[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Catbug]

What if stellar flare did something like replace both moonfire and sunfire and essentially was the combined damage of both (maybe with a little boost), the extra effects of both (longer duration and spread), would get an extension from NB like MF and SF do, is boosted by starfall of course, and is made instant cast (to better align with the theme of it is a combination of our 2 dots.
Basically make stellar flare a combination replacement for our 2 dots as far as the base concept.

You want even LESS spells!?

[wing5wong]

how many spells do people want, seriously.
think i have 24 with all active abilities and resto affinity, plus shapeshifts.

Thats before Pvp bindings - cyclone, party dispels, arena targetting/spells

pure number of spells doesnt help with any complexity outside of not being able to process which spell you want to hit

[garonne]

it would be interesting to have a talent that turns us more into a dot spec. not sure how i'd feel about it unless i test it, but its an interesting idea.

[wing5wong]

Touch of the stars lvl 7 pvp talent seems to have been missed with the x10 modifier as well. generates 1.5 asp

[Madus]

it would be interesting to have a talent that turns us more into a dot spec. not sure how i'd feel about it unless i test it, but its an interesting idea.

Well, they could easily change Stellar flare to:

• 40 asp spender
• remove that solar/lunar emp eating mechanic
• increase dmg done
• add dispell protection
• make it scale from mastery as starsurge
• make SW/LS hits on STFL affected target empowered OR just make STFL just generate empowers.

basically it would replace starsurge for third dot.
Problem is that they are not able fix easy shit so this is too much for them.

[Lucrece]

I'd rather StFl didn't replace our other spenders. It could just have a cooldown and eat up like 20 AsP, so it's a really potent single target DoT.

That should be a thing, I hate how it has become a norm for dots to be seen as intended to be spread across multiple targets. Treat it as a strong single target nuke.

[Madus]

I'd rather StFl didn't replace our other spenders. It could just have a cooldown and eat up like 20 AsP, so it's a really potent single target DoT.

That should be a thing, I hate how it has become a norm for dots to be seen as intended to be spread across multiple targets. Treat it as a strong single target nuke.

You cannot have cake and eat it too. You cannot have strong dots and strong nukes, everything will go down to some tuning and you end with medium nukes and medium dots (mkin) or strong dots and light nukes (afli) or strong nukes and light dots (ele). Without trading it will be never strong just some lil % of overal dmg by your x nukes+x dots.

[huth]

You cannot have cake and eat it too. You cannot have strong dots and strong nukes, everything will go down to some tuning and you end with medium nukes and medium dots (mkin) or strong dots and light nukes (afli) or strong nukes and light dots (ele). Without trading it will be never strong just some lil % of overal dmg by your x nukes+x dots.

You are trading something for it, though. If you take StFl, you get neither Incarnation nor SotF. And Incarnation is quite a bit stronger than now, since it also prolongs CA in addition to its current effect.

[Madus]

You are trading something for it, though. If you take StFl, you get neither Incarnation nor SotF. And Incarnation is quite a bit stronger than now, since it also prolongs CA in addition to its current effect.

This cd and passive are still weak trade for standalone "strong" dot, they are enough for this "crap" dot what we have now. Ye sure you can bulk it up with long cd (read 3min) but will spec feel as "dot" spec when you will cast your dot once per x min and generally forget about it?

[Lucrece]

You cannot have cake and eat it too. You cannot have strong dots and strong nukes, everything will go down to some tuning and you end with medium nukes and medium dots (mkin) or strong dots and light nukes (afli) or strong nukes and light dots (ele). Without trading it will be never strong just some lil % of overal dmg by your x nukes+x dots.

It's not free. It's a single target damage boost that costs a talent slot. For it, you pay the opportunity cost of not having Incarnation for burst and multitarget DPS, or the constant passive benefit of soul of the forest which also expands to multiple targets.

[Cyous]

You cannot have cake and eat it too. You cannot have strong dots and strong nukes, everything will go down to some tuning and you end with medium nukes and medium dots (mkin) or strong dots and light nukes (afli) or strong nukes and light dots (ele). Without trading it will be never strong just some lil % of overal dmg by your x nukes+x dots.

Affliction is crazy multi-target, though?

Keep in mind, you can't use StFl after 4+ targets, because Starfall is better outright.

[Madus]

It's not free. It's a single target damage boost that costs a talent slot. For it, you pay the opportunity cost of not having Incarnation for burst and multitarget DPS, or the constant passive benefit of soul of the forest which also expands to multiple targets.

Incarnation in overall damage is low amount.

