[WOTLK 4.0] Balance Discussion - Page 7

Herrera · 10/14/10, 4:24 PM

I sent a message to the OP about the guide, but here it is again.
If I'm blind or stupid, just disregard this.
Sunfire is a talent that converts Moonfire to nature damage when Solar Eclipse is up. That means, Sunfire benefits from the damage buff, making Sunfire a buffed Moonfire by 37%. This changes the rotation a bit and adds one more thing to watch - like replacing Moonfire with Sunfire after Solar Eclipse and perhaps re-refreshing Sunfire before Solar Eclipse hits 0.
I did test the damage of Moonfire vs Sunfire today, so I'm not guessing or anything.

Nethris · 10/14/10, 10:30 PM

Originally Posted by Herrera

I sent a message to the OP about the guide, but here it is again.
If I'm blind or stupid, just disregard this.
Sunfire is a talent that converts Moonfire to nature damage when Solar Eclipse is up. That means, Sunfire benefits from the damage buff, making Sunfire a buffed Moonfire by 37%. This changes the rotation a bit and adds one more thing to watch - like replacing Moonfire with Sunfire after Solar Eclipse and perhaps re-refreshing Sunfire before Solar Eclipse hits 0.
I did test the damage of Moonfire vs Sunfire today, so I'm not guessing or anything.

Pretty sure this has been covered - refreshing affected dots during eclipse is a good idea, and we need to cast at least one near the beginning to get our haste buff. However, Sunfire is 3 second ticks and unaffected by haste, so it's fairly bad in the grand scheme of things. At least at one point it was losing to normal moonfire I think, though not by much (I could be wrong about this). It certainly isn't doing the damage that a Lunar eclipsed moonfire does.

Elwood · 10/14/10, 11:10 PM

I haven't seen a post yet, but it looks like they've "fixed" some moonkin damage bugs. My target dummy dps went down about 1.5k tonight, and it appears that Sunfire is scaling with haste. I don't have solid numbers, but Insect Swarm is significantly further down the Recount list than it was before--now it's behind Wrath, Starfire, and Starfall.

Erdluf · 10/14/10, 11:26 PM

Just tested, untalented. IS is cut in half. 13% coefficient. 122 Base damage.

Zanarhi · 10/14/10, 11:28 PM

GC added a post to the Class balance as of Oct 13, 2010 thread

"Balance Druids – we lowered the base points and coefficients of several Balance spells, especially Insect Swarm."

Will have to take a look and see what exactly has changed.

footstomp · 10/14/10, 11:45 PM

Well the nerf is in. Post from Ghostcrawler...

I do have a questions. is there a point at which I should be going for crit over haste. say when i can't get enough haste to go to the next tic for my dots? or is haste always better then crit?

footstomp · 10/15/10, 1:26 AM

Originally Posted by Hoedown

I don't want to poison the pool here (so to speak) but can some peeps with Heroic Nibelung do some parses? I'm getting some extreme numbers that aren't making sense. Seems very overpowered at this point. I'll post some numbers in a bit. I'm almost afraid to post em if it's a bug on my end.

I was amazed by this tonight also, just for fun I put it on. I did 11K on test dummy, and 10% of damage came from Valks. They where procing like mad. It would be cool for someone to look at it since I am a hack at this kind of thing.

Latas · 10/15/10, 1:31 AM

Any idea if these are just going to apply to just the level 80 version or are these changes going all the way up to the level 85 versions? i.e. get reflected in beta.

GotlandsUgglan · 10/15/10, 2:38 AM

I am wondering about what is the best strategy to handle our dot refresh. The issue i have is that the Dot duration is a bit less then the time between Eclipses.

If i start with a freshly procced eclipse then my DoT will tick out precisely before or after the next procced Eclipse. If i the dot is expiring just before the Eclipse then the duration will in many cases pass the eclipse and expire after.

To circumstance this i often starts the boss fights with a Solar Eclipse at around 20 Eclipse Energy. This is because i get a buffed IS to start the fight with and i am soon in Lunar where i can pop Starfall. This way if my Dot is 1-2 seconds shorter then my Eclipse cycle i will still end up refreshing within the eclipse for some eclipse cycles.

I guess that there need to be some kind of limit similar to

If Solar is up and energy is less then 15
  If IS expires in X ticks and is not Solar buffed.
     Cast IS

The same question exist for the Nature Grace buff as well. Should i keep MF and IS "together" in order to no miss a NG buffed Dot. Is it worth it to always cast the dots together or making sure that they are cast within 15 seconds of each other.

Should we always buff IS since it was/is our strongest DoT?

On another topic: I noticed yesterday that Mark of the Wild no longer triggers clearcasting. I had the strategy to always cast MotW before casting IS and MF. 15% more damage under 6 seconds would have made MotW DPET over 12K up to 27K DPET.

Treetard · 10/15/10, 8:00 AM

Other than Insect Swarm being massively nerfed (does a little under half damage now for me), has anyone figured out what else has been adjusted?

My target dummy DPS went from just over 8k yesterday on average to barely 5.7k. I notice my Insect Swarm is doing about 40% of the damage it used to, but that alone isn't enough to cause a 25-30% DPS loss.

Unfortunately I just started playing again, and the only spell I checked before today was IS, so I'm not sure what kind of damage my other spells were doing before the nerf. Looks like Moonfire may have been nerfed a decent amount according to Recount. It's doing ~1.3k damage per tick average, while Sunfire is doing 3.2k damage per tick average. Pretty sure Sunfire was doing less than Moonfire before this fix... but now Moonfire is doing less than half of what Sunfire is.

aceofsween · 10/15/10, 11:50 AM

The million dollar question is whether or not these "bug fixes" are going to translate to reduced damage in Cataclysm or if they are merely temporary measures to tone down the damage done. I'm guessing that when Cataclysm is released, they will roll back most of them (true bugs like Sunfire haste scaling being a bit different).

Druub · 10/15/10, 12:07 PM

Did anyone confirm if boss damage triggered the Owlkin Frenzy talent proc? if so, the bonus damage may be worth the points otherwise, i will use elsewhere....

Thanks...

iamrelevart · 10/15/10, 12:28 PM

Originally Posted by Druub

Did anyone confirm if boss damage triggered the Owlkin Frenzy talent proc? if so, the bonus damage may be worth the points otherwise, i will use elsewhere....

Thanks...

What better option do you have? Either you don't need the mana (in which case moving the points to mana talents is worthless) or you can put it in Fungal Growth (which we don't really need since we can't control where treants die) or Solar Beam/fill out BotG.

If it procs at all, imo it's better than any other option.

Kaitain · 10/15/10, 12:29 PM

I don't think Owlkin Frenzy has changed. I looked at a few ICC parses of top moonkins that had it (i did not last night) and they were getting 20-25 ish procs for the night, with uptimes around 6%. So 10% of 6% tiny still. But as aceofsween says, it's the only real damage filler, such as it is.

}DM{Mnementh · 10/15/10, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by footstomp

I was amazed by this tonight also, just for fun I put it on. I did 11K on test dummy, and 10% of damage came from Valks. They where procing like mad. It would be cool for someone to look at it since I am a hack at this kind of thing.

Has anyone had a solid chance to test out Nibelung? I just checked and I guess I DE'd mine way back in favor of the Bonespike and Spindle. With the hasted dots and instant cast Starsurges it might not be too bad.

I'll throw up a ticket to try and get mine back but they couldn't help me out on my leather boots when I asked them a few days back so I don't know if I'll have a chance to get a new one.