[Balance] Legion Discussion

[dark666105]

I personally kinda agree with this.

I don't think FoE is necessarily a bad replacement. But I do think that CS had a more unique purpose.
The main thing I probably dislike about FoE is the harsh ArP requirement.

I guess CS was very prone to either being worthless or very OP very quickly though. FoE probably suffers a bit less from that.



I still think Shooting Stars should be baseline. The moonkin DoTs feel extremely dull.
And in certain scenarios (e.g. PvP fights / extreme mobility fights) it is really hard to get AsP as you can't always just stand and hard cast. And we can't passively regen Starsurge stacks anymore.
I feel a baseline Shooting Stars would solve a lot of those issues, especially if you consider that they are basically taking that away from WoD.

Though if we went to a model with minor AsP regen we would be going to that aspect of the previous model, which I am not so sure would be a bad thing.

[Adramelch]

I would like a version of Shooting Stars be baseline, with a talent that boosts its effects.

[lappee]

I still think Shooting Stars should be baseline. The moonkin DoTs feel extremely dull.
And in certain scenarios (e.g. PvP fights / extreme mobility fights) it is really hard to get AsP as you can't always just stand and hard cast. And we can't passively regen Starsurge stacks anymore.
I feel a baseline Shooting Stars would solve a lot of those issues, especially if you consider that they are basically taking that away from WoD.

Theres plenty of ways to combat with "extreme" mobility fights, talenting into Shooting Stars being one of them. Theres absolutely no need to have its effect as baseline bonus.

[Cyous]

Theres plenty of ways to combat with "extreme" mobility fights, talenting into Shooting Stars being one of them. Theres absolutely no need to have its effect as baseline bonus.

AC is another -> and WOE, and Feral Affinity if it's REALLY bad.

[lappee]

AC is another -> and WOE, and Feral Affinity if it's REALLY bad.

You forgot Displecar beast / Wild charge and Owlkin frenzy.
We could even count Stellar Drift in, even if its highly situational.

[huth]

Theres plenty of ways to combat with "extreme" mobility fights, talenting into Shooting Stars being one of them. Theres absolutely no need to have its effect as baseline bonus.

It would solve the issue of DoTs not being affected by mastery(and becoming useless) in singletarget, though.

[Adramelch]

Something like:

Shooting stars (baseline): The ticks from your latest dots have a chance to deal extra damage and generate X Astral Power
Shooting stars (talent): The Shooting Stars effect now works on all active dots and the extra damage is increased by Y%

Sounds too boring though.

[Lucrece]

That's not a moonkin only issue. Shadow priests are seeing issue with their dots not generating insanity, and in the case of affliction warlocks only one dot (Agony) generates soul shards on an RNG aspect. Elemental Shamans also generate no maelstrom from dots, their dot actually consumes maelstrom.

So now Blizzard needs to come with a way to tune it so multidotting is worthwhile and not costing you important resource generation while not pushing it the opposite direction and making multidotting essential to our performance.

[huth]

That's not a moonkin only issue. Shadow priests are seeing issue with their dots not generating insanity, and in the case of affliction warlocks only one dot (Agony) generates soul shards on an RNG aspect. Elemental Shamans also generate no maelstrom from dots, their dot actually consumes maelstrom.

I don't think you quite grasp the issue with Moonkin DoTs.

It's not that they don't generate resources, it's that they have no interaction with anything in single target and quickly become to weak to be worth casting if you have any mastery on your gear, leaving us with only Starsurge and our two fillers.

Neither Affliction, Shadow nor Elemental has to deal with that.

[Maldehv]

It's not that they don't generate resources, it's that they have no interaction with anything in single target and quickly become to weak to be worth casting if you have any mastery on your gear, leaving us with only Starsurge and our two fillers.

I wonder if that's the point. With Nature's Balance, there's a certain point where dots come close to having infinite value (depending on how long you can keep them up for without recasting), regardless of if they generate resources or not. Obviously this might be completely wrong, and maybe we just don't cast dots at all. I can understand the notion of dots not being good in every scenario.

[dark666105]

DoTless moonkin?!?!?!?! What is this blasphemy!!!! :P

[Nythiz]

Theres plenty of ways to combat with "extreme" mobility fights, talenting into Shooting Stars being one of them. Theres absolutely no need to have its effect as baseline bonus.

It's not JUST mobile fights though.

It's also some flavor that they're removing from the baseline abilities.
And like I mentioned, if you get trained in PvP it's really hard to generate AsP. I don't have alpha access myself, so I can't say that I have first hand experience. But from the PvP moonkins that i've watched on twitch, they were struggling to generate AsP while constantly being interrupted. Without the ability to stack charges and the 20% haste you get from Empowerments, burst potential is a lot lower.
On top of that the AsP is visible to the opponent (unlike starsurge charges) making incoming burst very predictable.

I figured since Shooting Stars is basically something we currently have baseline; it would add some flavor, plus it would help the DoTs stay worthwhile throughout the expansion.

