The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30 second. cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.
Them some powerful words! So with that in mind, let us look at the new Eclipse and why we'll no longer talk about Solar vs. Lunar or even say that Squawk and Awe is necessary for a good rotation.
The New Eclipse
With separate cooldown timers, it will now be possible to spend 15 seconds in a Lunar Eclipse, then continue casting Starfire until you proc a Solar Eclipse and suffer no internal cooldown whatsoever. The new spell mechanic will allow us to drastically increase our time under a given Eclipse, forcing us to switch spells only when the new Eclipse procs. We will no longer have to track an internal cooldown because even if we procced the second Eclipse the instant the first finished, the cooldown on our first Eclipse will have just finished by the time we were ready to proc it once again.
I had mentioned that I thought the Idol was the best thing out of all of this stuff, yet here appears to be one of the greatest changes to the Balance Druid in quite some time. Now you should be asking yourself "What is Rel smoking?" The answer is. . . well I'm pleading the fifth there. But lets take a look at what this change does for gearing.
Previously, someone who ran a Lunar rotation was much less effected by the 400 haste soft cap. The could blissfully stack on haste and not suffer much loss from Wrath clipping. Say goodbye to those days. Now, Wrath will compose a much larger chunk of all Lunar druids arsenal. Therefore, this mechanic change simply reduces the value of haste on all gear once a player reaches 400 haste. Graylo ran his model on the new Eclipse and found that crit rating was better than haste rating after 400 haste.
I really dislike being forced into certain gear because a spell is clipping the GCD. I feel that this indicates poor planning on the designer's part and often results in a reduction in good gearing choices since we are already limited by a hard hit cap. I'm still praying for a new Glyph that modifies the Wrath cast time to allow for more gearing options. Regardless we will most likely determine a BiS anyway and that will guide a good majority of players so perhaps I am being a little overly pessimistic. I guess we shall see.
The second thing I don't like about this change is that it simplifies the druid rotation a great deal. Personally, I like the idea of a priority list instead of a rotation. I feel that this change takes us one step away from a true priority and one step closer to a rotation. I spam one nuke until a little orb appears over my head or MSBT says ECLIPSE!! and then I switch. The only true decision making I have to do is with regards to DoT's and long cooldown abilities. Do I use Starfall with my Lunar or Solar Eclipse. Do I throw down my Treants now? Innervate yet? (Oh PS, all you Lunar folks are gonna find yourselves using more mana than before. Wrath does that to you!).
I guess all in all I am just a little worried that this great change was made to look so great because it was really just a bandaid. In some ways I see this conflicting with Blizzard's stated desire to get away from the rotation and emphasize a priority decision based play-style. I worry that this little piece of cheese dangling in front of me will be snatched away at the last second and I'll be left with only a rumble in my stomach and a heart full of disapointment.
Next up. . . set bonuses. If you thought this was ranty . . . just you wait *eyes glint in the darkness*
5 comments:
Hi Relevart. Been watching your blog since Graylo posted it a while back.
I read a while back on EJ's site, that even with the wrath proc (bonus to wrath) that you still did more damage with starfire?
Will the math work out for a new rotation after the changes?
There's one other question thats going to come up I think, and that's going to be whether or not to skip the lunar part of the equation if you can't proc it within a reasonable span of time.
Sure, ideally you'll proc lunar eclipse within say 5 seconds or so. But what if you still haven't proc'd it after 10 seconds. Would it be better at that point simply to start casting starfire again and grab the next eclipse as it comes off cooldown? Especially given that everyone will be aiming for the magic 400 haste or so.
Better late than never, I guess.
I wanted to address your two concerns about the changes to Eclipse -- the itemisation issue and the Wrath clipping issue.
As far as itemisation is concerned, other classes/specs have been dealing with soft caps for a while now. It may be frustrating for people who are used to stacking haste, haste, and more haste (ie, Starfire-spamkins from TBC), but it actually provides more freedom to get some crit and reduce the RNG factor in the lunar part of the rotation. An important thing to mention for your readers is that "soft cap" does NOT mean you get zero value from the stat (haste, here), but rather that you get REDUCED value -- it's not a complete waste of itemisation points, just not an optimal use of them.
Wrath clipping is definitely a concern, but I think it's probably over emphasised. Clipping the GCD with Wrath does not equate to a DPS loss -- you're still doing the same amount of DPS with Wrath. The only two concerns are a) it makes spell queuing more difficult, and b) those itemisation points you spent in haste could be better used elsewhere. It's not the end of the world though.
I also wanted to emphasise something that Lherin brought up -- namely that RNG still introduces a choice that will give moonkins a chance to prove their skill. I don't have an answer for her question yet, but I'm sure we'll see some math from Graylo or others to lead us in the right direction.
Lherin, you're talking about a cycle reset. Much like forced movement, a "dry" string of casts could go long enough to warrant resetting the whole process.
My rough guess and intuitive feeling is that this is best done when DoTs need to be refreshed. I believe I would attempt to proc a new Eclipse until I needed to refresh both DoTs. At that time, if the first Eclipse is coming off of cooldown, I would probably reset the whole rotation.
@bumkin
I'm sure on a cast per cast basis, Starfire hits harder than an Eclipsed Wrath. However, they have different cast times and it has always been the case that Wrath (when not clipping the GCD and not suffering crappy spell queuing) was a higher DPS spell. It also sucked at mana efficiency (DPM).
It strikes me now that maybe you are talking about Idols. As another person mentioned, it might be possible to do some idol dancing while casting DoTs so that you always had the proper idol for the relevant Eclipse.
However, it is safe to say that you want to use the idol (without swapping) of the spell that is dealing the majority of your damage. My guess is that given the lack of a cooldown phase, the Starfire Idol will be the best choice.
@Maestro
Indeed. That's going to be one of the last big questions with the new boring rotation. Exactly at what point is it going to be worth it to just reset the cycle. It will be interesting to look at some simulations and real parses to see what comes out on top. I know it still happens relatively frequently to me to have dry spells of 10+ seconds trying to get lunar to proc, especially on non-debuffed targets (like sparks on xt-002). It'll be something we can at least argue about for a bit since we'll be dropping the whole solar vs lunar debate in the process :)
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