[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Drdraker]

Hey guys I've been thinking a change that if done properly would make balance a lot better , i havent been thinking it too much so here we go

-Make our starsurge give only ONE empowered spell , that would mean u cant snapshot mastery anymore and gives the player the option to go for more ST dmg/target prio or go for more aoe .Having the player making the decision and not making cast both LS/SW which i feel is just weird would make the class more fun and engaging
-Buff our mastery and unempowered SW/LS to compensate for the loss , while also maybe reducing maybe Starsurge's AP cost
-Reduce starfall cost, and maybe a small buff to shooting stars

I think a small boost in ST target and reduced cost in starfall is all we need right now and with the above change the class will be better (at least in my head )
Let me know what you guys think
PS:i dont have the helm so i didnt bother yet with it so i dont know how would that play out

[ChickenChaser]

Hey guys I've been thinking a change that if done properly would make balance a lot better , i havent been thinking it too much so here we go

-Make our starsurge give only ONE empowered spell , that would mean u cant snapshot mastery anymore and gives the player the option to go for more ST dmg/target prio or go for more aoe .Having the player making the decision and not making cast both LS/SW which i feel is just weird would make the class more fun and engaging
-Buff our mastery and unempowered SW/LS to compensate for the loss , while also maybe reducing maybe Starsurge's AP cost
-Reduce starfall cost, and maybe a small buff to shooting stars

I think a small boost in ST target and reduced cost in starfall is all we need right now and with the above change the class will be better (at least in my head )
Let me know what you guys think
PS:i dont have the helm so i didnt bother yet with it so i dont know how would that play out

shooting star is already the best talent on aoe/multidot fights. doesn't need a buff.

[Drdraker]

shooting star is already the best talent on aoe/multidot fights. doesn't need a buff.

Aight scrath that off then , how do u feel about starsurge giving 1 empower then? i think it would solve a lot of the problems

[ChickenChaser]

Aight scrath that off then , how do u feel about starsurge giving 1 empower then? i think it would solve a lot of the problems

I mean i'm fine with the current empowerment system... I just feel that our Aoe need a buff and Helm need a nerf... Not to mention echoing stars is the most useless gold trait of any class.... Fire mages get a gold trait that doubles the damage of their flamestrike that is 15-20% of their damage without the talent on aoe packs making it a 15-20% aoe dps gain... Echoing stars is 1.4-2%..... On a class that already had bad aoe... Like Echoing stars needs to be removed or Buffed by 500% minimum. Its almost as if they left out a 0 on echoing stars and just went meh its fine....

[paror]

I mean i'm fine with the current empowerment system... I just feel that our Aoe need a buff and Helm need a nerf... Not to mention echoing stars is the most useless gold trait of any class.... Fire mages get a gold trait that doubles the damage of their flamestrike that is 15-20% of their damage without the talent on aoe packs making it a 15-20% aoe dps gain... Echoing stars is 1.4-2%..... On a class that already had bad aoe... Like Echoing stars needs to be removed or Buffed by 500% minimum. Its almost as if they left out a 0 on echoing stars and just went meh its fine....

This really...
Just started on bringing my hunter to 110, in case they dont fix it in 7.1

[MV Kaa]

I mean i'm fine with the current empowerment system... I just feel that our Aoe need a buff and Helm need a nerf... Not to mention echoing stars is the most useless gold trait of any class.... Fire mages get a gold trait that doubles the damage of their flamestrike that is 15-20% of their damage without the talent on aoe packs making it a 15-20% aoe dps gain... Echoing stars is 1.4-2%..... On a class that already had bad aoe... Like Echoing stars needs to be removed or Buffed by 500% minimum. Its almost as if they left out a 0 on echoing stars and just went meh its fine....

Well a lot of classes have bad golden traits like us. Like fire mages get like a 1% dps increase on flame strike? BM hunters get some aoe on their pets that does like no damage?

[xtramuscle]

I'd still like to see empowerments scrapped. And the damage increase baked into starsurge and starfall damage (not the dot buffing part). Otherwise I think we're okay.

[Albimoo]

I'd still like to see empowerments scrapped. And the damage increase baked into starsurge and starfall damage (not the dot buffing part). Otherwise I think we're okay.

So the rotation would be to dot up and wrath/Starsurge spam with no end in sight? The class is already incredibly boring without the helm, and at least the empowerment add some value to mastery.

Why would you try and remove something (I realize empowermenta arent difficult) from one of the most simple specs in the game.

[Alame]

What you mean ? missing defining mechanic like overloads/ignites ?

