Balance - Skillfire spec

[mharmless]

I think people should seriously look at the skillfire spec again. The change to 2% mastery was a massive buff to this style.
wowtal.com/#k=15PeS99i.aei.druid.

The basic idea is to stay in solar eclipse at all times, and rely on sunfire direct damage to do the heavy lifting. You lose out on some direct damage, for certain, but you more than make it up on the back end thanks to having 100% eclipse up-time on every other thing you cast aside from starfall. Furthermore, every single spell cast in this spec is instant, so you have the mobility of a melee dps plus all the advantages that being ranged gives you. Since your primary DD costs almost no mana this spec is free to throw around expensive AE spells in any and every situation where there are enough targets.

This spec uses a stat priority of INT > MAS > HIT > HAS > CRIT. Having 100% eclipse up-time means that the 2% per point of mastery trumps the ~1.5% hit for the same rating points.

[Deleted]

dps log, or it didn't happen.

[Posi]

The spec isn't questionable, it's the idea. I can't see a viable amount of damage being put out with this theory.

[Deleted]

So you basically run around spamming sunfire with IS kept up and starfalling on CD?

Can't see it putting out enough damage to be viable, compared to a normal balance spec.

[Calculated]

On multi-target, high movement encounters, this style of play and gearing is functionally superior. However, not all encounters fit this mold.

Three elite target dummies in org without really even trying that hard and not reforging yields something like this

Normal rotation -- multi-dotting all three targets in Eclipse:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/0...one/?s=0&e=599

Extended Solar spam -- only started to drop WM and Detonate into it about 1/2 - 3/4 way through (and, as noted, didn't reforge for Mastery)

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/0...?s=2086&e=2569

Now that said -- again, not every fight fits the mold of three targets of importance up throughout the duration. For my money, it's still largely a gimmick spec/gearing methodology.

EDIT: on the plus side of this methodology, that 20% Starsurge nerf would be inconsequential

[mharmless]

I have a couple of logs from nights where I got to bring my boomkin alt in for 25s. Here's the first one. This was right after 4.0.6 dropped and the 2.0% mastery went live. Was wearing the new int alchemist stone and a green wrist, rest heroic blues with a mastery focus:

worldoflogs.com/reports/h70ibd0gc62tzmx3/sum/damageDone/

23.5k Magmaw
23.8k Omni
41.9k Halfus
18.5k V&T

I beat all our established raiding DPSers with my skillfire alt. Number one DPS in all encounters. Did not get to go the next week, I sat out for one of the other boomkin as we were oversubscribed and this is just my alt. For the third week, I was eating a lot of rage about my spec being cheap and cheating, so I did some fights in a 'normal' spec. I had one additional epic this week, the Theralion mirror from two weeks prior.

27.0k Magmaw (Skillfire spec) - worldoflogs.com/reports/dq5buzk1vgomcj1a/sum/damageDone/?s=713&e=1232
18.0k Omni (Normal spec) - worldoflogs.com/reports/dq5buzk1vgomcj1a/sum/damageDone/?s=4545&e=5060
14.4k Argaloth (Normal spec) - worldoflogs.com/reports/dq5buzk1vgomcj1a/sum/damageDone/?s=6199&e=6478

It's hard to overstate just how much being in eclipse full time does for your DoTs & AoEs when it is backed by a ton of mastery. State of DPS currently says 30k is median for Magmaw for the best boomkins in the world, and I pulled 90% of that in two epics, one green, rest blues. And I know better than to think I'm a top class boomkin player.

I am well aware that these numbers are not insanely good for the set of All Boomkin. But if I can get these kind of results with pretty poor gear and almost no raiding experience as a boomkin then I think it strongly suggests that Skillfire needs another look by people with better experience and skill.

[Posi]

I see hurricane as useless now when AoE'ing with dots and getting starsurge procs appears to be more effective, however I'm still confused on what you're suggesting.

During single target portions of fights you're suggesting to spam sunfire?

Wouldn't a mix of these two ideas prove more useful?

[mharmless]

Basically yes. I'm saying that mastery scales so much better than any other non-int stat that it appears to me that giving up the better base damage of a traditional rotation is compensated for by the far higher eclipse up-times on the dots and the perfect mobility.
Here, look at these numbers copied from the logs Calculated linked to during dummy tests:
Normal:
Wrath 1643438 11.8 % 68 11670.0 793558 31 27415.5 849880
Starfire 1698496 12.2 % 45 14914.8 671168 26 39512.6 1027328

Skillfire:
Sunfire 5438142 51.6 % 146 7732.4 1128926 35 15622.8 546799

Wrath has a 2.0 cast, Starfire has a 2.7 cast, and Sunfire has a 1.5 cast (GCD), and all three are affected equally by haste.
So, in a normal spec doing a normal rotation, Calculated did
11670.0 per non crit Wrath, which is 5835 dps before haste
14914.8 per non crit Starfire which is 5524 dps before haste

but he did
7732.4 per non crit Starfire, which is 5154 dps before haste.

