I have played balance for several expansions now, and the worst version of our mastery is the current. Requiring dots on all AoE targets before doing our full damage is just unnecessarily painful and places at a competitive disadvantage. It’s especially painful on packs of mobs that need to die quickly in raids or mythic plus.
After an entire expansion of this and despite several years of balance maining, it’s enough to drive me look at other classes to get away from the ramp. I would like to choose to place dots when I know the mobs will be up for the duration and not because I am forced to in order to access 100% of my full damage- unlike other specs that just smash from the start. We’re already ramping because of eclipse start. That should be enough.
PLEASE update it to something akin to +increased damage in eclipse or similar.
I don’t think changing it to that would be as good as you’d expect.
That’s essentially what our mastery was in Shadowlands: increase nature damage by X % in Solar Eclipse, increase arcane damage by X % in Lunar Eclipse. We were immensely strong while we had Celestial Alignment / Incarn going, but outside of double eclipses we were extremely weak. Boomy was pretty infamous for doing next to no damage outside in Incarn, at times being compared to healer levels of DPS. Our mastery is no longer tied to a 3min CD or an occasional roughly once a minute proc, our damage inside and outside cooldowns is much more balanced.
We also gain 2/3 of our mastery as a flat damage bonus with the other 1/3 coming from the DoTs being present. So at the very least we’re still gaining a majority of the damage increase when there you don’t have DoTs up, but still significantly less if you don’t.
We also had an issue for a while that our DoTs didn’t really do anything to interact with our spec. Sure it was more DPS to cast them if the mobs lived long enough and we occasionally got some AP from Shooting Stars, but if you didn’t cast your DoTs it wouldn’t have seemed like anything was any different than if you did. At least now with the mastery requiring our DoTs we have some kind of interaction with them where we actually have a compelling reason to cast them rather than “they’re kinda just there to exist”.
So overall I believe this version of mastery is probably the best we could get with how Moonkin currently plays. If we moved away from an Eclipse system and back to something like empowerments I could definitely see our mastery changing again. Yes we do have a weakness in the ramp up time required, but once we get to moderately difficult content Balance Druid is a very competitive choice for what it does.
Honestly, I think Balance would feel great if they did two things.
Mastery: Astral Invocation
Your Nature spells deal 5.0% increased damage and an additional 2.0% to targets affected by Moonfire.
Your Arcane spells deal 5.0% increased damage and an additional 2.0% to targets affected by Sunfire.
Eclipse
Casting 2 Starfire empowers Starfire for 15 sec.
Casting 2 Wrath empowers Wrath for 15 sec.
Now, you decide what you’re doing for 15 sec increments and are using the right spells to do that AND your dotting makes more sense.
AOE? Sunfire-SF-SF-Eclipse-Starfall, if mobs live long enough throw up moonfires too.
ST? Dots-Wrath-Wrath-Eclipse-Starsurge
The fact they added in Dreamstate is them admitting that casting the wrong spell to start your Eclipse just sucks rotationally.
It’s a thematic holdover from the OG concept of eclipse in mists.
In that eclipse, you cast wrath to build solar energy, and maxing out on solar energy triggered a lunar eclipse, which then empowered starfire (which consumed solar energy and generated lunar energy) which then went the other way, and you cycled between them. That thematic holdover of cast X to empower Y has carried through every iteration of eclipse (bar the WoD version where it cycled without your influence) since then.
Design wise they’ve pigeon-holed themselves into retaining this thematic because without it you become a 3-button spec. Apply dots, spam ONE button, dump AsP where appropriate - which I think is something most would agree we should avoid.
If we identify ramp-up as a significant issue that needs correcting (which I’m not sure it is - other classes suffer from the same) then I think more rapid ways to spread moonfire is a solution, rather than changing the triggering of eclipse or mastery. They’ve been tinkering with eclipse for a decade now and every problem they “solve” introduces another one. I think short of a major overhaul with a clear design direction eclipse is off the table for changes.
None of you have mentioned the most important part for non boomy players! gasp
Make Full Moon the pinacle mega monster ability and tons of people would play it just for that reason alone. Who doesn’t love dropping a Full Moon on people’s heads? /Thanos
It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is. Yes they balance differently for PvP and PvE but having full moon be a mega-nuke for PvE and not game-breaking oneshots-through-defensives in PvP would require tweaks that are large enough (and potentially to spells other than full moon itself) to go beyond what’s permissible by the design ethos.
I can’t really see how changing Eclipses to proc off the same ability (ie, Wrath → Solar) would be in any way a compelling gameplay mechanic.
The entire history of Eclipses has been two promote Balance casting both of their builders. Every other caster in the game only has one filler ability (minus Shaman, who has their own gameplay mechanics going on), so instead of it being an arbitrary “cast X in single target, cast Y in AoE, no exceptions” it tries to promote weaving both in in some way. This has been present since WotLK in some way or another (eclipses, pendulum, empowerments). Both Mage and Warlock have their own class mechanics going on that affect their rotation and adds decision making and variety. Balance doesn’t even have any procs like say Frost Mage that cause them to make in the moment decisions when one occurs.
If it gets changed there’s also the thought of “what would even be the point of eclipses anymore?”. I’d say on a patchwork boss you’re only ever spamming Wrath, whats really the difference if you’d be in or out of Solar Eclipse? Like 15% damage? You’d never run into a situation where you have to plan or think or engage in your rotation, and there’s no worry ever of entering the wrong eclipse unless you somehow misclick Starfire twice. At that point you may as well remove Eclipses all together and bake in the damage bonus as needed.
As I see it at least, getting into Eclipses is sorta akin to not overcapping your AP / resources. You can’t really fix overcapping your resources besides just getting better and becoming aware of it. Same with Eclipses, it’s a skill issue from my opinion of not paying attention. Even enabling the in-combat resource bar (the health and AP bars under your character model in combat) has Eclipse duration tracking built in showing how much longer you have in an eclipse, letting the information be right there in the middle of the screen for you automatically.
As it stands, you’re proccing it from two builders to swap to the OTHER builder, but using a talent that all balance druids will now take to make them as absolutely unintrusive as possible so you spend as much of your time doing exactly the “1 builder and spender rotation” you think isn’t fun as possible.
They are giving you a talent to make it as absolutely close to what I’m suggesting as possible without just biting the bullet and doing it.
I think having to pick what eclipse you’re in for the next 15sec is a better barrier to your dps than having to throw two really fast starfires to be able to go back to your “boring” rotation.
I’d rather they take the starfires away (from the ST rotation), and give actual procs and things to respond to rather than just boring maintenance casts.
Huh, yeah I hadn’t realized how counter to the way the spec apparently is supposed to work with the eclipse system Chosen of Elune really is. If their idea is that half (I assume they design hero talents for 50/50 usage) of the people playing the spec just get rid of the mechanic, it’s not really core to the spec anymore.
It is fun and Elune’s will likely be the better hero talent tree because of it. Just wish they’d make astral separate from arcane and nature so we don’t get interrupted on everything in pvp.
