Boomking Talent builds (subject to change)

[Scrotles]

So since getting the beta about a week ago ive finally been able to sit down and really try a few of the different talent builds that we may end up having in BFA. I love the rework that we got, since from what i understand and what i saw moonkin was broken after losing everything in legion. So this initial update we got is nice to see and the class is actually playable and it is really fun. But that also doesnt come without some glaring problems the spec still has. For instance there are some talents that really just need to be baseline. And ill go into detail about that later. But to keep the post from being very rambly ill just go into the talent builds that are currently simming the best for me. Again all subject to change.

-Single Target-
15 l Force of Nature / Warrior of Elune
30 l Wild Charge
45 l Guardian Affinity
60 l Whichever you pick
75 l Soul of the Forest
90 l Starlord / Stellar Flare
100 l New Moon

Pretty simple and basic talent set-ups but there might be somethings that you are questioning. Such as the rows that have 2 options which will be better? And this is how I've simmed it and tried it in raid testing.

For our single target as of 6/1/2018 at Tier 15 for purely 1 target you go Warrior of Elune. Force of Nature is a close 2nd although. So really you can get away with both, but and this is personal preference but Warrior of Elune plays fantastic into our kit its fun to use and generates the most astral power in this tier. At 50 every 45 seconds. Ontop of that Lunar Strike currently on beta hits like a truck especially paired w/ Soul of the Forest @ tier 75.

The only other choice really is @ tier 90 in which one talent is easier to use than the other in my opinion. Starlord sims as the best single target talent here. But its so clunky to actually use because you kinda just always sit at 2 stacks and get the 3rd with about 5/6 seconds left on the buff. So then this brings the argument do you just bank AP and basically have 100% uptime on 2 stacks or have 3 stacks for 5/6 seconds and be stuck at 1 stack the next rotation for 3-4 seconds. Thats too much math for me to do lol. And since i started using stellar flare i really havent noticed a drop off at all. And in some cases ive seen a increase in damage. The only issue with stellar flare is that it has a cast time. Thats the only thing that doesnt feel great. Because you already have so much going on trying to weave your solar/lunar empowerments, tracking your new moon, tracking moonfire/sunfire that tracking another dot doesnt feel great at first. And its a little overwhelming at least it was for me. But more and more ya play with it the easier and better the rotation feels and you can see the potential of us having really solid single target.


-AoE-
15 l Warrior of Elune
30 l Wild Charge
45 l Guardian Affinity
60 l Whichever you pick
75 l Twin Moons / Soul of the Forest
90 l Stellar Drift / Stellar Flare
100 l Shooting Stars

For AoE again its pretty simple choices but we do HAVE choices which is always great.

Starting of with tier 75 Twin Moons pulls ahead at 4+ targets because it just doesnt become viable to cast moonfire on 4 or more targets. We already have limited GCDs. Twin Moons feels okay on beta currently. I think from having it all of legion im just kinda bored of it. Its great it does great damage. Im just bored of it lol. Soul of the forest is really good for around 2/3/4 targets if they are clumped up so you can get the benefits of the lunar/solar aoe aspects. But if the bosses are spread out past 8 yards and cannot be stacked twin moons wins hands down. Just by gaining 2/3/4 GCDs.

The other pick that is interesting is Stellar Drift / Stellar Flare. And this comes down to again how many adds / bosses are you facing. 2/3/4 targets Stellar Flare is great. But 4 / 4+ Stellar Drift hits so hard.

So yeah thats basically the builds on the beta currently for boomies if anyone has been interested and couldnt really find a good build to go with. Give these a try! And definitely let me know how you like them!


-Sidebar those talents that i was talking about earlier that i feel should be baseline are New Moon for obvious reasons its what made our spec awesome in legion and without it gameplay really is clunky in beta. Also i feel that celestial alignment should be baseline, and incarnation should be an added cooldown. Like how we were in WoD. Because currently incarnation is useless, pathetic, and terrible. And that SHOULD be our go to for single target, and its not even competitive against soul of the forest. For single target currently its the worst with twin moons pulling ahead of it as well. And that because Celestial Alignment alone is great. And the benefit we are getting by taking incarnation isnt worth losing soul of the forest / twin moons + CA. I doubt they will make CA truly baseline. But it would be great to have some of the best burst in the game like we used to in WoD.

[wing5wong]

CA is baseline?
am i missing something?

