Are we losing the Moon spells in BfA?

[huth]

I'm happy about the FoE rework because it will finally give us an option to put Ele Sham in their place (which is on the bench) with our burst AoE.

It's also nice since every second one lines up perfectly with CA/Inc.

[lappee]

Literally only things changing with FoE is mastery scaling and babysitting mode. The CD, the burst damage, all were there and the only thing lacking was proper scaling.

[dreamdaddy]

Literally only things changing with FoE is mastery scaling and babysitting mode. The CD, the burst damage, all were there and the only thing lacking was proper scaling.

That's like saying the only thing the internet changed was making things easier to share. The information, the porn, all were there and the only thing lacking was availability.

Plus, it doesn't have to compete with 5+ artifact traits that buffed Starfall/Starsurge now. Maybe there will be some Azerite traits that buff them, but it probably won't be to the degree that the Scythe of Elune did.

[huth]

Literally only things changing with FoE is mastery scaling and babysitting mode. The CD, the burst damage, all were there and the only thing lacking was proper scaling.

We went from a manually controlled variable length, variable cost repositionable rain effect skill to what is essentially a fixed duration and cost DoT with AoE damage.

Seems like a rather big change to me.

You really need to think outside your little box more and consider the primary audience of the game.

Though that reminds me that i wanted to check if it scales with haste now.

[lappee]

We went from a manually controlled variable length, variable cost repositionable rain effect skill to what is essentially a fixed duration and cost DoT with AoE damage.

Seems like a rather big change to me.

You really need to think outside your little box more and consider the primary audience of the game.

Though that reminds me that i wanted to check if it scales with haste now.

Primary audience already has 2 talents in the same row to take. It was the only talent that required actual planning and skill to use. Went from skillful no to skill talent. I guess we should just consider the primary audience for everything else and make them fool proof too.

and yes, it scales with haste.

[Mythicalchicken]

Primary audience already has 2 talents in the same row to take. It was the only talent that required actual planning and skill to use. Went from skillful no to skill talent. I guess we should just consider the primary audience for everything else and make them fool proof too.

and yes, it scales with haste.

"Primary Audience" chiming in ... FoE was fine in itself, but in concert with all of our other abilities and considerations) (moons, AP, extra abilities and CDs if we spec into them) with too disruptive for too little gains to make it *worth* planning for. I love Legion FoE and Stellar Flare, in theory. But honestly if I'm giving skill and timing consideration, I'd like to be toward the boss, not my action bar.

I'm loving the new FoE burst personally, for both AOE and maybe single target depending on the numbers.

Now if they's just either remove the AP cost of Stellar Flare, or have it give stellar empowerment (the name alone has it make sense), we're in good shape gameplay wise with a few options, or make Nature's Balance just a wee more interesting...

[huth]

It was the only talent that had both an extremely narrow niche and was utterly dependent on a highly coordinated group to be usable. Out of 7 rows of 3 talents for 36 specs.

There is content not meant for the primary audience. Talents are not part of it.

[Lucrece]

artifacts and legendaries are going - they were never going to be a persistent thing; azerite things are replacing them and people need to deal with that and seperate it from any other issues.
The current asp generation for balance is an issue, but it doesnt have to be moons that solve it. The core gameplay has otherwise remained the same

Whats an example of this 'atrocious pruning'? throwing out buzzwords gets none nowhere. Meanwhile the latest patch address major issues with FoE, as well as noting the QoL trait for sunfire radius. Starlord was brought back in line with the other choices, and stellar drift was unfbuffed to its original incantation, likely meaning damage tuning coming with it at a later time

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I think if this is to be the new norm, the empowered spells need something (proc/effect) additional. it should feel GOOD to cast them.
just more damage is unintersting and part of the reason the spec feels boring right now.

That's the bullshit they said when they decided to remove them. There was never any reason to rollback class progression from the artifacts. It's obvious the azerite armor effects are a pale shadow that will hardly fill the gap of what artifacts did.

