Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 13

Stommped · 03/31/12, 1:07 PM

Mana is really wonky on the Beta right now, I wouldn't make any hard conclusions until you can play around at level 90. I know the Shadow priest in my guild was ooming just doing the 5 minute boss fights in the Temple of the Jade Serpent. P

Lunarius · 03/31/12, 5:39 PM

Although mana has always been a problem for most classes when levelling during AoE, so we'll see at 90.

I just got into the beta earlier today and just got the character set up and I immediately noticed how weak the glyph selection is for Balance. At least Feral and Resto have some glyphs that actually affects gameplay to some extent but I feel Balancedruids have very limited choices as for majorglyphs (although I like the minor glyphs a lot). What I see as the primary three for me would be Rebirth (obviously), Stampede (always wanted a glyph like this), and moonbeast. Glyph of Hurricane and maybe innervate being options depending on encounter/mana. As mentioned I only just created my char and haven't played anything on it, so I'm not sure if this has changed but, does Rebirth still break moonkin form? If it does then I would have to say that glyph of the moonbeast is incredibly weak for not including it as it's one of the spells you cast the most (at least on progression), hopefully they will change either rebirth or moonbeast so one of them includes the "does not break form" part.

Balancemoon · 04/01/12, 9:49 AM

I'm still looking out for Thorns that hasn't re-appeared, and the talent calculator page still shows insect swarm as an available spell, so it might be an error that it isn't showing in beta. the 26% boost to wrath/SF doesn't seem to quite make up for everything that was changed.. here is a break down I did over on TMR.

We lost:
Insect Swarm as dot [accounting for approx 7% overall damage out put in live?]
4% spell damage from old Master shapeshifter talent
2% spell damage from old Balance of power talent
2% spell damage from Earth and Moon
8% spell damage from Earth and Moon
10% arcane/nature spell damage from Moonfury balance specialisation:
= 26% [note insect swarm lets them take an extra 25% damage]

In addition to those
6% moonfire DD from blessing of the grove
10% intellect from old HotW resto tree
4% crit to all spells from Starlight Wrath

Given that our main nukes are getting a 26% damage increase both in base and co-efficient - bear in mind WM and SF are significantly nerfed according to Erdulf's earlier co-efficients post, I will say with IS gone in all forms we have lost damage relatively, but if it is still there as 25% more damage taken from spells, then it would account for the missing additionals, the actual damage contribution of the old IS dot + finally abolishing the hybrid tax. So atm, I'm going with both the 25% increase from the new IS and the 26% boosted co-efficeints of the nukes to be where we are at.

thedopefishlives · 04/01/12, 12:57 PM

Actually, you'd be surprised how well we made out. You forgot to include some things:

1) Faster Eclipse cycling, plus the buff to our Mastery scaling increasing the damage of our Eclipse;
2) Starfall always being available every Lunar;
3) Celestial Alignment;
4) Sunfire and Moonfire not being mutually exclusive essentially erases the loss in damage from losing Insect Swarm as a dot.

When I compare old and new damage profiles using Rawr, we're actually holding steady DPS-wise (this is with a T13-Heroic BIS gear set, with reforging/regemming appropriately), even with the 25% from Insect Swarm being removed. Our damage modifiers (and thus our scaling factors) have all changed completely, but I don't see us losing any damage. With the boosted spell coefficients, we may actually scale even better than previously. Time will tell.

Erdluf · 04/01/12, 1:39 PM

We also pick up 100% crits for Starfall, WM, and Hurricane.

However, more frequent Starfall is offset by its new weakness. Single target damage is about the same as Wrath. Being instant cast means its DPET is better than Sunfire, but for an every-40s spell it is not too impressive.

Edit: Actuall single-target Starfall has substantially higher base damage than Wrath (a bit more than 3k at 85), but its scaling is very similar.

Balancemoon · 04/01/12, 2:19 PM

Originally Posted by Erdluf

We also pick up 100% crits for Starfall, WM, and Hurricane.

However, more frequent Starfall is offset by its new weakness. Single target damage is about the same as Wrath. Being instant cast means its DPET is better than Sunfire, but for an every-40s spell it is not too impressive.

Edit: Actuall single-target Starfall has substantially higher base damage than Wrath (a bit more than 3k at 85), but its scaling is very similar.

you mean its scaling is very similar to wrath? - being a cooldown spell and all it should be much higher than wrath shouldn't it? And whiles it is reset every lunar eclipse, remember we had the 2 glyphs of starfall and also glyph of starsurge which gave it roughly a similar amount of uptime to what we are getting in MoP with a lunar eclipse refreshing the cooldown, bar using CA which is new, but then CA is on a cooldown and I'd hate to feel SF nerfed just for because of it.

