Topic
Moonkin single-target DPS is abysmal
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Edited by Kantos on 13/02/12 23:55 (UTC)
This is an area where both theorycrafting (http://simulationcraft.org/432/Raid_T13H.html) and actual in-game results (http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Ultraxion/25H/all/14/30/p80/) are in complete agreement. Balance druids have the capacity to do decent and, in ideal circumstances, even very good damage in fights that allow them to cheese the meters with constant multidotting, but outside of that their damage is atrocious, thousands of dps behind even the middle of the pack, and completely out of sight of the dominant classes.
And keep in mind that the above will be heavily colored by the pressence of the legendary staff. The RaidBots link shows only the top 20% of logs from 25man hardmode guilds (in order to filter out people who don't know how to play their class) - top 25 man guilds will have the sizable majority of their casters kitted out with it. The simcraft results are using BiS gear including the legendary as well. A moonkin without it is going to be substantially worse off than even those links can show. Of course, the fact that Blizzard felt that they had to balance melee (and hunters, since 4.3.2) to be able to compete with legendary casters, and in the process ended up leaving non-legendary casters behind, is a somewhat separate issue, but it's even more damaging when your damage is tuned so low as to be bottom of the barrel even with the legendary. By the way, check out the graph for fire mages and survival hunters since 4.3.2. The results of their respective nerfs and buffs are plain to see. Then look at the balance druid graph in the same timeframe. Much was written about the weakness of our t13 4pc set bonus, but that was just covering up the fundamental issues with our single target dps. As you can see, the tiny buff to that bonus in 4.3.2 proved to be a practically imperceptible raindrop in the ocean. Mild changes to set bonuses isn't going to accomplish anything. Our mechanics aren't exactly favorable either. Any downtime on the target - be it from movement or something like shifting phases on Ultraxion - will hit us extra hard due to Nature's Grace, and our complete lack of any controllable burst, in the form of a proper damage cooldown or a less restrictive eclipse system, makes balance druids a worthless liability on a fight like Spine. In short, we're in need of help. The ability to do well on a couple of fights by throwing DoT's around with wild abandon is not enough to make raiding as a balance druid a satisfying experience. |
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Edited by Zulvembi on 13/02/12 18:24 (UTC)
Can't do anything but to agree. I'm currently 3:rd on dps (after an arms warrior and a retribution paladin) with the best dps ilvl in the guild. I'm currently 4 ilvl higher than the warrior and he's like 5-7k more dps on all single target and target changing bosses. The fact that they're removing a dot in MoP isn't really helping either.
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I think you are mistaken. One of the reasons that Moonkins single target DPS isnt as high, and hasnt been buffed is that their multi-dotting makes them very strong on fights with several targets. If they were to then have the much higher single target DPS than they'd currently have then they'd probably be too strong in general. If they remove one of your DoTs, thus weakening your multi-dotting it means that your single target damage is more likely to be buffed to the levels of other strong single target classes. |
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Edited by Nimoku on 13/02/12 22:36 (UTC)
The fact that they're removing a dot in MoP isn't really helping either. Not really. Let's take a look at fire mages, hmm. Even after their nerves, they tend to be topping on damage on EVERY SINGLE fight (besides blackhorn), be it aoe, single target or even multitarget. Shadow priests have a far stronger burst than Moonkins, do superior single target dps, have the same multidotting capabilities and their aoe is also fairly strong. Using our multidotting capabilities, (which come into play in what, 2, maybe 3 fights?) as a way to justify our abysmal single target and burst dps is stupid. Now let's say that they do remove one of our dots and buff Wrath, starfire and Starsurge in order to make up for that damage. Now, where is the actual buff in single target dps? And thanks for cutting our aoe and multitarget dps in half. The only real solution is simply giving balance druids a new, strong cooldown and buff Treants. Treants do damage equivalent of a wet towel and isn't worth being on a 3 minute CD. |
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Edited by Kantos on 14/02/12 00:15 (UTC)
