[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Kluian05]

Holy crap you see the bump aff locks and frost mages got in the logs.

lol our 8% trait aint going to come anywhere near 80% of what aff locks are pulling right now

Frost mages 1 point and golden aren't big DPS increases from what I gather. Their 4/4 is very strong tho, easily 50k+ DPS increase.

[markos82]

What did you chose as your 43rd point into weapon?

[Zan15]

What did you chose as your 43rd point into weapon?

holding for now, most likley single target selection which would be scythe

[MV Kaa]

What did you chose as your 43rd point into weapon?

Scythe. Then go sunfire.

[Toolban]

Balance Druid Challenge Appearance video

https://youtu.be/Q75pjRhsHBo

Where can I get those WA's for their trinkets!? I like em!

[Irefusetodie]

Where can I get those WA's for their trinkets!? I like em!

https://pastebin.com/VVWtAynB

https://pastebin.com/FbnxX98X

[Slippykins]

^The first line 1000%. And who the f is Lissanna?

A well-respected and thoughtful player who knows what she's talking about.

[Kyanion]

A well-respected and thoughtful player who knows what she's talking about.

Does not mean that she can't be wrong though. By some people's postings of logs about where moonkins are ranking in various situations, like single target, I can understand a bit of blowback coming her direction for some of her statements about moonkins being fine and all. That is a topic I largely stay out of though and just watch it from afar. I don't know who is right or really care. I just want moonkins to get some attention this upcoming patch and fix some of our problems.

[AngelovV]

Does not mean that she can't be wrong though. By some people's postings of logs about where moonkins are ranking in various situations, like single target, I can understand a bit of blowback coming her direction for some of her statements about moonkins being fine and all. That is a topic I largely stay out of though and just watch it from afar. I don't know who is right or really care. I just want moonkins to get some attention this upcoming patch and fix some of our problems.

And what are those problems? I see only ST dmg as a problem, and being wrecked in PvP.

[Slippykins]

Does not mean that she can't be wrong though. By some people's postings of logs about where moonkins are ranking in various situations, like single target, I can understand a bit of blowback coming her direction for some of her statements about moonkins being fine and all. That is a topic I largely stay out of though and just watch it from afar. I don't know who is right or really care. I just want moonkins to get some attention this upcoming patch and fix some of our problems.

Of course not, but I would rather believe a statistician than a chicken little.

e: I don't particularly want to partake in the discussion because I think it's mostly irrelevant, but you're allowed to have differing opinions. Appealing to ranks and logs is good if you use the data correctly.

[Kyanion]

Of course not, but I would rather believe a statistician than a chicken little.

e: I don't particularly want to partake in the discussion because I think it's mostly irrelevant, but you're allowed to have differing opinions. Appealing to ranks and logs is good if you use the data correctly.

I'm not saying I'm the one discrediting or even posting on the thread over there on the official forums. I just know people have been critical of some of her comments mainly when it comes to ST and perhaps on demand AoE Burst. But yeah it is really not a topic worth going into. The important thing is giving arguments to support why moonkin needs help

- - - Updated - - -

And what are those problems? I see only ST dmg as a problem, and being wrecked in PvP.

I would assume the problem could bleed into multiple areas. We're not strong in single target for sure. I think another problem people highlight is our AoE in many situations isn't good enough because many classes just flat out do it better while not suffering ST to spec into more AoE options like Stellar Drift. And PvP...I wouldn't know where to start there as I don't really do it.

[Bugg]

what do you guys think about our next Tier armors, bonuses and stats?

[Zan15]

Of course not, but I would rather believe a statistician than a chicken little.

e: I don't particularly want to partake in the discussion because I think it's mostly irrelevant, but you're allowed to have differing opinions. Appealing to ranks and logs is good if you use the data correctly.

unfortunately the "chicken little's" were more right then she was, the sky had been falling for a while and there is and was no need to have a dismissive attitude toward other players, whom have opinions and views.

Are you trying to say that people are looking at the logs and data incorrectly and there is no problem as indicated by others? Now i am no statistician by trade (although my job title was data analyst and stayed at a holiday inn express), but the logs, they give the look of quite a problem (not to mention personal experience watching 3 moonkin struggle in our first 20 wipes at Kros...i am glad i healed).

Even if everyone performed at 95%+ they would still be below some casters 75%. A portion of that could be attributed to ability and skill because of the small window moonkin have when it comes to performing a near perfect rotation when there is movement, but how big of a factor is this vs the upper limit of dps maximums? Perfect execution will not overcome the limits of the spec.

