rings: Ring of the Demonic Guile x2 (Dire Maul East - Alzzin the Wildshaper) - I know there are nice spell power rings in game, but I really liked the mp5 on those.
Trinkets: Eye of the Beast (BRD quest), Briarwood Reed (UBRS - Jed Runewatcher) - I know it's hard to get the Reed, get a mp5 trinket instead.
Wepon: Rod of the Ogre Magi (Dire Maul Tribute Run)

I do not include PvP reward items here, however a number of them are really good and might last you even until Blackwing Lair. If you know of any better items, that's great, please post them in a comment and I will make sure to edit my list if it's an upgrade. However, if you manage to get all the gear listed above you will be well prepare for Molten Core. Also, while I was trying to acquire the gear for myself, I would try to pickup unwanted healing BiS for Druids. You never know when you will be lacking a healer and I find healing even with balance spec doable. After you start raiding, I would pass on all the tier 1 drops after you pick up 3 piece for the set bonus, only to buff tanks for progression or long fights (In my opinion and experience it's the small upgrades that make the difference between a wipe and a kill a lot of times). Take any tier 2 for healing, you will never get the best non set gear, but the tier 2 is still is very efficient.

List of consumables:
- Major Mana Potion x30
- Demonic Rune x20 (They do not share a global cooldown with mana pots, alternate between the two wisely)
- Mageblood Potion x15
- Nightfin Soup x20
- Sagefish Delight x10 (Use those for longer fights)
- Brilliant Wizard Oil (3 with 5 charges)
- Brilliant Mana Oil (1 with 5 charges used for long fights)
- Greater Fire Protection Potion x10 (You've useless dead, trust your healers but come prepared)
- Restorative Potions x10
- Rumsey Run Black Label x20 (Makes it harder for you to kill yourself)
- Greater Arcane Elixir x10
- Major Healing Potion (Again, trust your healers, but come prepared)
- Runn Tum Tuber Surprise x5 (Vael fight)
- Flask Of Supreme Power (Any progression raids and BWL)
- Greater Arcane Protection Potion x5 (Shazzrah)
- Greater Shadow Protection Potion x5 (Nefarian, phase 1)
- Stratholme Holy Water x5 (Nefarian, phase 3)
- Wild Thornroot x40 (I bring 60 in case we are short on Druids)
- Ironwood Seed x20
- Spirit of Zanza x2 (They are unique, so you pop one when we're dropping the Heart of Hakkar and keep the other one for later.)
- Always bother the warlocks to give you a Health Cookie.
- If you have serious mana issues, bring Flask of Distilled Wisdom instead of the Supreme Power

Enchants:
No matter what gear you are currently wearing, enchant it! Being a 'Caster Buff' is not enough, help your guild out and contribute as much as you can. Shame other lazy ass casters that don't enchant their gear because they are an 'actual dps class', so they don't put any effort into raiding.

Head - 8 Spell power (The ZG enchants do give you a lot of stats, but I think the extra dmg is still better)
Shoulder - 5 Fire Resistance / 5 To All Resistances / 18 Spell power (All depends on your rep, the 1st two are from Argent Dawn, last one is Zandalar Tribe exalted)
Cloak - 5 To All Resistances
Chest - 4 Stats (100 mana is nice, but the extra Spirit and Stam form this enchant makes it more beneficial over all imo)
Wrist - 4mp5
Gloves - There isn't a caster enchant for gloves in the game yet, and AQ come there won't be a Boomkin one. I use Riding Skill.
Legs - 8 Spell power
Boots - Either put Mithril Spurs on them or Minor Speed Increase

Talent Tree:
I have tried out multiple variations of how to spend your talents, talked to a number of people and came to the conclusion this is the best way to spend your talents as a Boomkin:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0x0xIMEstZxxc
Link to my Char:
http://realmplayers.com/CharacterViewer ... er=Yacopok
If you have any questions or you see somewhere where I could improve this list, let me know.
All the best in game,
Yacopok

[Norjak]

First, Thank you for getting this discussion started - now that we're getting closer to AQ, and the way that Boomkin damage scales with gear in Vanilla, Balance has the potential to be viable in the hands of the right type of player who doesn't mind slamming mana pots like they're going out of style and maxing consumables.

About the Bloodvine set, there is a nice +Crit bonus if you are a Tailor so anyone wanting to bring decent damage to a justify their spot in the raid will want to be a tailor.

Also if you are counting Silithus bosses as pre-raid, the Abyssal Leather Shoulders of Sorcery (BoP) are a nice upgrade to the Cyclones. The Elemental Focus Band (Silithus bosses) is also desired by casters. Also, I just want to point out you are prioritizing SP over MP5 but then you choose MP5 rings as BiS.

This will change as further patches on Nost make better gear available to players. (ie. Spellweaver's Turban, Diana's Pearl Necklace, Rockfury Bracers, upgraded Ban'thok Sash etc.)

[Yacopok]

Yeah, I haven't looked at those bosses at all yet so thank you very much. And yes I forgot to mention, you don't need to make the Bloodvine set yourself, but being a 300 tailor at the same time would be incredibly beneficial for you as you gain the 2% crit chance for the set. I will edit the list. Thank you for the valuable input.

[eyeofhal9000]

It's about time that there was a boomkin guide on here.

[Pottu]

Stickied. Please keep it updated.

[Blaze]

Not trying to deflect from your write up, because it is pretty accurate in some sense (would not value mp5 as highly as you do, this is old content and even in a progression guild fights don't last too long)... but your realmplayers dps is absurdly low, if you need some rotation/gearing advice hit up Papablaze 8).

[ChipTheMonk]

I like the look of this.

Band of Rumination from Rend might be a better fit than 2x demonic guile. -10 int and -1mp5 but +1 crit.

I'm Chiptmoonkin (A) in game. My dps isn't great in raids still, but I'm still working towards some improvements.

[Keftenk]

The correct stat priority should be: Hit > SP > Crit > Int > M5 > Spi
Ideally ~9% spell hit should be suffice, but this really depends on how long the fights are. The longer the fights the better Spell Hit becomes, but as Balance spec we want shorter fights.

Pre-raid BiS should look like this (assuming you're leaving out ZG) for patch 1.8:
Weapon: Sageclaw
Off-Hand: Tome of Arcane Domination

Head: Bloodvine Goggles
Neck: Orb of the Darkmoon
Shoulder: Abyssal Cloth Amice of Sorcery
Back: Archivist Cape of Arcane Wrath
Chest: Bloodvine Vest
Wrist: Dryad's Wrist Bindings
Hands: Hands of Power
Waist: Stormpike/Frostwolf Cloth Belt
Legs: Bloodvine Leggings
Boots: Bloodvine Boots
Ring 1: Elemental Focus Band
Ring 2: Songstone of Ironforge/Eye of Ogrimmar or Maiden's Circle
Trinket 1: Briarwood Reed
Trinket 2: Eye of the Beast

Your crafts should be Tailoring and Engineering.

The thing about Moonkin is that it seems no one actually talks about (or maybe they haven't figured out) is that Crit only becomes exponentially better with SP. It needs to scale. You can't just dump a bunch of Crit onto your gear with no SP.

[maos]

Ring 2: Songstone of Ironforge/Eye of Ogrimmar or Maiden's Circle

You could get a green ring of arcane wrath with 23 SP as well.

[Keftenk]

Oh, good catch! That'd definitely be better.