Balance Druid 7.2.5 Patch notes

[Zan15]

I topped our Trilliax kill this week with over a million dps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe lucky maybe others unlucky

Oh wait it was because our frost mages, good hunter, good affli, good DKs were not there LUL

dont worry at your parse, ilvl 916 1.041m...you still are only a little bit behind....


shadow priest 1.258m 20.8%

Fire 1.174m 12.7%

arcane 1.170m 12.3%


ele 1.105m 6.14%


demo 1.287m 23.6%

dstro 1.141m 9.6%

beast 1.313m 26.1%

marks 1.198m 15%



i got bored at this point

of course there has been more then enough post to support this in way more detail then this shows....and way more substantial then just 1 v 1 comparisons.

[beaver1024]

well based on numbers and arguments, it ended up being a big nerf....they are still in the process of fixing it based on todays post.

Stellar Drift got nerfed even though Balance Druids are nowhere near the top for AoE. No compensation.

[Myztikrice]

I topped our Trilliax kill this week with over a million dps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe lucky maybe others unlucky

Oh wait it was because our frost mages, good hunter, good affli, good DKs were not there LUL

Why would that matter? Or were you able to fit in an extra Incarnation?

[Deleted]

are there any major changes coming in 7.2.5?

[wewe]

are there any major changes coming in 7.2.5?

Yes but not to us.

We are getting a Starsurge buff and a Stellar Drift nerf. Plus one good legendary and one bad to even it out.

[Deleted]

Yes but not to us.

We are getting a Starsurge buff and a Stellar Drift nerf. Plus one good legendary and one bad to even it out.

cool thanks, what is the starsurge buff?

[Deleted]

Because in a list there will always be an entry at the bottom. The point is the disparity between each entry.

its about the difference between the top and the last, current 20-50% a maybe, just maybe, just a little to extreme...but im no expert

[Tauton]

(From the patch notes)

Balance

Stellar Drift now increases Starfall’s damage by 50% (was 60%).
Starsurge damage increased by 11%.

Balance

The Emerald Dreamcatcher: Starsurge reduces the Astral Power cost of your Starsurges by 5 Astral Power (was 7) for 5 seconds (was 3 seconds), stacking up to 2 times.

Whispers in the Dark’s casting speed bonus and penalty now scale like a secondary stat.

I think that's everything that relates to us.

[wewe]

Whispers in the Dark’s casting speed bonus and penalty now scale like a secondary stat.

So what does this mean ?

[Tyze]

Stellar Drift now increases Starfall's damage by 50% (was 60%).
Starsurge damage increased by 11%.

The Emerald Dreamcatcher: Starsurge reduces the Astral Power cost of your Starsurges by 5 Astral Power (was 7) for 5 seconds (was 3 seconds), stacking up to 2 times.


These were all the changes we got during this PTR

[Ifeanychukwu]

Stellar Drift now increases Starfall's damage by 50% (was 60%).
Starsurge damage increased by 11%.

The Emerald Dreamcatcher: Starsurge reduces the Astral Power cost of your Starsurges by 5 Astral Power (was 7) for 5 seconds (was 3 seconds), stacking up to 2 times.


These were all the changes we got during this PTR

Just wait! There's still 4 days until the patch goes live!

[Gemini Soul]

So what does this mean ?

Diminishing returns most likely.


Looks like we got the short end of the stick for class changes, some had a lot of changes done and got flat dmg increases.

- - - Updated - - -

Stellar Drift now increases Starfall's damage by 50% (was 60%).
Starsurge damage increased by 11%.

The Emerald Dreamcatcher: Starsurge reduces the Astral Power cost of your Starsurges by 5 Astral Power (was 7) for 5 seconds (was 3 seconds), stacking up to 2 times.


These were all the changes we got during this PTR

Tauton already posted those, 2 posts before you and 40 mins before you. So why post it again?

[Tyze]

Diminishing returns most likely.


Looks like we got the short end of the stick for class changes, some had a lot of changes done and got flat dmg increases.

- - - Updated - - -



Tauton already posted those, 2 posts before you and 40 mins before you. So why post it again?

