11.0.5 Balance Druid Feedback

In Development The War Within Patch 11.0.5 PTR
1

Hello everyone! With the new season just around the corner, Blizzard has posted some major upcoming changes to Balance Druid for 11.0.5. While these changes aren’t quite to the scale of a full “rework,” they certainly could have a meaningful impact on how the spec feels in the near-term. Having done some initial testing and conversing with members of the Balance Druid community, we wanted to provide some general thoughts on these first set of changes and some potential iteration that could make them even better during this PTR cycle! As always, our goal is to provide useful feedback for the development team as they work to make the spec and the game fun for all of us. Thanks for reading!

New Talent Additions/Changes

Numerous new talents were added to the spec tree while also shifting a handful of nodes around and adding new connections. Most of these were net positives (baseline Starfall, new connections, and crit scaling especially), but I want to point out some items that may benefit from continued iteration.

Circle of Life and Death:

  • This talent was upgraded into Cosmic Rapidity in Dragonflight to reduce excessive globals spent dotting, which disrupted our rotation. Reintroducing this talent alongside Cosmic Rapidity seems redundant and reintroduces previous negative gameplay issues. Maintaining dots in large AOE packs is already a concern after the nerf of Aetherial Kindling from 4 seconds to 3, and this talent would exacerbate the problem.
  • Side Note: It’s unclear if this is intentional, but the talent currently seems to reduce the dot extension of Aetherial Kindling further, possibly due to quirks in Starfall’s coding. This was not the case in Dragonflight.

Wild Mushrooms/Sunseeker Mushrooms:

  • This node offers a choice between the current active, Wild Mushrooms, and a passive iteration that reduces complexity. However, Wild Mushrooms have consistently provided low damage, and neither the charges nor the new passive RPPM version scales with haste. Their sole purpose has been to activate Waning Twilight, but Smolder now fulfills that role in all content. It would be well received to have Mushrooms be relevant again especially in Mythic Plus.

2-Point Nodes:

  • Some 2-point nodes were reduced to 1 point, and talents were rearranged. While the continued reduction of 2 pointers is definitely moving in the right direction, issues remain with the 2-point nodes for Starlord, Cosmic Rapidity, and Balance of All Things, which limit build diversity by restricting access to key nodes and forcing specific paths.

General Positioning/Pathing:

  • The added connections are fantastic and continued improvement of talent positioning and pathing could enhance build diversity by allowing access to synergistic talents without requiring paths through conflicting ones. For example, Starweaver, which could be a gameplay defining talent, loses value for every point that is forced to be spent on increasing the power of generator GCDs.

Damage Breakdown Between Spenders and Generators:

  • Balance has faced issues with excessive damage contribution coming from generators rather than spenders in The War Within. This imbalance disrupts talent builds and rotation, resulting in an unsatisfying playstyle. While tuning can help, the root problem lies in how many spec and hero talents make generators too impactful. Addressing this imbalance could significantly improve the short-term gameplay experience.

Hero Talents

Keeper of the Grove:

  • The tree provides good burst every 45 seconds and speeds up Moonfire spread, but it lacks thematic depth and interactivity with treants. Many nodes are passive and even using Force of Nature does not add much, as we just hit Wrath to proc Dream Burst and otherwise just benefit from passive buffs. Unlike Restoration Druids’ treants with a flexible charge system, Balance treants are mostly ignored after placement. Finally, the tree has a heavy focus on the importance of generators which further exacerbates the issue mentioned above. Enhancing how Force of Nature influences gameplay and adding more visual effects would improve the thematic appeal and make the system more engaging.

Chosen of Elune:

  • This tree’s general theme lands much better with Balance Druid and talents like Lunation when combined with Fury of Elune offer engaging gameplay loops. However, there are concerns mostly related to Lunar Calling and a lack of visual effects. Lunar Calling heavily restricts build diversity, forcing us into a Starfire-centric build and limiting rotational depth. The slow cast time and lower AP generation nature of Starfire makes it feel clunky as your only generator especially in raid. An updated set of visuals to this tree would also make it feel more fun or at least look cooler to play.

Class Tree

There has been extensive feedback given on the class tree for Druids in the past. Most notably, community leaders/guide writers came together to write a WoWhead post that went into great detail on the issues with the tree. I’d recommend going to take a look at that post if you haven’t!

