Druid Stuff

Eclipse: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cooldown for each type of Eclipse.

Item – Druid T8 Balance 2P Bonus – Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 7%. (Down from 15%)

Before you get the wrong idea, I believe a player should be compelled to upgrade to subsequent sets. I do, however, want to address Ghostcrawler’s response to someone complaining about the nerfs and discuss how moonkins are both overpowered and underpowered at the same time.

Our intent was not to nerf Balance druid dps with this change. Our intent was to make a macro or addon that was quickly becoming mandatory at competitive levels not mandatory. It would be one thing if cancelling Eclipse auras was a fun or interesting choice, but since everything was so automated, the only thing I can really imagine anyone getting upset about was the dps loss, which we plan on offsetting.

The extra component to our rotation was certainly maddening from a theoretical standpoint. I’m happy that I will be able to throw out my macro for this reason. To elaborate, starfire has a flight time. It’s a very short flight time, but a flight time nonetheless. A spell takes into consideration the buffs you have as they begin to take flight. Procs, however, happen only when a spell lands. If you are at he soft crit cap, starfire will crit 100% of the time while eclipsed. So by canceling eclipse while your last starfire that can receive the benefit of eclipse is in flight, you will automatically proc a wrath eclipse (because the starfire eclipse is no longer active, meaning it can proc).

This will have a rather substantial effect on our maximum DPS potential. But note that Ghostcrawler says Blizzard plans to offset the nerf. So I’m not going to complain. But to help them consider our issues, I want to go over the situation moonkins are in.

As I said earlier, moonkins are both overpowered and underpowered at a basic level. In terms of individual DPS in a raid that has every buff and debuff, we are currently middle-of-the road. But the irony is the only reason we are is because our 2PT8 is overpowered and we can make use of the macro. It is, essentially, what allows us to be viable in terms of individual DPS. But that’s getting nerfed.

Meanwhile, in terms of the buffs we bring, there’s really no one better. We bring a 5% crit aura, 13% spell damage (though we can’t apply it to multiple mobs like an unholy DK), and 3% hit. We also bring an extra innervate (and this is especially noteworthy because we shouldn’t need our own innervate at high levels of gear, unless we’re AoEing).

The buff and debuff strength is not so potent in 25-mans, because you will have the 13% from unholy DK’s on a lot of fights, the 3% from shadow priests, and elemental shamans are (currently; not really sure for 3.3) doing pretty decent DPS, so they are often there and provide the buffs we do. So we’re not that essential for 25-mans, and if our individual DPS drops low enough, we won’t be needed.

But in 10-mans, our debuff and buff capabilities shine like burning magnesium. Because you have limited raid slots and typically want good synergy, moonkins get heavy consideration. Instead of bringing an elemental shaman and a shadow priest to augment a lock, you can bring a moonkin, drop the shaman and shadow priest, allow the warlock to use a damaging curse, and then put in a caster that does a better job for the given fight than perhaps the shaman and priest (though there are some fights shadow priests and shamans shine on, so it’s not like this is always the case, but it happens with some frequency).

However, with the nerf, our personal DPS is going down. So in situations of buff and debuff redundancy, we risk falling out of consideration when the extra innervate is not needed (and we’re not the only class who has an active mana return; hi priests).

So what should be done? Well, for one, I personally think the inherent 60% chance to proc eclipse on a wrath needs to go. This will partially make up for the nerf, but not entirely. After that, I’m not sure. I think either the base bonus of eclipse needs to increase, or other talents need a boost.

They’re planning to address it already, so I’m not worried about it too much.

Back when I started playing WoW, there was a lot of theorycrafting for how players could overcome or even minimize the impact of random numbers on their gameplay, which totally makes sense. Over the years though that has sort of morphed into: all RNG is bad, and any mechanic that has an RNG element is also bad. We don’t think Balance is saddled with an over dependence on RNG more so than other specs, and if you feel that way, you might want to talk to some Fire mage friends.

I’ve played both in a raiding environment. There’s an issue with RNG that lies in floors and ceilings. If the ceiling is too good, you can get lucky and put out (for example) 30% more than your average DPSer can ever hope to produce. But the opposite is also true. There’s a chance on a given attempt you can do everything right and come in dead last on the meters if your floor is too low.

This is why people rail against RNG. Me? I don’t have a problem with it as long as the ceiling doesn’t go too high, and the floor doesn’t go too low. But when this is the case, RNG can be the source of massive cognitive trauma.

Blizzard has to look at the scalability of such RNG mechanics, also. If at the highest gear level the RNG-based mechanic becomes so good that someone produces 20% more DPS than everyone else on average, that’s a problem. You either have to put in some sort of check, or lower its strength. But if you lower its strength, that could detrimentally affect the concept at low levels of gear, which is also important. So this is why RNG is such a tricky component of the game.

At low levels of gear, eclipse was more frustrating than even hot streak was. And I think, honestly, to counter for the unlucky streaks (for both classes), they need to implement something like a failsafe, where if you don’t proc something within, say, 10 spells, it automatically procs. This would fix the performance problems of each spec at low-end levels of gear.

If they can do something like that, RNG is fine. But it’s a fine mathematical line to walk.

Likewise, we don’t think it was good for warlocks to just use Shadowbolt or mages to just use Fireball. Furthermore, we don’t think a 1,2,3,4 rotation is a whole lot better. If your class mechanics invite you to be able to macro everything you do, then you as a player aren’t really making decisions; you aren’t playing a character so much as babysitting a bot.

I don’t think anyone is going to argue against the concept of using more than one ability to DPS. But the issues with RNG are separate matters and need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, as discussed earlier.

We’re more sympathetic to the argument that it might provide too much of a dps increase relative to other talents, but at the same time given what I said above, we aren’t really trying to promote an Eclipse-less Balance spec.

I don’t think it’s a huge issue to make a single talent really powerful, as one talent can often be the thing that makes a spec viable. One could argue vengeance is just as important for balance druids, if not more important at times. Ironically, vengeance and eclipse are mutually beneficial. Personally, as my gear’s increased, I’ve warmed up to eclipse, as those unlucky streaks happen almost never. Admittedly, at low levels of gear, I simply cussed it out, because it seemed to never proc enough and I’d often get streaks of 15 wraths without a proc.

I personally think balance is fundamentally sound, but we could use some balancing (ha… ha… get it) and tweaks to fix our issues at the low-end gear level.

…

On a different note: Stay tuned for another entry in the coming week. I’ve got an announcement concerning me (and it will affect the blog and its future content). But Thanksgiving is distracting me from finishing that entry.