[Balance] Shadowlands Class Updates

[Great Destiny Man]

Then it's probably fine and I'm just left with a boring spell. I just kinda hate the look of the other covenants and I'm a night elf main, so Night Fae is the only 'correct' place to go. Oh well, hopefully I won't run into dumb people all too much then, probably not trying to go for very high keys anyway.

Yea, thematically I'd very much like to go Night Fae but for all around ability and Soulbind usefulness Venthyr just seems top of the crop (and sadly the latter is more influential on my Covenant decision).

[TickTickTick]

I'm still wanting to go Night Fae on my druid, but right now it feels like I'll need to go Venthyr due to how powerful the package is. I'd be fine if Convoke was less throughput than RF (as long as they're semi-close, or both are good in different scenarios), it's that bloody Door of Shadows that's the issue.

Well, add into that that Night Fae vulpin ability isnt that good on us, since we have cat form already. Blink is kind of nice I guess, but you first need to transform to vulpin - in which case it takes as much as casting venthyr tp, which has bigger range and you choose the specific place to blink to. For classes like mage who doesnt have a movement speed boost, this could be nice I'm sure, but for druids...

[huth]

- Starfall area is huuuuuge

Should be about 90y diameter(i.e. 45y range in every direction, and it hits everything in range)
Did you check how it determines valid targets?(e.g. only in combat, only dotted targets, absolutely everybody in the whole wide world)

[TickTickTick]

Did you check how it determines valid targets?(e.g. only in combat, only dotted targets, absolutely everybody in the whole wide world)

I just checked - it doesn't hit mobs that are not in combat. But it DOES hit mobs that are in combat, but not with you.

Similar with Convoke the Spirits: it doesn't target mobs that are not in combat, even the Starfall proc doesnt aggro them. Trash does though if you're in close range. The hots do proc on people outside your group/raid though, so if someone happens to be in combat with a mob, you use CtS and it targets that person, you're automatically in combat with that mob.

Edit: both Starfall and CtS also don't target CCed targets (hex etc.) so they don't break cc (unless you happen to troll trash and you're near a CCed mob).

[Azzurri]

So how does Balance feel in general, is it fun? How is the DPS? I know we don't have conduits right now, so that will help.

[Niwes]

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So I was testing the raid yesterday.

Things I noticed as balance:

- Convoke the Spirit is underwhelming as fuck. I honestly don't see a reason why anyone would take it. Yes, animation is nice, but overall effect? Meh.
- Door of Shadows is great. I've found two good uses for it just yesterday alone: on Hungering Destroyer when the raid must spread for a moment, and on Lady Inerva to catch the Bottled Anima. Choosing an exact place to which you want to teleport is super helpful for doing mechanics
- Ravenous Frenzy... oh boy. This + bloodlust + incarnation: chosen of elune (i think the fact that we lose streaking stars and CE giving crit only will make this talent dominant on this row), I was able to get as many as 40 stacks, which is 80% haste AND damage done. Extra bonus if you're able to time it with Thrill Seeker (Nadjia soulbind). Considering the fact that at the begining our haste is so small, such a huge boost makes a lot of difference. I was able to maintain the double eclipse almost for the entirety of incarnation (was a bit laggy, no idea how would it go on live). This is, imo, the must go-to covenant, no question.
- Starfall area is huuuuuge
- Starsurge costs 30 astral power now. Not sure if it was announced anywhere (i cant remember, probably was). Feels nice for these must-burn moments, being able to throw 3 starsurges in a row
- the auras behind different eclipses are kind of messy right now. You get a visual aura at the center of the screen, but it disappears after one cast, even though it should be visible for the entirety of the specific eclipse. The ability on the ability bar sometimes flashes and sometimes not. It also shows "charges" for wrath and starfire, indicating how many you must cast to start the eclipse - the problem is, on multiple occassions i've seen a spell having 3 charges, and indeed I had to cast it 3 times to enter eclipse. So it's kind of buggy right now.

