Balance Druid Changes

[Linxy]

Greetings Moonkins.

We noticed that Balance druid gameplay was seeing a trend towards sitting in Solar and trying not to leave it, especially in Multi-DoT situations. Not engaging with a decent chunk of your core rotation to stay in Solar Eclipse is not a playstyle that we nor the original developers had intended, so we released a change last week that was aimed at preventing mastery snapshotting pre-pull by resetting Eclipse when engaging a boss.

Having your Eclipse state reset on boss pull does a few things:

• It lets Balance druids start pulls on a relatively even playing field (even after wiping)
• It makes you less reluctant to participate in trash pulls instead of saving an Eclipse state, and
• It also doesn’t punish a player who was recently in Solar, and starts a boss with their bar pushing towards Lunar Eclipse

We acknowledge this change required breaking a few Moonkin eggs and understand this could be a damage reduction in many scenarios. As a result, we went looking for a lightweight change to bring back the DPS lost from not being able to start in a specific Eclipse state, and to attack the core problem that Moonkins were facing that made them want to play ‘Sunkin’ in the first place–it feels bad to leave Solar Eclipse.

To address this, we recently deployed a hotfix that changes Insect Swarm to now deal Spellstorm (Arcane/Nature) damage so it can now benefit from Lunar Eclipse. This means that when you end up in Lunar Eclipse, you will still be buffing your two core DoTs. We estimate this change to be about a 15% damage increase to Insect Swarm, which is typically a Balance Druid’s second most damaging ability on non-single target encounters. There may still be situations where staying in Solar Eclipse is ideal, and that’s totally fine, we just don’t think it’s healthy for that to be every situation and on every pull.

We recognize that the lack of communication when the first change went live was frustrating, but we wanted to get the initial change out quickly so that the gearing meta did not settle in a specific way for Balance Druids, only to have that change a few weeks later while we continued to iterate on this set of changes. We look forward to seeing your Lunar Eclipsed swarms in action and will continue to monitor druid performance after this change.

Thank you!

[Tauslet-gehennas]

Good change.

Since you care for the “gearing meta”… any word about the mastery snapshot for Metamorphosis on pre pull? Will we have to care to farm a secondary mastery set every phase?

@Linxy

We recognize that the lack of communication when the first change went live was frustrating

Oh, don’t worry EU players are more than used to be 2nd citizen regarding news, hotfixes, etc.

[Bigbazz-tarren-mill (Bigbazz)]

@Linxy

Greetings Moonkins.

We noticed that Balance druid gameplay was seeing a trend towards sitting in Solar and trying not to leave it, especially in Multi-DoT situations. Not engaging with a decent chunk of your core rotation to stay in Solar Eclipse is not a playstyle that we nor the original developers had intended, so we released a change last week that was aimed at preventing mastery snapshotting pre-pull by resetting Eclipse when engaging a boss.

Having your Eclipse state reset on boss pull does a few things:

• It lets Balance druids start pulls on a relatively even playing field (even after wiping)
• It makes you less reluctant to participate in trash pulls instead of saving an Eclipse state, and
• It also doesn’t punish a player who was recently in Solar, and starts a boss with their bar pushing towards Lunar Eclipse

We acknowledge this change required breaking a few Moonkin eggs and understand this could be a damage reduction in many scenarios. As a result, we went looking for a lightweight change to bring back the DPS lost from not being able to start in a specific Eclipse state, and to attack the core problem that Moonkins were facing that made them want to play ‘Sunkin’ in the first place–it feels bad to leave Solar Eclipse.

To address this, we recently deployed a hotfix that changes Insect Swarm to now deal Spellstorm (Arcane/Nature) damage so it can now benefit from Lunar Eclipse. This means that when you end up in Lunar Eclipse, you will still be buffing your two core DoTs. We estimate this change to be about a 15% damage increase to Insect Swarm, which is typically a Balance Druid’s second most damaging ability on non-single target encounters. There may still be situations where staying in Solar Eclipse is ideal, and that’s totally fine, we just don’t think it’s healthy for that to be every situation and on every pull.

We recognize that the lack of communication when the first change went live was frustrating, but we wanted to get the initial change out quickly so that the gearing meta did not settle in a specific way for Balance Druids, only to have that change a few weeks later while we continued to iterate on this set of changes. We look forward to seeing your Lunar Eclipsed swarms in action and will continue to monitor druid performance after this change.

Thank you!

Dear Blizzard, revert Fury Warrior to patch 4.2. Thanks.

[Kovalos-nethergarde-keep]

Hi Linxy!

Good changes for Balance druids. Can we expect any love for Holy Priests?

Currently, the class is suffering from mana issues compared to Disc Priests.

1. Disc Priests can proc rapture and get extra mana back if they have more than 100k mana.
2. Disc Priests can use PI on them to reduce the cost of PoH during heavy AoE dmg.
3. Disc Priests have evangelism to give them back 5% mana.
4. Disc Priests get +15% intellect.

Meanwhile Holy Priests only have an extra 30% mana regen during combat which is not enough. This means they often go oom very quickly.

Holy Priests are also disadvantaged when it comes to haste. Disc Priests can use PI and PWShield to give themselves extra haste.

A Disc Priest with Evangelism buff can do better PoH heals than a Holy Priest.

Finally, a Disc priest can dmg-heal which means they are preferred for the extra dmg they can pump.

Effectively this means that Holy Priests are actively not included in raids and double disc is preferred.

Potential solution:

1. Holy Priests should be incentivized to spec into Evangelism to help out with mana, throughput and haste issues.

When under any chakra state, using Evangelism gives additional haste and mana.

OR

2. Chakra: Sanctuary allows Surge of Light to proc from Circle of Healing or PoH and Serendipity works on two PoH or Greater heals.

Additionally, please make Lightwell a smart HoT heal. It should give its HoT automatically to lowest hp targets.

To add flavour: Under Chakra: Chastice, the dmg also causes aoe heal.

[Черница-flamegor]

Ferals still need omen of clarity proc from faerie fire symbol that was introduced in Wrath Classic.

[Konjunktur-firemaw]

I am assuming this is a PvE only change right?

Otherwise this is, in PvP, a huge buff to an already extremely powerful spec.

Not Classic at all.