Balance Raiding in Cataclysm - Page 7

• Hamlet · 07/15/10, 2:43 AM

Couple notes from beta:

Nature's Grasp is gone.
Fearie Fire stacks up to 3 times.
Talent tree is a bit buggy due to Starsurge/Swiftmend.
Abolish Poison and Remove Curse replaced with "Remove Corruption."
Wrath gives Lunar Energy when the cast completes. But Euphoria energy appears when the crit lands.
Can't figure out how Starsurge decides which energy to give. Currently--opposite of whichever Eclipse you procced last, Solar if it's been a while?

• Hamlet · 07/15/10, 3:45 AM

Here's a video of me DPSing a dummy a bit to try to get a feel for the DPS mechanics (not done processing yet, but I'm going to bed now):
YouTube - Balance Druid DPS in Cataclysm Beta ver. 12479

Pudgeball · 07/15/10, 7:40 AM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

Here's a video of me DPSing a dummy a bit to try to get a feel for the DPS mechanics (not done processing yet, but I'm going to bed now):
YouTube - Balance Druid DPS in Cataclysm Beta ver. 12479

It's been a little while since I've played, but your mana consumption seems pretty good for going all out DPS spam. Not having all the normal raid buffs, you seem to be able spam pretty much forever with your gear. If you ever got low enough innervate would just bring you back up. Is Euphoria a little too strong? 12% of total mana every time you reach an eclipse seems pretty good. Observing your dummy spam it seems that WITH raid buffs you could go pretty much forever without a single concern for mana. Also, the way it is worded, 12% of total mana scales with gear, so with raid buffs and a much larger mana pool it will get exponentially more powerful. Is it truly 12% of your total mana?

Erdluf · 07/15/10, 8:20 AM

I haven't seen much discussion of mana issues. Converting most gear SP to Int would suggest a very large jump in total mana at high gear levels. Blizz has also implied that PvE DPS should not normally be concerned about mana issues (Arcane Mage is an obvious exception).

To make mana even marginally an issue (and if it is no issue at all, why keep the stat?) they can do some combination of

Lower the Int->Mana conversion (currently 15)
Significantly increase Base Mana (and therefore all spell costs)
Remove or weaken mana-regen abilities (Dreamstate, Meditation)
Increase the cost of individual spells
General mechanic changes (no more 5SR, in-combat means no spirit regen, even when not casting).

It isn't clear where they will go with this. It is a potential concern. At least in a five-man you may have no regen from other classes (no Replenishment, BoW, etc), and it is at least plausible that you'd stay in combat for long periods of time (perhaps six minutes in ToC5 or HoR type encounters). A Moonkin who is OoM has no native regen other than Innervate.

Does anyone know more about where they are going with this? Mana is a very number-crunchy issue, and at this point I think they are more concerned with look and feel, with the assumption that if they get that right, the numbers are fairly easy to tweak.

iamrelevart · 07/15/10, 10:51 AM

Originally Posted by lissanna

I'm not sure that moonkin form is the mechanic that is going to make our rotations "fun" regardless of what we try to design. They need to integrate our DOTs, starfall, typhoon, shrooms, and give our nuke spells something that makes them feel different.

Synergy should definitely be a focal point for feedback. Right now everything feels clunky. It was posted in the patch notes that a new version of Eclipse was implemented. Aside from a drastically reduced buff from Eclipse, can anyone be a little more specific as to what the change was? I've been unable to spend more than 5 minutes on beta without a DC.

• Hamlet · 07/15/10, 12:03 PM

I didn't see any significant change to Eclipse. There's no tooltip or anything visible for it anywhere in the UI; it just appeared at some point after I specced Balance.

I wouldn't worry too much about tuning mana, even the basic damage of everything isn't really in place yet. Euphoria has always seemed like extremely strong regen, but it might be meant to take the place of the current Moonkin Form mana return.

edit to above: Nature's Grasp is still there; it's just in the Feral tab. Typhoon and Moonkin Form are nowhere to be found.

Starfox · 07/15/10, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

edit to above: Nature's Grasp is still there; it's just in the Feral tab. Typhoon and Moonkin Form are nowhere to be found.

If you copy your character with a spec that hast moonkin/typhoon, it will have those spells on the beta servers too.
Haven't found any way to get moonkin form if you didn't already have it after the first login :/

• Hamlet · 07/15/10, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by Starfox

If you copy your character with a spec that hast moonkin/typhoon, it will have those spells on the beta servers too.
Haven't found any way to get moonkin form if you didn't already have it after the first login :/

Funny, I copied in Resto spec and I have a permanent healing bonus from Master Shapeshifter.

Starfox · 07/15/10, 12:42 PM

But moonkin doesn't provide tha "mana on crit" anymore and shapeshifting seems to proc solar eclipse if the bar is on that side.
Starsurge: they said they want to test if it should be the lvl10 ability or the tier3 talent, so perhaps that's the reason that it is both at the moment.

For me it seems like it always lowered my eclipse bar, no matter which side it was on.
I hope the beta servers get mote stalbe, you see World Server Down more often than a full eclipse bar :O

• Hamlet · 07/15/10, 3:18 PM

If you look at the video above, Starsurge always seems to push the energy bar in the direction you want it to go--even if you're not at the halfway point yet. I thought that was interesting. If I started at 0 Energy and opened with Starsurge, it would give Solar energy.

As a guess: each Eclipse has a hidden ICD to prevent you proccing the same one too quickly. SS will push away from an Eclipse that's on CD. It might simply be that if an Eclipse buff is active, SS always pushes you away from the Eclipse, but I think I saw it happen when Eclipse was down. Will check that again later.

SS gives its energy when it lands, unlike Wrath.

aceofsween · 07/15/10, 3:44 PM

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?

• Hamlet · 07/15/10, 3:55 PM

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.

aceofsween · 07/15/10, 3:56 PM

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.

• Hamlet · 07/15/10, 4:16 PM

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.

lissanna · 07/15/10, 9:41 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

If you look at the video above, Starsurge always seems to push the energy bar in the direction you want it to go--even if you're not at the halfway point yet. I thought that was interesting. If I started at 0 Energy and opened with Starsurge, it would give Solar energy.

As a guess: each Eclipse has a hidden ICD to prevent you proccing the same one too quickly. SS will push away from an Eclipse that's on CD. It might simply be that if an Eclipse buff is active, SS always pushes you away from the Eclipse, but I think I saw it happen when Eclipse was down. Will check that again later.

SS gives its energy when it lands, unlike Wrath.

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.