Longer Term Iteration/General Feedback

While the scope of these changes seems to be more focused on doing a reasonable amount of work to make Balance more enjoyable in the shorter term, there are some things the community would still like to see changed in the long-run if not now.

Eclipse System:

  • The Eclipse system overall has become uninteresting and overly maintenance-focused. The common sentiment has been that it feels “stapled on” to a basic builder spender that offers little gameplay interaction and overly constrains our talents/builds. Eclipse used to have a place but after numerous band-aid fixes over multiple expansions, it feels shallow and may have outlived its time. Season 1 of Dragonflight was a relatively enjoyed iteration of Balance and it was in part due to ignoring the Eclipse system all together. This opened space for reacting to procs and focusing on other more interesting interactions.

Strength of Cooldowns

  • Coming into The War Within, Blizzard indicated a desire to make our cooldowns feel more meaningful which they felt freed up to do by removing Pulsar. Currently, Celestial Alignment/Incarnation: Chosen of Elune are both still quite weak relative to other specs.

  • The new talent, Whirling Stars, seemed at first like it could be very interesting but the 9 second window feels extremely clunky given the number of casts we are required to fit into such a small period of time and the lack of power associated with Celestial Alignment. It is already difficult in the current 15 second window to dump Astral Power into Starsurge/Starfall, channel 4 seconds of Convoke, ensure you have spent all Dreamsurges if playing KotG, and then using globals on other spells like New/Half/Full Moon, Fury of Elune, and Wild Mushrooms if any are played. The reduction of this window to 9 seconds would make much of that impossible and also create clunky timing with effects such as Starlord.

Depth of Gameplay/Skill Expression

  • While some of the new talents are interesting, many continue to be more passive effects that will not meaningfully impact gameplay. This continues to be a concern across the entire spec tree, both hero talent trees, and the eclipse system’s impact on them. Any talent that just passively increases or procs extra damage on a builder, spender, or dot, generally doesn’t add anything to gameplay.

  • There is currently a large percentage of Balance Druid damage output that is almost entirely out of our control. Some of this is due to the damage distribution between spenders and generators, but it is also heavily impacted by the number of passive yet non-interactive damage elements in the spec. Denizens of the Dream, Astral Smolder, Umbral Embrace, Power of Goldrinn, Shooting Stars, and Convoke the Spirits all have heavy degrees of “RNG” to them without any way of playing around them or reacting to them. Together they contribute a meaningful portion of our damage while offering little to no gameplay impact. This leads to a feeling of our playstyle being “keep hitting Wrath and hope you get lucky.” Reducing these types of effects’ impact on our damage profile or increasing interactions would feel great.

Summary:

Positive Changes: Continued removal of 2-point nodes helps to alleviate constraints on spec tree, new talent nodes could provide interesting new builds if iterated on/tuned/located well, moving more damage into spenders, and added crit scaling should provide significantly more interesting gearing options.

Negative Aspects: 2 pointers that still exist in the tree continue to constrain the playable builds, hero talents still have little to no meaningful interaction with the spec as a whole nor noticeable visual effects, a class tree that needs a full redesign, and an Eclipse system that adds little interesting gameplay maintains a stranglehold on talents and design.

44 Likes
2

They refuse to make true baseline kit changes to both the druid class tree and the balance spec in general. Just talent shuffling without addressing the 5 big problems.

  1. Terrible class tree, with mediocre utility that requires taking off-spec relevant talents, and shapeshifting is a curse on the class, not a boon.

You pay 1-2 GCD’s for an inferior way of doing what the other hybrids do without paying a 1-2 GCD to shapeshift, locking out their other skills, and losing them huge amounts of armor on top.

Rejuvenate should not be in the class tree if it is going to remain worthless for the non-resto druids.

The capstones are terrible, a Frenzied regeneration every 2 minutes as a capstone is awful. Heart of the Wild and Nature’s Vigil are even worse.

  1. Balance druid defensives are terrible. NOBODY ENJOYS SITTING SILENCED IN BEAR FORM 24/7 BECAUSE YOU TOOK MOONKIN FORM’S 15% damage reduction aura away in earlier expansions.

