The Emerald Dreamcatcher Nerf

In the last 7.1.5 PTR build, The Emerald Dreamcatcher buff was changed to last 2 seconds, reduced by haste, down from the 3 seconds static on live.

This change effectively means that it is no longer possible to cast any spells between Starsurges while still maintaining the buff. Other than being a significant nerf to its damage output, this also kills what a lot of players find to be a very enjoyable playstyle, and messes with the relative balance of the Balance Druid legendaries.

The Current Rotational Changes

For those not familiar with it, the live version of The Emerald Dreamcatcher completely changes the Balance Druid rotation. Our baseline rotation is extremely open, and centered around keeping dots up and not over capping our resources (Astral Power, empowerment buffs, and charges on our artifact ability, New Moon/Half Moon/Full Moon). Aslong as you do that, the order of your spells is largely irrelevant. For instance, if you are at 60 Astral power, have one of each empowerment, and 1 charge on the moon spells, your next cast could be any of the following spells, without it having any impact on your overall dps: Solar Wrath, Starsurge, Lunar Strike, or one of the moon spells.

With the Emerald Dreamcatcher, however, our primary objective is to keep the buff that the legendary gives up as much as possible. This creates a rotation where we alternate between a spender/burst phase, consuming Astral Power while the legendary buff is up, and a generation/conservation phase, where we no not spent any Astral Power and only cast generators to get back up above 90 Astral Power to get ready for the next spender phase. If we drop the legendary buff at any point during our spender phase we lose a significant amount of damage, and instantly switch to the generation phase.

The spender phase is completely different from the baseline Balance Druid rotation. Instead of casting whatever spell we want, every single GCD has only one correct spell to cast. The exact rotation depends on what haste breakpoint you are at, but one of the most common one looks like this:

SS > LS > SS > SW > SW > SS > LS > SS > SW > SW > SS… etc.

What this rotation achieves is to generate as much Astral Power as possible between the Starsurge casts to keep the legendary buff up, allowing us to keep the buff up for longer by spending the additional Astral Power on more Starsurges. Depending on your haste and without Incarnation/Celestial Alignment up (you can maintain the spender phase indefinitely during those), the spender phase usually lasts up to ~15-25 seconds, while the generation phase lasts about ~10 seconds.

With this rotation it is no longer feasible to avoid over capping on empowerments, due to the shear amount of Starsurges we will be pumping out. However, we still have to manage our empowerment buffs. As seen in the example above, we have to alternate between Lunar Strike and Solar Wrath because we can only cast empowered spells between our Starsurges. We also have to consider when we should spent our empowerments instead of the moon spells during the generation phase, as to not run into having to cast unempowered spells if we happen to drop out of the spender phase earlier than expected.

A lot of players, myself included, have found this playstyle extremely fun, fast paced and rewarding compared to the slow, very open, and not very rewarding baseline rotation. I have also heard a lot of people explaining how awesome it was to learn the rotation after picking up their shiny new orange. Having to go back to the baseline rotation now does not feel good.

The New Rotational Changes

The new rotation with The Emerald Dreamcatcher will also be centered around a spender phase and a generation phase with one major difference: The spender phase is only 3 casts. This completely removes the fun, fast paced and very strict rotation we currently have with the legendary. Where is the fun in having a spender phase of 3 GCDs, and a generator phase 3 times as long?

The positive thing about the new effect is that we no longer have a rotation that completely alternates how we play. This is definitely an effect that belongs on a legendary item, where as the current one does not.

The Damage and Relative Strength

The Emerald Dreamcatcher was perceived by many to be our best legendary, and I am partly at fault for that. The truth is, it is only the best for single target. For multiple targets, Impeccable Fel Essence was always better, and with enough targets both Oneth’s Intuition and Cynidaria the Symbiote was better aswell.

This created a situation where if you did not have The Emerald Dreamcatcher you might not perform the best on single target, but atleast you could perform well on multiple targets if you instead had one of a few other legendaries. With the nerf to The Emerald Dreamcatcher this picture will change. Impeccable Fel Essence will be the best both for single target and for multi target, meaning that if you do not have this one legendary, there is basically no situation where you will be able to perform well. This is incredibly infuriating, and I absolutely hope that The Emerald Dreamcatcher is either buffed or that Impeccable Fel Essence is nerfed so that The Emerald Dreamcatcher is once again the best for single target.

The solution

I do not think the rotation that The Emerald Dreamcatcher creates should be removed. I would prefer it it was made into a talent and that the legendary was completely redesigned, but if the developers does not want to make significant talent changes like this at this time, I do not think The Emerald Dreamcatcher nerf should go live.

If the goal is to simply reduce the damage output of The Emerald Dreamcatcher (in which case Impeccable Fel Essence should be brought down too) there are plenty of other ways to do this. To name a few:

• Redesign the T19 4-piece. It heavily favors The Emerald Dreamcatcher. You can read some of my other thoughts on why it could do with a redesign here.
• Buff Force of Nature/Stellar Flare to be better than Starlord/Incarnation pure single target without The Emerald Dreamcatcher. This would be an indirect nerf to it, as both of those talents heavily favors The Emerald Dreamcatcher.
• Shift some damage from Starsurge into Solar Wrath/Lunar Strike. Since the Emerald Dreamcatcher casts significantly more Starsurges, and significantly less Solar Wraths/Lunar Strikes, this would result in a nerf to its damage output compared to the base rotation.
• Make each stack of the buff also reduce Starsurge damage by x%.

Whether you agree with me or not, I would encourage you to post your feedback in the feedback thread on the official forums, and let the developers know how you feel about it.

US: http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20752349289
EU: http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17614455825