[Balance] 5.4 Changes and Thoughts

[Aboubacar]

Level 90 tier for druids is a joke and needs a lot of work. I was hoping improvements would come this tier, but it looks like it won't happen until expansion . I guess it's probably hard to make 3 talents good + interesting for 4 specs.

@MCGamer agreed. Passive talents are generally supposed to perform worse than on-use, but this clunky talent (which has an aura that covers up the shooting stars aura......) now requires more management than the other 2 options, yet still performs significantly worse (in all scenarios) than the other 2 options.

I really feel like all druids are usually "forced" into HotW. The utility is unmatched by other talents and so is the damage the majority of the time depending on the situation/spec.

[Alzu]

I don't see what's the issue with the tier 90 talents. Only DoC is currently bad for balance druids.

Sure, NV isn't as big of a DPS increase and HotW can be used to have amazing hps for a long time. But NV is actually a good healing cooldown, especially in AoE fights. Dark Animus with all cooldowns, bloodlust and multidot in the beginning with HotW helps the healers' job by a ton and you still have it for a jolt or even two later on. Same with Primordius: 5 stacks of buffs, all cooldowns and multidot the adds and NV heals a crazy amount.

Just because NV can be used in some fights means to me that it is fine right now. HotW is better on most fights, but NV is nothing to disregard. DoC on the other hand, is a different story.

[daerellin]

I don't see what's the issue with the tier 90 talents. Only DoC is currently bad for balance druids.

Sure, NV isn't as big of a DPS increase and HotW can be used to have amazing hps for a long time. But NV is actually a good healing cooldown, especially in AoE fights. Dark Animus with all cooldowns, bloodlust and multidot in the beginning with HotW helps the healers' job by a ton and you still have it for a jolt or even two later on. Same with Primordius: 5 stacks of buffs, all cooldowns and multidot the adds and NV heals a crazy amount.

Just because NV can be used in some fights means to me that it is fine right now. HotW is better on most fights, but NV is nothing to disregard. DoC on the other hand, is a different story.

Free healing is always nice, but I just don't see a situation where a little "randomized" splash healing is going to make too much of a difference. I think I'd much rather have HotW-buffed tranq, rejuv blanketing and NS HT available so I have control over where my healing is going. Unless you're pushing new heroics very early in a tier, there's rarely a situation where you're going to be hitting the berserk timer unless you're doing something else wrong, so you can afford to spend part or all of the HotW buff propping up your healer team a bit. I run healbot when I DPS, so it's very easy to transition right into triage healer mode when it is necessary.

PS: I want all of your gear :'(

[dark666105]

Wild Mushroom: Place a wild mushroom at your target location that pulses every 3 seconds inflicting sunfire on the targets within 8 yards. Lasts 15 seconds. 30 second CD.

That would do it for me to be honest. Gives lunar Starfall and Solar something different in the for of mushrooms.

An aoe with a cooldown longer than its duration, lovely.

[Deleted]

You dont get the point. To max the aoe, we have to delay eclipse like you said, which effectively is a dps loss, whereas other classes just do normal rotation and then throw out aoe whenever.

And tbh its more of a dps loss to delay eclipses for burst aoe than to hit it out of an eclipse. Only for longer periods of aoe should you always be in eclipse.

So yeah the point is, our aoe is designed to badly for the fact that you can be in the complete wrong place on eclipse bars which screws you, i am not saying you cant time things or watch timers to be at the right point, but even still its a stupid thing.

You're wrong in that. Most classes have to sacrifice their single target dps for aoe. Hunters for example need to delay their glaive toss and bank up some energy for impending spawns of adds for multishot.
Demo warlocks have to potentially delay their immo aura and HoG as well. Mages also want to be using their Nether Tempest/Frozen Orb/Living Bomb on Cd, yet they also have to delay in such instances as well. you are correct that we sacrifice more for aoe, but on an overall basis, it'll still be a dps gain for you to make sure you're at least in Solar for aoe. Besides, the quicker adds die, the quicker you can go back to your happy eclipse cycling.

It seems you are speaking from an ignorance regarding the other dps classes, at least, that how it comes over. Any form of aoe takes away from the single target dps, but is bound to be a dps increase on an overall basis, if you aren't bad. To take lei shen as an example: I have done multiple kills where I disregarded aoeing the balls, kills where I've not managed my eclipses and kills where I have managed my eclipses a bit more. Also, most of the times if you start in solar after the transitions on lei shen, you'll most likely be in solar or close to it when the balls spawn with NG up, so there are only some cases where you'd have to delay your eclipses or stay in solar for a bit longer if you happen to have obscene luck with haste procs from the meta.

