It is funny how the only Class I actually enjoyed in BFA from what I played was Balance rofl. Now they are changing it to the old convoluted system. Sigh… If only they changed Paladin to the WoTLK/Cata version then I would be happy as hell, but NO! They had to do it to the one Class that actually felt good after 10 years! WHY BLIZZARD! WHY CANT U DO ANYTHING RIGHT
1 Like
i like the eclipse system, but just make it to it starts on what ever ability you cast first. so the first starfire puts you into lunar, and vice-versa.
I still remember fondly when Starfire was our highest-damage single-target spell, especially on a critical strike. Blizzard nerfing the damage of Wrath (or Solar Wrath) and Starfire (or Lunar Strike) in order to put in borrowed power stuff makes me sad.
I’ll try it in pre-patch, but Balance is the only spec I play for druid. If Balance isn’t fun, then I won’t bother touching my druid in Shadowlands.
3 Likes
Blizzard should just give up on eclipse or bring back the original eclipse from early wrath. I would rather deal with RNG then this system.
2 Likes
Agreed.
They could do some of what they did to spriest. They make a few things baseline like stellar flare and full moon (both astral). Add talents that let stellar flare add the other two or a talent ability to apply all three instantly. Fury of elune could be a talent to replace stellar flare with an instant cast higher damage aoe “dot” as an unavoidable beam, and part of that talent causes ticks of moonfire and sunfire to reduce it’s one minute cooldown by .5 secs.
Moreover, full moon as astral power baseline with the same recharge and cooldown has also a baseline interaction with wrath and starfire reducing the cooldown of the charge meter by x number of seconds (many classes and specs have these interactions). So as you are building astral power still for starsurge and starfall, the biggest damage, you are also getting faster recharges on the heavier hitting full moon abilities to sprinkle in as AP builders.
A talent for this newly worked full moon could be that once full moon is cast and lands on it’s target, it also causes a wave of astral fragments to hit 1 sec later (like echoing shock). Or that your next starsurge or starfall after 3 secs is free (so not to be too bursty) and if you have the legendary that makes it free or reduced, this is consumed first, not that proc from full moon.
Then the eclipse cooldown could be a talent to help with any of these or could be our new base cooldown instead of alignment. Or baked in somehow 
I think people care more about a fun rotation than a cooldown anyway.
1 Like
For fun, I decided to Moonify the rotation of other specializations. My alt happens to be an Arcane Mage. If Arcane Mage had the Eclipe system, this is how it would play:
- Base damage of all abilities nerfed by 100% (You will get your damage back by doing the rotation correctly, maybe and only with enough Mastery)
- Arcane Charges can only be generated by Arcane Blast or clear-casted Arcane Missiles.
- Arcane Barrage now consumes 1 Arcane Charge/Anti-Charge and buffs the damage of Arcane Explosion and Arcane Blast by 5% per Charge, but only if you cast it during Charged Up or Exhaustion.
When you reach 4 Arcane Charges, you get a buff called “Charged Up” which increases the damage of your Arcane Explosion by 20% for 15 secs.
After “Charging up”, the Mage is exhausted and cannot generate any more Arcane Charges from Arcane Blast. During “Exhaustion”, the Mage can only cast Arcane Explosion to release leftover energy.
Each Arcane Explosion cast during “Exhaustion” generates an “Anti-Charge”. When you reach 4 Arcane Anti-Charges, you get a buff called “Charging Up” which increases the damage of your Arcane Blast by 20% for 15 secs. Charging up removes “Exhaustion” and allows Arcane Blast to once again generate Arcane Charges.
2 Likes
Thank you for moonifying. Blizz, please take note.
1 Like
This post summarizes why I feel the need to roll an alt. Balance druid is genuinely Terrib le.
1 Like
All complain about Eclipse rotation and here I am wishing and dreaming they return to Nature’s (green) cast, insect swarms, and add all sortS of nature related spells (like HoTs Lunara ones) with the ocasional moon spell. Sigh 
Its been proven over and over this sun&moon Eclipse rotation just doesn’t work.
5 Likes
1000000% agreed. I get the elune moonfire but the sun side makes no sense and seems hamfisted into this dumb eclipse mechanic. I’ve hated it since its first iteration. We already have fire and arcane mages, that’s not what a druid should be.
Bring back the mushrooms, green wrath and nature/plant spells. Just make moonfire function like sunfire and delete the sun stuff.
2 Likes
I also miss insect swarm, green wrath, and feeling like a nature caster instead of am astronomer.
I think the sun and moon theme is okay, I just miss the original version of the spec.
