Balance Druid 7.2.5 Patch notes

[Polarthief]

Isn't resto incarnation an extra spell too? Either way afaik the other specs rarely pick their SotF talents(might change for resto with the T20 set).

Yes it is and I totally forgot that, rip me.

That said though, I feel like it's incredibly lazy for the other specs to just throw SOTF at them instead of actually picking talents. Great for us, but other specs, not so much. They should have considered going spec-wide talents.

[huth]

Way too many people say the whole "wait for more info" or stuff, and I'll never understand it. The whole point of stuff being on PTR is to be TESTED and given FEEDBACK.

That's kind of the point. The ring isn't available for testing yet. All "feedback" is based on datamined sources which likely don't tell us the full story.

[Zan15]

Anyone who says otherwise is an absolute lunatic. There's only a month or so to release of the patch (it's coming with or even slightly before ToS is out) which doesn't give a lot of time to change stuff, given that we see a new build every 1-2 weeks and soon they'll be completely out of the mechanical phase of the patch and be purely in the numbers part.

Like Kyanion said, the wait-and-see approach doesn't work. It hasn't worked for the past 5 expansions/Vanilla and I can give you first-hand experience that it definitely doesn't work in this one either.

Exactly but if you log into our discord you will see the main drivers of our community all have the sit and wait and see approach.
they consistently make fun of the "sky is falling mmoC crowd" even though this is exactly how it went in 7.1.5

remember the whole cycle? Don't worry we will be fixed, Don't worry wait for tuning, Don't Worry wait for balancing part of the PTR, Don't worry wait for release, Don't worry wait for Balancing before the Heroic raid release, Don't worry they will add an aura to us, Don't worry don't Worry....wait wait wait.

I've never seen a community full of people that don't want to fight or even question things till the very last minute. Guess that's why every other squeaky wheel (all the other specs) have just about seen major changes....

but i guess i am just one of those sky is falling guys (even though i am only asking for minor changes and enhancements).

- - - Updated - - -

I feel like anyone complaining about the ring isn't seeing the overall power of it and its synergy with everything else else we have. That ring combined with our T20 2pc and being able to have incarnation alone should be enough to see the power. Also seems I've seen quite a bit of speculation towards getting this as our third legendary, If thats the case I feel like all I can see is a ton of power come 7.2.5. It seems like a lot of people want to complain about the state of balance ( I'm sure I've been there.) and even though I miss the old starfall and our old Shooting Stars/Starsurge procs, I've really grown to like the new starfall and I think this is probably one of the best iterations of balance we have had. I don't think I would be playing still if it weren't for legendaries/Artifact Weapon/M+. Just enjoy it friends!

No one has stated that.
everyone understands the sheer power of the ring.

Most dissenting views are that is an awful implantation of a fix for our class, where other specs have gotten their fixes baked into their baseline we have to use a ledge slot to get the same kind of fix.

they have said a lot, i believe, they have no intention of adding a 3rd ledge slot.

- - - Updated - - -

Way too many people say the whole "wait for more info" or stuff, and I'll never understand it. The whole point of stuff being on PTR is to be TESTED and given FEEDBACK.



.

Quoted for the truth.


But i am sure you will be lambasted for your view that god forbid you give feedback and comment on changes.

[Killuha]

That said though, I feel like it's incredibly lazy for the other specs to just throw SOTF at them instead of actually picking talents. Great for us, but other specs, not so much. They should have considered going spec-wide talents.

I agree that hand picking the talents would be better. They have for hunters and DKs but that's probably they have no common throughput talents. For druid I can see why they picked SotF since the rings are called "Soul of the [insertclasshalltitle]" so it would fit thematically, but mechanically it certainly feels like the easy way out.


A reason that they are only giving passives might be that talents gained from the legenadaries stack with the normal talents but I think that'd be highly unlikely and in our case pretty broken.


An interesting possibility for the future would be talents being added to already existing legendaries e.g. IFE grating Incarnationm, ED granting NB or Eko granting all affinities.

[Myztikrice]

Huth's latest comment just reminded me. Blizzard doesn't really care about PTR feedback, all they care about is whether the item works as it should so any feedback we should give is whether the ring does what it says and gives us an extra talent because Blizzard doesn't care about anything else. But they do revert changes like the ED change if enough people whine about it. So you can either take it or give it.

