[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Lucrece]

@Dankdruid
There will be 3 more spells from the artifact (New Moon, Half Moon, Full Moon) - they all give AP and do nice dmg (especially Full Moon). That changes the rotation right away.

It's not 3 spells, just one that morphs, and the purpose is essentially the same: "Press this button to generate AsP", as with the several rows of talents which revolve around AsP gen.

[huth]

It's not 3 spells, just one that morphs, and the purpose is essentially the same: "Press this button to generate AsP", as with the several rows of talents which revolve around AsP gen.

It is three spells. They just share charges and the action bar button.

[Lucrece]

It is three spells. They just share charges and the action bar button.

It's not like ice lance vs frost bolt vs glacial spike or ice flurry. They're not mechanically separate spells, they're straightforward in that you'll use them on cooldown so long as they don't cap out your astral power.

It really won't change his rotation drastically if he's getting bored, he'll be pumping an extra starsurge or two per cycle or keep FoE up a bit longer. His playstyle will still revolve most of the time around renewing dots and spamming wrath outside empowerments and lunar strike once with them.

Telling him MoonMoon is gonna solve his boredom seems pretty generous, legion balance as most of balance's gameplay has been sinmple since wod.

[huth]

It's not like ice lance vs frost bolt vs glacial spike or ice flurry. They're not mechanically separate spells, they're straightforward in that you'll use them on cooldown so long as they don't cap out your astral power.

No, but then i didn't claim it was. So i'm not sure what you're trying to prove there. They're still three seperate spells with seperate spell IDs, which also means they appear separately on damage meters.

[Lucrece]

Yeah, but I was disputing how the artifact spell would answer the quited person's worries about boredom with the rotation. MoonMoon spells are about as separate as moonfire/sunfire are, but in essence they offer little variety in application let alone interaction.

You could merge MoonMoon into a single spell that frontloaded all the asp and damage and it would be no different. The artifact is not going to make it more entertaining for him if he isn't finding the core rotation any more engaging.

So, if he wants an engaging rotation, he should probably be looking at shadow priest, all the mage specs, demo/destro warlock.

Even ele shaman has far more interactivity. You get lava surges from flame shock, you empower your lightning bolts and chain lightnings with your artifact spell and you need to choose whether LB or CL are what you use empowered by that spell, your spell also triggers extra overloads and summons an elemental that adapts between single target and aoe. You want to optimize Lightning Rod uptimes or bank maelstrom for ice fury for mobility periods or for burst. Lava Burst becomes wortwhile against CL in aoe environments after its artifact perk.

That's not even covering class talents, of which balance is largely monotone in. It's all astral power expenditure and generation. The best you got are Stellar Flare (a talented vampiric touch with astral power cost instead of generation and no healing) and FoE. That's it.

[sgtcook]

For leveling

What is better Fury of Elune or Stellar Drift ?

[Cyous]

So, while we wait for more interesting topics... I made a thing.
https://wago.io/4k38vaEub

It's pretty useless.

[huth]

For leveling

What is better Fury of Elune or Stellar Drift ?

I'd say SD. FoE isn't very useful when stuff dies to fast.

Though, overall, i'd say the 100 talent doesn't matter much for leveling. None of them are designed for the short fights with leveling mobs.

[Audax]

I'd say SD. FoE isn't very useful when stuff dies to fast.

Though, overall, i'd say the 100 talent doesn't matter much for leveling. None of them are designed for the short fights with leveling mobs.

I've tried both on beta and think FoE is better, you save it for when you can hit multiple mobs with it and it's really strong in that case. Make sure you have a convenient way to cancelaura it though so you don't waste AP on dead mobs.

[Juvencus]

So, while we wait for more interesting topics... I made a thing.
https://wago.io/4k38vaEub

It's pretty useless.

You made owl us Moonkins happy. There is no fowl in that.

[Lilija]

For leveling

What is better Fury of Elune or Stellar Drift ?

FoE is decent for soloing harder things. SD brings some utility. But as others said, there it doesn't matter much for leveling content.

[Lucrece]

They need to bring back a shooting stars-like proc, this spec plays horrible with nothing to react to in order to break up a monotonous rotation.

What's worse, with the removal of shooting stars proc starsurges, this spec has horrendous issues with mobility and damage application.

They should make at least Owlkin Frenzy proc with sunfire and moonfire dot ticks.

