[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Juvencus]

They should return the Legion alpha Lunar Strike effect, give FoE graphic to StFl and give FoE a new one.

I also agree with the heals in form. Having to be in form is the cost of the form's benefits. Having to powershift is the cost of powershifting's rewards. Added costs and restrictions are just ridiculous. And neither you can damage/heal during it.

Talents, especially should be form-universal. The cc row already is, Renewal as well. Resto affinity and DP should also be.

[Alame]

Let's be real here, other than rejuv, when did you ever use any of the other spells that are now granted by affinities? I don't think i ever used any cat only abilities in a raid, and the only scenario were I would use a bear ability is in the rare case that the tank died, but I'd die to melee attacks rather fast regardless of if I press mangle and trash 5 times just to Frenzied regn. once for 10% of my HP. Basically, with the exception of rejuv, all the abilities are so rarely used, that it might aswell be baked into talents.

I actually used Dash quite a lot =(

Re-iterating my idea for Stellar Drift to move Starfall away from a DoT-enhancer and towards a stand-alone AoE spell, looks like:

Stellar Drift:
Increases Starfall's radius and damage by 30%. Additionally, Starfall no longer provides Stellar Empowerment but receives double benefit from your mastery.

[Cronizer]

I actually used Dash quite a lot =(

Thankfully, dash has returned as a baseline ability.

[Alame]

Thankfully, dash has returned as a baseline ability.

Guess I missed that? When did that happen?

[garonne]

to compare a ele healing to a boomkin healing in form is silly. the effect of moonkin is the increased armor and MKF, take less physical damage and proc instants and negate polymorh effects.

[Lucrece]

to compare a ele healing to a boomkin healing in form is silly. the effect of moonkin is the increased armor and MKF, take less physical damage and proc instants and negate polymorh effects.

No, what's silly is to compare perks of a balance druid while leaving the ele ones out. Moonkin's interrupt is on a 1 min cd while ele's is a 12 sec cd, so the ele can prevent incoming magic damage and CC like fear far easier, which polymorph immunity does nothing against. Ele has built in moonkin armor rating because he's MAIL and wearing a SHIELD.

Ele has instant lava surge procs, and his lava burst doesn't require resources to cast, unlike starsurge.

Ele's rotational spells don't involve a 2.5+ sec cast Lunar Strike..

Ele has astral shift, a greater 40% burst damage reduction.

Ele has a built in superior Typhoon in baseline Thunderstorm.

Ele has a baseline snare, which moonkin does not have.

Ele has purge to, for example, take off Avenging Wrath off paladins or soften a shadow priest up by taking his absorb shield away.

Ele also has baseline Hex, which is basically a fear effect that allows you to control and damage any target at the same time.

There are far more gladiator ele shamans than there are balance druids, for a reason. All a balance druid has ever done is spam moonfire/sunfire and hope something dies in shooting star procs. You bring virtually nothing else that a resto druid can't cover himself.

Let's be real here, other than rejuv, when did you ever use any of the other spells that are now granted by affinities? I don't think i ever used any cat only abilities in a raid, and the only scenario were I would use a bear ability is in the rare case that the tank died, but I'd die to melee attacks rather fast regardless of if I press mangle and trash 5 times just to Frenzied regn. once for 10% of my HP. Basically, with the exception of rejuv, all the abilities are so rarely used, that it might as well be baked into talents.

There is more to the game than just raids, namely PvP where these abilities are in fact used quite often, and outworld content where all is not measured in terms of a long run DPS gain over 5+ minutes.

As for taking BoE out of AC, you just ignored the middle ground I was suggesting and just swung to the other extreme. Because now you increased your hardcast gains but lost any burst gains in the process.

I guess I just like the shaman maelstrom system better where their Lava Burst is still castable for frontloaded burst damage and generates resources instead of hitting like a wet noodle for 3-4 casts before you can actually do some damage with Starsurge and empowerments.

Ramp up feels completely fine in raids because you've got time on your side. It most definitely does not work well in PvP or in shorter encounter times like overworld PvE or even challenge mode dungeons where most of your time is spent on short lived trash pulls.

[Deleted]

There is more to the game than just raids, namely PvP where these abilities are in fact used quite often, and outworld content where all is not measured in terms of a long run DPS gain over 5+ minutes.

Admittedly I don't pvp, but I still don't see why you'd ever use shred or mangle. The outworld content argument doesn't really hold, you could just spec for whatever you need, unless you need both Mangle and Shred in the same combat instance, which I don't ever see happening.

As for taking BoE out of AC, you just ignored the middle ground I was suggesting and just swung to the other extreme. Because now you increased your hardcast gains but lost any burst gains in the process.

I'm not sure exactly what your point is, you didn't suggest any "middle ground" you just said you wanted to move AsP regn. from AC to Hardcasts, which is exactly what BoE does. Why would you ever want something in between? Both are already such a small part of our total AsP regn. that calling them extremes are hardly justified.

