Dragonflight Moonkin talents feedback&thoughts

Classes Druid
1

Hello again! I want to start by saying Good freakin job with Dragonflight, really stoked to see more!

My History

The whole talent philosphy and design as a whole is as perfect as i could have wanted it to be. So good job on that :ok_hand: :smiley: :+1:

Alright, i have mained and loved moonkin since Cataclysm been top tier player in MoP&WoD, but also a lot of casual moments afterwards.

Feedback

I feel like there is too many simple talents that only increases damage or duration.

Wrath, Starfire and Starsurge damage Output & Balance

But i think the core of the issue is Damage output by Wrath, Starfire and Starsurge. Starsurge is doing FAR too much damage compared to Wrath and Starfire.

Talents such as Warrior of Elune, Stellar Inspiration, Umbral Intensity and Eclipses in general would be a lot more exciting if 40 to 50% of our damage didin’t come from Starsurge. Wrath and Starfire does not deal enough damage for these talents to feel impactful.

Can we please have a Insect/Mushroom build/row? <3
Insects and Mushrooms is very iconic to druids and i think it would add flavour to have a more “Nature” Row/build

As example Between Solar beam and Improved Starsurge:
Insect Swarm: ↓ Damage over time, reduces hit chance.
Mushrooms: ↓ (Place a Mushroom that lasts for 20sec and can be detonated, Deals heavy damage AND/OR Applies Insect Swarm)
Overloading Wrath: ↓ Casting Wrath on your Mushroom untill health reaches 0 will cause the mushroom to explode dealing increased AOE damage.

Celestial alignment talent node replacement
Between Solar beam> and <Shooting stars
Celestial Alignment ↓
Precise Alignment(Two points instead of one, total 7-8sec) ↓
Incarnation: Chose of Elune ↓

Just remove these talents that are boring or non-intuitive

Warrior of Elune: Maybe make it a Channeled ability(similar to Mages Arcane Missilies) ?

(NEW) Warrior of Elune: You fire 3 Starfires over a duration of 2sec? that generates 40% Astral power

Improved Eclipse
Improved Starfall: (Casting starfall increases duration of Sun&Moonfire)
Starlord: Ehh, meehh, Simcrafting?. Not notable.
Fury of the Skies: Very very not fun(Placeholder?)

Thanks for staying if you read the whole thing. I envy the Shaman tree, please use shaman tree as the golden standard :slight_smile: If a dev reads this, ya’ll doing a great job for real.

Cheers

2

Hey. Just posting my two cents here regarding the state of balance druid in Dragonflight. Sadly, I don’t have alpha, so haven’t played the spec, but from what I am seeing, I am disappointed. Sadly, there isn’t any feedback for balance on the EU alpha forums yet


Anyway, here goes. This is my opinion only.

Starfall and Stellar Drift
Stellar drift should NOT incur a CD when using Starfall. In my opinion, Starfall in the past has been fun, especially at the points of high AP generation through shooting stars. Being able to press Starfall more than once felt satisfying, now, looking at our talents in Dragonflight, we are still going to be limited to ONE starfall, when it’s our only spender in AOE/Cleave. It’s bad. Really bad.

Astral Power
We seem to be generating far less astral power (AP), particularly on aoe. Shooting stars and solstice need to generate more. That being said, we need to not be limited on our Starfall casts that I mentioned above. Is blizzard expecting us to Starfall once and then spend the remainder on Starsurge in aoe situations? That feels contradictory, and I hated this in Shadowlands.

Stellar Flare
I honestly detest this talent and am not sure why it’s still in the game. Who actually enjoys it?! This talent feels so lame to use. The damage isn’t always the best, it isn’t spreadable and has a cast time. It feels like a waste of time honestly. This talent, on single target encounters just feels depressing. Maybe to make it more engaging, and to feel like it’s worth the time, it could be spreadable, or proc shooting stars, or increase the duration on the target. It feels very shadow priesty and I hate it when it’s the viable talent option.

3 minute CD’S
Aren’t we by now, one of the only specs with a 3-minute burst cooldown? It’s infuriating in dungeons and raid content when everyone else can burst every 1-2 minutes, and I have to wait longer. The flexibility required for most modern-day encounters is barely existent for us.

