That is a problem. Failure of execution costing you more than 10% of your dps is a problem. Ihave no idea what you mean about stacking up starfire to giant crits with procs, that is not how balance normally plays. Balance normally is tediously monotonous and has a flat line of dps outside celestial alignment as long as you stick to the rotation. It only deviates slightly during CA but that line will tank if you screw up the rotation in anyway, then its a slogg to get back to that flat line.
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This isn’t a counter-argument. Empowerments were specifically added to move damage out of starsurge and into other parts of the kit because triple-dumping starsurges was simply too strong. Starsurge “hitting like a truck” is not counter-evidence to empowerments moving power away from Starsurge, but simply observation of the phenomenon as to why they thought that was necessary in the first place.
You say my argument is invalid because it’s simply my opinion, then proceed to give… your opinion! If you want to have a discussion on a topic, I’m afraid you need to do a little bit better than “my opinion is better than yours”.
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In unrelated news, I have figured out why I was previously convinced that Empowerments existed alongside Eclipse - because they did. Empowerments were added to Starsurge in 6.0.1, and existed throughout WoD in conjunction with the pendulum style Eclipse. Dunno how I forgot that, but I guess in that version of Balance they were more of an add-in than a central mechanic.
It does however, provide additional evidence as to why empowerments are a bad & degenerate mechanic in the Legion & BfA format - they serve no other gameplay purpose other than ensuring Starsurge, Wrath, and Starfire are pushed in the “appropriate” ratios to each other. By comparison, empowerments in WoD have a dynamic interaction with Eclipse, as consuming them as high as possible in the eclipse meter (but prioritizing Starsurge where appropriate) was one of the key forms of skill expression & rotational optimization. That’s ultimately where the difference lies. Empowerments themselves are not sufficient from a gameplay or mechanic perspective to force a rotation. If your only answer as “why am I pushing Starfire over Wrath in this scenario?” is that you have an empowerment to spend, then it’s not a smooth or satisfying rotation - it’s literally just the inverse of the “maintenance buff” being cited as justification for deleting eclipse.
Which is where it gets so frustrating that our talent trees are so boring. Strongly divergent gameplay styles that people want make for great alternative talent builds within a tree. Enables multiple gameplay styles and meaningful choices in talents (y’know, the whole design goals for the system) and it’s right there. If people want no-eclipse empowerment boomie so bad, give it to them on a choice node with eclipse. They can play the boring nonsense and the rest of us can play something with a bit more engagement.
Hero talents are essentially sub-specs and Blizzard has been confirmed to be using AI for various things so I think this is more true than you maybe expected.
This is… not true? Sub-optimal dot refreshing is like <1% damage over the course of the fight, provided you aren’t simply letting the dot drop off for large chunks of time. Typically you handle movement in fights by pooling Astral power to enable Starsurge GCDs during movement, so the only time “desyncing” your eclipse timers from the boss fight matters is if you happen to drop out of eclipse immediately before movement is required, but even then there exists tools (ie. WoE) to deal with that.
And even if you DO majorly mess up, Pulsar should be triggering every 40 seconds or so, which force-resets your eclipse timers no matter where they are - even in the absence of Pulsar you still have CA doing the same, so the only way the “2-3 minute resync” you’re referencing occurs is if you majorly screw up your eclipse immediately after exiting CA.
It sounds like you have some fairly significant rotational issues in your gameplay, which I don’t think is appropriate to lay at the feed of the spec.
I don’t know how far you can expect to get with this opinion.
How much DPS loss is acceptable on failure of execution? Should the player facerolling their keyboard with no care to rotation be doing 75%+ of a flawlessly-executed DPS rotation? As I said previously, it sounds like you’ve got some serious rotational issues in your gameplay. Saying it’s a problem that playing the class badly gives worse results than playing it properly is an argument so ridiculous it’s difficult to even address properly.
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Engagement = being forced to cast two counter productive spells for any given situation in order to start dealing proper damage. Sure…
I’ll take WoD eclipse back any day. Balance was very fun in WoD. Give me those Treants back too.
You can use this exact statement to describe every classes rotation in the game. This is the precise goal for every mechanic lol.
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What you’ve missed here is I’m not advocating for the current form of eclipse. I’ve said elsewhere in the thread multiple times that it needs work, but that reverting to empowerments is the opposite of improvement.
If you want to be reductionist, sure. If you want to actually have a conversation about design principles you need to be a little more nuanced about it. There are other classes that have 1-dimensional reasons for pushing the buttons they do, but not as a regular and predictable consequence of their core and only class mechanic.
I feel like doing skillful things in a rotation adds a lot of depth especially the way it is now with the eclipse talent and natures grace.
It basically played like this for quite a few expansions all they did was add cleave to big star fires making it super strong.
We are probably the only class that our cd does almost nothing for out rotation. Also doing something every 15 seconds and being viable with a huge buffer increasing your dps by a heap is exactly what you want fora class.
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By failure of execution, I’m talking about being in a 10 minute boss fight and failing to reapply your dots on time once because a mechanic forces you to move out of range for 4 seconds, resulting in a 10% loss of potential damage over the course of the entire fight. It isn’t just the reapplication of the dots, its need to get back to the swing of ap and eclipse with proc balance.
The rotation for balance is so rigid that any failure of execution, for any reason creates a chain reaction within the rotation that ultimately results in massive dps losses for tiny screw ups.
I am ok with skill rewarding better damage overall, but the punishment for any failure, no matter how small, whether or not it was the players fault is far too large.
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If you min max something everything not maxed is a failure. I don’t really understand what your asking for? Are you asking for less skill involved or are you asking to be penalized less for messing up your rotation?
If a mechanic gives you troubles because of eclipse then o well it will give everyone else troubles as well, boomy is quite mobile atm and have the strongest 3-8 target cleave in the game by far if you play it well and understand your procs. Just play better and if someone brings up that your not pulling your weight then your probably in a world first raiding guild and you want exactly what is happening.
If you hate there isn’t any new animations well my friend having fury popping everywhere during aoe and having HUGE numbers pop on my star fires every 15 seconds is super fun for me.
Eclipse forces the rotation to be too rigid, thats ultimately the problem. We need something far more dynamic and flexible
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In its current state i dont disagree with you. Maybe something like having eclipse be shorter, but starsurge/starfall extend its duration could work, with some sort of mechanic to swap eclipses other than just not casting spenders. That way you have some interaction, instead having to play around a rigid 15 second cylce.
With the ability to choose which eclipse youre in i wouldnt mind seeing more of a split of AoE and ST abilities either. Being in the right eclipse at the right time should be important. But you cant base that on being the right eclipse 2 minutes ago and hoping to god it lines up with adds or whatever.
Theres a lot of stuff we really dont have control over which make the spec frustrating to play. I love it when a full moon proc drops on an add at 2% health.
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I really hope we’ll get an overhaul within the 1st few patches of the x-pac.