Are we losing the Moon spells in BfA?

[exochaft]

Except they want to do away with ST vs AoE talents, and for good reason. Talents originally were meant to be a playstyle that you enjoyed. You'd always grab all the mandatory shit but those last 10 or so talent points were yours to spend how you wanted. Back in the day when I played Mage, a lot of Mages opted for extra SP gain when you absorb shit with your Mage Wards, but I always went for Improved Blink which gave you movement speed after Blinking (much like Displacer Beast today). There never was this ST vs AoE nonsense which just makes you carry tomes everywhere. It's STUPID, and even Blizz acknowledged this.

I think it's a culmination of various talents that were given the thumbs up or player approval over time and the structure of our talent trees as they are now. I think the Affinity row is one decent example of where you pick one based upon what you like... sure, there's a "right" answer for each encounter and how you tackle said encounter, but it's mostly player choice of what they want. Another is the CC row where we have 3 options that are generally player's choice with the caveat of some are more useful than others depending upon what you're tackling.

A prime example of what's potentially bad is where there's no cohesion of what the row should be and it drastically can affect your playstyle and results, such as the SotF/Inc/StFl row. There really isn't a common theme among these talents except you do more damage, but there's generally a clear right and wrong answer when it comes to these talents that require you to change them depending upon the situation. So what happens in the end? We constantly change this row of talents depending upon ST/AoE scenarios because all the talents in this row have a strong impact and they all vary in power depending upon ST/AoE/cleave situations. On my lazy raiding days, it's the only row (aside from the lvl 15 talent row, that has similar issues) I feel like I have to change constantly so I'm not a burden to my group.

Little long winded, forgive me. However, having StFl cause empowerment on the target would make it much nicer for single target applications... especially when the boss is pulled and I forget I'm spec'd into StFl.

[lappee]

Which the majority of groups are not doing. You can see that pretty clearly via 70th and lower percentiles, even on Mythic.

Which is a player issue, not the class or spell.
Then again, given the reactions to FoE, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted Starfall to autoplace ontop of your target rather than manual targeting. That way skilled players can't get any advantage placing it between 2 mobs.

Except they want to do away with ST vs AoE talents, and for good reason. Talents originally were meant to be a playstyle that you enjoyed. You'd always grab all the mandatory shit but those last 10 or so talent points were yours to spend how you wanted. Back in the day when I played Mage, a lot of Mages opted for extra SP gain when you absorb shit with your Mage Wards, but I always went for Improved Blink which gave you movement speed after Blinking (much like Displacer Beast today). There never was this ST vs AoE nonsense which just makes you carry tomes everywhere. It's STUPID, and even Blizz acknowledged this.

Which can be achieved in other ways than making SotF a baseline. Making SotF baseline just sets you in in one kind of playstyle (starfall spam) rather than diversifying the playstyles.

Swapping Incarnation and Stellar Drift makes 75 tier AoE oriented. Stellar Drift needs a buff to Starfall dmg as it can't be spammed (less Starfalls but they are big and hit hard) and Stellar Flare needs to get Stellar Empowerment attached to it (No Starfalls, Multidot shenanigans). Stellar Drift would still need something so its a gain on ST as well (like the other 2 talents are/would be)

It would also make 100 tier a more ST oriented, given they change FoE to deal reduced dmg on extra targets (Full Moon treatment).

There are also other little changes for 15 tier that could be done to achieve the same effect on all talents. 75 tier is rather good as it is.

[Kyanion]

Which is a player issue, not the class or spell.
Then again, given the reactions to FoE, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted Starfall to autoplace ontop of your target rather than manual targeting. That way skilled players can't get any advantage placing it between 2 mobs.

Careful. Your elitism is showing. And the point is that some RAIDS don't put the two dogs close enough, that is not a 'player' issue if you have no control over what the raid or guild is doing.

[lappee]

Careful. Your elitism is showing. And the point is that some RAIDS don't put the two dogs close enough, that is not a 'player' issue if you have no control over what the raid or guild is doing.

