[Balance] Legion Discussion

[thedeisel]

I mentioned the 4p in the post. No, mastery scaling is not included, because it has a minimal effect. Just like I am not including the changes to secondary stats across the board, they wont make a noticable difference.

I see you, you said in your gear. So, no 4pc. Didn't see that before, my bad.

The ED skill cap is literally miles above IFE. I'm not sure how you could ever argue otherwise. IFE literally doesn't make the rotation any harder, it does increase the difference between the good and the bad player a bit because of the double dipping, but nowhere near the swing you see with ED.

This sounds like a difference in terms of what we mean by skill cap. To me, the skill of moonkin has always been around maximizing hardcasts. Pressing a specific, simple sequence over and over and agin (1x SS, 1x LS, 1xSS, 2xSW) is not a difficult thing to do. It's even a relatively mobile sequence since 40% of it consists of instant cast spells. Maximizing IFE by requires navigating the encounter and mechanics and movement well which also is where the vast vast majority of skillcap exists for either spec.

No you can't. It is dead on aoe, and it is middle of the pack in most multi target scenarios.

IFE however? Now THAT one you can pretty much always use. Best for all kinds of aoe (unless you only care about a <2 min. window, but that is rarely ever the case in pve). Nearly as good as the best single target option for the elite, and actual #1 single target for the vast majority of the playerbase.

[/quote]
In specific aoe situations? no, you cant use it. But there's always plenty of opportunity to get most out of it in the rest of the encounter. In any case, I had in mind single target situations like the ones you simmed. I don't dispute that IFE is better for total dps in non-single target situations. But then again, moonkin is going to be bad in those situations IFE or not. It's just less bad.

The scaling from mastery is not trivial. I currently have 5500 mastery. The buff to scaling means my starsurge hits 4% harder. If i get 35% of my damage from SS, the scaling is a 1.6% total buff. That's what ED moonkin get going by guarm logs. If i get 22% of my damage from SS (non ED moonkin on guarm), I get only a 0.88% total buff. When we're making claims about a few % obviously that stuff matters. Add in 4pc 20% buff to SS multiplied through that? Significant stuff that starts adding up.

[lappee]

The major differences between our WoD rotation and the ED rotation is that ED is only limited in choice during the burn part of the rotation. While generating resources, the rotation is much more open (you can choose between SW/LS/Moon spells/dot refreshes). Also, delaying the burn phase is significantly less impactful on our dps, than it was in WoD, and it does not include casting a zero damage spell (Astral Communion) which in my personal opinion feels way worse than simply stalling with fillers (or in the case of ED, simply cast a single starsurge and then build again). For the sake of comparison, I also much prefered the playstyle in Cata (where we could sit pre lunar/solar eclipse and cast the "wrong" spell to delay entering the next eclipse for when we wanted the burst) to what we had in WoD in AC.

WoD rotation was pretty open when it became close to 0 point, sure you had the "right" spell to cast but casting the wrong one didnt really cost you any dps (it was so negligible amount that you really couldnt tell the difference).
WoD delaying for burst was harder and less predictable (unless boss abilities were timer based). Doesn't that just mean good moonkins were much better than the bad ones?

Where do we draw the line between openness (easiness) and strictness (hardness) when it comes to adapting to different situations?

Likely yes, but different people, and for different reasons. I think more having more complex rotations that leads to better dps is a good thing. I would prefer if the hardest rotation is the best when played well, and that the easiest rotation is the best if you do not perform at a top level. This applies to everything in the game, not just legendaries.

It is always ideal that way but its almost impossible to do so in patchwerk style manner. In todays wow the difficulty comes from handling movement and target differences (swaps, AoE vs cleave vs ST) etc instead of the core rotation.
ED is more difficult than core rotation when it comes to movement, yes, and it should increase the dps (if used correctly) as it does - nothing wrong with that. I'm just still saying that the majority who "like" the rotation do so only because its a dps increase rather than actually liking it - and the posts reflect that.

[Madus]

Do you expect people to play a harder spec that nets less damage even when played optimally and punishes severely over the easy spec?
Imagine if S2M wasn't the highest damage talent, even if it is fun it would be stupid run it.

You dont need to imagine anything just spec FOE.

