[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Lucrece]

Although BotA off the gcd sounds really nice, it would create a stance-dancing-macro gameplay that would make the choice irrelevant. On the other hand WoE should be off gcd and preferably castable while casting, as well as those 2 both applied to FoE's movement.

Yeah, I completely forgot about WoE.

What if they placed a short cd akin to shapeshifting in a way that impacted stance dancing macros for the BoE/BoA scenario? Maybe they could just make it so BoA's effect kicks in whenever you are moving and ends whenever you start a cast and BoE activates until you start moving again and it switches back to BoA, essentially merging the two effects. I mean, most people will just use BoE, so they could just bake in BoA some way.

[Juvencus]

What if they placed a short cd akin to shapeshifting in a way that impacted stance dancing macros for the BoE/BoA scenario?

I'm confused. Your brought it up that it should be off gcd. Your suggestion now would make it worse than the current normal gcd it has.

[Deleted]

@Juvencus WoE is already off the gcd, it was changed a while back. (cd also starts once the you have spent both stacks, so everthing works as it should now).

[Catbug]

May or may not be related, but I think people take Preach far too seriously.

No hating, remember everything is opinion based.

I like that the response to the video in particular have been very 50/50, that's what creates interesting dialogs. Reading and looking up boomkin, I can't say I'm the biggest fan of where it stands right now which is a shame since I'm kinda the boomkin in my current guild. Need to properly test it myself though and get a feel for it, its very different looking at someone playing and reading patchnotes then actually giving it a try yourself.

I also don't expect big changes coming anytime soon so we'll see how it turns out once it hits live. Hope they get proper tuning better then they did in Warlords as that was really sloppily handled (elemental shamans being practically useless at launch just to mention one).

[Lucrece]

I'm confused. Your brought it up that it should be off gcd. Your suggestion now would make it worse than the current normal gcd it has.

The GCD means it will not let you cast other things. If it could have an internal CD between switches but you could still cast and take actions as it switches, it could serve that deterrent to foil a macro if that's your worry.

It's not really a prescription for it. It's why I also floated the idea of just merging the blessings so a blessing would activate based on what you were doing if the internal cd apprach would harm the talent instead.

I think BoE is a workable talent already, because BoE by itself is fairly good. I'm just not sure about BoA, seems hard to tune competing stances, so there has to be a way in which BoA can become more desirable without eclipsing BoE.

No hating, remember everything is opinion based.

I like that the response to the video in particular have been very 50/50, that's what creates interesting dialogs. Reading and looking up boomkin, I can't say I'm the biggest fan of where it stands right now which is a shame since I'm kinda the boomkin in my current guild. Need to properly test it myself though and get a feel for it, its very different looking at someone playing and reading patchnotes then actually giving it a try yourself.

I also don't expect big changes coming anytime soon so we'll see how it turns out once it hits live. Hope they get proper tuning better then they did in Warlords as that was really sloppily handled (elemental shamans being practically useless at launch just to mention one).

Keep in mind mechanical changes DO happen in beta as well. Blizzard just likes to give themselves that caveat so that people don't flood them with expectations of revamp for every single class.

You can very much expect at least something in the pipeline for ferals, windwalker monks, and even demonhunters with their animation cancelling mechanisms that they stamped out on monk.

So, balance isn't that really far off if people actually post their views on beta instead of releasing youtube class review videos which developers are not likely to even review.

[Catbug]

Can I spam the blessings of ancients to make a light show rave party happen?

[Tehterokkar]

Can I spam the blessings of ancients to make a light show rave party happen?

Si Señor. /10char

[exdlost]

Can I spam the blessings of ancients to make a light show rave party happen?

lol

blessings of ancients - Cooldown changed from None to 15 sec cooldown

[Hadrious]

This is getting pretty ridiculous... Instead of getting some small fixes to the class we just get more stuff that makes it a pain?

Alame, send me ALL the posts you want to have up on the beta forums and i'll post that shit, this can't make it to live as it stands...

[Tehterokkar]

lol

blessings of ancients - Cooldown changed from None to 15 sec cooldown

Well rip, that changed fast.

BUT!

Blessing of the Ancient no longer on the GCD! Rejoice!

[Lucrece]

15 sec cd.....interesting number they arrived at. Now Blessing of Anshe will NEVER be used.

[wing5wong]

This is getting pretty ridiculous... Instead of getting some small fixes to the class we just get more stuff that makes it a pain?

Alame, send me ALL the posts you want to have up on the beta forums and i'll post that shit, this can't make it to live as it stands...

Balance is pretty good right now?

[Alame]

Starting on a new page, what about removing BoE/BoA from the GCD and increasing FoE's and Lunar Strike's range by 5 yards? It will improve the usability in all game formats.

No GCD or no cooldown means the choice of which blessing to be in and when to swap is totally inconsequential. This takes away the player interaction with the skill, and it may as well auto-swap on movement. Needs to be on the GCD, as any sort of cooldown would create a niche scenario where you toggle to move and it's still on cooldown when you stop moving and you can't toggle back.

I assume you're talking about AoE radius and not cast range Re: FoE & Lunar Strike. Honestly I'm flabbergasted these weren't Artifact talent options. 5yrds is such a pain in the ass size to use, unless your tank is exceptionally good at stacking adds you're not gonna catch entire packs. Any sort of low-target cleave involving big-model bosses will end up with the AoE being completely consumed by the Boss' fat ass and virtually no usable AoE space. I think it's better to have these as artifact talents rather than baseline however, it allows Boomkins to invest in increased AoE when necessary and spend artifact power elsewhere when it's not.

