[Balance] Legion Discussion

[Dragontoth]

So, treants or starlord? That's the one I'm stuck at atm.

What content for? What other talents do you use?

[thilicen]

What content for? What other talents do you use?

Mainly single-target boss fights. Right now I'm looking at this http://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/druid/balance/MF6M .

[huth]

Can you just stand there and turret? Starlord.
Otherwise FoN.

[Birgwow]

Feral affi is totally dead weight for boomkins. You either take guardian, if you get constant dmg or resto, if you dont get constant dmg.

I'm talking about a scenario where healing is not an issue. Is the burst from Cat > Swipe x3 stronger than Sunfire > Starfall > Lunar Strike x1? Alternatively, is it worth to replace Lunar Strike with Cat > Swipe in heavy AoE situations after you've already applied Sunfire and Starfall?


Also, for questing does crit become stronger than haste at some point? Seeing as the mobs will probably live shortly and you'll get procs of Owlkin Frenzy I'm debating whether I should enchant with crit or haste.

[Tradu]

Tank damage is negligent. They could do 5x more than a dps, a doesn't matter. As long as tank damage is relative and dps damage is relative, it's all good.

I hate seeing tanks beat me in dungeons but I understand that because of threat mechanics in current meta, they need this damage. It is not necessarily constructive damage, but it needs to be there to hold threat. Just as druids, as a general class, are very generally aoe damage. When we do damage it is not a very single target + splash. When we do AoE damage, it's hard to control. We are a highly min/max class and we need to accept it.

That would matter, because then you'd just bring more tanks instead of DPS, because they do more DPS and have stronger survivability. And how is tank damage "not constructive"? It's damage, doesn't matter where it comes from. The only reason you didn't stack tanks in MoP was because there was only so much Vengeance-giving damage available.

[Tyze]

So I tried to make a leveing "guide" on talents.
It's not so simple looking at our talents because I think we can go for everything tbh, comes down to what you want to use.



Level 15: Force of Nature which taunts and two free Lunar Strikes from WoE will make things simplier from this tier.

Level 30: All are good.

Level 45: Restoration is probably the best one, you could choose Guardian just for the damage reduction. But overall Restoration would make things easier in the leveling process.

Level 60: Comes down to what you want the most, but a Stun and the knockback (which I personally will use most likely) seems to be the most use.

Level 75: I honestly feel that Soul of the Forest is the best one to go for, reduce starfall is pretty neat to use. I'm not sure how much you'll need to burst things down but I doubt using Incarnation will be good at all, should've been an X. And Stellar Flare, if you want I guess :P

Level 90: I think Astral Communion and Blessing of the Ancient will be best, Astral to gain that fast AP for a Starfall or Starsurges, or having more generation through BotA.

Level 100: Looking back at it, Stellar Drift might be nice to have, you can cast in your Starfall so there is benefits of it. But I feel that with our Artifact we will get more Astral Power gain and Fury of Elune will be nice to have on stacked mobs. Nature's Balance is still useable.



Any insights? Tips for the Boomkins?

[Deleted]

@Rhyzer For leveling:

L15: Cross out WoE. FoN is waaaay better.

L30: Looks fine

L45: I'd say guardian isn't even close to resto. For try harding Feral might beat Resto, but probably not relevant (if you need to read a guide to figure out what to use, feral aff aint for you).

L60: I'd say you might aswell just cross out ME, rather useless.

L75: I'd cross out StFl, too long duration. INC and SotF are both fine.

L90: AC for sure. Too much downtime for other 2 to compete.

L100: Looks fine. FoE if you know how to use it, for the less experienced NB is the way to go.

[Kyanion]

@Rhyzer For leveling:

L15: Cross out WoE. FoN is waaaay better.

L30: Looks fine

L45: I'd say guardian isn't even close to resto. For try harding Feral might beat Resto, but probably not relevant (if you need to read a guide to figure out what to use, feral aff aint for you).

L60: I'd say you might aswell just cross out ME, rather useless.

L75: I'd cross out StFl, too long duration. INC and SotF are both fine.

L90: AC for sure. Too much downtime for other 2 to compete.

