Balance Druid 7.2.5 Patch notes

[MV Kaa]

Just go to the discord, all you see are mods and gapezilla saying "dont panic, just wait, the sky isnt falling. Which I dont believe, espcially when gape is allowed to ignore mechanics and has a fucking 938 weapon. Im sure the class does seem balanced when you out gear everyone

[PowerGamez]

Good buff to Wax and Wane but needs more. Make it's 25% per stack and then it's good. At 25% per stack - moonfire will hit for 20% less than a wrath. It's a nice filler that you can spam while moving - but if you can stand still you'll always cast wrath due to better astral power generation and damage.

A 10% damage increase to moonfire and sunfire would be a good move as well to bump us up to middle of the pack.

Called it 2 weeks ago

[beaver1024]

You do realize that the 4% loss on AOE is because we are gonna have atleast a 10% boost on AOE from the 2+4 set (the ability to save 120 AP and triple layer Starfall is going to be fucking Juicy) not to mention 15% haste on dots when doing this....... vs a 2 and 4 set that gave 0% aoe this tier... To which we are already really good on Substained AOE (regardless of the lack of fights with it this tier)

I don't know what raid or dungeons you've been playing but most adds don't live long enough for you to bank up the 120 AP to gain maximum potential out of SF. If you don't already know SF was nerfed for haste. Yes and that empowered dot argument, yeah no not going to fly because it's degenerate gameplay to spam Moonfire to spread dots.

CI did fix alot... we went from 24/24 almost 2% behind 23rd.. to 20/24 Ahead of Unholy/Spriest/Fire Mage/Enhance and Really we are only 2-3% behind being Middle of the pack...

No it didn't. CI was supposed to fix ST. It did no such thing. Our improvement in ranking overall is more due to some specs being displaced by dev favourites. Note our aggregate scores are almost identical from prior to 7.2. The other bottom feeders just fell to the same score as us.

Don't panic untill we get raid testing.

Heard that one before. Wasn't true then either.

[Slippykins]

Ok just got home, so I can give my thoughts a bit more extensively on the changes. I'll preface this post by saying sims for ToS will be out once the 2pc/4pc are finalised in about 2-3 weeks from now. I'll do legendary comparisons and trait rankings then. For the moment, let's focus on the three major bits of information available: the Starsurge/Starfall changes, the loss of T19 4pc and the gain of T20 2pc/4pc.


1. Information Available

Balance
Stellar Drift now increases Starfall’s damage by 50% (was 60%).
Starsurge damage increased by 11%.

Tier 19 2pc: Solar Wrath/Lunar Strike 15% crit
Tier 19 4pc: 15% Starsurge damage on targets with both DoTs

Tier 20 2pc: Increase max AP by 30 and increase Starsurge critical damage by 30%
Tier 20 4pc: Starfall/Starsurge increase haste by 3% for 15 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Mechanic: metronome.

The rest of the changes just look like tooltips are being changed to reflect the 4% buff across-the-board we received in 7.1.5.

2. Damage Analysis

So let's unravel these changes and see what's happening. I think most people are concerned with the Stellar Drift nerf, so we will start there.

Starfall damage 7.2 = S*1.6
Starfall damage 7.2.5 = S*1.5
% change = (1.5-1.6)/1.6 = -6.25% Starfall damage

If we assume Starfall is 30% of our AoE damage, then:
% change (AoE damage) = -6.25%*30% = ~-2%

So the Stellar Drift nerf is about a 2% AoE damage reduction, due to a 6.25% Starfall damage loss. Not that bad, but AoE nerfs feel a bit bad considering we don't do that much AoE anyway. Moving on: Starsurge.

Let us assume that you really like single-target damage, so you have 4/4 Starsurge crit traits, you picked up two Starsurge crit relics, so you have 6*8 = 42% extra crit to Starsurge. Let's also assume you have 18% crit passively, so your total Starsurge crit chance is 60%.