Balance druid plays like an elemental shaman on depressants, it's so horrendously slow. It would also be nice if sunfire and lunar strike spread was increased by 5 yard baseline and the artifact just gave it another 5.

Resto affinity heals and barkskin also need buffing, all our heals heal for nothing. I see no point in picking anything other than Guardian affinity for the far superior 10% damage reduction.

Also disappointed they stuck us with a useless Innervate. That skill is going to be so niche, especially in PvP where currently healers simply dont run low on mana before someone blows up.

[Menubrea]

They need to bring back a shooting stars-like proc, this spec plays horrible with nothing to react to in order to break up a monotonous rotation.

What's worse, with the removal of shooting stars proc starsurges, this spec has horrendous issues with mobility and damage application.

They should make at least Owlkin Frenzy proc with sunfire and moonfire dot ticks.

Balance druid plays like an elemental shaman on depressants, it's so horrendously slow. It would also be nice if sunfire and lunar strike spread was increased by 5 yard baseline and the artifact just gave it another 5.

Resto affinity heals and barkskin also need buffing, all our heals heal for nothing. I see no point in picking anything other than Guardian affinity for the far superior 10% damage reduction.

Also disappointed they stuck us with a useless Innervate. That skill is going to be so niche, especially in PvP where currently healers simply dont run low on mana before someone blows up.

Are you playing pre-patch or beta? The playstyle is more streamlined and faster on beta where you have access to MoonMoon. Outside of too long ramp up for AoE, I don't think the spec is bad to play at all.

As for healing, Balance is the strongest hybrid healer in PvP by fair margin due to Restoration Affinity + Protector of the Grove.

[Deleted]

Empowered LS is better than unempowered SW.

Is this definitely the case? I have been playing around with my rotation and entirely ignoring LS for single target. Is it best to spend all empowered spells if there is no need to conserve for AoE?

Thanks!

[striderZA]

Is this definitely the case? I have been playing around with my rotation and entirely ignoring LS for single target. Is it best to spend all empowered spells if there is no need to conserve for AoE?

Thanks!

Empowered LS has a higher DPET than an unempowered SW.

[Deleted]

Is this definitely the case? I have been playing around with my rotation and entirely ignoring LS for single target. Is it best to spend all empowered spells if there is no need to conserve for AoE?

Thanks!

use empowered LS...it's super effective.

[Lucrece]

Are you playing pre-patch or beta? The playstyle is more streamlined and faster on beta where you have access to MoonMoon. Outside of too long ramp up for AoE, I don't think the spec is bad to play at all.

As for healing, Balance is the strongest hybrid healer in PvP by fair margin due to Restoration Affinity + Protector of the Grove.

Healing others. Protector of the Grove does not trigger on yourself, so your self healing is shit unless you're landing heals on other people. And that applies only to Healing Touch, not the weak restoration affinity spells the talent doesn't affect. In fact, Protector of the Grove makes Regrowth and Rejuv obsolete heals due to their pitifully low values given their time to heal.

And the artifact spell addresses none of the problems I noted earlier. It does not shake up your rotation, the balance druid rotation is fairly monotonous.

The balance artifact also doesn't address mobility. In fact, it makes it worse by introducing a 3 sec cast into our rotation, as if a 2.5 sec Lunar Strike after every starsurge wasn't enough.

This is even more marked in PvP, you look at any arena videos you see all a moonkin is doing is spamming moonfire and sunfire on targets and waiting for an owlkin frenzy proc to cast anything.

[Catbug]

Anyone else getting a weird bug when you apply moonfire/sunfire where you see your cast animation trigger but the spell isn't actually casted? It happens quite a lot for me, especially when running around chainpulling with the dots or catching someone in a battleground.
edit: seems to happen whenever you're not line of sight to your target or slightly out of range.

Healing others. Protector of the Grove does not trigger on yourself, so your self healing is shit unless you're landing heals on other people. And that applies only to Healing Touch, not the weak restoration affinity spells the talent doesn't affect. In fact, Protector of the Grove makes Regrowth and Rejuv obsolete heals due to their pitifully low values given their time to heal.

And the artifact spell addresses none of the problems I noted earlier. It does not shake up your rotation, the balance druid rotation is fairly monotonous.

The balance artifact also doesn't address mobility. In fact, it makes it worse by introducing a 3 sec cast into our rotation, as if a 2.5 sec Lunar Strike after every starsurge wasn't enough.