[Lahis]

Also for anybody that cares about actual numbers:

SimC results using my gear (optimized for ED 30% breakpoint)
No leg: 408,690 (0%)
Old ED: 455,157 (11.1%)
New ED: 437,996 (7.2%)
IFE: 445,697 (9.1%)
New IFE: 436,159 (6.7%)


Result: ED should be very slightly ahead of IFE single target (~0.5% without 4p, likely ~1.5% with it) if you play it perfectly (hint: most people don't, and would benefit more from IFE). Both are significantly less ahead of the other legendaries when it comes to single target (but they are still #1 and #2).

For the general case, not much changes. ED will be favoured by the elite few for single target, and IFE will be favoured for everything else. OI and CS will start competing for the #2 spot as soon as we move away from pure single target, with the new shoulders and Sephuz slightly behind, both being significantly more niche than the other options (yet strong in their given niche).

I sure hope they buff the baseline generiously to offset this nerfing.

[huth]

The 4% buff does that, pretty much. Slightly higher for IFE, slightly lower for ED.

[Deleted]

The 4% buff does that, pretty much. Slightly higher for IFE, slightly lower for ED.

^this. Our best 2 legendaries got nerfed by ~4%, and we got buffed ~4% baseline to offset it. Net result: If you had one of the two legendaries you'll do pretty much the exact same dps as before (4% more aoe with ED), if you had both you'll lose ~4%, and if you had neither you gain ~4%.

- - - Updated - - -

The scaling from mastery is not trivial. I currently have 5500 mastery. The buff to scaling means my starsurge hits 4% harder. If i get 35% of my damage from SS, the scaling is a 1.6% total buff. That's what ED moonkin get going by guarm logs. If i get 22% of my damage from SS (non ED moonkin on guarm), I get only a 0.88% total buff. When we're making claims about a few % obviously that stuff matters.

ED scaling with mastery is extremely close to IFE, because both have 100% uptime on empowerments, and all ED does is replace empowered casts with starsurges (both of which scale with mastery). IFE also increases the damage of dots & moon spells slightly, but that is likely only 10-20% (very rough guess) of the damage output of IFE single target. Let's just assume 20% & your 4% mastery. If ED is a 8% dmg increase single target, a 4% buff to that brings it up by 8%*4%=0.32%. If IFE is a 7% increase single target, and 80% of it (5.6%)*4%= 0.22%. So ED gains 0.1% more dps compared to IFE single target. I'd call that insignificant.

On the topic of legendary difficulty, we can just look at statistical data. It is pretty clear that players find ED significantly harder, and at lower play skill IFE pulls ahead of IFE:
hc guarm 95 percentile ED is #1: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...5&difficulty=4
hc guarm 50 percentile IFE is #1:https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...0&difficulty=4

It is pretty clear to me that one is significantly harder to perform well with than the other.

[Hellshout]

deleted. fed up with arguing with trolls and kids.

[huth]

But that means we're the same we are now. And they claimed we'd receive some positive tweaking, aka buffs.
This means the 4% is not the final stop and we're to receive more goodies. No?

And if you had paid attention, you'd know that so far, we only saw compensation for the nerfs, no actual tuning yet.

[Hellshout]

deleted.

And it's paid, not payed.

[Nerxyrall]

It all comes down to encounter design.

If a 2min CD is favored IFE can get its full benefit. If you have to delay a lot for whatever reason, you loose a lot of value.
IF an encounter allows for ED play (movenment phases are only in the AP-Dumping-part not gaining-part of the rotation, you can plan your Dumping-Gaining accordingly etc) its better.

Since i dont have ED i can only guess how good it workes in the current encounters.
IFE works on most encounters pretty good at the moment. We will see what nighthold brings.

Still hoping for ED so i can use both and test the rotation myself to get more insight.

[thedeisel]

ED scaling with mastery is extremely close to IFE, because both have 100% uptime on empowerments, and all ED does is replace empowered casts with starsurges (both of which scale with mastery). IFE also increases the damage of dots & moon spells slightly, but that is likely only 10-20% (very rough guess) of the damage output of IFE single target. Let's just assume 20% & your 4% mastery. If ED is a 8% dmg increase single target, a 4% buff to that brings it up by 8%*4%=0.32%. If IFE is a 7% increase single target, and 80% of it (5.6%)*4%= 0.22%. So ED gains 0.1% more dps compared to IFE single target. I'd call that insignificant.

