It honestly feels like Druid was balanced around spreadsheets rather than actual gameplay. The numbers might look reasonable on paper, but in practice Wrath still feels too weak its doing less damage than wands on average, Starfire is still a long hardcast for its damage which works for pve but pvp like duels/wpvp its not as used as non druid players think and Eclipse doesn’t really solve that problem for pvp.
Meanwhile, other classes are getting abilities like Penance, Lava Burst, etc. that give them meaningful burst and gameplay options. Balance doesn’t necessarily need huge damage buffs—it needs tools that actually feel good to use.
I’d also really like to see some form of HoT protection. Having your entire healing/defensive toolkit constantly purged or dispelled by Shamans, Priests, and Felhunter pets is a major concern for endgame PvP.
Things like stronger baseline DoTs, a instant cast short-CD instant like SoD’s Starsurge especially tuned for vanilla being able to create kill windows with starfire clipping into starsurge would help the class a lot, and some form of HoT protection would go a long way toward making Balance/resto feel like a properly modernized spec.
Right now, it feels like Druid was tuned around theoretical DPS/HPS rather than how the class actually plays especially in PvP.
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Balance druid has historically just not worked until level 40, arguably even nearly max level. The talents kind of work in tandem with eachother in a very all or nothing way.
I agree that Balance has historically been very all-or-nothing with its talents, and I’m not necessarily arguing that the damage numbers are bad or unplayable especially after the 50% wrath buff.
My bigger concern is the actual gameplay and rotation, especially in PvP. Class identity is absolutely a good thing, and I don’t think Balance needs to become a completely different spec. But there are some weaknesses that go beyond class identity and start to feel like missing tools.
For example, having essentially no real answer to dispel/purge is rough. Stacking random buffs just to make your important buffs harder to remove feels more like a workaround than good gameplay. Vanilla’s developers clearly recognized this too, which is part of why tools like additional liefbloom was introduced in TBC.
I’m also not saying we need both HoT protection and a fast offensive ability. I could live with getting HoT protection but keeping the traditional Balance hardcasts, or getting something like SoD’s Starsurge / another fast offensive ability without a HoT protection.
It’s having neither that starts to feel bad.
If I can’t reliably protect my HoTs against Purge/Dispel or I don’t have a meaningful fast-cast/instant offensive option like Starsurge or at least even a third DoT such as Sunfire for a little more dps to counter not being able to heal as much, what are my actual tools against classes that counter my entire kit? stacking trash buffs?
That’s the part that feels less like “class identity” and more like an oversight. I’m not asking for Balance to have no weaknesses—I just think it needs at least one real answer to these problems.
Typhoon would have been a nice addition to balance. Not sure why they didn’t add it.
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I’ve been saying the same thing until I got my talents and played with eclipse. Boomkin will feel no different than it always has. Eclipse is just nature’s grace. 2.5 second starfires. They really fumbled on eclipse. I was ok with wrath being garbage bc of resto having access to wrath spam but after playing with eclipse I was just like yup this doesn’t feel good at all. It seems like the vision for us is based around a retail pvp talent. Thorn bots. We get to be thorn bots.
Looks like no more boomie for me and druid becomes an alt ill heal on later. It is what it is guys. The boomie dream stays a dream.
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they shoulda made eclipse baseline at 20 same time we get rank 1 starfire, and given us something “new” in its place or even earlier in the tree. If we’re willing to import later-expansion abilities/new abilities for other classes like priest penance, shaman lava burst, mage icelance, hunter sniper shot why is Balance specifically being forced to live with its original Classic weaknesses? all they talk about is every spec is viable yet boomies will only get 1 raid slot and thats solely for moonkin aura which is right back to vanilla problems that they claimed they fixed. we shouldnt be top dps no balance main thinks we should be top dps, but we arent even viable. If devs wont take a hard look at druids lets just hope the 60 balance/resto gear is really good to make up for this specs flaws
I was expecting 4 stacks of eclipse to be -2 seconds on starfire’s cast time with how it’s worded. That would’ve been great, but nope, its trash
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Same here be nice if it was a bug.