Ofcourse, other classes might have it a little easier when aoe is required and they don't need to preplan as much as a moonkin, but that's essentially what a moonkin is about. Take that away, and your partially taking the fun out of playing a moonkin.

[huth]

An aoe with a cooldown longer than its duration, lovely.

DKs have had that for as long as they exist. Some form of AoE that we don't have to channel would certainly be nice.

[Deleted]

You're wrong in that. Most classes have to sacrifice their single target dps for aoe. Hunters for example need to delay their glaive toss and bank up some energy for impending spawns of adds for multishot.
Demo warlocks have to potentially delay their immo aura and HoG as well. Mages also want to be using their Nether Tempest/Frozen Orb/Living Bomb on Cd, yet they also have to delay in such instances as well. you are correct that we sacrifice more for aoe, but on an overall basis, it'll still be a dps gain for you to make sure you're at least in Solar for aoe. Besides, the quicker adds die, the quicker you can go back to your happy eclipse cycling.

It seems you are speaking from an ignorance regarding the other dps classes, at least, that how it comes over. Any form of aoe takes away from the single target dps, but is bound to be a dps increase on an overall basis, if you aren't bad. To take lei shen as an example: I have done multiple kills where I disregarded aoeing the balls, kills where I've not managed my eclipses and kills where I have managed my eclipses a bit more. Also, most of the times if you start in solar after the transitions on lei shen, you'll most likely be in solar or close to it when the balls spawn with NG up, so there are only some cases where you'd have to delay your eclipses or stay in solar for a bit longer if you happen to have obscene luck with haste procs from the meta.

Ofcourse, other classes might have it a little easier when aoe is required and they don't need to preplan as much as a moonkin, but that's essentially what a moonkin is about. Take that away, and your partially taking the fun out of playing a moonkin.

Pooling energy and managing eclipse in anticipation of an aoe phase aren't even in the same league in terms of planning and single target dps loss, and the payoff is much smaller for the moonkin in the end.
Not that I mind that much. I mean, our aoe is utterly terrible and boring, but at least we have good single target dps in exchange. I definitely prefer that situation to the one we were in during Cataclysm. Other classes have good aoe, and as long as all the bosses in SoO don't have long aoe phases, I'm ok with not filling that niche.

[Reyzzz]

Level 90 tier for druids is a joke and needs a lot of work. I was hoping improvements would come this tier, but it looks like it won't happen until expansion . I guess it's probably hard to make 3 talents good + interesting for 4 specs.

I really feel like all druids are usually "forced" into HotW. The utility is unmatched by other talents and so is the damage the majority of the time depending on the situation/spec.

I agree on this, wish they made hotw baseline without the passive bonuses, and added in a completely new talent.

[xtramuscle]

Starfall revert: Starfall now hits all targets once again.

When I first read the proposed only hits dot'd targets changed I was stoked (HC Animus says hello!). But once they reverted back I thought about it; and on some fights where you would want starfall to hit everything, you just wouldn't bother doting them all (If they're clumped you'd want to hurricane instead). That got me thinking. Starfall on 2 targets out of eclipse > starfall on 1 in eclipse. But does anyone know the optimum number of targets where we get the most from starfall? Or is it anything >2. 20 stars, 2 targets = 10 each. Does it not get any better than that? [In which case this whole post is void cause as long as you have dots on 2 mobs starfall would max out damage anyway; so you'd dot 2 then hurricane].

Meh need coffee..

[Slippykins]

Starfall revert: Starfall now hits all targets once again.

When I first read the proposed only hits dot'd targets changed I was stoked (HC Animus says hello!). But once they reverted back I thought about it; and on some fights where you would want starfall to hit everything, you just wouldn't bother doting them all (If they're clumped you'd want to hurricane instead). That got me thinking. Starfall on 2 targets out of eclipse > starfall on 1 in eclipse. But does anyone know the optimum number of targets where we get the most from starfall? Or is it anything >2. 20 stars, 2 targets = 10 each. Does it not get any better than that? [In which case this whole post is void cause as long as you have dots on 2 mobs starfall would max out damage anyway; so you'd dot 2 then hurricane].

Meh need coffee..

2 targets eclipse > 2 targets non-eclipse > 1 target eclipse > 1 target non-eclipse.

