7.2: AOE nerf ?

[Deleted]

Patch notes say:
"Starfall duration and tick rate is no longer affected by Haste."

So we get AOE nerfed depending on % of haste?
Hoped for a ST buff.

[Meteox]

My only guess would be because they are adding a new 4/4 perk that increases the damage of starfall by 4% on each point.

[lairpie]

My only guess would be because they are adding a new 4/4 perk that increases the damage of starfall by 4% on each point.

It does the same damage, it just takes longer to do it. Potentially a small nerf to burst aoe, but mostly I would guess it is intended to make it so Astral Drift's moving-while-casting effect doesn't get short by haste.

[beaver1024]

I don't understand why people are saying this is not a nerf or even a minor buff. To me it is a huge nerf. Your DPS is damage / time. If Starfall damage is X and Y is the time it takes to deliver the damage including haste then your DPS for Starfall would be X / Y.

In 7.2, it would be X / Y + Z (Z being how much longer it takes without haste). As you can see your DPS drops dramatically.

Someone tell me I'm wrong and why we won't see a dramatic drop in DPS for our AoE.

Note if you look at Warcraft logs on AoE heavy fights, like Skorp, Starfall damage consist of 40 - 50% of damage done. If you're running with around 30% haste, nerfing Starfall would effectively nerf Balance AoE DPS by 15%.

I don't think the benefit of additional empowerment tick, or being able to cast in the radius of Stellar drift longer is anywhere close to making up for the nerf.

[Nish197]

Starfall does its damage over 8 seconds - haste, regardless of haste it does the same damage.
Benefits of haste not effecting it means more move casting and longer empowerment's on the other DoT's
The ONLY situation this is not a dps increase is when the adds die in less that 8 seconds
Even then you get longer empowerment on any main targets too

[nightman463]

Starfall does its damage over 8 seconds - haste, regardless of haste it does the same damage.
Benefits of haste not effecting it means more move casting and longer empowerment's on the other DoT's
The ONLY situation this is not a dps increase is when the adds die in less that 8 seconds
Even then you get longer empowerment on any main targets too

This is wrong. I'll give a hypothetical situation. Say, you can maintain 100% uptime on starfall on a group of adds thats alive for 15 seconds. Lets also say, that with haste, your starfall currently has a duration of 5 seconds. In 7.1.5, you would be able to get 3 full starfalls off on that group of adds, whereas in 7.2 you wouldn't even be able to get 2 full duration starfalls on the same adds, in the same amount of time. In this scenario, you would lose just over 33% of your starfall damage. on fights like heroic/normal botanist, where it is fairly easy to maintain 100% uptime in starfall even with haste, this will absolutely be a large nerf

[BearlyTheBear]

Your maths are correct for burst AoE, it is indeed a nerf to that, but why would it nerf your dps on Botanists? You will be able to get as much starfalls of, their duration is the only thing that changes, they will all deal their full damage over a longer duration, where is there possibly a dps loss on a sustained fight? The only thing that changes, is a bigger overlap of starfalls compared to how they are almost back to back right now or just overlapping, which will even help with the perk of movement while casting during SF. The ads might take less damage though, because of their short lifespan, thats it. Its like most of you guys here do your maths based on the facts they can't overlap, but they can, so where is their a damage loss if we are not talking about windows of a few seconds on ads?

- - - Updated - - -

I don't understand why people are saying this is not a nerf or even a minor buff. To me it is a huge nerf. Your DPS is damage / time. If Starfall damage is X and Y is the time it takes to deliver the damage including haste then your DPS for Starfall would be X / Y.

In 7.2, it would be X / Y + Z (Z being how much longer it takes without haste). As you can see your DPS drops dramatically.

Someone tell me I'm wrong and why we won't see a dramatic drop in DPS for our AoE.

Note if you look at Warcraft logs on AoE heavy fights, like Skorp, Starfall damage consist of 40 - 50% of damage done. If you're running with around 30% haste, nerfing Starfall would effectively nerf Balance AoE DPS by 15%.

I don't think the benefit of additional empowerment tick, or being able to cast in the radius of Stellar drift longer is anywhere close to making up for the nerf.