Regrowth heals for 10% of our health, it’s nothing. It’s a waste of a cast time. The spec can’t even compensate for poor defensives with strong self healing like enhancement shaman because that doesn’t exist either.

  1. The spec mechanic sucks. Eclipse didn’t need to come back. We’re paying capstone talents to get full moon back, which should be a baseline spell and fury of elune should be earlier in the tree if it will remain a requirement for a hero talent tree.

Moreover, the Treants which make the core of a hero talent tree are only designed well for resto druids with the 3 charge system and ranged performance instead of its current awful 10 second short lived summon that has to walk up slowly to targets and melee for mediocre damage and pray they don’t get CC’d.

  1. Ramp up. The spec has humongous ramp up. Requiring 2 dots on every target to AoE on top of casting Starfire means the spec is horrible in any keys that are not 20+.

The easy fix here is making Wild Mushroom baseline and Balance’s Shadow Crash equivalent, applying either both dots or a unique dot that makes Starfall interpret targets as having both dots up for damage consideration.

On top of that, Balance druid’s cleave is nonexistent. They do horrible in low target counts. Starfall does nothing until very large target counts. The DoTs have been overnerfed so they can’t function as cleave damage.

  1. The hero talents. Terrible both visually and design wise. The first hero talents to be previewed and didn’t get a single meaningful design change in the entirety of alpha and beta despite obvious feedback.

Keeper of the Grove needs Balance’s treants reverted to WoD with a charge system summoning a ranged treant that casts wrath/starfire depending on target count.

Keeper of the Grove should also play like Diabolist where you have a ritual that cycles between dryads/ancient/keeper summons like Diabolist with a final culminating spell like Ruination.

Elune’s Chosen needs to be something more than making Blance’s already boring rotation even more boring by eliminating Wrath altogether and spamming Starfire.

Both hero trees need better visuals and effects. Guardian druids’ swipe effects should be getting moon themed effects.

By the way, so should wildstalker feral druids be getting visual variety with their swipes gaining green/thorn motifs.

20 Likes
3

I think this is the most critical part here. Eclipse was functional in the MoP and WoD iterations of boomie before Astral power was a thing. Boomie was not a build/dump archetype class, it was something else. Since the migration to a build/dump baseline, all of eclipse’s iterations have had issues one way or another. Currently, it’s simply a maintenance buff we have to ensure is up and running before we can build or dump, one that compounds with how the mastery & dots work to ensure big ramp up time on anything more than a single target.

While the base gameplay of balance is “simple”, it’s also fairly rigid. There isn’t that much space to tweak the gameplay loops because anything significantly impacting the build/dump loop OR the eclipse management loop is inherently hamstrung by the other - there’s only so much you can do before those two loops start clasing with each other.

I’m still not certain why exactly the choice was made to make boomie a build/dump class. It eliminated a gameplay style that was fairly unique in favour of homogenizing it with an archetype that multiple specs and classes already fill. It was however done at the same time Eclipse was originally removed, but then astral power and build/dump not discarded when Eclipse was brought back. Three expansions of minor tweaks later and they’re still conflicting with each other, leaving the class feeling okay when one of them can be mostly ignored, and busy-yet-unrewarding otherwise.

And with how much the builder side of the equation is buffed through hero talents, the build/dump side of the equation makes less and less sense by the day.

Maybe it’s dooming but I don’t think the class is going to be fixed by some minor edge tweaks. I think one of these core mechanics needs to be committed to, and the other removed.

4 Likes
4

WOD had a new version of Shooting Stars, which served as a shared resource for Starsurge and Starfall. This change was made explicitly to turn Starfall into an AOE spell, whereas it was part of the ST rotation in MOP. When Legion became current, Shooting Stars was replaced by Astral Power as the shared resource.

When Legion moved away from Eclipse, the system of snapshotting was gutted virtually everywhere else in the game. Snapshotting in WoW is objectively clunky. There are multiple ways to snapshot, including Damage Mods, Critical Strike rolls, and few wothers.