[Kyanion]

Exactly but if you log into our discord you will see the main drivers of our community all have the sit and wait and see approach.
they consistently make fun of the "sky is falling mmoC crowd" even though this is exactly how it went in 7.1.5.

And those "sky is falling mmoC crowd would say: "Yeah and look what that has gotten us. A weak spec when compared to many others that has a complex rotation, painful legendary requirements and a general lack of fun considering our resource spender is used for ST and AoE so you suffer on one while trying to focus on the other."

I personally don't view it as THAT drastic but it is pretty lame to see moonkins hitting 90th+ percentiles for our spec and getting toasted by other specs/classes on multitudes of different raid encounters on normal-mythic. I don't enjoy ED because of the haste to latency playstyle after the nerf. It is like the spec has tiny little issues that just add up to being not as fun as it was in prior expansions.

I mean are these discord people really that happy with the spec? I don't see too many people being content with how we've been doing in Legion and bandaid/problems like the new Lego ring surely don't help matters.

[Polarthief]

Exactly but if you log into our discord you will see the main drivers of our community all have the sit and wait and see approach.
they consistently make fun of the "sky is falling mmoC crowd" even though this is exactly how it went in 7.1.5

To be fair, there's a bit of a difference between doomsaying and being smart enough to know that wait-and-see doesn't work. Trust me, I've been on both ends of the spectrum at times.

Doomsayers: Screams "THE SKY IS FALLING!" every chance they get
Wait-and-See Players: Laughs at the Doomsayers and does nothing to help push through feedback/good suggestions
The Smart Middle: Doesn't panic and gives feedback. These are the people Blizzard listens to. Not often, but granted, they don't really care to listen at times

[huth]

The Smart Middle: Doesn't panic and gives feedback. These are the people Blizzard listens to. Not often, but granted, they don't really care to listen at times

It's more that "listening" doesn't equate to "doing what people say". They always listen, but they often disagree.

[Polarthief]

It's more that "listening" doesn't equate to "doing what people say". They always listen, but they often disagree.

I guess, but there's a LOT of problem they aren't responding to, addressing, or changing to fix. They also said they'd have more open communication, and if anything, it's been arguably worse as of late (not even referring to Balance/Druid, just in general, they've been really bad).

So, idk anymore.

[darklogrus]

If the whole class design/balance is based around having an 'ideal' legendary ring, then you pretty much failed from the get go.

[Slippykins]

I'm one of those discord people, yet I'm very active with analysing our strengths and weaknesses as they change on the PTR. I simmed our damage for Tomb, I simmed the ring, I even made a thread on the PTR forums about the 2pc/4pc issue.

Yet I'm also someone who lambasts the "sky is falling" type, because I think we'll do well in Tomb from the evidence I've presented. So I don't think it's right to say "those discord people" are all wait-and-see type players when they are mostly "let's discuss these general implications and the consequences for our spec."

[Kyanion]

I'm one of those discord people, yet I'm very active with analysing our strengths and weaknesses as they change on the PTR. I simmed our damage for Tomb, I simmed the ring, I even made a thread on the PTR forums about the 2pc/4pc issue.

Yet I'm also someone who lambasts the "sky is falling" type, because I think we'll do well in Tomb from the evidence I've presented. So I don't think it's right to say "those discord people" are all wait-and-see type players when they are mostly "let's discuss these general implications and the consequences for our spec."

I think my biggest problem with "those discord people" is that when it comes to looking at how the spec is doing in current content things get skewed in favor of the great players. Keep in mind there are plenty of balance druids out there ranging from awful to best in the world. My point is that when it has come to looking at logs of average to above average players they are laughed out of the room because they didn't win the Legendary/Titanforged lottery and ignored. That is a problem in this section of the forums as well.

I really doubt Blizzard balances around the top 1% because they have to look at what all of their players are doing to try and put out specs that can compete with each other. In that I think Blizzard has failed various specs and I think Balance is one of them to some degree. We've heard this "I think we'll do well in X content" all throughout this expansion and sorry that hasn't been true when weighed across all of the raiding content and even M+ dungeons.