I was actually excited to use the swarm ability from necrolords, but then I realised how garbage our dots are.
1 Like
Yeah, this screams of a deeper issue of class identity issues after everything has been diluted, reimagined, and built-up / torn-down over borrowed powers over 16 years.
Guardian: we are no longer the high-hp tank, the dodge tank, or the self-heals tank. AOE tank? others do it better. ST tank? others do it better. Mitigation tank? others do it better… So what are we?
Feral: we are no longer the massive dots melee, we aren’t the massive finisher melee. AOE? not traditionally but its not terrible now. Spinning plates skill-cap class? Not so much anymore but hard to pick up… So what are we?
Balance: we are no longer a caster-healer-hybrid, we aren’t a nature priest, we aren’t an aoe dot class like a nature-based-lock because we spend half our time in single-target eclipse, we aren’t a single-target spam class because we spend half our time in AOE eclipse. So what are we?
Resto seems to be the only one with fully intact class fantasy and viability at the moment.
Blizzard should really think about what they want the first three roles to be and decide on that before they apply bandaids to boost unrelated and disparate abilities up just enough to be viable.
Just my opinion though.
2 Likes
RNG was literally the first iteration of Eclipse for Shadowlands. I played it. It was far worse than WOD’s system.
I posted an idea for the Eclipse system in this thread’s earlier state.
And I’ve revamped it some bit in another post. The post itself had more changes related to the talent tree itself, so this is just a part of it.
I feel like this will improve the system a lot.
1 Like
I really got into Balance in Legion because Full Moon was so darn fun to press and they changed to the empowerment system.
BFA went overboard giving too many empowerments and the only saving grace for me at all was Streaking Stars.
After they have continually updated this new iteration it still just feels awful to play.
- I don’t like just casting one spell over and over through both eclipses.
- The only one that even feels meaningful is the Wrath one, cause it actually does a bit more damage and hits almost as hard as Lunar Strike…
- Lunar Strike just feels incredibly weak. All the damage they’ve put into SS has gutted the rest of the spec. (Previous I was OK with SS hitting hard but I’ve changed my mind lol)
- SS has terrible interaction with the rest of the spec and should ALWAYS feel good to press.
- Dots feel almost useless to the rest of the rotation.
I don’t mind “simple”, but the spec just doesn’t seem finished at all.
I think one of the fundamental issues with creating a spec around 2 hard casted abilities that are also the center of the rotation is how to incorporate them both in a meaningful way. Which has lead to all these things they’ve tried over the years… But this is why the charge system felt best to me in making them feel like they needed to each be pressed but not necessary over and over again for more than a few casts.
If they want to keep this current system (which I’m sure will happen) then I hope they can keep iterating on it to make it feel better.
Here is just me dumping an idea:
NEW Starsurge -
Remove the Eclipse buffing of SS and have it give an Eclipse proc (and small chance to proc both).
NEW Passive - “Balance of Nature” -
Casting Solar Wrath or Lunar Strike reduces the cast time of the next cast of the other ability by 10% (stacks with Eclipse) and has a chance 10% chance to proc an Eclipse.
Updated Eclipse -
- Reduce the Eclipse window to 6 seconds.
- Grants 20% more damage and 20% more Astral Power Generation to affected school (So this would now include Sunfire/Moonfire) and gives LS/SW 10% decreased cast time.
Remove the DR on AP generation from SF/MF from Shooting Stars passive.
Starfall should buff dots (10-20%) and add 6 seconds to every dot in place when cast.
Moons baseline! (Pretty Please!)
AP generation for New Moon/Half Moon then Both eclipses when casting Full Moon.
Celestial Alignment should change to increasing all Astral Damage by 20% and reducing cast times by 20% on a 2 min CD.
TUNING-
I like to think of spells as a hierarchy ->
- Full Moon. This should hit for 2-3x a SS/Lunar Strike.
- Starsurge >= Lunar Strike = Half Moon. (Lunar Strike needs to do more damage. SS being Instant and proccing Eclipse will always make it worth pressing). Also I wouldn’t mind increasing the cast time of LS to 2.5 base which would help make it feel better when it hits even harder.
- Wrath = New Moon. With a chance to proc Eclipse this will still be worth pressing, but the priority should be casting Lunar Strike when possible (say for both Eclipses) over Wrath.
Thanks for reading my TED Talk.
3 Likes
This sounds pretty good to me.
Full moon needs to chunk again with how long the recharge is
5 Likes
It’s TRASH! TRASH! TRASH! …
(Imagine the Mechagon workshop sound after the first boss fight)
2 Likes