How is Balance in Alpha without Moons?

[axxey]

FoE looks super cool but is just counter to the whole rest of the spec, needs to deal damage on astral power spent rather than burning astral power and shooting yourself in the foot.
If it's going to replace the entire specs play then it's numbers tuning needs to be through the roof instead of less than half of breath of sindrogosa(the other equivilent spell), not even taking into account it's position and radius restrictions.

You could have it block astral generation until runs out, instantly apply all dots(steller flare included) and boost stats like prot pally seraphim. Suddenly you have a burst option with restrictions.

[Lazuli]

Dropping a moon on people ws the only reason I even tried balance, but it's still too boring of a rotation to me. Moon being removed pretty much guarantee I will not touch it in bfa. (except when taren mill vs southshore comes up lol)

[Cyous]

FOE needed too much micromanagement for the average player. It doesn't help that Blizzard purposefully killed it because it altered the rotation way too much.

Making it follow the target would have resolved the micromanagement. Replacing Starfall or Starsurge was still a stretch, FOE probably could have replaced Starsurge since it was effectively a ST laser with an AOE effect (due to the radius).

[Lucrece]

Yup, all it needed to do was follow the target just like Artanis's purifier beam from heroes of the storm, which is where the spell was grabbed from for inspiration (it even had the same graphic before the update).

It's just too bad because the removal of the moon cycle spells only exposes how stale and bareboned the core balance rotation and toolkit is. It's one of the offensive caster specs with the least amount of mechanically distinguished spells. It's virtually two clones of the same spell themed sun and moon with a marginal difference like sunfire spreading but otherwise the spells have no synergy within themselves until starfall was changed to interact with dots and starsurge gave empowerments.

They tried distinguishing lunar strike more with a cleave aspect to it, but the cleave portion is so pathetically undertuned that it was not compelling enough to set it apart as totally distinguishable from solar wrath.

If you look at mage or destruction warlock, each spell has a clearly defined function that doesn't really overlap with any other of the spells.

[ydraw]

I'm with you man... The Balance rotation itself is pretty easy, but oddly enough, it already has way too many abilities despite that simplicity. When I saw that the artifact ability was yet another hard-casted nuke ability, I went, "Meh" and moved on. Balance needs something to make the existing rotation more interesting, not just another spell like the ones they already have (even if the visual is cool).

Balance has 7 spells in its single target rotation (with OI) which is the most of any ranged class as far as I know.

There is basically no reason for both Lunar Strike and Moonmoon to exist together. Just get rid of Lunar Strike and keep Moonmoon its place. 2 filler spells is enough, 3 is crazy.

The rotation itself is quite simple and repetitive but the amount of keybinds needed makes it inconvenient.

[huth]

Balance has 7 spells in its single target rotation (with OI) which is the most of any ranged class as far as I know.

There is basically no reason for both Lunar Strike and Moonmoon to exist together. Just get rid of Lunar Strike and keep Moonmoon its place. 2 filler spells is enough, 3 is crazy.

MoonMoon isn't a filler. Fillers can't have CDs or charges since you cast them whenever you don't have anything better to do.

Still, i think it would be better to make LS more clearly distinct from SW rather than remove it. Our rotation is boring enough as is. Simplifying it further isn't going to help.

[cafecito820]

MoonMoon isn't a filler. Fillers can't have CDs or charges since you cast them whenever you don't have anything better to do.

Still, having an artifact ability that is just barely above your filler in your normal dps rotation just makes it seem like pointless button bloat.

[Seradi]

I would like to keep Moon spells, they added some flavor and man full moon is just visually cool.

[wing5wong]

FOE needed too much micromanagement for the average player. It doesn't help that Blizzard purposefully killed it because it altered the rotation way too much.

Making it follow the target would have resolved the micromanagement. Replacing Starfall or Starsurge was still a stretch, FOE probably could have replaced Starsurge since it was effectively a ST laser with an AOE effect (due to the radius).

so basically FoE needed to be Collapsing stars, which i remember was argued for way early on in the process when it first got changed to the mini-reticule

[huth]

Still, having an artifact ability that is just barely above your filler in your normal dps rotation just makes it seem like pointless button bloat.

It's one of the highest priority spells compared to the absolute bottom tier of fillers... what are you talking about?

[Mythicalchicken]

Still, having an artifact ability that is just barely above your filler in your normal dps rotation just makes it seem like pointless button bloat.

Just to clarify: I don't think the dps was MoonMoon's strongest selling point -- it was the astral power generation (moar Starsurge Crits!), and our tier pieces only made that more true.

