Logged in, decided to push tiers in delves, t4 was pushover, noticed during t5 that lunar beam’s cd wasn’t reducing. I hadn’t seen patch notes yet.
Beam is a huge part of self sustain, and going from ~20 (less with zerk or fury up) seconds to 40… I dunno, I’m no theorycrafter but this feels bad, really bad.
Is it time to crack people’s heads open and feast on the good inside or is it not as bad I think it might be?
No, it’s bad.
I believe that some of the reason behind this change was to move some of the damage profile out of Moonfire and into Mangle. Mangle was buffed, but in addition, the change to Lunation eliminates the incentive to spam Moonfire to reduce the cooldown of Lunar Beam. Now could they have made Lunation reduce the CD of Beam by 30 secs instead of 20 secs? Probably. But I can certainly understand why they would want to disincentivize MF spam.
It really isnt.
But given that they wanted to get rid of the degen play of Moonfire/Thrash spam into Lunar Beam and nothing else and actually make the Apex talents useful
Lunar Beam is still up for every pull, youre just not getting 2-3 per pull now.
To do this, it is enough to make the damage mangle - arcane damage. and not kill the survival rate of a bear in the high keys, when there will be large windows and no lunar beam, and no bark.
in high keys this will not be enough. and I gave above the way to change the gameplay.
It will
Ursocs got buffed - and actually using Maul/Raze with Gory Fur for bigger UF shields
And you desync Barskskin and LB for a mini defensive
Of course it won’t. The absorption from the talent was increased less than the damage increased by mobs. so this is not an upgrade, but a nerf to this talent. and absorb never gave the same survivability as bark or lunar beam.
It still is.
Shield has a max limit on it (1/3 total HP). So now it’s easier to hit this and in general get bigger shields
It’s not meant to be on it’s own. It goes hand in hand with defensives
I don’t know, it seems like simple math.
25% increase in character HP, 25% increase in maximum shield, 25% increase in mob damage, and only 16.7% increase in absorption talent.
As a result, absorption will take longer to reach its maximum and will break through faster.
absorption is not a basis at all, but only an auxiliary thing. Both absorb and LB were nerfed.
in high keys the bear will face problems in survival if nothing changes.
It won’t, it literally reaches it max sooner, and regardless of it breaking through sooner, we’ll have more overall shield from more uses of Maul/Raze
Absorb was buffed, LB itself was slightly buffed, Lunation was nerfed. As things stand, they should be fine; the offset of a few lower casts of LB will be made up with more rage and more shield
yes thats correct, lunar beam cdr was changed from active to a flat cdr.
this is to prevent the amount of degeracy it caused where you just spammed two buttons for maximum defensive output
this is healthy for the spec
your pretending that lunar beam is the specs only defensive for some reason.
calling nerfs buffs and point blank not seeing the problem that a bear will have in high keys…
What would it be like without you? This ruined the spec, I described the reason above.
some reason is that I understand how important this protection is for the moon bear.
spamming moonfire until lunar beam has a extremely high uptime isnt healthy
anyone with eyes can see that.
again ignoring every other active defensive bear has because lunar beam got justifiable nerfed is a bad take.
if anything according to gnomerender the changes end up being a net positive for bears defensive benefit and less degenerate playstyle due to the passive changes bear received this season. just this time, you have to be rotationally active to access that defensive power instead of spamming moonfire for lunarbean cdr. the spec is far from ruined, its only ruined for 2 button enjoyers and the lazy
If I am noticing a huge reduction in self-sustain in what we all would agree is trivial content I cannot IMAGINE it’s somehow fine in actually difficult content.
Do you ever not gargle Blizzard’s gargleables from the back?
maybe play better?
when every tcer and highend bear player who didnt fotm to the spec says its fine and a net positive defensively due to all the other changes. maybe its actually a good thing they changed bear
im sorry that you cant be op and fail upward by pressing 2 buttons anymore. we shouldnt encourage degenerate playstyles because you want to be good with the obr feature.
I was actually talking about Xhun there, not you, but if you want to hit-dog-holler, ok.
I changed to moonfire bear because it was measurably and objectively better than DotC in every way, and I was DotC all the way every day since hero talents went in.
Now I’m guessing they are closer to parity so I will probably experiment with going back.
It’s not FOTM to make what is objectively a minor change because something is better. We’re talking specs within specs here, not rerolling vengeance because VDH is suddenly SSS tier again.
I agree with the spamming moonfire thing. You need to understand I thought moonfire bear was STUPID, like I was legitimately ANGRY the first few days after switching when they nerfed DotC into the ground. It shouldn’t be possible to be that good with that little thought put into what you’re doing at any given moment. Is lunar beam on CD? Check Thrash. Thrash is on CD? Spam moonfire. Ouchies? Situational defensive. Probably a frenzied is all you need, but if not, SI or BS. I know this isn’t adequate for super high keys, but that’s not the point - it shouldn’t be adequate period. 2.5 button rotation, like your actual “you do this all the time no matter what” is just dumb. LB on cd. Thrash on CD. MF to fill. That is dumb!
It needed… something! Sure! I’ll have to dig in and tune my build (or again, try DotC again now that it seems like both specs are at a similar floor) because obviously last week’s build is garbage now, but it’s not unreasonable to say I absolutely do not like the change to lunar beam.
i was ec since the start, i can tell you that its not that deep
excuse me then, again it just reads to me that you fotm to bear because it was “thew best tank” because of its two button build. if you’re having issues in trivial content because you cant press lunar beam more then idk what to tell you. it reads to me that youve been misplaying bear to such a degree that you need the degen style to survive things any normal bear player would be able to shrug off easily
its not unreasonable to say you dont like the changes. however its reasonable to also point out that its the reason why the degen playstyle was made to begin with. it was inherently problematic and a exploding keg that needed a small flame to light it up. the previous season was that fuse.
i really dont think ec needs anything tbh. ive havent seen any issues in delves or trivial content and im still ec raid build
Goodness the complaining. You’d think bear was just the meta spec with a ton of rerollers….
Oh no, DF and TWW I split time between guardian and protadin.
I like guardian so much I actually have, like, nine spread across all levels and 3 at 90. (one is obvious mining/herb, the other is tailoring/enchanting bc cloth and stuff, but I don’t play either of them much)
I’m not an fotm druid player, I see what you meant. (I didn’t play druid in legion enough to do mage tower but I did unlock most of the other forms, and my favorite is fallen to the nightmare at present, even more than the neon bears)
I said the self-sustain is much lower and it is. I haven’t changed any talents yet, and clearly that’s the first step, but I think instead I will try DotC again (which I have always favored anyway) and if it’s not worse than my broken EC build is right now, probably stick with it.
that is, you have no eyes.
You’re the only one ignoring it here, apparently because you have absolutely no understanding of the spec.
Lunar Beam was one of the main defenses, and its uptime was cut almost threefold.
This offer is for you.
And this won’t be normal in complex content. The bear won’t be meta, since it simply won’t survive at the highest keys with such changes.
Where did you find this nonsense, and why did you believe it? They reduce the bear’s survivability and damage, but overall, these are positive changes?