All we needed to ask about is whether mastery disproportionately affects one more than the other. The non-mastery stuff is not relevant to that question, it's already rolled into the respective damage gains for the legendary. If we grant 100% uptime on empowerments then all we need to look at is the differential benefit to starsurge. We did that math already

On the topic of legendary difficulty, we can just look at statistical data. It is pretty clear that players find ED significantly harder, and at lower play skill IFE pulls ahead of IFE:
hc guarm 95 percentile ED is #1: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...5&difficulty=4
hc guarm 50 percentile IFE is #1:https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...0&difficulty=4

It is pretty clear to me that one is significantly harder to perform well with than the other.

All that proves is that those are bad data to draw arguments on. On mythic, for example, the results are reversed and IFE is higher at 99th but lower at 50th. And in any case the difference is practically nil because so many of the logs have both at this point. For heroic, IFE is better at 90th percentile, ED at 95th. Again the differences in that data are pretty small.

Overall, I'm not sure what the point of disagreement is. I think everyone agrees with what Nexyrall said above. And I think everyone agrees that ED is a superior option on single target. But if anyone has any questions for themselves go ahead and sit on a dummy on the ptr. You can divide out the crit luck. Take off your trinkets if you want. Do a long test run with each. I know when I did it, and did the math of dividing out crits and subtracting out PoG, ED was a bigger difference in damage for me than IFE. Some of that might because I'm pretty mastery heavy even in my haste set to get to 2x wrath breakpoint.

For M+ IFE has been fantastic. For fights like Mythic Ilgynoth it was lovely. For Cenarius getting extra uses inside the burn window to get out of p1 while also having multiple targets to attack? Awesome! For Ursoc, when the fight timing line up well, good! When it didn't? at least it was a massive statistical item level upgrade for me then, i guess. Much better to have ED. For Nythendra? not a whole lot of value to IFE. resets are during bug/sleep phases. For elerethe where we lusted on second platform and it takes about 2min to get over there so I'm sitting on INC? Not much value in IFE. For dragons, wouldn't know, never got to dps the fight as we don't carry 6 main spec healers but decided to 6 heal it. For Xavius, IFE was fine and I can't imagine that ED but there's there's so much padding on those logs now it's hard to tell. Not really much to the fight anyway so hard to judge.

With the changes they're making to both legendaries, both legendaries will be closer down to non-legendary. The relative pecking order looks to be staying the same, though the 4pc may be skewing that a little further in favor of ED. Mastery buff slightly benefits ED disproportionately as well. So, people with IFE will still wish they had ED on single target. On non-single target people with ED will wish they had IFE. OI is more interesting now with changes to Stellar Drift and Flare even single target.

Does anyone disagree with that? Those are the points I've been supporting.

Overall, for going through EN? I'd personally have traded my IFE for an ED. At least I'd get to shine when there were spots to shine for moonkin. And I'd get the option of changing up playstyle. Now on a fight like cenarius or xavius i get to be less pure garbage than I would've been (seriously look how low moonkin is on xavius, it's funny). For ToV, though? So far to me IFE has felt much better than I imagine ED would. We'll have to wait and see on Nighthold but at the very least it's a much bigger instance than either so my guess is both will have moments to shine.

The most interesting question is how much the other changes are going to affect the spec's value to raids. The talent changes to FoN, FoE, Stellar Drift, Stellar Flare all let us get more value out of talenting into more multi-target damage. Is Stellar Flare worth going to instead of Incarnation? (Please I hope so, even as someone with INC ring I'm sick of INC for so many expansions). I wonder if it's enough value to make us think of that as something valuable we can bring to raid. Do we get to get excited for a multi-dot focused fight, now? I'd love that.

My main hope going forward is that overall balance druid damage comes up a bit more but mainly that our baseline (non-talent dependent) multi-target damage gets brought up even more than our single target. My second hope is that the 4 set gets changed. I really hoped to have the option at some point to play FoE on something like an Ursoc like fight. Lots of single target with good long lived cleave opportunities. But even there it's not viable and with the 4set bonus I don't think the 7.1.5 buffs to FoE would be enough.

