[Balance] Legion Discussion

[huth]

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

Because a) there's other classes too and b) it's never free.

[Hellshout]

Because a) there's other classes too and b) it's never free.

So other balance druids argue against balance buff because they care about other classes?
And by free I meant you don't have to do anything as a person that doesn't want a buff. You don't want a buff, ok. Here's a buff, do more damage.

I wasn't talking about interaction with Blizzard, but if you want to go there, tell me what wasn't free about 4% buff for ferals? They were lacking, got 4%. Poof like Houdini.

[Drogotaar]

I don't even mind sacrificing single target for AoE and vice versa, but if we already are a binary AoE (x)or ST class, at least we have to have decent ST to compensate. And that simply isn't true atm.

[Dragontoth]

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.

A big problem with those charts comes pretty much down to our design. Our DPS will Skyrocket if we can cheese on adds or cleave the whole fight on Botanist, so the top Percentiles (95%+) will not represent the average or even the top player, they just represent a fight where everything is tailored to fit 1 or 2 players.

When u look at fight, where u can't tailor to 1 person, mostly ST, Balance never goes higher than 4th from bottom (Krosus and Trilliax).

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.

Right now it feels like there is absolutly no reason to bring a Moonkin, since we dont exceel at anything and are not overall good, we just have nothing left.
ST we are pretty much garbage, Cleave SP is better while also beeing better on ST, Burst AOE alot of specs are better while not having to spec full AOE and outdpsing us on ST. We dont have any really outstanding utility. Innervate gets outclassed by Warrior Cry and DH darkness.
Other classes have way better AOE/Cleave without having to sacrifice their ST and vice versa.
We have a really high opportunity cost for AOE/Cleave, but we also don't get anything for it. Even when we spec into it we still get outclassed by others who dont need to spec that far. Shouldn't we atleast be rewarded for having such a high cost?

[thedeisel]

I think slippy nailed the problem of the class and it's something I described above.

Our core class mechanic forces us to choose between doing all of our damage to one target (starsurge) or equal damage to all targets (starfall). Our baseline spells are so weak that all of our damage derives from our AP choice. It's an exclusive choice.

On top of our core mechanics forcing us to go to extremes, our talents also go to extremes. Either we focus on buffing starfall or we focus on buffing starsurge. There's nothing that really helps on both and the hybrid builds miss out on what is best about each of the single target or starfall builds.

On top of that, our Starfall increasing talents are an order of magnitude more powerful for increasing our multi target damage than our single target talents are at increasing our single target damage.

I think we'd largely be okay with some combination of buffs to starsurge/nukes and some proper single target talents.

Ideally, though, they'd drastically increase either our baseline nuke or dot damage and alter the empowerment system to make it less of an increase for whichever baseline part they increase. That would drastically reduce the Opportunity Cost of Cleave for us allowing us to not pay such a steep opportunity cost.

[earthwormjim]

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.

It's representative of the massive variation in our damage, depending on procs. If you get a whispers proc on the opener or it lines up with CDs, you will place 90-100th percentile, and keep up with other classes in single target. No whispers proc on opener, bye bye keeping up with other classes. Since trinkets proc'ing on the opener is a relatively small occurrence, you only see it concentrated in the comparatively small 95th percentile.

[Zan15]

Alright sure, I'll step into the discussion.


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.

To be fair about the logs they are a useful tool if you know how to use them and you are willing to discount the top 10-15% and the bottom 10-15% because of the high possibility of cheese and butt poor logs because of god knows what.
Even though one can make the argument if people are "cheesing" it, they are doing so for all classes and if moonkin fall behind on the cheese it might be representative of a ceiling of DPS that is set way too low for them or way too high for other classes (warlocks on scorp for example or moonkin on tish farm).

Also if you were to take your 99% logs and just look at the relative ST fights and those with minor cleave it still shows the problem with moonkins ST ability.

Tril- Basically tied for last, 2nd to last. 15%ish behind top 3
Kros- 2nd to last, (lets ignore soon to be nerfed AF warlocks) 10%+


The few ST fights with quick add spawns speaks to your OCOC, where thanks to classes like DH/DK/Shaman nothing stays up long enough for starfall to have an effect.

Chrono- 3 way tie for 2nd to last. 10-15%. Casters at top are a perfect example of burst AOE and good ST damage.

Your OCOC is perfectly correct since on fights where there are sustained cleave we do competitive damage because we can spec for it. (i almost want to discount tish mythic as much as scorp at this point because of cheese)


There is one additional problem with moonkin i don't think i see mentioned much. Its not a difficult rotation, even with helm. But its a very unforgiving rotation where a tiny little oops and you have a huge drop in dps. other classes seem to have much more forgiveness when it comes to executing at 80%+ of max potential.
Throw in our still huge problem with helm/ring have and have nots and it becomes a bigger problem. At this point i kind of wish the helm would go away.


