Feedback: Elune's Chosen in The War Within

Classes Druid
101

I added more to my original post, clarifying some existing details and providing more thoughts on various talking points, such as the few problematic talents in the Elune’s Chosen tree and the major class- and spec-wide issues Balance faces, including survivability and ramp-up time.

With the potential Moonfire has in this tree, dealing significantly more damage from various Arcane bonuses and increasing its Astral Power generation, it’s very possible they intend for Moonfire to be our instant filler during periods of high movement.

Otherwise, if they really want us sitting in Lunar Eclipse (given the theme and aesthetic of the tree) and casting Starfire as our primary filler, they could at least address its lengthy cast by doing something like this:

Plus, adding an effect to this talent that reduces its cast time makes it a more competitive option in that choice node with Stellar Command.

Unfortunately, I don’t see a world where Stellar Drift makes a return even in the form of a kiss/curse. At best, if it were to return, it would probably read like one of the following:

Stellar Drift

Starfall allows you to cast while moving while it is active, but reduces all damage you deal while moving by x%.

Stellar Drift

Starfall allows you to cast while moving while it is active, but reduces the damage it deals by x%.

No downtime here, but at the cost of a moderate amount damage (as you suggested).

It could, however, work as a utility choice node with the other option being mobility, such as Displacer Beast or significantly reducing the cooldown of an existing movement speed ability. I imagine they would need to have a Guardian-equivalent effect, though.

102

“The Warrior class tree will receive a significant re-arrangement in The War Within, and we are pleased to confirm that it is possible and easy to take Storm Bolt and Shockwave at once. We’d also like to add that we are positioning Shockwave primarily as a utility ability, so the bonus damage passive talent will be be removed.”

Surely this means the Druid and the Guardian tree will receive a “significant re-arrangement” too, right?

Right?

:upside_down_face:

4 Likes
103

The Druid Class Tree is objectively the worst by just about any metric you can think of.

Not sure why they’re only focused on soothing all these Warriors about Shockwave, which really doesn’t seem that onerous to get to—especially if you’ve dealt with the Druid Class Tree all expansion.

I just don’t understand why we can’t get this kind of communication.

2 Likes
104

I’d say they’ve got to eventually finish the “good” class trees and work on us, but Warrior was not in need of any fixing given how incredibly good it is so it certainly seems like we’re in for another expansion where we’re just terrible. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
105

As usual.

The only constant in this game you can have is that warrior/rogue/mage/warlock will NEVER be terrible. Being terrible is the specific niche of hybrids like shaman/druid/paladin/monk.

106

Well…not sure I’d get my hopes up, druid talents has been in beta for almost 2 years now.

107

I like the idea of a moon bear, not going to lie. My favorite skin is the Glowing Blue bear skin you get from that Legion power quest line.
It does feel like a missed opportunity though. If I’m elunes chosen, why am I not doing constant AOE arcane damage to enemies. It seems like something Elune would hook her chosen up with.

108

But you have Lunar Beam, Fury of Elune and Arcane Thrash for AoE, then Moonfire for multi-dotting. What did they leave out, or what could be added, that currently makes it a missed opportunity?

109

The bear skin is Ursocs skin. Give the bears some sort of aoe aura. If you’ve ever been close to a wild bear. Even the small ones can mess you up. Theres an aura of strength there. An Elune bear should have some sort of arcane aura.

110

Could turn bramble dmg into an aura that do arcane dmg every sec instead of everytime u beeing hit

1 Like
111

So my off the cuff answer was “Make Raze fire off a Starfall”, but I sat and thought a bit about this.

For reference, here are the 2 trees I would be looking at:

NoCarn Arcane Moonbear build

Incarn Aracane Thrash spammer build

In the NoCarn build, you are basically trying to keep Mangle and Thrash on CD, and fill in empty GCDs with Raze/Maul and Moonfire. Moonless Night works well with Elune’s Favored, making Mangle/Raze have basically 8% leech with moonfires out. Thrash would have a ton of leech.

