Is this really needed? I get you want to pidgeon hole resto druids into picking a single type of damage, and I get that, but it’s annoying that we now do less damage than before since, if we spec caster, our cat bleeds are worse, or vice versa with our magical dots.
Druid damage isn’t competitive at all with other specs in m+, raid, or pvp, so I’m not sure why we needed to get this heavy of a nerf. Maybe you could buff the Circle talents to 35% to help out?
EDIT: Also not getting the 6% haste when we swap to Cat/Bear/Moonkin is really annoying and takes a lot of the power/fun out of that talent. Please reconsider. Even though I gained a 10% spellpower buff from Moonkin this patch, with 6% less haste things feel worse somehow.
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That’s the exact point of the nerf. Forcing weaving between all damage types drastically raises the DPS skill ceiling for an already difficult healing class, particularly as they are lowering the DPS skill ceiling for specs such as Disc Priest and MW Monks which have been well received.
Of course in M+ you still are incentivized to use Moonfire even when Catweaving so arguably they didn’t nerf it enough.
I do not see why, after 10.2 when they made human form wrath (single target) or starfire (aoe) spam decent (which is also my ideal resto druid DPS rotation) they want me to use moonkin form again.
(Removal of complaint)
Blizzard most likely wants you to take Fluid Form for Owlweaving, which does all the Moonkin to-and-from automatically.
The DPS rotation for Owlweaving as Resto Druid isn’t that much more complicated than Resto Shaman or Holy Priest. You have 1-2 dots, an instant nuke with a cooldown, a ST spell, and a AoE spell. Not much.
I have an unrelated comment, that if wrath spam is not sufficiently strong, starsurge should also put you into owl form with fluid form talented and heart of the wild 45s duration should be added if used inside a call of the elder druid window. Fortunately, the call of the elder druid 15sec is already added to heart of the wild windows. Also, does dream of cenarius heal the most injured party/raid member or lowest hp party/raid member or something else or random?
Also, Lycara’s Teachings should allow you to select a secondary stat for each form. Thank you for telling me about this fluid form, I have overlooked this. I would like wrath and starfire to benefit from the moonkin form damage increase when the next global is an instant healing spell like lifebloom which takes me back to human form.
Unfortunately if they allowed this other druid specs can abuse this with cancel form and fluid form to basically have the buff permanently. which was why it was removed in the first place
Design wise, it’s basically not possible for Blizzard to nerf moonfire enough to never be worth pressing as a resto druid without redesigning how energy works or making the spec even more complicated to play for DPS. It’s the same reason why owlweaving was a thing for feral druid for several expansions; once you’re out of energy, pressing any ability is more damage than autoattacking. The only way for Blizzard to avoid this would be some combination of three things, all of which wouldn’t be great design-wise:
- Make energy unlimited for a resto druid in cat form. At that point, why even have a resource?
- Make autoattack damage over the course of two globals deal more than the damage moonfire deals. At that why even have moonfire?
- Add one or more mechanics that make sitting in cat form more damage on average than popping into caster to moonfire. This could take many different forms (autoattack can proc something, the damage of one or more abilities is higher when you’re in cat form than not, make energy only regen in cat form, etc.). But any of the solutions to this problem would make catweaving more complex and/or far less satisfying to play.
Depends on talents I guess. As a Keeper of the Grove Resto Druid, the “Treants of the Moon” hero talent causes treants to automatically cast Moonfire on offensive targets, which pretty much takes care of Moonfire uptime. That only leaves Sunfire uptime to maintain, which is much more forgiving since it’s an AoE DoT.
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I mean I suppose that’s also an option, but then it’s basically just passive damage tied to something else, which ties to my second bullet of why have moonfire at all.
My overarching point is that the reason why pressing moonfire or sunfire is optimal for a feral druid or catweaving non-feral druid is the fundamental way energy works. Once you’ve consumed all your energy, the only supplemental damage you can add is autoattack damage, and if that damage is lower than the damage from something else, the optimal play will be to fill the time with something else. While that fundamental reality can be changed, I’m not convinced such changes would be better for the game rather than to just accept that optimal play does involve throwing out moonfire when catweaving once you’ve exhausted your energy.