beta moonkins - is the new eclipse style actually fun?

[crunk]

disregarding all conversation about skill ceilings or difficulty, is the new style actually fun to play?

i see a lot of discussion over which is "harder" or "easier to learn, harder to master" or whatever, but i haven't seen anyone comment on whether or not it was actually fun to play.

i know that challenge and fun go hand in hand but what i mean is it fluid and intuitive? is managing the new sine-eclipse engaging? do the buttons feel rewarding to push? is it legitimately too easy or too difficult if you put your ego aside and try to judge it objectively?


thinking of resubbing since wildstar's endgame is too time consuming for my current real life schedule, but, i wanna know if my class is going to get the shaft or not. thanks!

[Zardi]

Granted I'm Resto and only play Balance in a very casual manner, so my knowledge and experience are very limited... But I found it enjoyable, myself. After all, the rest of casters are "stay here and spam this button" whereas our rotation still has a twist.

[Deleted]

Thats what im hearing but ive not played the beta laserckicken yet. I might do later or tomorrow

[Grum88]

Honestly it's different but not in a bad way it's much smoother now and more reactive. Just be assured were going to be ok (atleast until thy change something)

[Glurp]

Honestly it's different but not in a bad way it's much smoother now and more reactive. Just be assured were going to be ok (atleast until thy change something)

How is it more reactive when you have less procs coming in and have very little control over your Eclipse cycles.

[kosars]

How is it more reactive when you have less procs coming in and have very little control over your Eclipse cycles.

Pretty sure he just means youre reacting to the state of the eclipse bar, vs now which would be (by his definition) proactive - you decide the state of the eclipse bar.

by all common meanings (Aka, you make decisions) it's not very reactive, but hey. I'm still worried we'll just be able to load up an addon telling us what buttons to press, successfully. Until I see something that makes that not viable, i'll probably hate it.

[Tehterokkar]

I just want some number crunching on things, but it'd be fairly pointless at this stage of the beta.

And I agree with Kosars, someone will make an addon for retard proof gameplay.

[FuxieDK]

I've only done 5-10 quests on beta so far, but I find the new system VERY different from the old one.. Much much harder to keep track of anything..

In Cata and MoP, you always knew how many Starfires/Warths you were from a new Eclipse (unless you critted)..
In WoD, you count gets scewed when you pause casting, move, AoE, have to CR someone or any other non-Starfire/Wrath cast..

I really hope it gets better, when addons are enabled, because currently, you have to focus so much on the upper left corner (on the balance bar), that mobs can easily sneak up on you, without you notice...

[Glurp]

You could easily make a Weakura/addon that counts down until next eclipse peak which would make playing a lot easier.

[FuxieDK]

You could easily make a Weakura/addon that counts down until next eclipse peak which would make playing a lot easier.

Never tried WeakAura..

Personally, I think a HUD-style circle would be the best representation of the balance power..

[Glurp]

A bar or circle would both work fine, what you use would likely be personal preference. I think a suitable addon for Moonkins in WoD would be an eclipse bar/circle with options to show power and time until peak/middle.

One of you addon developers got on it.

[Curarin]

Way more enjoybale, atleast for me. Way less rng dependent and they finally got rid of the nature's grace buff.

[timmytompadderham]

I wouldn't call it "fun". The exciting part is how starfall and starsurge behave now and how sunfire and moonfire behave differently. I guess it can be somewhat difficult to chose to correct nuke, especially in the center of the bar, when you are doing other things like kiting, dodging fire, off-healing, whatever. An addon would trivialize the eclipse mechanic and the default ui directs a lot of your focus to the bar from other things imo. I do have 2 years of muscle memory with the MoP rotation and around 1 week of practice with the beta rotation so keep that in mind as it might not be very difficult to adapt to. After all, incorrect decisions near the center of the bar usually have the least repercussions.

Better than live, but still not satisfied.

[Deleted]

From what I have seen of the beta so far, it seems pretty stale compared to current version: Taking away that control from the eclipse mechanic was a bad move imo.