I like balance, have been playing it for 12 years and have no intent to stop as long as I play this game. I've enjoyed the spec in other expansions but in this one it feels like it is just missing something. I still think having a builder/spender resource system is terrible when the spender is used for ST or AoE and that choice limits you in talent choices as well. It just highlights what a problem some of the design choices are when we look at ED, this new legendary ring and what our options are when it comes to prepping on a fight by fight basis.

[Polarthief]

I like balance, have been playing it for 12 years and have no intent to stop as long as I play this game. I've enjoyed the spec in other expansions but in this one it feels like it is just missing something. I still think having a builder/spender resource system is terrible when the spender is used for ST or AoE and that choice limits you in talent choices as well. It just highlights what a problem some of the design choices are when we look at ED, this new legendary ring and what our options are when it comes to prepping on a fight by fight basis.

I'd love for Starfall to become an AoE cooldown again, but maybe make it so MF/SF ticks and direct casts reduce the cooldown of Starfall, so we'd have a set AoE rotation of spamming Fires/Starfall instead of ??? > ??? > Starfall > ??? > ??? > Starfall (because it's really awkward for non-Starfall AoE casting at the moment). This would also eliminate the mandatory SOTF talent for AoE since there's no cost reduction that absolutely has to be taken.

[Kyanion]

I'd love for Starfall to become an AoE cooldown again, but maybe make it so MF/SF ticks and direct casts reduce the cooldown of Starfall, so we'd have a set AoE rotation of spamming Fires/Starfall instead of ??? > ??? > Starfall > ??? > ??? > Starfall (because it's really awkward for non-Starfall AoE casting at the moment). This would also eliminate the mandatory SOTF talent for AoE since there's no cost reduction that absolutely has to be taken.

I wish they'd do something to let us have some sort of AoE we could use at the start of a fight be it letting us start with 60 AP on pulls or just some way to make it on demand every once in a while. I don't expect us to mow things down like cleave happy melee but the ramp up to our AoE can be pretty brutal.

The other thing I'd love to see is some talent tree changes so we actually have some options instead of 1 choice for AoE and 1 choice for ST. We have a fair amount of dead talents as well as a couple that could stand to be baked into our class like NB.

[Polarthief]

I wish they'd do something to let us have some sort of AoE we could use at the start of a fight be it letting us start with 60 AP on pulls or just some way to make it on demand every once in a while. I don't expect us to mow things down like cleave happy melee but the ramp up to our AoE can be pretty brutal.

The other thing I'd love to see is some talent tree changes so we actually have some options instead of 1 choice for AoE and 1 choice for ST. We have a fair amount of dead talents as well as a couple that could stand to be baked into our class like NB.

Yeah for sure. Regarding talents, Starlord was ALWAYS a part of our kit, IIRC it was "Grace of Nature"? Something like that. Don't remember exactly how it worked but it basically made us cast quicker. Chopping that off and turning it into a talent just feels shitty. NB IIRC was the same in that we had it and they turned that into a talent too. Both are just convenient QoL boosts and I don't see why they should be talents. SOTF also really should be baked in (at least the AsP reduction of it).

Then we have the dead talents...
- L15: FoN is pretty worthless outside of Skittish/Necrotic (and even then, you really don't need it) or when soloing with pre-EN raid gear levels (which is irrelevant since you can get 850 the same day you hit 110 without much effort). WoE is okay but so much worse than SL if you're Starsurging (otherwise SL is worthless, again showing us the inherent problem with our talents of SS vs Starfall). WoE is fine if you remove SL and bake it in.
- L30: Renewal is shit and Displacer really needs to not shift us. I'm already using WC and would probably stick with it even if Displacer didn't shift us anymore because I like the lower CD when needed. Still, renewal is shit.
- L75: SOTF is pretty weak when not using Starfall (again, that cost reduction should be baked in and SOTF changed overall), and StFl... We all know that thing needs to be torn apart and rebuilt.
- L90: More ST vs AoE. Honestly I hate this entire tier. I feel like you could scrap it and bake ShS into the spec (so you can get tons of AsP during AoE with DoTs, which is still similar to my idea of lowering the CD of Starfall from DoTs; I mean it's essentially the same thing since you get more AsP).
- L100: Bake in NB, scrap or fix FoE, and SD, IMO you could make it better for ST since it's worthless there. Maybe consider adding some Starsurge damage (like 5-10%) and/or making Starsurge allow your next 2 Solar Wraths or Lunar Strikes to be cast while moving (to keep to the theme of what SD is right now). More mobility would never hurt since our ST mobility is a bit lacking (unless you consider Waxkin, but that's only relevant short-term movement. Longer movement, we're god awful).