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Base cast time reduce is 15%, which can be increased to 20% with Soul of the Forest talent.

results in a „how long“ starfire/lunarstrike cast ? or asked the other way: what is base cast time of lunarstrike in beta ?

- - - Updated - - -

You guys must have some really weird cars or driving habits, as the rotation doesn't feel like that at all, especially at higher haste levels. The default Streaking Stars rotation is certainly rhythmic, but by no means janky. Even with Streaking Stars, fairly frequently it doesn't make sense to alternate SW/SF casts due to preparing for movement/pooling, or uneven empowerments. If I did have a complaint or two about the moonkin rotation in BfA, empowerments were way too frequent and Starfall was underpowered/ineffectual for most content/scenarios. Otherwise, the rotation was smooth and fairly adaptable to different scenarios, and the addition of Streaking Stars actually improved the baseline kit. If anything, we can chalk it up to differences of opinion, which is perfectly fine.

Still am a bit concerned about the state of moonkins on the beta when it comes to Venthyr. I still hold the opinion that Door of Shadows, regardless of class/spec, is way too good in all content in the game compared to the other covenant abilities, even adding the others perks in to try to tip the scales. From the Kyrian changes, I think Blizz is trying to make something actually compete with Ravenous Frenzy for boomies (I'll have to get that tested at some point). Unfortunately, even if RF is slightly inferior to other covenant spell options, the power/flexibility/universal application of Door of Shadows would probably still drive people to Venthyr. Maybe Blizz is viewing abilities like Door of Shadows and Soulshape as just utilities, but in practice they tend to be throughput gains on top of utility, which is why the balance feels so off right now. Covenant tuning on the beta still has quite a ways to go for boomies right now, and I'm curious if Blizz will do something major with Venthyr in an upcoming build.

I'm still wanting to go Night Fae on my druid, but right now it feels like I'll need to go Venthyr due to how powerful the package is. I'd be fine if Convoke was less throughput than RF (as long as they're semi-close, or both are good in different scenarios), it's that bloody Door of Shadows that's the issue.

2 questions come into my mind here:

1) on what level you raid ? it feels like you have no good imagination how much of your dmg Streaking Stars do.

2) That pooling statement i not understand in the slightest. Why should you ever NOT rotate Wrath and LunarStrike, as long as both are empowered ??? This makes no sense at all. And they are, as you said, empowered like > 90% of the time.

as a side note: your last statement, among millions of statements out there, shows why the Covenant system sucks. Just had the feeling to add this here.

[TickTickTick]

results in a „how long“ starfire/lunarstrike cast ? or asked the other way: what is base cast time of lunarstrike in beta ?

Base cast time and dmg are the same as in live (2,3 sec), but ap generation was reduced by 33%.

So how does Balance feel in general, is it fun? How is the DPS? I know we don't have conduits right now, so that will help.

Hard to tell. It's definitely different and will get some time to get used to and will require you to make some instant decisions on the spot (although i'm sure there will be some kind of prio list).

For example, because of how our mastery is working now (starsurge benefiting from both solar and lunar eclipse dmg increase), casting starsurge with no eclipse feels pretty bad. But then, what if you're capped on AP, but you're in an eclipse you want to leave asap? Do you just remain AP capped and wait for the other eclipse? Do you cast starsurge anyway because it benefits from half of the mastery?
Because of this benefit though, I'm even more sure incarnation is the best in the row: first, because the time in which you cast starsurge matters more, you're not guaranteed to have near 100% uptime of starlord and getting 3 stacks asap will also be harder (do I spam 3 starsurges to get my 9% haste for 20 second, but in consequence also extend my lunar eclipse by 9 seconds?), second, because incarnation gives: 15% crit, 15% haste (not available for CE), 30 astar power (both) and 30 sec duration (20 sec for CE) meaning a longer window in which we can spam starsurges benefiting from both eclipses, and 15% haste means faster astral power generation meaning more starsurges.