Seems we are repeating the same problems of 7.1.5. where a few people here told everyone not to worry we would be performing great, and had dismissive attitudes toward people whom started to notice a very big problem with ST going forward into mythic.

[Slippykins]

unfortunately the "chicken little's" were more right then she was, the sky had been falling for a while and there is and was no need to have a dismissive attitude toward other players, whom have opinions and views.

Are you trying to say that people are looking at the logs and data incorrectly and there is no problem as indicated by others? Now i am no statistician by trade (although my job title was data analyst and stayed at a holiday inn express), but the logs, they give the look of quite a problem (not to mention personal experience watching 3 moonkin struggle in our first 20 wipes at Kros...i am glad i healed).

Even if everyone performed at 95%+ they would still be below some casters 75%. A portion of that could be attributed to ability and skill because of the small window moonkin have when it comes to performing a near perfect rotation when there is movement, but how big of a factor is this vs the upper limit of dps maximums? Perfect execution will not overcome the limits of the spec.

Seems we are repeating the same problems of 7.1.5. where a few people here told everyone not to worry we would be performing great, and had dismissive attitudes toward people whom started to notice a very big problem with ST going forward into mythic.

Alright sure, I'll step into the discussion.

Firstly, I don't think it's wise to step into a discussion with your mind made up beforehand. I'm not saying you personally are doing that, but that's the prime reason why discussions never go anywhere. To put all people discussing a topic into two dichotomies, {Boomkin needs a buff, Boomkin does not need a buff} is silly -- clearly, this is a scale because it involves judgment. In so saying, I would put myself closer to "needs a buff" than "does not need a buff," and that's predicated on my own experiences, the people I've spoken to and the logs I've analysed. So let's not put people in nicely-wrapped boxes and instead pull apart arguments.

Secondly, and again maybe this isn't aimed at you, but the amount of times people purposefully misrepresent data to put their view forward is phenomenal. Here's an example: the sky is falling, look at how badly Boomkins are doing! We're at the bottom!



But I could have easily just given a different chart that looks like this:



Ah, my mistake, we're actually doing pretty well. We're in the top 30% of specs overall!

Obviously this is tongue-in-cheek. But who is to say which chart is "more representative"? To someone arguing we need a buff, probably the first one. To someone arguing we don't need a buff, probably the second one. You can look at any chart within that range and still say the same thing -- so this judgment in displaying data clearly has a bias. There is no "best" percentile ranking, because it depends on too many factors. Why do we observe such big changes between 99th and 95th? Is it because we have an extremely hard spec? Arguably not. Is it because of luck? Probably, Whispers in the Dark disproportionately affects top ranks. But then a lot of other specs also have the same trinket, so it's not a spec-specific issue.

So what am I trying to get at here? Essentially, the metric you choose to display the health of a class is ultimately flawed on some level. Warcraftlogs rankings are all biased toward burst cleave and people that can make use of cheesing mechanics: for instance, cleaving bloods on top of Tich for as long as possible, or having only one player cleave on Aluriel, Krosus, Botanist (flowers), Elisande, Gul'dan. This happens and will always happen in top guilds that have nothing better to do than cheese ranks. So looking at top rankings is inherently flawed because Boomkins will naturally be biased downwards -- we don't have the kit to abuse mechanic cheesing as well as say a Demon Hunter or Frost DK.

Ok, so we're not using Warcraftlogs rankings anymore to dictate and measure the health of our class. What now? We have three options: player experience, toolkit analysis and developer feedback. Player experience has more biases than rankings, but is important to initially identify what the problem is. The problem is that experience often overidentifies issues, so you need to figure out what's the pertinent problem. Toolkit analysis is where you look at what's provided to the spec, and figure out what's doing well, what's not doing well and what's missing. What's missing is the hardest and most relevant part. Developer feedback is usually confirmation or rejection of your hypotheses on the health of the class -- developers have more information and (usually) a better understanding of the spec, so their response is often great information.

I prefer to look at toolkit analysis, so that's what I'll be doing here. I think that the main issue with Boomkins today is the excessive opportunity cost of cleave (OCOC). Opportunity cost of cleave is defined as the ST DPS loss by selecting cleave talents to fit a cleave scenario. This wouldn't be a problem in a bubble -- if there were only two fights, ST and cleave, then the opportunity cost of switching to a cleave build would be irrelevant because the whole cleave fight is cleave. However, as is often the case, most fights are a hybrid between ST and cleave. Therefore, the opportunity cost of playing a cleave spec is a relevant cost to consider when selecting your talents. Not many other specs have as high OCOC as we do, so we relatively suffer when on a hybrid fight and have to single-target with a cleave spec on (think: Aluriel between adds). In comparison, DHs and DKs don't really have this issue -- they have cleave specs, but they also have a very high amount of passive cleave with a ST build. Therefore, they can afford to not take the OCOC on many fights and just choose to use their passive cleave as a DPS boost. We don't have that luxury -- our cleave in a ST build is abysmal.

