Balance Druid - New Moon (Talent)

[Síndry-kazzak]

Suggestion for buffing New Moon Talent and making playstyle more interesting.

Eclipse empowerment works for Wrath and Starfire atm.
Expand its tooltip to New, Half, Full Moon, so they get buffed the same way Wrath and Starfire are.
In Solar eclipse Moons would get % damage increase buff.
In Lunar eclipse Moons would get % critical chance increase.
When both eclipses are active Moons would benefit from both buffs.

That would give Moons in one of the best case scenarios with 5 stacks from Starsurge empowerment 50% increased damage and 50% increased critical chance.

With so many nerfs that hit directly and indirectly Balance Druid, this thing would buff overall damage by a descent amount but would also increase the difficulty of playstyle, would bring some challange for single target rotation.

From mine point of view the biggest problem for balance druid in 9.0.x patches was not its damage done. They are in top 5 for sure, but bigger problem was how easy they were achieving this.
So you only had to press 1 (macro) button for burst once every 3 minutes and to hope for best cause it was random from good - great - broken. And this was doing 50% of overall damage.
Other then that it was enter eclipse press Starsurge 3 times continue with Wrath or Starfire and refresh dots from time to time.
Quite simple mechanic for single target.
The thing that is deciding how well you will perform is not how skilled you are it’s how lucky your burst will be, and that is problem.

Difference between fully skilled player that pulls best out of class and average player is small.
As a result you get class that can do insane damage if you get lucky, and does great damage even when luck is not so much by your side. As said you do 50% of your job with 1 button press.
Having class that performs well is not problem as long as only 10-20% population that master that class would perform well and others would perform average or bad.

This is also one of the things that talents should regulate, like having talent that is passive and that will do 95% of max output and then other talent that requires skill and can make 100% output if played properly but would do 80% of max output if played wrongly. This would setup 2 viable options where not so skilled players would perform better with “worse” talent and only top skilled players would perform better with “better” talent.

I understand that you don’t want to adjust game for only 10% best players cause majority is not so skilled and you want to make classes easier to play so more people would enjoy, but that could be changed with talents as explained. One for majority that would perform better for majority and would make them feel if they are doing enough, descent, good, and other for those that are masters in that class that would outshine majority in 90% of casses, because if not played properly, other, “weaker” talent that is easier to play would outperform “better” talent.

This change to Moons would not exactly bring this for balance druid, it wouldn’t be that challenging to put Moons inside rotation at optimal times (depending on what legendary player is using), but it would give small, descent amount of skill needed for top performances.
It would also make empowerment mechanic more relevant, since they are not so relevant now, the only reasons you are casting Starsurge on start of eclipse is Boat legendary crit buff and starlord haste buff, and empowerment mechanic is just something that happens passively and doesn’t impact overall performance by much. I mean if you had Boat crit buff on the end of eclipse you wouldn’t even care for empowerment mechanic you would cast Starsurges at the end of eclipse, that’s how irrelevant this mechanic is. It’s just something that happens and not something you build your playstyle and skill arround, it has 0 influence on playstyle atm.

Maybe this theory with talents that are better for majority of population is not a thing in reality. Maybe those are interesting approach only in theory.
Because people would use programs that are simulating and showing what option performs best and other people that write guides would explain and suggest the best option, so in the end majority would take “best” option eventhough they would perform better with other, easier option, talent

[Кортий-howling-fjord]

Loving the idea

[Tulguar-thrall]

But arent movement, cd timing, bis gear and class knowledge already good factors which determines your performance? I bet new players or “not so skilled” players don’t care much about that and already do 5% less dps than the others.

For HC it is almost irrelevant to minmax and I highly doubt that even if you only hit ca/convoke twice during a bossfight and completely mess up the roation that you even hit blue parses.

Also I can’t see how a playstyle where I’d have the need to play like an octopus, hitting tons of keys, waiting for perfect odds to cast spell a or b to squeeze 1% more dps contributes into more fun?

Naaaah, Balance is fine

[Síndry-kazzak]

Blue parses is irrelevant cause it compares you with other balance druids and not with all other classes.
If parse that shows how you did compared to all other classes existed, 90% of Balance parses would be purple or better, cause its simplicity.

Its not about how many keybinds you press, balance has not so small amount of binds, its about how much you need to think about your next move. And for balance druid this is pretty simple. Rotation is simple and there are almost no things that would bring some challenging thinking process about your next move that would distinct good from bad players. There are no situations or periods of times that would change your wrath/starfire spam for 10 sec and then 3 SS and again.

If you don’t count utility and defense spells which most people rarely use you have 6 binds to press in ST fight. One more keybinds all 3 moons in 1 bind wouldn’t make it that harder.

Balance is all but not fine atm. Best for every situation without the need to adjust your 123 spam. With few weakaura too simple and too OP.