http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18600870072&sid=1
Community Team: Let’s take a look at the Balance talent tree. Eclipse is a crucial talent for players who are looking to perform a damage dealing role and invest in the Balance tree. There has been a lot of discussion though regarding the gameplay it provides as there is a lot of randomness involved. The buffs to a solar rotation were very well received, but the lunar rotation still has to wait for a critical strike to happen as well as an additional random proc to occur which can lead to some long gaps of nothing happening. Then when these finally fall into place players have complained about threat issues which force them to slow down or having to move to avoid something which ruins the procs they have and significantly hurts their overall damage.
Q: What are our thoughts on how Eclipse is functioning and do we have any plans to change how this talent works?
Ghostcrawler: The goal of the Eclipse talent in the first place was to give moonkin a more dynamic rotation that involved the player paying attention and responding to the environment rather than falling into a monotonous rotation. The Eclipse in 3.2 should less strongly favor one half of the Eclipse over the other since the cooldowns are independent. Ultimately however the problem we are trying to solve is that Wrath and Starfire are just too similar. In PvP you get a little bit of interest out of the fact that they are in different schools, but in PvE by the time talents are factored in, the two spells just become fairly quick (but not instant) nukes and it’s easy to math out which one to use and which one to ignore. Long-term to fix this problem we need to add another spell, separate out Starfire and Wrath from each other a little more, or make one of the other spells, like Moonfire or Insect Swarm, more dynamic. I’ll give a couple of example of caster rotations that “work” in our opinion: Destruction warlocks want to Immolate before they Conflagrate, Frost mages can proc a Brain Freeze and throw out a fast Fireball.
It's about time. I had a feeling this was coming, but it sure is nice to hear that they are 'officially throwing the idea around. Personally, I'd like to see a spell that works somewhat like Living Seed. Allow me to articulate upon that. The spell would be a medium cast (2.0 sec) spell that does not benefit from Starlight Wrath. It would deal damage on par with Wrath but infect the player with some type of disease (I like the way that sounds) that erupts when the target is hit by at least one Starfire and one Wrath. Lasts 7-10 seconds? Put it on a short cooldown of say 15 seconds (conveniently the length of Eclipse).
Relax, relax, I know it's PvP viability is a little shady. Not to mention it would need to be able to track each which player cast the spell to avoid exploitation by three druids. The point is, there are many different ways that we can make a rotation interesting and encourage the use of multiple spells beyond the simple "X spell increases the damage/crit of Y spell by Z%" modulation. Perhaps a few of you have ideas? Please please please comment them here. I'd like a bunch of ideas to present. And nothing is too silly. If you think we should get a spell to call a swarm of insect, comment it in! ... oh wait, we have that! Well, even if you think we should have a Termite Blast, put it here.
Community Team: Another aspect of Balance talent tree that has seen a number of discussions lately is the survivability of Moonkins while in a Player vs. Player setting. Many players agree that they have a very low survivability rate and that a spell like Typhoon doesn’t provide enough help to prevent classes like Death Knights and Rogues from doing some serious damage to them.
Q: How do we feel Moonkins are doing in PvP and do we have plans to improve their survivability?
Ghostcrawler: We don’t think Moonkins are quite there yet, though we’ll see how they look after 3.2 ships. Some of their problems are not limitations with the spec so much as they are ramifications in other parts of the PvP environment, such as some classes being able to burst them down too quickly. Of the casters, and as of this writing, only Frost mages really seem to be a potent PvP force, but it requires multiple forms of CC and escape mechanisms to get there. We really don’t want to go down the road of every caster needing that many unique tools – it homogenizes the classes and makes the mage tools less compelling. We understand some players are desperate to play Balance in PvP, but our priority is on getting underperforming classes viable before we worry about the second or third spec of classes that already have a strong PvP presence. We’ll get there.
Long story short? I feel like we've been told that if we want to be seriously PvP viable, we should roll out as resto or feral. Sadly, this means we'd have to build a gear set from scratch. I guess that's a worst case scenario since I have collected quite a bit of feral gear but walking into an arena with my high damage Ulduar gear allows me to at least be dangerous, if not survivable.
I do think that the fact that they mentioned we are underpowered is a good sign. They have noticed the trend of few to no Balance druids in the upper tiers. Also, their response was not "lrn2play" so it's safe to assume that we will receive some attention at some point in time. We'll just have to wait.
Community Team: Players have also been discussing how they feel the overall playstyle of a Moonkin is just not very exciting. The best damage dealing rotation for them requires very few spells and a deep Balance spell like Starfall doesn’t help them very much.
