Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 24

magojo · 06/06/12, 8:55 AM

They are trying to remove all glyphs that ended up being mandatory while raiding.
Lifebloom and Savagery will probably end up being used very often still though, but the rest are situational.
All the increase damage by X, reduce cast time/energy by Y have all been removed as they ended up being mandatory.

Survival Instinct is Guardian, not Feral. Might of Ursoc is usable by all specs.

Astral Communion is enough for me, for not to worry about getting some little glyph just to be equal to other classes/specs... And i consider Glyph of Moonbeast awesome as well, saves some GCDs which is a minor boost.

Lucrece · 06/06/12, 6:25 PM

Originally Posted by magojo

They are trying to remove all glyphs that ended up being mandatory while raiding.
Lifebloom and Savagery will probably end up being used very often still though, but the rest are situational.
All the increase damage by X, reduce cast time/energy by Y have all been removed as they ended up being mandatory.

Survival Instinct is Guardian, not Feral. Might of Ursoc is usable by all specs.

Astral Communion is enough for me, for not to worry about getting some little glyph just to be equal to other classes/specs... And i consider Glyph of Moonbeast awesome as well, saves some GCDs which is a minor boost.

You're implying I'm asking for plain stat boosts when what could be offered in glyphs to balance druids could be the same for other specs -- customization and quality of life increases.

Glyph of the moonbeast is underwhelming. How many times do you cast healing touch as a moonkin? I thought removing regrowth and lifebloom from moonkin druids was completely unnecessary. They could at least give regrowth back as shamans kept their flash heal, which is more applicable, than a long cast heal.

You're basically getting a glyph to do what paladins and shamans themselves can do without needing a glyph. Even shadow priests at least get access to shields.

I know AC is enough for you, but for us, who have tasted the toolkit other classes have, balance druids already had a limited kit to begin with and we lost some key spells to become talents and in exchange we got more eclipse manipulation instead of actually new spell implementations and mechanics. Compare that to warlocks, which I can say my demo warlock with his vast list of priorities saw drastically different playstyle options and depth, yet still got a total overhaul and more new tools to play with.

Compare your Celestial Alignment against Ascension or other new cooldowns. The comparative depth is just not there. The balance playstyle compared to a fire mage or warlock of any spec or shadowpriest is rather superficial and simplistic exactly because of the limited toolset and lack of customization associated with it.

We've got Starfall, Mushrooms, and Hurricane all cluttering the AoE utility. We've got a single dot, an interchangeable nuke (starfire/wrath), and a slightly stronger nuke that might proc earlier.

Why not bring back thorns? Why not make something better out of that and Owlkin Frenzy, which is still and undervalued talent outside leveling? Why is Faerie Fire for balance not made into part of an interesting debuff or proc added into the rotation?

Silkworm · 06/15/12, 7:50 AM

The classes you are comparing, especially the mage and warlock are pure dps classes. I really do not expect much from a class that can tank/melee dps/range dps and heal, except versatility. What we lack in tool kit, we gain in versatility. Making Moonkin with a toolkit as large as say warlock will be unfavorable towards pure classes of the game.

If Moonkins were given such tools, feral dps players would expect the same deep tool kit that rogues have.

Nythan · 06/15/12, 1:32 PM

Originally Posted by Silkworm

I really do not expect much from a class that can tank/melee dps/range dps and heal, except versatility. What we lack in tool kit, we gain in versatility. Making Moonkin with a toolkit as large as say warlock will be unfavorable towards pure classes of the game.

That seems like bad logic to me. You are saying that as a boomkin, I shouldnt be doing as much DPS as a warlock, just because I have spell that i will never use?

In PvP, sure i can see an argument for that. Boomkins could heal themselves up and then go back to DPS.

but in PvE? I shouldnt have to content myself with the fact that i could heal when a pure class cant. If my healers are doing their job, I should be able to do just as much DPS as the 'lock, because that is the role I am in.

TL;DR When I pick my spec (be it tank/DPS/Healing) i should be able to perform as well as any other class in that role, regardless of whether they are pure or not

Corren · 06/16/12, 5:03 AM

Well, the thing is, as a moonkin, you can cast tranquility, you can revive a dead player, you can self heal extremely efficiently and assist heal on others if need be.
As a feral, I can heal less efficiently, but I can still revive players and switch to bear to tank/offtank for a certain period of time if need be.
Those are roles in a fight that are as important as giving a high dps. You cannot see that kind of action in a raid by PAragon, For the Horde or others HL guilds because they do very little mistake which allow them to maximize dps. But if you are not playing in a HL guild, an arror, a failure at some point can be saved by a druid like you, neither by a mage nor by a warlock.