[Hellshout]

...

Everything you said, while true, means a major class change and they swore not to do it. Utter shit if you ask me. Build a shit spec and then "sorry we can't change it, we said we don't do major changes"...

I think the ring will shine in AoE spec right? Because we're ok sacrificing ED then and pick up Incarn for burst. On ST....speachless. Feral might benefit a lot from it.

What I dislike a lot about our 2 subspecs is the difference between them. The playstyle if completely changed. Not to mention if you don't use ED for AoE I still do surgeweaving like a moron and fuck up everything. ...

[Mewseph]

Nature's grace. It went through many many iterations, up to WotLK it was a 0.5 cast reduction proc on your next spell on spell crit, to a 3 second 20/15% casting speed buff that procced on spell crits (I remember trying to hit the Haste breakpoint for a 3rd Lunar strike during the BT trinket proc), to a Haste 15%/15sec buff that was procced by casting DoTs with a high ICD but was reset by entering Eclipse then changed to a straight proc on entering Eclipse in Mists. I believe Nature's grace was removed in WoD and that's when we got the 20% reduced cast time with SW/LS empowerments and that got turned into Starlord when Euphoria was removed.

NG was incredibly strong during LK/Cata, it greatly increased the value of Crit on our gear. Honestly, if it was baseline in Legion it'd be OP as fuck in most of its interations. Starlord just out performs the other options, makes our rotation far far smoother, and enables Emerald dreamcatcher abuse. The talent is really really good.

[Rocksteadee]

What I dislike a lot about our 2 subspecs is the difference between them. The playstyle if completely changed.

I think this is actually what's making me most likely switch mains for ToS. I just don't enjoy the AoE playstyle of balance at all. I think it took me a while to realize it because at the beginning it was just so nice to be viable in AoE, but I just don't enjoy it, and it has seemed to scale poorly because other classes are putting out so much more AoE now it's making ours worse as well.

It sucks that elemental and shadow are down in the logs like us because our raid needs ranged, but I hate not playing a hybrid class :/

[kosars]

I think this is actually what's making me most likely switch mains for ToS. I just don't enjoy the AoE playstyle of balance at all. I think it took me a while to realize it because at the beginning it was just so nice to be viable in AoE, but I just don't enjoy it, and it has seemed to scale poorly because other classes are putting out so much more AoE now it's making ours worse as well.

It sucks that elemental and shadow are down in the logs like us because our raid needs ranged, but I hate not playing a hybrid class :/

This is just idle musings, (Also note I'm talking specifically about balance. Most of what I say isn't necessarily true for other specs) but it seems like most other classes (Note: i know very little about shamans, priests, and paladins atm, so you may exclude those from this), have very good, if not in some cases exceptional dps (aoe, ST, or both depending on class/spec), and some great survivability tools to go with it.
For a long time druids never had any of this (Ok there was period of time where aoe was absolutely insane, and a few times feral ST was off the charts, but balance in particular has always lacked the survivability tools of other classes, and has never really been able to compete with the top classes in ST damage). The excuse for this was, as a druid, we already had so many tools available that were inherent to the class, that having everything the other classes had would just be OP - and I agree with that. Very good self heals, survivability tools available via bear form, excellent mobility (Not always the ability to be mobile and maintain dps, but always excellent mobility), really just about everything. It was perfectly ok to not excel at anything, because you could do everything.