[Cyous]

Where is this "scaling" concern for DOTs vs. Nukes coming from? Moonfire and Sunfire are worth so much more than either spell.

[Maldehv]

Where is this "scaling" concern for DOTs vs. Nukes coming from? Moonfire and Sunfire are worth so much more than either spell.

I'm pretty sure that if DOTs didn't generate Starsurge procs or benefit from Mastery, I wouldn't cast them in Warlords.

[lappee]

It's not JUST mobile fights though.

It's also some flavor that they're removing from the baseline abilities.
And like I mentioned, if you get trained in PvP it's really hard to generate AsP. I don't have alpha access myself, so I can't say that I have first hand experience. But from the PvP moonkins that i've watched on twitch, they were struggling to generate AsP while constantly being interrupted. Without the ability to stack charges and the 20% haste you get from Empowerments, burst potential is a lot lower.
On top of that the AsP is visible to the opponent (unlike starsurge charges) making incoming burst very predictable.

And most of the previously mentioned abilities help with this. Not to mention if you actually "get trained" then you'll have plenty of OKF procs making it pretty easy to generate AsP. Sure it wont be as good as when you can just turret targets but its still good.

I figured since Shooting Stars is basically something we currently have baseline; it would add some flavor, plus it would help the DoTs stay worthwhile throughout the expansion.

The game changes, balance mechanics change so the baseline abilities change aswell

[snaxattax]

still don't know what that last artifact keystone, or mooncraze does. could be significant dot-based bonuses (especially mooncraze which sounds like a moonfire modifier just based on its name).

[huth]

The names are just leftovers from their old effects.

Where is this "scaling" concern for DOTs vs. Nukes coming from? Moonfire and Sunfire are worth so much more than either spell.

They aren't, once you take AP generation and Empowerments into consideration. Even at 30% mastery, using Moonfire won't be worth the cast time, which is a problem since i'm going to sit around 70% once 7.0 hits.

[Catbug]

That's not a moonkin only issue. Shadow priests are seeing issue with their dots not generating insanity, and in the case of affliction warlocks only one dot (Agony) generates soul shards on an RNG aspect. Elemental Shamans also generate no maelstrom from dots, their dot actually consumes maelstrom

See, the thing is, Affliction warlocks benefits highly from their dots. It's essentially a dot management class with very few other spells, so their dots hurt a lot. They are designed around dotting, and their mastery increases the dot damage even further.
Shadow Priests have multiple artifact talents that affect their dots with one increasing their damage by 5% per stack of voidform which results in a lot of damage to mention one.
Elemental Shamans always want to flame shock so their lava burst crits and has a chance to reset cooldown on lava burst and make it instant. There's interactivity there.

Balance got none of that. Each dot just ticks away doing damage with 0 integration with the rest of the abilities outside a specific talent pick and an aoe spell. They might end up doing a lot of damage, who knows, but it's still very boring to have to use a spell that doesn't interact with the rest of the spec whatsoever (on single target). It feel too disconnected, especially when dots were a central mechanic to balance for some time now. Having a talent that even removes the need to cast dots again is even more boring, especially when it looks to be the to-go talent for single target.

They aren't, once you take AP generation and Empowerments into consideration. Even at 30% mastery, using Moonfire won't be worth the cast time, which is a problem since i'm going to sit around 70% once 7.0 hits.

Your offstats will drop quite sharply once you're in full legion gear though, but it's still a valid point.

[Cyous]

They aren't, once you take AP generation and Empowerments into consideration. Even at 30% mastery, using Moonfire won't be worth the cast time, which is a problem since i'm going to sit around 70% once 7.0 hits.

At 70% Mastery, your DOTs are far more valuable than non-empowered nukes of either spell. Moonfire is still way ahead of SW (by +50% DPET). They are about equal while Empowered.
At 30% Mastery, your DOTs are just better if the target lives at least 7 sec, assuming the nukes are empowered. Non-empowered, it's no contest.

Stellar Flare is still twice as strong as your mega-empowered DOTs while empowered itself (125k vs 41k).

[huth]

At 70% Mastery, your DOTs are far more valuable than non-empowered nukes of either spell. Moonfire is still way ahead of SW (by +50% DPET). They are about equal while Empowered.
At 30% Mastery, your DOTs are just better if the target lives at least 7 sec, assuming the nukes are empowered. Non-empowered, it's no contest.

Stellar Flare is still twice as strong as your mega-empowered DOTs while empowered itself (125k vs 41k).

Hum, must have gotten numbers confused somewhere. Anyhow, at 70% Mastery, Moonfire is almost exactly twice as strong all things considered on a target that lives a multiple of its full duration.(including damage from AP funneled into SS and the LS Empowerment)

Targets that live less than half the duration are somewhat of a problem, since you can't fit enough Wraths for a Starsurge in them either, reducing it to just its base damage. Just drop the moon on them and double Starsurge them out of existence, i guess.