[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Cyous]

While i agree with the rest, NB is not a tuning issue. There's no knob on NB they could turn to make it adequate(or even noticeably better), and the one they had was removed.

So, it's a tuning issue. It needs a knob for tuning. Is there anything wrong mechanically? (Nope...boring isn't the problem.)

[Alame]

Yes, I would rather that different classes have different strengths and weaknesses in raids (aoe being one of them) than have 33 specs performing within a 5-10% difference in mythic+. Lucky for me, blizzard seems to share that opinion.

So you purposefully and by-design want there to be imbalance in the game. You think forcing players to play a different class to be competitive in certain types of content is a good idea. Blizzard doesn't agree with you, that's completely and utterly against their design principles.

You're also, once again, operating under the false assumption that classes can have individual strengths and weaknesses or the total variance between classes can be low. That is not an either/or scenario, both are achievable simultaneously.

If your suggestion is so god damn brilliant and I just keep misunderstanding it (which I must, because it makes absolutely no sense to me how it wouldn't affect any other aspect of the game than dungeons), why don't you bring it to blizzard? I'm sure they'd be thrilled if you found a way to balance mythic+ dps that requires no work other than adding a talent, and has absolutely no sideeffects.

Can you even tell me what my suggestion is? I doubt it, despite the fact I've posted it 3 times in this very thread.

The gist of it is a talent that removes DoT enhancement from Starfall, and feeds that damage back into Starfall itself.

How does that address the problem in Dungeon content? It allows the druid to pool AsP between pulls and have ~80% potential AoE damage rolling after 1 GCD instead of 4+. Why is that a problem? Because dungeon content is more mobile and shorter-lived than raid content. Spending 20-30% of each pull setting up your AoE makes you non-viable in comparison to classes that can hit 1-2 buttons and operate at peak AoE output.

How do you stop this from mitigating "by-design" weaknesses of Moonkins in raid content? You tune how much of DoT empowerments you feed back into Starfall such that taking the talent results in 5-8% lower total DPS potential. That way, even if you're operating under fundamentally flawed design principles that involve specifically creating situations in which a player feels like shit, you're pushing the player to play around the weakness. Difference being where the player has no option to play around the weakness they have an out.

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I smell elitism in these last couple of posts. Fellow Boomkins, settle down.

Do not get this thread locked over some disagreements, followed through with name-calling and harassments.

There is a lot of information people are desperately searching for regarding this beloved specialization. And thankfully we do have the people who play this spec to take the time out of their day to number crunch and craft theories.

Just a friendly reminder from a fellow Boomkin to please keep it civil.

I grow tired of endlessly repeating myself for people who show zero interest in having a productive discussion. This removes my civility. There is no place for "It's supposed to be this way and you're wrong" in this discussion.

[Lucrece]

Yeah, but it's circular because that discussion took place with me instead of you before. It's simply design viewpoints that cannot be reconciled, because they pertain to different desires for a videogame from very different type of people.

And I doubt suffering over this disagreement that will not be resolved in a fansite forum that likely isn't even consulted by devs to make their decisions will help push your desired changes through.

So, if you're unhappy like me, stick to Twitter and the legion beta forums. Twitter Celestalon, Muffinus, pretty much any game director or designer on twitter about it. Celestalon can be kinda a haughty douche sometimes, so tweet accordingly an opinion/concern without being combative as he'll likely just block/ignore you.

[Frostyfire14]

I grow tired of endlessly repeating myself for people who show zero interest in having a productive discussion. This removes my civility. There is no place for "It's supposed to be this way and you're wrong" in this discussion.

I understand. Don't let one (or a handful) bad apple ruin your hard work.

[TastyMoonkin]

They just need to start turning those knobs soon, for the past few builds its been talent modifications and a starfall buff/nerf. people just want to get the numbers done. I'm sure people will calm down if/when they get to that because there isn't much time left. I personally am nervous/worried, as I am every expac. but generally its worked out. Were really close and the lack of "Balancing" feels late in the Alpha\Beta\PTR Stages. Hell id like them to finish the knobs, and start releasing some concrete info on everything else. IMO most of us have nothing better to do then worry because WOD is dead/has been for months, and we just want things to work out.

thats just me really though, im bored, and I want this crap done.

[Borawa]

A couple design notes:

This spec doesn't work well with RNG.

Whether you like it or not, Starfall is designed to be a non-cooldown, non-single-target AOE ability. It uses Starsurge to balance it out, just like in WOD.

Whether you like it or not, our "best times" were Builder/Spender -- Cata and MOP. If you want to talk design, then you need to know what you're looking at first. If you don't understand how Cata and MOP Eclipse were "Builder/Spender", then you just need to think about it for more than a couple seconds, or remove yourself from the conversation (and get learnt good).