[naeblis495]

i think he meant that CA and incarnation become two different spells if specd into it like mop (?)

so you can pop both at the time

that would require to rework one of two tho

[Scrotles]

Yeah sorry wrote the post pretty early in the am haha so some things might be convoluted a bit. But yes I'd love to see CA be a baseline talent in which if you choose Incarn you gain incarn and never lose CA. Fully aware that won't be the case. Its just something that i truly miss. And the way they have incarnation now just makes it so bad to choose over the other talents in that row. They would need to either buff the duration/haste or reduce the time of the cd and keep the same percentages for it to ever be viable in single target vs soul of the forest at least currently.

[Deleted]

Starlord sims as the best single target talent here..

How can u sim with beta values? there is some 8.0 simcraft or you just tried or did some maths?


Edit: nvm I just read...

Anyway I think many people, you included, are underestimating Nature's Balance and Fury of Elune..

[huth]

I imagine FoE is going to be the goto-talent for anything that needs burst-AoE.-

Yeah sorry wrote the post pretty early in the am haha so some things might be convoluted a bit. But yes I'd love to see CA be a baseline talent in which if you choose Incarn you gain incarn and never lose CA. Fully aware that won't be the case. Its just something that i truly miss. And the way they have incarnation now just makes it so bad to choose over the other talents in that row. They would need to either buff the duration/haste or reduce the time of the cd and keep the same percentages for it to ever be viable in single target vs soul of the forest at least currently.

I don't really see that as an improvement. They'd have to significantly nerf Incarnation to do that. Besides, Incarnation is just a stronger CA with different graphics.
I'd actually preferred if Incarnation becomes the base version and the talent is just +x% damage/10s duration to Inc.

The rest is just a tuning issue.

[elynos]

I'll be going with nature's balance for both cause it's just better.

[Scrotles]

The issue with FoE is that the cooldown sucks so badly when lining it up with abilities. At 1 min and 20 seconds it lines up with absolutely nothing. & atm nature’s balance is awful. It takes a minute to even get you up to 50 AP. And with doing mythic pluses you aren’t going to be waiting a minute after pulls lol. I imagine they will change it. But again this is all current. For raiding sure the AP gain you get per minute is better with nature’s balance but gaining AP is not an issue at all in bfa.

With warrior of elune if you get 3 stacks of lunar empowerment which is very very easy to do with either starsurge, solar wrath, or dot procs. You bank 3 pop warrior of elune you have that extra dmg instantly along with 50 AP in 3 globals. Again it just feels better to play with than nature balance.

But just to talk again on FoE quick. Again the glaring issue with FoE is 1 the cool down doesn’t line up with anything. You end up having to wait 10-20 seconds to use it. And the gain it provides right now is awful. 40 AP is terrible, and what people aren’t realizing is if you put it on a target yes it “follows” but once that target dies you cannot put it to go on another target. I’ve had it happen a few times where a target needs to be bursted down and it gets killed so quickly that fury of elune is just there for 3/4 seconds doing nothing. And again the AP gain is awful. It is a lot more fun than new moon which has its own issues. But FoE needs some love.

[huth]

The issue with FoE is that the cooldown sucks so badly when lining it up with abilities. At 1 min and 20 seconds it lines up with absolutely nothing. & atm nature’s balance is awful. It takes a minute to even get you up to 50 AP. And with doing mythic pluses you aren’t going to be waiting a minute after pulls lol.

Blizzard clearly wants to get away from people stacking CDs. Besides, this makes it better for fights with more common burst phases. The AP gain isn't that different from the other two, keeping CDs and cast times in mind.

Also, keep in mind that NB also prevents any AP below 50 from being lost between fights.

[Scrotles]

Blizzard clearly wants to get away from people stacking CDs. Besides, this makes it better for fights with more common burst phases. The AP gain isn't that different from the other two, keeping CDs and cast times in mind.

Also, keep in mind that NB also prevents any AP below 50 from being lost between fights.

100% understand that. I enjoy playing with FoE alot more than new moon. Just FoE isnt viable with how it currently is over new moon. And its really not debatable lol. As of right now FoE doesnt even come close to new moon in AP or damage.

& With NB again lol I understand the whole argument with not dropping under 50 and building up to 50. But you guys defending NB don't understand that AP IS NOT an issue for boomies currently lol. And ontop of that when doing M+ you will never take it because you are chain pulling constantly and will never have 1 MINUTE to regen back UP to 50. It literally takes 60 FULL SECONDS to get from 0-50. NB is not that good im sorry lol.

[naeblis495]

100% understand that. I enjoy playing with FoE alot more than new moon. Just FoE isnt viable with how it currently is over new moon. And its really not debatable lol. As of right now FoE doesnt even come close to new moon in AP or damage.