Overall, I think our ST DPS is a little bit low, but I also think we're focusing too much on rankings that are unfavourably against us due to a bigger problem -- the opportunity cost of cleave.

[Lucrece]

Not just the opportunity cost, but the shit design.

Burst specs should not be putting anywhere close to the sustained damage of dot specs. That's what has made dot specs all but obsolete for dealing with adds (affliction is a pure single target boss turret spec, as is assassination rogue for that very reason).

Out go 2 sindragosas, 2 fury of the illidari+ eye beams, and there is simply no amount of health you can put on adds that will outlive that burst cleave/aoe unelss you make a council fight.

They NEED to tone down aoe burst or put significant long term costs to it by making burst classes noticeably inferior on boss damage.

What's the point of a ramp up class if the burst class can output the same DPS or better by the end of the fight? Burst should be a tax on a spec's DPS potential.

They could also simply condense Starfall's duration just like they did with earthquake, make it only affect sunfire, and significantly beef up the empowerment effect. You now deliver the aoe much quicker and probably before mobs die instead of now where by the time starfall has gotten 3 ticks the mobs are already dead.

And then there's single target. It seems some classes like warlock or druid HAVE to choose between ST or AoE builds, but not both. And yet melee in general besides arms/assassination/feral get to have their cake and eat it, doing both top tier single target and burst aoe and cleave.

[Lahis]

Can you imagine the amount of whine lowering the ST damage of those AoE burst kings would cause?

[Lucrece]

I honestly don't care. It's about time they stop caring about the whine. Mages cried a river until we got the monstrosity that is frost (top tier single target, and unlike affliction and demo it is also top tier aoe and cleave as well). Serenity and Exorsus brought 2+ shadow priests to their world firsts and still we had plenty of shadow priests whining about the state of shadowpriest.

Balance needs to make sense. it can't be about who can campaign on the forums best.

[Lahis]

Balance needs to make sense. it can't be about who can campaign on the forums best.

I believe that on the day devs drop in Dreamgrove #balance to discuss class changes instead of just lurking in the mage Discord.

[Kyanion]

Balance needs to make sense. it can't be about who can campaign on the forums best.

I mean you likely wouldn't find anyone that disagrees with the forum campaign part. There aren't just enough of us anyways even if we did want to mount a massive campaign on the forums like mages pulled off.

[Hellshout]

{Boomkin needs a buff, Boomkin does not need a buff} is silly

Why would people argue against a class needing a buff is beyond me? Why does it bother you to do more damage for free?

On topic: your claims of analyzing warcraftlogs is very true, a lot, if not 99% of those 90% logs are cheesed up more than France can hold in it's reserves.
But why is 40% logs a bad thing? It just shows how hard the class is to master, no? Or how much it depends on the right legendaries. Look at warr, 2nd place on 40% and 5th on 99%. Maybe the class is good for the whole palette of players.

People are always focusing on the top players, but we play also. Why base a class on what a handful of people say they can do.
My point is, it's not fair some classes can be retard proof, while ours has to be taught from father to son and studied at the University. We get a lot of punishment(not more than Feral, but still) for missing a spell in our surgeweave rotation, or if we start dotting adds that die too fast instead of SFall, or we have to build AsP in order to cast a SFall etc.

From my experience as an average owl, I enjoy the burst at the start of the fight, especially if we don't move. What I don't like is the fact that I have to choose, AoE or ST. Tried a cheesed out Tycho with ST build. It sucked. There is no use for Starsurge in there. So you spec AoE, but then if you don't cheese Tycho, you'll lose ST damage in order to get AoE.
Again, not fair imho. I don't know all classes, but I'm sure there are many that don't have to sacrifice as much as we do.

They said talents aren't meant to make or break a class, yet we can't complete without the proper spec. They said legos aren't meant to make or break a class, yet we can't complete without the proper legos.

I know I'm shooting out of my ass, but maybe make SFall do damage based on the type of target. Small lifeless adds, burst dmg in 3 seconds. Big adds/boss, sustained damage in 8 seconds. And find a way to balance the damage so we don't get OP. Meh, just an idea.

In any case, stop using 99% to make a class, it's not fair towards medium players. It's not fair towards pro players either. You think they don't struggle to keep up with an easier to master class?

#averagelifematters #wewantboomkin