[Balance] Shadowlands Class Updates

[Lucrece]

I hope they reconsider the starfire change. I would much rather they'd increase starfire crit damage during eclipse to prop up crit instead of devaluing it.

Honestly, I'm not sure introducing RNG value anyways to lunar eclipse will have people happy. They could have left the increased splash damage and simply increased the cast time reduction on starfire to keep it feeling good in ST while looking at solar eclipse and making it so sunfire gets more ticks during the same duration at shortened intervals to give solar eclipse its compensation in AoE. They both still deliver ST and aoe in a somewhat different manner, but neither eclipse feels so terrible to get caught out on.

More importantly, it makes cycling eclipses in PvP far more bearable as lunar eclipse is just horrendous in PvP and if the enemy knows to just lock you out/CC you during solar knowing your lunar eclipse is worthless, it really screws over balance druids as a mechanic compared to the previous one.

[Great Destiny Man]

You may base your decision on whatever you want, be it numbers, aesthetics or any other personal reason you fancy. That does not take away from math dictating what is best and honestly, I don't care about how you may find one's attitude or the simple truth numbers speak. That is quite simply only your problem.

Which circles back to the whole unnecessary aggression part I mentioned, but this isn't constructive discussion., As you say you can base your decision on whatever you want so let's leave it there shall we?

Well, getting this back to what this thread is supposed to be about, looks like Lunar Eclipse is getting changed to give Crit to Starfire instead of boosting cleave, which is now on SotF(though it no longer provides Crit. Basically, they swapped the effects). Based on previous behaviour, the crit bonus should increase ~6-7% with each Starsurge.

Obviously, this is much more useful when we have to do ST in Lunar.

On one hand always nice to see DoT buffs, on the other CA and mastery nerf is a little painful. Crit based Lunar Eclipse is problematic when crit is currently heavily devalued but I agree it's a much nicer change on ST rotation.

[Lahis]

So were hitting like wed noodles outside of CDs, and to fix that they're nerfing the CD.

Great.

[huth]

So were hitting like wed noodles outside of CDs, and to fix that they're nerfing the CD.

Great.

And gave a fairly sizeable buff to our DoTs.

[naeblis495]

And gave a fairly sizeable buff to our DoTs.

wich is off set by the mastery nerf .

So the result is a hard nerf .

[lappee]

wich is off set by the mastery nerf .

So the result is a hard nerf .

But the spec is in a better position overall. Getting the balance (and interactions, if there were any) between spells right is the priority, if we're still short on damage after that they can just blanket 10% aura buff us without causing unexpected consequences.

[naeblis495]

But the spec is in a better position overall. Getting the balance (and interactions, if there were any) between spells right is the priority, if we're still short on damage after that they can just blanket 10% aura buff us without causing unexpected consequences.

Yeah , they could blanket aura buff it's so easy right ?

So why is current classes balance have been wack for years ?

[TickTickTick]

Obviously, this is much more useful when we have to do ST in Lunar.

Yeah it's apparent the shift in buffs between SotF and normal lunar eclipse is meant to make us feel less bad about spamming Starfire on single target. But on the other hand our cleave got nerfed, so I'm not sure about that.

[naeblis495]

Yeah it's apparent the shift in buffs between SotF and normal lunar eclipse is meant to make us feel less bad about spamming Starfire on single target. But on the other hand our cleave got nerfed, so I'm not sure about that.

i don't think starfire cleave was a huge part of our aoe ? Starfall is the main deal and beside the mastery nerf (wich affect everything.) , it wasn't affected .

[Lahis]

i don't think starfire cleave was a huge part of our aoe ? Starfall is the main deal and beside the mastery nerf (wich affect everything.) , it wasn't affected .

Starfire needs to hit hard because it has zero scalability. You can't stack it or hasten it, it is always static ticks.

[naeblis495]

Starfire needs to hit hard because it has zero scalability. You can't stack it or hasten it, it is always static ticks.

You mean starfall right ?

[Lucrece]

You mean starfall right ?

Yes, that's what he meant. But that's a matter of a change with Starfall that must happen at some point if we don't want it seen BfA'd again.

Either way, lunar eclipse still needs more work, and by swapping an undesirable attribute of the core eclipse into an already weaker talent, they just made the talent even more undesirable.

This attempt to try to make Lunar Strike some bad hybrid of ST/cleave spell isn't really working. Especially in PvP where what's supposed to make this spell worthwhile over Wrath is the cleave, but it is so meager in range and effect that it's just not an attractive feature, and changing our class function back to wotlk nostalgia eclipses means everyone will hate spamming a 2.5 sec cast base spell for some time in an environment that really doesn't reward or enable it.

The idea with Lunar Strike is that it carries more negatives than Wrath in terms of practicality, and that should be compensated in the punch of the spell, and it's just not there.

[Lahis]

You mean starfall right ?

Yeah, starfall.