Starsurge doesn't extend the eclipses during CE/incarnation though, it's a set duration to be as long as the buff, after which you can decide which eclipse you enter next.
You can't cancel the eclipse buff, so no clever macros to remove unwanted eclipse fast to start working on the next one.

When it comes to being stuck on solar eclipse while there are multiple targets... you do more dps spamming wrath during solar eclipse when there are less then 4 targets, on 4 targets it becomes kind of even, and on 5 targets and more simple starfire does more dps than solar eclipse wrath. So I think the way to go will be:
- you're in solar eclipse, there are 4 (arguable) or less targets: you dot them all (both dots, simple with twin moons), spam solar eclipse wrath and cast starfall to not cap on AP and to extend the dots (and starfall now does very similar dmg to base starsurge over 8 seconds so not that bad)
- you're in solar eclipse, there are 4 (arguable) or more targets: you sunfire them, spam starfire and cast starfall to not cap on AP (extending dots doesnt matter that much in this case since its easy to reapply sunfire)
- you're in lunar eclipse, you always spam starfire there no matter how many targets you have, since even one target lunar eclipse starfire does more dps than wrath, the question will yet again be when do you cast starsurge and when starfall, since they both do different things now

For how is the dps - it's hard to tell, i didn't have time to do dungeons yet, and during raid tests it's not really about dpsing but testing mechanics. But at first glance I think the eclipses and different purpose of starsurge / starfall are kind of limiting and we will suffer for that... not even mentioning the hybrid tax.

[GringoD]

In terms of minimising damage loss on heavy movement, Door of Shadows is a lot more useful than WC or Tiger Dash. I also assume it'll work same way as DB/Blink so that you can teleport through wall/ring AoE effects, providing an easy counter to that.

Also I had a scan through the soulbinds yesterday and to me, Venthyr ones really stick out as being far more useful for us than the ones from other Covenants. Obviously everything can change during the Beta but combine that, door of shadows and the haste buff from the class ability and it does seem that Venthyr overall seems to be a very strong choice.

Door of Shadows is still a 1,5 second cast, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. In Ny'alotha, it would've helped the most on Il'gynoth organ burst across the room, but everything else... Thinking about it, it's nice to avoid damage if you can anticipate the need to move. Like Carapace P3. Tiger Rush won't get you out of Infinite Darkness fast enough, but you could start the port while the Fury is still casting.

With the soulbinds I'm guessing we want to go for max potency conduits.
That would be Nadija in Venthyr and she is essentially just Thrill Seeker. If you take the buff to consumables and enchants, you lose a potency conduit.
Out of the other 3 potency soulbinds, only Pelagos looks good to me right now. Depends on whether the 5% versa refreshes or falls off and how annoying it is to keep up the 5% mastery.

[Great Destiny Man]

Door of Shadows is still a 1,5 second cast, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. In Ny'alotha, it would've helped the most on Il'gynoth organ burst across the room, but everything else... Thinking about it, it's nice to avoid damage if you can anticipate the need to move. Like Carapace P3. Tiger Rush won't get you out of Infinite Darkness fast enough, but you could start the port while the Fury is still casting.

With the soulbinds I'm guessing we want to go for max potency conduits.
That would be Nadija in Venthyr and she is essentially just Thrill Seeker. If you take the buff to consumables and enchants, you lose a potency conduit.
Out of the other 3 potency soulbinds, only Pelagos looks good to me right now. Depends on whether the 5% versa refreshes or falls off and how annoying it is to keep up the 5% mastery.

I assume that cast time is reduced by haste (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). If you really wanted to you could take the Soulbind with instant Door of Shadows as well.

That being said, I think you're missing a lot of overall use cases that highlight the utility it brings. Imagine Azshara being able to port past the laser to go soak a node that needs draining. Imagine on G'huun being able to teleport yourself quickly to a tumour that doesn't have enough people soaking it. Imagine on Jaina just being able to port straight on top of the barrels when you have fire. Etc etc.

That and the fact, that it generally feels more satisfying to press a button to be in the desired position and not have to worry about bumping into other players or meandering around traps/whatever.

