[Balance] Legion Discussion

[huth]

A lot of gear effects is going to be moved to the Azerite system for BfA. Based on what they showed at BlizzCon, there's going to be at least 9 bonuses you can have active, with at least twice as many available so you have something to choose from.

[Polarthief]

A lot of gear effects is going to be moved to the Azerite system for BfA. Based on what they showed at BlizzCon, there's going to be at least 9 bonuses you can have active, with at least twice as many available so you have something to choose from.

Except then that leaves anything that isn't a trinket or a Azerite slot as boring crap, if true. I'd really hope that this is false or just speculation.

[huth]

You need to strike a balance. To much of this stuff, and you end up with a huge mess to sort out gearing due to combinatorial explosion and non-obvious power gains.

[exochaft]

While I'm typically bearing it up, my occasional moonkin fun-time really makes me glad tier sets are going away. Blizz's original goal was that (for the most part) if you got a piece of gear that was a higher ilvl, you should be able to just put it on immediately in Legion. With all the systems floating around in Legion, from tier set bonuses to legendaries to WF/TF to whatever else you want to throw in, that goal is almost never met by any class/spec. Going through a raid night getting 3-4 pieces of higher ilvl gear is great, but due to all those competing systems I generally can't wear them because it's a power loss. At best, you probably have to sim something because you really can't be sure just because of the ilvl of a piece. With the removal of tier set bonuses on tier gear, that goal is more achievable.

As was stated somewhere earlier, there have always been balancing and power problems with tier sets even before Legion and all these gear systems. My memory gets fuzzy over time, but I can recall certain set bonuses or items that were so powerful that you couldn't perform your best without them despite their lower ilvl (or being received lower in progression, before ilvl/gearscore was a thing). The addition of all these gear systems and mythic+ being a viable path for gear progression alongside raiding have just amplified the problems to where it's very noticeable.

[Polarthief]

You need to strike a balance. To much of this stuff, and you end up with a huge mess to sort out gearing due to combinatorial explosion and non-obvious power gains.

No one ever said most of it even had to be performance-boosting. For example, the chest from Seat gives Leech when you take Shadow damage, and the cloak from Karazhan gives you Speed when you take Fire damage. You could also make on-use DRs, heals, tertiary stats, etc. Even if most of it is utility, I'd still have a good time with it.

I mean fuck, I'm excited to get ATV (if I EVER get it) for that sweet Tertiary stats proc, not just because it's an iLvl 1000 UA.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizz's original goal was that (for the most part) if you got a piece of gear that was a higher ilvl, you should be able to just put it on immediately in Legion.

To be perfectly honest though, even w/o Tier/Legendaries, this was absolute bullshit to begin with. I wouldn't dare put on a +5-10 iLvl piece if it was Crit Vers and replacing Haste Mastery.

MAYBE if it was a Chest/Helm/Legs, I'd at least sim those, but definitely not if it was any of the many low-budget slots (since Int scales like shit at the moment).

[Khrux]

The only way to make ilvl be the decider in what gear you wear, is to either A) inflate ilvl jumps from content to content or B) make primary stat scaling so strong it beats out any secondary combination.

I don't think Blizzard wants either scenario, with ilvl being squished I think they'll be pretty conservative with ilvl jumps going forward so squishes don't become a common thing. Plus making primary stats scale better than any potential secondary just dumbs down loot in general when you'd only really be concerned with getting more int/str/agi and couldn't care less about secondaries.

The biggest problem with secondaries is the variance in class mechanic design and how this increases or reduces stat value on a class by class basis, such as:
- Masteries that gives straight up % damage increases versus proc based masteries versus resource generating masteries (creating huge swings in mastery value per class)
- Spells that have innate higher/guaranteed crit chances (reducing the value of crit heavily for certain specs)
- Versatility being a boring stat that is just throughput (which some classes scale really well from, because other secondaries don't interact with them meaningfully)
- Haste being pretty terrible for energy using classes (bottom stat for 3 of the 4 energy classes and is only useful on focus using classes for cooldown reduction mostly)

So no matter what, certain secondaries will always be king and certain secondaries will always be trash depending on class/spec.

[huth]

What does that have to do with Balance in specific?

And no, they're not going to do it. The squish merely lowers the baseline. Which means it's actually completely pointless and they should have invested the time into improving the UI to make large numbers more readable instead.

[XcrossroadX]

What does that have to do with Balance in specific?

And no, they're not going to do it. The squish merely lowers the baseline. Which means it's actually completely pointless and they should have invested the time into improving the UI to make large numbers more readable instead.

Isn't that basically what they are doing by shrinking the larger numbers?

[huth]

Isn't that basically what they are doing by shrinking the larger numbers?

No, because that only delays the issue, it doesn't solve anything. We'll be back in the hundreds of thousands by the end of BfA. Chances are 9.0 will end up with numbers larger than Legion if they don't squish again.

