Solstice (Talent) now causes Shooting Stars to fall 200% more often (was 300%).* Okay but why though?
Stellar Drift (Talent) has been redesigned – Starfall damage increased by 25% and allows you to cast while moving while Starfall is active, but it has a 15 second cooldown.* Honestly fine with this since it means we only have to wait 5 seconds after the first Starfall ends.
So ultimately I have to ask, why the Solstice nerf? I am presuming this is all because of pvp reasons or people whining about Balance being to stronk, but honestly that is unreasonable.
You can easily program the game so that certain effects are reduced for PvP without having to negatively impact PvE, but barring that, nerfing a class that is already hard to make strong to begin with is not at all fair. From what I have learned Balance Druid is really gear dependent compared to most other classes so again…why nerf a class that is already hard to make strong in the first place?
People really need to stop complaining about Balance being op when it really isn’t cause when you have to get best in slot gear for the class to function amazingly (and I know this to be fact since I main Balance Druid) then a weak start and growing into a strong class makes things fair, unlike some classes that are strong out the gate and remain strong later on with little effort in comparison. So come on Blizzard, stop doing this to a class that already struggles
True! But since our overall damage will fall down quite a bit I expect people to minmax far less, so we will probably see some chimkens running full moon again
Most of the complaints have to do with the fact that it was incredibly random just deciding to nerf solstice of all things, when we got nerfed in multiple other areas as well. Like this just the most random and weird decision. It wasn’t some talent making headlines as being good, it literally just got nerfed because it was objectively better numbers wise than 2 of the terribly designed talents on its row (FoE and Moons).
Rather than buffing them up like they should have so they aren’t trash, instead they cut solstice by a third and then turned New moon from completely trash to 90% trash. Like it’s the most odd decision making.
I mean I was having a hard enough time anyways in casual open world content, now my Solstice and Stellar Drift are getting gibbed and all because people are whining that their classes suck, so instead of buffing those classes they have to nerf a class many people like yet again, I honestly feel like a jynx because anything I personally like gets nerfed sigh
Well man if they decide to nerf a spec then they gotta nerf something lol, just ignore the solstice nerf its tiny and not even worth thinking about. When warriors got their MS nerfed would you have called that extremely random? When Frost got its shatter combo nerf is that extremely random?
The only nerf worth being angry about is the stellar drift nerf, not BoAt or Solstice
Even in casual open world play, you need to stay in Eclipse. Our DPS is very weak outside of Eclipse windows.
A nerf is warranted and balance should still be playable. The biggest issue is Stellar Drift. Taking a DPS loss in exchange for moving while casting is a big hit to playstyle.
The current iteration of Stellar Drift on PTR offers 7 seconds of downtime of Starfall (moving while casting). Meaning you hardly have any. So you’re not trading a DPS loss for moving while casting. You’re trading a DPS loss for hardly any moving while casting.
On this shammy Spiritwalker’s Grace is 15 seconds of moving while casting every 2 minutes. 12.5% uptime. On a druid you’re complaining about bursts of 8 seconds of moving with a 7 second wait. That’s better than 50% uptime. And that’s on top of moving while casting Convoke, instant cast DoT refreshes, Starsurge, dash or wild charge, roar, plus flicker if you stay fae. Mobility on my druid is a non-issue. It’s not going to break the class to change move while cast to bursts of 8 seconds with a short CD.
The unreasonable part is the loss of continual uptime on AoE, and even with the damage buff from 15% to 25% it’s overall a loss because the spell loses the 2 sec duration increase and instead has a CD.
Honestly for single target scenarios I’d rather have a Spiritwalker’s Grace type of cooldown over having to cast Starfall for the effect. It’d likely be more balance if it functioned like that in AoE too.
I keep saying that imo the best way to change SD is to figure out what they want to nerf. If it’s the damage, adjust the % increase on Starfall to 5-10% instead of 15%. If it’s the movement, put a cap/duration on the movement buff…say the first 3-5 seconds of casting Starfall.
Nah. The 2 classes use them for different purposes. The real burst comes from starsurge and not wrath or starfire. Shamans don’t have a builder. They just want to fire off as many lava bursts as they can which already does more damage than our nukes, is faster casting than our nukes, and has a mechanic to make them instant cast. Most Shamans use Spiritwalker’s for the heals I imagine.
But like you said, the change to SD just doesn’t make sense and it would be nice if Blizzard explained what it is they’re trying to nerf with this change. If it’s PvE AE DPS, this is an incredibly silly way to do it. If it’s astral power generation, wouldn’t just the solstice change be enough? If it’s PvP, they really need to make wrath and starfire generate more astral power in exchange because this will have a lot of downstream problems for the class no one will see until live because no one is pvping on PTR.
I also question sometimes if players (and Blizzard) can distinguish between what is the fault of the Druid class, Convoke, and BoAT. Anyone ever run into a Balance druid that isn’t NF or isn’t using BoAT? They aren’t nearly the same level of power. It’s just the nearly 100% chance to crit on convoke from range wiping out whole teams that seems to be the problem.
But then again, I’m fairly new to druid so /shrug.
Celestial Alignment allows you to double dip on mastery. Starsurge and Starfall get double the bonus. So you’re already hitting incredibly strong. BoAT adds in the guaranteed Crit. Soulbind allows for like an extra 40% Mastery on use. Which again, CA allows for double dipping.
The whole set up is incredibly broken. Both PvE and PvP. The nerfs aren’t going to be “as bad” as everyone is making it out to be. Balance is still going to be extremely strong and competitive. It’s just being brought into range of others.
I’m interested in seeing how things pan out going forward. I’m waiting for Venthyr to eventually overtake Night Fae and convoke as the true power house. It’s already got some good potential. Just needs a good set yp
That’s why everyone hates borrowed power. The lines between the classes and the expansion-specific abilities get blurred and these enormous balance issues crop up. Convoke, while it’s great fun, was a bad design idea and should never have made it live.
