The differences in when you gain Energy are odd. You would think they would be timed together.

Clearly though, it shows that Balance Druids have a long way to go. Your Starfire crits were hitting for around 8000, which is about what a regular starfire hits for now. Starsurge's damage was very promising though, even if it does look exactly like a Nature-styled Lava Burst. You would think they'd add a little arcane-feel to the spell's image but I guess that's not really important. It was a little strange watching Wrath's cast time take so long after it being a 1.5 second cast for years.

Seemed like Eclipse was taking around 30 seconds to proc which struck me as a little strange. Were you still at level 80 for this video?

Yeah, this is at level 80 and my crit/haste are terrible (and I was refreshing DoT's a lot). Also, Improved Eclipse still isn't in.

Differences in Energy probably because the things that are procced by talents (Euphoria/Lunar Guidance) are given when the spell deals damage and is logged.

But Nature's Grace is a talent and it has always procced when you finish the cast. Euphoria should be able to operate no differently.

Furthermore, Lunar Guidance merely adds an Energy component to Starsurge. If Wrath is designed in a way that allows Energy to be generated once the spell is cast, Starsurge should theoretically be able to operate the same way via Lunar Guidance.

I'm sure it could work that way, it's just that most things don't. I'm pretty sure they used unusual tech to make Nature's Grace work in a special way or else it wouldn't even been able to do what it was supposed to (accelerate your "next" spell after a crit).

Here, the only downside of the delay is that if you're casting e.g. Starfire at 72-79 Energy, you don't know what spell to cast afterwards. The old habit of casting an instant right at that point will probably persist. And the delay can also be an advantage--if you're at 85 Lunar Energy and cast Starsurge, you can start a Starfire afterwards, while it's travelling, and get more effective Lunar uptime.

This all might be a bit pointless since we have on pretty good authority that there will still be significant changes, but it's kind of fun and I guess there isn't too much else to do right now.

Starsurge seems to be like the least buggy thing I've played with so far on Beta, honestly. This seems to be corect based on my testing. It's supposed to have an internal cooldown, I think, though it may just be based off what your last spell was. I haven't tested it well enough yet.

Moved this to the correct thread:


It's interesting that he completely sidestepped the first question all together, but to me that only reaffirms that the position of the slider does not alter the damage of your spells. So far, the only other question was about Moonfire and whether it was supposed to be an instant Nuke with a DoT or a DoT with an instant nuke. Their answer was both, especially while moving.

Why they're so stuck on a timed buff I'll never understand. A simpler method would be to allow Eclipse to persist indefinitely until you reach the center of the Eclipse bar. In the end, I suppose there's no real difference. This would completely eradicate any problems we have with movement and gives us a maximum 50% Eclipse uptime.

The only questions that remain are how they will incorporate our other spells (particularly our DoTs) with Eclipse.

First impression here is good. Will think about it more in a bit.

Has Starfire's cast time been talked about? Right now it operates as a sort of cast-time analogue to fireball. Fireball is supposedly reduced t 3 sec now, down to 2.5 with talanets ala shadowbolt. This makes the spell more accessible in a variety of situations, from PvE not making it too susceptible to movement interruption, to the very important PvP usage.

I really hope starfire, too, gets reduced to 3 secs for a talented 2.5 sec cast. With eclipse now poised as our core mechanic, we WILL be pressured to balance starfire and wrath in a PvP environment, which simply does not support ridiculously long casts like starfire at the moment.

Making Starfire less susceptible to necessary movement would be in line with all other changes like the upcoming change to moonfire.

Also, I will note that Starsurge, as you mentioned before, Hamlet, has a huge coefficient. At some points it seemed like it would do nearly double to 3/2 the damage of a starfire, at a 2 sec cast. Impressive stuff, and the graphic is amazingly pretty with the leaves flying out of the meteor, hopefully it gets some glowy arcane swirls to the meteor to incorporate the arcane theme.

Does Starsurge benefit from the eclipse proc buffs? They really need eclipse to allow flat damage buffs (+arcane damage, +nature damage) instead of limiting them to starfire and wrath only. For the sake of maintaining DoT relevance and tying up our trees abilities so they actually mesh.

