"Casting 3 Starfires empowers Wrath for 10 sec. Casting 3 Wraths empowers Starfire for 10 sec. These Eclipses occur in alternation.
Summarizing some of the biggest points coming out of early feedback:
–General negative feeling on the RNG startup of Eclipse. A few people did notice that there was pretty strong bad-luck protection on the proc, but ultimately that didn’t seem to help in this case.
–The idea of the 30s ICD wasn’t worth all the confusion. It was intended to simply alternate Eclipses in long combats, so it’s clearer to straightforwardly do that.
An important detail of the change (the number of casts to start an Eclipse is now fixed at 3) is that the count is visible in the default UI–highlighting this since it won’t be obvious to people who have only seen datamining. This lets you know, among other things, when you’ve been out of combat long enough to “reset” and be able to start with either Eclipse again, so you don’t have to guess about that. It also makes the mechanics clearer, for example, that you can enter either Eclipse immediately after Celestial Alignment ends.
Another problem solved by no longer being random is that you’re not stuck in the middle of a “wrong” cast when Eclipse starts (Eclipse feels a bit longer when you play it in this version, for this reason). You can plan a buffed nuke or Starsurge crisply at the start of Eclipse, as well as allowing more advanced planning around DoT refreshes and movement.
Finally, it’s expected that there are better and worse Eclipse timings in a long encounter based on whether Wrath or Starfire is more valuable at given moments, and there’s some ability to manipulate it as you learn what’s coming. There hasn’t been a lot of opportunities for people to explore this yet, but Starsurge timing, DoT timing, Celestial Alignment, and choice of starting Eclipse are all ways to influence the cycle.
____________________________________________________________________________-
So it’s clear Blizzard are aware of the problems, but they aren’t helping the spec feel any less boring. I don’t think the Eclipse system works in the modern-day WoW, especially with Astral Power. Eclipses made more sense with the eclipse bar back in MoP and WoD. With astral power, this boring rotation will force us to NOT extend the eclipses in certain situations which means we have to refrain from pressing starsurge/starfall and instead overcapping on AP. This is already a major flaw since starsurge should be our biggest hitting ability, and not wanting to press it is straight up bad.
The whole rotation is counter-intuitive and feels bad to have to cast the opposite spell to what the situation requires. Casting single target spells in an AoE situations, in dungeons and raid trash the pack will be half-dead by the time you get round to whichever eclipse is best for AOE as melee exists.
Also since they’re adding old legendaries back, what happens if we get oneths intuition which felt like a fun legendary. It would force us to use the Starsurge/Starfall proc - meaning it would extend our current eclipse well what if we didn’t want too? I know this legendary might not return, but it’s something to consider. What happens with the starlord talent? (that’s always BIS) it forces us to starsurge at specific points to maintain the haste buff, but again, what if at the time we need to extend, that it messes with our eclipse?
I am failing to see the ability to choose which eclipse like they’re saying. The tooltip says “These Eclipses occur in alternation”-- how does this allow choice? If I finish a solar eclipse (because of the forced alternation) and then I need to do some single target, I won’t be able to because now I’m locked into lunar eclipse.
The rotation as it stands seems to be:
Cast X 3 times
Spam only Y for 16+ seconds
Spam only X for 16+ seconds
Press starsurge/starfall IF you want to extend it
Repeat
Seems more monotonous to me.
I honestly don’t welcome these changes. I don’t want limiting choice and control over my damage. This system is restricting, which is why they removed it in the first place, and a lot of people genuinely didn’t like the eclipse bar. I liked it at the time because I was new and bad, so I didn’t really care but as the years have gone on, I enjoyed Legion balance druid the most.
Legion/BFA Balance may have been simple, but at least it allowed us the choice as we’d rarely ever had before. Also, why are the moon spells still NOT baseline?
I would prefer the spec to be as it is now, with a massive talent overhaul, and for moons to be baseline. Streaking stars baseline would be cool too.
Sorry for the longgggggg post, but i’m really dreading this new eclipse system. I don’t want it to ruin my time in Shadowlands since everything else looks promising. Having fun with the spec is the most important thing to me alongside raiding, so I just want them to make it right.