[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Synadrasa]

Numbers are numbers, the spell was boring as fuck. It was essentially a 40-yard AOE pulse. Who gives a fuck about other specs. Do you have fun pressing buttons as a hunter or a moonkin? It's not a yes/no question. Play what you enojy. If you need to jerkoff to DPS Meters, then I'll give you an edited Skada/Recount script so all your damage has a multiplier on it. But who fucking cares about numbers....WOD Starfall was boring no matter how good you think it was. Legion Starfall actually has some gameplay around it.

IIRC, the only reason Moonkin was a thing was because you had ridiculous spread/non-clump AOE damage on 1 encounter. And you think having 1-2 encounters all expansion be good for our main AOE overrides that shitty gameplay? You should probably play hunter instead.

The spell is boring? So you're saying people didn't have fun casting starfall? First off that's subjective and second, what the fuck are you even going on about. Contrary to your belief starfall was not changed because it was boring it was changed because it was too powerful, unless you're trying to suggest the new starfall is interested in any way. Not every ability needs to be super high skill for it to be fun. Is a hunters barrage boring?

What was unique about it? It was just AoE spell like Monk RJW only with ridiculous range

Name another class with that toolkit? I guess you don't know what unique means?

[lappee]

Name another class with that toolkit? I guess you don't know what unique means?

I just did? unless you mean the range part which also means you consider our 45yard nukes unique aswell.

Just... No.

[Todesregler]

WOD Starfall was boring no matter how good you think it was. Legion Starfall actually has some gameplay around it.

IIRC, the only reason Moonkin was a thing was because you had ridiculous spread/non-clump AOE damage on 1 encounter. And you think having 1-2 encounters all expansion be good for our main AOE overrides that shitty gameplay? You should probably play hunter instead.

I won't disagree with you that legion Starfall has much more gameplay around it than WoD one, but WoD Starfall was insanely good to press for me. It felt rewarding, which Starfall right now simply does not - this of course, is just an opinion which nobody here has to share with me.

[Synadrasa]

I just did? unless you mean the range part which also means you consider our 45yard nukes unique aswell.

Just... No.

Yea and rushing jade wind is the reason why method brought 4 moonkins to their world first blackhand kill. You're going to have a hard time arguing starfall is RJW.

[huth]

I think its been brought up since alpha - would be really nice to shift some damage from empowerments into the direct damage of starfall.
Such a high cost, many talents affecting its (relatively weak) direct damage, yet it also requires significant number of gcds beforehand before being optimal.

I like that it has interaction - perhaps its still just slightly too much

Might have been a better niche for FoE or WoE(say, make it a toggle that reduces damage on primary, but increases splash, or have it splash for full damage for x casts or something).

[Lucrece]

Yeah, but that requires even more specific talenting to do what other classes get baseline.

Forced talents to bring capabilities up to par are the reason why warlocks are where they currently are.

Blizzard at some point will have to understand the value of burst, especially burst aoe, and either shift encounter/dungeon design to not punish specs without it, or bring classes up to par on that terrain.

There's a reason why affliction warlocks are shit, and feral druids are confined to tunneling bosses and thus less desirable than a rogue.

DoT-based, heavy ramp up specs have way too many disadvantages relative to the advantages of frontloaded classes.

If frontloaded classes will keep the benefit of said raid utility, then the dot classes need to be head and shoulders above these burst specs on long lived targets.

[Frostyfire14]

The fact that there is even a discrepancy regarding Moonkin AoE and its damage, and what realistically it needs to bring to be on par with the rest of any ranged dps class is astronomically outrageous.

The specialization is obviously undertuned. The specialization is obviously flawed, to a degree (as with other classes and specializations - we just have the most obvious and the community sees it.)

The above discussion regarding how fun Starfall was in previous expansions and how it is not in this expansion is unbelievably stupid. Fun is a personal reaction. To say Starfall isn't fun or not is purely personal and should not be uplifted to become a fact of the class.

The problem that we can all agree with, and hopefully refocus on, is how to bring the community together to prove to Blizzard that there is something wrong, and that it needs to be addressed. One or two theorycrafters spamming twitter with angered tweets towards Blizzard is not going to achieve change. Neither is barking at each other on here debating if Starfall is fun or not.

There are many druid puns in this reply and I'm not ashamed.