You yourself even have said it in later posts. We are losing the power of goldrin procs, so we are losing visually. We have to give up astral communion or shooting stars which we previously would have alongside full moon.

We are losing our healing procs and bonus armor, which is the only modicum of rather mediocre survivability moonkin already had. We are losing the haste on celestial alignment, we are losing collapsing star, the direct damage portion of moonfire/sunfire is now truly pathetic without wax and wane, and we've lost circadian invocation.

So in place of all these debuffs and interactions, we have a highly limited azerite armor that even recycles traits acloss classes so it's not even truly class specific, but they'll have to do a flatline numbers buff to compensate as well.

It is pruning, however much you want to euphemize it.

The classes in BfA play exactly like a Legion class who forgot to start their artifact quest. It's that pathetic outside the few specs who did get a revamp like demo warlock or survival hunter.

Playing the alpha, what are you even excited about during leveling? Nothing, because you gain nothing until max level.

[exochaft]

Personally, I wish they'd do something akin to throwing all the AoE options into one row. For example, put FoE, Stellar Drift, and Stellar Flare into a row, so you have the option of how you want to AoE (still keep Starfall baseline, so you always have the option, maybe have the spell change to BoE/StFl if selected). FoE for the clumped/burst AoE, Stellar Flare for the 2-4 target situations (and make it not reliant on Starfall for empowerment, always hated that), and Stellar Drift for the spread mass AoE with Starfall as well as the cast while moving bonus. Maybe I just hate Nature's Balance, since you have to refresh your DoT's anyways and you'd likely be casting Moonfire/Sunfire while doing moderate/reactive movement anyways... it'd be better as a baseline ability imo.

When it comes to the Moon change and being throw into the AsP generation row, I think the complaint doesn't really have to do anything with damage output but more of some level of thought being thrown into the rotation, no matter how minimal it is. For example, suppose we could spam Wrath and use Starsurge only and be the best single target spec in the game... I guarantee people here would still not like the rotation despite how much damage it does. When it comes to AsP generation and empowerments, even if the current BfA build model was used and we were destroying the meters, people would probably still be unhappy with how it plays. It's been my biggest gripe with Lunar Strike, an ability that screams AoE but I don't generally want to use it in many AoE situations since it gets dwarfed by other factors.

Same with empowerments as they are, since you basically ignore what SW/LS spells actually do and just cast them because they light up for ST. Order generally doesn't matter and empowerments have no meaningful impact outside of damage. If they rebalanced SW/LS damage to be on average the same as having empowerments while removing the empowerment mechanic, what would that really change? I'd rather a system where procs have some meaning and choice impact behind them, or not have them at all.

[Polarthief]

Okay legit, could you imagine if StFl applied Stellar Empowerment? Obs it'd be self-improving, but the biggest thing is that it would make MultiDoTting a for Boomy a thing. Fights like Felhounds where the two targets are split (or INTENDED to be split) is actually one of our worst fights despite having DoTs, simply because our DoTs don't do that much without Starfall hitting all the targets, so StFl would be the perfect talents to choose for fights where you have multiple targets, but they're split too far to both be affected by Starfall.

GRANTED they said they're moving away from ST vs AoE, but I don't know what else they can do to StFl outside of making it a combination of MF+SF and just making it an improved version of both of them. Deffo will save you a ton of globals since Moonfire now becomes an AoE?

Also holy fuck, make SotF's -20 AsP cost to Starfall fucking baseline already. That's one of the worst offenders that's keeping Starfall from being used without feeling forced to talent into SOTF.

[wing5wong]

I’m all for the stellar flare granting empowerment. On alpha right now you can barely manage two stfl being empowered. It just feels odd. Triple dottting and aviidingbstarfall would be an interesting gameplay choice.

but making sotf baseline would likely bring starfall into the base rotation (dad spec).