Personally I feel like you're massively selling it short but if you feel you can play well enough without it, more power to you.

Pelagos Soulbind just seemed a bit meh to me. Let go of the Past really doesn't sound like it will sync well at all when you consider Eclipse system. With Combat Meditation, I dunno, as you say depends on how annoying they make that.

[huth]

results in a „how long“ starfire/lunarstrike cast ? or asked the other way: what is base cast time of lunarstrike in beta ?

The spell got pretty much no real changes outside the rename. The reduced AP generation is offset by the lower cost of SS and the major buff to SFall.

With the Covenants officially getting special interactions in Dungeons and the various boosts you can get from Fleshcraft, i don't think DoS will be quite as OP as some think.

[GringoD]

With the Covenants officially getting special interactions in Dungeons and the various boosts you can get from Fleshcraft, i don't think DoS will be quite as OP as some think.

What do you mean by that? Fleshcraft sounds pretty bad. Standing there for 4 seconds channeling to get a 20% HP shield isn't exactly what I usually want to do as Moonkin. I don't see anything special in the soulbinds. If you wanna maximize potency conduits, you'd need to take Emeni for that and he doesn't give any throughput.

[huth]

What do you mean by that? Fleshcraft sounds pretty bad. Standing there for 4 seconds channeling to get a 20% HP shield isn't exactly what I usually want to do as Moonkin. I don't see anything special in the soulbinds. If you wanna maximize potency conduits, you'd need to take Emeni for that and he doesn't give any throughput.

Because you're looking in the wrong place. There will be objects or other things you can use or interact with that require a specific Covenant to use. There may well be a skip option in a dungeon that cannot be used by Venthyr, only by Necrolords.

Also, going max potency conduits may not actually be the best option. It prevents you from using some potentially powerfull utility and the paths to potency conduits are invariably the ones that do not have throughput perks native to the Soulbind.

[GringoD]

Because you're looking in the wrong place. There will be objects or other things you can use or interact with that require a specific Covenant to use. There may well be a skip option in a dungeon that cannot be used by Venthyr, only by Necrolords.

Oh, maybe I wasn't clear. I was guessing from your post that every covenant has their interactions. So I was curious why you propped up Fleshcraft in particular, since it sounds like the worst out of the four to me.

Also, going max potency conduits may not actually be the best option. It prevents you from using some potentially powerfull utility and the paths to potency conduits are invariably the ones that do not have throughput perks native to the Soulbind.

Might be, theorycrafting will tell. I doubt it though.

[Lahis]

Oh, maybe I wasn't clear. I was guessing from your post that every covenant has their interactions. So I was curious why you propped up Fleshcraft in particular, since it sounds like the worst out of the four to me.

Nah, Fleshcraft ain't the worst.

That honor goes to the Kyrian Steward which has literally no use.

[exochaft]

2 questions come into my mind here:

1) on what level you raid ? it feels like you have no good imagination how much of your dmg Streaking Stars do.

2) That pooling statement i not understand in the slightest. Why should you ever NOT rotate Wrath and LunarStrike, as long as both are empowered ??? This makes no sense at all. And they are, as you said, empowered like > 90% of the time.

as a side note: your last statement, among millions of statements out there, shows why the Covenant system sucks. Just had the feeling to add this here.

12/12M right now? I used to be top 30 US mythic guild, but real life got in the way, so I'm on a more casual basis nowadays.

I think you're misunderstanding my statements a bit, so I'll clarify. Streaking Stars does a ridiculous amount of damage, although I never referred to the damage aspect, just the rotation altering aspects. Before Blizz fixed Streaking Stars from proccing damage based upon when the spells hit (so travel time mattered for the damage to proc) to just not chaining casts of the same spell, the rotation could feel a bit awkward depending upon where you had to stand in relation to your primary target.