If they were to then have the much higher single target DPS than they'd currently have then they'd probably be too strong in general. While moonkins are obviously much better on fights with constant multidotting, and I'd happily give some of that up in exchange for decent single-target dps, I think that this is a statement that you'd have a very hard time backing up with facts. The amount of extra single target damage that druids would have to do in order to beat combat rogues, arms warriors, fire mages, survival hunters or affliction warlocks (among others) on overall damage would be VERY large. Moonkins are good at fights with heavy multidotting - but they are by no means in a league of their own at it. And for that to even matter would require that the ability to get good numbers a couple fights by cheesing it with dot's is as valuable as great, pure single-target damage. It's not. |
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Euhm if you're talking about heroic if you properly do them you can multidot on -Morchok -Zon'ozz (phase 2) -Hagara (ice phase & ice tombs) -Blackhorn -Spine -Madness Yor'sahj has minor multidotting possibilities too. Ultraxion is in fact the only fight where you can't multidot at all. |
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Nope, maybe at the start, but as the fight goes on, even when we attempted to keep them both closer to each other, it's impossible to keep dots running on both Kochrom and Morchok. -Zon'ozz (phase 2) Not really, most of your dmg will be on the boss anyways, and the dots on the adds don't really help you that much. -Hagara (ice phase & ice tombs) Ice tombs are too far apart to reliably keep dots running on all of them. Besides, that, the phase is a very very minor part of the fight dpswise and the burst phase after each ice/storm phase kind of overshadows that. Since you know, boomkins don't have good burst. -Blackhorn Was one of the fights I was talking about. -Spine No, you cannot really multidot on this fight as a moonkin. Your main priority should be dpsing the amalgamation and delaying solar for each tendon to make sure you are doing enough dps burstwise. You need to break the grip with single target spells in order to avoid killing the corruption, so you can't really have your dots running on them. Besides, dps means jack!@#$ on this fight imo. -Madness Yes Out of all the fights, 3 really, if we count zonozz. |
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Edited by Kantos on 15/02/12 07:34 (UTC)
Which feeds into what I was saying above: Moonkins are very good at fights with constant and persistent multidotting - but it really does need to be constant and persistent, otherwise they don't raise us an inch above mediocrity at best. Having "some" opportunity for multidotting is not enough to compensate for terrible single-target dps, not even close. Especially since, as I already mentioned, multidotting is simply not as consistently valuable as single-target dps. You mention Spine as an example of a moonkin-friendly fight, but that fight is an example of the exact opposite. You CAN throw around DoT's and raise your numbers a bit (but only a bit, assuming the rest of your raid is marginally competent), but that would be the very definition of cheesing the meters with worthless damage. All that matters on that fight is burst dps. As for the others, well... Morchok: What we gain from being able to multidot some of the time is comfortably lost by our complete ineptitude at movement heavy fights. Warlord: Sure, this fight contains a good amount of potential for multidotting - but even then we are handily beaten by a number of classes, ALL of which obliterate us on single target as well. Especially rogues, who gain more of an advantage from cleaving than we could possibly hope to gain from multidotting, and yet are at or near (depending on whether the rogue in question has gotten his legendary daggers yet) the top on single target as well. Almost as if being good on multitarget phases doesn't actually require you to be garbage on single target to compensate... Yor'sahj: More or less the same - we can do OK on part of the fight, but are still comfortably beaten by numerous classes and specs that also comfortably beats us on single target. That is, of course, assuming that you're raiding 25mans, which is a fairly small minority at this point. On 10man the adds are too few and die too fast, and you'll only do decent damage if your rogues, warrior, mages and so forth are asleep. Hagara: We can do well on the ice phase. Who cares. There's no real pressure to get those pylons down, the damage in that phase is low and this is a coordination fight, the least number-dependant boss in there except Morchok. This fight is another strike against the idea that multi-target ability is as valuable as single-target. And again, it's another boss where you'll only be able to pad your way to "success" on 25man. On 10man it's right back down to the bottom. Spine: Already covered. A balance druid is quite possibly the single least useful spec you bring to this fight. Blackhorn and