Eclipse
I must admit, I do not like the eclipses as they are currently and in DF. It feels like a watered-down version of the empowerment system, somehow, and it does not feel impactful being in an eclipse. You cannot control it either, which again, is bad design imo. Why am I forced to single target in an AOE/Cleave encounter and vice versa?! To me, the eclipse system is counterintuitive. There is just no satisfaction about being in an eclipse. It’s kind of pointless. As much as I liked the eclipse system in MoP because we had starssurge procs as well, it just doesn’t suit the modern-day WoW. I think Legion’s version of balance was the best one yet.

The new balance talent tree
Firstly, I think ours is considerably more boring than other specs. We didn’t really get anything new, and the returning things cough adaptive swarm cough are lame.

The middle row is questionable. The first outlier is starsurge empowerment being after starfall and going into starfall/aoe talents. Then solar beam in the middle, which should definitely be in the druid tree, because it’s core to our gameplay, and also it’s blocking the single target nodes?!?!

In the last row, we have things like Oneths, which is a pretty fun ability IMO, that is in the bottom left section and are gated by Stellar Drift. While Stellar Drift is located in the previous section, this is a talent that devalues astral power generation; which leads to three out of the four nodes that allow the use of more Astral Power in your rotation.

Another issue is that soul of the forest is responsible for making the lunar eclipse and starfire relevant in AoE/cleave with its increase to Starfire AoE damage. This leads to a larger problem with the tree: there is a sense of counter-intuitiveness in how these talents work together dependant on their standing. They need re-arranging.

Adaptive Swarm and COLAD seem like a strange choice for deep balance druid nodes seeing as they have seen no use in Shadowlands. Who seriously looked at these and thought, heck yeah, this is what these people want?

Anyway, these are my main concerns at the moment. There’s more, but i’d be here all day. I really do hope they address some of the issues, some are personal preference but some are mechanically counter-intuitive and will make the spec feel clunky and restrictive. I miss the days of being able to successfully and reliably choose what I press in certain situations.

P.S Please for the love of god can we have a glyph that allows me to be a normal zandalari troll rather than a chicken or a bluey sparkly troll. Thank you kindly. ;’)

3

As far as i remember

DHs meta is a 5 min CD.
Ferals major CD is 3 minutes.
Ret paladins avenging wrath is 3 minute CD.
Frost DKs BoS is also a 3 minute CD.

Moonkins arent alone on sitting on a 3minute CD. However agreed they arent that fun.

4

Yeah, that’s why I said “one of”.

Currently, frost DK’s BoS is a 2-minute cooldown? They also get raise dead, empower rune weapon, pillar of frost, and frost wyrm’s fury. That’s far more than boomkins get in terms of bursting.

I don’t know enough about DH and Ret to comment, but Feral is a mess in itself and is in dire need of help as well.

1 Like
5

Ah for some reason thought it was 3 minutes.

And tbh ret and DH are both a mess in viability also tbh

6

My main issue with Moonkin as a whole is the damage output by Wrath, Starfire and Starsurge. Starfire main target doing same as Wrath, Wrath doing 36%(Solar eclipse with no empowerment) of Starsurge damage. We are completely balanced around Double dipping burst damage, i dont like it.

Am i alone in feeling like Wrath and Starfire should deal at least close to equal to Starsurge on a damage meter?

Currently on Live:

  • Starsurge base in Eclipse(NO double dipping) deals 6800~ Non-crit
  • Starsurge base in CA(double dipping) deals 9500~
  • Wrath base in Solar Eclipse(Not empowered) deals 2500~ Non-crit
  • Starfire base in Lunar Eclipse deals 2600~ Non-crit

i would like to see Starfire deal 70-80% of Starsurge, And Wrath maybe 50~% of Starsurge

if Starsurge deals 7000 non crit

  • Starfire deals around 5000 non crit
  • Wrath deals around 3500 non crit
    Starsurge needs to be tuned down ofc and even remove double dipping if necessary


Here’s a thought for our AOE situation!

What if we had Astral Storm(Glyphed Hurricane) back as a stronger and worthwhile casting AOE Astral power spender?

