With the release of 11.0.5, we wanted to get ahead of the eventual release of 11.0.7/11.1 which may offer an opportunity for a more thorough pass at fixing core Balance Druid issues. The below thoughts were gathered and reviewed from members of the Balance Druid theorycrafting community who have spent many hours testing and playing the spec over the years. We appreciate you taking the time to consider our feedback as always and look forward to the continued work being done to make the game and Balance Druid fun to play!
Eclipse System:
-
The Eclipse system has become an uninteresting, overly maintenance-focused gameplay loop that is stapled onto the base builder spender archetype and constrains a lot of the spec’s gameplay/design. Eclipse used to have a place, but after numerous band-aid fixes over multiple expansions, it feels shallow and has outlived its time. Season 1 of Dragonflight was a relatively enjoyable iteration of Balance which was, in part, due to effectively ignoring the Eclipse system all together (we would Wrath in Lunar and only cast Starfire when we had Umbral Embrace). This opened space for reacting to procs and focusing on other, more interesting interactions. We strongly believe that the Eclipse system is a significant part of the current issues with this spec.
-
Talents like Starlord could already serve to provide a cyclical pool and spend playstyle without the need for the Eclipse maintenance buff and without conflicting with the normal builder/spender.
Celestial Alignment/Incarnation (and their various alterations)
-
One of the stated intentions coming into The War Within was to make our cooldowns shorter in duration, but more powerful in effect. This has had mixed results with Celestial Alignment still not being a particularly powerful cooldown relative to other specs. Providing a more engaging or powerful cooldown could be a way to give Balance Druids that “exciting moment” to look forward to in the rotation which we currently lack. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune’s duration increase makes the cooldown window feel better, but is an otherwise very weak selection since the removal of Pulsar. Integrating the duration and power of Incarnation into baseline Celestial Alignment could allow Incarnation to become a more engaging talent, similar to past spells like Ravenous Frenzy.
-
The charge-based system with Whirling Stars offers interesting flexibility but faces a major issue with its shortened duration and the need to fit too many spells into a tight window. This results in a clunky and unsatisfying experience, diminishing the value of talents like New Moon and Starweaver. Unfortunately, the spells crammed into this window lack meaningful interactions, making it feel disjointed when it should be the most satisfying moment. It plays better when taking Incarnation due to the offsetting increase in duration, but as discussed, Incarn is quite weak in especially raid content. Finally, the complexity of numerous desynchronized cooldowns, while solvable for more committed players, seems to have created a gameplay experience that may be frustrating for average players.
General Talent Tree Feedback:
- There are many talents (like all 3 “Umbral” nodes) that are pure passive buffs to generators with no actual rotational interaction. These, along with effects like Dream Burst that proc off of only generators, will continue to sap value away from the proc-oriented spender talents while offering no interesting gameplay. Seeing more interesting choices replace these and potentially reworking how Dream Burst procs (more on the Keeper of the Grove Tree later) would open more room for procs to provide value in the rotation.
- The middle of the tree continues to be extremely bloated, making certain talent selections extremely hard to select structurally. Currently, there are 9 “mandatory” nodes in the middle section, leaving you with only 2 points remaining to make selections. This is compounded by key 2 point nodes later in the tree and the bottom third of the tree being very lackluster both from a gameplay and throughput perspective.
- General talent placement and pathing across the entire spec tree could be examined. There are still many anti-synergistic nodes that are forced pathing into one another. For example, Starweaver, which could be an interesting gameplay altering talent, loses value for every point that is forced to be spent on increasing the power of generator GCDs.
Depth of Gameplay/Skill Expression
-
Over 22 (50%) of our throughput talent nodes are either entirely passive or have minimal impact on gameplay. Talents like Crashing Star, Denizen of the Dream, Cosmic Rapidity, Power of Goldrinn, and Shooting Stars lack meaningful interaction. While some passives are expected in any spec, the high number and low impact of these talents in Balance Druid notably reduce excitement in the rotation. Additionally, many talents provide less than 2% throughput, making the choices feel irrelevant both in power and gameplay.
-
A significant portion of Balance Druid damage output is largely out of our control, stemming from talents like Denizens of the Dream, Astral Smolder, Umbral Embrace, Power of Goldrinn, Shooting Stars, and Convoke the Spirits. These abilities rely heavily on RNG, providing little opportunity for players to react or strategize around them. As a result, our playstyle often feels reduced to “keep hitting Wrath and hope for the best.” Reducing the impact of these RNG effects on our damage profile or increasing their interactivity would greatly enhance the gameplay experience.
Waning Twilight’s Impact on Mushrooms and Stellar Flare:
- Spells like Wild Mushrooms and Stellar Flare seem limited by their impact on Waning Twilight. It would be more engaging if these spells had meaningful interactions within our kit rather than serving as simple Waning Twilight activators. For example, Stellar Flare’s interaction with Shooting Stars in Season 1 of Dragonflight provided a tangible boost to Astral Power generation, enhancing the rotation. Similarly, empowering Wild Mushrooms to deal more damage or apply additional dots would give us much-needed AOE burst and be a fun button to press. This might necessitate removing Waning Twilight, which currently has zero impact on gameplay beyond tuning.
Hero Talents
Truthfully, both hero talent trees could use a significant overhaul to add visual effects and meaningful gameplay interaction. At the moment, both are overly passive and not particularly exciting. In some cases they make the spec actively more frustrating to play. Below are some more detailed thoughts on each.
Keeper of the Grove:
- Keeper provides you with good burst every 45 seconds and helps speed 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 depth, 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. Enhancing how Force of Nature influences gameplay, making the button feel more impactful to press, and adding more visual effects (Giant Ancient Keepers!) would improve the thematic appeal and make the system more engaging.
Chosen of Elune:
-
This tree’s general theme lands much better with Balance Druids, and talents like Lunation when combined with Fury of Elune offer an engaging gameplay loop. However, there are concerns mostly related to Lunar Calling, minimal gameplay interaction, 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 of Starfire makes it frustrating to use as your only generator. While it removes a portion of the Eclipse system, it still suffers from the same maintenance buff nature of Eclipse and doesn’t add any additional depth.
-
As mentioned, the CDR for Fury of Elune is great, but when Lunation is selected with New Moon, it makes the rotation feel far less enjoyable and bloated with globals due to the design of New Moon.
-
Finally, an updated set of visuals to this tree would also make it 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!