Another problem i see is thanks to 7.2 there are caster classes that are performing WAY too well on ST heavy movement fights (kros/Chrono). This enhances the problem of classes that are doing ok, and gives the increase perception that the class is broken to raid leaders, officers and players whom don't play moonkin. Kros has really made this appear to be WAAAAAAAAAY worse then it is because of the tight dps requirements
(we killed him last night first time 6:03....so close that we got loot but no achieve :P . we sat a moonkin half way through the night as people logged in on other classes. i did not get to dps even though i am at 44 in my weapon cause we can't seem to find healers to stick around)



Right now i feel we are kind of stuck since we do very well on a few key fights, buffing our ST damage would also increase our performance on these fights and make us one of those outliers while trying to be competitive on the other fights. Then the "nerf moonkin" chants will start.

i would gladly give up some of our sustained AOE for ST and burst AOE.

[Cadaaga]

I'll start off by saying no one likes a couch developer but it seems like there isn't really a vision for boomin right now. I will probably throw in a post on the bnet forums later but thought i might toss in my 2 cents here and see if anyone agrees with me. I highly doubt we will get anything in the way of sweeping changes to talents or anything and probably just a blanket buff/nerf if anything but I can think of several ways they could fill in some of the gaps in our toolkit or at the very least make our tradeoffs meaningful enough to matter.

First off we lose some significant damage if we take SOTF over incarnation because of the doubled duration of our only dps cooldown. I feel like that is a tradeoff that is probably ok because of how much faster we can get our aoe rolling with SOTF but could be mitigated a little bit if CA was baseline 20 seconds and the trait haste increase for casts was toned down a bit.

Second we basically have no ST dps increase from our lvl 100 talents. Yes Nature's Balance is our go to but all it really does is save some gcds on our dots and realistically nullifies one of the new traits (W&W) that we just got in 7.2...Literally no one uses fury of elune because it just isnt worth the set up or the opportunity cost of not casting SS with all the bonuses we get from tier/artifact traits. That leaves two options for talent changes that could significantly boost our performance if we get a decent new one.

Some things that come to mind (would obviously need a large amount of testing and tuning):
1-replaces natures balance: spell that consumes 3 empowerment charges on lets say a 10 second cooldown if it even needs a cooldown
x3 Solar consumption- uses the added value of the charges on a single large solar wrath. maybe it even gives the value of 3 Solar
wraths' AP although that might get out of hand with Inc/BotA/t20bonuses
x3 Lunar consumption- causes the next lunar strike to be an automatic crit and apply stellar empowerment to the afflicted targets for
x seconds
I'm sure someone else could come up with better effects but im just spitballing.
2. replace Natures balance with original ED effect and change the effect on the helm to
a) Starsurge causes the target to suffer a tick from any active dots (including Stl FL) with Stellar empowerment applied to the tick
b) SS increases the critical strike chance or just dmg of moon spells by x amount stacking y times
c) same as b except empowered SW/LS instead of moon spells

3. FoE seems intended to fill our burst aoe slot for lvl 100. seeing as how that isnt accomplished change FoE to
Wild mushroom replaces Starfall - causes a wild mushroom to grow and explode dealing x astral damage in y radius and applying stellar empowerment to the targets for z seconds.

again just ideas spouted off that maybe blizz could take and make their own but the empowerment system seems lacking and at the very least some of these options build off of that system if that is the design goal for moonkins. what do you guys think

[Kyanion]

I feel like a lot of things could be done if they just helped out some of our talents. Incarnation and Nature's Balance should just be baseline. We get punished way too hard for having to pick talents to help our AoE and our already weak ST takes even more of a hit when we do it.

[MV Kaa]

I feel like a lot of things could be done if they just helped out some of our talents. Incarnation and Nature's Balance should just be baseline. We get punished way too hard for having to pick talents to help our AoE and our already weak ST takes even more of a hit when we do it.

Our talents are fine. We dont lose much dps taking SD over NB when the fight has a little bit of aoe. Same with taking SotF and Incarnation.

[gobio]

Our talents are fine. We dont lose much dps taking SD over NB when the fight has a little bit of aoe. Same with taking SotF and Incarnation.

I made the mistake of thinking this way, to the point that before 7.2 most of my progression raid on Krosus I use SD over NB because the raid leader hyping up the importance of "a little bit of aoe" (even thoughthat is true).

NB really isn't that insignificant and I definitely feel it when I didn't have this talent. Every GCD count.

[thedeisel]

Our talents are fine. We dont lose much dps taking SD over NB when the fight has a little bit of aoe. Same with taking SotF and Incarnation.

The problem with our talents isn't that we we don't lose all that much Single Target when we go starfall build. It's that our single target talents aren't in the same realm of effect as our Starfall talents. SotF and Stellar Drift are ridiculously huge buffs to Starfall. We get nothing like that for starsurge from NB/Starlord/Inc.

Missing NB/Inc is definitely noticeable on single target when you don't have it as well even if it's not in the same range of the massive effect that Stellar Drift's/SotF's has on Starfall.

[Kyanion]

Our talents are fine. We dont lose much dps taking SD over NB when the fight has a little bit of aoe. Same with taking SotF and Incarnation.