I also hope Wild Mushroom gets removed off the GCD and is instant. Setting up the mushrooms themselves will be enough delay. Having to put down each mushroom and deal with GCD andthen have to detonate could have some issues of practical use. It seems like the mushroom does about as much damage as the mobile non-cd nukes like felflame-- which is to say, quite low as a standalone unless the mushroomshave a different coefficient (mushoorms need to be placed AND detonated, as opposed to immediate effect upon targeted opponent).

Along with that, they simply need to give faerie fire some balance functionality. Why they would keep it castable for the spec when it has no use whatsoever for the druid is beyond me.

Furthermore, they also talked about those barely used spells either finding some more use in PvE/PVP or being cut. Hello Hibernate and Soothe Animal, along with Entangling Roots on a distant place. I never understood why they coul not make the CC from roots and its dot portion separate, with the dot being a meaty DoT that remains after the root breaks. And doing Wailing Caverns on my little warlock alt just reminds me how sad our version of Hibernate is compared to the druids of the fang.

P.S. Has the knockdown on Starsurge been implemented? How long does it last if it has indeed been implemented?

Starsurge does not gain a benefit from Eclipse. But I'm not so sure that Eclipse buffs for things besides Starfire and Wrath are as big a deal as people make them out to be. This is one of the things I was going to say about the new Eclipse previewed in the Twitter, actually--having it only buff those two nukes is fine as long as you don't feel penalized for casting other things.

That said, SS does need to interact with Eclipse in a more significant way (this is something I made a point of telling GC recently in feedback). Right now it's just a nuke you use on cooldown for the extra damage. As a first glance though, if they go ahead with this Eclipse change, that would really support the idea of having SS generate a lot more Energy (even at the cost of some damage)--you would then intelligently use it to shorten your Eclipse downtime each cycle.

Right now I see SS applying a 2s knockdown debuff on the dummy.

e: man, the beta is so buggy when it comes to talents. This time when I logged in my spec wiped and Sfall/FoN are gone, but I can still cast Starsurge. Last time, Sfall/FoN were still there, but when I tried to cast them, I got "You don't have that spell" or somesuch.

The only thing that I dislike about Eclipse only buffing Wrath and Starfire is that it discourages casting anything but Wrath and Starfire during Eclipse uptimes. However, because you can't really waste Eclipse uptime, it might actually not matter anymore.

Also, Starsurge is supposed to do damage based on which would do more, similar to Frostfire Bolt. I always figured that would play into a rather nice Eclipse effect if they made Eclipse to buff Arcane or Nature damage, but then again there is really no benefit to that. In fact, you could say that Starsurge works better this way because its damage will not fluctuate based on whether Eclipse is up or not. The difference being that the damage of Starsurge won't be balanced around whether Eclipse is up or not so it will always be doing the maximum damage possible where as Wrath and Starfire damage will fluctuate with Eclipse.

The same can be said of our DoTs, however I still think they should have some mechanic that makes our DoTs feel more important.

One interesting thing to note...

During Eclipse you will actually want to use as little Eclipse Power as possible to prolong the effects of Eclipse. Currently, casting Starusrge during Eclipse might be a bad idea since it has a larger effect on Energy.

Bah, a 2 second knockdown is underwhelming. Expected more arund 3-4 seconds for the 15 sec cooldown, since Chaosbolt sits at a 12 second cooldown, and Lava Burst at an 8 second cooldown (even shorter with lava surge procs).

But my biggest concern is the above stated, where an eclipse proc will lessen the prominence of Starsurge-- a potential key ability-- by encouraging starfire/wrath spam at the cost of everything else. I'd like more break where we want to incorporate all our spells as much as possible, and Starsurge for a key ability should play along with the mechanic.

It's just that wrath and eclipse by themselves are not interesting spells, and eclipse will not make their spamming any less uninspired.

Our rotation basically boils to putting dots on (if they're made to be orth it), and spamm the same spells until eclipse tells you to spam the other spell. Our proc isn't really that interesting.