I'm saying this, and still, this is not what I see when I'm raiding. I know it certainly is because I'm not in a HL guild, but I can compete with my fellow guildies' dps AND use my hybridity to help killing bosses.

What do you say to the guy who chose to play a mage and who's only pleasure is to top dps meter ? "Well you chose your class don't complain..." ? The same argument can be said to you ^^

But again, you can find elemental chamans and balance druids in very HL guilds, which proves they can give a super high dps no matter their being hybrid classes.
I understand players wanting to play the class they love AND being able to be as effective in their role as any other class. But if all classes could do the same things, all casters would be mages, all tanks would be, say, warriors and all healers priests... You cannot argue and say "Yeah I don't give a damn about what Blizzard designed this class for, I want to play it like I play my mage..." it's utter nonsense. Plus, addiction to the numbers you can read on your dps metter is a bad one and you should get rid of it. A valuable player is not a player just able to do a high dps. It's a player able to adapt to every situation, to learn a fight quickly and to assist where they can when the guild needs them to.

Qaajn · 06/17/12, 7:35 PM

If the balance rotation doesen't change, there would be a big chance that I would drop the spec in favour of feral, or perhaps play another class entirely. Which would make me sad, as it was my main up until wrath, all the time as balance. There it was my main for pvp as feral, and then it returned as main in cata as balance/resto. But there is still hope!

Ever since I read the post (#310) Balancemoon made about inverting your position on the eclipse bar, I have been unable to let it go. It felt like it could be an elegant approach to add complexity to the balance rotation, so it would be more fun and rewarding to play. Eventually, when the thought have grown in the back of my mind for weeks, I think I got what we need. Something Easy to learn, but hard to master.

While the idea is inspired from the spell Equinox that Balancemoon suggested, the only remaining aspect now is that it inverts the position on the eclipse bar. The main reason for this is that I'm not quite fond of a random proc making your queued spell a bad choice. But enough talking, I'll reveal my idea and then discuss it.

Starsurge
2 seconds cast. Consumes a charge of Equinox to cast Starsurge. Deals spellstorm damage and inverts your position on the eclipse bar.

Equinox
The direct damage criticals of your single target spells give you a charge of Equinox, stacking up to 3 times. Equinox last until cancelled and is used to cast Starsurge.

Shooting Stars
When no spell have been cast or channeled for 3 seconds, you trigger Shooting Stars and gain a charge of Equinox. Shooting Stars last while a charge of Equinox remains and make your Starsurge instant cast.

Let's take a look at those changes one at a time, and I'll try to explain what I think they would accomplish.

Starting with Starsurge, the intent is that it would have the highest DPET of any casttime spell. With this you want to use it as much as possible, and that alone would add something to the rotation. With the added eclipse inversion it would also cause you to adapt after the cast, not just returning to the normal rotation like a regular cooldown (such as starfall) would do. Naturally, it needs a limitation or all you do is casting Starsurge instead, which brings us to Equinox.

This is what will turn us away from a rotation, to something more akin to a psuedo rotation or priority. It would be a rotation, because you can control when and how, but since you can't control how often it would not be a pure rotation, and literally no fight would be the same. The reason for scaling of crit is to make it more valuable on gear, something Blizzard seem to desire, and to allow more choice in how to play your character. With the charges, you get some more control in when to switch, so you don't have to use it right away or lose dps.

At first glance, it might seem like the best rotation will be simmed out, and then either wrath (proc equinox faster) or starfire (currently higher dps) will be largely ignored. But the random element make this much more interesting. Let's take a look at a sample rotation. I call a rotation the sequence starting with a starfall at full energy in lunar, and ending the next time lunar trigger. Only an eclipse trigger would reset starfall and cause nature's grace; an eclipse switch would just swap the energy and buffs.

No starsurge (StS): StF,MF,SF until solar,SuF,W until lunar.
Much like in beta now, and pretty boring. Adding in one StS, you start to get options. Do you cast StF,MF,SF and StS as last spell? Is it better to instead cast StS during lunar, putting up a SuF and spam wrath until you trigger lunar? Adding two or three starsurges between each eclipse trigger make this more complex: even number of StS will cycle past both eclipses in a sequence, any use of StS allow you to eclipse both MF and SuF each time eclipse trigger, odd numbers return to the same eclipse (lunar!) and in most cases the choice of wrath vs starfire comes down to more dps or more starsurge procs.

Shooting stars is all about movement, control and short bursts. Starting a fight, you should always have access to an instant starsurge, while moving you will be able to gain energy and cast an instant starsurge every 3 seconds, and saving up equinox charges would allow you 3+ (more if any starsurge crit) instant starsurges back to back. I would also remove Lunar shower. I don't know anyone who like it, and now there would be no need for it with the shooting stars.

