Owlkin Frenzy should proc free Starsurges. That’ll teach 'em. 
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The only positive I can see so far is the return of the old Starfall but with the caveat that it only hits targets are in combat with. Nothing about Eclipse ever appealed to me.
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I see more positives than that.
Balance druids will be utility gods in M+ and PVP. When talented, we get:
Mass roots, aoe silence, typhoon, cyclone, ursols vortex, wild charge, & entangling roots.
The armor debuff will def hurt (not to mention it is a 50% armor debuff if you currently run ironfeather armor in pvp/world content), and there needs to be some attention to the eclipse system, but hoping they read the feedback.
I saw a video of high level torghast on balance and it looks really fun.
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I kind of said this in a different thread, but I’ll go over it again in some support of this. The biggest problems I always had with Eclipse was that it wanted you to use two different types of spells to reinforce each other. If builders are desired, they should build up to good things.
Wrath should be the ST go-to. Better DPS if you are looking at a single target, as well as casting fast. It should build up Starsurge, either through Eclipse or by reducing any CD it may have.
Lunarfire should be our AoE go-to. If you have two or more mobs standing next to each other, Lunarfire should be what we want to use. It may be weaker than Wrath on a per-hit basis, but when you’re hitting 2-5 mobs, the total DPS wins out. Like Wrath with Starsurge, Lunarfire should build up for Starfall, either through Eclipse or reducing its Cooldown.
The two should not be mixing it up at all. It makes no mechanical sense for a ST filler to be boosting an AoE filler and vice versa.
But, I rather agree with Galadriae, in that Druids should be the utility majors of groups. May not always top on damage or healing, or the most interesting Tanks, but we affect fights in ways one can’t see on meter boards. Anyone remember Faerie Fire, and not being able to use it due to debuff limit?
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Great insight. The fact that one standard attack spell works to boost the other, only for the cycle to rewind back the other direction, feels pointless because it’s not amplifying any outside factors or anything exciting or fun. Shadow Priests in the Shadowlands have a similar problem with their new build in that the climax to their first ramp up is really just a second ramp up before the go straight back to zero in an instant. If Blizzard wants players to utilize spells and abilities in a way that builds on their attacks, they need to make the outcomes of those builds exciting. Balance druids in the Shadowlands alpha don’t have that, and some other classes have similar issues for the same reason.
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Please revert the change to Balance. No one asked for the eclipse system to return. I’ve been maining Druid for years, and upon hearing these changes, started prepping my Mage and Warlock for SL. I do not want to switch to a class that I enjoy less, because of this.
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WotLK eclipse wasn’t much better man. It’s still a system that is way too confining and creates situations where you have to sacrifice truly optimal play to make it work.
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Maybe these changes are to lower the representation of balance druids? Feral+gaurdian has fallen behind in every aspect so far in alpha, and now nobody likes the new playstyle of balance. But resto stays the same with more added fun abilities. Back to basic: druid= healer…
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Really the main question when adding something like eclipse back should be “why are we doing this?”
I can’t think of a single good reason to have a system that requires casting in a certain order to get marginal increases in DPS. This is why at least paring it down to just a spender system (these add to astral power, these spend it) without all the proc, eclipse and other nonsense would be an improvement.
An even bigger improvement would be to just make the baseline spells hit harder naturally, and eliminate all of overhead nonsense. Maybe with legendaries we could get flavor stuff like (subsequent casts of wrath increase arcane power gain by 1 up to a maximum of +3) or whatever, but don’t make it the heart of the spec.
I was a gladiator multiple times in BC back when we actually could…you know do things without long set up periods. I couldn’t imagine any of the more recent versions of moonkin being anything any top team would want, its just too slow with too much set up. More likely you’d get “oh great you have a druid? Gear up for Resto and join us!”
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Moonkin in arenas now is sit in Bear Form/live long enough to root+beam a healer and shoot 2-3 Starsurges.
Back in BC/Wrath, Moonkin PVP had a lot of liberty in how to approach PVP scenarios. You could outlast with HOTS + DOTS + Travel form or attempt to nuke someone down. Now you can at most cast 3-4 Regrowths and heal yourself to 50% after 6 secs of casting while a Rogue pops a Crimson Vial and heals for less effort… lol
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Was still keeping an eye on Moonkin come SL and being still in Alpha/Beta hoping for more tuning and changes. Same with Bear and Cats < really lacking and I can’t ever get an answer to “Why BrINg a FeRaL” ?
I always love seeing people in Balance threads, posting on characters that aren’t druids, and not even knowing the names of our spells
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I am actually slightly positive to the changes.
If the builders build slower, it means that both builders and spenders will do more dmg. So the buttons we press might start feeling meaningful again, instead of just being wetaoenoodle, wetsingletargetnoodle.