Because you are not taking in account the fight duration, and the fact that starfalls overlap? So you can get the same damage output if the fight isnt shorter than 8 seconds ? Like surely a unique starfalls DAMAGE PER SECOND is higher, but its damage over a different duration remains the same, how is that an issue when you can overlap them and get of as many starfalls / time as before? Burst AoE only issue

[beaver1024]

I'm not sure I understand. Even if Starfalls overlap you get:

1st Starfall DPS = X / Y
2nd Starfall DPS = X1 / Y1

They both contribute to your overall DPS.

With the nerf

1st Starfall DPS = X / (Y + Z)
2nd Starfall DPS = X1 / (Y1 + Z)

You still suffer a relative DPS loss even if they're stacked one immediately after another. This gets worse when tanks have to move the boss (like on Botanist) to avoid bad on the ground.

I also don't understand the rationale for the change. No one seriously uses the drifting ability of Stellar Drift because you're usually casting range. You will never be within the circle to make effective use of it where it matters. Also empowered Dots are not going to make up for the loss because you get at most 1 tick extra tick of Sunfire and Moonfire.

What is the purpose of the nerf? PvP? I thought PvP was balanced separately? Is Moonkin overpowered on damage meters? All I can see is Balance coming last in Mythic NH so what gives? Revenge for how good Guardian and Resto are?

[BearlyTheBear]

I'm not sure I understand. Even if Starfalls overlap you get:

1st Starfall DPS = X / Y
2nd Starfall DPS = X1 / Y1

They both contribute to your overall DPS.

With the nerf

1st Starfall DPS = X / (Y + Z)
2nd Starfall DPS = X1 / (Y1 + Z)

You still suffer a relative DPS loss even if they're stacked one immediately after another. This gets worse when tanks have to move the boss (like on Botanist) to avoid bad on the ground.

I also don't understand the rationale for the change. No one seriously uses the drifting ability of Stellar Drift because you're usually casting range. You will never be within the circle to make effective use of it where it matters. Also empowered Dots are not going to make up for the loss because you get at most 1 tick extra tick of Sunfire and Moonfire.

What is the purpose of the nerf? PvP? I thought PvP was balanced separately? Is Moonkin overpowered on damage meters? All I can see is Balance coming last in Mythic NH so what gives? Revenge for how good Guardian and Resto are?

If you cast 30 starfalls in 90 seconds, does it matter if they deal their damage in windows of 8 or 5 seconds? At the end they will all have done their full damage, when you divide the total damage by the total amount of time, you still get the same dps.. you are looking at it like the thing that gets damaged by the starfalls is shorter of lifespan than the duration of the starfalls, which is indeed a nerf to burst AoE

[Deleted]

Let´s say - as an easy example - a starfalls duration with 10% haste is 30 sec and it ticks 15 times.
A starfall duration witth 30% haste is 20 sec and it ticks 15 times as well (even during this shorter period, tick rate buffed by haste)

in 7.2 it will be alway same duration and same tick rate, independend from haste, this means to me it is equal to 0% haste.
To reach the same amount of damage, you will need more time. For sure this is a nerf.

No idea, if the effect of the new perks will compensate this?
However, we are currently fine with AOE, there is no need for a change.
We are absolutely not fine with ST damage, where is the buff?

[BearlyTheBear]

Let´s say - as an easy example - a starfalls duration with 10% haste is 30 sec and it ticks 15 times.
A starfall duration witth 30% haste is 20 sec and it ticks 15 times as well (even during this shorter period, tick rate buffed by haste)

in 7.2 it will be alway same duration and same tick rate, independend from haste, this means to me it is equal to 0% haste.
To reach the same amount of damage, you will need more time. For sure this is a nerf.

No idea, if the effect of the new perks will compensate this?
However, we are currently fine with AOE, there is no need for a change.
We are absolutely not fine with ST damage, where is the buff?

They still deal the exact same amount of damage/ starfall regardless of the time they take for it, and because they are able to OVERLAP, there is no Damage loss on extended windows of time, unless short lived ads die before 8 seconds.