[Lucrece]

Admittedly I don't pvp, but I still don't see why you'd ever use shred or mangle. The outworld content argument doesn't really hold, you could just spec for whatever you need, unless you need both Mangle and Shred in the same combat instance, which I don't ever see happening.


I'm not sure exactly what your point is, you didn't suggest any "middle ground" you just said you wanted to move AsP regn. from AC to Hardcasts, which is exactly what BoE does. Why would you ever want something in between? Both are already such a small part of our total AsP regn. that calling them extremes are hardly justified.

Usually, you opened off a pounce in cat form and sometimes built up cp's for Maim if you were trying to pull off a cc chain for your team. There are times in PvP where you are interrupted so going into cat form to maintain pressure is an option, and often cat/bear form were used for their spell interrupt in-form.

That's just feral, which as always has had the least synergy. Resto tools were always a large part of balance druid survival in PvP since we have so few defensive tools on our own in balance spec and not much in the way of hard CC let alone instant cast ones to keep people in place for bursts or to peel/create gaps for hardcasts.

I don't know how you can call wasting an entire talent row full of potential just to retain (even if mediocre) tools we previously had baseline a "good thing".

It's like when they split feral into bear/cat separately and told cat druids they could become competitive as a result and it turned out to be a total lie. They just lost additional tools and the same issues that plagued their spec remained because while tools were moved away, no new meaningful tools were added to flesh the spec out.

[garonne]

i guess you completely missed my point.

boomkins have their bonuses and negatives, shamans have their bonuses and negatives. hope this clears it up for you.

[Lucrece]

i guess you completely missed my point.

boomkins have their bonuses and negatives, shamans have their bonuses and negatives. hope this clears it up for you.

No, it didn't, because it's a profoundly stupid comment. It's like saying live arcane mages have their bonuses and negatives relative to the bonuses and negatives of a retribution paladin in PvE.

The "bonuses" in relation to "negatives" ratio is way off between those two. You're seeing OKF as a "bonus" when it's just a band-aid for the fact that you can't cast shit as a moonkin because you don't have any tools whatsoever to consistently peel melee from yourself. Same goes for that "bonus armor", which you seem to have neglected that shamans already got it baked in via their armor class, and that armor is a measly bonus in PvP given that most classes do armor ignoring damage, aka magic damage.

Or that shadow priests have Dispersion, passive Vampiric Touch healing on top of shadow mend and PW:S and an aoe instant cast fear as their "bonuses" while all a Moonkin has is extra armor most classes ignore and and Barkskin.

I don't think you have a clue as to how PvP works if you think moonkins are in a remotely good spot in it and changing Moonkin form to no longer cast rejuv in form was a change with merit.

[Riistov]

Why have a utility that isn't useful to ourselves at all really?

Because you're benefiting the healers in your group/raid, thus benefiting you by downing bosses.

Not sure why people have a hard time understanding this, solo players maybe?

[Lucrece]

Because you're benefiting the healers in your group/raid, thus benefiting you by downing bosses.

Not sure why people have a hard time understanding this, solo players maybe?

It's kinda extraneous, though, isn't it? Healers are not balanced around Innervate availability for encounters.

[Owlkin]

As mostly PvE player I am waiting Legion with dread. I had the "pleasure" to deal with " duels " in a few PvP areas in the open world . And I almost did not have the opportunity to respond to aggression, despite the fact that I had one column pvp talent.

Given that we have regularly do a bunch of world quests, play moonkin may not be an easy task.

Lets face it. Our healing is sux even with restor affinity. Our burst potential is small. You can take AC&WoE but its not great for farming and don't grant you any real burst potential anyway.

[Deleted]

While I can believe that our survivability is lacking in pvp, Our potential burst with CA/INC + AC should be amazing, especially if you stack Mastery for SS dmg. It is in pve anyway.

[Owlkin]

While I can believe that our survivability is lacking in pvp, Our potential burst with CA/INC + AC should be amazing, especially if you stack Mastery for SS dmg. It is in pve anyway.

Not enough. 2ss about 600k damage without crits against enemies with 1.4-2kk hp. And after that you can only moonfire.

[wing5wong]

Admittedly I don't pvp, but I still don't see why you'd ever use shred or mangle. The outworld content argument doesn't really hold, you could just spec for whatever you need, unless you need both Mangle and Shred in the same combat instance, which I don't ever see happening.


I'm not sure exactly what your point is, you didn't suggest any "middle ground" you just said you wanted to move AsP regn. from AC to Hardcasts, which is exactly what BoE does. Why would you ever want something in between? Both are already such a small part of our total AsP regn. that calling them extremes are hardly justified.

Thrash to rip rogues out of cloak vanish, not much else

[Lucrece]

Not enough. 2ss about 600k damage without crits against enemies with 1.4-2kk hp. And after that you can only moonfire.

Yeah, but Gebuz said his viewpoint from PvE. The thing is his viewpoint is colored in terms of a raid opener where burst means the duration of Incarnation and not "I can open with 1-2 spells that wipe out half the HP of a mob pretty frequently".