His non-optimized, non-mastery-stacked sunfire casts, backed by the full weight of his mediocre eclipse, were almost as much baseline damage per second as his properly-geared-for normal rotation. I don't know if he had the 4% more moonfire DD talent.


The big loss is Starsurge. Will the eclipse fueled DoTs make up for the loss? I don't know.

[Mudkiper]

Log's are really that impressive... you did like 60% of your damage on magmaw parasites which is just... not needed. Omnitron that spec will be extremely dodgy in heroic due to shields, halfus.. 41k isn't amazing with the damage modifiers and valiona, 18.5k for a boomkin is exceptionally low.. sorry to burst your bubble :<.

[mharmless]

First off, I'm not claiming to be hot shit, I'm claiming this spec has the potential to be. I shouldn't be 90% of anybody awesome while running around in blues on my month old alt.

I had been looking for other people doing what I'm trying, and I just found one:

worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-c6s5vipvhj2ha8z3/details/16/?s=5207&e=5616

A top 200 performance for V&T with sunfire being 51% of all damage and only enough casts of Starfire to get into solar eclipse. Zlay, in full epics.

[axxey]

First off, I'm not claiming to be hot shit, I'm claiming this spec has the potential to be. I shouldn't be 90% of anybody awesome while running around in blues on my month old alt.

I had been looking for other people doing what I'm trying, and I just found one:

worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-c6s5vipvhj2ha8z3/details/16/?s=5207&e=5616

A top 200 performance for V&T with sunfire being 51% of all damage and only enough casts of Starfire to get into solar eclipse. Zlay, in full epics.

3 engulf magic... yea, rng much? Pretty bad dps compared to a normal 2 target rotation.

More interesting would be a balance between the 2, dot spamming using every shootingstar proc then pushing through to other eclipse when starsurge pushes you out of current.

[nightmarez]

The spec isn't questionable, it's the idea. I can't see a viable amount of damage being put out with this theory.

in i play this setup and its best tacts to do get eclispe spam sunfire this will be your highest dps arena wise casting still does lil bit more dmg but casting can be interupt and cancelt by pillars hug that's why sunfire spam is better it doesn't look skilled at and that is true but only way to do good dmg in arena you might use starsurge procs sometimes till you have like 15 or less solar energy than your forced to stop or you can't do any high dmg with spamming moonfire/sunfire
and about lunar eclipse try get fast rid of to gain solar eclipse but getting a lunar eclipse or going that direction is bad start already
and this is ment for pvp while in pve its still better to cast i have done skillfire/and casting tacts

[Shamslam]

3 engulf magic... yea, rng much? Pretty bad dps compared to a normal 2 target rotation.

More interesting would be a balance between the 2, dot spamming using every shootingstar proc then pushing through to other eclipse when starsurge pushes you out of current.

That's what I'm wondering. Would it be worth it to run as skillfire and use starsurge on procs? Once you come out of Eclipse you just push it to Lunar and back to Solar as fast as possible. Or is that too much downtime of not spamming sunfire? Does the 20% base dmg nerf to Starsurge make it not worthwhile?

[Anathor]

Log's are really that impressive... you did like 60% of your damage on magmaw parasites which is just... not needed. Omnitron that spec will be extremely dodgy in heroic due to shields, halfus.. 41k isn't amazing with the damage modifiers and valiona, 18.5k for a boomkin is exceptionally low.. sorry to burst your bubble :<.

Exceptionaly low? For a guy in blues? They don't sound exceptionally low to me.

I'd like to see a bit more data on this. It seems to allow for a lot of flexibility / movement. I could see it doing well on fights like Maloriak or Council.

Also interesting is the idea to purposefully extend the Solar phase why only casting Starsurge on proc to get out of it.

[Deleted]

Am I the only one who noticed that the build the OP linked doesn't have Shooting Stars in it ? That pretty much solves the equation.

[Deleted]

So basically you want to do what moonkin already do for movement/multi-target/keeping-eclipse-for-later-nuke phases of fights... all the time? Skipping a prime glyph, all major glyphs (since they don't support this playstyle) and giving up the use of starsurge instant procs since it would kick you out of the eclipse eventually? Giving up on 4t11 set bonus, too?

Umm... sure, if you feel like it, it's your character and your raids. Seems like a lot of wasted potential resources to me, though.


Also, spamming 2 buttons while dancing in one spot all the time, on all fights, and forgoing all the tactical decisions of going through eclipses for certain phases would bore the feathers out of me, but hey, just a personal opinion.

BTW, I'm not bashing you, it's good people come up with new ideas and put them up for brainstorming, but I don't see this work... and if it suddenly became feasible somehow, I see Blizz swiftly changing it like they did with diseaseless DK and 1-button AoE tanking druids of yore.