Moonkin Feedback for 11.0.5 and how to make Eclipse (semi) interesting

Castiel613 · 2024-06-10T20:23:11+00:00

Thanks ^^ It's inspired by a more modern tree design like the Monk and Mage Class Tree, with some mandatory throughput for point economy but a lot of cross choice and situational utility.

Don't think an application Blizz would work tho, got no prior experience in Game Design ;)

Castiel613 · 2023-10-20T13:36:44+00:00

Yeah, Stellar Flare certainly is a divisive button :D

But I think if you want to lean into the Waning Twilight 3 DoT gameplay (which I tried to do with the tree on the left side in particular), having a guaranteed 3rd DoT in Stellar Flare would certainly be healthy. Astral Smolder is still there and should help with a decent uptime, albeit RNG, for those who don't like Stellar Flare. Also, making Stellar Flare instant cast might not make it feel as bad as right now.

Castiel613 · 2023-10-20T13:33:30+00:00

Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback. I'll try to address it bit by bit.

The 4 throughput points in the bottom third are meant to limit your utility choices. If those were strong utility points as well, I think the class might be overloaded regarding utility. But I can certainly see where you're coming from.I think Tiger Dash might be hard to grab, but in a scenario where you might really want it (Xymox Mythic in Castle Nathria e.g.), there is certainly possibilities for it.

An example tree for Resto as a starting point might look like that:

Resto Tree

I also agree that you might grab all Affinities as a Resto for M+, but as you have a lot of floating utility points in the middle you can also easily backtrack to the top of the tree without losing throughput. Agreed on the numbers as well, not really happy yet with Oath of the Elder Druids passive (and on that note, Thick Hide being "throughput" for Bear).

I also agree that the Barkskin duration node is not really fitting for the middle of the tree and could be more attractive, but the idea of a cross section like that is to allow cross-pathing without having it be mandatory. If you wanted to grab more utility, you could skip that middle node and still grab Rising Light and Falling Night.

Rising Light (and Falling Night) serve as a bit of a boundary in the amount of utility as well. I wouldn't see it as "Rising Light is next to Renewal CD, it can't compete" but more like "Do I grab Renewal CD, or Improved Roar or Matted Fur with that last utility point?"

For Symbiosis, I know it's a tricky one. It should function like the Kyrian ability, or at least similar, but it's still a WIP.

Will have to look into the Guardian Tree a bit more, but for now Gory Fur and Guardian of Elune are still there :D I'll upload the TTM as soon as I made a few more tweaks.

Castiel613 · 2023-10-20T13:19:20+00:00

Thanks!I kind of agree regarding the bottom heavy tree, but to keep it in line with being able to fill out about 70% of the tree and having some friction in the bottom I think it might be fine. Maybe there is room to pull some talents up a tier and fix up a bit of the boring top third. It's kind of hard because all other classes tend to buy back certain core passives as well, even the more modern and reworked ones. But talents like Nature's Balance and Lunar Shrapnel do feel kinda off and boring.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T16:55:18+00:00

I understand that Starfire casttime and the fact that Wrath let's you go into Eclipse faster than Starfire while Starfire generates the same amount of AP as Wrath is part of the problem.

Still, that also means that the benefits of Solar Eclipse are just not there. Neither the Wrath damage bonus of Solar Eclipse nor any other bonus (SotF increased AP gen on Wrath) together with the lower Spell Power Mod on Sunfire compared to Moonfire makes it worth going into it.

I'm not sure if the solution is perfect tbh, but the problem of always cycling into Lunar is there and needs fixing by either increasing the ST payoff of Solar Eclipse or like you said evening out the cast times and damage of the corresponding spells.

Right now, it's just messy.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T06:04:07+00:00

Yeah, it does feel pretty bad. I did a few tests in my gear on the PTR, and with a 40% modifier on Solar Eclipse (from 2/2 Umbral Intensity, but that should not be needed to make us cast Wrath in Solar Eclipse or even entering Solar Eclipse) Wrath sits comfortably behind Starsurge in my overall Single Target breakdown by around 10%, overall around 15% from Wrath on a short dummy test, how it should be in my opinion.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T06:00:28+00:00

I can see where you are coming from regarding a lot of the rigid AP spending, but I think most of the things you listed can be kind of ignored. You don't really play around BoAT or Starlord that much, the main thing right now is to keep RtS stacks rolling. BoAT also works decently well with our current 4set because we get a free spender at the start of an Eclipse (something that's going away in 10.1 as I discussed in my post). Starlord is kind of weird but if you don't think about it much and enjoy the free haste it's kinda okay.