When it comes to pooling and what to cast, it all depends on the scenario. One of our biggest DPS killers is movement, and effective pooling can mitigate (or in some cases negate) movement affecting your DPS. With empowerments, if you read what you quoted of me, I told you one of my issues with BfA was that empowerments came too often. However, having an overabundance of empowerments to where you risked capping AsP and empowerments tends to only happen in ST scenarios with certain talents available. If you run with FoN and FoE, you can get a burst of AsP, but when those abilities are on CD it's not uncommon to blow through all your empowerments and still not have enough AsP to use Starsurge (where NB and ShS tend to give you a steady stream to where you tend to always have an empowerment). All this is also depends on how often you proc free Empowerments from casting SW/LS as well. This scenario happens quite frequently in a M+ scenario, where you may have downtime between pulls and your AsP drains quite a bit (maybe even empowerments drop).

Anyways, there are situations in BfA where you can find yourself without empowerments and either can't cast Starsurge or you know you're planning for movement very soon (where you'd rather be casting Starsurge instead of spamming SF/MF). So what do you do? If it's pure, ST you can spam Wrath to build up AsP to toss out some Starsurges while you move. If it's an AoE scenario, you can cast LS to get some extra cleave damage in while pooling AsP for movement. If you come into a scenario where you're moving and you have CA running (either you used the ability or it proc'd via Visions), depending on what type of movement and how far you're going, you are not going to be alternating SW/LS while moving. If you lack the AsP because you weren't planning on the movement, you'd probably alternate SF/MF to get Streaking Stars damage going out. If you planned properly, depending on how far you go you can alternate Starsurges with MF/SF or maybe even alternate Starsurges with SW if the movement allows stop-and-go. Without devolving into every single scenario, the underlying point is this: the goal of the rotation isn't to alternate SW/LS casts, the goal is to not overcap on empowerments and AsP while always casting. In order to achieve that, you may end up not alternating casts of SW/LS at all (especially outside of Streaking Stars windows).

Anyways, hope that clears up any confusion.

Door of Shadows is still a 1,5 second cast, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. In Ny'alotha, it would've helped the most on Il'gynoth organ burst across the room, but everything else... Thinking about it, it's nice to avoid damage if you can anticipate the need to move. Like Carapace P3. Tiger Rush won't get you out of Infinite Darkness fast enough, but you could start the port while the Fury is still casting.

I think Door of Shadows could be used way more than that in just Ny'alotha, especially viewing the ability outside of our own class which has quite a few movement abilities. Only fights that probably would have zero benefit in Ny'alotha on mythic would be Maut (unless you're a slow tank catching orbs maybe?), Dark Inquisitor Xanesh, and Hivemind. The other 9 fights having Door of Shadows could make some classes' lives much easier, or maybe even ease up some comp restrictions when it comes to movement or negative certain mechanics. Thinking outside of of Ny'alotha and back to previous raid tiers in BfA and even Legion, being able to teleport 35 yards with a 1.5 sec cast would have always been a boon when dealing with mechanics

Beyond just thinking of mechanics that Door of Shadows can deal with, minimizing the loss of DPS due to movement makes the utility suddenly a DPS gain. If you have to move 5-10 yards, Door is probably not going to be better than properly pooling for movement. If you have to move a long distance, suddenly being able to move 35 yards in 1.5 seconds is powerful. It's not just with boomies, everyone has to deal with this at some level, even melee. The faster you can get to where you need to be or getting back to a position where you can DPS the boss (or heal people, let's not leave the healers out of this), the better.

My main issue with Door of Shadows isn't how powerful it is by itself, it's how powerful it is in relation to all the other options (even taking soulbinds into consideration). If all the other signature abilities were powerful and of marked usefulness in every scenario, great! If all the signature abilities had niche applications, I'd be all for that, too! The abilities don't have to be all perfectly balanced either, allowing some abilities to shine in certain scenarios where others don't as much. However, none of these describe the current state of signature abilities. Night Fae is probably a close second to Door of Shadows in my mind and probably in a good spot to compete with Door, and the other two abilities are far more niche in application. I could see scenarios where you could use Fleshcraft and it would be potentially more useful than Door of Shadows, but every one of those scenarios is pretty niche and don't necessarily make your life any easier, especially compared to how Blizz typically designs content.

I understand that this is all supposed to be a package deal with covenants, and that the signature abilities by themselves are supposed to be just one piece of your decision. Be that as it may, the gap does close a bit, but there's still probably a gap that could be closed even more.

[huth]

Oh, maybe I wasn't clear. I was guessing from your post that every covenant has their interactions. So I was curious why you propped up Fleshcraft in particular, since it sounds like the worst out of the four to me.

Those were unrelated. There will be interactions, and Fleshcraft isn't quite as weak as some make it out to be. 20% extra health is a much bigger deal than you seem to realise, especially at the high end. Finding 4 seconds(likely reduced by haste) to channel it isn't necessarily all that hard, either. Dead DPS are still by far the weakest.

[GringoD]

Those were unrelated. There will be interactions, and Fleshcraft isn't quite as weak as some make it out to be. 20% extra health is a much bigger deal than you seem to realise, especially at the high end. Finding 4 seconds(likely reduced by haste) to channel it isn't necessarily all that hard, either. Dead DPS are still by far the weakest.

Nah, Fleshcraft ain't the worst.

That honor goes to the Kyrian Steward which has literally no use.

Fleshcraft is exceptionally weak, because we already have something that essentially lengthens our health bar by 20%. And that thing is instant, on a 1 min CD and off the GCD: Barkskin.
If you have time to stand around and wait for an effect, then I'm either helping healers by spamming regrowth on allies or I'm in bear form. I can't find a single useful application for that thing.

Kyrian on the other hand is a better healthpot on top of your healthstone. I find that infinitely more useful.

[Great Destiny Man]

Fleshcraft is exceptionally weak, because we already have something that essentially lengthens our health bar by 20%. And that thing is instant, on a 1 min CD and off the GCD: Barkskin.
If you have time to stand around and wait for an effect, then I'm either helping healers by spamming regrowth on allies or I'm in bear form. I can't find a single useful application for that thing.

Kyrian on the other hand is a better healthpot on top of your healthstone. I find that infinitely more useful.

In a raid environment it could in theory be useful if there's heavy damage soaks, bear form + Fleshcraft would drastically increase the chances of surviving. Depends on where raid design is going next expansion, if we get way more fights that focus on us being evasive rather than damage sponges then Fleshcraft isn't the same level of usefulness.

For M+ Fleshcraft is going to be a very viable choice for High end keys though due to the need to be tanky and the the differing buffs you can get from Volatile Solvent.

[huth]

Fleshcraft is exceptionally weak, because we already have something that essentially lengthens our health bar by 20%. And that thing is instant, on a 1 min CD and off the GCD: Barkskin.
If you have time to stand around and wait for an effect, then I'm either helping healers by spamming regrowth on allies or I'm in bear form. I can't find a single useful application for that thing.

Kyrian on the other hand is a better healthpot on top of your healthstone. I find that infinitely more useful.

Fleshcraft sharing a CD with Barkskin would be news to me. And being in Bear doesn't really stop you from using it. In fact, that's probably the best time to do so since you both get extra benefit due to Bear and can't do damage anyway.

[Chickat]

I think every covenant ability needs to had a utility and survivability trait.

Fleshcraft: 20% Shield. Also lets you teleport back to the same spot/corpse within 5 minutes as long as you remain within 100 yards. Still not as good, but makes it a lot more useable in certain situations.

Soulshape: Movement speed with blink. Also removes all harmful effects and heals you for 10% hp for every effect removed.

Steward: Offers to stand somewhere that you desire. You can switch places with him within 10 minutes instantly teleptorting and healing for 3% hp for every 5 yards you were away from the Steward when you switch places.

Door Of Shadows: Teleport to the chosen location. 2 second cast. Up to 40 yards away. If you teleport onto an enemy you suck the life out of them healing yourself for 15% of your health. Does no actual damage to the enemy. There will be a telegraphed effect on the ground allowing for players to move away in pvp.