  • Critical Strike rolls would be best described with dice. If I have a spell that hits 10 targets, how many dice do I roll? 1 for the cast, or 10 for each target?
  • Damage Mods have to be factored out. Let’s say Eclipse was just a flat 20% bonus, and let’s say it snapshot with Moonfire. I need a simple way to tell the server to give it maximum value, and the best way to do that is to assume it’s always at max value. So, it always deals 120% more damage. But if I cast it without Eclipse, it needs to be 100% damage. The max is simple enough: You just multiply by the inverse of 1.2 or 120% (0.8333, or 1/1.2) … but why do it this way? Because gaining the buff cannot further increase the effects of the snapshot, it just provides maximum value at all times.

So, Eclipse is now gutted because snapshotting is clunky as hell. Eclipse was built on snapshotting too. So, can you really even have a system function properly when it’s main mechanic no longer exists? I don’t think so. So it moved to builder/spender. And remnants of the player exist as a reminder of a bygone era, including dual generators, Sunfire overtaking Insect Swarm, and Eclipse sitting with a 15sec duration (to match Nature’s Grace from the past).

So, to answer the question in the quoted text: Because it’s easier to design.

2 Likes
5

This is interesting context for people. Thanks! I agree that the two systems dont synergize well and likely contributes to the difficulty in adding interesting interactions to the spec.

1 Like
6

I know some people might have long time attachments to the class fantasy or theme of the Eclipse mechanic, but it’s clear that it has served its purpose and has overstayed its welcome. The builder/spender style is much easier to develop from a game design direction and will allow for much more actually interesting, visceral, and viable builds in our spec tree.

The only thing keeping people connected to the idea of the Eclipse mechanic is nostalgia in my opinion. It’s about as fun as pressing Slice and Dice on Rogue or Inquisition on old Paladin. Maintenance buffs are not as interesting as some people in the forums are trying to make them out to be. I counter the point made by some people that the builder/spender design is boring with that idea in mind.

Balance needs to pick a side already, and the builder/spender side is the only one between the two that hasn’t gone though many redesigns over the course of expansions. With the builder/spender route, Balance will be free to breathe and actually make use of fun flavorful abilities i.e. New/Full Moon and Wild Mushrooms like the OP touched on. Right now, the rotation has so much ramp and such tight windows to perform we are being bottlenecked. Eclipse has become a throttle on the spec. Not to mention how unintuitive it feels just to get into the mechanic in the first place. Pressing 2 of the opposite spell to enter the Eclipse you need to be in is the definition of clunky.

If Eclipse sticks around in the spec it needs to become a flavorful passive side thing. Something small like a bit of haste or crit (or whatever other small benefit you can think of) depending on which Eclipse you entered. Not a flat 15% damage modifier. Heck, move the class tree talent Rising Light, Falling Night and rework it into the Balance tree as the new Eclipse function.

5 Likes
7

I want to address some points that I think others have missed thus far, as I believe many of the already-posted criticisms are great feedback.

  1. Moonkin is one of the worst casters for movement-while-casting, right alongside Priests. Our reliance on Eclipse means we can’t send Starsurge outside of it, and we have long cast times with certain builds like Moons and Lunar Calling. However, this iteration of talents could give us really good potential for casting while moving because of free Starfalls and Starsurges. However, Eclipse would still hinder us in this regard.

  2. Moonkin has a pretty awful issue with raid AoE in general, and Starfall might not be able to contribute enough to our single target (like movement mentioned above) to justify being taken just for free casts. On many AoE fights, Starfall just isn’t a relevant enough spell due to a lack of utility (no longer being able move while within the spell) as well as a niche that is too rarely filled out where it used to have better general applicability (like when it used to amp our DoTs in Legion). Perhaps these changes can fix our ability to more reliably mix single target and AoE, but it’ll be reliant on procs that we can’t control reliably, thus often making us miss windows wherein we need the ST or the AoE for a specific moment of a fight.

8

Agreed. The Eclipse mechanic once again directly affects this issue, as we need to hard cast two spells of the opposite type to enter the Eclipse state. That period of hard casting can feel especially frustrating when it’s interrupted by movement mechanics (like swirlies on the floor), more so than other spell cast interruptions. Entering Eclipse as quickly as possible is crucial to fully ‘play the game’ and maximize our damage. When our hard casts are interrupted, we lose those few precious seconds of Eclipse time, either because we’re forced to move or, as mentioned, because we can’t enter the state as fast as we’d like due to movement.

EDIT:
Wanted to cross post an idea in here as it is the PTR feedback thread after all.

