[Balance] 5.4 Changes and Thoughts

[Drayarr]

The dev's havent got a clue about balance druids, they've made crappy change after crappy change and we just take it and make it work, im sure we will just have to accept this shit and get on with it.

[Deleted]

Can you keep it constructive please? Casting while moving is considered a game-breaking ability outside of of the weakest of spells. Just ruins the caster metagame and Blizzard has stated many times they wanted to tone down casting while moving(and have) rather than giving it to everyone.

wrath has been buffed by a total of 20%
starfall a total of 20%
starfire 10%

I'm confident it will make up for the needed SS change. Like most, My only concern atm is AOE. I really see it as bottom of the barrel outside of maybe a 20second window where its middle of the pack and quickly drops off.

Starfire also seems to get the 2x 10%, wich would be aprox 21% buff for all 3 spells. It is written under balance

I have hope they will somehow do something else for either our AoE or our poor movement. If not then atleast we will be single target cannons.

[Aboubacar]

Balance movement isn't poor unless you're at a 463 ilvl... It's only worse than ele shamans and demonolgy. Balance movement damage is about where most casters should be.

You guys are completely downplaying Balance's strengths. Dot cleave (while doing very good single target at the same time), extremely good target swapping and offhealing. Said it a million times, we all know the AOE is a bit too low, but you can't have everything and the class doesn't need a total overhaul.

Trust me, while you might not always be top of the meter, it will remain very competitive in 5.4 outside of a fight with very sustained clump AOE.

[Deleted]

Balance movement isn't poor unless you're at a 463 ilvl... It's only worse than ele shamans and demonolgy. Balance movement damage is about where most casters should be.

You guys are completely downplaying Balance's strengths. Dot cleave (while doing very good single target at the same time), extremely good target swapping and offhealing. Said it a million times, we all know the AOE is a bit too low, but you can't have everything and the class doesn't need a total overhaul.

Trust me, while you might not always be top of the meter, it will remain very competitive in 5.4 outside of a fight with very sustained clump AOE.

So our movement dps is actually one of the best in the game then? Wow, im not sure what you are smoking, but we are completely dependant on RNG wether we have procs or not. And if not, then you can do nothing else then place mushrooms, as half the time overwriting dots is even a bad idea. I had plenty of times i could practically do nothing on the run. Please explain how our movement dps is so great its ranking in your top 3 casters list mate.

Maybe some people are abit overreacting here, but its not nothing when you expect some good work being done on your spec while they trash it like they did. Making comments like top 3 movement dps is just gonna make you look like a fool.

[Cyteriz]

Yeh but what about CM's, Prooving grounds, PvP'ers, casual raiders ? They literally didnt give a shit about them, disgrace.

[Aboubacar]

So our movement dps is actually one of the best in the game then? Wow, im not sure what you are smoking, but we are completely dependant on RNG wether we have procs or not. And if not, then you can do nothing else then place mushrooms, as half the time overwriting dots is even a bad idea. I had plenty of times i could practically do nothing on the run. Please explain how our movement dps is so great its ranking in your top 3 casters list mate.

Maybe some people are abit overreacting here, but its not nothing when you expect some good work being done on your spec while they trash it like they did. Making comments like top 3 movement dps is just gonna make you look like a fool.

You're shoving text into my post at this point and it's just annoying to explain the basics to whiners.

Every ranged caster has movment fillers that do far less than their main abilities.
Balance druids are limited to wild mushrooms, MF/SF, and SS procs
Shadow is limited to: SW pain clipping, t90, DI procs, sometimes FDCL procs
Arcane only has barrage PoM
Fire is limited to: Pyro procs, bomb refreshes, scorch(which is on par with 3 stack lunar shower moonfire) PoM
Aff is limited to: Dot refreshed, malefic grasp if talented
Destro limited to incinerate while moving, if talented

Ele can do everything while moving but for 15s, and then continue to lightning bolt and spam LS procs
Demo can often work meta around movement.

Balance movement damage is rather close to everything I put in the first set of specs and there's a noticeable difference with the last 2 specs I mentioned. Additionally, on multi-target DoT cleave fights you have more than enough movement fillers to get from point A to point B without losing any damage.

Thread has morphed into a whine-fest rather than an actual discussion. Apologies to those that were actually constructive in this thread.