Even if it’s viable at 60 because of gear, it doesn’t excuse 1-59, then hoping for a pity raid slot at 60 long enough to get some gear and be “viable”.
Really disappointing state boomie is in. Hopefully they continue to make positive changes to the spec and create something I want to sub for come November.
i completely agree, just about every other class/spec got huge updates, yet balance got 60% baseline nerf (originally), being able to root 2 extra people if you waste talent points into it, and a system we also have to put points into to force us into a wrath-starfire rotation, and omen of clarity baseline on spells and melee with moonkin increasing the proc chance. everything they changed was passive in the end. and the baseline nerf made no sense when boomie damage was already subpar at 60 compared to other classes including hybrids. just feels like the devs dont touch balance druids with a 10 foot pole. 20+ years of data on why balance sucked in vanilla and they looked at tbc which completely fixed balance druid and said no thanks.
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In my opinion,
Blance druids need to lean into the BOOMkin label.
INCREASE the cast time on Starfire, and boost it’s damage.
Make Boomkin the highest ST range spec, IFFF they can get their casts off.
Seems like a niche only they can fill.
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just compare it to Warrior and you’ll feel better about yourself
Its hard to evaluate Balance without seeing Moonkin Form. I would wait till 40 before making changes.
Isnt the only difference from vanilla to forever with moonkin form the 100% increased omen of clarity procs? Which doesnt really change the core problem of the post. the core problem is the toolkit feels 80% complete maybe im just spoiled from all the recent tbc but it just feels incomplete is my own personal biggest gripe especially seeing every other class get actual new stuff to freshen up gameplay and buff classes.
I’m still spoiled from SoD. Decent damage and a more fun, interactive rotation.
It wasn’t perfect but I felt like they had a really good thing going and it still had the feel of Vanilla. I’m surprised they didn’t bring it back for this.
The craziest part is people loved starsurge, and after p1 where it got nerfed it wasnt too op and that ability alone breathed so much life into balance. not to mention fury of the stormrage 0 mana with a 12% chance to proc instant cast HT made deep balance builds solid in pvp, lifebloom as well so many good things in SoD to see literally 0 of them here. starfall although fun is just way to OP and even i wouldnt wanna see it in a vanilla setting as much fun as it would be
I wasn’t a big fan of stars urge but mainly just the animation they went with. Sod boomie should be the bar they set for this its insanely wild their internal metrics didn’t show people would like the playstyle of wrath juicing starfire cast times but I guess it was just me that liked it lol. Apparently we wanted to be thorn bots…
its because blizzard hates druids, we’re never not just a afterthought to them lol
Just bait with rank 1 HoT’s. Bait kick with your hearthstone.
It’s e z.
The whole “just use R1 HoTs as dispel bait” thing is honestly a pretty bad solution.
The problem is that R1 HoT buffering is completely counterintuitive to how Balance/Resto is supposed to play. The whole strength of the spec is supposed to be attrition — keep your DoTs up, keep your HoTs up, kite, CC, heal yourself, and slowly wear the other player down. If I’m constantly throwing out R1 HoTs that I don’t actually want or need just to fill my buff slots, I’m wasting globals and mana on buffs that aren’t doing anything for me instead of actually playing my attrition game.
And realistically, decent players aren’t just going to mindlessly purge every R1 HoT you throw at them. Once they realize you’re trying to bait their dispels, they can just stop dispelling the trash buffs and wait for the HoTs that actually matter. Now what? I’m sitting there maintaining a bunch of useless R1 HoTs while my real HoTs are still vulnerable.
So yeah, it’s technically a trick you can use, but I don’t think “hope the other player is stupid enough to purge my useless buffs” is a good answer to one of the core weaknesses of the spec.
And honestly, the original WoW devs clearly recognized this problem too. That’s part of why Lifebloom was introduced in TBC — it gave Druids a HoT that was much harder to simply invalidate with dispels and made the HoT-based healing playstyle actually function in PvP.
It doesn’t solve the problem — it just makes you play around the problem in a way that’s actively counter to the Balance/Resto playstyle.