This is even more marked in PvP, you look at any arena videos you see all a moonkin is doing is spamming moonfire and sunfire on targets and waiting for an owlkin frenzy proc to cast anything.

You can cast HT on someone else, then spam very short cast HTs on yourself with that talent. Does pretty good healing.

While I agree it's more freeflowy due to the lack of eclipse, you're still pushing the same buttons so it still feels very much the same, just more streamlined.

With my current haste (18%) my starfires are 2.1 sec long casttimes, and with starlord empowerment they go down to 1.7. Really doesn't feel bad, and it's not like you're forced to use one after each surge.

To be fair, basically all we did in WoD pvp was chaincast 3 starsurges and hope they died to it. And here we can WoE 2 lunar strikes, starsurge, astral communion and hit two more starsurges all instantcast burst which does do quite a considerable amount of damage. Getting locked out from moonmoon spells absolutely sucks but we still have the escapes of cat blink and cat dash, actually more mobility then a lot of other casters have. We only really lack a very good defensive or selfheal (outside Swiftmend)

[Nythiz]

They need to bring back a shooting stars-like proc, this spec plays horrible with nothing to react to in order to break up a monotonous rotation.

Something to react to would be nice, but I wouldn't go as far to say it's an extremely monotonous rotation. Once you get the moon spells and FoE that actually is quite a fun mechanic to work with.
There is also some decent potential for skill depth, where better players can get ahead of worse players.

What's worse, with the removal of shooting stars proc starsurges, this spec has horrendous issues with mobility and damage application.
They should make at least Owlkin Frenzy proc with sunfire and moonfire dot ticks.

Mobility and damage application is maybe slightly down, but it is more reliable now at least.
If you're looking at it from a pvp perspective, the moon skills can set you up for some great burst when combined with Astral Communion and Warrior of Elune. That's 3-4 star surges and 2 lunar strikes, and those are all instant. You'll have to talent for mobility rather than get it baseline though.

I'm not totally disagreeing that damage on the move could be better. I mean, falling stars with the charge system was just massive massive (mobile) burst potential. But as much fun as it was at times, as much of a letdown was it when it didn't roll nicely. Plus compared to other casters we're not the worst by any margin from what I can tell so far.

Balance druid plays like an elemental shaman on depressants, it's so horrendously slow. It would also be nice if sunfire and lunar strike spread was increased by 5 yard baseline and the artifact just gave it another 5.

In this pre-patch it's quite rough being moonkin as the class-balance isn't quite there (not that we perform all THAT bad) and with moonkin is much MUCH more of a ramp-up class now. Whereas previously you could easily starfall and starsurge off the bat for some out of the gate burst; you'll have to build it up now.
That initial build up feels really slow (especially without moonmoon) which, with the current kill rates and overgeared content feels a bit lame compared to classes that have retained or even gained power that they can use from the get go.

Also 15y radius is huge. That extra 5y we're getting is already quite a lot.
If you translate it all into area (which is telling much more than radius IMO), you get:
5y = 78.5 sq yards
10y = 314 sq yards
15y = 707 sq yards

So 15y radius would nearly make the area tenfold, bit over the top.

Resto affinity heals and barkskin also need buffing, all our heals heal for nothing. I see no point in picking anything other than Guardian affinity for the far superior 10% damage reduction.

Resto affinity won't make you a full fledged healer. But a Regrowth -> Rejuv -> Swiftmend combo isn't bad healing (it's actually quite strong self healing compared to what some other classes can do).
Don't forget that practically everyone got their selfhealing scaled down. A few exceptions (like affli locks) that will soon be fixed.

Only thing I'm putting some questionmarks at is why ferals are getting much more selfhealing out of swiftmend than balance druids. For ferals swiftmend seems to heal for like 50% of their HP, for boomkins its more like 10-15%.

Also disappointed they stuck us with a useless Innervate. That skill is going to be so niche, especially in PvP where currently healers simply dont run low on mana before someone blows up.

Agreed, I'm not a fan of Innervate in this form at all. I'd much rather have something more similar to the old one where it restores mana or something. It's much less prone to go to waste that way.
Same goes for the resto one, you'll generally just use it on yourself unless you have great coordination with a healer that makes better use of it. It pays to be selfish with it to some extend.

