[Balance] Slip's Boomkin Theorycrafting (7.2.5+)

[thedeisel]

Shouldn't the old APL work just fine though? Most of the conditions are just based on duration remaining from what I remember, I could be wrong though. Anyway, doesn't really matter much, not much reason to use ED anyway

If the new model allows 100% uptime on empowerments (it does, it looks like), even if you cast slightly fewer starsurges, couldn't that make this a neutral change?

Uptime on SS cost reduction buff and AP savings aren't the only things that affect the value of the helm. Not wasting any empowerments and proportion of nuke casts with empowerments also matter as they're over 100% bonsuses at this point of gearing.

[Deleted]

If the new model allows 100% uptime on empowerments (it does, it looks like), even if you cast slightly fewer starsurges, couldn't that make this a neutral change?

Uptime on SS cost reduction buff and AP savings aren't the only things that affect the value of the helm. Not wasting any empowerments and proportion of nuke casts with empowerments also matter as they're over 100% bonsuses at this point of gearing.

Could be, but I'm pretty sure old ED already had almost no unempowered casts.

[Kluian05]

Well the new helm certainly works better with OI. It gives you leeway to use the procs not drop uptime on the ED buff.

[Deleted]

Well the new helm certainly works better with OI. It gives you leeway to use the procs not drop uptime on the ED buff.

That's true, I didn't think about that.

[Glurp]

You also don't drop your buff when you get the whispers debuff.

[Kaastral]

What itemlevel is the tier 19 pieces you simmed with, and can u also do sim with jacins on it 2P+4P IFE-OI AND jacins

[Deleted]

What itemlevel is the tier 19 pieces you simmed with, and can u also do sim with jacins on it 2P+4P IFE-OI AND jacins

you can't equip 6p + jacins.

[Kaastral]

you can't equip 6p + jacins.

Lol ofc, forgot it was hands

- - - Updated - - -

But im curious of what ilvl the tier 19 he simmed with was

[Slippykins]

Lol ofc, forgot it was hands

- - - Updated - - -

But im curious of what ilvl the tier 19 he simmed with was

It's at the top of that post, T19 is i910.

Shouldn't the old APL work just fine though? Most of the conditions are just based on duration remaining from what I remember, I could be wrong though. Anyway, doesn't really matter much, not much reason to use ED anyway

Yeah, it was only some very small changes to fix a couple of inconsistencies where some values were hardcoded in and were inefficient with the changes.

I believe Zoomkins and Jundarer are looking at building a more efficient overall APL though! Could be good.

[Deleted]

It's at the top of that post, T19 is i910.



Yeah, it was only some very small changes to fix a couple of inconsistencies where some values were hardcoded in and were inefficient with the changes.

I believe Zoomkins and Jundarer are looking at building a more efficient overall APL though! Could be good.

Hope they do one for non ED 4p to min/max it so we can better compare it to ED. I would expect it to be quite an increase if you pool AsP for it.

[rverma87]

Based on info that's currently available, how do you think boomkins will perform in relation to other specs, specifically mages? Will they be in roughly the same place they have been so far in the expansion? I ask because I mainly do raids at a heroic level where adds die faster and the ramp up time for boomkin aoe is prohibitive to good dps on many fights. This is exacerbated by my raid comp which has 3 fury wars, 2 rets and 3 hunters (as well as a couple locks but they don't have good burst aoe as far as I know) - all strong burst aoe classes. I'd like to be able to compete better on the meters with my raid comp and I was wondering if any of the theory crafting thus far indicated if there would be any significant improvement relative to other classes, specifically mage, because I feel that perhaps with a mage's burst aoe capability, I may be able to perform better.

Thanks for all your theory crafting work, Slip (and others!) I've been a long time lurker and your posts have been gospel for me!

[thedeisel]

Has anyone done a big re-sim of generic stat weights like Cyous did at the beginning of the expac?