Some raids don't keep them close enough, 95% do for the majority of the fight. I don't think you realize how big the hitbox on the dogs is, it is a player issue for the majority. It pretty much is a case of "if you can multidot then you can Starfall" and people just don't even multidot.

If people decide to go ST build for a 2 target fight then it is nothing but a player issue. You can go check the logs of the "70th" percentile and lower and see how many of them are just not multidotting/Starfalling even when its usable or simply using ST spec. It is the vast majority of them.

but please, keep putting things under the "elitism" checkmark when you don't want to face the issue.

[Kyanion]

Some raids don't keep them close enough, 95% do for the majority of the fight. I don't think you realize how big the hitbox on the dogs is, it is a player issue for the majority. It pretty much is a case of "if you can multidot then you can Starfall" and people just don't even multidot.

"some" I think you might want to go through a lot of the data on those kills, because I really don't think this is the case. Yes I know the hitbox is massive but I don't get to starfall them. Not like it matters that much to me, we just kill the boss and move on.

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If people decide to go ST build for a 2 target fight then it is nothing but a player issue. You can go check the logs of the "70th" percentile and lower and see how many of them are just not multidotting/Starfalling even when its usable or simply using ST spec. It is the vast majority of them.

but please, keep putting things under the "elitism" checkmark when you don't want to face the issue.

I'm checking elitism when you respond how you do. You don't seem to know how it goes in some normal/heroic guilds and surely don't seem to know what it is like for pugs out there.

It isn't a player issue if the dogs are split too far up to starfall.

[Zyky]

"some" I think you might want to go through a lot of the data on those kills, because I really don't think this is the case. Yes I know the hitbox is massive but I don't get to starfall them. Not like it matters that much to me, we just kill the boss and move on.

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I'm checking elitism when you respond how you do. You don't seem to know how it goes in some normal/heroic guilds and surely don't seem to know what it is like for pugs out there.

It isn't a player issue if the dogs are split too far up to starfall.

His numbers are definitely mixed, but if the conversation is about how your guild isn't doing x for you to do better, than maybe it's time to look for a new/better guild? It still sums down to a player issue, not a playstyle issue, but more of a complacent attitude issue.

[lappee]

"some" I think you might want to go through a lot of the data on those kills, because I really don't think this is the case. Yes I know the hitbox is massive but I don't get to starfall them. Not like it matters that much to me, we just kill the boss and move on.

You might want to go through the data as I wasn't able to find a single one where the dogs were separated enough for the majority of the fight.

I'm checking elitism when you respond how you do. You don't seem to know how it goes in some normal/heroic guilds and surely don't seem to know what it is like for pugs out there.

It isn't a player issue if the dogs are split too far up to starfall.

Except for the majority of the expansion I've been casual Heroic/Mythic raiding in pugs, only lately have I gotten back into a guild and doing something with the other than just getting Cutting Edge. Elitism =/= realism.

It isn't a player issue if the dogs are split too far apart, however that isn't the case for the large majority. It is simply player issue not using Starfall, whether its because of talents or lacking the skill to place it correctly doesn't really matter as its still a player issue.

[Deleted]

I simply disagree that FoE autofollow makes the spell any lesser, and frontloading is AP cost was a good idea so it's not a game of rooting yourslef for maintaining it as long as possible. Moonkins already has terrible mobile damage so it doesn't need to become even more of a turret.

I just don't buy into the old school feral school of class design. Making classes obnoxious to juggle to gain marginal performance gains is not my idea of fun.

It puts the specc in an impossible state because they will never give a spec of certain difficulty enough of a gap in performance to compensate since at higher skill levels it will be perfectly usable and broken as a result while at the lower skill levels the spec underperforms.