Starsurge damage 7.2 = SS*1.15 (from T19 4pc)
Starsurge damage 7.2.5 = SS*1.11*(1+0.3*0.6) = SS*1.31
% change = (1.31-1.15)/1.15 = 14% Starsurge damage

So assuming you have the set-up as indicated above, your Starsurge damage should increase by 14% when you swap your T19 4pc for T20 2pc. This doesn't factor in ED, getting three Starsurge relics, the max AP increase from 2pc, nor the T20 4pc. tl;dr -- Starsurge damage will be nuts in 7.2.5. Also note that CI is still relatively new and will amplify this effect.

If Starsurge is 30% of your ST damage, then this is a 4.2% damage increase alone. When you factor in the things that I didn't here, we should see our ST damage being very competitive in 7.2.5.

I think that's about all I wanted to contribute for the moment. Once simc is updated I'll give a lengthier post on legendaries and traits.

[Hellshout]

Maybe I didn't understand it properly, but the only thing Moonkin form does now is to increase Regrowth and Deft duration(?armor?). No more damage increase, right?

Y tho? For transmog reasons, for people complaining about being a chicken?

[MV Kaa]

Maybe I didn't understand it properly, but the only thing Moonkin form does now is to increase Regrowth and Deft duration(?armor?). No more damage increase, right?

Y tho? For transmog reasons, for people complaining about being a chicken?

Boomkin form increases arcane and nature dmg by 10%

[Hellshout]

Balance Druid Increases damage/healing of Echoing Stars, Full Moon, Fury of Elune, Half Moon, L1 Arcane Charge, L4 Arcane Charge, L5 Arcane Charge, Lunar Strike, Moonfire, New Moon, Solar Wrath, Starfall, Starfire, Starsurge, Stellar Flare, Sunfire by 4% 0%. Increases periodic damage/healing of Fury of Elune, Moonfire, Stellar Flare, Sunfire by 4% 0%. Increases buff duration of Deft Touch and Regrowth by 6,000. Increases damage/healing of Deft Touch and Regrowth by 102,560. Increases damage/healing of Deft Touch and Regrowth by 50%. Increases periodic damage/healing of Deft Touch and Regrowth by 50%. Increases power cost of Deft Touch and Regrowth by 20%. Druid - Balance Spec. Druid - Balance Spec.

So this is the aura they added some time ago? Like when they gave Ferals 4% in 7.2?

[MV Kaa]

So this is the aura they added some time ago? Like when they gave Ferals 4% in 7.2?

Yes, that is an old aura from last class balancing.

[Polarthief]

So this is the aura they added some time ago? Like when they gave Ferals 4% in 7.2?

Yes, that is an old aura from last class balancing.

Yeah and moving the damage to the spells directly would make the extra 4% from the aura rather OP, so they're removing the temp aura they had in place to just bake it into the spells. That's what all the tooltip changes you see happening.

[Moshots]

Just go to the discord, all you see are mods and gapezilla saying "dont panic, just wait, the sky isnt falling. Which I dont believe, espcially when gape is allowed to ignore mechanics and has a fucking 938 weapon. Im sure the class does seem balanced when you out gear everyone

I mean we have people on here saying the sky is falling after we got a 8% ST buff from CI moving us from 24th by a good margin up to 19th/20th. and now have a 4.2% ST buff coming from the Starsurge buff according to Sippy....

Assuming sippy's math is right Disregarding other class buffs those buffs will put us close to the top 10 ST While already having amazing AOE that even with a 4% nerf will now be buffed by our 2 and 4 set allowing us to be even more broken on Memekin fights..

We could be one of the best all around classes in 7.2.5 but all people want to do is complain we arn't gonna compete ST with assassination rogues..

[Gatao]

when are these buffs going live?

[huth]

So this is the aura they added some time ago? Like when they gave Ferals 4% in 7.2?

It's the various passive effects associated with being Balance spec. Moonkin is a seperate spell that wasn't changed for 7.2.5.

[joltcola1234]

While already having amazing AOE

Where is this amazing AoE coming from?

