I’m sure the damage will be fine, or it won’t, it doesn’t actually matter. This post isn’t about performance. I really really hope the datamined balance druid runes are among those that “aren’t real.”
Starfire and Wrath extending the duration of Sunfire and Moonfire by a few seconds is probably a nice little DPS buff but it’s also wildly boring and lacks imagination. There had to be a better idea. A new ability, a new mechanic. Something. DoTs are like, the least exciting thing about playing Moonkin.
Hurricane rune buff is very nice, but again, just so unimaginative. Same with the Barkskin rune. Both of these spells were intentionally hamstrung to give druids additional weaknesses because that’s how the game was balanced way back when. Both of these runes could have unironically been a book. Imagine having to put on a rune to make Blizzard worth casting at all.
Again, I’m not concerned with throughput here. I am sure balance druid will do fine DPS, I’m sure it’ll be at least OK in PvP. But it’s just really, really boring. I really hope you guys rethink these. The number one thing game developers want feedback about is fun value. Throughput is a distant second. I’m giving you the kind of feedback I hope you want and hope you’ll take into account.
Very boring indeed
The hurricane rune shouldn’t be a rune but a quality of life book, & extending pretty weak dots that can’t crit is not great. I’m dooming again.
Good thing I have a hunter alt, bad thing is I farmed all rep on druid.
There have been so many incredibly rad balance druid spells over the years. Full moon, solar beam, starfall, wild mushrooms. Slow on faerie fire. Bash in moonkin form. Force of Nature. I could go on forever. They could have thought of something new or interesting for us like they have for a few other specs. But they’re just like. “What if starfire made you cast your dots fewer times”
The joke is that improved barkskin and hurricane are on the same rune, so you can’t run both for aoe farming. The most fun thing about these changes potentially and we can’t do it.
Yea this time around the Runes aren’t super enticing. Feral is just about dead if not already, but I do like the Barkskin Rune. Was hoping for treants though.
I guess I just fail to understand what the problem with the rotation was that we needed to cast Moonfire and Sunfire less often. and why it was a big enough problem that it needed an entire rune slot to solve it.
With the DoT increase, it is more lucrative to keep the dots going and it will 100% reduce mana cost usage since we wont have to use sun/moonfire as often. They’ll be more of a ‘run and gun’ for mechanics or pvp when necessary.
It’ll also let us focus on using our most damaging spells more frequently. Starfire is a major chunk of our damage so it’ll be nice. So essentially you’re not wasting a global to refresh it for a fraction of the damage of what Starfire does.
I was so excited yesterday, today I feel like I need to abandon my main as other classes are getting such cool stuff. How is felguard equal to hurricane being useable?
That’s a decent way to sum up SoD runes in general since P2.
Just a big lack of imagination, and it’s not even like they’re executed well either. Lots of very questionable design decisions, even with boring runes.
The rotation is definitely interesting now. Refreshing moonfire every 30 seconds and sunfire every 21 seconds. Moonfire’s time keeps it consistent in rotation placement, always the second of 3 spell casts between starsurges. But sunfire alternates between right after a starsurge cast and right before a starsurge cast. This is kind of strange and almost requires you to pay attention enough to remember if you need to refresh your next sunfire before or after a surge which also means if you always casted starfire before surge like I do, then thats not going to fly when you need to refresh sunfire last.
Theres also a time when moonfire and sunfire both need to be refreshed at 63 and 64.5 seconds into a fight AS WELL as at 273 and 274.5 seconds into a fight, where you must remember to starfire right after star surge is cast or you will lose that cast. Luckily it seems like this only (fingers crossed) happens in a state where sunfire has to be refresheed before a surge cast and not after. This means it almost seems like the correct way to play is to always put star fire after a surge cast and only move it back when refreshes force it to be.
Faerie fire also fits back into the rotation excellently. As far as I can ascertain it never overlaps with sunfire or moonfire and FF refreshes are always after a surge cast. There are times when you must refresh FF, then moonfire, and then cast star fire. but not very often.