[Frostyfire14]

What if Starfall had the Wild Growth treatment? Did most of its damage upfront and lessened over its duration (still doing 100% damage), but also kept the dot empowerment.

[Kharahh]

Hey guys, I was just looking over at the Simulationcraft page and it seems to be putting boomies quite low on the list (go check out their page.. i can't actuallylink but its under (reports/Raid_T19P). What I do not get is under simulation and raid info, it seems our boomies have no haste which makes me think these sims are utter rubbish (or i am missing something completely).

[huth]

What if Starfall had the Wild Growth treatment? Did most of its damage upfront and lessened over its duration (still doing 100% damage), but also kept the dot empowerment.

They'd still have to shift damage from empowerments to Starfall. The base spell doesn't do that much damage for the cost. Maybe if the empowerment also worked that way.

[Cyous]

The spell is boring? So you're saying people didn't have fun casting starfall? First off that's subjective and second, what the fuck are you even going on about. Contrary to your belief starfall was not changed because it was boring it was changed because it was too powerful, unless you're trying to suggest the new starfall is interested in any way. Not every ability needs to be super high skill for it to be fun. Is a hunters barrage boring?

I am the one who quite literally told the devs to place Starfall on Starsurge charges. Starsurge hit incredibly hard and Starfall was allowed to do a fuckton of damage because of it. In addition, it met all the design goals PLUS added easy tuning knobs. So yes, I know exactly why Starfall is the way it is in WOD and that Moonkin was boring overall. When I got to speak to some class devs, I wanted them to make the spec more challenging -- more min/max. Starfall in WOD had very little. Legion Starfall is no more complex to use. If you want to min/max, you need to play better. So they met the challenge and did a great job overall.

I should also add that you'd be bitching about WOD starfall not being rewarding if its damage was shitty. This is exactly what you're saying about Legion starfall. Reconsider your argument.

And I am saying Starfall is a boring spell. It was quite literally a 40-yard AOE pulse that sucked ass in single-target. That was the entirety of the spell. Whether you think that is subjective or not is hardly a concern -- the only "fun" part was pulling the entire zone.

Anything that is Fire and Forget is boring. Barrage included. Starfall just happened to hit everything in a 40 radius, rather than a 40 yard cone.

[Lucrece]

Well, there was a time when Starfall didn't suck in single target, but it was a cooldown. Then they went and made it an aoe spell for some reason because apparently revisiting hurricane was too much work.

And so they turned Starfall into Hurricane this expansion as a fire and forget targeted aoe and removed hurricane, when they could have had Hurricane simply do what Starfall fills now and made starfall into a more interesting spell. Or vice versa.

But the expansion is out now so all of this is moot, might as well make your peace with what came out and wait and see what comes with the next expansion. Hopefully better, more interesting talent rows.

[lappee]

Yea and rushing jade wind is the reason why method brought 4 moonkins to their world first blackhand kill. You're going to have a hard time arguing starfall is RJW.

It was because moonkins are ranged and monks are not. Starfall had nothing to do with Blackhand WF kill.

Starfall is RJW with ridiculous range, mechanics are the same just numbers (like duration and range) are different.

[Xandrigity]

It would have worked to just make starfall only work on mobs with the dots on them. Like it was without the option glyphing it or the draenor perks that it hits everything.

[Alame]

When I got to speak to some class devs, I wanted them to make the spec more challenging -- more min/max.

Inappropriateness of one, non-blizzard employee supposedly having so much influence over design direction aside - do you believe this goal has been achieved?

What about Legion boomkin equals or exceeds the min/max potential of WoD? For single-target we still have dumping of empowerments during trinket procs, but lost the ability to time casts with Eclipse for maximum scaling. We lost difficulty in DoT play, as you now aren't punished for missing a refresh with both available simultaneously.

There's an argument for AoE being more complex with FoE - the complexity of which brings problems we've discussed previously.
Outside of FoE it's the same-old AoE rotation - DoT everything (1x/2x based on time alive) keep startfall up as much as possible, spam LS/SW to fill. Sure we have to manage AsP now, but we also only use LS as a filler whereas before you still used LS/W based on eclipse.

I fail to see how this rework added significant min/max "skill" based gameplay. It's made the rotation significantly more formulaic and removed all requirement on the player to react to the eclipse bar or SS procs. The only thing interrupting your formulaic rotation is boss mechanics and movement, which we still had to deal with before.

It was because moonkins are ranged and monks are not. Starfall had nothing to do with Blackhand WF kill.