@Cyteriz this is a much larger problem not limited to balance, but a lot of casters that scale well with gear and even rogues for example that rely a lot on higher energy regen. The game is being balanced around 1 item level, not 463-570, which leads to class balance being very, very out of whack at lower item levels that we've either progressed out of or are set that low by Blizzard's scaling.

I don't really have a perfect solution to this, but I'd prefer that they'd adjust the mobs in proving grounds and CMs to have higher health and harder-hitting abilities rather than dropping your character to a gear level that no class is balanced around atm. No idea what to do with PvP considering its lower ilvl is to prevent people from using PvP pieces in PVE.

[Cyous]

Sunfire 372 ticks - 18.5%
Moonfire 393 ticks - 18.4%
Starsurge (34 Shooting Stars procs) 13 casts - 17.6%
530ilvl with 4pc

This was on a 2 target fight ( kor kron dark shamans)

Taken from US forums.

http://gyazo.com/2c9fbfbfcc94c8063e530255e4a8c88a 8-16 target (AOE)

You said you had the 4pc. You probably had 40% effective crit. (trinket/weapon procs).

This puts your effective SS proc rate per tick at 9.21%. So, we could find an average:
(9.21% * ([372 + 393] * 0.5))
9.21% * 382.5 = 35.23 procs.

Unfortunately, this is consistent with your experience.

(Posting this here because on the US forums, there was discussion that SS might be bugged)

[Erdluf]

I try to maintain a PvP spreadsheet for myself. I want to get started on the 5.4 version. Besides the changes listed in the first post, I think we are looking at

• Increased Wrath, Starfire, Starfall damage.
• Reduced Shooting Stars procs when multi-dotting.
• Stronger Nature's Vigil when healing (but most Moonkin still prefer HotW)
• Ysera's Gift available (but WoC is probably better)
• Increased baseline resilience.
• Increased battle fatigue
• PvP ilvl cap to climb slowly during the season.
• New RPPM rules for Haste.
• Edit: Increased Stamina in bear form

Is there anything I'm missing?
Thanks.

[Deleted]

wrath has been buffed by a total of 20%
starfall a total of 20%
starfire 10%

Where are you getting this info from? As far as i can see its 10%, just listing a spell twice doesnt make it 20%

Look at the tooltips:
Starfall is going from 577 + 33% -> 635 + 36.3% which is a 10% change
Wrath is going from 2664 + 121.6% -> 2930 + 133.8% which is a 10% change
Starfire is going from 4434 + 196.9% -> 4878 + 216.6% which is a 10% change

Really, they would write 20% if it was 20%.

Also i agree with another post that balance will remain competative, the only place we fall short is on aoe, however maybe it will be tuned abit higher, however i dont ever want us to go to a boring hurricane channel for big packs, i like multi dotting and think it would be nice to work something into the mix. What we do need it some better mitigation, maybe we did feel tanky like blizz says, i disagree, but even still only having 20% on a 1 min CD is very poor, really we are the worst class for mitigation in this new tier. You cannot count on or rely on symbiosis because you wont always have the class you need or enough of them in raids.

[Aboubacar]

Where are you getting this info from? As far as i can see its 10%, just listing a spell twice doesnt make it 20%

Look at the tooltips:
Starfall is going from 577 + 33% -> 635 + 36.3% which is a 10% change
Wrath is going from 2664 + 121.6% -> 2930 + 133.8% which is a 10% change
Starfire is going from 4434 + 196.9% -> 4878 + 216.6% which is a 10% change

Really, they would write 20% if it was 20%.

Also i agree with another post that balance will remain competative, the only place we fall short is on aoe, however maybe it will be tuned abit higher, however i dont ever want us to go to a boring hurricane channel for big packs, i like multi dotting and think it would be nice to work something into the mix

Yea what I wrote was incorrect, but it was buffed by 10% in each of the past 2 builds (starfall, wrath) and starfire was buffed by 10% 1 time.
Math is hard/ (for me XD)

Unless of course they removed the starfire buff and only buffed the other 2 spells 1 time, in which case I misread rather than accidentally putting an additive value.

[Deleted]

You're shoving text into my post at this point and it's just annoying to explain the basics to whiners.