I'm wondering if Circadian Invocation and the way it double dips on our Astral damage (or maybe some combination of other things) is affecting the value of mastery. I've simmed myself in a pretty large range of haste and mastery conditions (as low as 20% haste, as high as 30%, from 30% mastery from gear to 50%) and across a few different legendaries (boots, oi, ife, latc) and I consistently get that Mastery is a clear favorite in terms of stats, ahead of intellect. Sometimes it's very far ahead. Often times haste can even be last (though at worst it's still very close to crit/vers). I've been using the standard single target spec and APL. It also gets confirmed by swapping haste enchants, gems, and gear for heavy mastery sets and seeing the sim dps go up. The trinkets I've been simming with are a 910 whispers and 865 Arcano crystal and 4pc T19 with none of the 7.2.5 changes.

Just curious, anyway.

[Slippykins]

Based on info that's currently available, how do you think boomkins will perform in relation to other specs, specifically mages? Will they be in roughly the same place they have been so far in the expansion? I ask because I mainly do raids at a heroic level where adds die faster and the ramp up time for boomkin aoe is prohibitive to good dps on many fights. This is exacerbated by my raid comp which has 3 fury wars, 2 rets and 3 hunters (as well as a couple locks but they don't have good burst aoe as far as I know) - all strong burst aoe classes. I'd like to be able to compete better on the meters with my raid comp and I was wondering if any of the theory crafting thus far indicated if there would be any significant improvement relative to other classes, specifically mage, because I feel that perhaps with a mage's burst aoe capability, I may be able to perform better.

Thanks for all your theory crafting work, Slip (and others!) I've been a long time lurker and your posts have been gospel for me!

Hey! Sorry for the late reply, forgot to post.

It's hard to judge where in the hierarchy we will sit for Tomb. I'm fairly confident our ST DPS will be average, maybe a bit above average, but the inclusion of SotA really messes up our position for hybrid fights. We will be able to do quite well on fights with adds and ST components when taking SotA/IFE or SotA/OI. I'm really not certain where that will put us. Mage is always a safe bet anyway, since they have three specs.

Besides that, I think we will perform well in Tomb overall. If we will beat mages? Not sure.

[thedeisel]

Hey! Sorry for the late reply, forgot to post.

It's hard to judge where in the hierarchy we will sit for Tomb. I'm fairly confident our ST DPS will be average, maybe a bit above average, but the inclusion of SotA really messes up our position for hybrid fights. We will be able to do quite well on fights with adds and ST components when taking SotA/IFE or SotA/OI. I'm really not certain where that will put us. Mage is always a safe bet anyway, since they have three specs.

Besides that, I think we will perform well in Tomb overall. If we will beat mages? Not sure.

Would you mind elaborating a bit more on what it is about ToS that makes you think that?

I've been trying to find a write up about moonkin and the encounters in ToS but haven't seen anything. I haven't seen anything like Nagura's post from pre-Nighthold during the 7.1.5 patch. Her post was pretty pessimistic about moonkin performance in nighthold and ended up being pretty much spot on as moonkin probably had its lowest representation in bleeding edge raids since I can remember (going back at least to ICC). Is the design of encounters in ToS going to be a lot different than what played out in nighthold? More spread out multi-target fights? Will SotA just play really well in the instance? I haven't had a chance to do much ptr raid testing.

I'm also interested in why you think we're going to be in a good spot for single target. Is that because just generally, for any spec, we should expect for it to be near the middle once tuning happens?

I'm finding it hard to understand why we should be optimistic about moonkin specifically. Currently, for example, the best performance relative to peers for moonkin comes literally at the very max where we're still about 5% behind the middle. At other even very good percentiles (95th) we're closer to 10% behind the middle. I don't follow other specs so I don't know if lots of other classes are getting very large nerfs but we're only getting about a 3% buff which would need to be 3x as big if it were going to get us to middle class range single target dps.

[Slippykins]

Has anyone done a big re-sim of generic stat weights like Cyous did at the beginning of the expac?

I'm wondering if Circadian Invocation and the way it double dips on our Astral damage (or maybe some combination of other things) is affecting the value of mastery. I've simmed myself in a pretty large range of haste and mastery conditions (as low as 20% haste, as high as 30%, from 30% mastery from gear to 50%) and across a few different legendaries (boots, oi, ife, latc) and I consistently get that Mastery is a clear favorite in terms of stats, ahead of intellect. Sometimes it's very far ahead. Often times haste can even be last (though at worst it's still very close to crit/vers). I've been using the standard single target spec and APL. It also gets confirmed by swapping haste enchants, gems, and gear for heavy mastery sets and seeing the sim dps go up. The trinkets I've been simming with are a 910 whispers and 865 Arcano crystal and 4pc T19 with none of the 7.2.5 changes.