Affliction is crazy multi-target, though?

Keep in mind, you can't use StFl after 4+ targets, because Starfall is better outright.

Well, i just responded @garonne what would need talent do if you wanna turn us more into dot spec.
Also i dont know why you see dot spec = crazy multi-target spec. I see dot spec as spec which is doing most of damage by damage over time spells. It doesnt mean that it must be instantly crazy-multitarget spec...

If our overall damage is composition of SW+LS+SS+MF+SF and over 60% is always SW+LS+SS then no matter how many dots you add, it will still not feel as "dot" spec, bcs majority of your dmg will be nukes rest minus SF+MF will look like trinket procs. Thats why you would need high AsP or whatever cost dot so you lower presence of SS (or SW+LS like current state)...

Anyway i dont care about Stellar flare, because "damage abilities" are imho lowest problem right now.
There is much bigger problem imho because in pvp you doing nothing other just spam instant damage.
Watched Supatease playing arenas with Moonkin and its looks like most fucked up thing ever, there is literally nothing other to do just spam instants damage abilities. And reading last Celestalon tweet just fortified it.

[Cyous]

@Madus

Well, hardcasting your Cyclone and Roots won't be instant. Those huge CC chains make Moonkin very potent. But I absolutely agree that we're devolving to instants. But the alternative is never being able to cast when being focused. It's why Owlkin Frenzy is so important to us. Without it, it's pretty miserable.

So long as hardcasting is actually potent, spamming instants won't be a 3v3 thing. But ofc, this depends on the meta and the pace of gameplay.

In terms of "importance" ~ sure, it's fine to dismiss somethings...like "game-breaking" Shapeshifting's cooldown (lol). But Alpha is the time to discuss mechanics. PVP mechanics are pretty wonky overall. Stellar Flare's mechanics are also wonky.

On the multi-DOT'ing vs. DOT note -- it's an accept observation that DOTs tend to be far stronger for multi-target against single-target. Or AOE output is like 70-80% DOT damage. And they'll be ~40-60% in multi-target (when Starfall can be cast). We are definitely a DOT-spec with heavy roots in hardcasting. Nothing wrong with that, nor having the option to be even more DOT-centric.

[Alame]

The problem with Stellar Flare is that it's a bit of an ugly duckling in the kit, but to understand why you need to appreciate what makes DoTs unique on a design level.

The advantages of DoTs are:
-They do very high amounts of damage for the time involved in casting them (relative to nukes)
-They require little to no input from the player to do their damage after application
-They leave the player free to perform other actions & deal additional damage while they do their work
-They can be active on multiple targets at the same time
-They are normally instant cast and can be used as on-the-move & rotational fillers

The disadvantages of DoTs are:
-The target must survive (and not dispell/remove the DoT) for a minimum amount of time for DoTs to be worth casting
-They do not provide any meaningful burst potential to combo with cooldowns / increased damage phases
-They must have some meaningful interaction with the remainder of the kit to be a gameplay element and not a fire & forget

Looking at this, Stellar Flare:
- Doesn't do very much damage (similar to MF/SF when empowered, ~20% less unempowered)
> As a result of this the time the target must survive w/ DoT applied must be higher
> As a result of this generating AsP for Starfall becomes a better option at 4 targets as Cyous mentioned
- Has a cast time and therefore cannot be used as a movement filler
> As a result of this there is no uncontested GCDs to apply it as there is with MF/SF, it always competes for GCDs with SW/LS/SS
- Requires us to pass up Incarnation, a hefty price considering the strength of CD/Lust/Proc/Potion stacking
- Has a clunky empowerment consumption mechanic that makes no sense in the overall gameplay of the spec
- Has zero interaction with the remainder of the toolkit
- Adds another button & superfluous complexity to the toolkit

That's a lot of problems for one spell to have. When you look at just how strong Incarnation is, you're never going to take the weak, clunky, awkward talent that doesn't even have it's own visual over Incarnation. Fact of the matter is simple tuning doesn't fix this talent, either they make it so strong we have to take it to be competitive (which harms our gameplay & player choice, and is strongly against most if not all of Blizzard's design philosophies) or they make it competitive with Incarnation and Incarnation is still the go-to because it provides comparable performance boosts with significantly simpler execution. The talent needs to be redesigned & given a niche.

