Respectfully, none of that answers my question. Empowerments mattering is neither here nor there. Our damage matters. How does Eclipse Empowerment increase our damage? Why should I enjoy the greater complexity of Eclipse empowerment over what we have now?
I know I’m calling Eclipse empowerment more complicated, but I do mean it in the general sense. Point of fact, Eclipse empowerment isn’t truly complicated by any stretch of the imagination. But it is more complicated than our current system.
first question…did you ever play any of the variations of eclipse before WoD??
Sure did. While Balance hasn’t been my main spec throughout all the time I’ve played, I’ve been playing Balance since vanilla. Remember when starfire had a stun component? I detested the Eclipse mechanic in MoP. I’ve loved Balance in Legion and BFA.
i didn’t play until wrath. i was only asking because you asked how does eclipse increase damage, so i thought maybe you never played when eclipse was a thing. currently it reduces cast times and increases damage of wrath and increases aor damage of starfire
No. How does Eclipse empowerments increase our damage over BFA’s empowerment system? Mathematically, how does this change usher in increased damage output for the spec? Mechanically it’s slightly different, but not overly so. So what’s the mathematical benefit to it?
oh i see. you’re asking a question about tuning. i don’t think tuning has even really happened yet. for that question to be answered we will have to see where the spec is come 9.0 and hopefully the tuning of the spec puts us in a good spot
Live being “propped up” by streaking stars is of no consequence, thats just number tuning and can be tweaked at anytime. Im talking the enjoyment of the rotation itself. Streaking stars wont exist in shadowlands so therefore if live where to go into shadowlands has is we could choose which empowerment to cast. Is it more fun to choose which of your empowerments to cast in any given situation or is it more fun to be told what your gonna cast regardless of the situation?
We’re not really choosing right now, you have to be switching otherwise you run the risk of capping the opposing empowerment due to the wrath/sf proc and power of the moon. Streaking stars has been best in slot for all this expac and Vision for a lot of content, so we really have been alternating wrath/sf all expac. The new eclipse doesn´t get capped and has the potential for more interesting decisions. Right now the only decision is pooling resources for bursting with Starsurge, other than that we always have empowerments and both are the same.
I do agree the new eclipse needs another spell/proc to break the spam. I think having Moon spells baseline would fix that issue.
streaking stars wont exist in shadowlands my friend. level a new druid right now or play as if streaking stars didnt exist and you will see what the rotation would be like going forward in shadowlands, that freedom of choice is what im talking about.
Honestly at this point i think it might be better to just do away with empowerments and eclipses. Just spam wrath if its single target and starfire if there is any aoe or cleave at all lol. That would still be better than " you have to cast this spell now for 10+ seconds even if it doesnt necessarily fit the situation"
i haven’t gotten a chance to play this version so i’m only speaking from reading about it but…it seems there will be a lot of nuances to the class. whether or not to lead with celestial alignment in opener (i’m assuming yes). whether or not to extend a certain eclipse or avoid starsurge so you can end an eclipse to get to the other faster…and in this scenario if you want to end lunar to get back to solar how much astral power to pool and when to dump some into starfall so you don’t cap while also trying to save the right amount so you dump it into starsurges for the damage and to extend your preferred eclipse as long as possible. also with eclipse…when to delay a 3rd wrath/starfire cast so you can proc eclipse at the right moments. also…dot refreshing and starfall usage as far as extending dots during aoe phases.
in short, it seems that balance druid might be one of those specs that is easy to learn but very nuanced to master. i hope that the devs tune it so that the skill curve is reflected in the damage numbers also. it would feel terrible to have a spec that is difficult to master with little reward fore that mastery.
I don’t see this at all. There’s no nuance here. Changes are only about being able to micromange the eclipse state. And I still struggle to see how this is an improvement over the current state.
Because there is no thinking with the current spec, once you learn how Streaking Stars works and how the haste talent proc on Starsurge works that is IT. You you don’t have to think about mechanics or encounters you just hit the button that lights up.