Every ranged caster has movment fillers that do far less than their main abilities.
Balance druids are limited to wild mushrooms, MF/SF, and SS procs
Shadow is limited to: SW pain clipping, t90, DI procs, sometimes FDCL procs
Arcane only has barrage PoM
Fire is limited to: Pyro procs, bomb refreshes, scorch(which is on par with 3 stack lunar shower moonfire) PoM
Aff is limited to: Dot refreshed, malefic grasp if talented
Destro limited to incinerate while moving, if talented

Ele can do everything while moving but for 15s, and then continue to lightning bolt and spam LS procs
Demo can often work meta around movement.

Balance movement damage is rather close to everything I put in the first set of specs and there's a noticeable difference with the last 2 specs I mentioned. Additionally, on multi-target DoT cleave fights you have more than enough movement fillers to get from point A to point B without losing any damage.

Thread has morphed into a whine-fest rather than an actual discussion. Apologies to those that were actually constructive in this thread.


@Cyteriz this is a much larger problem not limited to balance, but a lot of casters that scale well with gear and even rogues for example that rely a lot on higher energy regen. The game is being balanced around 1 item level, not 463-570, which leads to class balance being very, very out of whack at lower item levels that we've either progressed out of or are set that low by Blizzard's scaling.

I don't really have a perfect solution to this, but I'd prefer that they'd adjust the mobs in proving grounds and CMs to have higher health and harder-hitting abilities rather than dropping your character to a gear level that no class is balanced around atm. No idea what to do with PvP considering its lower ilvl is to prevent people from using PvP pieces in PVE.

While i agree this thread has turned into a whinefest, counteracting with blown up positives is not the way to do it either.
You just create an environment where balance would be best off, while other specs are worst off. Sometimes spamming dots is a dps loss, getting SS procs even on multiple targets now and even with BiS gear is sometimes a pain (Multi target post nerf), and let's not include mushrooms at all shall we?
Based on this every boomkin who has some sort of self evaluation would not call it fine, or even in the higher regions like you would make us believe.
If you are fine with planting mushrooms, wich will hit like a wet towel thats your opinion. Let's not make it a fact.

Btw i do not see they removed the starfire buff either. Like i said before, it is placed under balance specifically. While the other 2 are under druid.

[Deleted]

While i agree this thread has turned into a whinefest, counteracting with blown up positives is not the way to do it either.
You just create an environment where balance would be best off, while other specs are worst off. Sometimes spamming dots is a dps loss, getting SS procs even on multiple targets now and even with BiS gear is sometimes a pain (Multi target post nerf), and let's not include mushrooms at all shall we?
Based on this every boomkin who has some sort of self evaluation would not call it fine, or even in the higher regions like you would make us believe.
If you are fine with planting mushrooms, wich will hit like a wet towel thats your opinion. Let's not make it a fact.

You do kinda make it out like balance is broken. Dont know about you but i generally am high in the logs on every fight in T15 bar a few, the nerf to SS proc rates, i am not sure how others find it and if the nerf is on the current ptr build but i played flex today and tbh its not that bad, sometimes you get really dry spells especially when you CA + inc on pull and multi dot like 6+ enemies, you get literally 0 procs which i thought was laughable. However the SS procs are pretty consistent through the fights, definitely less than we currently have but meh, if we can do nice dps then what does it matter. I just wish they would change the 4 set after they decided on this nerf because its the most pointless set bonus ever now, increase proc rates and nerf proc rates in same tier?!

Yeah i am one of those people that think mushrooms dont belong in the balance pve spellbook, sure keep them for pvp for slows only, but they dont work for pve dps. They wont overhaul our aoe this close to the patch and they already said they are past that stage and are just tuning classes now. Best we can hope for is a tune up on hurricane and storm. But really they should have removed the NG affecting the aoe and then tuned the damage to be consistent with what we should have, then we can do sustained aoe.

[Fleuria]

I don't agree with, well, any of the ideas in this post. While they aren't exactly bad ideas, it's radical changes to how balance druid works. I don't really have a problem with any of the balance druid mechanics outside of mushrooms, and that's just because the damage is pitiful. The class combat is really smooth, the spells work great, and the eclipse bar is working out very, very well. There's no need for large scale changes to how the spec works.

Well technically their is, if they don't want high crit builds they have to change it, sure they've started but they should of left it till the end of the expansion not 2 weeks before a patch launch, however in a recent tweet they said they though about letting starsurge stack but they didn't want to do it when starsurge was spammable now in theory it isn't outside of t16 set so I tweeted gc asking if they could add it in now that they've made the diminishing return on dots so hopefully they do or even better they revert the change and just wait to make game changing spec changes till expansion.

