[Balance] Legion Discussion

[huth]

3. Correct for uptime.
With ~80% Starfall uptime, You have 8.11% SP/AsP/Target
With ~20% FoE uptime (12/60s) you have 3.89% SP/AsP/Target

Uh... what? That step makes no sense. Why would uptime affect SP/AP? FoE doesn't cost anything when it isn't active. And neither does Starfall, for that matter.

[Alame]

Uh... what? That step makes no sense. Why would uptime affect SP/AP? FoE doesn't cost anything when it isn't active. And neither does Starfall, for that matter.

It's about availability of the AsP -> damage conversion.

Talenting into FoE means not taking Stellar Drift, that means the increased damage from FoE has to be such that despite dumping ~40% of your AsP into FoE and ~60% into Starfall, you still end up with a higher total than you would taking Stellar Drift and dumping 100% AsP into Starfall.


If you're in a Casino for an hour, and you can play Blackjack and win $100/hr, or Poker for 10m @ $200/hr and slots for 50m @ $50/hr, you play Blackjack. Blackjack wins you $100 while poker wins $33 and slots wins $42 for a total of 75$

Yes, the time -> money conversion is better playing Poker, but if Poker is only available to you for 10 minutes of every hour, and you can't play Blackjack if you're playing poker, mathematically it's better to play Blackjack.

By the same logic, yes FoE produces more damage/target/AsP than Starfall does. If you take Stellar Drift, you're playing Blackjack, the middle-ground conversion rate that's always available to you. If you take FoE, you're using FoE (poker) and untalented Starfall (slots) and despite sometimes having a higher AsP -> Damage conversion rate, your average rate ends up lower.

I didn't totally compute the impact adding dumping AsP into untalented Starfall would have on FoE, I guesstimated in the next paragraph.

[dark666105]

Ok what ability is the equivalent to Craps now? :P I like the analogy, not sure why they thought FoE was a good idea.

[Crewsix]

Yeah but why can't you play poker for 10 mins and blackjack for 50? Essentially what happens is you are limited by a pool of AsP. Wouldn't it be better to figure out how to allocate that pool to each spell? And thus since FoE does more SP/AsP you would allocate as much of your AsP pool to FoE. And then once that runs out then switch to starfall until the cooldown comes back.

[huth]

Not just that, FoE alone already does ~98% of Starfalls damage for almost half the AP in 1/4 the time, so you can still drop 3 Starfalls on top of that.

It's about availability of the AsP -> damage conversion.

Talenting into FoE means not taking Stellar Drift, that means the increased damage from FoE has to be such that despite dumping ~40% of your AsP into FoE and ~60% into Starfall, you still end up with a higher total than you would taking Stellar Drift and dumping 100% AsP into Starfall.

Sure, but that's not what you're calculating there. What you do calculate is the efficiency of Starfall and FoE based on the assumption that you're paying for 100% uptime but only get damage for the actual uptime, which is completely nonsensical.

To fit with your analogy, you have to calculate damage over a fixed timespan for both situations(say, 1 minute), then compare. Not multiply efficiency with uptime.

Just for reference, even if we completely ignore that you could still use Starfall with FoE, total damage over 1 minute based on your uptimes would be

FoE: 3600% SP
SFa: 3648.96% SP

Since FoE only costs slightly above half what Starfall costs in that scenario, i'd say it is much stronger, as well as providing more burst.

[Alame]

Yeah but why can't you play poker for 10 mins and blackjack for 50? Essentially what happens is you are limited by a pool of AsP. Wouldn't it be better to figure out how to allocate that pool to each spell? And thus since FoE does more SP/AsP you would allocate as much of your AsP pool to FoE. And then once that runs out then switch to starfall until the cooldown comes back.

Because poker requires FoE and blackjack requires Stellar Drift which are mutually exclusive talents.

Not just that, FoE alone already does ~98% of Starfalls damage for almost half the AP in 1/4 the time, so you can still drop 3 Starfalls on top of that.


Sure, but that's not what you're calculating there. What you do calculate is the efficiency of Starfall and FoE based on the assumption that you're paying for 100% uptime but only get damage for the actual uptime, which is completely nonsensical.

To fit with your analogy, you have to calculate damage over a fixed timespan for both situations(say, 1 minute), then compare. Not multiply efficiency with uptime.

Just for reference, even if we completely ignore that you could still use Starfall with FoE, total damage over 1 minute based on your uptimes would be

FoE: 3600% SP
SFa: 3648.96% SP

Since FoE only costs slightly above half what Starfall costs in that scenario, i'd say it is much stronger, as well as providing more burst.