[Ifeanychukwu]

So I got Oneth's Intuition a few hours ago. Does anyone have a weakaura to track the proc from these bracers specifically? I've been using the WA setup from the weakauras thread but I've found that I haven't really needed it so I'm just looking for something simple to track the OI buff by itself.

[SpamHealzu]

I used the one on this thread and it works for me:
http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topi...pleasebalance/

[Deleted]

All we needed to ask about is whether mastery disproportionately affects one more than the other. The non-mastery stuff is not relevant to that question, it's already rolled into the respective damage gains for the legendary. If we grant 100% uptime on empowerments then all we need to look at is the differential benefit to starsurge. We did that math already

No, looking only at starsurge makes absolutely no sense when the ED rotation casts significantly less LS/SW, and both of those are also affected by mastery. If you're in doubt, simply run a sim with both, and you'll likely find that the scale factor for mastery is within 5% of each other.

Looking at the 99th percentile for mythic is useless, sample size is way too small (it is literally 4 logs in top 1%). I used heroic logs because sample size is huge and it includes a lot more mediocre/bad players than the mythic logs do. And no, I don't think everybody agrees that that ED is superior single target, because that straight up isn't true if you look at the actual statistical data. It is only better in the hands of an elite player. For the vast majority of the playerbase IFE is better, BECAUSE it is significantly easier for them to utilize.

[Ifeanychukwu]

I used the one on this thread and it works for me:
http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topi...pleasebalance/

Right on, thanks

[wing5wong]

@Cyous Legenderpy has trackers for our legendaries.
I wish it would make a sound when one activated though. Im sure its simple enough

[thedeisel]

No, looking only at starsurge makes absolutely no sense when the ED rotation casts significantly less LS/SW, and both of those are also affected by mastery. If you're in doubt, simply run a sim with both, and you'll likely find that the scale factor for mastery is within 5% of each other.

What? Yes, ED casts more SS and fewer emp SW/LS but it's not like you're replacing those SW/LS casts with MORE unempowered casts. You're replacing them with Starsurges which benefit from mastery. Obviously we're talking small advantages for ED here via mastery and size of advantage depends on mastery level. But it's a small advantage nevertheless.

Looking at the 99th percentile for mythic is useless, sample size is way too small (it is literally 4 logs in top 1%). I used heroic logs because sample size is huge and it includes a lot more mediocre/bad players than the mythic logs do. And no, I don't think everybody agrees that that ED is superior single target, because that straight up isn't true if you look at the actual statistical data. It is only better in the hands of an elite player. For the vast majority of the playerbase IFE is better, BECAUSE it is significantly easier for them to utilize.

Guarm mythic is just about the absolute theoretical maximum contribution of IFE under the current IFE. Every fight is between 3:30 and 4. And at that level it's slightly less than ED. So, point granted. Under absolutely ideal conditions for IFE, IFE and ED can similar on single target (though IFE ever so slightly behind at very high end play as you noted with your percentiles). In 7.1.5? It provides literally zero dps increase on Guarm. You can use it at either 2min or 3min in. You get two uses only whether you have the legendary or not. Pick the bottom legendary/no legendary. That will be the IFE/ED gap in 7.1.5 on guarm. Obviously that's the other extreme from the current setup. But when the extreme high end performance of A only makes it equal to B, how can we not agree that B is better in every other part of A's range? Especially since the range of B doesn't vary like the range of A?

How can we not agree that the mythic guarm data show ED is the single target winner given that they're merely equal (if not already a slight advantage to ED) when IFE is used under absolutely ideal circumstances?

I don't understand why there's any interest in denying that ED is the clear single target winner. It is and it's clearly intended to be.

[Cyous]

If IFE was matching ED every damned fight, that IFE would get nerfed even further. The simple fact you can min/max legendary items soon enough is within their design goal. Instead of ife, maybe you take OI and ED, or ED and LATC. That's perfectly fine.

IFE kicks the shit out of ED on Multi-Target, does that mean ED is a shitty legendary for AOE and needs a buff to AOE? No, it just means ED sucks on multi-target.

[Irefusetodie]

The IFE vs ED argument is entirely pointless considering that you can't choose to have one over the other. You get what you get. If you're lucky and got both, you can use both. Don't see what the point of this argument is other than something to argue over.

[joltcola1234]

The solution is to get both Emerald Dreamcatcher and Impeccable Fel Essence, like me.