Alternatives

  • Astral Storm: Creates a violent Astral storm in the target area that consumes 5-10? Astral power per second and deals heavy AOE damage. Lasts on the target area untill Astral power is depleted or Canceled(Press Astral storm again to cancel)

Note: Basically Shamans Earthquake that consumes Astral Power(Not channeled)

  • Astral Storm: Same as old Hurricane, a channeled ability but it consumes Astral Power every Second. Needs to be very powerful/bursty if its a channeled ability
1 Like
7

I think wrath and starfire do pathetic damage compared to starsurge yeah. They definitely need bumping up.

I don’t like abilities that require full AP, and then drains per second. It would make starfall useless since we don’t build enough AP to have both up at once. This was similar to Fury of Elune in Legion, and it just felt really awkward to use in my opinion. I don’t think we should have channeled abilities either, it makes mechanics and movement a big annoying issue, and in raids and dungeons, I doubt this would be taken since you have to move a lot. I think if it was just an ability we pressed like starfall, it would be fine.

Our AOE is complicated I think.

8

Ye, true.
But I do think something like Astral storm/Hurricane could be fun as a talent option, I’m just a sucker for storms😅

I have looked and tested other spec talents, and Moonkin is kinda sucky.
Bad node connection, too many lame options. Whatever build I do is basically the same. Some new very nice talents, but still very lacking.

9

I wish they would tone down the celestial stuff. The spec feels more like a spaceship than a druid.

10

I agree, i would very much like to see a row/node group that take focus from Celestial spells to more basic nature spells. I have felt alienated from my Moonkin since Legion :stuck_out_tongue:

11

Remove Eclipse. Let everything do damage as if in Eclipse all the time. The worst part about Balance, is being forced into solar eclipse in an AoE setting.

Change how AoE works. Not being able to layer Starfall feels terrible, and is bad design. Having to pump Starsurge in heavy AoE situations because of a legendary just feels bad.
Not having Starfall scale with haste is further proof of bad design.

The Stellar Drift CD needs to be removed, ASAP. If Starfall proves to be strong without the CD, just nerf it. No one would care, just remove the CD of our AoE.

I don’t see Insect Swarm coming back, it fits unholy DK more than a druid now. The Mushroom playstyle was gimmicky at best, hopefully it will not come back. I would be open for Hurricane to return, but it doesn’t fit the theme of Balance anymore.

Frankly, I just want an improvement on what we have. Make Starsurge do splash damage. Give us Twin Moons baseline. It shouldn’t be too hard to fix the fundamentals of this spec, most of it is already in place.

2 Likes
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I would like to see also something that interacts with out dots or atleast a faster way to apply them, cuz currently on aoe they are complete waste of time and provide minimal payoff. Maybe Make Fury of Elune baseline and make it apply moonfire and sunfire to all targets hit, idk

13

They need to bring back stellar empowerments from legion, give us a spammable aoe, mop eclips bar and the class might be saved

14

Every class get some changes after their talent tree comes out,except moonkin(hunter tree changed like 15 times).The tank and feral tree is bad also. Blizz dont listen to the crowd when the theme is moonkin dmg.

2 Likes
15

Imma be real mad if they don’t do more for druid. Hunter is getting all the love atm :frowning:
I heard there is different people working on each classes and the druid&priest dev is on vacation. So, lets hope that is true :slight_smile:

After playing some Wotlk beta i noticed the Shadowlands eclipse is inspired by Wotlk, Lunar eclipse increase Crit chance for Starfire and Solar increase Wrath damage. IN WRATH it actually feels great because Starfire is a BIG FING DAMAGE DEALER.

They had the right idea for Shadowlands eclipse, but forgot to buff Wrath and Starfire :slight_smile:

Yes, i’m very stubborn and i will NEVER give up on this topic.

  • Remove double dipping in CA
  • if Starsurge deals 1000 damage, Starfire deals 700 and Wrath 400~
  • Nerf Starsurge accordingly

I absolutely hate how we are entirerly dependant on Starsurge and CA to deal notable daamge.

1 Like
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They need to do smth! But i dont care,im gona play with druid anyway
who wants to be a squishy hunter :smiley: :smiley:

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