Just curious, anyway.

I don't believe so, but generic stat weights are usually misleading though. It really depends on your current gearset, your talents and the mechanics of the fight. I've never been too much of a fan of generic stat weights.

Would you mind elaborating a bit more on what it is about ToS that makes you think that?

I've been trying to find a write up about moonkin and the encounters in ToS but haven't seen anything. I haven't seen anything like Nagura's post from pre-Nighthold during the 7.1.5 patch. Her post was pretty pessimistic about moonkin performance in nighthold and ended up being pretty much spot on as moonkin probably had its lowest representation in bleeding edge raids since I can remember (going back at least to ICC). Is the design of encounters in ToS going to be a lot different than what played out in nighthold? More spread out multi-target fights? Will SotA just play really well in the instance? I haven't had a chance to do much ptr raid testing.

I'm also interested in why you think we're going to be in a good spot for single target. Is that because just generally, for any spec, we should expect for it to be near the middle once tuning happens?

I'm finding it hard to understand why we should be optimistic about moonkin specifically. Currently, for example, the best performance relative to peers for moonkin comes literally at the very max where we're still about 5% behind the middle. At other even very good percentiles (95th) we're closer to 10% behind the middle. I don't follow other specs so I don't know if lots of other classes are getting very large nerfs but we're only getting about a 3% buff which would need to be 3x as big if it were going to get us to middle class range single target dps.

So again, I'm just giving my opinion. I'm not much of a pessimistic person -- I like to focus on the positives and not get bogged down in the issues. Sometimes I'll notice a glaring issue and post about it, like the 2pc/4pc problem.

Besides that, I enjoy playing Boomkin. I've placed this spec since BC, stayed with the same main, stayed the same spec. I've seen all the iterations of Eclipse, the origination of Starfall, the loss of Insect Swarm, the spec is always changing. Every expansion would be a new playstyle, and some of those playstyles were more fun than others (UVLS Starsurge spam in ToT was the best).

So I'm confident that our spec will get another change, another rework, during the beta for the next expansion. As such, the major flaws of our current spec will be addressed then. Therefore, those changes will not occur now, and we will need to make do with the current form of Boomkin for at least two more raid tiers.

If that's the case, what's the point in doomsdaying? I'm not directing that at you, but it's just something that strikes me odd. We know that our major flaws wont be addressed until next expansion, we know we have to deal with them for another year or more. A player always has the option to discontinue playing Boomkin if they don't like how it's performing anymore. You could be like me, always playing Boomkin even when the balancing gets rough and we're significantly below average. Regardless, I still champion for the areas I think we're deficient in, as long as I feel the problem can be addressed in a normal balancing patch. I'm not going to ask Blizzard to add three new spells and turn one into a meteor halfway through an expansion. I understand that's hyperbolic, but there's a limit to how much you can ask before it strays from the realm of a balance patch.

Another thing is that I don't particularly get the fascination of inter-class comparisons. What inter-class comparisons measures is how "healthy" our spec is compared to everyone else. It presents a ranking for each spec and for each fight. Great. But why do I care if I lose to a Demon Hunter's burst AoE? Why do I care if a Frost Mage is going to beat me in ST? A lot of people quote "being below the average" -- half of the ranked specs must be below average. Half of them. So we're lumped into a category that contains half of the DPS specs currently. A better measure is to plot the quantile of our spec and look at that instead, since that gives much more information. Personally, the only way I will have a major problem with balancing is if my guild no longer wants to bring me to raid because the spec is doing too poorly. Besides that, I don't focus on inter-class comparisons and instead I look to intra-class rank.