Sort of. Balance lacks an over-arching purpose in gameplay. Previously our over-arching purpose was defined by Eclipse, the whole rotation was defined by eclipse in terms of what you cast when, and interacting properly with eclipse was where the majority of your damage came from.

When they changed us to a simple build/dump class and removed Eclipse, they didn't replace it's over-arching gameplay. That's why the Balance rotation feels very formulaic & boring - you're just going through the motions and not really building towards anything.

Look at other build/dump classes:

Fury Warriors play around Enrage procs, their rage is used with Bloodthirst to push higher Enrage uptime.
Arms warriors play around Colossus Smash, pooling rage to dump while the debuff is active.
Elemental Shamans have major problems so let's pass over them.
Enhancement Shamans play around Stormstrike procs, playing a balancing game between spending Maelstrom on Crash Lightning & having enough to Stormstrike whenever it procs.
Havoc DHs play around Momentum, pooling & dumping fury in accordance with Fel Rush & Vengeful Retreat management.
SPriest Insanity isn't used as a dump resource, but rather used to maintain uptime on Void Form

What do we have that influences how we spend our AsP? Aside from a minor pooling mechanic that relies on having RPPM trinkets, it makes no difference whether we spend AsP as soon as we have enough, or spending to avoid cap. Sure, there's a voidform-esque mechanic in Fury of Elune, but the baseline kit contains nothing.

I wonder why this is problem, i mean if we are not supposed be strong on "some"(nonexistant right now) fights then why there are even dot specs ?
If Dot based spec are not supposed to shine on multiple long live targets then make them one target only and make sfall burst aoe, problem solved homogenized as other classes, only difference you need 7 binds for single target compared to 3 like other casters...
Imho this "dots cannot shine" mentality is retarded and very wrong design choice.

Also from IH Q&A: "All specs can't have strong and consistent AoE. The team wants there to be areas of strength and weakness."
So strong burst aoe is ok, but strong persistant aoe is not? wtf

They're talking about doing 300k/target for 5/60 seconds, vs doing 25k/target for 60/60 seconds. Both theoretically do the same total amount of damage, but they're neglecting the fact that if the targets don't live for multiples of 60 seconds, the burst method is far superior.

Right now the breakpoint where persistant "catches up" to AoE is too high. Instead of 60 seconds in the example above, persistent damage needs to be catching up at 20-30 seconds. You can either do this by reducing the ramp-up time of persistent AoE, or by making it stronger.

If Stellar Drift were a 2-minute cooldown active that instantly applied both DoTs to all targets within your next Starfall cast, Balance would be in a much better place. Instead this useless talent is still plaguing our design.

- - - Updated - - -

Well a lot of classes have bad golden traits like us. Like fire mages get like a 1% dps increase on flame strike? BM hunters get some aoe on their pets that does like no damage?

You mean Aftershocks? (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=194431/aftershocks) That's not a 1% DPS increase on Flamestrike, that's a 100% dps increase on Flamstrike (assuming targets stay in location.) Plus that then feeds into additional ignite damage. Aftershocks is anything but a bad golden trait.

- - - Updated - - -

So the rotation would be to dot up and wrath/Starsurge spam with no end in sight? The class is already incredibly boring without the helm, and at least the empowerment add some value to mastery.

Why would you try and remove something (I realize empowermenta arent difficult) from one of the most simple specs in the game.

No, the idea is remove empowerments and add some other mechanic that better serves as an over-arching purpose I talk about above.

You have to understand where Empowerments come from - they were a good, functional mechanic in WoD eclipse because they were the main way you interacted with the Eclipse bar. You would pool empowerments to dump at high-eclipse states for maximum scaling & damage. Without the changing power boost from sine-wave eclipse, their only purpose is to push you to cast LS on ST & SW on AoE instead of mindlessly spamming the one spell. Not only are they bad because they sap power away from our spenders (Starsurge) to push back into builders, but it's a cheap and boring way to make sure we use more than 2 spells in rotation.

[xtramuscle]

Exactly. I'm not sure any other builder spender rebuffs the builders. Our spenders don't hit hard, they don't feel rewarding. Ive likened our play style to SoO destro but they had massive chaos bolts as a rewarding spender. Our spenders are watered down and don't feel rewarding at all. If you remove empowerments starsurge and starfall could hit hard and feel rewarding but I agree we could use some other resource or system in place to add complexity to the class.. How about snapshotting dots? XD

[MV Kaa]

@Alame when you have people going into fireblast damage over flamestrike damage, purposely skipping over a golden talent because it is so bad.