I'd rather have stampeding roar back, but we all know that's not going to happen.

[Lucrece]

Something to react to would be nice, but I wouldn't go as far to say it's an extremely monotonous rotation. Once you get the moon spells and FoE that actually is quite a fun mechanic to work with.
There is also some decent potential for skill depth, where better players can get ahead of worse players.




Mobility and damage application is maybe slightly down, but it is more reliable now at least.
If you're looking at it from a pvp perspective, the moon skills can set you up for some great burst when combined with Astral Communion and Warrior of Elune. That's 3-4 star surges and 2 lunar strikes, and those are all instant. You'll have to talent for mobility rather than get it baseline though.

I'm not totally disagreeing that damage on the move could be better. I mean, falling stars with the charge system was just massive massive (mobile) burst potential. But as much fun as it was at times, as much of a letdown was it when it didn't roll nicely. Plus compared to other casters we're not the worst by any margin from what I can tell so far.




In this pre-patch it's quite rough being moonkin as the class-balance isn't quite there (not that we perform all THAT bad) and with moonkin is much MUCH more of a ramp-up class now. Whereas previously you could easily starfall and starsurge off the bat for some out of the gate burst; you'll have to build it up now.
That initial build up feels really slow (especially without moonmoon) which, with the current kill rates and overgeared content feels a bit lame compared to classes that have retained or even gained power that they can use from the get go.

Also 15y radius is huge. That extra 5y we're getting is already quite a lot.
If you translate it all into area (which is telling much more than radius IMO), you get:
5y = 78.5 sq yards
10y = 314 sq yards
15y = 707 sq yards

So 15y radius would nearly make the area tenfold, bit over the top.



Resto affinity won't make you a full fledged healer. But a Regrowth -> Rejuv -> Swiftmend combo isn't bad healing (it's actually quite strong self healing compared to what some other classes can do).
Don't forget that practically everyone got their selfhealing scaled down. A few exceptions (like affli locks) that will soon be fixed.

Only thing I'm putting some questionmarks at is why ferals are getting much more selfhealing out of swiftmend than balance druids. For ferals swiftmend seems to heal for like 50% of their HP, for boomkins its more like 10-15%.



Agreed, I'm not a fan of Innervate in this form at all. I'd much rather have something more similar to the old one where it restores mana or something. It's much less prone to go to waste that way.
Same goes for the resto one, you'll generally just use it on yourself unless you have great coordination with a healer that makes better use of it. It pays to be selfish with it to some extend.

I'd rather have stampeding roar back, but we all know that's not going to happen.

Fair points, but the reason why I brought up ele shaman is because the resources are identical. It's a builder/spender caster.

The difference is the ele shaman has overloads which also trigger random additional gains in the resource (more reactive resource management), and they have lava burst which is essentially a 2 sec lunar strike that hits harder, can also overload, has a shorter cast time, and is 2 charges with a 30% chance in dot tick to reset and be instant cast. Earth Shock is more or less their equivalent to our starsurge, admittedly less often than a starsurge (about half the frequency) but it hits proportionately higher to its cost.

Basically, ele shaman maelstrom is the balance resource and costs done right. Even their earthquake totem, their equivalent of our starfall, costs 50 maelstrom (opposed to 60 baseline starfall you need to talent into to make affordable) and all the damage is built into it instead of the value being in dot amplification for large packs (where you'll only sunfire). Chain lightning on 4-5 mobs takes about 2-3 casts to give you one earthquake cast, on top of the aoe damage chain lightning does itself on top of maelstrom generation (compared to the pitiful astral power generation of our dots).

I have both similarly geared, so it's a stark difference in how much more dynamic ele shaman came out. Shamans also got wonderful talent revamps, while we got recycled talents and a bunch of rows tied to resource generation, a row of talents that basically returns us our old WoD form functionality with a passive attached, and a worthless typhoon/bash/mass entanglement tier while ele shaman got thunderstorm (their typhoon with a longer knockback) and frost shock snare as baseline, and their CC tier gives them a ranged 5 sec aoe stun in capacitor totem and for mobility tier they get gust of wind which is just a superior wild charge (or a displacer beast with half the cooldown without the dash that doesn't cost you a global to shift back in form).

As far as healing goes, check a few posts back. I already compared balance druid resto affinity heals against ele shaman and shadow priest without and with artifacts, and balance druid healing is much, much worse.