My Guild has need of a Moon Chicken, and I have answered the call. A few questions for clarity:
For Elune’s Chosen:
Does Lunar Calling completely remove the need for Wrath to push you into Lunar Eclipse?
No. It prevents Starfire from pushing you into Solar Eclipse.
Can Stellar Flare be used instead of Wild Surges?
Dealer’s choice on this one. If you want a mediocre DOT that forces you to stand still to cast it, go for it, but I prefer 10% crit on my primary.
Are Tree Ents really necessary for the build in a Raid/Mythic environment?
I can’t speak to this since I don’t raid at Mythic level. However, our Treebois are another short CD that is a simple DPS boost AND pulls aggro from you when solo/without a dedicated tank.
Now, here’s my pontification about the state of Boomkin and its spec madness, because there are three different gameplay styles(Nuke, DOT, summoner) and none of them are playing very well with each other thanks to our Mastery.
Our Mastery plays into our being a Nuke and most of our damage is tied up into Wrath/Starfire spam. Then, things like Stellar Flare try to turn us into a DOT class because it forces us to spend most of our time refreshing our DOTs with almost no time spent actually doing anything during our Eclipse window. Then our Treebois and Faerie Dragon buddies beg for a more coherent summoner build.
IMO, our Mastery needs to reflect this…balance and allow us to focus into the different aspects of our Spec. The Hero Trees do this to a point, Elune’s Chosen pushes into Nuker territory with cooldown reductions and big damage increases for Starfire and Moonfire. Keeper of the Grove “should” turn us into a summoner/pet class by making one of the Treebois hang around all the time in addition to what it already does. So what really needs to happen is we need a 3rd Hero Tree that plays heavily into our DOT damage but that’s unlikely to happen.
Anyways, welcome to Boomkin, we’re in kind of a spot right now, but it’ll get better.
edit
I thought it might be helpful to see my talent build. I’m quite sure it’s terrible, but I enjoy it.
Second question:
DoT before or in an Eclipse? Based on all the bonuses going into Eclipse, wouldn’t it be better to DoT when you’re in it instead of Dotting and then immediately casting into an Eclipse?
And does Stellar Amplification mean I have to snapshot the DoTs or does it happen retroactively? Do I need to snapshot for any of the odd % buffs that happen in this wacky tree?
That’s a question for someone else.
If it was properly designed, the percentages would actively change as buffs and debuffs come and go. I’m not so miserable that I obsess over making sure that I snapshot the most buffs possible and fastidiously maintain them as much as possible. Hell, I really like the trinket that conjures the little candle dudes, but I need the Crit from the torch worse than I need a small army of candles and some extra Intelligence.
I might be showing my casual side here, but we need a tool that can show us what our damage increase and falloff are when swiching gear because I don’t believe that raw item level or primary stat tell the whole story once you reach 8/10ths of ilvl cap. I’m probably an idiot though.
Just means you cant go into solar eclipse from starfires.
Due to our spenders doing big dam atm 10% is worth a tone of damage, stellar flare is only slightly less but it is a cast and requires some other things that it kind of only is a flavor thing.
100% required if you play Keeper of the grove, not use full at all in elunes chosen
Try to do before going into eclipse it will gain the extra damage when u go into eclipse
Not snapshotting required it is retroactive.
No, it just prevents Starfire from putting you into Solar Eclipse. You still need Wrath to put you into Lunar Eclipse
It can be, but Wild Surges is passive, doesn’t require you to cast it (Stellar Flare is not instant), and I believe just sims higher anyway (but in not sure)
Treants are only required for Keeper of the Grove hero talents. Our spec tree is not set up in a good way to allow you to take it as an option in M+/AoE, but there are enough points to take it in single target (though Warrior of Elune is probably better without taking hero talents into account).
With all that said, Keeper of the Grove I believe is still best for single target and the AoE build has been gaining popularity in M+
Outside of the opener you want to DoT inside an eclipse, and when outside of an eclipse you want to get back into one ASAP.
This typically means you’d want to refresh DoTs right before you exit an eclipse if it will expire within the next 6-7ish seconds.
Ideally you want to enter eclipse with a large amount of AP banked up → get off 3 spenders ASAP within the Balance of All Things window and for Starlord stacks (or cast another builder or two to get enough AP to cast a 3rd) → build up AP for the next eclipse, refresh DoTs when needed, and dump AP if you are going to overcap.
Balance Druid does not do any snapshotting, everything is dynamic