It's an imperfect model, just trying to ballpark, also need to look at varying mastery levels as SF has multiple scaling levels with mastery and foe doesn't, but that's not realistic to do in my half hour lunch break

[huth]

It's an imperfect model, just trying to ballpark, also need to look at varying mastery levels as SF has multiple scaling levels with mastery and starfall doesn't, but that's not realistic to do in my half hour lunch break

Take a look at your initial calculations and think about what you're trying to calculate there. Then, look at your casino analogy and figure out what the difference between the two calculations is, and why the analogy makes sense, but your original calculations do not.

[Cyous]

Mechanics do need to be fun, but being powerful is a part of that fun. The most fun mechanic ever still won't see use by the majority of the playerbase if it's significantly undertuned compared to competing mechanics. Sure Blizzard can just dial numbers up until it's competitive but they're often unwilling to disturb the balance status quo like that - Look at Stellar Flare throughout WoD, just below the threshold of viability for the whole expansion.

Yes, and your complaint stems from DPS output -- to which "tuning is easy." So long as the mechanics are fun, the tuning will follow. I wholeheartedly disagree about Stellar Flare as well. It was not that far behind in most situations. To say it was "not viable" is simply not correct.

___________________________

Astral Power acquisition is as follows:
AsP / time(t)

Whatever effects time will affect AsP. AsP is modified by lack of casting, including your time spent casting DOTs. Naturally, we need to remove that time spend casting, based on their GCD or cast time (whatever number is higher). Assuming 25% Haste, our GCD is 1.250sec. Another factors is "refreshing DOTs" and other effects like it.

It's fairly simple to do, and that gives you time(AsP gen) -- time spent casting Astral Power generators.

You can factor in Shooting Stars as well, in case you want to refresh, or recast, Starfall, Starsurge, etc. Since these are [velocity] calculations, you can race your Astral Power consumption versus your Astral Power generation -- mostly for FoE.

____________

Keep in mind the window of execution. You can drop a Sunfire, then Starfall, then AC into FoE, and follow up with two WoE-buffed LS's.

Also, in single target, how much damage do you get out of FoE vs. SS + empowerments?

[huth]

Since these are [velocity] calculations, you can race your Astral Power consumption versus your Astral Power generation -- mostly for FoE.

That depends on whether AP consumption still scales with haste like it did with CS. If it does, you gain nothing.

[Cyous]

That depends on whether AP consumption still scales with haste like it did with CS. If it does, you gain nothing.

I'll adjust my calcs, but it's already setup to factor in hasted and static ticks for CS-- and soon to be FoE. Doesn't change much on my end.

The highest I can get FoE to stay up is just over 18sec, including CA and BotA:Elune.

[Alame]

Take a look at your initial calculations and think about what you're trying to calculate there. Then, look at your casino analogy and figure out what the difference between the two calculations is, and why the analogy makes sense, but your original calculations do not.

I understand the concept, I just didnt have a better way of modelling it with the time I have available and figured it would be a reasonable ballpark. I was also operating under the faulty assumption that DoT amplification was an effect of Stellar Drift and not baseline (oops)

With more time to run it, that was not a good ballpark. Turns out FoE + untalented Starfall does 4507.2% (from those two sources only) over 1 minute spending 305 AsP for a rate of 14.8% SP / AsP. Compare that to Stellar Drift's 3515.4% Spellpower spending 360 AsP for a rate of 9.8% SP / AsP.

These calculations include the following conditions:
-Start with 100 AsP
-AsP generation of 15/s
-FoE has no AsP running for 10 seconds after FoE ends (generate enough AsP to cast SF) and the last 17 seconds of the minute (bank 100 AsP to re-start FoE when cd ends)
-AsP is only spent on SF/FoE
-One target, but it's all linear scaling with target number so just multiple above numbers by targets.
-30% Mastery

SO, as long as you can fit all targets within the piddly small AoE, FoE is about 22% more damage and 34% more efficient in AsP dumping.

Essentially, the damage looks pretty good. The AoE size, and direct competition with Starfall are still perplexing.

Yes, and your complaint stems from DPS output -- to which "tuning is easy." So long as the mechanics are fun, the tuning will follow. I wholeheartedly disagree about Stellar Flare as well. It was not that far behind in most situations. To say it was "not viable" is simply not correct.

Also, in single target, how much damage do you get out of FoE vs. SS + empowerments?

If tuning were that easy we wouldn't have talents we literally never use for the entirety of an expansion. Tuning IS easy when you can make 1-2% adjustments every week or two until it reaches a competitive level. That's not how Blizzard chooses to balance, and history strongly supports that things that go live with bad tuning tend to stay badly tuned. Fortunately the tuning isn't as bad as I thought originally, so it's more of a usability/niche thing.


