So I can try to reason on it from a ST perspective, in my mind some of these ideas can translate over to an AoE situation. I haven’t tested them myself, so this would be all from how it feels to play and from what I’ve seen in my rotation. In general I feel that it usually comes down to the importance of more damage rather than increased AP generation.
So on ST, Shooting Stars is usually my #3 damaging ability after Starsurge and Wrath. Using the BoAT legendary, the increased Crit window lasts for nearly all of the Solstice window, so lots of incoming Shooting Stars that are all critting.
In addition, during your ST rotation using the standard traits (Starlord, Stellar Flare, Solstice) I end up with almost exactly 90 AP when entering an Eclipse, so every time I can cast 3 Starsurges during my BoAT window. I spend the rest of my time maintaining DoTs and using my fillers, get ~90 AP by my next Eclipse, and repeat.
Unless I’m running Soul of the Forest in AoE or I’m in CA/Incarn window, I will always only cast 3 Starsurges during my Eclipses. To be able to do 4 per window, I’ll need to hit a much higher haste breakpoint, and therefore lose out on other stats (such as Mastery and Vers which have high values due to our finishers, most people being Night Fae, and BoAT lego). So you’d have to give up lots of good stats for something that probably doesn’t end up being a higher pay off (4 Starsurges instead of 3).
Fury of Elune could be used to counteract that, giving you 40 AP every 1 minute, meaning during that Eclipse window you can use a 4th Starsurge. However, you’d need to be able to manipulate the cast in such a way that:
- You can still caste this extra SS inside the BoAT window
- You start a new Eclipse at a high enough AP level, but don’t overcap from FoE
You also lose out on the extra AP generated when entering an Eclipse. I usually start a new one at as close to 90 as possible, meaning that by losing Solstice there’s a good chance I won’t be able to do that anymore.
So using FoE in an attempt to occasionally get a 4th Starsurge in 1/4 of my Eclipses, I will probably no longer be guaranteed 3 Starsurges for every Eclipse.
Other thing I can think about would be that Balance already has a pretty strict ability priority on ST as it is already.
- Enter an Eclipse
- Cast Starsurge during BoAT window
- Maintain DoTs
- Cast fillets.
Solstice is a passive while FoE requires a GCD, and finding an optimal place in our rotation would probably be around step 3.5. In AoE our rotation is probably much more flexible, but the fact that it’s another GCD we need to be using probably has some ramifications.
Again, I have not tested this myself, especially in an AoE situation, but this is stuff I’ve observed from my own perspective in ST content. I have seen raider io leaderboards at very high levels which use FoE, more than likely because of the requirement for burst stacked AoE rather than any AP generation of the extra sustained damage from Solstice.
Just looking at raidbots, Solstice sims higher in both Patchwork and Dungeon Slice fights, so for me that’s enough of a reason to take it.
I can definitely look into my sims though or test it in dungeons to see how it feels or performs.