I like the idea of StFl combining MF/SF into a single DoT (the original inception of the talent was about being the middle ground between MF/SF, and while it didn't make sense to replace both with the old Eclipse & toolkit it does in the new one) so that's the base I'm going to work with. So:

Stellar Flare
40yrd Range, Instant Cast
Replaces Moonfire and Sunfire
Burns the target for (252% Spellpower) Spellstorm damage and an additional (1008% Spellpower) Spellstorm damage over 24s. Whenever your most recent Stellar Flare deals periodic damage, you have a 15% chance to generate 6 Astral Power, and this chance is doubled on critical strikes. Additionally, whenever an enemy afflicted by Stellar Flare is struck by Starfall, there is a 20% chance they release a burst of Astral energy, dealing (42% Spellpower) damage to all enemies within 5 yards.

With this, Stellar Flare becomes a multi-DoT & mass AoE talent. The base damage is equal to moonfire & sunfire together, but increases the DoT duration to 24s to make maintaining Stellar Flare on multiple targets easier. Empowerment consumption is gone, as you're supposed to be using StFl in conjunction with Starfall & won't be using AsP on Starsurge to generate empowerments. Instead of AsP on casting the DoT we take the old resource generation method of shooting stars. Finally, using StFl in conjunction with Starfall triggers little fire nova-style explosion that deals damage approximately equal to a single Moonfire tick - explosions triggered by Echoing Stars would deal 1/3 normal damage, just as the stars deal reduced damage.

I also think Soul of the Forest needs some help - it's one thing to say Nature's Balance is okay because some people like the simplified rotation it provides, but Soul of the Forest provides no simplicity benefit over Incarnation. I would like to see SotF moved towards a strictly single-target talent, Incarnation the middle-ground talent good for any number of targets, and StFl good for multi-target & hectic cleave as outlined above. That gives each talent a unique niche and we don't end up just taking Incarnation for the entire expac (again)

[Deleted]

I'm still of the opinion that the current StF is fine if it gets a buff and/or is moved to another tier as to not compete with INC. The cast time doesn't really matter, since it replaces a SW. The fact that it generates 0 AsP is fine, since it just means we get slightly less Starsurges (you likely wouldn't cast SF if you spec StF), but StF just needs to make up for that loss in damage. I'm actually a fan of it consuming empowerments, because it allows us to actually benefit from our mastery when multidotting targets that are too far apart for SF to see any use. Besides, this actually makes our rotation rather interesting as you have to think a lot about when to cast SS since you cannot cast SW/LS between your SS and StF cast.

I'm also a big fan of having talents that actually make our rotation harder - something that only FoE provides at the moment.

[Madus]

@Madus
Well, hardcasting your Cyclone and Roots won't be instant. Those huge CC chains make Moonkin very potent. But I absolutely agree that we're devolving to instants. But the alternative is never being able to cast when being focused. It's why Owlkin Frenzy is so important to us. Without it, it's pretty miserable.

Problem is not cyclone and root. Problem is that they removed possibility to smart use of:
stampeding roar, hurricane drink break, mushroom slow, fonroot, ursol+beam, nature vigil, hotw, soothe+reflect, stealthpounce...
And replaced it with crap like "form without abilities" or pvp talent tree filled with crap like twinmoonfire and celestial downpur wtf.
Smart use of these lil utility spells made difference between good and great.

After pruning all of these not so much used spells, instead of adding interesting combos with spells (like root+beam), they made pvp talents just glorified damage passives.
And now you will have pvp meta where sometime you cc (or you dont when you dont pick that talent) and 90% just damage race.
Current state of PvP is retarded and boring, yet they gonna even more reduce it to pve rotation damage race with even lower amount of non-damage abilities.
And its not only balance druid this can be said about all specs in pvp.

[Cyous]

@Madus
Still agreeing on PVP.

They should give back more baseline utility, then make PVP talents passive and modify those spells.

[Deleted]

I think the design of stellar flare is fine, its just very important that they get the damage right, it has to be stronger than incarnation for sustained damage. To me, the talent row is do i want SotF if i will be spamming starfall, inc if extra burst is required at some point in a fight, or StFl for more constant overall damage on 1-3 targets. The only thing i would change is to make it generate some astral power, as SotF saves 10 per starfall cast, and Inc generates extra over CA

[garonne]

it doesn't have to be stronger than incarnation for sustained, that'd be soul of the forest's job, StF just has to better on two targets and become the cleave option.

[huth]

it doesn't have to be stronger than incarnation for sustained, that'd be soul of the forest's job, StF just has to better on two targets and become the cleave option.

SotF can't compete with either of them for sustained single target. Especially since the single target portion of SotF doesn't scale with mastery.

The cost reduction to Starfall finally gives it a useful niche.