L100: Looks fine. FoE if you know how to use it, for the less experienced NB is the way to go.

I found Soul of the Forest pretty useful just because the cost reduction in Starfalls when pulling 3+ mobs.

I'm going:

L15: FoN- The treants let you get away with more dangerous pulls while letting you take less damage. Less down time and less healing is more speed killing.

L30: Renewal- is just another thing I use to lower downtime and handle more dangerous pulls to finish quests or the elites faster.

L45: Resto Affinity- Echo of the previous statements, passive healing and on demand swiftmend/regrowth to keep myself alive in harder pulls or to lower downtime.

L60: Typhoon- Can buy me time to snare enemies when I've overpulled or as a makeshift interrupt when Solar Beam is on CD

L75: Soul of the Forest- As stated earlier I enjoy the reduced cost in starfall and I like the single target applications for elites in some of the quest chains.

L90: Shooting Stars- I find I'm fighting 4+ enemies all the time and getting free damage and AP generation from a spread of sunfire works for me. I can see where the other 2 talents can shine here but I've just liked Shooting Stars quite a bit when mass pulling.

L100: Could make a case for all 3 of them here, Stellar Drift can provide a little bit of freedom when kiting massive packs but I think default to NB. I just don't like FoE's 90 second cooldown.

[Deleted]

I'm talking about a scenario where healing is not an issue. Is the burst from Cat > Swipe x3 stronger than Sunfire > Starfall > Lunar Strike x1? Alternatively, is it worth to replace Lunar Strike with Cat > Swipe in heavy AoE situations after you've already applied Sunfire and Starfall?

Dont really know what to say here. Youre a caster, not a melee dd. If you starting to punch things in cat form, you will be most likely get kicked after the fight.

[Birgwow]

Not sure why you'd pick Nature's Balance when leveling - mobs shouldn't last long enough for the dots to run out.

Dont really know what to say here. Youre a caster, not a melee dd. If you starting to punch things in cat form, you will be most likely get kicked after the fight.

If you're a dps your job is to dps. If you can deal more dps in cat form (and it won't hurt your raid by doing so) you shouldn't feel restricted by "but I'm a caster, not a melee dd". Come on now..

[Kyanion]

Not sure why you'd pick Nature's Balance when leveling - mobs shouldn't last long enough for the dots to run out.

Yeah think that was more of a holdover from beta leveling where the starter gear set was terrible. Found it useful for some of the elites I had to deal with. But using my geared up druid I'd think that talent would be the worst one to take for leveling.

[Crewsix]

I would think generally stellar drift would be the default lvl 100 talent, especially with class trinket. DOT up large packs and starfall them down

[huth]

Honestly, i don't think the 100 tier matters much for leveling. None of the abilities are terribly well suited for short fights with lots of downtime inbetween.

If you're a dps your job is to dps. If you can deal more dps in cat form (and it won't hurt your raid by doing so) you shouldn't feel restricted by "but I'm a caster, not a melee dd". Come on now..

The problem is you're a ranged and are expected to stay at range. If you mull around in melee range you're a) making things more crowded for the actual melees and b) risk getting them hit by range-only mechanics.

Generally, it's just not worth the effort.

Melee and ranged DPS are two different roles.

[Tyze]

Was looking at Wowwiki on Scythe of Elune, and tooltip said "Owlkin Frenzy can periodically trigger without being hit."
This was removed wasn't it?

[huth]

Quite long ago, in fact. We actually had a different effect after that which has also been removed months ago. Now they just list the baseline Artifact ability, so MoonMoon for us.

[Deleted]

Very sad. Made an entire thread about it how it would improve the gameplay if we had a procc for some instant casts. Dont get why every Druid specc gets Omen of Clarity, but not Moonkin.

[Kyanion]

Very sad. Made an entire thread about it how it would improve the gameplay if we had a procc for some instant casts. Dont get why every Druid specc gets Omen of Clarity, but not Moonkin.

It would give us a bit of RNG elements to spice things up a bit but the stability of the spec not relying on RNG is appealing as well.

[huth]

Very sad. Made an entire thread about it how it would improve the gameplay if we had a procc for some instant casts. Dont get why every Druid specc gets Omen of Clarity, but not Moonkin.