I’m not sure they want that going forward

[lappee]

"Primary Audience" chiming in ... FoE was fine in itself, but in concert with all of our other abilities and considerations) (moons, AP, extra abilities and CDs if we spec into them) with too disruptive for too little gains to make it *worth* planning for. I love Legion FoE and Stellar Flare, in theory. But honestly if I'm giving skill and timing consideration, I'd like to be toward the boss, not my action bar.

I'm loving the new FoE burst personally, for both AOE and maybe single target depending on the numbers.

And thats where the real skill comes from, handling it and the raid environment.

New FoE burst is the same as the old.

It was the only talent that had both an extremely narrow niche and was utterly dependent on a highly coordinated group to be usable. Out of 7 rows of 3 talents for 36 specs.

There is content not meant for the primary audience. Talents are not part of it.

The same niche is still there and, yet again, it wasn't dependent on any higher group coordination than any melee AoE. Things needed to be clumped and thats it, the rest was up to the player.

Ontop of that, there are other talents out there that are "not for the primary audience", like Breath of Sindragosa. The real question is how dumbed down you want the game to be? Should be just make Starfall be cast around your target rather than be a ground targetable AoE? You know it might be real hard for the primary audience to handle such things.

and yes, talents is THE place to have changes to gameplay that makes it harder. Its either that or Azerite armor and they generally serve the same purpose.

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Okay legit, could you imagine if StFl applied Stellar Empowerment? Obs it'd be self-improving, but the biggest thing is that it would make MultiDoTting a for Boomy a thing. Fights like Felhounds where the two targets are split (or INTENDED to be split) is actually one of our worst fights despite having DoTs, simply because our DoTs don't do that much without Starfall hitting all the targets, so StFl would be the perfect talents to choose for fights where you have multiple targets, but they're split too far to both be affected by Starfall.

Hounds are actually one of the best fights for moonkin since Starfall range is so huge, the dogs literally need to be on different side for it to not hit both targets with correct placement.
If StFl was to incorporate Stellar Empowerment then the AsP cost would have to be higher as well, how much higher depends on whether its included to Shooting Stars or not.

Also holy fuck, make SotF's -20 AsP cost to Starfall fucking baseline already. That's one of the worst offenders that's keeping Starfall from being used without feeling forced to talent into SOTF.

Shouldn't happen. If you're not picking SotF then you're committed to not using AoE primarily. SotF is a viable ST talent as well if you think that you're going to be needed for proper AoE.

[Lucrece]

Breath of Sindragosa is pretty dumbed down already, it wasn't hard at all to keep up ridiculous uptime particularly on a spec as easy as FDK.

The only complaint people had was DK mobility since the main inhibitor to BoS was uptime on the target.

It was far from FoE in terms of accessibility and average performance.

[dreamdaddy]

I remember BoS was relatively difficult to keep up in early NH, so it created a gap between players who could keep it active for longer and those who couldn't (either because of skill, legendaries, or mechanics). You could make arguments for or against this high-risk/high-reward design style, but Blizz decided to normalize the whole spec by making BoS much easier to keep up.

FoE was a strange addition for Legion considering it didn't scale from mastery when our other AsP spenders did, and it competed with 2 spells that had a good number of artifact perks enhancing them. The updates to the spell suggest the design team really want it to be useful and a part of our kit.

I'm still hoping that the Emerald Dreamcatcher sneaks its way into our talent tree because it was a fun playstyle that should have lasted longer than 1 tier.

[Lucrece]

FoE if anything is a cool active spell. Active spells should be fun additions that are not a headache to use. It feels like crap that often the passive options are so much more attractive because all the active options do is introduce juggling with little payoff.

[lappee]

The only complaint people had was DK mobility since the main inhibitor to BoS was uptime on the target.

It was far from FoE in terms of accessibility and average performance.

