Clarification: These suggestions aim to merely slightly increase the caster’s durability - without impacting team support, which was targeted in Dragonflight with nerfs to Regrowth & Nature’s Vigil.
Frenzied Regeneration was over-nerfed. Please buff it by 1% per ‘tick’ (so, 24%) like it was in BfA. Balance Druid needs defensive help in PvP atm. Ideally, I’d just make it heal more but take one ‘tick’ less to do so. Regardless, it should “Shift into Bear Form and Heal…”.
Also make Brambles a Druid class tree talent with slightly increased absorption and significantly reduced backlash, and a 5-10% slow to help vs melee cleaves and esp. the armies of 10000 pets, minions, etc.
Or, provide a passive alternative to Nature’s Vigil that leeches, say, 10% of single-target damage during Major Cooldown as absorption.
Or buff Thick Hide & Natural Recovery by 1-2%, and Matted Fur by 100-200%.
(At least, give Elune’s Chosen a buff to one of those from Glistening Fur. Defensively, it’s behind Keeper by a lot)
Tyvm for the considerations
Rejuv healing wouldn’t do anything, as the meta for the last few expacs has been about tempo DPS rather than slow sustain.
Regrowth healing would be ideal, since it’d make Forestwalk a nice talent to take then, but it becomes a 2fold problem. 1) Our talent points being able to be moved are limited. 2) You’re relying heavily on the enemy team just not pressing a stun or making a serious mistake.
Frenzied Regen has already been getting slowly unnerfed, but it still doesn’t fix things if it gets buffed further. Boomy requires a cd.
And Moonkin form passive defense would just make it a bane for a lot of specs if you added magic resist to it. Boomy really only struggles into melee, nothing more. You generally win wizard wars as is.
Boomy just needs a second defensive that doesn’t rely on pressing bear form every stun.
Slow sustain is nice for 1v1 though, like when you roam in blitz. Never have I felt so useless 1v1 that i can remember, I think Legion was pretty close.
Maybe they could make Nature’s vigil not garbage for boomy as another defensive cooldown. Takes points away from other defensive capstones but heart of the wild has such a long cooldown if you made vigil really good then it would work i think,
Again, boomy just needs a second defensive. It’s the only spec in the game with a single realistic CD if you take Renewal as a fake one.
It simply requires a second button to press defensively, even if it has to be preemptively pressed rather than being usable in stuns. The only alternative is just to make bear form have a passive damage reduc rather than flat armour, and/or buff incoming healing when in bear.
We don’t live in a world where rejuv healing is going to change the spec, and Forestwalk requires the second person for viability. You just need to offer the base defensives and let it flow from there.
Another problem since the dawn of arena is that both Renewal and Frenzied Regen are gutted by dampening and MS.
We could get Survival instincts back, even as a PvP talent but I personally wouldn’t want any more buttons and would always take the passive option.
Overall, I think your idea of a second stack to Barkskin is great! Simple and effective.
A simple PvP talent change would be to make Celestial Guardian mitigate against all damage types. Or, to bring Ironfeather Armor back, I think it’d be nice since like you said, we’re already doing fine in/vs magic lobbies/comps.
What I really wish we’d get is indeed a passive thorns/brambles crossover. More absorption, and slowing all the pets… Maybe that could be an alternative to Nature’s Vigil (again, so a passive selfish option rather than a potential team-wide utility which seems to be adamantly nerfed at every turn because of the ‘DPS aren’t supposed to have those’ design mentality. It’s also why I wish they’d revert the DF Hybrid healing change - so fewer, but stronger Regrowths. I hate “spamming noodles” in both damage and healing scenarios. Those designs just put the spec years behind the GCD curve. Nothing feels worst, esp. in PvP, when you need to blow multiple cooldowns only to get enemies off of you for 2 seconds. Or, use multiple GCDs only to land one reduced heal. So another idea is to give Boomy FR the same treatment as Feral - so it’d be useable in Moonkin and increase health and healing received for the duration.
Yet ANOTHER important point to why I’d prefer the buffs didn’t come from Regrowth & Co. - is that the changes should make Elune’s Chosen more viable. It’s why I suggested in the OP to bake a Thick Hide (or something else) aura increase into Glistening Fur. Just to make that build tankier because it’s overall behind Keeper in both potential burst output and healing/defensive benefits.
Only issue with this is it basically locks boomy into playing 3 pvp talents.
Granted, thorns and faerie swarm suck to take overall. Moon & Stars is probably the nicest “I got outplayed but go screw yourself” talent. Dying stars is situationally good ofc, and the rest have their place.
What I’m GOING to say is that Elune’s Chosen actually feels better than KOTG imo. KOTG is better for the best boomy comps (boomy/rogue & Boomy/dh) where you’re trying to kill in windows that you’re FON is up for, but I’ve been experimenting with a EC build for the last few weeks that I’ve finally meshed out that genuinely feels insane for every comp that isn’t with a rogue or dh. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2297372710 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2297661841 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXNXR6MGTZM
Putting up a more indepth guide of it later, but you don’t actually feel weaker damage wise with this build, and a 20% moonfire slow (at first I thought was troll) is actually just barely enoguh for you to be able to kite out anything you need to. And obv I can’t tell off 3s, but I do believe it stacks withother slows in game.
Thanks a lot for this! I followed, subbed & looking forward to your guide. I also prefer EC, so I’m glad to see your coverage and viability results Edit: hopefully we get more fun build variety in the future & tuning keeps things balanced
That is amazing! Gonna feel like Legion / early BfA again though like you said… it could use a buff for its cast time. Put the Boom back in Boomkin! /salute
Edit: hopefully we get more fun build variety in the future & tuning keeps things balanced 