It sucks not having NB and the playstyle does not feel as fun when you have to refresh dots more often. You say we don't lose "much dps" but the thing is we DO lose some and it changes our playstyle to try and help our AoE or ST depending on the situation. I am looking at this from a playstyle standpoint and how things will be going forward into the next raid.

If our talents are 'fine' (which is hella debateable) then what do you suggest be done for the spec?

[gobio]

I'll start off by saying no one likes a couch developer but it seems like there isn't really a vision for boomin right now....

Not to be nitpicky here, but their vision on boomkin is very clear. a build up AE class and a build up single target class.
The problem with balance druid single target is :

1) For fight mechanics that force range casters to stop casting more than 2-3 seconds (thus interrupting our rotation via leg. helm), this punish balance druid way too much harsh compare to other casters. Or even for the fights that requires target switching. If this is "intended" as we are "build up class" then :

2) for all the restriction (or vision) designed for balance druid to "build up" dps, when all condition meet together magically, meaning you have helm and ring, and 33% haste, and good internet, and raid leader allow you to stay on boss forever, and the boss does not single you out to move away, and your BIS trinket proc at perfect timing, and you watch your haste% add on and press the button perfectly. Having all that, you are still only doing "competitive" dps. I would say it is fair for balance druid to shine just a bit on DPS when all above conditions are met one a while.

[Cadaaga]

Not to be nitpicky here, but their vision on boomkin is very clear. a build up AE class and a build up single target class.

You are correct, vision was probably a poor choice of words. We are very clearly meant to be a builder/spender class that has to make choices between ST and AoE which is fine. I actually am a very big fan of the current iteration. I think the empowerment concept is pretty unique but that it doesn't exactly deliver the kind of power we need it to for ST. As many people have said our AoE talents give us a huge buff to our Aoe potential whereas our ST talents give a much less significant boost.

Don't get me wrong it is very noticeable when you dont have Inc/NB on ST and trying to do the ED rotation without NB is a nightmare and significantly cuts down on the amount of SS you can push out in your weave phase with the 4 set increased damage. But it seems like some of our ST talents could be replaced/given baseline in order to make room for some more meaningful power fpr our ST. Especially when some of the talents never see the light of day *cough* Fury of Elune *cough*

[Myztikrice]

Whaddya know, the same person saying Boomkins were fine because they were doing AoE numbers in Heroic before Mythic came out is saying their talents are fine.

[Cadaaga]

Not to be nitpicky here, but their vision on boomkin is very clear. a build up AE class and a build up single target class.

You are correct vision was a poor choice of words. We are very clearly meant to be a builder spender class that has to make choices between ST or AoE and whichever spender we choose increases the power of our filler spells/dot damage respectively. What I should've said is that currently we don't seem to fulfill that vision; by which i mean that we have a melee type resource builder/spender but our spenders have a good portion of their damage moved into empowering our other abilities. Either we need to just be build/spend and have a our spenders do the brunt of our damage, like a melee, or they need to flesh out the empowerment system and make our talents actually affect the empowered spells. Currently Starlord is the only talent that actually affects empowered spells. All of our AoE talents only affect starfall direct damage or resource generation.

Obviously AoE isnt our main issue though, most of us are concerned about or ST damage. As many people have stated we simply don't gain as much from our ST talents as much as we do when we spec for AoE. Don't get me wrong its definitely noticeably when you dont have Inc/NB, especially with ED, but we dont get nearly as much power from those two talents for ST as we do when we take SotF and Stellar drift for aoe.

[Zan15]

Whaddya know, the same person saying Boomkins were fine because they were doing AoE numbers in Heroic before Mythic came out is saying their talents are fine.

i think you might have him confused with someone else because MV Kaa has always talked about how important ST damage is even on fights that have AoE components.

"Sure, go memespec for all fights, Im sure your RL will enjoy you padding" is one of my favorite quotes from him.

he was one of the few people that supportted early on our ST was bad.

i don't think our talents are all that messed up, relative to other classes. the problem is tuning of the class makes it so if you choose one spec over the other you suffer vastly more then other classes.

[Myztikrice]

Well I'm not. The importance of ST damage on fights with AoE components has nothing to do with whether Boomkins are fine. He said we should go ST and not pad, he didn't say our ST was bad.

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i don't think our talents are all that messed up, relative to other classes. the problem is tuning of the class makes it so if you choose one spec over the other you suffer vastly more then other classes.

Hint, that's what they mean when they say our talents are messed up.

[Zan15]

Well I'm not. The importance of ST damage on fights with AoE components has nothing to do with whether Boomkins are fine. He said we should go ST and not pad, he didn't say our ST was bad.

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Hint, that's what they mean when they say our talents are messed up.

No the tuning is messed up. much different then the talents being crap or messed up.
if you had much bigger benefits for choosing ST or AOE through tuning changes then i think it would solve most of the problems without actually having to change the actual talents.
Much better chance of that happening then a mass overhaul of talents which they are not going to do.