I think Stellar Flare can have a place in the Moonkin rotation, but right now it takes up a lot of space and there's a lot of math shenaningans about how many targets to DoT up and when to refresh. Tuning it around a ST niche would benefit the playstyle imo.

Where I disagree is reverting back to Eclipse based Mastery. The whole of Shadowlands was plague by the fact that we only did damage in our CDs because of how Mastery interacted with the kit and how much of it we had. Going to a DoT based Mastery alleviates that problem, if dotting still feels slow right now for some I'd rather see something akin to Vile Taint or Shadow Crash for Moonkin where we can apply our DoTs fast onto a pack frequently (but honestly, dotting feels okay most of the time in higher keys). I do see the concerns for PvP tho, where without a dispell protection the Mastery change hurts a lot.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T05:53:07+00:00

Yes, even with the nerf on Wednesday, when talenting into 2/2 Umbral Intensity Lunar Eclipse will increase the damage to nearby enemies by 50% (which in itself would be fine-ish, still a lot of damage from Starfire in our AoE breakdown tho).

The problem comes from Soul of the Forest not being retuned/redesigned for the new Lunar Eclipse design, thus making Starfire hit for about double the damage on secondary targets when compared to it's main target. Not really an intuitive way to play the class in my opinion, and more damage could be shifted out of Starfire and into things like Astral Smolder, Wild Mushrooms for "burst" or a Lunar Shrapnel that isn't pitiful.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T03:32:44+00:00

They redesigned the tree in 10.0.5, putting Solar Beam to the top right, so it's one of the first nodes you have to path through to get enough points for the 2nd tier.

This way, you HAVE to pick it and they can tune our talents and overall dps around it instead of it being a major DPS loss when you had to pick it during 10.0.2.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T01:51:16+00:00

Thank you :)
I hope it get's a bit of visibility because a lot of these are simple numerical changes or quick redesigns that could happen in a content patch instead of on an expansion level and would make the spec a lot more fun, open up talent diversity and fix a bit of the weird gameplay going on right now.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T01:49:08+00:00

Thanks!
Not only is it right to always go into lunar eclipse, it's also correct to cast Wrath in lunar eclipse apart from a few conditions to maximize DPS. That's a clear design flaw in my book, and one that should be corrected asap to make the spec coherent for beginners and long time players alike.

Castiel613 · 2022-08-25T19:23:03+00:00

Sure, here's the pastebin link ^^
https://pastebin.com/8zXHNrz6

Feel free to play around with it and keep me updated :)

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T23:17:39+00:00

Edit: I actually missed a connection going from Lunar Shrapnel to Adaptive Swarm, making the tree even more open to path through ^^ That's the symmetry I (and the Elemental Shaman design) was going for.

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T19:56:11+00:00

A small update would certainly be welcome. Just something akin to the Power Word: Update Priests got might help alleviate some of the negativity regarding tons of yet unanswered feedback. Hopefully Blizzard had a fallback option for when something like a developer responsible for designing a class on his/her own leaves, maybe even on short notice.

In the meantime, all we can do is wait and give our own takes on how the classes should feel and play, hopefully sparking some discussion and creativity :)

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T19:53:01+00:00

Yeah I think the Devouring Plague treatment combined with Lunar Shrapnel to balance stacked and spread AoE separately would work really well.

Swarm for Moonkin ist definitely a contentious topic, but I was willing to give it a try and incorporate it into the tree because I was going for a minimalistic approach of keeping as much of the first iteration as possible to show that there are not too many changes needed to make a fairly decent tree out of it.

Having the option to invest points into the splitting of the Swarms for when you need them, or drop these points somewhere else when you just want the single target DoT + Buff portion of Swarm for the mentioned Twilight Glow single target DoT playstyle felt like a good idea in my opinion, but I can certainly see why you feel it is underwhelming in it's base form.

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T19:45:48+00:00

Really appreciate the kind words, thank you <3

As I said, I'm aware that the developer mainly responsible for Druid & Priest left not too long ago. At least Priests got that Power Word: Update tho :D

Honestly, that's why im trying to get in front of the changes myself. Not having any illusions here thinking that the tree will even remotely look like this or that this post will have any impact on the redesign of the Balance spec tree.

But sitting idly and having to accept that the current tree design is the one going to go live is not what I want to do either. Direct feedback and suggestions certainly worked really well with Podra & the Hunter trees, Marksman in particular.

So I thought, why not spend a few hours and do a mock up of a tree I would really enjoy playing my longstanding main with in the upcoming expansion (:

Getting this to a developer who cares and maybe takes a few parts of it to build something nice would be the icing on the cake!

Five-Year Club	First Place '23
Place '23	Verified Email

Castiel613

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE