Balance Druid 7.2.5 Patch notes

[wewe]

All of which are mechanical changes to the spec, yes. No tuning. Any power differences are incidental and will be compensated for before the tuning phase begins.

"All" is quite the stretch seeing as there are quite a lot of % dmg changes as well.

[Zan15]

we just had another change to New Moon/ Half Moon/ Full Moon,

they have been changed back to Arcane from Astral.

Meaning that they will also benifit from our Circadian Invocation, extra 6% Arcane Damage.

so that in turn is also an increase in our Single Target.

You have this waywrong.
Its always been arcane since a while ago.
This is a tooltip change.

2Nd astral would get both buffs which would be 12%.
So if they actually switched it today it would have been a nerg

[Moshots]

How is "8% damage increase to all abilities" a mechanical change?

Those were hotfixes to live.


The only Changes to PTR have been to specific spells and mechanics....

Other than Sub getting a 20% damage buff on PTR but that is due to them losing their 20% damage buffing spell that lasted 30 sec with a 10 sec cd that was removed to make place for a new spell because Temporary buffs with a 100% uptime is a bad game design and every other one in the game IE Feral/Ret/Prot paladin have already been removed in past expansions...

Overall though every PTR change has been mechanical we will still have some raid testing and multiple more patch notes before we get to final tuning of numbers.

[wewe]

Those were hotfixes to live.


The only Changes to PTR have been to specific spells and mechanics....

Other than Sub getting a 20% damage buff on PTR but that is due to them losing their 20% damage buffing spell that lasted 30 sec with a 10 sec cd that was removed to make place for a new spell because Temporary buffs with a 100% uptime is a bad game design and every other one in the game IE Feral/Ret/Prot paladin have already been removed in past expansions...

Overall though every PTR change has been mechanical we will still have some raid testing and multiple more patch notes before we get to final tuning of numbers.

And destro getting 10% and arms getting 10% and not to mention all the individual skills getting % changes. Anyway it's false to say it's only mechanical since there is clearly tuning involved already.
Still it dosn't matter, no one is claiming boomkin can't get tuning changes down the line, it just seems less likely that we would get some mechanics altering or whatnot.
Buffing some numbers here and there will make our numbers go up but without some more substantial changes boomkin in it's current iteration is/will be punished by movement (more so if you use ed + ife) way to hard.

[huth]

How is "8% damage increase to all abilities" a mechanical change?

You mean the tooltip corrections to account for Hotfixes to 7.2? None of which have any actual impact ingame, since they already show the hotfixed values, for that matter.

[Polarthief]

Nobody has gotten any tuning yet for 7.2.5, and it will stay that way for a few more weeks. Exactly the same as with 7.0, 7.1, 7.1.5 and 7.2. Funny how people forget that every 5 seconds.

You're 100% wrong about 7.1.5 (that patch was all mechanical and tuning) and that no one has gotten any tuning on the current PTR. 7.2.5 will also drop on live prior to ToS coming out, which will be around June. Oh and you think a 10% nerf to SD and 11% buff to SS aren't tuning? Kek.

we just had another change to New Moon/ Half Moon/ Full Moon,

they have been changed back to Arcane from Astral.

Source? The tooltips actually did the opposite of what you're saying (though mechanically the Moon spells have been Arcane for a good 2 patches or so now; the change on the recent PTR notes were tooltip fixes).

I highly doubt this will actually happen due to PvP reasons of being locked from both schools, the original reason why the Moon spells went from Astral to Arcane. Sadly it's a 6% damage loss on them, but what're ya gonna do?

[huth]

You're 100% wrong about 7.1.5 (that patch was all mechanical and tuning) and that no one has gotten any tuning on the current PTR. 7.2.5 will also drop on live prior to ToS coming out, which will be around June. Oh and you think a 10% nerf to SD and 11% buff to SS aren't tuning? Kek.

No tuning was done in any of those prior to the last few days. And no, that wasn't tuning, that was a mechanical change.

[Myztikrice]

Can you elaborate on your definition between a tuning change and a mechanical change?

[huth]

Can you elaborate on your definition between a tuning change and a mechanical change?

Tuning is meant to change your strength compared to other classes. Mechanics are meant to change your rotation and will generally have their damage effects nullified.

[Myztikrice]

How do you feel a 10% nerf to SD and 11% buff to SS changes your rotation?

[huth]

How do you feel a 10% nerf to SD and 11% buff to SS changes your rotation?

It makes Starfall on singletarget in memespec less practical.

[Polarthief]

Tuning is meant to change your strength compared to other classes. Mechanics are meant to change your rotation and will generally have their damage effects nullified.

It makes Starfall on singletarget in memespec less practical.

You are the only one who thinks the SS buff and SD nerf were "mechanical changes". Tuning means tweaking numbers, not necessarily relative to other classes/specs. Also, NO ONE was starfalling single-target unless you needed it for the mobility (e.g., Trilliax laser).

This is tuning, whether you think it is or not.

[BoomkinHell]

I've been a lurker for a while but boomkin has gotten to the point where I am just pissed with no outlet. I have 6 legendaries and no dreamcatcher, ilvl is 906. I decided to fuck around, because my parses could not get worse. I spammed moonfire to generate astral power, while doing the usual memekin aoe. No solar wrath, no lunar, just Moonfire. How broken are we, that I parsed higher this way than the last 3 weeks. Mechanics aren't even a problem with the instant casts. Just moonfiring away, and it hits hitting harder than my generators. I can fit in 3 moonfires, by the time a lunar strike is cast. It' slightly less astral power, but way more damage. After we killed Guldan, I logged off and just sat there for a while. Then, logged back in because fuck there's more WQs I need to do.