In the entirety of old feral's existence it never performed proprotionate to its difficulty, so the simplifying changes in Legion were a good thing for the accessibility of the spec.

oh no you didnt just say that, oh my gosh you dont like overly complicated playstyle to gain +0,5% dps increase over other specs who spam 2 buttons in no particular order (only on ST while on AoE you completely suck and when your rotation breaks due to some random boss ability you lose 20% of total dps forever) so you must be a bad player, man this is clearly a l2p issue, if you dont like it then switch to other spec, or better quit the game, just dont touch my precious spec which plays like crap for 99% of players (and I just happen to be a famous theorycrafter of)

sorry I just had to be sarcastic

Not necessarily. Keep in mind if you're taking SD, you're also losing out on 30% Starfall damage from live's version, which is a decent enough loss (plus all the traits. Stellar Emp is MUCH weaker than live, as are the DoTs; another 12% loss on Starfall too).

Also, Starfall SHOULD be in the base rotation, at least for 2+ targets, without the mandatory need of a fucking talent. Without SOTF, you avoid Starfall like the plague unless you have a ton of targets (in which case, why aren't you using SOTF again?).

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Which the majority of groups are not doing. You can see that pretty clearly via 70th and lower percentiles, even on Mythic.


Except they want to do away with ST vs AoE talents, and for good reason. Talents originally were meant to be a playstyle that you enjoyed. You'd always grab all the mandatory shit but those last 10 or so talent points were yours to spend how you wanted. Back in the day when I played Mage, a lot of Mages opted for extra SP gain when you absorb shit with your Mage Wards, but I always went for Improved Blink which gave you movement speed after Blinking (much like Displacer Beast today). There never was this ST vs AoE nonsense which just makes you carry tomes everywhere. It's STUPID, and even Blizz acknowledged this.

Yes they stated openly that switching between ST and AoE playstyle all the time is bad design. I dont understand why are some people defending it. To be honest I dont see other classes/specs asking for constant change between AoE and ST talents. Why dont I see it? Maybe because its boring tedious bullshit? Just maybe, I dont know.

Which is a player issue, not the class or spell.
Then again, given the reactions to FoE, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted Starfall to autoplace ontop of your target rather than manual targeting. That way skilled players can't get any advantage placing it between 2 mobs.

Which can be achieved in other ways than making SotF a baseline. Making SotF baseline just sets you in in one kind of playstyle (starfall spam) rather than diversifying the playstyles.

Swapping Incarnation and Stellar Drift makes 75 tier AoE oriented. Stellar Drift needs a buff to Starfall dmg as it can't be spammed (less Starfalls but they are big and hit hard) and Stellar Flare needs to get Stellar Empowerment attached to it (No Starfalls, Multidot shenanigans). Stellar Drift would still need something so its a gain on ST as well (like the other 2 talents are/would be)

It would also make 100 tier a more ST oriented, given they change FoE to deal reduced dmg on extra targets (Full Moon treatment).

There are also other little changes for 15 tier that could be done to achieve the same effect on all talents. 75 tier is rather good as it is.

So your theory doesnt work in practice but you are refusing to do what researchers do all the time since...forever? That when your theory clearly doesnt work you should get back to reality, check the facts, and then change your theory? You cant just say its a player issue not the class or spell when majority of playerbase (whole playerbase, not just moonkins you know, because those 70% represent all other thousands of people who refuse to accomodate to your one single ability) doesnt do what is optimal for this one single ability.

The more I read your responses the more I think you dont even play balance, you just read descriptions of talents & spells and (try to) argue based on this theoretical knowledge.

It reminds me of one developer who stated in the beginning of Legion that moonkins are absolutel fine in m+ because they bring tons of utility, like solar beam. Yeah, sounds good, doesnt work.

---
Ofc those talents need to be buffed/nerfed when shuffled around. I dont see a big deal, thats what dev teams are for. I honestly dont care what they do with those talents as long they keep their promise and solve this AoE vs ST talent nonsense. If its too hard to balance around then bake some talents in. I will never defend lazy design, and this is lazy because its not in line what they stated and they are not doing anything to fix it (yet).