[Alame]

@Alame when you have people going into fireblast damage over flamestrike damage, purposely skipping over a golden talent because it is so bad.

People aren't skipping Aftershocks and building towards Blast Furnace because Aftershocks is bad - it's because every fight this tier in EN is single-target or priority-target damage. Fire mages simply don't cast Flamestrike because Pyroblast is much better in almost every scenario. With that usage in mind, it's much better to take the boost to Fire Blast (which you use tons on ST AND AoE) that invest a ton of artifact power into traits you barely use.

The trait itself isn't bad, it's just low priority with the current lineup of bosses.

[ChickenChaser]

People aren't skipping Aftershocks and building towards Blast Furnace because Aftershocks is bad - it's because every fight this tier in EN is single-target or priority-target damage. Fire mages simply don't cast Flamestrike because Pyroblast is much better in almost every scenario. With that usage in mind, it's much better to take the boost to Fire Blast (which you use tons on ST AND AoE) that invest a ton of artifact power into traits you barely use.

The trait itself isn't bad, it's just low priority with the current lineup of bosses.

exactly... Even if echoing stars was 500% what it was now all good moonkins would have not rushed it during progression because there was no place for it to be good outside mythic+..... Same with fire mage. its amazing for mythic+ but in raids there is no place where you need to blow up adds. (eye boss is easily controlled by hunters alone)

[Myztikrice]

Starfall should cost less and not scale with haste so its duration doesn't decrease, Solar Wrath/Lunar Strike should auto apply their respective DoT or Lunar Strike should spread Moonfire to every target hit. They should start with initial AP like Bears for one Starsurge. That's if you want improvements mechanics wise. Buffing all the damage of our spells would do the same to get us to parity in raids but not necessarily mythic+s.

[Mykk]

There is no point of playing balance. Argument that blizz made was fine back in TBC but now its not. They need to change whole game if they want to make argument like that to stand for.

Balance druids in nutshell:

Bad AOE
Bad cleave
Bad single target dmg
Bad utility

Starfall deals no dmg at all and our 3rd golden trait sucks really hard. Actually many our traits literally SUCKS
Lunar strike cleave??? Seriously 35% of dmg dealt of lunar strike............ Many speccs cleave 100% of their dmg
Our single target well yeah if we can literally turret in one spot whole fight we can pull somewhat okayish decent dmg but once there is more movement we suck harder than any other caster specc
Do i even have to start with our utility? DDD Seriously Typhoon sucks and every druid specc can have it so why would anyone want to bring balance over resto that has ursol's vortex thats 100000000 million times better. Solar beam? Aoe silence that has no benefit at all. Hardly ever in mythic dungeons we can silence two or more targets at the same time so its literally one interrupt so everyone else can do that better. Top of that STUNS are 100000000000000 times better than AOE silence. Innervate????? Yeah sure useless in mythic dungeons in raids somewhat usefull but even then subpar utility even with artifact trait.

So our only benefical thing in raids is traited innervate which is not enough to move us from bench

[MV Kaa]

So I have the helm and SFC trinket, trying to do the mastery snap shot but looking at my character sheet my mastery still goes down when the trinket runs out. I am casting SS at 10 stacks and keeping both empowered buffs.

[Lahis]

So I have the helm and SFC trinket, trying to do the mastery snap shot but looking at my character sheet my mastery still goes down when the trinket runs out. I am casting SS at 10 stacks and keeping both empowered buffs.

Mastery goes down, but Empowerment buffs retain the benefit they gained from the 10 stacks as long as you keep atleast one stack of them active.

That's what snapshotting is.

[MV Kaa]

Mastery goes down, but Empowerment buffs retain the benefit they gained from the 10 stacks as long as you keep atleast one stack of them active.

That's what snapshotting is.

Ok thank you! That makes sense.

[Lahis]

Speaking of Snapshotting, is it possible to make a Weakaura that would show the current percent of benefit the Empowerment buffs have?

(Something like this is propably possible, but I'd believe it would need some custom coding which I don't know how to do.)

[Alame]

Speaking of Snapshotting, is it possible to make a Weakaura that would show the current percent of benefit the Empowerment buffs have?

(Somethign like this is propably possible, but I'd believe it would need soem custom coding which I don't knwo how to do.)

This would defs require custom coding. Easiest way (I think) would be:

If no empowerment stacks
Check # of focused lightning stacks when Starsurge cast
Display stack # until Empowerment buff drops off

Then you'd know how many stacks (0-10) your current empowerments are snapshotting, and if/when you should drop & refresh snapshot.

I'm no good with Lua though, talk to @Cyous for that one.