Which seems to be the main complaint about FoE as well, "its hard to keep on the targets". The actual usage of the two spells is similar (keeping it up as much as possible), the big difference is that BoS is a ST spell while FoE was AoE which limited the usability of FoE compared to BoS. FoE not being viable was due to scaling which could've been solved just the way it was solved with the babysit version.

FoE if anything is a cool active spell. Active spells should be fun additions that are not a headache to use. It feels like crap that often the passive options are so much more attractive because all the active options do is introduce juggling with little payoff.

FoE was a cool active spell that benefited from right usage. Now its just a Fire and Forget spell that has little to no gameplay options around it.
It feels awesome when you're rewarded for good gameplay.

[cujoe]

Which seems to be the main complaint about FoE as well, "its hard to keep on the targets". The actual usage of the two spells is similar (keeping it up as much as possible), the big difference is that BoS is a ST spell while FoE was AoE which limited the usability of FoE compared to BoS. FoE not being viable was due to scaling which could've been solved just the way it was solved with the babysit version.

FoE was a cool active spell that benefited from right usage. Now its just a Fire and Forget spell that has little to no gameplay options around it.
It feels awesome when you're rewarded for good gameplay.

I don't know man. As much as I liked BoS gameplay in WoD as tank and UH, FoE was never really on par with it fun wise. Having to stand completely still for as long as you can while you maintain the spell and just spamming your most efficient generator while neglecting core mechanics like empowerments was never really a good design imo. There was a reason nobody took FoE beyond the very first weeks of legion until they buffed Starfall damage. Because in the scenarios where it was really good potentially (like m+) there was just so much stuff that could f*ck up its usage (earthquake affix, random stuns/knockbacks/silences) that it was mostly impractical to use.

Also, talents like BoS and FoE can be very rewarding when everything goes perfect but at the same time can be extremely frustrating when you get hit by that random ability just after you popped your CD. In addition those abilities tend to favor certain secondary stats (like haste) and make gearing a real pain (much like legendary helm needed high amounts of haste in the beginning of legion).

All in all I think those talents create a whole lot of problems and I am glad that Blizzard changed FoE the way they did in BfA alpha.

[Lucrece]

I simply disagree that FoE autofollow makes the spell any lesser, and frontloading is AP cost was a good idea so it's not a game of rooting yourslef for maintaining it as long as possible. Moonkins already has terrible mobile damage so it doesn't need to become even more of a turret.

I just don't buy into the old school feral school of class design. Making classes obnoxious to juggle to gain marginal performance gains is not my idea of fun.

It puts the specc in an impossible state because they will never give a spec of certain difficulty enough of a gap in performance to compensate since at higher skill levels it will be perfectly usable and broken as a result while at the lower skill levels the spec underperforms.

In the entirety of old feral's existence it never performed proprotionate to its difficulty, so the simplifying changes in Legion were a good thing for the accessibility of the spec.

[lappee]

I don't know man. As much as I liked BoS gameplay in WoD as tank and UH, FoE was never really on par with it fun wise. Having to stand completely still for as long as you can while you maintain the spell and just spamming your most efficient generator while neglecting core mechanics like empowerments was never really a good design imo. There was a reason nobody took FoE beyond the very first weeks of legion until they buffed Starfall damage. Because in the scenarios where it was really good potentially (like m+) there was just so much stuff that could f*ck up its usage (earthquake affix, random stuns/knockbacks/silences) that it was mostly impractical to use.

Also, talents like BoS and FoE can be very rewarding when everything goes perfect but at the same time can be extremely frustrating when you get hit by that random ability just after you popped your CD. In addition those abilities tend to favor certain secondary stats (like haste) and make gearing a real pain (much like legendary helm needed high amounts of haste in the beginning of legion).

All in all I think those talents create a whole lot of problems and I am glad that Blizzard changed FoE the way they did in BfA alpha.

There is hardly any actual random silences/stuns/knockbacks in M+, even quaking isn't random.