Rotationally, this spec feels fine, it seems like it would work very well. The biggest issue with this spec is one I think is similar amongst most bear specs, in that there are talents that are simply NEVER used. Pulverize is just not that useful. Thrashing Claws and Scintillating Moonlight are both just too expensive for the point investment. Scintillating Moonlight ESPECIALLY, since a DR based on Moonfire should 100% be something a moonbear takes, but it is just not enough for a 2pt investment in the location its at in the tree.

The other spec, the Incarn Arcane Thrasher, plays in a quicker, Mangle/Thrash/spam Ironfur style. You get a ton of leech from Thrash and can spam it to keep up Incarn as often as possible. The issue is that you don’t have enough pts in tier 3 to get Lunar Beam, Incarn CDR, Elune’s Favored, Ursoc’s Fury, AND RAZE. You can’t pick up Raze with these talents, which means that in AOE, your tier 2 talents are wasted on Maul.

Basically the hero talents are great and I’m totally happy with these, but the spec tree and the general tree need ALOT of work to make sure that these hero talents don’t make talent builds not work or leave our trees full of talents we CANNOT take or talents we have to take that do NOTHING for us.

1 Like
112

I saw this too when I was looking at the tree earlier today. I still can’t believe they split incarn into 5 separate points and that 2 of them are in the capstones. They really need to merge these berserk talents and pull incarn up out of the capstones, they can leave the CDR down there. It’s too central to the spec to be relegated to capstone level of cost; wings, niuzao, and DRW are outside the capstones with Avatar, Demonic, and the meta CDR are on the class trees.

I’m also surprised that cycle of life and death even exists; this should just be how the spells work why does it need a talent point.

It’s a great idea to try and merge the two play styles some by making thrash arcane damage but they really need to deal with the horrendous trees (the class tree also sucks) to actually make it work.

1 Like
113

This is from a PvP perspective: I would love an option to focus on Solar Eclipse and have also always wanted an absorption shield for Boomy - Celestial Bulwark. Or, as suggested above, at least doubling down on making us more tanky or punishing in Moonkin Form passively. Damage or CC can be tuned down to compensate.

114

About Glistening Fur:

Instead of adding a flat baseline magic resist of 3% (which is still pretty low), please rather add an active magic damage mitigation skill (~30…40%) to the guardian toolkit.

We had one in the beginning of Legion, but it was removed for no good reason.

115

Glistening Fur is really good, and we are not getting Mark of Ursol back.

Bear’s biggest threat to our survival is magic damage. Having 3% more free magic DR, with 6% for arcane damage (basically flavor), is right on par with other hero talents. Warriors get a 1.5% general DR, when they have a very similar problem to us as far as magic damage being rough for them.

We have an incredibly low DR button in Barkskin, that basically every bear has on approx 30sec CD, which can go up to 30% all DR if you spec for it, and the option of 2 shield walls.

We don’t actually NEED more skills to deal with magic, or really more talents to deal with magic. The only thing we really need is our talent trees better laid out so that we can take the talents offered and feel good about it.

Just as an example:

With that, we have

6% passive DR
9% Versatility
30% DR button for 14sec on a 32sec CD
20% flat DR from having thrash and moonfire on a target
15% flat DR commonly up from maul/raze
lots of other CDs to throw down when barkskin isn’t up

Now, that tree is horrible, but it shows what we have as a possibility. If the tree was designed better where we could actually pick up more of whats in it and actually use it, we’d be very powerful.

The issue is the tree(s), always has been.

116

Updated my original post to address some concerns in greater detail.

One important thing to note:

Talents that entire trees are based around should be more easily accessible, if not automatically granted without the need to allocate a talent point. We should NOT be required to take capstone nodes to make Elune’s Chosen work.

I revised how Lunar Insight should work and provided more feedback:

Lunar Insight

Moonfire deals 10% additional damage, and its periodic effect is automatically applied to enemies the first time they take damage from Full Moon, Lunar Beam, or Fury of Elune.