Since all the choices and rotational complexion is based around critting, I think some bonus crit (10%) in moonkin form would be needed to get the dynamic rotation started. Getting more crit should feel like a bonus and open up more choices, not a requirement to get a fun rotation.

While not needed for any of the above, I've thought much about the eclipse mechanic and how it tend to make eclipse feel like less of a bonus, and more like a punishment when you are not in it. The implementation of nature's grace further exaggerate this, as it always trigger in conjunction with an eclipse and we have little control over it. It also make balancing our dots harder; do we account for eclipse and NG or just eclipse? Particularly movement during an eclipse overly punish us due to this. Something that would help reduce those issues, make being in or out of eclipse more distinguished and make the change more fun, would be to change NG.

Nature's Grace
Reduces the cast time of your wrath, starfire and starsurge by 25% while not in an eclipse. Passive

This implementation would keep the same relative damage in and out of eclipse (ignoring haste effect on dot) but shift the dps some from eclipse to outside, while the downtime would also be shorter. By my napkin math (phone and memory) the eclipse cycle would get slightly shorter. This would also make it less punishing to get stuck outside of eclipse, allow you to get to a new one faster and also increase dps while stalling an eclipse trigger (not stalling before you leave eclipse, or the old lost NG is now offset by shorter pre-eclipse phase).

All of those numbers are just suggestions and guesstimates, but I hope the intent of those ideas was clear!

Sincerely

Qaajn

Lucrece · 06/18/12, 3:35 AM

Remember that spec designs can't exist in a vacuum; you can't create designs that would worsen PvP for balance druids than it already is.

Ultimately it would be preferable that the spec be less turret-like and have more sources of damage outside triggered eclipse. I suspect movement DPS will be a big issue this xpac if things stay as is.

Qaajn · 06/18/12, 5:47 AM

I fully agree with you on that point, and it's very easy to try to fix only one aspect of your spec, and forget the other, and PvP have definately been on my mind as I thought of the idea. A big weakness for moonkins right now in PvP is the high reliance on eclipse and the difficulty getting there. I think moonkins are in a pretty good spot for PvP with all the added utility, tricks and survability in talents, so I will definately give the spec a try in arena and rBG. That said, all the tricks in the world won't help much if you can't get spells of and the few you do get away hit like nuudles.

With the instant starsurges when you haven't casted, you would always have a kind of equalizer after a silence or cc. It would also give you a energy builder on the move as you kite and dance around pillars to get of heals or get some distance. If the tweak to natures grace would happen, you would not be as weak out of eclipse as you are now, as the shorter casts would be easier to get of. At the same time, it would downplay the huge snowball you get when you leave a moonkin alone, with both eclipse and NG active at the same time, there is a huge burst in damage. Hopefully this would sometimes not be the focus, if we are hard enough to catch and that burst is more predictable.

I think most of the mechanics needed to implement this is already in the game, on our spec even. Crit-procs and single target spell differentiation already on the current shooting stars and Nature's Vigil respectively, time since spellcast must have been here with the old 5 sec rule, but would need some modification to count channel as casting. It's only the inversion that I think cause bigger problems, but their good programmers would probably solve it easily, such as at 42 lunar, you get 84 solar and change direction before the rest of starsurge does its thing. Giving energy should be easy, and changing should already happen at 100 energy. Would need some kind of check to make sure you switch eclipse if one is active, but also if you have 100 solar and switch, you would not reset starfall.

Lucrece · 06/18/12, 2:10 PM

I'm also curious about how they'll bring back Insect Swarm, and they should've done something interesting with Thorns and Owlkin Frenzy instead of removing one and leaving the other intact in its undervalued state as it has been for entire xpacs.

Ultimately I don't think moonkin willl ever be viable in PvP so long as they refuse to add in a glyph addressing Starfire's cast time. No spec can be bothered to continually cast a 2.7 cast in any PvP environment with the amount of interrupts and CC without mentioning the ease of LoS'ing such a long cast.

Wrath of Cenarius as a talent for both PvE and PvP will not even be considered because for some weird reason they chose to remove Regrowth, the casted heal we could use with the least encumbrance, from the spec.

Narwhal6 · 06/18/12, 4:14 PM

I'm still confused about the Thorns Removal since it was a fairly nice CD For PvP.

I'm hoping they bring back IS in some form of an Execute Dot. Meaning: You can only use sub 25% - It Ticks Hard and Fast.

They really do need to flavor up the Single Target rotation. Removing Solar Cleave, Mega Nerfing Mushrooms, and Removing IS has severely damaged this spec. Even though I've been a Moonkin since TBC, I foresee my self abandoning this spec for MoP. It's not fun...