I don't understand the nerf to starfall in this light then. People talk about triple starfall proc, but that is only possible with a start up sequence that involves CA, so it will only occur then, other than that is it not quite similar to live when you glyph up for it? Then why lower the damage so much? Bear in mind SF is still suppressed easily too if you take Pvp into consideration. Also, WM has been considerably lowered, what is it looking like now in beta? Again, this was only high if you managed to place down 3 mushrooms which was sometimes worth the 3 GCDs you would spend in certain situations. Lowering the damage might just return it to its relative obscurity pre buff especially since it still has no mechanism to generate mushrooms without actually using a cast. And by mechanisms, I mean something like Hurricane causing an extra mushroom to grow every x secs. or Insect swarm giving a chance that a mushroom would be pollinated at the targets location (it won't override placed mushrooms ofc and never exceed the 3 limit).

Without such mechanisms, I just wonder if it is going to be worthwhile using shrooms again even in a solar eclipse. Hurricane got a damage buff, but killer mana so you won't camp in Solar too long, Astral Storm got a damage nerf - hmm, since these are the same spells, I'm not sure what is going on there in fact and why Astral Storm now slows attacks but Hurricane doesn't.

Anyway, starfall and WM are not the same. Starfall is cast and forget, WM is place mushrooms, and 3 at that wasting valuable AoE time, you're gonna prefer lunar AoE because WM damage is now much lower it's been more than halved and you still need 3 GCDs for a decent effect.

• Hamlet · 04/01/12, 8:23 PM

Starfall was in a pretty awkward spot all through last expansion really, ever since it stopped being an AoE spell (for meaningful purposes--scaling with number of targets). It's at least better now where it comes up every Lunar without any hoops. It's a pretty mindless spell though: hit once per cycle, doesn't interact with anything, can't really be used for any especially exciting purpose. Should remember that for feedback--it has almost no reason to exist at the moment. I'd probably rather have seen it gone before Insect Swarm.

• Hamlet · 04/02/12, 4:19 PM

I wrote some feedback thoughts which I copied here: http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/1152-h...back_mop_beta/

Lunarius · 04/03/12, 3:44 PM

Done some testing on training dummies on the PTR today and I found a few things that might be interesting to know:

1. The old trick of lining up an instant cast Starsurge after the last eclipsed Starfire/Wrath seems to be working, you still get the eclipse benefit on it, however, it does not refresh moonfire/sunfire on the target.

2. Unlike Live, the first spell you cast when you enter eclipse can now be moonfire/sunfire. As they've changed energy gain from on hit (even though starfire has no travel time, server/client response times delayed it just long enough not to get sunfire morphed and buffed) to on cast whatever spell you cast first will now be buffed by eclipse/get NG Haste. The same applies to Starfall, you can press it instantly after your last wrath as the cooldown is reset on cast, however, it's probably a better idea to apply moonfire first if it has fallen off to get higher uptime as Starfall CD is no longer an issue and you will most likely not finish the eclipse before starfall ends anyway (except at very high levels of haste).

3. Starfire/Wrath dot refresh during their respective eclipse works on HIT (as previously assumed) rather than on cast. Usually you'd want to go lunar after CA when you can, but if it's midfight and you pop it while heading towards Solar you need to cast at least one wrath a few seconds (depending on distance to target) before CA ends to extend your Sunfire, it's probably better to be safe than sorry and maybe cast a wrath midbuff or when there's 5 seconds left as it doesn't take very long to go from 0 energy to 100 and then have your wrath refresh automatically.

4. Using Starsurge as the last spell BEFORE eclipse (80+ energy) grants the starsurge the damage buff from eclipse. On Live you'd want to avoid casting starsurge as the last spell before eclipse, however, currently on PTR it's optimal to use it as the last spell. And since this is true, you could also infer that it would refresh moonfire/sunfire when it hits as well. Not sure at what haste levels (need hero/BL/TW or right after CA most likely) it would be possible to go an entire cycle without having to refresh moonfire/sunfire, but if you are able to do it one cast short of the desired eclipse (as the case is with the way starsurge works currently) it will make it easier.

And about secondary stats priority. Think I read somewhere that Hurricane/Astral Storm, shrooms and starfall now all have a 200% multiplier like everything else + the extra scaling through shooting stars will make crit rating a fairly competetive stat. With the buff to moonkin mastery (With 1400 mastery I get 8% more eclipse damage on PTR) and the way starsurge currently works (see #4) mastery might surpass the always strong haste as the #1 stat to go for. They might be fairly close to eachother and it might become a matter of preference/fight dependancy (which I think is great), but I feel the priority as it stands right now is mastery => haste > crit. I have absolutely NO math to support this with, but with #4, Soul of the Forest and mastery buff, it seems that mastery has taken a huge leap in importance.

• Hamlet · 04/03/12, 4:08 PM

Nice. 1 and 4 are things I hadn't noticed. I actually spent a bit a few days ago trying to sort out how DoT refreshing works with travel time involved, and I noticed that sometimes the Eclipse bar remains glowy for half a cast or so after Eclipse should end (really hard to check expiration of the buff precisely without addons). That might explain being able to chain an instant SS at the end.

As far as 4, that's interesting. Clearly things have to be set up so that the Eclipse buff appears just before/as the last pre-Eclipse spell ends (in order for queued DoT's to work, something it looks like they made a big point of fixing). Thinking about it now, they must have put in some special tech for ensuring that the final nuke isn't affected by Eclipse but the DoT is, even though both are cast at the same time (has anyone actually checked that the final nuke doesn't have incorrect extra damage?). Maybe they forgot to do the same for SS.