[Drogotaar]

This is wrong. I'll give a hypothetical situation. Say, you can maintain 100% uptime on starfall on a group of adds thats alive for 15 seconds. Lets also say, that with haste, your starfall currently has a duration of 5 seconds. In 7.1.5, you would be able to get 3 full starfalls off on that group of adds, whereas in 7.2 you wouldn't even be able to get 2 full duration starfalls on the same adds, in the same amount of time. In this scenario, you would lose just over 33% of your starfall damage. on fights like heroic/normal botanist, where it is fairly easy to maintain 100% uptime in starfall even with haste, this will absolutely be a large nerf

I was 100% on your boat until someone on reddit pointed me to the fact that you can simply instantly recast starfalls now and not have ticks nor dmg being lost. Same ticks, same damage, same everything.

Tested it ingame with leg bracers and indeed, you can stack them! So only a minor nerf to burst AoE but Stellar Drift is a lot better now and so is our sustained cleave for better Stellar Emp uptime

[Aylenn]

I'm pretty surprised how many of you play a dot + aoe class and still can't wrap your minds around how this will nerf all of us. Starfall is a GTAE DoT(Ground Targetted Area Effect Damage over Time). All DoTs benefit from haste, the faster the do dmg the more dmg you can do. Starfall is unique because you can stack it over and over so you can have 2, 3, 4 starfalls all doing dmg at the same time, however it's also unique because it targets the ground, not an enemy.

As pointed out on ANY fight with movement, which is all of them, there is a much higher chance and even probability on fights like botanist, gul'dan, spellblade, etc. that we will lose a ton of damage from starfall because they each need 8s to do full duration so if you pump out 2 starfalls on live it's Starfall(~5s) > GCD(~1.2s) > Starfall(~5s) you will need about 6-7 seconds to do full damage from both starfalls, there's a good chance you will get it all, small chance that you will get clipped but you should always be able to get at least 75% of your damage. New starfall will be Starfall(8s) > GCD(~1.2s) > Starfall(8s) which will cause use to take about 9-10 seconds to do full damage, much higher chance mobs are either dead or moved out of our aoe reducing our DPS.

Anytime we do damage slower we LOSE DPS(Damage PER Second) and furthermore we had very little "burst" aoe to begin with, we had ramping AOE that took about 3 seconds to really get going, any longer and we're going to become much more useless in M+ and many AOE fights. Good thing I'm gearing up a DK then I guess lol, they can burst AOE upwards of 10+ mill DPS while a boomie is at like 2-3? Hopefully they give boomies something soon because as pointed out they're scraping the bottom in Mythic as it is and so far there's just a nerf in the future.

[Kluian05]

Starfall duration being static means it will benefit from more uptime on Stellar Empowerment of our Dots, which means more damage over the course of the Starfall. This change should have no effect (or a DPS increase if Starfall uptime is not 100%) as long as the target survives longer than 8 seconds.

[Skyepic]

I'm pretty surprised how many of you play a dot + aoe class and still can't wrap your minds around how this will nerf all of us. Starfall is a GTAE DoT(Ground Targetted Area Effect Damage over Time). All DoTs benefit from haste, the faster the do dmg the more dmg you can do. Starfall is unique because you can stack it over and over so you can have 2, 3, 4 starfalls all doing dmg at the same time, however it's also unique because it targets the ground, not an enemy.

As pointed out on ANY fight with movement, which is all of them, there is a much higher chance and even probability on fights like botanist, gul'dan, spellblade, etc. that we will lose a ton of damage from starfall because they each need 8s to do full duration so if you pump out 2 starfalls on live it's Starfall(~5s) > GCD(~1.2s) > Starfall(~5s) you will need about 6-7 seconds to do full damage from both starfalls, there's a good chance you will get it all, small chance that you will get clipped but you should always be able to get at least 75% of your damage. New starfall will be Starfall(8s) > GCD(~1.2s) > Starfall(8s) which will cause use to take about 9-10 seconds to do full damage, much higher chance mobs are either dead or moved out of our aoe reducing our DPS.

