Friday, March 20, 2009

Blue Posts: 03/20/2009

While it is well publicized that Eyonix likes my blog, it is clear that Ghostcrawler like Foofy since he has answered two of here forum posts.

Just kidding, but Ghostcrawler did stop by the forums today and drop a little moonkin news. Lets take a look.

Typhoon -- what we are most likely to do is add a daze effect of some kind. This is what the mage spell Blast Wave does. The daze (it's like a 50% snare) can add a little bit more time to do something before the targets get back on you, such as cast a Cyclone. We might mess with the
knockback distance a little, but Typhoon is built differently from many spells, so there may be a limit in what we can do here.


I can't give you much analysis here because this is clearly a PvP change. It sounds like a buff to me but you will have to go to the forums to find a more reasoned analysis.

2P Ulduar set bonus -- we increased the Eclipse boost to 15%, which should actually grant a dps increase.

We know many druids still don't like the inherent RNG that Eclipse offers. However, we like
mechanics that encourage players to dynamically (meaning if they pay attention) swap which spell they are using. Balance has often had a real tunnel-vision problem of just using the same spell over and over. Even mages do that less these days with all the other procs and cooldowns they can blow at certain times. Eclipse did have some problems, particularly with the Wrath part of the talent not actually doing enough, but we believe those are in a better shape now.
You know this sounds oddly familiar. Oh yea, I suggested it here. I can't take a lot of credit for it because several people including Murmurs did the math for it. What really makes me happy about this is that it shows Blizzard listens to reason. They may not always agree with us or make the changes we want but If you present a good argument there is a chance.

Obviously I like this change since it is exactly what I suggested. This almost guarantees that the T8.25 Hands and Legs will be Best in Slot and moonkin won't completely ignore the T8 gear.

I still don't like the randomness of Eclipse but it is what it is. Blizzard obviously feels that the volatility in our DPS isn't a huge issue. As long as my guild leaders and blizzard understand this, then I can't get to up set. My main worries about the volatility are two fold.

1. I don't one my raid leader to come up to me and ask why I was slacking on Patchwerk when my DPS is lower then it was last week. Raid leaders like consistence especially when your working on new content.

2. I fear the day when a moonkin will get a really lucky parse and absolutely kill all the other DPSers because everything went his way. Think of the QQ that will be started because a Moonkin beats several good "pure" DPS players by 20%. This won't be a huge problem as long as Blizzard understand that it is due to volatility.

7 comments:

Megami said...

He's a Mathkin not a Spellerkin :P

I hope they understand our concern over "bad luck RNG". I've done 5k+ on Razuv and Sarth, and then I do 2500 on P1 Malygos because I got no Eclipse procs. That 2500 was for the 6 min achievement in 10 man, and we were off by like 30 seconds. =(

I don't want to be on the list of people my Officers swap out because my DPS isn't reliable, now our T8 4 piece bonus is yet another RNG. It does seem useful for the movement heavy fights of Ulduar, but I hope it remains a constant "buff" of sorts like mage's Combustion and is active until we use it.

Unknown said...

What I really don't like about the lack of consistency is well.. Bad luck! I can't choose when to make my DPS matter. I'll get some sweet Eclipse procs on trash clearing for Sarth 3 drakes and then NOTHING for the whole of Tenebron and a proc on Shadron just as a lava wave spawns...

I don't mind having occasionally low DPS on Patchwerk, it's not about the meters to me. But not being able to make my DPS count on as sensitive a fight as Sarth 3 drakes really frustrates me.

When I first saw the Eclipse talent and graphic I loved it. I though it was an awesome idea and while levelling it was a fun little bonus. But TOO MUCH of our DPS comes from Eclipse. I'd prefer it if Eclipse was nerfed to be more of a "yay" with other passive bonuses being put in the Balance tree, because as it stands things are just too bad without Eclipse.

Other options for Eclipse include:
-make it a stacking buff, every time you cast Wrath your Starfire gets a 1% stacking crit bonus; every time you cast Starfire your Wrath gets a 1% stacking damage bonus.
-decrease the internal cooldown and effect and increase the proc chance.

We just need to have more reliable DPS. Losing 1000 DPS because of bad procs is NOT cool...

Anonymous said...

I hear what you are saying about the randomness of our damage, but at times I really think it's fun. I feel like I'm on my toes a bit more, and those days when you blow everyone's damage out of the water is pretty cool. I remember doing a patchwerk kill and after the fight everyone saying "Wow look at his damage". We have our good days along with our bad days, but I'm usually always welcome along for the raids.

I guess I wouldn't complain about consistency, but I really don't mind the randomness that we get now.

Anonymous said...

I'm expecting Eclipse to be with us until 4.0. We need more PvE spells to rotate into our arsenal (to make our rotations more interesting) before GC will consider letting the talent go.

In WotLK Beta testing, any time we said we hated Eclipse and wanted the talent changed, the devs just buffed the damage it did instead of actually listening to what we were suggesting (ie. giving it charges that last longer, making it an active ability so we could time it). They'd just buff the damage, change the cooldown, or something. It's powerful now because we didn't like how the talent was designed.

Gadrick said...

Great job with the math.

Personally, I do not like the randomness of the Moonkin's DPS. I have spent a lot of time in some boss fights spamming wrath to proc eclipse and it almost doesn't, (I counted 24 wrath casts with 14 of them criting before it proc'd in a 10 man Patchwerk fight). I guess the RNG lets me crit but not get eclipse.

Cerista said...

I immediately thought of your blog when I read the blue posts. It's nice to know that Bliz will listen to feedback to avoid an unintentional nerf to a class's dps. I'm looking forward to the patch more than ever now.

All I can say is thanks! to you and all the other people who do the math. Keep up the good work. =D

As for Eclipse itself, I don't have a real problem with it. It's fun and it keeps me paying attention. The only time it's not fun is when the RNG hates me and makes me wrath spam for an eclipse. I don't have a real problem with it in 25s, but 10 mans are a little more harsh due to the lack of class diversity we usually run with.

Besides, if you're having an off night, you can just blame it on the RNG. XD

Eyecare said...

Nice article and good thoughts. I too am confounded by the randomness of the eclipse procs. It eventually goes off but there are just too many times where I can't use it to its maximum effect because I have to move or I get stunned or it comes too late to make any difference. I've even gone to firing off extra ISs or MFs before they expire or even alternate Wrath and SF in a different order even though I know it might hurt my overall DPS and mana conservation just in the hope that it'll get eclipse to proc.
On the positive side, if I pay attention to which eclipse procs and make use of it I can often out-DPS better geared moonkins. So it does help to pay attention to and make appropriate use of Eclipse procs.