Madness are both ideal moonkin fights, and we do very well on those two (but even under those perfect circumstances we are NOT on top). Our moments to shine. As I said, I do not feel that the ability to be valuable on a couple fight in a tier is enough to make playing a moonkin a satisfying experience. And again, the above only applies if you have the legendary staff. If not, it's right back down to crapsville on everything except gunship and madness. But we're hardly the only ones who have that problem. EDIT: I should clarify that I'm not complaining that we're not on the top of the charts on those supposed multidotting fights. I'd be happy to take middle of the pack - if only the same applied to our single target as well. But some people (and I'm not aiming this at anyone specific in this thread) have mentioned that moonkin multi-target is so dominant that having decent single-target would make them overpowered overall, and I'm pointing out that a) this is simply not the case, and b) even in some alternate reality where it was, the correct thing to do would be to nerf multi-target while buffing single-target, so that we could be decent but unspectacular on both. |
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The whole idea about moonkins beign so reliant on dots is stupid anyway. We were always about nuking with direct damage, and dots served as our necceseary fillers during rotations giving us some form of boosts for nukes. Leave some hectic dotting to affli locks geez, I don't want it. Also, our aoe damage mechanic needs to be remade I think. Shrooms are strong as hell, sure, but only in solar and they are heavily time consuming (4 gdcs to blow it) and extremely position-relying. So only when you are absolutely prepared you can do some nice damage with it, if anything unexpected happens you're screwed.
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Edited by Kantos on 15/02/12 03:00 (UTC)
This is true, and since Blizzard does sometimes like to justify hated mechanics and class design issues by pointing out that they are an integral part a given spec's "feel" (prime examples being the much-maligned RNG dependency of fire mages, and, especially in past expansions, clunky yet overly crucial totems for shammies), it does deserve to be pointed out that this is a relatively new issue. I doubt many balance druids signed up to live or die based on how many targets a given fight allowed them to throw dot's on. Up until the pre-cataclysm patch - 3.4, if memory serves - dot's were a tiny part of our damage, to the point where it was a matter of gear level and circumstance whether they were even worth casting at all. Balance druids were very much a nuke-based class. After that, our dot's were much more important to our damage, which is fine, but we still had decent single-target for a while. We weren't pigeonholed into dot-spreaders, and there were encounters where we were, indeed, too powerful. While multi-target dps is nowhere near as desirable as single-target overall, it's still something that should be balanced better than it is - in an ideal world, we'd be weaker at it, and many specs would be stronger at it. But regardless, our current predicament was not by design - we sorta fell into it due to a mixture of poor scaling, unfavorable mechanics, and misguided PvP nerfs. The pressence of numerous specs that can perform in both single- and multi-target situations demonstrate this as well: The idea that a spec is only allowed to perform on either type of fight is not at all applied universally. Nor should it be; being pigeonholed is never fun. Also, our aoe damage mechanic needs to be remade I think. Shrooms are strong as hell, sure, but only in solar and they are heavily time consuming (4 gdcs to blow it) and extremely position-relying. So only when you are absolutely prepared you can do some nice damage with it, if anything unexpected happens you're screwed. Don't really agree with this, though. I like the fact that our AoE mechanic is unique, and the fact that is requires some setup and timing isn't a bad thing. However, the eclipse dependency could stand to be a bit smaller, the difference in our damage inside and outside it is maybe a bit too large. It would also be helpful to have some sort of cooldown ability to manipulate eclipse energy without casting nukes. Like, say, a damage cooldown that causes us to jump into the nearest eclipse state and generate no eclipse energy for x seconds. Would also help with the issue of reliable burst. By the way, detonating shrooms does not take up a GCD, so if you've been waiting for a second before beginning to cast again you can stop doing that. :-) |
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Kantos; very well put and correct on all counts. I find it interesting that (looking at raidbots) median dps overall is going down over the timeline, rather than up, although truth be told that seems to be similarf or many classes/specs, not just boomkins.
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Edited by Kantos on 15/02/12 08:24 (UTC)
Hehe, it's fun to speculate on why that is, although probably not terrible important as far as class balance is concerned given how small the changes are. One theory would be that, as RaidBots only tracks kills, the implementation of the 5% debuff allowed more guilds to suddenly record kills with lower dps than what was possible before - note that the trend of tiny drops in median dps across all logs is not really repeated to the same extent on less gear/number-dependant bosses compared to a boss like Ultraxion, presumably since Ultraxion is the most basic "gear check" in there, with very little coordination required. Compare it to Hagara, for example. That fight is all about movement and coordination, and a 5% nerf in her damage and health is unlikely to get many guilds a kill if they were screwing up before. Also the debuff landed on 31/01 and 01/02, and that's when the median dps across all kills on Ultrax and a few other more tightly-tuned fights started to drop a little. This theory is also backed up by the fact that the trend is not repeated if you limit the dataset to the top results, by selecting the 90th percentile for example - the top people who were already killing it are not slowing down. |
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Yep, pretty much what I thought as well (did notice the consistency in the top100 parses). Welp, as I've said before, it's unlikely that we get any significant changes to anything before MoP and even there I've a feeling we still will not be as rounded as some of the more completed classes are...we simply are too odd a beast and still too reliant on eclipse to easily balance properly.
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Edited by Kulisek on 15/02/12 11:51 (UTC)
-Hagara (ice phase & ice tombs) You are wrong about this one. Hagara is in fact one of best fights for moonkin - all "timers" on this fight perfectly match moonkin eclipse bouncing and it contains basically no RNG so you can perfectly plan your way through the fight. You can get to solar for frost phase to profit from dots on crystals, then when there are just two targets to finish you get to lunar - starfall and proc NG and nuke the crap out of her during vulnerability. You'll be in solar for shrooms. Here comes probably the difference because I'm in 25man guild where you get 5 tombs which is around perfect number for multidotting (while you probably get 2 in 10man). What I hate most is our "aoe". Planting shrooms in heavy aoe is just pain, everytime I do Yor'sahj I wish to be there with my shadowpriest where you just target someone and mindsear... |
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Edited by Nimoku on 15/02/12 13:39 (UTC)
Solar is better for burst, FYI. And yes, you get only 2 on 10 man. |
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Edited by Kulisek on 15/02/12 16:58 (UTC)
Correct information but wrong advice. Either you'd have to be in lunar for frost phase sacrificing tons of damage on crystals for pathetic increase in burst phase, or you'd have to be in solar for frost phase and burst her without NG. On top of that you really want to be in solar for cubes. |
I know right! It's almost as if humans are generally more likely to complain that they're doing poorly than that they're doing too well. Feel free to give yourself a pat on the back for that stunning revelation.
...and that would be a really strong argument in an alternate world where Blizzard are aiming to tune classes so that they oscillate between underpowered and overpowered, each in turn. Of course, that is not the case, since that would be absurd. This is not a zero-sum game. Blizzard does not have a limited amount of buffs to hand out. The fact that moonkins need buffs does not somehow mean that no other classes can be buffed as well, or that they shouldn't. I'm not sure what part of my posts implied to you that druids and ONLY druids are struggling, though we are at the very bottom when it comes to single-target. |
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Eh, affliction warlocks? The DS25 HC data on raidbots reveals that moonkin is better dps than affliction for the large majority of fights: Morchok - Moonkin Zon'ozz - Affliction Yor'sahj - Moonkin Hagara - Moonkin Ultraxion - equal Blackhorn - Moonkin Spine - Affliction (unreliable - small amount of data) Madness - Moonkin (unreliable - small amount of data) OVERALL - MOONKIN On Ultraxion, *the* single-target boss, moonkin and affliction have almost the same dps. On Zon'ozz affliction's strong execute allows it to pull somewhat ahead. Moonkin wins the rest. Yeah, moonkins may indeed have a bit low single-target dps... but your claim that affliction has a "VERY large" advantage in overall dps seems misguided (in fact, the opposite seems true). Affliction's advantage, at best, is that it has the possibility to respec. |