[kaid]

I think if they tweak astral power generation they can make the rotation work fine without moons. I will miss them but their main selling point was giving you bursts of AP and there are other was to handle that.

[huth]

I think if they tweak astral power generation they can make the rotation work fine without moons. I will miss them but their main selling point was giving you bursts of AP and there are other was to handle that.

Working isn't the issue. It's just frickin boring without MoonMoon to watch for. The rotation would still work just fine even if you just adjusted damage numbers. It just wouldn't be very interesting.

[Cyous]

so basically FoE needed to be Collapsing stars, which i remember was argued for way early on in the process when it first got changed to the mini-reticule

For mechanical reasons, no. You'd want it to reapply to a nearby target. But a giant beam instantly relocating seems bad, aesthetically. We just need to make it fixate to a target and allow us to relocate by changing the fixate target. FOE should disappear if we leave combat, on that note.

[wing5wong]

For mechanical reasons, no. You'd want it to reapply to a nearby target. But a giant beam instantly relocating seems bad, aesthetically. We just need to make it fixate to a target and allow us to relocate by changing the fixate target. FOE should disappear if we leave combat, on that note.

I mean in terms of it being a debuff rather than a reticule.
The target transfer would be good. Not sure if reticule staying in one spot if the target dies vs having to swap target debuff before they die to maintain it is more interesting though. The reticule at least may be hitting something if you don’t retarget fast enough while the debuff would require more skill in terms of managing the targets hp

[Deleted]

I just hope they dont make passives be the better choices in BfA, also please stellar drift baseline (the movement part at least)

[cafecito820]

It's one of the highest priority spells compared to the absolute bottom tier of fillers... what are you talking about?

You're making it sound like there's half a dozen filler spells in this discussion. You keep your dots up, spend AP before capping, then use fillers, which would be your artifact ability, then Solar Wrath assuming you don't have any empowerments up.

It's like the Destruction warlock artifact ability. You keep up Immolate, spend Soul Shards before capping, and generate Soul Shards using your fillers - the artifact ability and Incinerate.

That's all I'm saying. The place it fits into the rotation isn't the place of a shining centerpiece - it's that of "when I have nothing else better to do".

[Polarthief]

I just hope they dont make passives be the better choices in BfA, also please stellar drift baseline (the movement part at least)

So many of those talents need to be baseline, like Starlord and Nature's Balance, both of which were from the old talents system, where you didn't need to give up so much to get. Now they're part of the new system which costs much, MUCH more than just a talent point or three.

Balance has 7 spells in its single target rotation (with OI) which is the most of any ranged class as far as I know.

Lunar Strike you literally cast only once per Starsurge, and Starfall is only cast once every ~fifth Starsurge. I barely consider those spells.

That said, it's just 2 DoTs, a spender, an empowered spell you cast once per spender a filler, and an Artifact ability with a short CD. The synergy of Balance is so pathetically bad that it's a core reason why our ST is so bad: We don't scale well at all and pretty much all our mobility goes out the window if we can't Starfall (since they nerfed Wax & Wane).

Really hoping they fix all of this up for BfA, because as it stands, I definitely won't be playing Druid for another expansion if it's relatively the same thing.

As for my thoughts on Moon spells, it's literally a bandage fix to a much bigger issue. Hoping they stay gone and the base kit gets fixed, though I would like to see the Full Moon (and Goldrinn!) graphic be used in some way in BfA. It's fun to crash a moon into your enemies, but it's not fun taking an eternity to cast it.

[ydraw]

So many of those talents need to be baseline, like Starlord and Nature's Balance, both of which were from the old talents system, where you didn't need to give up so much to get. Now they're part of the new system which costs much, MUCH more than just a talent point or three.



Lunar Strike you literally cast only once per Starsurge, and Starfall is only cast once every ~fifth Starsurge. I barely consider those spells.

The still require keybinds. And 7 keybinds is a lot for a single target rotation. Most classes have 4 or 5.

[huth]

You're making it sound like there's half a dozen filler spells in this discussion. You keep your dots up, spend AP before capping, then use fillers, which would be your artifact ability, then Solar Wrath assuming you don't have any empowerments up.

It's like the Destruction warlock artifact ability. You keep up Immolate, spend Soul Shards before capping, and generate Soul Shards using your fillers - the artifact ability and Incinerate.

That's all I'm saying. The place it fits into the rotation isn't the place of a shining centerpiece - it's that of "when I have nothing else better to do".

Since MoonMoon is above other spells, it's by definition not a filler. It's your highest value builder. You also forgot "don't cap moonmoon charges".

Your filler is the spell you use when you can't do anything else. Not just all spells that aren't spenders.

In our case, that's generally unempowered SW.