Moonkin is definitely going to be one of the slower levelers now and most definitely one of the most slow farm outworld PvE classes with the amount of ramp up they have in between MoonMoon/AC cooldowns.

And in PvP it's gonna be the same old crap of spam moonfire and pray for OKF procs, except without even getting to fish full starsurge procs.

A rage resource mechanic is a wonderful idea for mobile melee classes who can build resources on the move and when ever they get hit, but on a ranged caster with little mobility while casting and long cast nukes, it's a recipe for disaster in PvP if you don't have a ton of cc and snares to get all those casts off.

I'm not sure why they didn't give moonkins the warlock/spriest treatment of reduced interrupt duration and a talent like warlock's casting circle that lets them become immune to interrupts.

Warlocks got unending resolve and casting circle as two fair duration cooldowns that give interrupt immunity, and quite frankly moonkin needs something similar if they won't give moonkins more hard cc and baseline snares to kite well.

Hell, warlocks now even self-heal better than any hybrid ever could thanks to the amount Drain Life is healing for while also doing damage. 24% hp healed in your filler spell plus soul leech is the kind of survival moonkins need as well, or any caster that doesn't have all the tools to escape as mages do for that matter.

[Riistov]

It's kinda extraneous, though, isn't it? Healers are not balanced around Innervate availability for encounters.

You better believe it's going to be a called on cooldown in nearly ever mana intensive fight come Legion.

[Cyous]

Not enough. 2ss about 600k damage without crits against enemies with 1.4-2kk hp. And after that you can only moonfire.

How about you start at 100 Astral Power?
(100)
SS, SS (20)
Full Moon (OKF?) (60)
WOE, LS LS (80)
SS, SS (0)
AC (75)
SS (35)
MF, SnF (41)
SS (1)

Casts:
Full Moon - 1 (OKF, 1 gcd) (basically the strength of 2 SS casts)
MF/SnF - 2 (2 GCDs) o...or... 1 New Moon cast
Lunar Strike - 2 (2 GCDs, WOE)
SS - 6 (6 GCDs)

So that would be 10-11 GCDs, all instant, and effectively dealing more than 9 Starsurge's worth of damage.

So....given a 33% crit chance, that would be giving 3 SS a crit, or basically 2+ more SS's worth of damage (crit suppression). Due to estimations, it's fair to call this 3 casts. So, that's 12 SS's of damage.
At 300k each, that is 3,600,000 in ~15sec. Which is ~240k DPS.

[garonne]

stuff

i see you're upset over stuff i didnt mention or allude to, but sure, i'll bite. your original statement was

And they need to do away with taking us out of form for Rejuv/Regrowth or any other cast for that matter. Shadow priests can cast PW:S and shadowmend in shadowform, ele shamans can cast their heals without losing defense and paying TWO globals to do what other classes do for ONE.

i said its silly because you were comparing them in a vacuum. i said its silly because things like that aren't built in a vacuum. i said its silly bc all you've done is list the negatives of boombies and emphasize the positives of other classes but have not once said anything of the positives that boomies have. all classes have their weakness thats complimented by strengths in other areas. thats what i did when i listed the bonuses of moonkin. you can only cast 1 heal (which ele also has 1 heal) in form but bc of that, you get xyx.

this is what i mean by you missed my point. arguable, it was a simple statement as i didnt want to have a long discussion, so to that, thats my bad.

in regards to armor, the bonus armor makes boomkins plate lvl+ damage reduction, making it better than shamans. 200% is a huge bonus, its the same as bear form with an added 75% with artifact. physical damage reduction for boomies is greater than shaman, if you dont believe check the beta yourself.

it seems you enjoyed ele, me too mate, you probably should main the class since youre unhappy with boomkins. it'll probably be less stressful for you. not being facetious here, just a suggestion. now about these ele bonuses you listed off.

lavaburst isn't ele's starsurge, thats earthshock, which is also a resource dump so your comparison is off.

lunar strike, yup, its a 2.5 sec cast, but its likened to lavaburst which has a 8 sec cd with 2 sec cast with procs HOWEVER, lightning bolt is 2 sec cast as well and solar wrath is 1.5 sec. bonuses and negatives

shamans get 40% reduction on 1.5 min cd, boomies get 20% on 1 min, 40 wins you're right, but we also have an option to get a passive 10% so it can bump us up to 30%. less damage reduction more often, to more damage reduction less often, positives and negatives

no baseline snare, but luckily we aren't balanced or thought of as just baseline, we get to use talents and artifact weapons and pvp talents so to just completely dismiss it is cherry picking. but just incase this isn't enough we also have dash to get ppl off us.

ele has purge, you win this one.

and last but not least, ele has hex and lower cd interrupt, well boomkins have a root, can't be polymorphed and can get out of movement impairments by switching forms as well as "shitty" interrupt that can interrupt multiple ppl at once.

positives(bonuses) and negatives man. each class has them. with coming legion, classes won't have all they need and will be more reliant on team play to help with their weaknesses. if the weaknesses of boomkin isn't something you can live with, by all right, argue and try and see if they'll make changes but to just list the negatives you're not being reasonable.