Somewhere along the line, they decided this wasn't a good idea - so they stripped it all away. Mobility is still there for the most part, but the heals are gone, the survivability tools are gone. Sure you can talent into one of them, but even then it's pretty sub-par and barely a shadow of what it used to be. The problem with this, is they didn't give us any of the tools other classes have that we never needed before. Even with resto affinity, self-heals are pretty poor. The only thing keeping me alive most of the time when doing solo content is promise of elune. With guardian affinity (which is probably better in a raid setting), sure you take less damage, but you lose the ability to heal it back up, and you still don't gain any real mitigation tools. Barkskin is... well, it's surprisingly not that good.

Anyway the point of this rambling is that druids aren't really a hybrid class anymore. Sure you have all the different specs and you can pick and choose one and go with it, but thanks to the artifact power mechanic, even swapping specs isn't something viable on a regular basis. Once you pick a spec though, you're for all intents and purposes, locked into it, and you lose the vast majority of offerings the other ones give. It's like blizzard decided they didn't like the druid toolkit being as big or varied as it was, so they decided to change it up so we're basically a "pure" class once we pick a spec, but they forgot to give us the toolkit everyone else has available.

On a side note, much of what I've seen makes it seem like a lot of changes were made for the benefit of pvp (removing the self heals/survivability, removing stuff like ursols vortex, but for some reason resto still gets it???), but then I look at the honor talents and see spells I thought were removed (cyclone for example) sitting there, and it just sorta baffles. Honestly though, these days, I feel a lot less like a druid, and more like a bad mage.

[thedeisel]

re: sky is falling mmoc people v discord people

I find this pretty strange. I have to be honest, I can't take much time on discord and use it only for links really because it's so toxic in terms of the amount of noise to signal. It's just so filled with chaf and mindless repeating of the same questions again and again that it just takes too much effort to sort through to find the good stuff.

But the main reason I find this debate strange is no one ever says what they mean by 'sky is fall' or 'everything is fine'.

From what I can tell, by far the most significant complaint 'sky is falling people' have is about single target output.

Could anyone possibly look at the data (pick any data set you want 50th through 75th percentile, 75th through 95th percentile, 85th through 95th percentile, Max only) and think that our single target output (Trilliax, Anomaly, Botanist, Krosus) is even middle class? The best it gets is at the max. At spec Max the median spec does 5% more damage than moonkin. It only gets worse as you go down. By the time you're at 75th percentile, the median dps spec is doing more than 10% more damage than moonkin. Even at the 95th percentile, we're a full standard deviation below the average spec. Single target output is by far the most important output in raiding and that's why they try so hard to balance it well. They just missed on moonkin. Flat out. It's in the data. Ever since the hot fix buffs came out post 7.2 to other classes, moonkin (after a brief bump with Circadian Invocation) returned to the basement.

So, those are the data. So I'll repeat my question from before. What do people who are talking about 'sky is falling' people think that 'sky is falling' people think? That the class is unwelcome in raids? No one thinks that, though, to be sure, at the very highest end of progress moonkin were far less represented than I ever remember them being since ICC. As far as I can tell, 'sky is falling' people just think that single target damage is undertuned. What am I missing?

Maybe the raid encounter design in ToS is changing a lot? Maybe there's lots of spread (enough sothat melee can't cleave) but not too spread (so that starfall can still hit everything)? Maybe there aren't a lot of burst AoE demands? Honestly, I don't know. I haven't seen anything like the brilliant writeup that Nagura did on the PTR forums before 7.1 released which essentially nailed every shortcoming Moonkin had and continue to have through the end of nighthold. But if Nighthold looks like ToS, I'm not sure what reason we have to believe at the moment (caveat: more tuning still possible!) that Moonkin will fare better in ToS than it did in NH.

I have to say, it seems to me that, historically speaking, NH was the weakest performance I can remember for Moonkin from ICC until now—that's not to say that Moonkin was fully unviable or worthless. I've been able to play just fine in my guild that is only 9/10M atm. I just notice that I'm consistently weaker than I have ever been in terms of important throughput measures than I generally have been even though I'm playing with pretty much the same people. The WCL data back that up. I never remember seeing moonkin so consistently low on so many kinds of encounters. And top end representation of Moonkin at the very bleeding edge backs that up.

Is it encounter design change that makes people think our single target deficiencies won't be as important in the next tier? As someone who doesn't raid test on PTR I'd be very happy to hear an encounter by encounter breakdown as to why ToS is different than NH.