Currently on beta the rotation is just..slow, and pretty boring. The way the timings of the eclipse swing is currently you can pretty much use your starsurge at any point on the up swing of the eclipse and be close to optimal for the next 2-3 buffed casts, and those casts currently seem to take an eternity. Then there is how long the dots last, I personally enjoyed thinking of when to recast etc. Stellar flare is fairly unintuitive, but it breaks up the rotation nicely making it easier to transition into the other eclipse. And then there is the starsurge stacks, they are so god dam unreliable, one minute you can have 1 proc, the next you have 6 meaning all you have to do is press starfall a few times to use excess procs and go back to just....waiting to use them next starsurges next eclipse.

Overall, I dislike it more than live version. Only thing I felt they needed to change was adding NG equiv to hurricane ticks to make aoe'ing viable, but oh well.

edit: CLC Ret style addons are incoming probably

[faroh2046]

It's worlds better in my opinion. I agree with the above poster who said you do have to watch that resource bar as the shifting happens automatically. But there are opportunities. I found the rotation on live zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. This one will require a bit more skill. As your moonfire moves into Solar it becomes Starfire (the button). It also requires some decision making as when you starsurge you get 3 nukes buffed in your current eclipse. So if you don't get those nukes off you will switch into your next eclipse. I'd like to test it with addons so that I can get hard numbers and figure out optimal times to recast but it does add a bit more complexity than live.

[Bearshield]

It's "different", but I don't know that I'd call it fun. I'm not a fan of the whole Eclipse mechanic though and I'm not sure why Blizz thinks hybrid rotations need to be so much more complex than pures. Though to be fair, Mages have a talent now that works similar to the new Eclipse but I don't know enough about Mages to say whether it will be taken or not. I never mained Moonkin spec so while I remember bits and pieces from over the years, I don't remember exactly how the rotation worked every xpack other than the fact that it has changed every xpack.

I think what would be nice is to basically have a rotation somewhere along the lines of Starfire x number of times to apply a debuff to the mob that strengthens your Wrath and then you cast Wrath until you need to reapply the debuff. (I'm pretty sure this is somewhat similar to a previous version of Moonkin rotation) Moonfire doesn't need to become Sunfire, it can just be Moonfire and work as it always has and something (crits perhaps) could proc a free Starsurge which would theoretically hit harder than Starfire or Wrath. No, it's not drastically different from other caster rotations, but why does it have to be just because Druids are hybrids? It still requires you to time your spells, watch your dots, and pay attention to a spell proc and there's nothing needlessly complicated about it or as tedious as watching an Eclipse bar tick back and forth.

In fact, if you really want to add an element of challenge to my suggestion, you could always add a Dream of Cenarius mechanic that requires you to cast a heal spell to buff your next spell with a cast time of x seconds or something like that? Or it could add a dot effect to one of your cast spells?

[Gumboy]

I think there is going to be a LOT of "I like it" and a lot of "I don't like it!" posts, and frankly it is going to be really divisive amongst moonkins, I saw on the official forums some high parsing/high rated guilds moonkins don't like it because they can't really do anything to set themselves apart anymore, it is an incredibly easy to follow rotation. Like you could have an add on that told you exactly what to cast in what order and your rotation would be perfect, simply because you know exactly when everything is going to happen :P

- - - Updated - - -

Personally, I am mixed on it. It is more fun for questing for me, but in group content....meeeh.

[crunk]

meh, so it doesn't sound very fun. at least not any moreso than live.


also, CLCMoonkin is literally aids. you can see it coming and it hurts my feathery soul. even if "you aren't forced to use it" - as its future proponents will claim - the fact that our priority queue will soon be able to be boiled down to that is pretty sad. if CLC can do it any monkey can do it and thats a problem.

i know i said in the OP to "disregard difficulty" but, honestly, if its as easy as everyone has indicated that really ruins it. one or two days of practice and it will just be slack-jawed button mashing when your weak auras light up. as idiotic as our current "stack crit to 50% and press starsurge" gameplay is now.

[omri1212000]

No.
I hate it when I aggro mobs while mounted and the eclipse cycle starts. it should start the cycle when I, The Player, wants it to start by engaging. for exmaple, cast a moonfire or any other spell.
I hate it that there is no decision whatsoever. The game decides "its time to cast a starfire" and I, "mindlessly" Do so.
I hate not having control of in-and-out of eclipse.

[Cyous]

Sine-wave is fine.
The rest of the damage-dealer toolkit is extremely bland.