This xpac Moonkin mastery was changed from eclipse damage to nature/arcane spells doing % increased damage when the target is affected by Sunfire/Moonfire (SF/MF). A fine change to get our class away from massive burst windows with Celestial Alignment. The problem is we were not given a way to protect SF/MF during PvP. Healers spam dispel the DoTs now that they know how our mastery works and we spend the entire arena reapplying our DoTs or doing damage without our mastery. A very unrewarding playstyle.
A fix to this would be giving druids a way to protect their own dots by adding a dispel protection mechanic to Stellar Flare.
For example,
Dispel → summons shooting stars (work towards full moon)
Dispel → blinded for 2 seconds (it is a flare after all…)
Dispel → Fury of Elune summoned
Now one issue is the difficulty in casting Stellar Flare in PvP because if a moonkin is locked on Stellar Flare they are unable to cast nature or arcane spells.
A fix to this is to add Stellar Flare to Owlkin Adept so that Owlkin Frenzy will now reduce the cast time on Stellar Flare.
Stellar Flare would create an intricate risk/reward for each cast since it would protect your MF/SF and give you the Waning Twilight buff while still risking being locked out on both schools.
Furthering the discussion, the druid class is built backwards.
We should be rewarded for our casts, not our instants.
In other words, nerf starsurge/starfall and buff wrath/starfire.
Remove eclipse
Remove astral power
Make starsurge and starfall cost mana + reduce damage by 80%
Make starsurge empower wrath (single target) + buffs damage by 400, 1200, 2000% of current
Make starfall empower starfire (AOE) + buffs damage by 400, 1200, 2000% of current
Change full moon to be an “empowered” spell similar to an Evoker’s
Hold for 1 second → New Moon
Hold for 2 second → Half Moon
Hold for 3 second → Full Moon
The idea is to be rewarded for our casts and our instants be our fillers.
We have the best single cc in the game and several backups to protect our dots, which cost zero mana, have 45 yd range, don’t require facing the target, and both can multi apply to stacked enemies. This is not the problem
You raise a good point, applying to multiple enemies is another problem since that will proc our shooting stars on them and can summon a full moon on targets other than the kill target and can even break CC on the healer.
Certain situations would warrant not taking Twin Moons / Improved Sunfire
And to be clear, my original post was reflecting the problem with the mastery change. Not the problem with moonkins in general, there is a lot more to be said about the problems with moonkin than just DoT protection.
I’m always spamming sf/mf out because they only last 13 seconds.
Flare isn’t worth the 1.4s cast end potential lockout.
Make that like .5 or instant and I’ll gladly start spamming that out too.
I wish there’s a way they can give moonkins some added utility and higher consistent dmg for the lack of defense. Initial impact dmg from MF/SF could use a moderate buff as well, not that its lacking but it could open up ways to generate pressure from DoTs right off the bat.
I’m just here before that walking abortion that “could have won the AWC” and parries cheapshots regularly chimes in on his boomy he’s been playing seriously for less than two full seasons now
I was very disappointed at first too, they have made changes since the very first iteration of the 10.0.5 build. It still needs a few things swapped, hopeful that they will make the changes before patch drop.
I mean you could have stellar flare dispel protection cause an event horizon on the target. essentially vortex but shorter duration and only pulls once.
That said I hate stellar flare and wish theyd redesign it, add more talent nodes to augment it, or get rid of it. The spec has so much potential talent design wise its upsetting they just recycled so much and didnt really flesh things out.
Boomy damage seems fine to me. We have decent single/aoe and burst CDs with orbital/incarn up. Start burst bombs are useful if you know how to play with them, and our CC is top notch.
The defensives are lame.
Feral dps gets survival instincts dead middle of their tree.
We get nothing in our tree like this anywhere.
Switching into crappy version of MELEE bear form is not an acceptable defensive for us.
I feel like boomkin has been getting punished for their god like existence in WoD, having those instant roots and spammable no cd snare that every rogue hated, I get the feeling some dev got boogered by some boomkin then and they been suffering ever since
The point of the post is to address having to spam re apply moonfire and sunfire because the enemy team healer has 87 dispels 2 minutes into the game. I am thrilled you think moonkin damage is fine, but it does not have anything to do with this post.
Thanks for your input.
what a civilized and well thought out post.