You wont get anything more from Starfall adding more targets past 2, since it caps at 20 stars like you said. The "Starfall only hits MF/SF targets" thing would be both beneficial and a hassle, beneficial for fights where you don't want to pull aggro and not beneficial for fights where you want to hard AoE instead of multidot. Pretty much the same as what you said.

[xtramuscle]

What a difference a time zone or two makes - clearly you're more awake than I.

[Slippykins]

What a difference a time zone or two makes - clearly you're more awake than I.

It's 6pm in Melbourne right now, but I still feel like I should drink another coffee for posterity.

Updating the OP now with any changes that've gone through in the past couple of days. Let me know if I miss anything!

[mikoslav]

2 targets eclipse > 2 targets non-eclipse > 1 target eclipse > 1 target non-eclipse.

You wont get anything more from Starfall adding more targets past 2, since it caps at 20 stars like you said. The "Starfall only hits MF/SF targets" thing would be both beneficial and a hassle, beneficial for fights where you don't want to pull aggro and not beneficial for fights where you want to hard AoE instead of multidot. Pretty much the same as what you said.

Well, Starfall begs for a minor glyph then, that would change between hit all, and hit DoT affected targets.

[huth]

Just thought i'd point that out: the Legendary proc deals Firestorm damage and scales with Moonkin and Solar eclipse.

It's about 3 procs pre-haste and at 35k SP i'm seeing ~50k damage in Solar. It will hit whatever target it got procced on, so with Starfall, it can go off in any direction, and you'll get an arcing mist green flame animation to the target.

[Aboubacar]

I believe the OP is missing glyph of guided stars which would explain the confusion in some of the latest posts. There's a major glyph (since moonbeast spot is now free) to allow starfall to only hit targets with dot(s) on them (this is moonfire OR sunfire). It will function as it does now in 5.3 the same in 5.4 w/o the glyph. Recent notes are tooltip fixes. If you don't want this glyph i'd generally recommend ursoc glyph or maybe even rebirth.

Additionally, I'm dissapointed that devs seem to have given up with giving druids more talent choices. DoC and SotF, still a complete failure after the changes ~ a month ago and Nature's vigil still mediocre at best.

Another thing I'd like to see changed is displacer beast keeping the current animal form and/or getting a shorter CD. Having to plan starfall around DB is a bit silly

[Juvencus]

The Starfall change was probably a test or a datamined tooltip for the new glyph that makes starfall only hit doted targets. I don't think they would change a spell for dramatically as baseline.

Edit: Got fapasaurus'd >.<

- - - Updated - - -

Just thought i'd point that out: the Legendary proc deals Firestorm damage and scales with Moonkin and Solar eclipse.

It's about 3 procs pre-haste and at 35k SP i'm seeing ~50k damage in Solar. It will hit whatever target it got procced on, so with Starfall, it can go off in any direction, and you'll get an arcing mist green flame animation to the target.

Firestorm is Fire+Nature right? Like Spellstorm is Arcane+Nature?

[Slippykins]

I believe the OP is missing glyph of guided stars which would explain the confusion in some of the latest posts.

Yeah I just deleted it with the recent update, thought it was removed. I'll add it back in, since I couldn't actually find any documentation on it being removed - just the tooltip change for Starfall.

Good catch you two though!

[huth]

Firestorm is Fire+Nature right? Like Spellstorm is Arcane+Nature?

Correct. "storm" is used to denote a nature component in multi-elemental spells, while fire is, well, fire.
This makes the proc even more potent for us.

Except for Chaos, which is just everything all at once. Including physical.

On that note, i currently have the legendary meta in my T16 helmet. I suspect it is going to stay that way.
The way the proc works is a little odd: When it procs, it puts a buff on you that causes your next spell(within 15 seconds) to cause a jade flame to jump its target. Starfall stars count as a spell for this purpose. Not really sure why they don't just let it proc directly.


BTW If you have Starfall ready, you can stack Wrath of the Darkspear to 10 stacks in ~5 seconds.

[Deleted]

I wonder what would happen to our aoe if they just would return the splash damage to our starfall doing 25% of the damage done of a star in a 5 yard range to all enemies of it's primary target. (could be implemented in glyph of guided stars imo).

and ye make our mushrooms work like hand of guldan, but then with first placing it on a target and detonating like we have it now (for 1 shroom not 3).

[Deleted]

I have been slacking on ptr last few weeks, Now i noticed this glyph for shrooms is http://www.wowhead.com/item=104102

I tried it on ptr, but i didnt notice any difference with or without the glyph, is it not functioning yet?