Starfall Discussion - Blue Tracker

#0 - Feb. 2, 2009, 6:13 p.m.

I was hoping someone from the developers’ side could open up a conversation with us druids about Starfall. Starfall, like tranquility is one of my favorite spells because of my old WC3 days, but like the original tranquility did before its overhaul, it falls short of that epic feeling it had in WC3.

1. Starfall scales very poorly with gear, the damage it does now will be comparably the same as the damage it does when I have achieved the highest gear attainment I can. (Edited to be more accurate, see below.)

2. Starfall no longer removes stealthed players from stealth.

3. Starfall no longer gains the stun benefit of Celestial Focus.

4. Starfall in canceled upon the druid being CC’d.

5. Starfall is canceled upon a druid shape shifting.

6. Starfall aggros everything in sight. (This is great for farming animal herds for cooking meat, I must admit.)

I know there are a lot of factors that go in to making an ability balanced, and I won’t pretend to know how to develop a game better than the people who created it, but can this ability be evaluated for a change?

It’s on a 3 minute CD, in its current state it would almost seem not to warrant a CD. I’m not advocating for this change, only making the observation that it seems underpowered for a 3 minute CD.

My personal opinion is that being on a 3 minute CD, with its current damage, the portion that allows for CC to cancel its effects is too severe.

Anyway, what do other druids think? What does everyone in general think?

Ghostcrawler

#82 - Feb. 2, 2009, 9:29 p.m.

The purpose of Starfall is to do extra damage. What I mean by that is that the spell is not channeled so you can use it along with a Hurricane or whatever other spell you want to cast. It was never intended to be a de-stealther and we've become unenamored with random stun chances added to other spells.

One criticism which we think is totally valid is the paltry coefficient on Starfall. We will be hotfixing in a more reasonable number soon (tm).

Ghostcrawler

#140 - Feb. 3, 2009, 5:40 a.m.

As I said, Starfall is a damage spell. While it does AE damage, that does not mean it is ineffective against single targets. If you cast it and keep using Starfire / Wrath etc. on bosses then your dps will be higher than if you did not cast it. I realize its large area can bring in extra groups, but this is rarely a problem on actual bosses.

The PvP utility spell, as Lissanna (I think) pointed out, is Typhoon. If your primary concern is Arenas, you might want to direct your feedback toward Typhoon rather than trying to turn Starfall into a different spell.