[lappee]

oh no you didnt just say that, oh my gosh you dont like overly complicated playstyle to gain +0,5% dps increase over other specs who spam 2 buttons in no particular order (only on ST while on AoE you completely suck and when your rotation breaks due to some random boss ability you lose 20% of total dps forever) so you must be a bad player, man this is clearly a l2p issue, if you dont like it then switch to other spec, or better quit the game, just dont touch my precious spec which plays like crap for 99% of players (and I just happen to be a famous theorycrafter of)

sorry I just had to be sarcastic

1/10, too many factual mistakes.

But thanks for having 0 input on the matter.

So your theory doesnt work in practice but you are refusing to do what researchers do all the time since...forever? That when your theory clearly doesnt work you should get back to reality, check the facts, and then change your theory? You cant just say its a player issue not the class or spell when majority of playerbase (whole playerbase, not just moonkins you know, because those 70% represent all other thousands of people who refuse to accomodate to your one single ability) doesnt do what is optimal for this one single ability.

Except I'm actually checking the facts. The fact is that for large majority of the players the dogs are close enough to be AoE'd for large majority of the fight. Deciding to use ST spec or not using Starfall when its possible is a player issue. If people don't care about their performance then good for them but it still is a player issue.

The more I read your responses the more I think you dont even play balance, you just read descriptions of talents & spells and (try to) argue based on this theoretical knowledge.

I get a similar feeling, I'm seriously not sure if you even play the game.

It reminds me of one developer who stated in the beginning of Legion that moonkins are absolutel fine in m+ because they bring tons of utility, like solar beam. Yeah, sounds good, doesnt work.

That depends on ones definition of fine. Can one play and get the best rewards? sure. Can they compete in pushing highest keys? nop.

Ofc those talents need to be buffed/nerfed when shuffled around. I dont see a big deal, thats what dev teams are for. I honestly dont care what they do with those talents as long they keep their promise and solve this AoE vs ST talent nonsense. If its too hard to balance around then bake some talents in. I will never defend lazy design, and this is lazy because its not in line what they stated and they are not doing anything to fix it (yet).

And the main point was that SotF doesn't need to be baseline (and shouldn't be) in order to achieve builds that are good for one thing but not dead for the other.

[Deleted]

For all of you suggesting that Stellar Flare should apply Stellar Empowerment: That is a horrible idea. It would make it absurdly good on single target. With the current ~200% bonus it would be around a 30% dps increase single target to spec Stellar Flare. Tuning cant fix this. Stellar Flare needs either a complete redesign or SotF to be baseline to be viable.

Soul of the Forest most definitely should be made baseline unless they A) move it to a tier that is purely focused around different kinds of AOE (FoE would fit on this row too) so it is not mandatory in every scenario where you want to AOE, and B) Remove all talents that synergizes specifically with Starfall (Stellar Drift & Stellar Flare) which makes speccing SotF mandatory.

All our 4 DPS talent rows currently goes completely against the design philosophy of avoiding having to choose between Single target and AOE. With legendaries gone, you will always pick WoE/SotF/ShS/SD for AOE and SL/INC/NM/NB for single target, with zero room for variantion outside of maybe the occational FoE mixed into the ST build for burst AOE. At that point they might aswell just turn it into a single talent tier since you always pick all 4 together.

[lappee]

Currently directly making StFl grant Stellar Empowerment would be closer to 25% increase from that talent (Incarnation is ~10%) so it would indeed be OP, you could juggle the empowerment % around during tuning (among other things, like dmg from the dot itself and AsP cost). Even if it wasn't wise to let it grant Stellar Empowerment itself the idea of it buffing dots is what would make it compete with the other talents for AoE.

Getting SotF, Stellar Drift and Stellar Flare into the same tier would do the trick of having AoE tier. Sure you could put FoE in there instead of SotF and make it baseline but that would cause us just to spam Starfall in any kind of AoE. I'd rather see my suggestions come live on these talents (and others) which would get us away from choosing between ST and AoE.