Q: Are there plans to make any changes to the general spell rotation for deep Balance/Moonkin Druids?
Ghostcrawler: As I mentioned above, we do want to improve the spell rotation of Balance. We think the spells are interesting when considered alone (expect for perhaps Starfire and Wrath) but they don’t necessarily play together in interesting ways. You don’t try to save up a Starfall for example for great synergy with another spell. We have no problems with Starfall itself -- it is an AE with smart targeting that doesn’t require channeling. It is basically just bonus damage. Often players with a gripe about Starfall are wishing that it still proc’ed stuns with Celestial Focus or was a stealth remover. But those uses meant players saved Starfall for only those specific situations instead of using it when they needed extra damage, which was the original intent.
I'm slightly saddened by the fact that he said there is no synergy with Starfall. I feel like he doesn't read my blog (probably true). However, I disagree with him (as many of you will probably know) because I feel like Starfall does have synergy with the rotation in the pre-casting phase of Solar rotation. Even with the dual Eclipse in 3.2, I feel like we will want to cast it at the end of a Lunar rotation. Also, a note: Never use Starfall with a Lunar Eclipse. You probably already have almost 100% uptime on Nature's Grace so that portion of the spell would be wasted. If you're dying to sync it to an Eclipse, sync it to a Solar Eclipse. /rant off.
This answer is very much like the first one where they acknowledge that the druid rotation is a little dry and will become more so once 3.2 hits. He derails the comment into a mini-explanation of Starfall and "what players want" but the real meat and potatoes is in the comment that they want to promote spell synergy. I feel a revamp of the druid spell arsenal coming up. I'm honestly not sure that one additional spell, no matter how interesting, will fix the problem.
TL:DR
No seriously, read it. And then tell me what you think, I want to know!
4 comments:
"Also, a note: Never use Starfall with a Lunar Eclipse. You probably already have almost 100% uptime on Nature's Grace so that portion of the spell would be wasted. If you're dying to sync it to an Eclipse, sync it to a Lunar Eclipse."
Never sync Starfall to a lunar eclipse unless you want to sync it to a lunar eclipse? Either I don't understand, or one of those should be Solar.
Ah, how right you are. I was typing fast to push this post out. Thanks!
Here's my idea of how to improve the synergy of balance spells (haven't done any math by the way):
http://war-tools.com/t64388.html
PvE
- Sunfire (Spell). Deals small initial damage, also consumes an insect swarm and buffs next Starfire. Has a 15 second cooldown.
- Wrath of Cenarius (Talent). Moonfire procs instant Starfires on a 30 second cooldown. Similar to the current 4p t8. This would encourage the use of Starfire (the cooldown is there for PvP reasons).
- Earth and Moon (Talent).
1. Wrath deals 5% more damage for each dot on the target (Insect Swarm and Moonfire). Would encourage high dot uptime.
2. Starfire extends Moonfire up to 9 seconds (just like the glyph). Because of Wrath's high dps, this would balance Starfire's usage to Wrath.
- Eclipse (Talent). Changed to use a small quantity of charges in a 30 second time window. Its dps contribution will be smaller than it is now, but it would be a lot more flexible. Would encourage the use of
both spells in the 30 second time window. (By the way, I hate the PTR version of Eclipse as is eliminates any decision making as to which Eclipse to use for mana or movement issues)
PvP
- The changes for PvE would provide more controllable dps as well as better mobility.
- Balance of Power (Talent). Affects all damage, not just spells (PTR).
- Brambles.
1. A 3 second daze would affect the target if roots are dispelled (and only dispelled). This would discourage dispellers, and would increase survivability against melee as well as keeping someone in place.
2. Instead of increasing the damage roots does (which is insignificant as it always breaks early), the change would increase roots synergy as an iconic balance spell for PvP (although roots would still
break as usual)
So, what do you think?
I would like to start by having some kind of buff we can self cast like 'shade moonkin form' to allow for our normal appearance with the ability to cast and have armor with strenght. The buff could wear off slightly as it goes away and be rather short...
As far as rotations go I would like an idol that procs a DoT or something while casting our nukes... ex: 'Idol of acursed wrath' 5% chance to instant cast when wrath crit hits target causing the nearby earth to rip from the ground shatter upon target, causing 3 seconds of blindness to target rendering all agro to disapate...
IDK it would be fun to come up with this stuff all day
~Gargen of Vek'nilash
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