[Tyze]

Only good aoe Balance has is spread out

[MV Kaa]

I mean we have people on here saying the sky is falling after we got a 8% ST buff from CI moving us from 24th by a good margin up to 19th/20th. and now have a 4.2% ST buff coming from the Starsurge buff according to Sippy....

Assuming sippy's math is right Disregarding other class buffs those buffs will put us close to the top 10 ST While already having amazing AOE that even with a 4% nerf will now be buffed by our 2 and 4 set allowing us to be even more broken on Memekin fights..

We could be one of the best all around classes in 7.2.5 but all people want to do is complain we arn't gonna compete ST with assassination rogues..

Please stop saying "we will move up in the ranks" just based on OUR changes. Other classes will gain DPS as well with their tier. Other classes are also getting buffs. Sure our dps ranks will go up when compared to NH numbers but imsorry to say this but in 7.2.5 we wont be raiding NH.

[Myztikrice]

Mohoots lives in an alternate universe where only Moonkins get a new tier bonus and where we can trust Blizzard to fix DPS tuning during the middle of a raid tier.

[MV Kaa]

Mohoots lives in an alternate universe where only Moonkins get a new tier bonus and where we can trust Blizzard to fix DPS tuning during the middle of a raid tier.

exactly. Yes I am glad we are getting buffs and our tier is good, but i HIGHLY doubt we will be the only class getting buffs and tier 20 that is a dps increase

[Zan15]

We WERE one of the worst classes.

Look at 7.2 over last week.

We went from 24/24 by 2+% on every ST fight to 20-21/24 on every ST fight Because of the new Gold trait. Combine that with new 4 set+the 11% SS buff and we should be right in the middle 10-15th ST in 7.2 as of right now.

the difference between 21st and 24th is relatively non existent on most fights.
the bottom 3-4 have always shared last place on most fights, are we really excited about this move that everyone is crowing about it?

so fire mages and ele shaman got bigger shafts then we did, so we should celebrate we are out of the cellar but still 25 points out of the wild card playoffs?


worst part i see is we also got better on a few fights and of course those will now be nerfed (of course its not a huge nerf but we were not even in 1st)

- - - Updated - - -

Just go to the discord, all you see are mods and gapezilla saying "dont panic, just wait, the sky isnt falling. Which I dont believe, espcially when gape is allowed to ignore mechanics and has a fucking 938 weapon. Im sure the class does seem balanced when you out gear everyone

forget the gear the key is "ignore mechanics".

why is everyone so hell bent on balancing this game around the 90%tile and 95%tile which we know after the first few kills becomes an abuse of the mechanics to parce.
i wish there were more options on the log site to allow to isolate kills based on time and other factors so we can really discount these. maybe there is and i have not looked hard enough.

[MV Kaa]

Mhm. I have a 90% 2 mil dps Tich log. Does that mean Im OP? No. It means I used the belt and shoulders and padded on bloods under the boss the whole time. Using top percentiles to show how balanced a class means almost nothing based on how many people can cheese a fight. Boomkins can do decent on krosus, if they dont have to soak, which no guild will let someone do during progression.

[Zan15]

I mean we have people on here saying the sky is falling after we got a 8% ST buff from CI moving us from 24th by a good margin up to 19th/20th. and now have a 4.2% ST buff coming from the Starsurge buff according to Sippy....

Assuming sippy's math is right Disregarding other class buffs those buffs will put us close to the top 10 ST While already having amazing AOE that even with a 4% nerf will now be buffed by our 2 and 4 set allowing us to be even more broken on Memekin fights..

We could be one of the best all around classes in 7.2.5 but all people want to do is complain we arn't gonna compete ST with assassination rogues..

reminds me of the "don't worry our golden trait will fix things"....as people forgot other classes also got their golden trait and other talents that actually increased their ST damage. Shadow 4 traits leading to golden gave almost 6%. Warlock 4 traits gave 8%ish. others were in the ballpark