Intra-class rank is what's reported on your character tab on WarcraftLogs. It's your hist%, your All Stars points. Intra-class rank is a (noisy) measurement of one's ability. Noisy comes from the other confounding factors that play a part in your personal rank, like guild strats, RNG and scumbagging. Regardless, it's still a fairly good measurement of how good you are as a player. This is the metric I like to focus on, because it has a meaningful interpretation for me, and for the things that I can control. I can't control inter-spec balance. I can control how well I do relative to other Boomkins. This is a core part of why I do simulation and theorycrafting work: I really enjoy learning for myself and for others what the best options we have available are for a given situation.

-----

So anyway, that's a longwinded explanation as to how I make judgments. I haven't looked at the Tomb fights, but I've heard from a few high-end raiders that the typical focus of Tomb is ST with priority cleave. I think we can do well at that with SotA, but again it's just my opinion. Tuning changes haven't even occurred on the PTR yet. That's mostly why I said it's too hard to call right now.

[thedeisel]

My question was honestly trying to see if your opinion was based on what you had heard and or experienced about ToS. I don't do ptr raid testing and hadn't read anything so I've been trying to pick up any info I can about the ToS encounters. I also love moonkin, have raided with it since ulduar (which is when I started raiding) and don't play the game enough hours to switch characters anyway. I even really enjoy the basic foundations of this iteration of moonkin [I only like Cata moonkin more with the IS cast control over NG]. It emphasizes movement expertise more than any spec I've ever played and I've always found that the most interesting aspect of ranged dps in raids because it rewards learning and reflecting on the encounters. My interest in theory craft is largely the same—how can I figure out the best way to do moonkin. Tbh, I also don't even care about individual percentile rankings. They confound way, way, way too much information (guild quality, gear quality, player role in raid strategy, player quality, and luck across any number of dimensions) to tell you much about the player quality. Only way to really know whether someone is playing well or not is to look at their casts and targets

My only real source of frustration with moonkin this expansion has been the combination of the high cost of cleave together with the overall poor single target performance. That's somewhat idiosyncratic to me. I play in a raid with 2 outlaw rogues who never go to assassination, 2 DH, 2 BM hunters, 1MM hunter, a Fury Warrior (2 for a while), a frost DK and a ret. We've got three mages (fire when great now frost). There's just no such thing as adds that last longer than 5 seconds. In that context I'd have loved to have been able to buy strong single target dps even if it meant opting out of any aoe contribution. I have really high hopes for SotA in that context—since I can't get seriously valuable single target damage, I really want my cleave damage to come very cheaply in terms of opportunity cost. That's why I was curious as to the kind of encounters in ToS, to see if SotA was going to be the go to. I also just think it would be far better if they just made that effect baseline and instead had sotf buff stellar empowerments since that's such an easy/small tweak that would be very appropriate to this size patch. But /shrug. I'll take it on a legendary I guess. I think I only have ED and Symbiote left to collect anyway so I should be able to have all three about halfway into my ToS progression at the rate that I play. In the end I dont' care about moonkin's relative spec standing since I'm not changing. I just want to be able to be adaptable and provide valuable contributions to my specific raid team. Overall I've been fine, in the context of my raid I do plenty well, but this is easily the least valuable I've felt to the raid team since I can remember.

[branbib]

So I'm confident that our spec will get another change, another rework, during the beta for the next expansion. As such, the major flaws of our current spec will be addressed then. Therefore, those changes will not occur now, and we will need to make do with the current form of Boomkin for at least two more raid tiers.

If that's the case, what's the point in doomsdaying?

Why are you so certain that out flaws won't be adressed till next expansion? DH's have been reworked 2 times already during legion. Aff warlocks in 7.1. Now Destro in 7.2.5. Brewmasters also. Elementals and Enhancement shamans got their talents reshuffled and rebalanced. So every aspect of the game that makes out spec flawed - was already redesigned for some specs. It's not that technology isn't there. Also keep in mind that's only the first ones that come to my head - there're certainly more.

Second thing is - there are a lot of players enjoying general feel of boomkin - but they don't even try it - because of numbers problem. Same as some people don't enjoy affliction but play it just to top the meters. WoW aside from casual playerbase always was and is still up to this day - a numbers game. Not to mention that discord is full of posts about boomkins being benched for progress bosses - because of tight damage requirements during progression.
I don't like the doomsdaying people but extremely passive stance that was taken by some of out ambassadors like you Slippy, and a boomkin community as a whole - is not very healthy either.