Maybe you missed the part where Method brought four balance druids to handle p2 ledges? The only reason there was account sharing drama is because of Kuznam's boomkin being brought alongside his mage - which they did because they wanted another boomkin and it was the best geared available. I can't fathom you suggesting they brought Kuznam's Druid instead of Fragnance's mage and that had nothing to do with starfall.

[DDM]

Can you please stop this ridiculous conversation. I'm reading this thread because i want to hear something interesting and helpful for my druid and not someone complaining about "meh, my brainafk-to-use starfall is gone and i don't shine easy as f**k on pe**s-meters".
This is just annoying.

Thanks

[lappee]

Maybe you missed the part where Method brought four balance druids to handle p2 ledges? The only reason there was account sharing drama is because of Kuznam's boomkin being brought alongside his mage - which they did because they wanted another boomkin and it was the best geared available. I can't fathom you suggesting they brought Kuznam's Druid instead of Fragnance's mage and that had nothing to do with starfall.

Moonkins werent the best class for the job, they did use moonkins since they had so many of them. If they were able to use melee on the fight they would've done so.

Being ranged was the reason why they had so many moonkins.

[Cyous]

This just in, designers actually talk to players. Players give feedback, designers decided to listen to it. This is clearly not in the best interest of the game, just ask Sub Rogues about their design prior to their overhaul. I disliked how binary WOD Moonkin was, I asked them to make something with more complexity, they gave us a product with more complexity. Shocking how feedback works.

What's so complex about FOE? Sure there's a learning curve, and they want it to be a difficult spell to use. The only issue is other players/tanks moving. This is part of the difficulty -- you should ask them why they haven't made FOE auto-fixate -- maybve they'll tell you exactly what I've explained for the past 6 months on that subject.

Legion is clearly "pick your complexity" -- just because you aren't p[laying complex talents doesn't mean the complexity isn't there. Look at the interactions between DOTs and Starfall, how about Stellar Flare and FOE together? How about teaching yourself to line up maximum AP for FOE? How about executing all those little details during a boss encounter where shit can hit the fan even on a good pull? Just because you won't look doesn't give you the right to claim the complexity isn't there.

For reference, WOD had 3 major min/max details:
-- Starfall/Starsurge accordingly
-- Starsurge near max Eclipse so you can fit 4 Lunar Strikes and 2 Starsurges near the sweet spot.
-- Who can shit on the boss the hardest for 15sec.
-- Bonus: DOT refreshes (which was negligible in nearly all cases) 500-1000 DPS on patchwerk...lol.

Starfall being great for 1 fight. Wow, that's totally an indication of how useful it was, right? Plus, you could just use 1 moonkin with Cooldowns instead, but 2 made it easier? WOW. Not to mention how great melee was for BH. So great for melee, they only kept Rogues to immune the damage.

[Deleted]

Guys anyone else having problem with artifact quest "The Deadwind Hunt"? Worgens on first phase just standing there, they should be moving, right? Previous quest was bugged as well for me for a couple of days, now this one...

[Frostyfire14]

Inappropriateness of one, non-blizzard employee supposedly having so much influence over design direction aside - do you believe this goal has been achieved?

What about Legion boomkin equals or exceeds the min/max potential of WoD? For single-target we still have dumping of empowerments during trinket procs, but lost the ability to time casts with Eclipse for maximum scaling. We lost difficulty in DoT play, as you now aren't punished for missing a refresh with both available simultaneously.

There's an argument for AoE being more complex with FoE - the complexity of which brings problems we've discussed previously.
Outside of FoE it's the same-old AoE rotation - DoT everything (1x/2x based on time alive) keep startfall up as much as possible, spam LS/SW to fill. Sure we have to manage AsP now, but we also only use LS as a filler whereas before you still used LS/W based on eclipse.

I fail to see how this rework added significant min/max "skill" based gameplay. It's made the rotation significantly more formulaic and removed all requirement on the player to react to the eclipse bar or SS procs. The only thing interrupting your formulaic rotation is boss mechanics and movement, which we still had to deal with before.

FoE should have never been passed as viable. Great concept, shit final design. I guarantee more people are going to use it and fail than those who will succeed at it, ten fold.

And why is Cyous taking credit for nearly all the Boomy changes? Did you literally speak with a Dev to help design this specialization? If so, why isn't it done.....