[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Kaniinchen]

Hi Boomy friends, I will be levelling as Boomy in Legion with Resto being my ms. I will be putting in 13 points into the balance artifact weapon. Could anyone tell me what the optimal path is for 13 points? I think I might use this at some point in dungeons to dps as well ( and later on in raids when Resto is maxed out). Which affinity are people taking for levelling, Guardian?
Thanks!

[Deleted]

Tank leveling is at least somewhat quicker because of how much more self-sustain you have. Not to mention loads of AoE damage and the ability to go all out with pulling.

this is not true for druids at all.

[Cyous]

DoTs aren't significantly stronger now than they were in WoD, and the slight increase in damage they received is offset by the removal of baseline shooting stars. Pointing to DoTs as the sole reason why Haste is so strong suddenly is a mistake - it's a factor, but one of several.

The problem lies in sapping power away from the AsP spenders into empowerments (thus devaluing Crit) and bad mastery.

At the same time, straight nerfing portions of the kit is not the solution. You're going to end up providing compensatory buffs somewhere down the line - because Balance simply isn't in a spot where it can shrug off a significant nerf and not be in need of buffs - and if those buffs aren't made with the original nerf in mind you'll create more problems. Better to simply shuffle power between spells and provide the compensatory buff at the same time to ensure it's done in a way that addresses the problem.

DOTs are the primary reason. Haste only gets crazy with aoe/multi-target.

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@Cyous, would you mind telling me what talent-build you used for your sim, that gave out the stat values on page 188?

It's heavily weighted, and uses many different builds.

[huth]

The problem lies in sapping power away from the AsP spenders into empowerments (thus devaluing Crit) and bad mastery.

How would that devalue crit? Empowered spells can still crit. Losing the old Shooting Stars certainly devalues crit, but Empowerments have no effect on it.

I'm not really convinced by your Haste argument, either. Shoving damage from Empowerments into spenders doesn't weaken haste, since haste affects both sides equally(and Empowerment damage effectively is spender damage, so it doesn't do jack anyway). You'd have to dump it all in MoonMoon and FoE for that, and then we'd just get two spells with completely ridiculous damage numbers and a bunch of bumbling around waiting for them to come back. It would also nerf Mastery even further.

[Dragontoth]

If you wanted to fix this problem, the easiest solution seems to be to scale down Balance as a whole, but mastery and Scale up Mastery a bunch. So overall we would stay at the same powerlevel, but Mastery would have a way bigger impact on our scaling.
Also getting alot of "free Mastery" from our artifact weapon devalues it even further, so if we would get Castspeed on our spells instead of enhanced Empowerment damage Mastery should be closer to the other stats.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure why you guys are even discussing nerfing haste, it's not like it is needed. Anyway Cyous, is right, the reason haste is good is dots, since they double dip with haste (both increases dmg and reduces cast time). For the rest of the rotation, haste scaling is basically linear (except for MoonMoon which scales poorly with haste since CD isn't reduced). We don't cast more Spenders because we have more haste, we actually cast LESS (as a percentage of casts), because we spent less time casting dots/moonmoon. Obviously it helps haste that it requires less rating per 1% than crit/vers.

[thilicen]

is there a good guide out for Balance DPS at 110 yet? Been working on a spec lately and would love some input from other sources to see where I'm at.

[huth]

I'm not sure why you guys are even discussing nerfing haste, it's not like it is needed. Anyway Cyous, is right, the reason haste is good is dots, since they double dip with haste (both increases dmg and reduces cast time). For the rest of the rotation, haste scaling is basically linear (except for MoonMoon which scales poorly with haste since CD isn't reduced). We don't cast more Spenders because we have more haste, we actually cast LESS (as a percentage of casts), because we spent less time casting dots/moonmoon. Obviously it helps haste that it requires less rating per 1% than crit/vers.

Yeah, haste is fine. The issue is mastery being way to weak. And our Artifact having the wrong stats for our spec right now.

[Deeflin]

How many other specs have artifacts that don't have their best stat on them?

[Catbug]

How many other specs have artifacts that don't have their best stat on them?

blood dk
unholy dk
resto druid
surv hunter
fire mage
prot pally
ret pally
shadow priest
outlaw rogue
enhance shammy
demo lock
arms warr
fury warr

[Adramelch]

It's one thing that it doesn't have our best stat (by a country mile) on it and another that it actually has what is our worst (by some margin) as the main stat.

[huth]

Bit of a difference between "Eh, could be better" and "Wouldn't pick that if i had a choice", yeah.

[Alame]

I don't think haste needs to be nerfed - that was just the topic of discussion. I think haste is overvalued but it should be Mastery getting reworked/buffed, not haste getting nerfed.

How would that devalue crit? Empowered spells can still crit. Losing the old Shooting Stars certainly devalues crit, but Empowerments have no effect on it.