[Deleted]

To keep it short, I'd expect us to be in the pretty much the same position as in NH, except our single target might be slightly better (still wouldn't expect to be above average, just not dead last anymore) and our ST might be slightly better with the AOE spec assuming we get to use SotA for progress.

A quick overview of the encounters per latest PTR tests/DJ:
Goroth: Primarily single target, it might be intended that you let an infernal or two spawn and dot them down, but they will likely be out of starfall range, and thus we wont be able to do any significant damage to them. Anyway, probably a joke boss since it's the first.
Demonic Inquisition: Assuming starfall and echoing stars doesn't give Torment when hitting the bosses, this should basically be a 2 target spread cleave in starfall range, which is awesome for us. Plus, we get free cleave on the adds that spawn. Easily one of our best encounters of the tier, likely better than Spellblade was, depends how long small adds live for and how many you get.
Harjatan: Lots of cleave which is great, but adds will likely die too fast for us to be top. Still, great encounter for us. There might be a huge breakpoint where pushing more ST dps is useless, aslong as you don't get a new Frigid Blows phase.
Sisters of the Moon: Pure single target atm, horrible for us.
Mitress Sassz'ine: It's going to depend a lot on how the add tuning ends up. If the adds ends up dying super fast our AOE will be insignificant, however if they live for a decent amount of time we should be one of the better dps for it, and the encounter does not look like a huge ST dps race.
The Desolate host: Again, it comes primarily down to how fast the adds die. If they live for long it will be a very good encounter for us, if the best tactic is to focus and burn adds single target it will be a pretty terrible encounter for us.
Maiden of Vigilance: Pure single target, bad for us.
Avatar of Sargeras: Mostly single target (with very short 2 target windows in p1), likely a bad encounter for us.
KJ: no idea at this point.

Overall, obviously always going to depend mostly on the last encounter of the tier, but the 2 before the last being primarily ST is a bad thing for us.

[silkworm]

This question keeps popping up "If we will beat X class on meters" Gebuz pretty much summed it up. Just want to add my piece. If you are not playing guardian or resto as off spec, you are only using half or 1/3 of your class. This class is a jack of all trades. No other class offers this versatility.
Unless you are a hardcore raider that has serious goals such as world first, play your other specs. If you are in for that, your guild will dictate you what to play anyway. You will not be able to have much choice.
I did HC Gul'dan and did a few mythics with our undergeared casual friends, that have been playing since Vanilla and enjoyed immensely. I healed when our healers didn't show up, I tanked when I had to and I dpsed rest of the time. If we had more than 1 raid a week we could be doing some more mythics but then that's really for people who can devote more time to this game. I watched Gebuz raiding for Gul"dan Mythic with their guild and I respect them.
Also if we could beat x damage class consistently that would be a design flaw on Blizzard part and would be addressed immediately. I wouldn't want to play a 3 dps spec class and get beaten consistently from dps spec of a class that can heal and tank seriously.

[Lucrece]

Just take comfort in the fact that if destruction warlocks before 7.2.5 were being brought to mythic gul'dan despite the fact that they ranked in the bottom quartile overall, then your boomkin should have no issue being brought to mythics.

I've played enhancement shaman, unholy DK, windwalker, balance druid, and warlock for several xpacs. Even if the worst xpacs where people "don't want melee", I was still doing mythics on my melee characters, and on this expansion my guild NEVER told me to switch from destruction to the OP fotm affliction for mythic Nighthold.

Mythic encounters are pretty much tuned to the point where you can bring any spec so long as you balance out your roster to fill in requirements like burs/spread/clumped/ST DPS just fine to meet the minimum requirements of the encounter.

Destruction warlock was at the very bottom of mythic Guarm at one point and I was still doing enough DPS on my warlock to meet the individual requirements that add up to raid DPS to beat the encounter.

Follow Louis CK's and Slippykin's perspective and you'll be a lot happier when you're not so hung up on how much more or less your other guildmates are doing.


As a destro lock I never resent my frost mages or assassination rogues or even affliction warlocks. It only means our raid DPS has more to spare.