  • Designed specifically with high target encounters in mind to resolve ramp-up issues in AoE.
  • Both the rotational abilities and their respective procs (Orbital Strike, The Light of Elune, etc) can apply its periodic effect.
  • Limiting the application frequency of Moonfire to the first instance of damage keeps the power level of this talent in check, and ensures other Moonfire “uptime” talents, such as Aetherial Kindling and Galactic Guardian, remain relevant.

And in instances where Moonfire can’t be passively reapplied or extended by the above mentioned talents, we can always hard cast it when and where needed, such as in single target encounters (which is fine).

I also clarified my thoughts and explanations on Lunar Amplification and why it should change:

Lunar Amplification

Each active Moonfire increases the damage of your Arcane damaging abilities by 3%, stacking up to 3 times.

Rework this talent without any weird caveats or conditions, allowing us to focus more on dealing Arcane damage instead of Nature or Physical damage. Why should we need to worry about casting multiple Wraths or Sunfires in an Arcane-centric tree?

  • This resolves the problematic implications of using Solar-based abilities in a Lunar-based spec, while still functioning similar to the original concept.
  • Moonfire is a prominent ability in Elune’s Chosen. This idea continues to build on that.
2 Likes
117

Honestly in my opinion they need to change:

(Glistening fur) the passive DR buffs into a stackable magic DR buff per iron fur stack. 2% overall magic damage DR per stack.

(Lunar calling) instead of arcane damage swipe to make incapacitating roar give you a buff so you can cast an empowered starfall for free in bear form for up to 10 seconds for free and instantly.

(Elune’s grace change to Elune’s Light) for bears should just make lunar beam silence enemies and give a 10% DR buff to all teammates close to the beam and an enemy DR loss of 10%.

(Astral insight: incarnation change to Astral Insight and remove the incarn buff its kind of a joke.) for moonkins and bears should make convoke baseline… on top of only allowing arcane abilities, healing abilities and iron fur for bears. heavily preferring arcane damaging abilities. (Yes including lunar beam, moonfire and starfalls… with the ability to proc their own fury of Elune’s procs)

To me that would fix the tree.

118

Holy crap dude. How about moonfire has 100% chance to call down a full moon on your target too?

The tree is fine. If we could have a tree this good for each spec I’d be thrilled.

119

Updated the Additional Talent Ideas section with one new and one revised talent idea.

NEW IDEA

By the Light of the Moon

Moonfire heals you for 10% of damage dealt.

Although this concept isn’t entirely new, it brings a highly desired effect to our kit.

  • This will help with survivability and provide us with some much needed passive healing (to make up for the poor active healing Regrowth does).
  • Additional survivability or damage effects can be added to this talent, or this effect can be added to an existing talent (such as Lunar Insight, if the AoE Moonfire concept is trashed).

REVISED IDEA

Power of the Moon

Balance
Minor Moon pierces nearby enemies and impales them with lunar shrapnel. When the target dies or takes damage from Starfire, the lunar shrapnel explodes dealing Astral damage to nearby enemies.

Guardian
Lunar Beam now follows you, and periodic damage dealt by your Moonfire has a chance to summon a Lunar Beam at 20% effectiveness while Lunar Beam is on cooldown.

Both Specializations
The flash of energy now also occurs when Fury of Elune is cast.

Although the primary talents in this tree are fine as-is, I thought this would be an interesting effect to consider.

  • Balance is lacking in burst damage due to its significant ramp-up time. These effects help to address this issue.
  • It would be nice to see Minor Moon do a little more than just generate extra AP and deal a bit of damage. I hope, by default, they deal AoE damage.
  • Lunar Beam quality of life effect added, allowing it to follow the player.
2 Likes
120

man that lunar beam idea would be cracked. you could basically keep up a lunar beam at all times if you played it right. easily top damage of the spec.

1 Like