Compare that to a shadow priest rotation, or an affliction lock, or with the new arcane mage who will be able to use arcane barrage to activate an arcane missile proc to balance with arcane blast.

starfire star fire starfire wrath wrath wrath with a starsurge every 15 seconds assuming starsurge is even good to use on cooldown while eclipse is up just doesn't boil down to an interesting rotation.

Starfall also needs to be reexamined now that all aoe's have taken hefty nerfs (starfall included), to the point where it simply isn't an interesting 31 pointer, much less one of good enough caliber for its placement in the tree. Starfall does very little to affect the balance druid upon obtaining it in a way that chaosbolt, haunt, deep freeze, arcane barrage do.

Then there's Typhoon, whom, with moonfire and mushroom filling in the mobile dps niche, feels lackluster. It will boil down to an extremely situational spell, as with the comeback of CC you don't want to end up breaking CC with its wide range (and this touches upon starfall as well, which manifested already in pvp situations where starfall sucks in competitive arena because it's basically 10 seconds of your team not being able to CC anyone).

They mentioned wanting to restrict crit bonus to dps specs only and that's why it's easy for pures while not for hybrids. They revamped the system, so why can't they add the crit bonus talents into the passive for any dps caster? They have done so with pushback talents, so making balannce/elemental/shadow pay in talent points for range/crit bonus while pures would get it for free further contributes to the feeling of hybrids as being limited in havint to spend points just to catch up and then have less total talent points to actually affect their play.

With the twitter version of Eclipse, there is very little benefit to talents that increase movement of the energy bar when casting a nuke.

Add such a talent, and Lunar Eclipse to Solar Eclipse might be 10% faster, but the Lunar Eclipse itself would be 10% shorter. Either way, there is about 50% Eclipse uptime.

There are possible fixes (example: don't apply the increased energy movement under Eclipse).

This I agree with, wrath/starfire/starsurge are too similar and arcane/nature casting are nearly identical. Eclipse should modify the behaviour of either school and not just boost damage, that will help distinguish it. I would love to see Starsurge instant even though they want you to have a chance to interrupt a knockdown, knockbacks/fears and other effects being instant cast aren't unprecedented, don't see why SS can't follow making it that bit more distinct from wrath with higher damage.

If they leave as it is then you're right, but they should modify it, shifting can become a mechanic of its own, an extra dimension to the spec outside eclipse casting if they wanted to, like I suggested earlier by giving one example of how, and they could make going moonkin form change the behaviour of the cast spells so it is different from casting in caster form - so the druid now has to decide whether a situation or a period in a fight is better off tackling in moonkin form b/c of its cast style or better in caster form - this could work out quite interesting.

Yeah, I should not have added the second part to that question, maybe he would have answered it then, or maybe just ignored it like he did most of my moonkin questions. After the eclipse answer though, it makes sense mastery only affecting eclipse as its uptime is much longer now


The reason they want it timed buff I think is to challenge you more to position yourself well and make the most of your uptime, that is what I believed, as in version 3, playing balance well required a lot of skill because you need an above average position placing excellence. Charges would have eliminated that. However now with this new version I conclude it's to make you use your time more wisely as the buff will end.

Yes indeed, with eclipse lasting 45secs, in most scenarios reaching the center of the bar would have stopped the eclipse long before the duration ended, allowing you some leeway with movement, but not infinite so you still have to be smart about your positioning, which is a good move imo.

As for DoTs Mooboom, I maintain, if the bar position influences your damage school, then casting dots will do more damage at full bars, so you'd be waiting to cast dots then, or consider only refreshing the appropriate DoT at the bar's end. What would be interesting is if bar position influenced arcane/nature style of casting. However this can be more easily set up via the eclipse lunar and solar buffs or by moonkin and caster form allowing you to handle arcane and nature spells in a different way.

For the last time: this is not how Eclipse works. Bar position has no effect on your damage in any way shape or form. We've been over this several times already.

Long duration Eclipse, canceled when Energy reaches zero will encourage rotations that don't alternate Eclipse.

Assume
Wrath DPS 5% larger than SF DPS.
SF Energy/sec 5% larger than Wrath Energy/sec.
Starsurge always moves energy away from zero.