Not sure I didnt look lol

[Kluian05]

So what does this mean ?

I'm also curious about the change of whispers.

•Whispers in the Dark’s casting speed bonus and penalty now scale like a secondary stat.

Did whispers scale non-linearly with ilvl? Perhaps it just means higher ilvl whisper trinkets will have slightly less haste increase/reduction than before.

[Zan15]

I'm also curious about the change of whispers.

•Whispers in the Dark’s casting speed bonus and penalty now scale like a secondary stat.

Did whispers scale non-linearly with ilvl? Perhaps it just means higher ilvl whisper trinkets will have slightly less haste increase/reduction than before.

Seems its less % if you get higher ilvl procs then it would have been. Since ilvl procs are getting a boost say if you get a 940 whispers, its not going to be as high % as it would have/could have been prior to this patch.

say it would have been 60%, its now 55%...or something like that.

Guess it would have gotten out of hand with how high it could have gone if you got a lucky mythic wf wf wf wf wf wf wf wf wf wf wf proc...you know that 1-billion chance.

i just hope the 900-925 versions remain at the same %

[Hellshout]

So their plan was to remove the % aura from classes and bake them into the spells.
Most classes got %dmg increase as aura )

Also they increased the dmg of aff locks, bm hunters, ALL rogues, ALL warrs, but we got 11% Starsurge because that's our only spell.
Last night a lower ilvl aff lock beat me at Krosus HC when I didn't focus puddles and tried to move as little as possible. But sure increase their dmg by 20%, when UA does 50% of the total dmg on ST...

[Deleted]

Primary stats and secondary stats scales differently with ilvl. Primary stats scale way better with ilvl than secondary stats on everything but jewelery (on those secondaries scales about the same as primaries in other slots). For instance, if you look at stat sticks throughout this expansion, they started about 1k primary 800 secondary, while nowadays they are like 2.2k primary and 1.4k secondary (very rough numbers, but you get the idea, the percentage increase is significantly higher on primary). Most trinkets that had stat + some effect had the effect scale as if it was a secondary if the stat was primary, and vise versa. Whispers, unlike most, had both proc and passive stat scale like a primary, resulting in it scaling better than other trinkets. Similarly, Arcano only has secondary stats and scales terribly with ilvl, which is also why the base version of 860 or 880 is so strong.

What does this mean for us? Mostlikely very little. The 895 whispers is the same as before, anything less is gonna be better than before, while everything higher is gonna be worse. However, the change is pretty minor, since even a 895 version was outperforming most 925 trinkets (much like arcano). the 910 version goes from 46->43% (and 18%->17%), which is still rather minor. Overall, we can still expect Whispers to be BiS in pretty much every scenario, unless you get another trinket with extremely high ilvl. The only trinket that might beat it is the new Sentinel trinket (the owl one from ToS) that also performs extremely well for us atm, but that is purely for ST dps.

[Zan15]

Primary stats and secondary stats scales differently with ilvl. Primary stats scale way better with ilvl than secondary stats on everything but jewelery (on those secondaries scales about the same as primaries in other slots). For instance, if you look at stat sticks throughout this expansion, they started about 1k primary 800 secondary, while nowadays they are like 2.2k primary and 1.4k secondary (very rough numbers, but you get the idea, the percentage increase is significantly higher on primary). Most trinkets that had stat + some effect had the effect scale as if it was a secondary if the stat was primary, and vise versa. Whispers, unlike most, had both proc and passive stat scale like a primary, resulting in it scaling better than other trinkets. Similarly, Arcano only has secondary stats and scales terribly with ilvl, which is also why the base version of 860 or 880 is so strong.

What does this mean for us? Mostlikely very little. The 895 whispers is the same as before, anything less is gonna be better than before, while everything higher is gonna be worse. However, the change is pretty minor, since even a 895 version was outperforming most 925 trinkets (much like arcano). the 910 version goes from 46->43% (and 18%->17%), which is still rather minor. Overall, we can still expect Whispers to be BiS in pretty much every scenario, unless you get another trinket with extremely high ilvl. The only trinket that might beat it is the new Sentinel trinket (the owl one from ToS) that also performs extremely well for us atm, but that is purely for ST dps.

so a 955 whispers will not be 123%......boooo!?!?

