Good info in this thread but I’d like to point out, as a pvper that mains balance this xpac, were not super bad. The BS nerf reduction is odd but not nearly as bad as feral losing survival instincts and gaining BS. Balance druids are very tanky. I’m always top dmg in arenas, hit over 2.1k easily in every season and a boomy won blizzcon S1. It may not be as easy to do well with as say, a destro, but we’re not useless.
What I do hope is that managing this in pvp isn’t… horrible. I’ve played at around 2500mmr and if I need to try and set up eclipse things are certain moments that’s fine but pvp isn’t a raid. I don’t know when an add heavy spot is coming or this and that. We need control otherwise I could see this being iffy. Just my 2c
Currently CA causes both Eclipses to be active, and Astral damage is double-dipping on those buffs. (This makes Mastery essential for burst damage.)
Wrath generates 6 Astral Power, which is slightly higher AP/s than Starfire.
Moonfire and Sunfire generate 2 Astral Power per cast.
I believe Astral damage double-dipping on Eclipse during CA/INC will be changed.
Our AP generation during the start of an AOE phase might be a huge sore point. Pooling AP for Starfall isn’t a big deal, but the shear number of Moonfire casts might cause the flow of combat to feel too slow.
Starsurge cost being reduced makes me wonder if other talents/sources of Astral Power will be nerfed slightly.
Stellar Drift is god-tier.
Balance Druid has a lot of AOE control in their toolkit. I don’t believe the Talent Rows will shuffling around very much, though I suspect more changes to Talents are coming down the pipeline.
yeah i’m curious to see your analysis as things get moving. i know you’ve been doing this a long time and know what you’re talking about
another thing i noticed, and obviously it requires testing, but with CA and Incarn ability to activate both eclipses…will starsurge extend both eclipses everytime its cast? if so does the game become how long can you manage both eclipses being active especially if starsurge doubledips on the damage bonus
Bring back the Eclipse mechanism and that should finally finish it for my druid.
It was so bad that I abandoned my druid after it being my main for so long. Just…just…un-acceptable!
This is just more lazy and unimaginative design change just for the sake of change. Boomkin is at the best place it has been for a few expansions. This reversion is just fail.
That was one thing they were going to focus on for Eclipse. Eclipse itself was pretty central to Balance Druid, and they are going with the RNG model, but they want it to feel more deterministic. They have included Bad Luck Protection. We don’t know the formula being used, but there is BLP.
Current sims show that a Base Proc Rate of 25%, with no BLP, it is like a 7% chance to see a drought from 10+ casts, which ~70% of procs occurring at 4 casts or sooner.
Those sims are just simple Python scripts checking against a random roll.
Once I start testing, I’ll answer. I’m making a Shadowlands AP Pro Bar atm.
I’ve played through all versions of balance and if they go back to eclipse procs I would probably be happy. The current builder/spender system is so boring and generic. I would rather have a proc to react to that can lead to interesting choices and opportunity costs rather than a super deterministic system.
Though, I would suffer through any terrible design if they made wrath green again. Please just give me a glyph…
CA – SS extends CA/Eclipse duration.
INC – SS does not extend INC/Eclipse duration.
With proper setup, I’m able to get 6 Starsurges. I’m not adding in fancy talent builds to this. But I could probably get 8 Starsurges within a CA window.
Seems you just want to ca during a solar eclipse and pop quite a few starsurges into it. Also tettles said that the icd for eclipses starts as it procs, so at some point we should see enough haste to keep a very high uptime on single eclipses.
I remember it was good for Spicy CHicken cleave in Cata, and back then boomkins were pretty crazy in 5v5, but that’s about it… I still don’t think people were like, “OH MAN let me roll a boomkin to get into 3v3!”
It’s very basic, but it shows a lot of the basic information, such as AP, DOT timers, and Eclipse timers. Includes a “Filler Handholder” that shows you the icon of which filler you should be casting.
I cant respond on that forum but if you look here:
scroll down to druid and you can see where they say eclipse has a 30 second cooldown
also on another note, any chance you’ll be posting some videos of your gameplay/testing? does incarnation still replace celestial alignment? also, with soul of the forest extending eclipse and further lowering cast times, duration is it a better talent than incarnation on that row?
Oh, I get that part. But sometimes you simply forget what you should be casting. I have no idea when that 30sec ICD is up. I made a WA that handles it for me, in case I forget – usually after a quick pull.
I’ll probably be streaming in a bit. VODs are VODs.
INC replaces CA.
Damage and Talents aren’t tuned yet, and Balance is kinda bad at single-target based on my testing. But we have bonkers AOE potential with Starfall + FOE + CA. I was doing ~4k DPS in the open dungeon.
Don’t worry about tuning yet, that’ll be down the road, probably not for another 2 months.
Wrath: I really liked boomkin played it a bunch the entire expac it was my fav playstyle personally, lack of control and unpredictability of procs kept me focused
Cata: was fine playing ping pong
Mop: didn’t play enough
WoD: I didn’t like the automatic cycle and played gaurdian
Im actually looking at dusting off the boomy for shadowlands maybe in nostalgia but I’m really looking forward to it.
well guys and gals, seems like a lot of us will be hanging up the boomkin hat for the next 2 years if they bring back that god-awful eclipse pendulum system…and it’s looking like that might be the plan.
it’s kinda sad when you see most everyone else cheering about their class changes.
eh, we always have the old adage: “it’s only alpha.” -_-
Looking at both DPS specs I think I am going to be stuck as Guardian (who also didn’t do particularly well out of these changes, but is the lesser of 3 evils).
It really feels like they are trying to bury the class this expansion. The druid changes are bad and they should feel feel bad. Here is hoping that they at least make good on the promise of easier alts, otherwise I will probably just pack it in totally.