Anytime we do damage slower we LOSE DPS(Damage PER Second) and furthermore we had very little "burst" aoe to begin with, we had ramping AOE that took about 3 seconds to really get going, any longer and we're going to become much more useless in M+ and many AOE fights. Good thing I'm gearing up a DK then I guess lol, they can burst AOE upwards of 10+ mill DPS while a boomie is at like 2-3? Hopefully they give boomies something soon because as pointed out they're scraping the bottom in Mythic as it is and so far there's just a nerf in the future.

Don't try and undermine other people when you're missing a vital part of the concept yourself. The difference between Starfall and a regular DoT is that when your haste goes up, the DURATION of starfall got shorter.

Does your sunfire duration get shorter the more haste you have? No
Does your moonfire duration get shorter the more haste you have? No

So don't compare them in the same way.

You also need to differentiate between Damage Per Second and Damage Per Execution. DPE will stay exactly the same, where as it's DPS will drop a small amount. Because of the fact that starfalls can overlap, over an extended period of time (I.E a realistic trash or boss pull) you will see practically no difference in the end result DPS. All you'll see is that your DPS doesn't spike as high. The only time this will negativly effect our DPS is if whatever needs to die lives less than 8 seconds. the amount of starfalls we can drop is still hindered by our AsP generation.

Hypothetically, over the course of 20 seconds lets say you can generate enough astral power to drop 4 starfalls. Regardless of whether those 4 starfalls are 8 second durations or 10 second durations, because of the fact they can overlap, you can assume all 4 can be completed in the 20 second window. The set of X starfalls will finish faster so your DPS will be higher leading up to the 20 second mark but once all 4 starfalls finish the total damage is going to be the same which in turn will make your DPS the same.

You will still get off the same amount of starfalls and over an extended period of time they will still do the same amount of damage (minus the situation where something dies in less than 8 seconds). If that situation starts to become more prevalent, whelp F*** us.

[Deleted]

It is probably a slight nerf but not the end of the world.

We lose damage on short-lived adds and a higher chance of losing damage due to targets being moved.

But we gain more time of empowered dots and potential drifting.

[Spoonman]

I see some talking about stacking Starfalls here, im rookie so just wondering if that comes in 7.2 or is it on Live?
and with stacking do u mean having multiple starfalls up at same time?

[hulkgor]

Regardless of it being a slight nerf, or actually good for longer empowerments, etc...

... am i the only one that recognizes the absurd amount of damage we deal on AoE now? This is a hightly justified change. We're probably the best class in the game for Mythic+s for that matter, and have a massive sustain aoe for fights like botanist (non-hc), skorp, aluriel, etc?

I just wish they'd bump our single target up a bit if they lower our aoe potential.

[Myztikrice]

I see some talking about stacking Starfalls here, im rookie so just wondering if that comes in 7.2 or is it on Live?
and with stacking do u mean having multiple starfalls up at same time?

You could always stack Starfalls. You get the extra damage from Starfall and echoing stars procs but not extra empowerments.

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Regardless of it being a slight nerf, or actually good for longer empowerments, etc...

... am i the only one that recognizes the absurd amount of damage we deal on AoE now? This is a hightly justified change. We're probably the best class in the game for Mythic+s for that matter, and have a massive sustain aoe for fights like botanist (non-hc), skorp, aluriel, etc?

I just wish they'd bump our single target up a bit if they lower our aoe potential.

Elemental Shamans are better at AoE in practically every way and they offer more combat utility with knockdowns and stuns. Skorp doesn't matter and you don't AoE on Mythic Botanist (the only difficulty that matters now).

[Deleted]

Regardless of it being a slight nerf, or actually good for longer empowerments, etc...

... am i the only one that recognizes the absurd amount of damage we deal on AoE now? This is a hightly justified change. We're probably the best class in the game for Mythic+s for that matter, and have a massive sustain aoe for fights like botanist (non-hc), skorp, aluriel, etc?

I just wish they'd bump our single target up a bit if they lower our aoe potential.

I did nearly 1000 myth+ runs up to level 16. I am a level 900 equiped moonkin with 2 BIS legendaries. I do an amount of AOE damage similar to level 900 equiped mages, warlocks, hunters. Not better in cases, where I need to collect AP first.
In NH hc it is a similar situation.

We are definitely not the best class for Myth+, not in AOE and for sure not in ST fights.
We do not need a AOE nerf, we need a ST buff.