As for single target, it's not even close. 700% from Starsurge + 105% & 77.16% from Lunar & Solar empowerments respectively, 882.16% total. You need just shy of 3s of FoE to match that costing 50 AsP compared to the 40 for Starsurge.

[Lucrece]

Do we have any video of the animations for the new stuff?

[Skozen]

FoE and its predecessor really seemed more like single target talents. I'm a bit surprised they decided to make it AoE and truth be told I'd rather have it as a debuff on the boss than an area since small AoE + most tanks and encounters mean significant boss movement is the norm. Goin to be a pain in the butt losing ticks to a moving boss. I'd much rather they made it stick to your initial target if they're going to make it an AoE.

[dark666105]

Not sure how Power of Goldrinn is a line nuke when they fly out of you at an arc...

Looks kinda cool to have ghostly wolves flying from you though.

[Cyous]

If tuning were that easy we wouldn't have talents we literally never use for the entirety of an expansion. Tuning IS easy when you can make 1-2% adjustments every week or two until it reaches a competitive level. That's not how Blizzard chooses to balance, and history strongly supports that things that go live with bad tuning tend to stay badly tuned. Fortunately the tuning isn't as bad as I thought originally, so it's more of a usability/niche thing.

If Stellar Flare was 5% better than Incarnation, as Incarnation was compared to Stellar Flare, would you ever use Incarnation for progression? After some point, the lines are blurred. Your personal play would mpact you more than talent selection. And that's the case here. (And that's also the point I want to stress. What is a 5% difference from the top echelon of players is simply not the case for the general population of players.)

_________________________

I'd consider FOE single-target then, it's almost guaranteed to last ~10sec (13 ticks, hasted [20% haste], 14 total hits). So, that's ~4 Starsurges in ~10sec.

In addition, it's a 60sec cooldown. And a ~10sec uptime is 1/6, or 15-18% (9-13 ticks).

IN ADDITION, it doesn't stop until you exhaust it, instead of target death and uhm, something like DISPELS ~ WHOOP WHOOP.

[huth]

IN ADDITION, it doesn't stop until you exhaust it, instead of target death and uhm, something like DISPELS ~ WHOOP WHOOP.

Is it even dispellable? Area effects normally aren't.

3y radius is a bit ridiculous though. You can practially stuff that in the melee range without hitting anybody. 5-8 should be the minimum.



I'm starting to wonder what they are doing, though. Last few builds didn't really see any major changes, and we still have several unadressed issues, like DoTs becoming worthless in ST or Moon Moon being unneccessarily clunky.

How about this: Starlight increases all Astral damage, but no longer Empowerments. Stellar Flare gets a damage boost and AP cost to bring it more in line with other Astral spells.

This would keep DoTs from becoming worthless, and stop AP based talents from getting worse(compared to SS/SF) with increasing mastery.

It also stops the ridiculous exponential scaling on Stellar Flare, which makes it either OP or tuned so low that we'd never use it.

[Deleted]

Is it even dispellable? Area effects normally aren't.

3y radius is a bit ridiculous though. You can practially stuff that in the melee range without hitting anybody. 5-8 should be the minimum.



I'm starting to wonder what they are doing, though. Last few builds didn't really see any major changes, and we still have several unadressed issues, like DoTs becoming worthless in ST or Moon Moon being unneccessarily clunky.

How about this: Starlight increases all Astral damage, but no longer Empowerments. Stellar Flare gets a damage boost and AP cost to bring it more in line with other Astral spells.

This would keep DoTs from becoming worthless, and stop AP based talents from getting worse(compared to SS/SF) with increasing mastery.

It also stops the ridiculous exponential scaling on Stellar Flare, which makes it either OP or tuned so low that we'd never use it.

The empowerments are there because SS dmg would get out of control really fast since it is such a small portion of our dps. Having said that, I agree 100% it should affect all spells that costs AsP, but there is no need to remove the empowerments from our mastery. Maybe they could make SnF/MF consume empowerments from SS so that dots actually benefit from our mastery.

[Madus]

The empowerments are there because SS dmg would get out of control really fast since it is such a small portion of our dps. Having said that, I agree 100% it should affect all spells that costs AsP, but there is no need to remove the empowerments from our mastery. Maybe they could make SnF/MF consume empowerments from SS so that dots actually benefit from our mastery.

Slowly you get to the point where you will not need empowermetns at all .

[Deleted]

Slowly you get to the point where you will not need empowermetns at all .

How so? The percentage of casts that are empowered doesn't change at all.

[Owlkin]

I do not like the idea of ​​watching a bunch of WA icons.

In my opinion they should remove starsurge and add us spell that enhances next spell with power of Astral. So we can use it then we need it most.