That last one's definitely wrong though, no way we're keeping it for live. The first one, who knows, we had it for all of last expansion and it's just a small trick for good players to keep in mind.

Lunarius · 04/03/12, 6:46 PM

Well, if I understand you correctly and I'd like to think I am. There wouldn't be any problem with the other nukes as you cast starfire pre-solar and wrath pre-lunar, neither of which can benefit from the eclipse it's procing. So it's really only Starsurge that is the problem since it can benefit from both.

I agree that it most likely won't make it live (very weird to let such a thing slip by) but the way I imagine they'd fix it would be to calculate starsurge damage when it lands rather than when it is cast. This would in turn also fix #1 so you can't cast instant starsurges after the last spell in your eclipse, two birds with one stone (although it would most likely create a whole new set of issues as it would be the only spell in the game (?) that would snapshot the player's stats as it HITS the target). I do believe, however, that they would need to compensate for the loss of damage one way or another, yes, the damage from that extra eclipsed starsurge isn't gamebreaking, but then again we were hardly top dps on singletarget either, and every bit counts. But with the changes to balance in general we may already be on par with other classes, time will tell.

• Hamlet · 04/03/12, 7:00 PM

Originally Posted by Lunarius

Well, if I understand you correctly and I'd like to think I am. There wouldn't be any problem with the other nukes as you cast starfire pre-solar and wrath pre-lunar, neither of which can benefit from the eclipse it's procing. So it's really only Starsurge that is the problem since it can benefit from both.

I agree that it most likely won't make it live (very weird to let such a thing slip by) but the way I imagine they'd fix it would be to calculate starsurge damage when it lands rather than when it is cast. This would in turn also fix #1 so you can't cast instant starsurges after the last spell in your eclipse, two birds with one stone (although it would most likely create a whole new set of issues as it would be the only spell in the game (?) that would snapshot the player's stats as it HITS the target). I do believe, however, that they would need to compensate for the loss of damage one way or another, yes, the damage from that extra eclipsed starsurge isn't gamebreaking, but then again we were hardly top dps on singletarget either, and every bit counts. But with the changes to balance in general we may already be on par with other classes, time will tell.

That's right, just forgot while I was typing it. So that probably is what's going on--Eclipse becomes actives in time to apply when the last spell completes, which is a problem with Starsurge only.

Balancemoon · 04/04/12, 9:31 AM

Originally Posted by Lunarius

And about secondary stats priority. Think I read somewhere that Hurricane/Astral Storm, shrooms and starfall now all have a 200% multiplier like everything else + the extra scaling through shooting stars will make crit rating a fairly competetive stat. With the buff to moonkin mastery (With 1400 mastery I get 8% more eclipse damage on PTR) and the way starsurge currently works (see #4) mastery might surpass the always strong haste as the #1 stat to go for. They might be fairly close to eachother and it might become a matter of preference/fight dependancy (which I think is great), but I feel the priority as it stands right now is mastery => haste > crit. I have absolutely NO math to support this with, but with #4, Soul of the Forest and mastery buff, it seems that mastery has taken a huge leap in importance.

It certainly would (fortunately) greatly improve the desirability of mastery trinkets for the balance druid. Not had a look yet at the upcoming trinkets, but it would look like you would dump points into Mastery until you can reach a haste threshold through reforging then switch to haste and build up mastery till you can reach the next threshold.

Hidden · 04/04/12, 10:14 PM

Just a small note regarding the mana situation discussed above:
We actually know exactly how the mana situation on beta at level 90 currently looks; just like it looks at 85 or 86.
Mana no longer scales with gear and mana regen in combat (as DPS spec) never has. Basically every single mechanic revolving around mana, be it mana costs, regeneration or max mana, is now linearly dependant on mana and thus leveling will increase your mana costs by the same factor as your max mana and all mana regeneration mechanisms.

Thus it looks like for now Moonkins are not supposed to sustain their AoE for a long amount of time, but considering encounter design that shouldn't be a problem unless you have to recast Hurricane very often - and in that case you're probably better off just multi-dotting.

As for stat values you have to take into account that all relevant secondary stats have actually had their scaling increased in some way:
Crit: All spells now have 200% base crits and Shooting Stars procs only off of crits
Mastery: Potentially higher Eclipse uptime on spells combined with stronger mastery scaling
Haste: Instead of allowing higher Eclipse uptime on DoTs at certain thresholds you now actually gain higher DoT uptime since Moonfire and Sunfire can be on a target simultaneously now - this is a result of traversing Eclipse cycles faster while having (relatively) constant DoT durations once you leave an Eclipse

So overall I wouldn't say simple napkin maths allow you to get proper stat values for MoP and we'll need some further theorycrafting to actually get those. However it looks like stat values could finally be at a similar level to each other allowing you to actually customize your Moonkin (instead of mindlessly stacking haste).

• Hamlet · 04/04/12, 11:52 PM

That's a good point about mana.

On stats, the WrathCalcs on the WrathCalcs thread is at the point where it should be giving pretty reasonable impressions of stat values.