[nlc]

For all of you suggesting that Stellar Flare should apply Stellar Empowerment: That is a horrible idea. It would make it absurdly good on single target. With the current ~200% bonus it would be around a 30% dps increase single target to spec Stellar Flare. Tuning cant fix this. Stellar Flare needs either a complete redesign or SotF to be baseline to be viable.

Is it possible to make Stellar Flare a good choice for two or three targets without also making it too powerful for single target? Increase AP cost, increase damage and reduce duration or something like that. Make it a nuke dot; so you are not normally spending AP on starfall and starsurge in this situation. They could add something to Nature's Balance to buff moonfire/sunfire if Stellar Flare is applied without going so far as to apply the full Stellar Empowerment. Just a thought.

[wing5wong]

For all of you suggesting that Stellar Flare should apply Stellar Empowerment: That is a horrible idea. It would make it absurdly good on single target. With the current ~200% bonus it would be around a 30% dps increase single target to spec Stellar Flare. Tuning cant fix this. Stellar Flare needs either a complete redesign or SotF to be baseline to be viable.

Soul of the Forest most definitely should be made baseline unless they A) move it to a tier that is purely focused around different kinds of AOE (FoE would fit on this row too) so it is not mandatory in every scenario where you want to AOE, and B) Remove all talents that synergizes specifically with Starfall (Stellar Drift & Stellar Flare) which makes speccing SotF mandatory.

All our 4 DPS talent rows currently goes completely against the design philosophy of avoiding having to choose between Single target and AOE. With legendaries gone, you will always pick WoE/SotF/ShS/SD for AOE and SL/INC/NM/NB for single target, with zero room for variantion outside of maybe the occational FoE mixed into the ST build for burst AOE. At that point they might aswell just turn it into a single talent tier since you always pick all 4 together.

Without doing any math on it it was more about the empowerment aspect of it and how its strange having to use it single target, and it doesnt work on spread targets. It just never really fit. what if it scaled simoly with mastery, how FoE does now?

Just have to wait on next build to see some of trhese supposed upcoming changes

[Lunardark]

It's possible to make Stellar Flare a decent aoe option by removing its damage on cast component, decreasing/tweaking its overall damage and duration, and making it an asp generator on par or worse than wrath. This way you don't want to spam it single target, and you have a way to actually use it and sustain it in aoe settings. At the most it should be a single target increase close to SotF. Plus at 60 asp Starfall shouldn't be worth it single target.

[Deleted]

It isn't possible to make StFl work as a dot without Starfall. Starfall is such a huge contributor to our AOE DPS (70-80%) that not casting it would require Stellar Flare to do an absurd amount of damage, which can't happen because it would be way over the top on single target. It simply isn't possible to replace an AOE spender with a single target spender in AOE scenarios when the AOE spender is already better at 2 targets.

With Starfall StFl works fine in 2-3 target situations in Legion (See felhounds), but Starfall is still the main source of damage, and spending AsP on StFl is only a dps gain when Starfall already has 100% uptime. Currently it relies heavily on Moon Moon + RM and SotF to achieve that, none of which is possible in BfA. Obviously there are a few different ways to solve this, like making SotF baseline and making StFl generate AsP instead of costing it, but SotF existing on the same talent row literally kills Stellar Flare's viability.

[lappee]

It can be achieved, one possible way: Stellar Flare grants say 25% Stellar Empowerment and is increased for each active Stellar Flare. Whether this is for the targets afflicted by Stellar Flare or all dots via a buff is another question, although having such a buff would create interesting gameplay in AoE situations. Obviously only highest Empowerment is active (Doesn't stack with Starfall).

Wouldn't be over the top for ST, enables actual multidotting while still working for clumped AoE situations. You can't really go over the top with Stellar Empowerment since you still have to upkeep your other dots, specially if targets aren't clumped, unless we go with a buff and there alot of AoE to just sunfire -> StFl spam.