[Argenon]

I've been a lurker for a while but boomkin has gotten to the point where I am just pissed with no outlet. I have 6 legendaries and no dreamcatcher, ilvl is 906. I decided to fuck around, because my parses could not get worse. I spammed moonfire to generate astral power, while doing the usual memekin aoe. No solar wrath, no lunar, just Moonfire. How broken are we, that I parsed higher this way than the last 3 weeks. Mechanics aren't even a problem with the instant casts. Just moonfiring away, and it hits hitting harder than my generators. I can fit in 3 moonfires, by the time a lunar strike is cast. It' slightly less astral power, but way more damage. After we killed Guldan, I logged off and just sat there for a while. Then, logged back in because fuck there's more WQs I need to do.

I have a hard time believing a rotation involving moonfire spam competes with a properly done legit rotation.

[earthwormjim]

I have a hard time believing a rotation involving moonfire spam competes with a properly done legit rotation.

If there's enough adds that your dots ticking saturates your astral power bar, I can see it being the case that moonfire spamming would come out ahead.

With wax and wane, and the legendary shoulders, moonfire is more dps than LS or Wrath, it's jut behind on astral power generation.

I don't think that's the case though with this 1 time poster... He's not factoring in relic weapon points.

[Hellshout]

He also doesn't have ED, so he doesn't care that much about AsP gen. He can just fill the bar slowly, and if MF is doing more dmg, he might be right.

[Argenon]

With wax and wane, and the legendary shoulders, moonfire is more dps than LS or Wrath, it's jut behind on astral power generation.

I don't think that's the case though with this 1 time poster... He's not factoring in relic weapon points.

First, I agree with your assessment of the previous poster.

Second, about your claim that with wax and wane the damage of moonfire is more than LS or wrath, is this true for empowered LS and W? or just un-empowered? Even if that is true, it doesn't mean it is an overall DPS increase over LS or W, because if it is less astral power then thats less starsurges, and less starsurges = less DPS overall.

Please feel free to tell me I don't know what I am talking about, but I would be willing to guess that logs/numbers just don't support a moonfire spam rotation as viable after the direct damage removal from stellar empowerment.

-Edit-
Also, are we talking ST or AOE. BC that does change the conversation, though I still believe moonfire can't compete with a competent boomkin doing the right rotation.

[earthwormjim]

First, I agree with your assessment of the previous poster.

Second, about your claim that with wax and wane the damage of moonfire is more than LS or wrath, is this true for empowered LS and W? or just un-empowered? Even if that is true, it doesn't mean it is an overall DPS increase over LS or W, because if it is less astral power then thats less starsurges, and less starsurges = less DPS overall.

Please feel free to tell me I don't know what I am talking about, but I would be willing to guess that logs/numbers just don't support a moonfire spam rotation as viable after the direct damage removal from stellar empowerment.

-Edit-
Also, are we talking ST or AOE. BC that does change the conversation, though I still believe moonfire can't compete with a competent boomkin doing the right rotation.

Was referring to an AOE only context, so low chance you have empowered fillers.

Let's compare empowered and unempowered though and see, based on my guild's Elisande logs, if there is any validity. The other balance druid in my raid has the legendary shoulders. We're ignoring astral power generation.

His moonfires hit for about 300k (600k total if two targets are within 20 yards) each with 6 stacks of wax and wane. Empowered wrath 424k, unempowered wrath 374k , empowered lunar strike 708k, unempowered lunar strike 460k. These are all average values, including crits.

His GCD is about 1.2 seconds on average. Average wrath cast time 0.8 seconds (so GCD capped). Average lunar strike cast time was 1.5 seconds.

Moonfire DPS: 250k or 500k 2 target
Unempowered Wrath DPS: 311k
Empowered Wrath DPS: 353k
Unempowered LS: 306k + (n-1)Targets*(0.35*306k)
Empowered LS: 472k + (n-1)Targets*(0.35*472k)

So single target, there is no way imaginable that moonfire is higher dps than any of our fillers. For two targets, moonfire is 500k dps, a lot higher than wrath is empowered or unempowered. Lunar strike only matches this if empowered or hits 3 or more close targets. AOE situations have low empowered fillers.

If you do happen to get lucky with astral power generated from your dot ticks, I can definitely see moonfire spamming being better than our fillers or at least on par. Especially if the aoe targets are more than 5 yards appart, which can often happen (Guldan eyes).


*edit* revised the numbers to account for Celestial alignment throwing off wrath. Keep in mind these are values from an actual encounter, so sample size is small meaning crit can throw things off a bit.

[huth]

Empowered wrath 424k, unempowered wrath 395k , empowered lunar strike 708k, unempowered lunar strike 460k. These are all average values, including crits.

You sure about that Emp Wrath number? That would be less than the basic empowerment bonus without mastery...

[earthwormjim]

You sure about that Emp Wrath number? That would be less than the basic empowerment bonus without mastery...

Crit and celestial alignment were throwing the numbers off, he had about 5% more unempowered crits than empowered. A lot of unempowered wraths were during celestial alignment. I'll post revised values without celestial alignment.