thoughts?
Edit: after thinking about this, I dont like it. At first I did but most people agree we don’t like the inflexibility of eclipses right?
Why are we bringing eclipses back? Because empowered spells are almost always the case something like 90%+.
Doing some napkin math:
Assuming you start in CA so there is no additional 2 cast tax at the start. Let’s assume 15% haste as early xpac level.
About 2s LS cast and 1.3s wrath cast.
Let’s say entering lunar first.
2 wrath to enter lunar.
So assuming 0 AP from start we have 5 LS casts with i believe 8 ap gen per for 40 ap total plus 12 from wrath.
Then we cast 2 weak LS for another 8 bringing us to 68ap.
Now we enter solar eclipse and cast about 7.5 wraths weaving in starsurges. Total ap to burn is 112ish without any other things such as shooting stars. That gives us an additional 9 seconds in eclipse which, minus Gcds on SS, is about 4 more wrath casts since we will get an additional SS from that.
The process repeats.
So thats barebones less than what would really happen with procs and what do we get?
2 wrath weak
5 LS strong
2 LS weak
11-12 wrath strong.
So 4 weak 17 strong.
So in a bare minimum, unless my math is wrong and correct me if it is, excluding real world procs increasing this percentage, we are looking at about 80% empowered spells.
We’ve come full circle except with a worse mechanic that the majority don’t like.
Edit #2 im forgetting eclipse increasing LS cast speed. Makes it worse I think you get the point.
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Has this happened or is it a suggestion?
On data mining from today’s build.
I think it’s better than 3 casts. Also eclipse decreases starfires cast time not increases. Unless they made some strange change
Yea i meant increasing cast speed, ill fix that to be clearer.
ok some things i noticed that are off… first is your astral power. assuming you are taking nature’s balance that starts you with 50 astral power. celestial alignment gives you another 30. so without casting anything at all you are at 80 astral power. you are also now in solar and lunar eclipse already so you wouldn’t be casting 2 wraths to enter lunar. one starfire and you’d have enough astral power to burn off 3 double dipping starsurges in a row. idk if that would be optimal or not, but it would be possible. of course you might want to throw a starfall in right away, which double dips also. after that you’d likely be pumping our wraths and starsurges to extend celestial alignment as much as possible. maybe i’m wrong here, but it seems like the thing to do unless it was an aoe cleave situation where you’d be casting starfire. once celestial alignment eclipses are over you’d be casting 2 wrath or 2 starfires depending on which eclipse you wanted to re-enter.
Edit: I see in the alpha feedback forums that CA can’t be extended by starsurge anymore. Seems like a nerf, but they are saying it was going to cause balance issues.
terms:
Filler = Starfire:(targets >= 3, stacked) or Wrath
AP Dump = Starfall:(targets >= 2, no Starfall active) or Starsurge
the opener is:
- Starfire
- Moonfire
- Sunfire
- Class Ability (Covenant) - Non-damaging
- Celestial Alignment
- Class Ability (Covenant) - Damaging
- Fury of Elune / AP Dump
- AP Dump
- Full Moon / Filler
- Filler
rules:
- Apply Moonfire and Sunfire before entering Eclipse (expires >= 12 sec); Stellar Flare can be applied at any time while in pandemic range.
- Do not apply Moonfire or Sunfire while Eclipse is active.
- Solar Eclipse for single-target. Lunar Eclipse for AOE.
- If you are using Starfall, and if you cannot fit other Starfall AND Starsurge within that Eclipse, do not use Starfall a second time. (Basically, can you get 50 AP in 10 sec? --> Yes? --> Starsurge then Starfall; --> No? --> Do not Starfall, but you can Starsurge to clean up a priority target.)
Build 34972
This sounds ridiculous and stupid. Balance is fine the way it is. /sigh.
How is it fine if we currently use the same spell sequence in AoE as in Single target without any decision making (i.e. alternate Wrath and Starfire which are always empowered, dump AP with SS, refresh dots and never cast Starfall)? It´s just alternating spells without any decisions involved.
Though I think Eclipse still needs to provide a “wow” exciting moment, and that opener is currently not possible as Full Moon is not baseline. It does allow for more interesting decisions like holding eclipse for adds burn phase, or holding a solar for a single target burn phase. Also a 10 second eclipse does seem a reasonable time not too long or short, should we choose to not extend it to be ready for a future phase, though Starfall would be the only option to not extend it and not capping AP.
Compared to Shadowlands, we are fine now. It isn’t perfect, but it is better than having to cast single target spells to unlock the ability to do aoe spells.
Nor is Fury Elune. It’s in there as a way to denote when you should press it.
I expect that casting multiples of a certain spell that you don’t want to cast to empower the one you need will feel very bad.
I would have been bad when needing to cast 3 spells, it will be bad when needing to cast 2 spells and it yould still feel wrong even if you have to cast one wrong spell to power up the spells that you want. I think eclipses are a worst system, then empowerments but sadly blizzard seems to have already made up their mind to give them to us.
In my opinion, if we have to go with eclipses, they should be tied to a different trigger. i have two ideas how this could work.
First idea: make new/half/full moon baseline again and give it a buff like “the next astral generating spell will start a corresponding eclipse” ( the freed up talent could be the double full moon from the old legendary) This would give us more control for not only how to start an eclipse, but also to the pace, since you would have basically a three charge system. the cooldown would feel more organic and new moon would be an answer to our lack of burst.
Second Idea: make eclipse tied to your spenders. like after 3 spenders your next spell will start an eclipse, or after spending 100 astral power your next spell will start an eclipse. this again would give us a more organic way to start eclipses as part of our natural gameplay while giving us some sort of tactical planing since you can pool astral power and carry it over to the next pull and not waste some random internal cooldown.
random thoughts: perhaps eclipses should empower a certain number of spells instead of a fixed time, so you are somewhat flexible instead of the classic frost mage level of depth 1 button spamming for 10 seconds.
If out of combat for ~10 seconds, your next spell should always start an eclipse. As Druids we have very little up front damage and I feel ellipses will make this even worse.
Having to alternate eclipses is bad, let me trigger what I need for any giving situation, but if we can’t have 2 same eclipses in a row then there should be a third eclipse that empowers our spenders. so in a single target situation we could alternate between empowered wraths and surges.
what does the optimal talent set-up look like as of now?
Depends on legendary effects ^^
thats why i put as of now. since i know things can change. i was curious because he is bringing up when to use fury of elune and new moon, if talented. i was wondering if either of those talents are even better than shooting stars as of now. also, is stellar drift better than twin moons and is soul of the forest good now?
to be fair the rotation looks rigid and boring as hell.
User filler spell to use another filler for 10s+ …and dump AP to extend eclipse? while keeping moon/sun fire up
I just feel like we’ve come full circle, the whole argument was too many spells were empowered and this was to reduce empowered spells.
With 2 casts to enter eclipse we see basically the same empowered to unempowered ratio. So why change it at all at this point?
Just to make it known: No tuning pass has taken place yet.
I was finding success with Nature’s Balance for single-target and questing, Warrior of Elune for AOE in dungeons; but enjoyed the QOL from Nature’s Balance a lot.
Incarnation seems pretty good for burning bosses, and SOTF would be strong for sustained. I use SOTF.
Stellar Flare might be the best, but I prefer Twin Moons or Stellar Drift.
Shooting Stars isn’t great at this time. FOE for AOE, and Full Moon for Single-Target.
Because the issue with empowerments in BFA is that the source is Starsurge. Eclipse isn’t tied to Starsurge, allowing the Astral Power generation and spenders a lot of freedom for effects.
How is damage balance between builders and spenders on alpha compared to bfa?