The title qoutes a FACT from the Devs but they decided to make it a rain of fire again? WHYYY?
for the other changes: If our Mastery should buff Damage to Targets with moonfire then we need moonfire spread.
If we should exited about Stellar flare proccs shooting stars… then Stellar Flare must be more attractive. Maybe let us Use Syzygy more often then every 3 minutes.
I Hope sooo much for massive feedback from you guys because this changes that where postet should not go live.
We just simply asked to let it stack nothing more…
Ohh is it april already?!
too early to judge the other stuff, but if you touch my moving f**ing starfall imma freak out. MAKE IT A STACKABLE OPTION AS A TALENT?
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
This one give me hope, i just hope they realise how weak Starfire and Wrath is 
The previous design of Eclipse and Mastery: Total Eclipse created a situation where the power of the spec was dictated by Celestial Alignment, allowing for double dipping the mastery bonus. While this is fun, it takes away from the power and feel of the spec outside of cooldowns. With this new Mastery our goal is to further reinforce keeping your DoTs active while continuing to allow for Starsurge, Starfall, and Stellar flare to be able to gain extra benefit from Mastery even outside of cooldowns.
No touchy my Starfall, at very least make it a pvp option
Mindset overall seems good with the other changes
Lots of druid players gave damn good feedback. That something like this comes out is absolutely disappointing.
I agree with what have been wrote here.
I also agree with certain things blizzard wrote:
Eclipse: 1) There is a lack of control with the rotation that can feel bad in both single target and AoE. 2) Having to cast 2 unempowered Wraths or Starfires to enter an Eclipse combined with their weaker base power and Starfire’s long cast time is underwhelming.
We gave a cooldown version of Starfall a chance again for Shadowlands and we don’t feel it has played as well as we had hoped. Having a Starfall that moves with you is awesome and something we had hoped to keep, but for gameplay we feel it’s better to be able to choose to spend additional Astral Power for more Starfalls.
But what absolutely puzzles me is the way they try to fix these issues?!?! I mean seriously?
Its like: ‘we know eclipse suck. Lets keep it xD’ or ‘We know Starfall moving with you is AWESOME. Lets change it xD’
Feels like they constantly taking the best parts of moonkin away while keeping the garbage. Like they fear moonkin is too much fun.
I stopped playing moonkin because of SL eclipse. I will not return playing moonkin in DF.
I’m so tired of this company
Everytime they detect some kind of fun element - they remove it.
Who the hell asked for this Starfall change?!
Having it be a “rain of fire” effect will take away many of the problems it has caused though.
I do think with the big reworks on both feral and boomkins devs are brave …and its already looking much better. If they now follow up with their promise on more consistent updates and tuning …maybe some amazing version of Starfall (or any other ability for that amtter) might come at a later time.
Overall this is much better for all specs of druid…in my opinion ^^
I’m in doubt as well but I’ll judge after the updates are live on beta. let’s see
A large majority has wanted the stacking starfall to come back since early SL. The reason they are moving back to the old style of starfall is because simply making the current one stack is not an option, it never was.
It is the largest aoe spell in the game by far and insane for spread out aoe and that is one of the reasons why it was given a cooldown when talented into drift, not just the movement part. In addition it would be virtually impossible to tune properly for the different types of content we have.
One example would be Sylvanas mythic. A stackable aoe spell that covers most of a boss room would be insanely overpowered. On the other hand if they tuned it to not be overpowered in raids, it would be very underwhelming in dungeons.
A stackable spell of this magnitude simply cannot exist in the game without certain drawbacks. This is part of the reasoning as to why Blizzard has chosen to go back to the old starfall from legion and bfa. It is first and foremost a tuning issue.
Give it a chance before you shoot it down.
I get the frustration, but this is a situation where we can’t have it both ways. We can have medium sized bursty aoe, or a full sized aoe with little to no burst. I know which one I would choose.
Lots of us actually want this change, and if the massive size and “move with you” are the prices we have to pay to get our more bursty aoe back, then that is a price we are willing to pay. Just imagine us getting back to the legion style gameplay, where we actually did very good damage in dungeons AND raids.
On a last note… we are also getting some (possibly major) reworks to our talent tree in the next week or so, and I can’t wait to see what they have in mind.
Starfall is a unique spell, it is part of Balance druid’s identity and has been until it was changed in Legion (only to be changed back in SL).
Balance AoE can be good even with Starfall as a cd, in my opinion adding Hurricane (as a spell like Volley but without a CD) and Mushrooms might be the key to Balance druid AoE outside of Starfall.
A stackable targeted starfall is literally the same thing as mushrooms apart from the visual.
So what you’re actually suggesting is for them to revert boomie to the wrath version with a sprinkle of cata.
Certainly not my favorite iterations of boomie, but to each their own.
We’ll have to see what happens when the full scope of the changes are out.
I prefer a modern version of MoP balance druid.
A valid point, but honestly, why not just give us another AoE spender? I’d love to see Starfall with a cooldown as our big AoE spender, but then have something else that can be used as a rain of fire style AoE spender? Could honestly just bring back Hurricane in a reworked version to fit modern balance druid.