Most of our issues are TUNING issues. Some design issues exist, and that's understandable. Barkskin is a tuning issue. Stellar Drift and Nature's Balance are tuning issues. Self-healing is a tuning issue. Utility is a mechanical issue. Ramp-up time is not an issue, you're just stupid for not taking AC and/or using New Moon properly. And ofc, our damage is a tuning issue.

Overhauls will never happen this late unless something is literally broken beyond fixing. Get over it. You are literally wasting your time (and mine, because I have to keep replying to the same 2-5 comments every build to push the discussion to a more constructive topic).

Completely agreed. While i dont find the spec engaging (neither was the last one) with some number changes i could get into it more.

With our base spells i would be fine with any of the following
A) Spending less time on filler spells
B) If I spend such a large amount of time on my fillers have my spenders feel more meaningful
C) Make my fillers stronger. (Wrath can hit harder on live lol)

In terms of talents id like to see changes to the 45 line and the 100 line. Im actually quite happy with the choices I feel able to make @ 75 and 90 a good change from wod where i swapped my talents once sometimes twice a tier (and normally it was for roots).
For the 45 talents I personally like feral affinity for dungeons (dps and movespeed) but for leveling and world quests I take Resto. If im taking alot of damage honestly there is not that much I can do it feels. I can heal myself for 1/3 to 1/2 of my hp but as a class that would rather aoe things down it doesnt work too well. Shifting out of form and losing the added armor as well. One the topic of our defensives and self healing does the artifact talent "Touch of the moon" scale with anything? HP or Spell Power? Im inclined to believe it does not which makes it another spell that for toons with 1.5-1.9 million hp healing for jack all.

Ok so 100 talents. Fury of Elune. I just want to see the change reverted. Mythic dungeons as a boomkin were already hard enough and the only reason I can sometimes feel competitive on trash pulls now is becuase i have 5 points into falling star which wont last forever. It was more or less a mandatory talent (arguments for natures balance on pure single target w/ PoG) which would lead me to believe that the other 2 should be brought up, not FoE brought down.

Stellar drift. Honestly a lackluster talent in numbers alone. Cast-on-move is a cool mechanic but to spend 60 asp to get that with a moderate size and damage increase is rough. The damage of starfall is not what makes the spell better than its WoD counterpart. Its the dot increase. Putting down starfall without dots is like trying to cast Starfire on solar side. The change id like to see would either affect the spell itself or the talent. Either a cost reduction on starfall or have it further increase the damage of our dots. That makes it reward good play by proper dot spreading. I think the core mechanic is really cool so id like to keep it the same.

Natures Balance is just bleh. Slow and boring dot extension. No one took bop and that even gave 10% dot dmg increase. It even lowers the amount it extends each dot by with how high your haste is. I have 29% haste and a 4.7 moonfire and 3.1 sunfire extension. If I drop myself to 17% haste, it becomes a better talent. with a 5.1 moonfire and 3.4 sunfire extension. Just dont understand it would scale like that. Should just be a flat talent that gets better with haste. I really dont know how to make this talent good without making it crazy. I think it should avoid dot damage increase and leave it to starfire. Maybe a damage increase on our fillers or even something cool like if sunfire has a higher duration than moonfire, lunar spells do more damage and vice versa. Maybe even if the 2 dots are within 3-5 seconds of each other starsurge does more damage. Although we should honestly avoid large mechanic changes at this point i thought it would be pretty cool.

I just want to feel good for playing moonkin. I feel i have good pulls and bad pulls. I get punished for my bad pulls (bad FoE positioning/improper AsP management) but when I finish a fight and know i played well i dont see it in the numbers. If i got off a juicy Fury cleave or saved my AsP for a starfall at the perfect time, Im not on top in mythic+, I wasnt on top during raid testing pre-nerf FoE, i dont feel rewarded for good play with our current numbers. Being middle of the pack in damage on good pulls when all our class is is damage (low to no utility) isnt cool.

[Deleted]

There is no place for "It's supposed to be this way and you're wrong" in this discussion.

"It's supposed to be this way and I think you're wrong." There is no place for me having an opinion? Well, we should probably end this discussion, aint going nowhere then. I apologize for wasting everybody's time with this discussion, but I'm not sorry for stating my opinion on the matter just because you disagree with it. If you're only interested in hearing from people that agree with you, It's probably a bad idea to bring it up on a forum.

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@Borawa Touch of the moon heals for 360% spellpower. I posted more about it on the beta forums here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743575958?page=13#253

The reason NB extension is reduced by haste is because more haste => more casts => more extensions. The only thing that messes with this is CD spells like INC, FoN, MoonMoon, etc. but that is pretty insignificant. You should be freshing dots nearly as often with 0% haste as 25% haste.