Weird, i always thougt Guardian was a Druid spec too. Besides, OoC doesn't make spells instant, it makes spells free.

We do have a proc for Instant casts, too. Gets triggered by getting hit, is called Owlkin Frenzy.

[Seneca]

I don't think a proc would really be necessary or the best solution if we want to put it that way, not all specs need procs.


There are many mechanics which can be used to make a spec more interesting (procs are just 1 of them).

Surely refreshing dots every 20secs, and basically spamming SW and SS when available, with the occasional LS, doesn't feel that interesting, personally speaking.



Balance, I think, is the only caster spec with 2 fillers. That uniqueness, for example, is something that, imho, should have been strenghtened, improved, glorified....instead, they hard failed at it and enchained LS to only be used with the empowerment, single target wise. AoE wise we do not use SW anyway, so balance does not really have 2 fillers, it is more like 1 with the other one confined by a buff.


The 2 dots, imho, leave something to be desired too, I mean, MF could as well as be removed and the damage of SF boosted and nothing would change mechanically or talents/traits wise, or am I wrong?

The same cannot be said for the baseline dots of the other casters, there are too many resources, procs, buffs, cleave/AoE effects, talents/traits implied.

[Nythiz]

Assuming BoE and SOTF
starting at 0 AP
Well lets say you got 4 targets: moonfire x4 +sunfire+ SW x4 + starfall +sunfire refresh+refresh moonfires.
Thats 10 GCD's before your dots are empowered and you star doing "real" aoe damage. Thats an awfully long wait compared to other aoe.

The alternative is to skip dots, wrath x 5 +sunfire+starfall+moonfire spam. Still takes 7 GCDs, and you are getting less empowered dot ticks for all that AP you spent.

Using LS is more splash damage but its even slower (since it has a lower AP/Sec value).

Its great against long lived adds...but against stuff that isn't - 7-10 gcd's and they are likely dead already

Kinda depends on the encounter type. A lot of the longer duration fights don't have adds from the get go, but rather have adds trickle or spawn in.
In those cases you can (assuming you know the encounter a bit) start with a good bunch of AsP before you start the AoE.

As for the ramp up, that also depends a bit on the situation. Astral Communion seems like a really solid option IMO if there are situations where you need a bunch of AsP at once for cases like these, where you need to get your AoE up ASAP but don't have AsP to begin with.

Don't get me wrong. I think our AoE rampup is pretty awful compared to WoD or compared to some other classes; but it's also not too shabby once we get it running. And with moonmoon and possibly AC you can really ramp up your AoE quite fast.

The major thing holding you back is moonfire spamming all the adds.

Ridiculously strong, though.

Could have been integrated into a talent like SotF or Stellar Drift to be frank; they're somewhat boring IMO. But I don't think it would be the best solution.

Personally I don't really think that DoT maintenance on AoE fights is such a bad thing. For me a bigger issue is that Lunar Strike is conflicting with that DoT maintanance.
Does blizzard want us to maintain DoT on AoE groups, or do they want us to cleave nuke; having both of those really doesn't flow well, unless they would somehow interact

So I tried to make a leveing "guide" on talents.
It's not so simple looking at our talents because I think we can go for everything tbh, comes down to what you want to use.



Level 15: Force of Nature which taunts and two free Lunar Strikes from WoE will make things simplier from this tier.

Level 30: All are good.

Level 45: Restoration is probably the best one, you could choose Guardian just for the damage reduction. But overall Restoration would make things easier in the leveling process.

Level 60: Comes down to what you want the most, but a Stun and the knockback (which I personally will use most likely) seems to be the most use.

Level 75: I honestly feel that Soul of the Forest is the best one to go for, reduce starfall is pretty neat to use. I'm not sure how much you'll need to burst things down but I doubt using Incarnation will be good at all, should've been an X. And Stellar Flare, if you want I guess :P

Level 90: I think Astral Communion and Blessing of the Ancient will be best, Astral to gain that fast AP for a Starfall or Starsurges, or having more generation through BotA.