This way we will have the Starfall we all love (and even the Devs admit is the better version), but we avoid all the trouble of balancing it in a stackable version. Essentially bringing it closer to the WoTLK AoE version, where you pop Starfall as an AoE cooldown, but have Hurricane as the spam AoE (or, in modern WoW as the spam AoE spender).
this sounds like a way better solution.
I’m currently playing Wotlk pre patch and hurricane is amazing!
Each Hurricane damage deals a bit less than wrath, feels amazing and i love the animation&sound
I made a custom balance druid tree 2 weeks ago, in my opinion mushrooms and/or reworked hurricane + starfall CD is the way to go
i feel like stackable starfalls is super lazy and rushed and it only really satisfy the mythic+ players that want to be top of the meter and care about top 1% competetion among the 1%.
People dislike mushrooms but i don’t know why. It could be a lot of fun aspects to it, it Could function as:
There is already an animation for Astral storm(Glyphed Hurricane), so why not use it?!
But i would very very much like to have more nature spells, regular hurricane from Wotlk Starsurge animation from pre-legion.
Hope to see the new beta build soon.
I loved old Starfall for leveling in WoD and for pulling trash in ICC.
I dont see why having stackable Starfall that continues to move with you could not simply be a capstone talent point - Is that not exactly what the talent tree makes possible.
They could continue with havinge a placed startfall that you can cast multiple times, but have a capstone to make it stay on you character instead.
Edit.
I also want to add a suggestion that by no means is meant as a great idea, but to add a perspective that there is otherways to approach starfall. The suggestion is for a starfall that still follows your character
Focused Stars: Starfall gets a reduction in size for each active starfall. but is stackable ( this limits the ability for it to be abused on spread aoe)
Astral storm during MoP was Hurricane during Lunar Eclipse (deals arcane damage instead of nature to benefit from Eclipse), and then in WoD they changed it so you can glyph Starfall to deal nature damage and Hurricane to deal Arcane damage (swapping around your AoE abilities)
My ideas for balance (a tree I designed a few weeks ago, based on MoP eclipse) is to empower eclipse for 15 sec (eclipse lasts 15 sec, however you have a lot of talents interacting with Eclipse to make both it and Celestial Alignment better.
about AoE, Hurricane/Astral Storm should be the main “spaming ability” during Eclipse.
Astral Tempest
Call down a violent storm in the target area, causing Astral damage to enemies every 1 sec for 10 sec. The Druid must channel to maintain the spell.
Generates 10 Lunar or Solar energy, whichever is more beneficial to you, every 1sec.
(Channeled spell. Lasts 10sec)
improving talent: Targeted Storm: Increase the damage of Astral Tempest by 25%. Astral tempest no longer needs to be channeled but has a 10 sec cooldown.
Starfall becomes a CD with a choice between Starfall and Sunfall, both function similar to old versions of Starfall but have a slight difference.
Starfall/Sunfall
Calls down waves of falling stars/solar bolts upon enemies within 40 yds, dealing Arcane /Nature damage over 8 sec.
Triggering a Lunar/Solar Eclipse activates this spell, regardless of its cooldown
(1min cd)
I thought about making it so both deal Astral damage and just turn the eclipse trigger into the choice node but wasn’t sure.
- Lunar Shrapnel brought back as well
- Stellar’s Drift changed, Starfall and Sunfall deal 20% (40% rank 2) additional damage and allows you to cast while moving for 7sec (15 sec rank 2) Stellar’s Drift is always active during Celestial Alignment.
Mushrooms added back similar to their MoP form, taking Wild mushrooms grant you 3 spells:
Wild Mushroom:
Grow magical mushrooms with 5 health at the target location for 2 minutes. After 4 sec, the mushrooms will become invisible.
Only 3 mushrooms can be placed at one time.
Wild Mushroom: Detonate:
Detonates all of your Wild Mushrooms, dealing Nature damage to all nearby targets within 10 yards, and creating a Fungal Growth in each mushroom’s wake covering an area within 8 yards, slowing all enemy targets by 50%, and lasting 15 sec.
Wild Mushroom: Bloom:
Causes your Wild Mushroom to bloom, healing all allies within 10 yards.
Your Wild Mushroom: Detonate and Wild Mushroom: Bloom spells share a 10sec cooldown
Wild mushrooms will be the more focused. less spamy AoE spell, with some talents to improve it
Starsurge (in my opinion at least) should reward casting while standing still, so Power of Goldrinn has 20% increased chance for each 0.5 sec channeled (an empowered spell, with up to 2sec cast time.)
there’s a talent that makes it so each 1sec spent casting will cause you to deal 5% increased damage to the target for 15 sec OR hit an additional target.
there are a lot of other changes, like a proc that makes Starsurge act as if it was fully empowered and stuff.
that’s part of my take on Balance druid, idk if people will like it or not but these are some changes that can be done to make balance different (and at least in my opinion, better)