[huth]

The reduction basically makes NB unaffected by haste, as weird as that sounds.

So, it's a tuning issue. It needs a knob for tuning. Is there anything wrong mechanically? (Nope...boring isn't the problem.)

Adding that knob is a mechanical change.

So yes, there's something wrong mechanically with it. Not on the player side, but on the developer side.

[Borawa]

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@Borawa Touch of the moon heals for 360% spellpower. I posted more about it on the beta forums here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...58?page=13#253

OK thanks for clearing that up. Still underwhelming but it scales.

The reason NB extension is reduced by haste is because more haste => more casts => more extensions. The only thing that messes with this is CD spells like INC, FoN, MoonMoon, etc. but that is pretty insignificant. You should be freshing dots nearly as often with 0% haste as 25% haste.

The reduction basically makes NB unaffected by haste, as weird as that sounds.

Yea, I understood that part of the talent but i still end up refreshing dots with NB. Higher levels of gear should make some talents better and some talents worse. To have a talent in one of our dps performance tiers be unaffected by secondary stats (which we already have copious amounts of) is just not something I personally am fond of. Id like to go, ok im gearing haste so it makes these certain talents better and im going to take NB and its going to be better because I have a high amount of haste..

Adding that knob is a mechanical change.

So yes, there's something wrong mechanically with it. Not on the player side, but on the developer side.

Agreed, NB is just in a strange spot one of the only mechanics I think blizzard will acknowledge and possible give a minor rework. Maybe something thematic to the spell and not just calling it Nature's Balance because it sounds druidy...

[Glengolars]

Just to make it clear for me, when you guys say no more mechanical changes at this point is because there's not enough time to test them sufficiently?

[Juvencus]

Just to make it clear for me, when you guys say no more mechanical changes at this point is because there's not enough time to test them sufficiently?

It's one of the factors. Another one is that developers set a general idea of how a spec should look like in a coming expansion and unless it's extremely dysfunctional they tend to stick with it until the next expansion.

Of course exceptions always happen, even mid-expansion but I wouldn't bet any money on it happening.

[huth]

They're at least partially doing it to stop themselves from going completely overboard as well. They do have to release at some point.

[Glengolars]

They're at least partially doing it to stop themselves from going completely overboard as well. They do have to release at some point.

Yeah but what about "minor" mechanical suggestions like the tweaks to NB or Stellar Drift? Would those be considered overboard? Although as I understand it we're some builds behind from their actual tuning so maybe all of this is pointless at this point...

Idk... I feel a bit worried but seeing that respected balance druids like Cyous do post on their forum about our concerns (or at least his view of our concerns which I happen to agree with) and they seem to read them I hope they have something in mind to make the spec feel better.

Do you think that more baseline Asp Generation pre-artifact would somehow make some issues go away?

[huth]

Yeah but what about "minor" mechanical suggestions like the tweaks to NB or Stellar Drift? Would those be considered overboard? Although as I understand it we're some builds behind from their actual tuning so maybe all of this is pointless at this point...

"Just one more mission"

The little changes are by far the most dangerous, as you don't realise how much time you're losing.


There's definitely some AP gen issues before we get MoonMoon, making the spec play wonky in pre-Legion content.

[Lucrece]

Hey, they made light of the sun better. I would have preferred a 30 sec reduction instead of a 15 sec one, but it's an improvement.

[Borawa]

Well they did something I guess. Honestly a welcome change for mythic+. Just did a HoV+6 raging and it was painful not being able to interrupt some of those lightning casts. By painful i mean 1.4 million damage hits.

[wing5wong]

15sec plus 30sec pvp talent.
Mmmmmmmmmm rbg interrupt bot.
15sec interrupts if you're good at it

[Hekkipekki]

Hey, they made light of the sun better. I would have preferred a 30 sec reduction instead of a 15 sec one, but it's an improvement.

Would have loved to use the old Light of Sun for a fight like Mannoroth :P

[Borawa]

Is swiping trash in dungeons worth it? Or is it better to sac every other trash pack. Ive been dotting up things, swipex3, generate astral power, swipex3. Sometimes i starfall if i have the Astral Power and obviously if i have the time before a boss i FoE the packs. Just trying to see if swipe is worth taking.

[Frostyfire14]

Is swiping trash in dungeons worth it? Or is it better to sac every other trash pack. Ive been dotting up things, swipex3, generate astral power, swipex3. Sometimes i starfall if i have the Astral Power and obviously if i have the time before a boss i FoE the packs. Just trying to see if swipe is worth taking.

If this is a thing, this spec (Balance) has some SERIOUS issues.