[Deleted]

I spent some more time thinking about how to possibly make a single target dot that applies Stellar Empowerment work and here's what I came up with:
- Casting it makes the next cast within a few seconds free (or significantly cheaper). This makes it able to compete with Starfall for multi target without being overpowered on a single target since chain casting has little benefit for a dot.
- High AsP cost to ensure that it is the primary spender. A low cost would result in Starfall being cast anyway, defeating the purpose of it providing Stellar Flare.
- Short duration, again to ensure there is less AsP leftover to spent on Starfall.

A possible problem would be that on single target you might end up refreshing it early just to take advantage of the free cast (is this a bad thing? Likely). That could be discouraged by no direct damage component and not making it free but only reduce the cost (maybe make the cost reduction stacking like ED). Alternatively the cost could be tuned to make it not worth using single target if placed in a talent tier focused purely on AOE.

I don't think it is likely that we will see something like this implemented for BFA at this stage, but somehow adding a massive benefit to casting it on multiple targets is the only way I could see a single target dot that applies Stellar Empowerment work.

Similar ideas I thought of:
- casting StFl on a target not already affected by it increases its damage/makes it free/some other benefit. Bad idea since it discourages utilizing pandemic.
- Stellar Flare does X% increased damage for each other active Stellar Flare you have. Linear scaling probably wouldn't work, and non linear is hard to explain to the player.

[Biggles Worth]

current Alpha build has zero moon spells or talents; however, they could still be added later...its alpha & classes are continually being tweaked

I don't know about adding them later. I'm still waiting for single minded fury to be added back into the game......

[Argenon]

Personally, I like the idea of StFL generating AP instead of costing or the potential for it to add empowerments. Either of these I think would make this talent viable in more situations. Though I don't know the ramifications of that on other talents/abilites, just a simple heroic raider here who never used StFL because of its niche requirements.

On that note, even in heroic, my guild kept the dogs quite far apart; it was very frustrating.

Also, everyone here is, hopefully, just trying to help, can we avoid personal attacks?

[Deleted]

It can be achieved, one possible way: Stellar Flare grants say 25% Stellar Empowerment and is increased for each active Stellar Flare. Whether this is for the targets afflicted by Stellar Flare or all dots via a buff is another question, although having such a buff would create interesting gameplay in AoE situations. Obviously only highest Empowerment is active (Doesn't stack with Starfall).

Wouldn't be over the top for ST, enables actual multidotting while still working for clumped AoE situations. You can't really go over the top with Stellar Empowerment since you still have to upkeep your other dots, specially if targets aren't clumped, unless we go with a buff and there alot of AoE to just sunfire -> StFl spam.

I like the idea but you could game it big time for single target DPS. With only a few targets you would still have a lot of AsP leftover, and the empowerment bonus would either be so low that Starfall would be better or so high that you would gain a ton of damage on your primary target since it would be super cheap to get a huge empowerment bonus. Increasing the cost of Stellar Flare and reducing the duration would hurt it as much for AOE as it would for single target. Now considering how much some other specs can game cleave/multidotting to increase single target that might be okay, but I doubt Blizzard would want something like that. Linear increase would likely also be a bad idea, and I don't think Blizzard would add something that convoluted to the game (especially considering how they have already degraded our rotation to Solar Wrath spam).

"Burns the target for X spellstorm damage over 15 seconds. If you have atleast one other active Stellar Flare it also applies Stellar Empowerment. Each additional active Stellar Flare increases the empowerment bonus by 20%. Costs 20 Astral Power."

That is the simplest variation I could think of. I'd be game for that, but the cheese potential would be huge.

The above is all assuming that it should be used as a dot primarily for 2-4 targets. If it only needs to be viable at a high number of targets it would overtake starfall eventually because of the exponential scaling, but I don't think that is what we want it to do. Atleast it seems weird to me to use AOE (Starfall) on a few targets but multidot (StFl) on lots of targets.