Level 100: Looking back at it, Stellar Drift might be nice to have, you can cast in your Starfall so there is benefits of it. But I feel that with our Artifact we will get more Astral Power gain and Fury of Elune will be nice to have on stacked mobs. Nature's Balance is still useable.

Any insights? Tips for the Boomkins?

Level 15: FoN is really strong. Probably the best choice.
WoE might be better if your tempo is really high though, if you level with another person or if you're simply overgearing something (if that's possible). Treants might not do enough in 10 seconds and that quick double lunar strike gives you a nice burst of AsP as well.
Starlord would only really be good if stuff takes ages to kill perhaps, as to make the rotation a bit more fluent; but that's not generally a leveling situation.

So FoN for sure, WoE situational if you level with someone else, go really fast, or really want the snap AsP.

Level 30: All are viable perhaps, I wouldn't use "good choice" for Wild Charge though.
I'm leaning towards displacer as being the best. Mobility is king and if you can blink between mobs, quickly blink to a quest mob that is about to die for a fast tag, run blink and run from a gank. That's golden.
Renewal might be good if you take a buttload of damage, however I think with Resto affinity you have enough instant healing potential right there. Granted, Renewal is off the GCD and doesn't take you out of moonkin form, so it's really good on that part. Definitely not a bad pick.
I'd say Displacer Beast, for mobility and even utility here.
Wild charge just isn't really all that good if you aren't a feral or guardian to be frank.

Level 45: Restoration I'd say. Let's name the pro's and con's.
Feral gives you the movement speed, which for leveling is nice. This might be prefered if you're in a situation where you have 0 downtime or you have a tank buddy with you so you just move about faster. But if you solo or whatever I think you'd benefit more from reducing your downtime with resto affinity.
Guardian affinity gives you damage reduction, but to be frank it rather pales compared to a fast heal. You're better off taking a little bit more damage and having access to rejuv and swiftmend than to take a bit less damage but being forced to cast healing touches.
Restoration, IMO the best, for reasons stated above.

Level 60: Like you said. It's either Bash or Typhoon. The latter has a bit more utility, but the stun might be really nice for leveling. It's going to depend heavily on the situation and the flow of combat whilst leveling. I think the stun would be slightly better in a lot of situations (also no pvp realms); typhoon has some great utility though, but that might not really shine enough while leveling.

Level 75: Stellar Flare is a no, stuff dies fast enough without. SotF would be nice if you plan on using starfall a lot, but I'm not so sure that situation comes up enough. Incarnation isn't particularly more useful than SotF though. So either of these will work just fine. I think the passive from SotF wins out, mostly because the extra 5% damage and 15sec duration on Incarnation (vs Celestial Alignment) aren't huge while leveling. If you need a cooldown CA will generally suffice.
My verdict would be: SotF if you use starfall now and then; Incarnation if you hardly if ever use starfall.

Level 90: I think Astral Communion is king here. The AsP boost is huge. Using this plus both of your DoT gives you 81 Astral Power, which is enough for 2 starsurges or a solid FoE. This talent would almost make Starlord good in the T15 tier if you go for the starsurge dumps, because you'd have 2x 2 hasted casts after this combo.
Shooting Stars just doesn't do anything really good unless you pull a lot of targets that survive for a long while. I don't like it for leveling.
BoE is a decent talent if you dislike the cooldown, you can even use BoE:An'she if you find yourself not using lunar strike and solar wrath enough for some reason.

Level 100: Fury of Elune is probalby one of the stronger options here. It combines well with AC and gives you a more bursty option that also gives you some AoE.
Stellar Drift is an option if you find yourself resorting to starfall a lot, but I'm not sure how much use this will see whilst leveling. If we can keep the class trinket for a while it might be nice due to the mobility and increased radius.
I don't think NB will be that good to be frank. I don't see us refreshing DoT a lot in a single target leveling situation. Maybe you need to refresh in AoE, but then the other 2 talents are much better anyway. I don't think this is going to be really good.

My choices for leveling would probably be:

FoN > DB > Resto > Bash(/Typhoon) > SotF/Inc > AC > FoE(/SD)

I might pick WoE since I probably level with a buddy of mine who is going to be leveling tank. The treants might just interfere more than help.