Warrior of Elune will actually be worth using in pvp again. And when the moonkin form procs for free Lunar strikes, aka wetaoenoodle, it might start doing dmg and could potentialy scare some melee away…or god forbid, hurt them.
I actually find pressing 1212121212 even less interesting than 11112222. And in big pvp fights where u get a little lag (or as of patch 8.3 massive lag) it will be easier to make this system work.
I really hope Lunar strike and Solar wrath starts to do some meaningful dmg again.
The current iteration of Eclipse is “3 fillers to proc Eclipse.” It’s 100% deterministic.
A lot of the information in this thread is woefully outdated.
You’re more than welcome to like the Empowerment system. But it was the single limiting factor in BFA’s gameplay. Empowerments largely stopped being relevant for damage after Essences were introduced. Empowerments’ “decision making” is also directly related to how often we cast Starsurge. You literally could not increase Resource/Astral Power generation any further without making Empowerments irrelevant. If your core mechanic is irrelevant to gameplay, then there isn’t any reason for it to exist.
This is largely why Empowerments needed to be axed. As for Eclipse systems – I prefer deterministic. I’d like to see other QOL improvements made, but that mostly comes down to things like “Making Eclipse feel stronger” and “Making Starfall interact with the core toolkit more.”
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Yeah I have no idea what they are doing. They are taking a spec that’s both fun to play and has been moderately successful and reverting it to a poorly received mechanic from the past…all while ignoring a several druid specs that are performing poorly (feral and guardian).
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That is part of the issue. What you describe as “fillers” are the same spells we cast to deal damage. I don’t want fillers, I want the meat and potatoes.
In what way? You choose which Eclipse to go into first, sure, but after that you’re stuck in a rotation of alternating single/aoe damage. Casting 3 single-target spells when you need aoe “now” is not deterministic.
Extending Eclipse states by using Starsurge (or not) does little to remedy this and creates situations where it “feels” bad to use Astral Power when you “want” to as opposed to when you “need” to.
Can you elaborate on this? My experience with essences and BFA was completely different. I accredit a lot of the Moonkin DPS issues to reliance on Streaking Stars.
I also think the Moonfire Azerite trait contributed more to capping on empowerments than anything else. Still, I don’t believe capping was that big of an issue, but I’d like to hear more about your opinion on this.
Please, no. Eclipse is already punishing as it is in PVP situations, please don’t make it worse by tying Starfall into it. As it is, Eclipse seems to encourage weird situations where you’d want to snapshot dots and use Starfall to extend them… geez, what a cumbersome and annoying gameplay mechanic.
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Time is a flat circle. Everything we have done or will do we will do over and over and over again—forever.
Balance currently gives me early arthritis with the APM it has. And the more haste I get the better more my fingers hurt.
I’d rather longer casts with more damage.
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Snapshotting isn’t a thing, pretty sure any active dots instant get the higher eclipse dmg.
For Alpha, a lot of this comes down to how much damage Starsurge deals. It’s pretty hefty, especially when it double-dips during CA.
Deterministic means “No RNG.” You know exactly what to expect from your spellcasting.
Extending Eclipses means you’ll be focused more on trying to lining up your Eclipses with encounter mechanics. It’s pretty challenging, but honestly adds a lot of depth to the gameplay beyond raw performance metrics/dps meters.
Our AsP generation is pretty high. You almost never cast a non-Empowered filler. Because of this, your fillers don’t actually feel buffed. If you were to over-cap on Empowerment stacks, you really wouldn’t notice a difference. The current gameplay is tuned in such a way that you do not over-cap unless you make a mistake or play a particular build where AsP generation is higher.
It was a design choice to make Empowerments not over-cap. This is directly related to Starsurge. Because Starsurge is how we get empowerments, we cannot really cast more Starsurges without over-capping empowerments. Gameplay shifted away from our single-target spells because of that.
If you are over-capping to the point where managing Empowerments doesn’t matter, then as a game designer, there is no point to have Empowerments exist in the toolkit.
PVP can be better with Eclipse gameplay. It mostly comes down to triggering Eclipse reliably. There are plenty of ways to accomplish that, including “Regrowth reduces the number of casts needed to trigger Eclipse by 2.” (3 casts -> 1 cast). Owlkin Frenzy could work for Starfire and Wrath (instead of Starfire only).
Eclipse doesn’t snapshot. Damage is effectively normalized between Solar and Lunar. Wrath deals more damage per normalized cast time and generated more resources per normalized cast time when compared to Starfire. You’ll only notice a difference in DPS on single-target, and not by that much.
Starfall tickles out of Eclipse regardless. Our DOTs are fairly weak overall.
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