Feedback on Bugs and Lunar Shower
As I've done before, just reposting some feedback I've sent in to Blizzard.
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Just catching up a bit. Patch day seemed like a good time since I can see what things you fixed that weren't in the notes (there are a few nice ones, like Lunar Shower stacking properly and Eclipse direction resetting on death).
Outstanding bugs:
1) Euphoria. The double-energy proc does not occur if you have 36 or more energy. i.e. if you have 35 Solar energy and cast Starfire, it might proc and take you to 75. But if you have 36, it won't.
This might be partially intended? It makes sense for Euphoria to not proc at (60 Solar/74 Lunar) energy or higher, since that would cause unexpected Eclipses. I don't know if there's a reason to stop at 35 though, it means that in practice, it virtually never procs.
Not that important, since Euphoria adds so little DPS anyway, mostly just weird.
2) Gift of the Earthmother. When checking haste to compute tick size, it's ignoring buffs like Nature's Grace and Wrath of Air, and operating off of rating only (I checked those two buffs in particular, at least). It does correctly use the 12.5% breakpoint now, but from rating only. Again, maybe not a big deal, but makes this talent a little weaker than it should be.
3) Wild Mushroom isn't getting the 15% damage bonus from Moonfury (best I can tell, Moonfury is not a true spell school damage buff like it claims, but just a 15% buff to a particular list of spells). There might be balance issues here though, see below.
4) Starfall is being really weird since the patch. To be honest, I don't think it's entirely clear to anyone what was intended with that change. The result seems to be that it drops twice as many stars now (up to 20 on one target and 40 on two targets), but inconsistently. Sometimes it doesn't drop the full complement of stars, but I haven't figured out why. It will also still frequently pull mobs that are initially out of combat. Finally, it simply won't fire on target dummies.
5) I just noticed that the Total Eclipse bonus from mastery rating is rounding down to the nearest percentage point. I'm not sure whether it was always doing this, but it would probably be cleaner if it didn't. The Resto mastery doesn't round (except in the tooltip).
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Some comments on Moonkin:
The Eclipse system has given rise to a lot of decisionmaking in combat. In some way it's a very successful model of what a resource for DPS should look like: it never "runs out," but it makes me think ahead about where I want the meter to be in the future. The reason this might be awkward though, is that it all centers around one important tool, and that's Lunar Shower.
Lunar Shower is in many ways the most important talent in the tree (this didn't really become apparent to me until I'd played it a good bit). The key fact is that spamming Moonfire with Lunar Shower allows you to do reasonable DPS (less than Starfire/Wrath, but not terrible), while freezing your Eclipse meter in place. So if I want to adjust my Eclipse progression at all (typically to save the next Eclipse for some important upcoming moment in the fight), I can dance with Lunar Shower a bit to delay.
Putting it together, Lunar Shower as 3 distinct uses:
1) When forced to move during a fight, I have an instant I can spam to do reasonable DPS.
2) Discussed above, it's the only way of exerting any control over when Eclipses come.
3) In multi-target situations, I can sit in Solar Eclipse indefinitely, and spam DoT's and other instants only.
(1) is the obvious intended use and working well. I genuinely don't know how intended (3) is. But (3) really gets its strength from the power of simultaneous DoT's, not from Lunar Shower--nerfing Lunar Shower wouldn't affect it all that much. Finally, (2) is an odd way in which Lunar Shower adds quite a lot to the class.
So this is all to point out that Lunar Shower might have some unintended effects. You probably don't want Moonkin to be going out of their way to move just to make use of it. But the counterpoint is that for Eclipse to be interesting, there has to be way for the player to have some influence on when it starts and ends, and somehow Lunar Shower is filling that role right now.
-----------------------
Just catching up a bit. Patch day seemed like a good time since I can see what things you fixed that weren't in the notes (there are a few nice ones, like Lunar Shower stacking properly and Eclipse direction resetting on death).
Outstanding bugs:
1) Euphoria. The double-energy proc does not occur if you have 36 or more energy. i.e. if you have 35 Solar energy and cast Starfire, it might proc and take you to 75. But if you have 36, it won't.
This might be partially intended? It makes sense for Euphoria to not proc at (60 Solar/74 Lunar) energy or higher, since that would cause unexpected Eclipses. I don't know if there's a reason to stop at 35 though, it means that in practice, it virtually never procs.
Not that important, since Euphoria adds so little DPS anyway, mostly just weird.
2) Gift of the Earthmother. When checking haste to compute tick size, it's ignoring buffs like Nature's Grace and Wrath of Air, and operating off of rating only (I checked those two buffs in particular, at least). It does correctly use the 12.5% breakpoint now, but from rating only. Again, maybe not a big deal, but makes this talent a little weaker than it should be.
3) Wild Mushroom isn't getting the 15% damage bonus from Moonfury (best I can tell, Moonfury is not a true spell school damage buff like it claims, but just a 15% buff to a particular list of spells). There might be balance issues here though, see below.
4) Starfall is being really weird since the patch. To be honest, I don't think it's entirely clear to anyone what was intended with that change. The result seems to be that it drops twice as many stars now (up to 20 on one target and 40 on two targets), but inconsistently. Sometimes it doesn't drop the full complement of stars, but I haven't figured out why. It will also still frequently pull mobs that are initially out of combat. Finally, it simply won't fire on target dummies.
5) I just noticed that the Total Eclipse bonus from mastery rating is rounding down to the nearest percentage point. I'm not sure whether it was always doing this, but it would probably be cleaner if it didn't. The Resto mastery doesn't round (except in the tooltip).
-------
Some comments on Moonkin:
The Eclipse system has given rise to a lot of decisionmaking in combat. In some way it's a very successful model of what a resource for DPS should look like: it never "runs out," but it makes me think ahead about where I want the meter to be in the future. The reason this might be awkward though, is that it all centers around one important tool, and that's Lunar Shower.
Lunar Shower is in many ways the most important talent in the tree (this didn't really become apparent to me until I'd played it a good bit). The key fact is that spamming Moonfire with Lunar Shower allows you to do reasonable DPS (less than Starfire/Wrath, but not terrible), while freezing your Eclipse meter in place. So if I want to adjust my Eclipse progression at all (typically to save the next Eclipse for some important upcoming moment in the fight), I can dance with Lunar Shower a bit to delay.
Putting it together, Lunar Shower as 3 distinct uses:
1) When forced to move during a fight, I have an instant I can spam to do reasonable DPS.
2) Discussed above, it's the only way of exerting any control over when Eclipses come.
3) In multi-target situations, I can sit in Solar Eclipse indefinitely, and spam DoT's and other instants only.
(1) is the obvious intended use and working well. I genuinely don't know how intended (3) is. But (3) really gets its strength from the power of simultaneous DoT's, not from Lunar Shower--nerfing Lunar Shower wouldn't affect it all that much. Finally, (2) is an odd way in which Lunar Shower adds quite a lot to the class.
So this is all to point out that Lunar Shower might have some unintended effects. You probably don't want Moonkin to be going out of their way to move just to make use of it. But the counterpoint is that for Eclipse to be interesting, there has to be way for the player to have some influence on when it starts and ends, and somehow Lunar Shower is filling that role right now.
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