With how eclipse is being thought out the base rotation will be quite easy to play while more experienced professional balance druids will actually be dictating their entire rotation on preparing things to happen and this adds a incredible amount of depth to the rotation.
Bfa balance you had Starsurge haste talent, streaking stars. Shadowlands it seems like youll have to prepare the Starsurge haste talent, eclipses, and starsurges for certain parts of the fight while also making sure you cast the correct thing while your doing your base rotation.
Having an easy to play spec that has a really high skill cap is always fun .
Sounds like you want a spec were you do not have to think at all, lucky for you the eclipse system is exactly that, just don’t expect to be beating people actually gaming the system.
This, in and of itself, is not a reason for changing anything.
No, quite the opposite. If changes are to be made, I want those changes to be made from good, sound reasoning. Changes should be beneficial, not cosmetic or driven by a desire to change for the sake of it. Again, I keep asking, someone show me mathmatically how this is an improvement over what we currently have.
Because you do not have 100% uptime on your empowerments and your starfire/solar wrath do different things. Therefore you actually need to prepare for things.
Now you just press whatever as long as its lit up its fine theres no prep outside maybe saving incarn/communion for a few seconds.
The full moon talent is boring. new moon and half moon are just a means to getting to full moon which has way too long of a cast time.
i’d like to see a talent that interacted with eclipse in a different way. like rework it to a talent you can call moon and sun. where eclipse charges a spell that becomes active when eclipse ends. lunar charges full moon and solar charges solar flare. full moon is the same as current and drops a moon on the target , solar flare causes an eruption of solar radiation to burn the target area for x damage over x seconds as long as the enemy stands in the affected area. the longer you are able to stay in the corresponding eclipse the more the ability charges
you keep asking for some mathematical proof as to how this is better. you want to know how will the dps of the spec be better but thats a tuning issue not a mechanics issue. the mechanics of the cspec can be made into…" spam wrath only" and if wrath does 120k per spell cast then mathematically it’s better than what we currently have dps wise. mechanically it is press 1 over and over again. so what you are asking doesn’t make sense as a question for the mechanics of the spec.
Final DPS numbers would certainly be based on tuning, sure. But to insinuate that we have to “pass the [change] in order to know what’s in it” is not true.
Look, I’m not a theory crafter. Perhaps some Balance theory crafter would look at my comments and shake his/her head at it because its so obvious. But it’s not obvious to me. Nothing anyone has said in this thread, or in the alpha forum speaks to anything other than cosmetic or potentially quality of life. And in my view, that is not something we should be making changes over.
Yes, we needed tweaks. In my view, we did not need another redesign.
The tweeks you would need to make balance function in the way it will function now in shadowlands would hardly be tweeks.
To get the same amount of prep work for the higher end plays you would need to decrease the amount of empowers you get considerably meaning starsurge would be costing maybe double the amount of astral power, as well as increasing our astral power to the point where we can get 3 of those starsurges off back to back.
Imagine just spamming fillers that are not empowered for 180 astral power THEN being able to dump it. This shows a small part of preparing for things, but this would be extremely boring as a builder/spender.
The eclipse system however is moving some of the power/spender requirement into a completely different system allowing the how balance druid build to be half builder/spender and half resource management.
This is why many of the higher end balance druids are really liking these changes because without it the skill floor and skill ceiling are the same. This change makes the skill floor basically the same but increases the skill ceiling by making the rotation far more fluid then it would otherwise be if you kept the same design of bfa and just tweeked it.
I dont necessarily think that the changes are intended to provide a mathematical benefit to balance druids. If they were set to buff balance druids that would be the case, but for the first patch of an expansion I don’t think they’re trying to make the spec any more or less “capable.” Instead I believe their goal is to make the gameplay of balance druid feel better or more interesting to play. That’s why no one can answer your question - because it’s not the right question to be asking.