[TickTickTick]

At this point they can just do away with Starfire as a filler altogether. Other rangeds can live with one and filler spells aren't important enough to be a defining part of a spec (saying this inb4 someone says "thats how balance is! go and play another spec"). They could leave it for strictly cleave encounters, but I'd much rather just have Wrath as a filler and spam it mindlessly, as opposed to having to alternate between one and the other and still spam them mindlessly. And then they would be able to remake Eclipse into some more engaging class defining mechanic, instead of this saying "now you're good at this, now you're good at that".

[Lucrece]

At this point they can just do away with Starfire as a filler altogether. Other rangeds can live with one and filler spells aren't important enough to be a defining part of a spec (saying this inb4 someone says "thats how balance is! go and play another spec"). They could leave it for strictly cleave encounters, but I'd much rather just have Wrath as a filler and spam it mindlessly, as opposed to having to alternate between one and the other and still spam them mindlessly. And then they would be able to remake Eclipse into some more engaging class defining mechanic, instead of this saying "now you're good at this, now you're good at that".

Lunar strike could very easily be made into a proc spell or have hooks like Wrath casts reducing its cast time and chance to critically strike by X% alongside an increased cleave range. Then it would feel like a real payoff.

[lappee]

Yeah , they could blanket aura buff it's so easy right ?

So why is current classes balance have been wack for years ?

Class balance has been rather good over the years when we look at progression level of gear. Whether X class scales well when tier is done is completely another matter, that is way, way harder to get "fixed" and would require most abilities in the game to be reworked from ground up.

- - - Updated - - -

At this point they can just do away with Starfire as a filler altogether. Other rangeds can live with one and filler spells aren't important enough to be a defining part of a spec (saying this inb4 someone says "thats how balance is! go and play another spec"). They could leave it for strictly cleave encounters, but I'd much rather just have Wrath as a filler and spam it mindlessly, as opposed to having to alternate between one and the other and still spam them mindlessly. And then they would be able to remake Eclipse into some more engaging class defining mechanic, instead of this saying "now you're good at this, now you're good at that".

Literally the number one issues people complained about before beta eclipse changed was that you'd spam to much wrath due to being in Solar for so long, and now that it is no longer the case and Starfire gets buffed in ST people start to complain that it'd be better to just spam wrath all the time?

Clearly there isn't a way to satisfy both parties, so better stick with how balance has been since TBC and alternate between the spells.

The AoE cleave from Starfire is very niche and shouldn't really be thought at all, Blizzard just needs to fix AsP generation from dotting (likely best way to remove DR from ShS) so we can actually AoE by dotting and having Starfall up (or feed it to ST). If there are enough targets for Starfire to be better than Wrath in Solar eclipse then thats neat, and if its better to Starfire rather than Moonfire multiple targets (specially without Twin Moons) then thats neat as well. The goal is to have damage between both eclipses in AoE and ST be rather similar, and the latest change with Starfire play into that. Talent choices will spice things up, but as a baseline spec that should be the goal.

[Lucrece]

That's virtually what Legion's system did with empowerments, make sure several Lunar Strikes wouldn't need to be cast in a row. That's what's going to happen now in Shadowlands since they wanted to imitate WoD nostalgia stunts with an old system nobody asked back for in a pointless rework when all the spec needed was iterations on the empowerments and their effects and looking at Starfall.

[lappee]

That's virtually what Legion's system did with empowerments, make sure several Lunar Strikes wouldn't need to be cast in a row. That's what's going to happen now in Shadowlands since they wanted to imitate WoD nostalgia stunts with an old system nobody asked back for in a pointless rework when all the spec needed was iterations on the empowerments and their effects and looking at Starfall.

The system is far closer to wotlk all through mop than it is with WoD. If they actually went back and made the class like it was back then people would be happy
A lot of people asked for a rework, Legion and BfA base specs were horrendous dogshit only to be "saved" by legendaries and azerite.

What we have now is definitely better than any of the last 3 expansions, but still worse than the expansions prior.

[joeblogs]

No, you just have no idea what you're talking about and keep believing that you find flaws where there are none, constantly contradicting yourself. Unless you can mathematically prove what you're saying, there's simply no value in it when talking about numbers.

You are literally saying that they show up as the best. There's nothing to discuss further with no data on your part. Just stop trying to muddle the waters.

Well it looks to me like you are the one who has no idea what you are talking about, lappee is in a unique position of being both a high level theory crafter and a world first raider.

Sims are great, those of us who have been using them for the last 10 years before every patch know that early sims very often do not translate to real world performance, and that the APL are usually not perfect for every build.

Blanket statements like "this is best for everything" have very little chance of being right even when you have all the correct data, when you have early APL's that might be sub optimal and untested fights with timings and veriables you haven't taken into account....

[Lucrece]

The system is far closer to wotlk all through mop than it is with WoD. If they actually went back and made the class like it was back then people would be happy
A lot of people asked for a rework, Legion and BfA base specs were horrendous dogshit only to be "saved" by legendaries and azerite.

What we have now is definitely better than any of the last 3 expansions, but still worse than the expansions prior.

This is without question a worse system in PVP at the very least. There is no world in which you'll be continually casting lunar strikes, and all your reliable focus target threat is in the one eclipse whose school is also shared with your CC and healing spells.