I'm not really convinced by your Haste argument, either. Shoving damage from Empowerments into spenders doesn't weaken haste, since haste affects both sides equally(and Empowerment damage effectively is spender damage, so it doesn't do jack anyway). You'd have to dump it all in MoonMoon and FoE for that, and then we'd just get two spells with completely ridiculous damage numbers and a bunch of bumbling around waiting for them to come back. It would also nerf Mastery even further.

Building around big SS crits to dump with trinket & buff procs (a hallmark of Boomkin playstyle, it's where the name Boomkin came from ffs) doesn't work when your AsP/damage conversion takes place over 5.5s instead of one GCD. You're placing greater demands on the size of burst windows & making that playstyle harder & less effective.

The distribution of damage in the kit just doesn't make sense to me. I don't buy that empowerments are necessary to reign in Starsurge - the only reason that would ever be a problem is 1-shotting in PvP. One of the major PvP developments for Legion is increased separation of PvP/PvE balancing, why are we being saddled with a clunky, antiquated mechanic that pushes us out of the iconic playstyle for the sake of PvP balance?

I'm not sure why you guys are even discussing nerfing haste, it's not like it is needed. Anyway Cyous, is right, the reason haste is good is dots, since they double dip with haste (both increases dmg and reduces cast time). For the rest of the rotation, haste scaling is basically linear (except for MoonMoon which scales poorly with haste since CD isn't reduced). We don't cast more Spenders because we have more haste, we actually cast LESS (as a percentage of casts), because we spent less time casting dots/moonmoon. Obviously it helps haste that it requires less rating per 1% than crit/vers.

Not sure how much you can count reduction of cast time on DoTs as a boon specifically to DoTs, it's GCD reduction across the entire kit.

Haste isn't the problem - division of damage ruining burst-windows & crappy mastery are.

[huth]

Building around big SS crits to dump with trinket & buff procs (a hallmark of Boomkin playstyle, it's where the name Boomkin came from ffs) doesn't work when your AsP/damage conversion takes place over 5.5s instead of one GCD. You're placing greater demands on the size of burst windows & making that playstyle harder & less effective.

Boomkin is 2 expansions older than Starsurge. I don't remember that ever being a hallmark of Balance playstyle, either. Dumping burst with as many buffs as you can get is hardly Balance specific.

[Torlarn]

Yea, I remember being called a Boomkin back in TBC. I think it was a reference to the fact that if we pulled aggro even for a second, we just died? Although I don't think we were the only class without a threat dump, so that never really made much sense. Oomkin was at least rooted in those people who would Moonfire spam and run out of mana.

[huth]

No, it was mostly about us actually doing useful damage instead of just running out of mana.

[Deleted]

Not sure how much you can count reduction of cast time on DoTs as a boon specifically to DoTs, it's GCD reduction across the entire kit.

I never said that. "the reason haste is good is dots, since they double dip with haste (both increases dmg and reduces cast time)". Other spells don't do more damage with more haste, they only get the cast time reduction. Hence the double dipping and better haste scaling.

[Catbug]

empowerments are just there to keep some familiarity with the warlords play style but while they did work in warlords quite well due to the eclipse mechanic and maximizing empowered cast at peaks, in the legion play style they really feel shoehorned in just to keep that familiarity. while i do agree it'd be nice to have all that damage amp just baked into starsurge or distributed among the other spells for more even damage, doing so would remove our only synergy we currently have at the moment and makes all the spells feel even more samey then they currently do.

i like gameplay that synergies spells well (for instance how you cast certain spells during certain eclipses, kept dots up so you'd get starsurge resets) and if empowerments were removed completely in favor of just more raw spell damage this spec would become unimaginably dull.

[lappee]

Building around big SS crits to dump with trinket & buff procs (a hallmark of Boomkin playstyle, it's where the name Boomkin came from ffs)

Wait, what? I have no idea when you started playing Balance but "Boomkin" was a thing way, way before SS was introduced. I'm not sure if it was used in Vanilla but in TBC is was very common thanks to how Nature's Grace and PvP set bonus worked (+ Starfire actually hit quite hard) - it was common to kill people from 90 to 0 in a 0.1sec window

[Seneca]

empowerments are just there to keep some familiarity with the warlords play style but while they did work in warlords quite well due to the eclipse mechanic and maximizing empowered cast at peaks, in the legion play style they really feel shoehorned in just to keep that familiarity.

True.

while i do agree it'd be nice to have all that damage amp just baked into starsurge or distributed among the other spells for more even damage, doing so would remove our only synergy we currently have at the moment and makes all the spells feel even more samey then they currently do.

True too. Empowerments are a bad mechanic but having a bad mechanic is better than not having any mechanic at all (in a sense).

i like gameplay that synergies spells well (for instance how you cast certain spells during certain eclipses, kept dots up so you'd get starsurge resets)

Me too.

and if empowerments were removed completely in favor of just more raw spell damage this spec would become unimaginably dull.

The point is that empowerments shouldn't simply be removed and call it a day, they should be replaced with more interesting, fitting, deep mechanics.


We are a week away from launch so that won't happen, ofc.