This is getting pretty ridiculous... Instead of getting some small fixes to the class we just get more stuff that makes it a pain?

Alame, send me ALL the posts you want to have up on the beta forums and i'll post that shit, this can't make it to live as it stands...

Ohhhh boy. I have the day off tomorrow, I'll write it up & get it to you then.

- - - Updated - - -

Balance is pretty good right now?

Balance is okay. When you have the kind of reworks you see in Shadow Priests & Elemental Shamans I don't really thing okay is good enough, never mind the fact that I've never known Blizzard to be satisfied with okay.

Edit: By this I mean mechanically. Numbers wise we are apparently quite competitive which is good.

[Lucrece]

Well, Binkenstein, the most prominent elemental shaman theory crafter, doesn't have positive things to say, which is why he's for the first time switching mains to a mage this xpac.

But despite that, the shaman talents I feel are a model to be followed. They're all pretty freaking cool and with plenty of active options. No rows wasted on resource generation (BoE/AC, etc), no rows wasted on baking back in what was once baseline (affinities). Plenty of new toys.

But shadow priests, now that's a rework you can be really jealous of. They're doing pretty damn well on all aspects of the game. They're kings of multidot like affliction warlocks, but they have burst which affliction warlocks don't, they have good defensives and utility, and their resource mechanism actually adds interesting gameplay.

For that though, shadow priests pay with one of the ugliest/most simple looking artifacts ;p.

Ele shaman also looks pretty fun, I just think it's the numbers that has people worried.

And I would agree with your suggestion for range, really anything that makes Scythe of Elune less boring in terms of artifact traits. I'll have to disagree with people hating on Power of Goldrinn though, that's actually a pretty cool trait. I wish it wasn't RNG based, but I can live with it.

Echoing Stars, however...

Moon and Stars could also use some sprucing up.

Rapid Innervation could afford to also give us 20% haste for its duration on our ally.

[Zerohiten]

So I just got in beta and still leveling.. I'm going to main resto eventually but doing balance at the moment so if anyone like me to try/test something out, feel free to let me know!

Is it just me or the artifact trait don't alter much on the gameplay?

[Mystikal]

Been messing about with Feral Affinity. The Cat abilities actually hit very hard, and the buff to Killer Instinct will obviously also affect them. The active portion may find a very niche role in PvP against interrupt heavy teams, given that we will suffer the full lockout duration.

[Lucrece]

So I just got in beta and still leveling.. I'm going to main resto eventually but doing balance at the moment so if anyone like me to try/test something out, feel free to let me know!

Is it just me or the artifact trait don't alter much on the gameplay?

The balance druid artifact is one of the most passive artifacts currently in Legion. You'll probably want to look at Arcane Mage, Demo Lock, Enhancement/Ele Shaman, and Shadow Priest for artifacts with more active features/procs.

Balance sees an artifact more akin windwalkers and affliction warlocks. Feral is also pretty similar in that most of the traits are passive enhancements.

[Borawa]

Rapid Innervation could afford to also give us 20% haste for its duration on our ally.

That seems pretty annoying. A DPS increasing CD tied to a regeneration CD for another player. Used at the start of the fight and more or less on CD after that. Someone needs it for mana, too bad on cooldown i needed the dps increase. And if its held it just feels really bad. Oh cool i get 20% haste outside of FoE or Incarn or whatever.
I know at the end of the day you can say, "But dude you get a 20% haste increase be grateful" and i think to myself what if the ring was activated on a 1 minute 12 second cooldown and instantly activated off cd. It would just feel shitty. Yes it's a damage increase but not one that someone @ a high raid level would be able to use if the fights are ever mana intensive. To me it just would feel dumb.

Also whos ready to get their flying cow tornado wolf. Gotta keep that Astral power up and prep a full moon. Can we just not have our main resource fade over time like warriors AND have a prep similar to shadow orbs as well. Honestly one of my biggest complaints about the spec. That or can we get like a raid dummy that doesnt proc trinkets and is placeable in raid that despawns during boss encounters. Seems alot more complicated tho.

[wing5wong]

Balance is okay. When you have the kind of reworks you see in Shadow Priests & Elemental Shamans I don't really thing okay is good enough, never mind the fact that I've never known Blizzard to be satisfied with okay.

Edit: By this I mean mechanically. Numbers wise we are apparently quite competitive which is good.

I think mechanically we play quite well too. Spells work together nicely for the most part (cough stellar drift, cough stellar flare stellar empowerments)
Missing the of flare that other classes have - sure, dont disagree there, but dont think the doom and gloom type calls are needed

[Lucrece]

I think mechanically we play quite well too. Spells work together nicely for the most part (cough stellar drift, cough stellar flare stellar empowerments)
Missing the of flare that other classes have - sure, dont disagree there, but dont think the doom and gloom type calls are needed

They can at least get around to finally getting rid of the placeholder Fury of Elune animation; orange/sun is NOT the spell effect that should go on a spell for a moon gooddess.

I also suggested they get around to updating Starfire by making it use the blue fire particle effects from Starsurge and the MoonMoon spells.

Stellar Flare could just use a merge of the solar wrath+blue fire spell effects, or something. Just something that doesn't look like some electrical beam or a laser.

They could also just make Glyph of Stars only summon falling stars around the druid but not make him translucent, so that Blessing of the Ancients gets its translucent property (mostly so I can just get my wish fulfilled of being allowed caster form as a balance druid without some tint all over my toon).