I think the optimal steady-state strategy becomes
1) Maintain DoTs and use long cooldowns
2) Outside of Eclipse, use SF and Starsurge to proc Solar.
3) In Solar, at high energy (>70) use Wrath
4) In Solar at low energy (<70) use Starsurge or SF

For a short burst-phase (think overcharged Emalon add) you'd use even more Wrath (run at a lower Energy level).

With this strategy, your high-dps nuke (Wrath) always benefits from Eclipse. You use your low-dps nuke (SF) only to proc and maintain Eclipse.

Note that blizz could require us to alternate Eclipses (Solar on cooldown until Lunar procs), in which case you'd modify the strategy slightly. I think you'd still go for long Solar Eclipses (hit zero energy at about 45s), but you'd then get back to Solar as quickly as possible (get to Lunar real fast, and then back to Solar as quickly as possible).

An additional concern might be mana. Euphoria will reward frequent Eclipse procs, and penalize alternating nukes to maintain a long Eclipse cycle. However if Euphoria has a short cooldown (say <30s) it may end up rewarding consecutive Eclipse procs on the same side of the bar (if they are possible).

Blizzard's goal is to have us alternate Eclipses. If a strategy like this comes up, it'll be quickly squashed by some kind of cooldown of some sort. They want us to swap between Solar and Lunar Eclipses, not cherry pick the one that's "best."

Yes, but because Eclipse only effects Wrath and Starfire that's a fairly simple thing to adjust. They would just need to be sure that Wrath and Starfire are equal in terms of both damage and energy gains over time. If they can maintain that equality, there is no advantage to prolonging Eclipse because wasted Eclipse uptime is basically the same thing as Eclipse downtime. So if you spend 5 seconds casting Wrath during Lunar Eclipse to prolong it, you would only spend 5 more seconds casting Starfire. It would be the same effect as if Eclipse naturally lasted 5 seconds longer and took 5 seconds longer to proc.

The problem with this set up then is that Wrath and Starfire truly become mirror images of each other. But subtle differences in their damage isn't a meaningful difference anyway; it's just the illusion of one. They would almost be better off just going ahead and making Starfire a 2 second cast so it really is exactly like Wrath. That feels very bland though, but it's not any different than how things are now.

I wouldn't see equal cast times as being all that bad. It would need some getting used to see smaller starfires, but we are also getting used to wraths no longer being little machine gun nukes.

It would also provide a viable alternative against lockouts on spells, be it boss interrupts or pvp. I'd like to see more interrupt mechanics in pve come cata as an additional mechanic.

Homogenization of wrath and starfire would certainly be argued to water down the interesting aspect of the nukes, but as it stands bigger damage/longer cast vs. smaller damage/faster cast isn't too interesting an implementation to be honest.

Particularly around the idea of balance, the nukes being equal would somehow fit the theme they're trying to place on the spec.

Most of the "gain Eclipse energy" talents won't be as useful when they implement the new version of Eclipse, so I'm interested to see what the talent trees look like when they do the change. They do want us to use both lunar & solar Eclipse, so they'll nerf wrath if we never want to use starfire. Also, if the arcane buff increases our moonfire damage when we're running, we may want the Arcane damage buff more often in heavy movement fights since moonfire will be our "on the run" DPS.

I'm not sold on the idea of Eclipse buffing Arcane or Nature damage anymore simply because it makes everything we do revolve around Eclipse. They would have to balance our DoTs, cooldowns and nukes around it instead of just our nukes.

Make no mistake, I think they do need to integrate our DoTs somehow, but I'm not sure if Eclipse is the right idea for that.

Everything is going to evolve around Eclipse regardless. We'll just have a better motivation to actually use our other spells if they are buffed by Eclipse.

I'm not sure it's all that necessary, and might even lead to overcomplication. A solid Eclipse system defining the interaction between Starfire and Wrath seems fine, while you have DoT's and Starsurge layered on top. DoT's will already have some interaction with Eclipse due to refresh timing. Starsurge needs to affect energy in a more interesting way, which I think it the only major piece missing.