What I like about the idea of the Spirit Boon system is that it offers druids some tools to bridge the gap in utility that a build might be missing while leveling and into the mid game. However, unlike the Barbarian and Rogue class mechanics (perhaps even the Sorcerer’s), Spirit Boons don’t offer much once you’ve reached the end of your leveling journey and venture into the end game. In addition, the boons themselves (most of which are just minor affixes) don’t really compare to having an additional weapon or being able to combine the effects of your core skills into other skills greatly increasing their effectiveness and/or damage. So here are my thoughts on how to improve the system while not completing throwing away its original intention.
I believe turning Spirit Boons into a separate, slightly smaller but more impactful talent tree would greatly improve the system. Instead of choosing one option from each row, you would instead have points (18-25) to invest into passive nodes across the tree culminating in 3-4 new skills or key passives. What I like about this system is that it allows the developers to really play around with having distinct druid play styles (werebear, werewolf, human and/or companions) without having to cram everything into the main talent tree.
Here are a few ideas for what these passives/key passives could look like:
Regular Passives:
Gift of the Wilds - Gain 15/30/45% spirit regeneration and deal 3/6/9% increased damage while you have at least 4 companions in human form
Will of Ursus - After taking 20/15/10% of your maximum health as damage, your next werebear skill is guaranteed to overpower
Moonlight Rampage - Critical hits from your werewolf skills have a 5/10/15% chance to cast Blood Howl. Chance is doubled against poisoned enemies.
Grace of the Gale - Gain 33/66/100% of your non-physical damage reduction from Cyclone Armor as movement and basic attack speed.
Key Passives:
Wild Communion - Your companions gain the Nature skill tag. Your Wolves and Ravens have a 10% chance to trigger the Circle of Life and Bad Omen passives. Poison damage from your Poison Creeper has a 30% chance to inflict double damage.
Totem of Rage - After casting an Ultimate skill, you create a totem of rage at lasts for 6 seconds. Whenever you cast a werebear skill, enemies near the totem take 100% of your weapon damage as physical damage. Triple this for overpower damage.
Pact of Bloodthrist - While in Werewolf form, you lose 3% of your base health each second but your critical strikes cause the target to bleed for 10% of your weapon damage up to 100%. You deal 15% increased damage against poisoned targets and 30% increased critical damage against bleeding targets.
Wrath of the Wilds - When you cast a Wrath skill, you also empower your core and companion skills increasing their damage by 10% up to 30% for 8 seconds. While empowered, casting a core skill reduces the active cooldown of one of your wrath skills by .5 seconds and companion skills reduce the active cooldown by 1 second.
These are by no means perfect, but give an idea of how the Spirit Boon system could be used to really double down into certain play styles and make the choices feel more meaningful. The developers could also move more niche options from the main talent tree like Clarity to the Spirit Boon tree to make space for more generically useful options.
In my humble opinion, the Spirit Boon system just doesn’t go hard enough. And the problem overall with the druid class, I feel, is a lack of choice. If you want to do meaningful damage, you throw on a Tempest Roar and ignore everything else. Using Spirit Boons as another substantial, yet balanced talent tree system is a way to infuse some player agency into the class while also allowing it to compete with other class mechanics.
If anyone sees this, thanks for reading!
And as an honorable mention - Please give Sorcerers another enchantment slot and create enchantment effects for the Ultimate skills. 