People didn't play with FoE because it just simply didn't scale and thus wasn't on par with the damage. You could throw a perfect FoE and you'd do marginally more than just with Starfalls on that one pack and being very worse off for the next pulls. It just wasn't rewarding enough on the dmg even if you played it properly. Raids had no use for it either for the same reason.

FoE didn't even favor haste since you couldn't increase the duration with it as the tick rate on AsP consumption increased. You got the damage out more quickly but it wasn't double dipping from haste.

So the only problem was that FoE didn't scale with Mastery, which they fixed in Alpha already. There was no actual reason to change the gameplay of the talent into a boring spell that it is now.

I simply disagree that FoE autofollow makes the spell any lesser, and frontloading is AP cost was a good idea so it's not a game of rooting yourslef for maintaining it as long as possible. Moonkins already has terrible mobile damage so it doesn't need to become even more of a turret.

I just don't buy into the old school feral school of class design. Making classes obnoxious to juggle to gain marginal performance gains is not my idea of fun.

It puts the specc in an impossible state because they will never give a spec of certain difficulty enough of a gap in performance to compensate since at higher skill levels it will be perfectly usable and broken as a result while at the lower skill levels the spec underperforms.

In the entirety of old feral's existence it never performed proprotionate to its difficulty, so the simplifying changes in Legion were a good thing for the accessibility of the spec.

Autofollow makes it easy, literally a fire and forget as you can't control it in any way, and it also reduces the potential of it since now the mobs need to be even more clumped together (think of Starfall manual placement vs Starfall autoplacing on your target). Static AP cost makes it easier as well, you just can't control it outside of picking the target you cast it on.

Moonkins had ok movement dps if you prepared for it at all and it just got better and better the further we got in the expac. In BfA its still ok, nearly as good as it was at the start of Legion. Casters don't really even need to be able to push out dps on the move, its where positioning skill comes in.

If you don't like talents that require more effort and skill than the rest then you have the option not to take it. We're trying to make the talents on par with each other, one being better for X situation and the other for Y while still being close to each other. It is to give people options.

You're comparing one moonkin talent to a whole class which is just wrong. You can play Moonkin the old way just fine without FoE or people could play with FoE and the two would be equal, with equal skill, in grand scheme on things.

[Polarthief]

I’m all for the stellar flare granting empowerment. On alpha right now you can barely manage two stfl being empowered. It just feels odd. Triple dottting and aviidingbstarfall would be an interesting gameplay choice.

but making sotf baseline would likely bring starfall into the base rotation (dad spec).

I’m not sure they want that going forward

Not necessarily. Keep in mind if you're taking SD, you're also losing out on 30% Starfall damage from live's version, which is a decent enough loss (plus all the traits. Stellar Emp is MUCH weaker than live, as are the DoTs; another 12% loss on Starfall too).

Also, Starfall SHOULD be in the base rotation, at least for 2+ targets, without the mandatory need of a fucking talent. Without SOTF, you avoid Starfall like the plague unless you have a ton of targets (in which case, why aren't you using SOTF again?).

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Hounds are actually one of the best fights for moonkin since Starfall range is so huge, the dogs literally need to be on different side for it to not hit both targets with correct placement.

Which the majority of groups are not doing. You can see that pretty clearly via 70th and lower percentiles, even on Mythic.

Shouldn't happen. If you're not picking SotF then you're committed to not using AoE primarily. SotF is a viable ST talent as well if you think that you're going to be needed for proper AoE.

Except they want to do away with ST vs AoE talents, and for good reason. Talents originally were meant to be a playstyle that you enjoyed. You'd always grab all the mandatory shit but those last 10 or so talent points were yours to spend how you wanted. Back in the day when I played Mage, a lot of Mages opted for extra SP gain when you absorb shit with your Mage Wards, but I always went for Improved Blink which gave you movement speed after Blinking (much like Displacer Beast today). There never was this ST vs AoE nonsense which just makes you carry tomes everywhere. It's STUPID, and even Blizz acknowledged this.