& With NB again lol I understand the whole argument with not dropping under 50 and building up to 50. But you guys defending NB don't understand that AP IS NOT an issue for boomies currently lol. And ontop of that when doing M+ you will never take it because you are chain pulling constantly and will never have 1 MINUTE to regen back UP to 50. It literally takes 60 FULL SECONDS to get from 0-50. NB is not that good im sorry lol.

you forget that FoE scale with mastery too , moonmoon doesn't , is instant and doesn't require you to cast two worthless spell first to reward you
FoE is also 3 times better than full moon in aoe and less than 2 times worse in mono

there is lot of good and bad argument for both .

[huth]

With NB again lol I understand the whole argument with not dropping under 50 and building up to 50. But you guys defending NB don't understand that AP IS NOT an issue for boomies currently lol. And ontop of that when doing M+ you will never take it because you are chain pulling constantly and will never have 1 MINUTE to regen back UP to 50. It literally takes 60 FULL SECONDS to get from 0-50. NB is not that good im sorry lol.

You absolutely do not understand the argument. It doesn't matter that it takes 60 seconds. What matters is that you don't lose your entire AP if you can't be in combat for 30. You'd rarely end battle with 0 AP anyway.

That aside, we're not producing so much AP that we can't use it all in BfA, and NB gives twice the AP in combat the other two options do. The AP to 50 isn't its only effect.

[Deleted]

Even without the out of combat regeneration NB generates more AP than WoE, about 50% more, because you have to consider the cast time and the damage difference is very low.
Moon moon, once again, generates the same AP than FoE (70 seems more but it isn't because you can cast 3,5 less wrat --> 28 less AP) so the difference is only about the damage.
In Single target moons seems stronger... but in aoe, expecially in dungeon where you can hit 4-6 target, there is no match. Probably in dg we should choose between FoE and ShS.

I really like how this talents are balanced. The only things I don't like is the t90 row, Stellar Drift seems out of place: Imo they should make it baseline and replace it with something more in line with Starlord/Stellar Flaire like Celestial Downpoor for example...

[nlc]

If WoE is stronger on single target than NB then I think it means starsurge is too weak relative to the builders. That could be fixed in tuning. At least I hope it would be as I don't see WoE being that much fun on sustained single target. Does NB scale with haste, btw, or is it fixed?

[Scrotles]

you forget that FoE scale with mastery too , moonmoon doesn't , is instant and doesn't require you to cast two worthless spell first to reward you
FoE is also 3 times better than full moon in aoe and less than 2 times worse in mono

there is lot of good and bad argument for both .

You're also taking what im saying and stretching it over 2-3 years of an expansion lol. And ive made it clear and apparent that everything im talking about in this post is right now current day.

- - - Updated - - -

So again, everything. here. is. based. on. what. ive. seen. on. beta. thusfar. im. trying. to. help. the. people. whom. dont. have. beta. who. might. want. to. play. boomie.

Everything. that. ive. said. is. subject. to. change.

[huth]

So again, everything. here. is. based. on. what. ive. seen. on. beta. thusfar. im. trying. to. help. the. people. whom. dont. have. beta. who. might. want. to. play. boomie.

Everything. that. ive. said. is. subject. to. change.

No, everything is based on your personal gut feeling about what you saw on beta. This isn't helpful. You're dismissing abilities for silly reasons like "doesn't line up" without actually examining if this matters.

You mess up the math, do not actually provide any for us to examine, give no consideration to interactions beyond CDs lining up and generally have a very poor formatting, making it hard to read.

Your post is junk and does more harm than help.

[Scrotles]

No, everything is based on your personal gut feeling about what you saw on beta. This isn't helpful. You're dismissing abilities for silly reasons like "doesn't line up" without actually examining if this matters.

You mess up the math, do not actually provide any for us to examine, give no consideration to interactions beyond CDs lining up and generally have a very poor formatting, making it hard to read.

Your post is junk and does more harm than help.

Who is dismissing abilities you clown. Ive clearly stated since the first post that these are things ive seen with the gameplay and what is pulling more numbers currently in beta. But you want to form an argument about talents 2 years down the line lol. Like you're taking what ive said and extrapolated it to fit your argument. When all ive said is the talents that you are referring to CURRENTLY ARE TRASH. Doesn't mean they wont be viable tomorrow when the new patch comes out.

Dont be a sally.

[Deleted]

Twin moons and Starlord switched talent spots in the latest build.

Pretty much makes twin moons useless. Expect a stellar drift nerf.

[Malmmoc]

Nature's Balance refills AP a lot faster out of combat now. The improvement is really noticeable.

[huth]

Nature's Balance refills AP a lot faster out of combat now. The improvement is really noticeable.

Seems like it actually fills up to half too, rather than just 50 AP. With 2t20, it goes up to 65.