[Khrux]

TBH I'd rather see the baseline and incremental scaling reduced rather than the client updated to show larger numbers.

It starts to get a bit stupid when we have 10-15mil hp and deal 3-5mil crits on main abilities. While bosses need to have hp in the billions as a result...

[huth]

And the problem with that is? It's no more complicated than having 10-15k HP, doing 3-5k crits and bosses having millions of HP. In fact, it's not measurably different. All that would be needed is displaying both numbers in the same way to keep them readable.

Scaling won't change, as the reasons why it is the way it is haven't changed.

[joltcola1234]

Seeing a few parses with people using Radiant Moonlight, what's the process behind making this effective?

[wing5wong]

Seeing a few parses with people using Radiant Moonlight, what's the process behind making this effective?

Multiple adds, high starfall/t214p uptime and moonfire moonfire moonfire moonfire

[Selerian]

@joltcola1234
It's used in AOE fights where you spend all your AP for Starfall (like Heroic Felhounds or Coven of Shivara). In a situation like that if you went the "normal" build and spell rotation you'd be forced to rely on non empowered wraths (bar your occasional empowered one from bracer procs) as your primary AP generator which is counterproductive both AP & dmg-wise.
The extra full moon from the cloak along with the instant Lunar Strikes from Warrior of Elune (since Starlord is a wasted talent with this build) provide solid AP generation without requiring you to spam wraths, enabling you also to abuse the T21 4set bonus for Moonfire spamming (for which with the standard build you'd find yourself AP starved).

On a separate note I'd be really interested to have some more data on the Stellar Flare build and how it compares to both the standard (Shoulders/Bracers) or the Cloak one but not enough ppl play it in order to make solid conclusions. I don't know if it's a matter of not being actually competitive or if ppl just aren't used to it and choose to ignore it. Gebuz, among a few others, has shown it can put up real numbers (btw how does FoN compare to WoE) so there may be more to it.

[Deleted]

And the problem with that is? It's no more complicated than having 10-15k HP, doing 3-5k crits and bosses having millions of HP. In fact, it's not measurably different. All that would be needed is displaying both numbers in the same way to keep them readable.

Scaling won't change, as the reasons why it is the way it is haven't changed.

/sign, thats why i replaced my unitframes with %HP instead of e.g 5M HP. I dont care if i'm at 12M life or 12k

[Lucrece]

I honestly don't care about floating numbers either. They mean nothing. I'll go to the logs if I want to understand my damage breakdown.

[Kluian05]

@joltcola1234
It's used in AOE fights where you spend all your AP for Starfall (like Heroic Felhounds or Coven of Shivara). In a situation like that if you went the "normal" build and spell rotation you'd be forced to rely on non empowered wraths (bar your occasional empowered one from bracer procs) as your primary AP generator which is counterproductive both AP & dmg-wise.
The extra full moon from the cloak along with the instant Lunar Strikes from Warrior of Elune (since Starlord is a wasted talent with this build) provide solid AP generation without requiring you to spam wraths, enabling you also to abuse the T21 4set bonus for Moonfire spamming (for which with the standard build you'd find yourself AP starved).

On a separate note I'd be really interested to have some more data on the Stellar Flare build and how it compares to both the standard (Shoulders/Bracers) or the Cloak one but not enough ppl play it in order to make solid conclusions. I don't know if it's a matter of not being actually competitive or if ppl just aren't used to it and choose to ignore it. Gebuz, among a few others, has shown it can put up real numbers (btw how does FoN compare to WoE) so there may be more to it.

Wait so are they using Cloak/Bracers or Cloak/Shoulders in this AoE setup?

[Rocksteadee]

From the link, it's cloak/shoulders, or cloak/ring(SotA)

[Selerian]

Cloak/Shoulders. Ring is used in Stellar Flare builds.

[Myztikrice]

@joltcola1234
It's used in AOE fights where you spend all your AP for Starfall (like Heroic Felhounds or Coven of Shivara). In a situation like that if you went the "normal" build and spell rotation you'd be forced to rely on non empowered wraths (bar your occasional empowered one from bracer procs) as your primary AP generator which is counterproductive both AP & dmg-wise.
The extra full moon from the cloak along with the instant Lunar Strikes from Warrior of Elune (since Starlord is a wasted talent with this build) provide solid AP generation without requiring you to spam wraths, enabling you also to abuse the T21 4set bonus for Moonfire spamming (for which with the standard build you'd find yourself AP starved).

On a separate note I'd be really interested to have some more data on the Stellar Flare build and how it compares to both the standard (Shoulders/Bracers) or the Cloak one but not enough ppl play it in order to make solid conclusions. I don't know if it's a matter of not being actually competitive or if ppl just aren't used to it and choose to ignore it. Gebuz, among a few others, has shown it can put up real numbers (btw how does FoN compare to WoE) so there may be more to it.

Pretty sure even with 4pT21 it's better to cast unempowered wraths than spam Moonfire on 1 target.