I would love it if instead of Eclipse feeling like a maintenance buff as it does now, it could instead perhaps feel something like a fluid stance dance controlled by our builder abilities— with only 1 cast to activate the needed Eclipse— and Wrath activating the Solar Eclipse, while Starfire activates Lunar Eclipse to remove the backwards feel in the gameplay. Then of course removing the time limit on the Eclipse buff completely as stated in the original post. This would keep the spec fantasy intact, while lowering Eclipse’s unwieldiness in the modern day when functioning in tandem with the builder/spender gameplay.

2 Likes
9

As someone who alts moonkin quite often these are very good points and make a lot of sense to me.

1 Like
10

Honestly the solution to help,

Nature’s Grace - When Eclipse ends or when you enter combat, enter a Dreamstate, reducing the cast time of your next 2 Starfires or Wraths by 40% and can be used while moving.

This would help greatly, not a total fix but it’s something.

11

Making balance treants charged based with 3 charges that use ranged spells ala WOD and maybe baselining warrior of elune would go a long way as well.

Mobility, defensives, and ramp up are the crux of what’s sinking balance druids. The class tree is inexcusably bad, but even the spec’s core kit and tree has problems.

12

Make them the DPS version of Grove Guardians. Yes.

13

Can you explain how that would be better?

DPS generally revolves around stacking as many multiplicative effects as possible in the windows that exist.

IE in a 3 charge system, you would still hold/dump charges to line up CDs.

14

No you would not, if you knew being caught out in forced movement with no movement GCD’s to cast is an even bigger loss.

3 charges of treants+2 warrior of elune starfire casts = 5 globals for movement.

If you want to frontload them for more burst that’s on you when the forced movement comes.

15

Are we reworking the hero talents then?

As soon as they give you a buff (8% spell power + dream burst) simply dumping them for movement globals isn’t really a choice.

Did I also miss the change where treants and WoE are no longer a choice node?

Resto druid being on a charge system makes sense because they’re treants are also off the gcd. Could you imagine dropping 1 tree at a time at the cost of a global?

16

If they take on Resto Treant system, Grove Guardians are off the GCD, so it should essentially be the same for Force of Nature as a charge system.

It be ridiculous if the changed Force of Nature, I’m my opinion for the better, but then keep it costing a GCD. But this is Blizzard we talking about. :man_shrugging:t4:

17

Yes, that’s the point.

Keepers of the Grove and even Elune’s Chosen need reworks.

Keeper of the Grove can see the Treants become baseline to the balance druid spec and just empowers them.

You then also redesign keeper of the grove so pending astral power ticks down a nature ritual, summoning dryads, keepers of the grove, and ancients.

Like the really nice warlock Diabolist tree, but for nature magic/

For Elune’s Chosen, it gets reworked by giving us back the moon spells as baseline. Fury of Elune gets moved to earlier in the tree. It gets better visuals and empowerments to moon spells and elune’s fury.

For guardian druids, their attacks take on astral moonlight tint vfx.

1 Like
18

While the visuals in some cases are more than a little underwhelming, I really quite like the Elune’s Chosen Heroics.

While I do understand there are some issues there, I don’t blame that particular Hero Tree, rather I blame the Balance spec coupled with the class tree as there is little synergy. Some talents on each side need to be made baseline, with something new and exciting to take their place, something that actually fits with the fantasy.

Whether or not Blizzard dev’s have the skill or even ambition to make such changes remains to be seen, but I can live in hope. After all, Evergreen means constantly changing and evolving. I don’t see the Devs actually having the wherewithal, talent, skill or ambition to be this. In fact, it looks to me that they hired the bottom of the barrel to laid a few bucks and laid off the best of them.

19

I quite like eclipse as a mechanic, tbh. I don’t understand the hate it gets.

But I really dislike the ramp time. Druid feels like early bfa affliction lock in that regard.

CA applying dots in a line is neat. They could add Moonfire and sunfire to it, so at least periodically you could have a quick Start. A 30s cd that applies Moonfire in an AoE would be good. Similar to vile taint, since Moonkin is now an affliction Druid, we can solve the same issues with similar ways.

20

Orbitral Strike is a bugged piece of garbage that fails half the time either due to pathing not found or because the beam actually doesn’t launch in the direction you are facing.