[Deleted]

2 different patch builds, 2 different dates

and 2 times x-amount of % buffs.

If some of you would spend more time reading patch notes, and actually contribute, we would be better of as a class. This thread was not intended for QQ, nor was it created for useless discussions about what buff was received, and which one was not. It was intended for communicating on how 5.4 was affecting our class, and the thread has been up way longer than the SS nerf. If all of you doomthinkers could leave, and leave the maths and thinking to those that are willing to put effort into their spec and class, we would be better off.


/thread


Might aswell be locked to avoid further random arguments and whiny statements

[Fleuria]

2 different patch builds, 2 different dates

and 2 times x-amount of % buffs.

If some of you would spend more time reading patch notes, and actually contribute, we would be better of as a class. This thread was not intended for QQ, nor was it created for useless discussions about what buff was received, and which one was not. It was intended for communicating on how 5.4 was affecting our class, and the thread has been up way longer than the SS nerf. If all of you doomthinkers could leave, and leave the maths and thinking to those that are willing to put effort into their spec and class, we would be better off.


/thread


Might aswell be locked to avoid further random arguments and whiny statements

It's the same build btw, just the previous one was official patch note updates.

Still only a 10% buff, you should also stop whining this is a discussion thread sure alot of posts have a whiney tone but still most come up with good points, the maths of the spec is done on elitist jerks.

[Deleted]

You do kinda make it out like balance is broken. Dont know about you but i generally am high in the logs on every fight in T15 bar a few, the nerf to SS proc rates, i am not sure how others find it and if the nerf is on the current ptr build but i played flex today and tbh its not that bad, sometimes you get really dry spells especially when you CA + inc on pull and multi dot like 6+ enemies, you get literally 0 procs which i thought was laughable. However the SS procs are pretty consistent through the fights, definitely less than we currently have but meh, if we can do nice dps then what does it matter. I just wish they would change the 4 set after they decided on this nerf because its the most pointless set bonus ever now, increase proc rates and nerf proc rates in same tier?!

Yeah i am one of those people that think mushrooms dont belong in the balance pve spellbook, sure keep them for pvp for slows only, but they dont work for pve dps. They wont overhaul our aoe this close to the patch and they already said they are past that stage and are just tuning classes now. Best we can hope for is a tune up on hurricane and storm. But really they should have removed the NG affecting the aoe and then tuned the damage to be consistent with what we should have, then we can do sustained aoe.

I'm sorry if i made it look like that. I still think our single target dmg is very high, and we will surely be viable. Just like you said our AoE is not where it should be and imo our moving dps at points can be really poor. This multi dot nerf will certainly not make that easier.
I also believe the SS nerf was needed, i like to cast things. But not without settling atleast our AoE. That would just be plain wrong, since the nerf also affects our moving dps and AoE.

There are a fair few fights with streams of adds coming to the raid, i am at this point not to sure what we are supposed to do at that point. And if these fights are tightly tuned might cost us a spot to some class wich is better equipped for it.

[Deleted]

It's the same build btw, just the previous one was official patch note updates.

Still doesn't change the fact that the thread has derailed and turned into a QQ fest

[Cyous]

Well, a quick fix to Balance AOE:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...6461?page=2#27

* Adds 5 Eclipse generation per tick of Hurricane and Astral Storm. (Does not benefit from Euphoria)
---- Causes almost 0 damage gain and loss in AOE.
---- Does not contribute positively to single-target DPS (you cannot game AOE for single-target).
---- Interacts with NG so it doesn't kill us to AOE then transition into single-target. (not the same as gaming it)
---- QoL fix which literally does nothing, except improve our QoL with NG.

[Drayarr]

Wasnt the 10% worked out to something like a 1-3% dps increase? when really we need something more like a 25% increase? unless the trinkets (as per usual) really are going to be make or break for the teir?

[Deleted]

What about if your on say 20 energy solar and you want to hurricane a few times, i dont want to be taken out of eclipse when i dont want it. This kinda method is why people didnt like the old lunar shower since it had adverse effects.

I dunno i personally dont want hurricane / storm to move my eclipse bar, i just think it should extend NG when it ticks, so if you start aoeing on 5 seconds of NG, then when the channel is finished then you still have 5 seconds of NG left so you dont have the painful single target movement to the next eclipse.