Mythic
Item Level 955+
Binds when picked up
Unique-Equipped
Trinket
+3,444 Intellect
Equip: Your damaging spells have a chance to grant Nefarious Pact, increasing your casting speed by 123.43% for 12 sec. When Nefarious Pact expires, your casting speed is decreased by 123.43% for 8 sec.

[Deleted]

so a 955 whispers will not be 123%......boooo!?!?

Mythic
Item Level 955+
Binds when picked up
Unique-Equipped
Trinket
+3,444 Intellect
Equip: Your damaging spells have a chance to grant Nefarious Pact, increasing your casting speed by 123.43% for 12 sec. When Nefarious Pact expires, your casting speed is decreased by 123.43% for 8 sec.

Wowhead tooltips are incorrect at the moment. For some reason they are showing pre 7.1.5 buff values.

[thedeisel]

Starting to play a bit more with the 7.2.5 sims to look at sort of realistic-ish builds, rather than just playing around with stats.

One thing that stands out to me is that there's not a ton of quality haste-mastery items in all of Nighthold. It's a good thing our 4pc bonus is what it is.

The second thing that stands out is that it seems very clear that the go to trinkets are going to be sentinel + whispers (barring a nice Arcano Crystal).

The third thing is that the relics are very favorable to Starfall usage. There are 2 arcane Falling Star Relics, 1 Life Falling Star Relic. There's only 1 Scythe relic and it's Life.

So, I put together two characters that look like what someone could shoot for as they start mythic progression. It doesn't count titanforging, etc. Then I tested out two builds, one that talents for Starsurge and uses the default APL. The second that talents for Starfall single target and uses the default APL.

Both characters use 910 Whispers + 920 Tarnished Sentiel

Starfall Character:
Overall iLvl: 922
Relics: 3x 915 Fallnig Star
83% mastery, 18% haste, 19% crit, 4% Vers [Like I said, it's not easy finding strong haste gear and there's a lot of crit floating around]
Legendaries: Soul of the Arch Druid, Oneth's Intuition
Talents: WoE, Stellar Flare, BotA, Stellar Drift [Found WoE to slightly outperform Starlord with this rotation]
APL: Keeps up DoTs and Starfall single target, squeezes in Starsurges with leftover AP.
I found the best results while enchanting for mastery

Starsurge Character:
924 Overall ilvl
Relics: 2x 920 Solar Wrath, 1x 915 Scythe
90% mastery, 19% haste, 18% crit, 3% vers [The tarnished sentinel gives a ton of mastery and it's tough to get more haste from Tomb gear while getting 4pc; in any case I tested some slightly lower ilvl stuff that gave more haste and it didn't increase dps]
Legendaries: ED, IFE
Talents: Starlord, Incarnation, BotA, Nature's Balance.
I found the best results by enchanting haste.

Single Target DPS:
Starsurge: 1.141m DPS
Starfall: 1.08m DPS

Starsurge focused build is a 4.9% increase over Starfall focused build on single target. Notice that Starfall is that close despite giving up 2 ilvl (which comes from the higher weapon ilvl from using 2x 920 relics on the Starsurge build). That size difference is pretty small, a bit smaller than the differences between middle class single target specs and upper quintile specs.

So, single target starfall is looking like it's going to be able to decently hang within range of the standard max single target build. That should be somewhat good news for moonkin. Not to mention the Starfall build is pretty mobile and also not too sensitive to getting a bad debuff while your CDs are up and running. It will of course bring less on demand single target burst. But Maintaining 3 DoTs and Starfall while squeezing in as many starsurges as you can should provide for pretty fun, fast paced gameplay without losing too much single target dps.

Will a very super high end player who grinds so much M+ that they can count on picking up a 915+ scythe relic and lots of haste gear be able to squeeze out more damage than what I listed above from their ED+IFE or OI rotation? Sure, small gains are definitely to be had by supplementing with outside gear. But for the vast majority of raiding moonkin who don't want to count on or can't count on lucky titanforges, it's nice to see the new legendary opening up a new competitive play style.