Zojun · 06/18/12, 6:45 PM

Don't bank on the return of Insect Swarm. Few builds ago it was explicitly added in the 'What has changed?' spellbook tab as being removed (this was after the blue posts detailing how if it returned, it would be changed). At the time GC was mentioning IS and some energy changing ability together - presumably this became Astral Communion and, until we see otherwise, IS is gone.

lissanna · 06/19/12, 11:07 PM

Hey druids, Zharym has started a heavily moderated post about class balance & number-crunching theoyrcrafting on the beta forums (not for general design concerns): Beta Class Balance Analysis - Forums - World of Warcraft So, bring on the math!

Qaajn · 06/20/12, 6:54 AM

Originally Posted by lissanna

Hey druids, Zharym has started a heavily moderated post about class balance & number-crunching theoyrcrafting on the beta forums (not for general design concerns): Beta Class Balance Analysis - Forums - World of Warcraft So, bring on the math!

It looks interesting and I will read through all the posts. There is something I would like to see brought up there, namely our rotation complexity. But since I am EU, I can't post myself, could one of you do it for me?

I have taken a look at how our rotation appear now, for simplicity I assumed no haste other then NG, 0 ms (no "human reactions) and that SotF is taken.

Going from lunar to solar will take 23.48-24.1 sec (2 starsurge, 1 in NG - 1 starsurge not in NG) and include;
1 moonfire
1 starfall
1 or 2 starsurge
8 or 7 starfires - two will not be in NG

Going from solar to lunar will always take 23.22 sec and include;
1 sunfire
1 or 2 starsurge
11 or 10 wraths

Combining for a full cycle, it will take 46.7-47.32 sec of the following spells;
1 moonfire at start of lunar
1 sunfire at start of solar
1 starfall during lunar eclipse or multiple target phase
3 starsurge cast on cooldown (15 sec)
18 chained casts of wrath and starfire in "gaps"
This give ~31 APM with nothing dynamic

You don't track debuffs; they refresh during the correct eclipse and isn't worth recasting with no NG and eclipse. You use starfall once a cycle and starsurge on cooldown. Sounds interesting? Oh, I almost forgot. You also cast starsurge on proc; 20% chance from a DoT crit to make instant and reset cooldown. Crit is the least valued stat for moonkins. Even assuming 10% crit, we look at perhaps 1 proc every second cycle. That's one time every ~90 second that anything dynamic happen in the cycle, and it might be a trivial increase if the cooldown is almost over.

Are you going to adress this?

♦ Tecton · 06/20/12, 7:27 AM

A couple of notes from what's been posted in that thread that seems to be of import to balance/Wrathcalcs:

Crit suppression is 1% for every level above us, i.e. 3% crit suppression for raid boss mobs.
It looks like they're updating the way pets (like FoN) inherit stats, worth keeping an eye on the post clarifying this when it arrives. Also, they seem to be fixing the lag in the treants reacting upon being summoned unless you cast them directly on top of a mob (which made them do a melee swing first the last time I checked).
Confirmed that Mushrooms should not be affected by Solar eclipse.

Does anyone have a list of rating requirements at level 90? I guess it's about time we got Wrathcalcs set up properly for level 90 if they're saying things are at a fairly stable point.

[EDIT] Thanks Starfox. [/EDIT]

Starfox · 06/20/12, 2:22 PM

Originally Posted by Tecton

A couple of notes from what's been posted in that thread that seems to be of import to balance/Wrathcalcs:

Crit suppression is 1% for every level above us, i.e. 3% crit suppression for raid boss mobs.
It looks like they're updating the way pets (like FoN) inherit stats, worth keeping an eye on the post clarifying this when it arrives. Also, they seem to be fixing the lag in the treants reacting upon being summoned unless you cast them directly on top of a mob (which made them do a melee swing first the last time I checked).
Confirmed that Mushrooms should not be affected by Solar eclipse.

Does anyone have a list of rating requirements at level 90? I guess it's about time we got Wrathcalcs set up properly for level 90 if they're saying things are at a fairly stable point.

// Dodge rating multipliers
1035.000000000000000

// Parry rating multipliers
1035.000000000000000

// Block rating multipliers
345.000000000000000

// Melee hit rating multipliers
400.000000000000000

// Ranged hit rating multipliers
400.000000000000000

// Spell hit rating multipliers
400.000000000000000

// Melee crit rating multipliers
700.000000000000000

// Ranged crit rating multipliers
700.000000000000000

// Spell crit rating multipliers
700.000000000000000

// Melee haste rating multipliers
500.000000000000000

// Ranged haste rating multipliers
500.000000000000000

// Spell haste rating multipliers
500.000000000000000

// Expertise rating multipliers
400.000000000000000

// Mastery rating multipliers
700.000000000000000