Balance Druid Feedback: 11.0.7 and Beyond

Classes Druid
1

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!

66 Likes
2

think it would be better for overal gameplay if shooting stars also get procced from stellar flare like it was in df s1

2 Likes
3

Eclipse being a “theme” of swapping in between the Eclipses now/BFA or pressing Wrath/Starfire Empowerments has been iterated on multiple times in different ways. We saw the pendulum in MoP/WoD, Empowerments in Legion, and slight change in BFA, the cycling of Eclipse in SL and DF, and now TWW. Both of the previous systems were better, full stop. The most recent one being Empowerments; you weren’t hamstrung by being in the wrong Eclipse for a situation, either by accident or by the end of Eclipse on a pack for 4 with 1 left. You weren’t held back by a “mechanic” that can’t be fixed to make the spec flow better because it’s part of the core function.

BFA had its own issues with Starfall being nerfed to the ground, but there are previous systems that are 1. Just as easy to play around and 2. Don’t feel like you’re being held back by the core design. 3. Don’t cause friction with multiple talents because the core design isn’t “fit as much stuff inside this 15 second window as you can.

Incarn as an “improved” version of Celestial Alignment is weird when it adds 10% crit and 5 seconds more duration. The talent being worth 4-5% against Convoke being 2-3x that. This sparks a whole other conversation about talent values. The point just being that some(most) talents are missing depth. They don’t change enough of the spec when you choose them or they don’t do enough to warrant taking them.

Rattle being the preferred choice in the node with Starweaver isn’t going to change until the maintenance part of the buff comes back or Starweaver gets changed to increase the spenders damage. It is a choice being able to turret and gaining some more movement globals. Rattle catching a change from 12% to 10% and then 10% to 8% is still not enough to be behind Starweaver.

Whirling Stars somehow caught a shadow nerf, idk how it made it here. The original version on PTR was 75s, but got changed to 100s without a blue post mentioning it or any communication from the dev. In ST this doesn’t really add anything but an extra window of Celestial Alignment with trees between 0:00 and 2m. We always will connect Celestial Alignment with Convoke, so you have a 100s cooldown that is still being used at 120. You don’t get any added line-ups with Celestial Alignment, base Fury of Elune or with KOTG Force of Nature (it doesn’t line up with base either). If you wanted to give an option for multiple talents to be 1m while having Force of Nature and Fury of ELune not line up in some places is fine, but adding another possibility for desyncing is just out of place. M+ is a different story, where I think Whirling Stars can be in a very good spot, with having Incarn for generally every pull, but the idea of “charges” doesn’t matter because we’re never at 2 stacks long enough to care.

The cases in which Stellar Flare is/was good keep popping up. It’s a lengthy debate of people disliking 3 dots, disliking the cast (which I don’t care about personally, it’s just another cast of Wrath), or being required to take it in AoE (Season 1 of DF). This next iteration might make it only viable in ST and possibly steer away from it in AoE. If this is possible I’m ok with it but I’m also a DF S1 enjoyer.

Mushrooms feel like it wants to replicate Shadow Crash for Priest or Cataclysm for Warlock, but it isn’t, and currently just works as a situational activator for Waning Twilight, a role that is already occupied by Astral Smolder. Adding a passive version of Mushrooms is funny, when half our tree are already passive talents that don’t change gameplay at all and Mushrooms can be an actual button. The GCD sucks because it does less damage than other buttons and doesn’t add much gameplay wise.

Also, just a quick question. Why doesn’t Umbral Inspiration increase Starsurge damage when it increases Starfalls?

5 Likes
4

I just want to add that, while in my opinion, I think Balance Druid was PEAK during Legion with it’s playstyle and how good Moons felt in general as a new ability and core ability. Eclipse wasn’t so heavily horrible to manage back then either. I really wish eclipse would either be removed all together or altered in a way that makes this spec more enjoyable.

That comment aside from the basic playstyle, our talents need HEAVY overhauling IN GENERAL. BOTH CLASS AND SPEC. Why is every Druid spec having to take Convoke the Spirits in EACH SPEC TREE, ALL FOUR (4), instead of the class tree when all 4 use it?

Why is Balance Druid STILL the squishiest spec/class? Why does Moonkin form not have 500% more armor or why do we not have survival instincts? Devs made an argument that they gave Feral Druid Innervate because its playability > class fantasy. SO why can’t Moonkin have Survival Instincts, a big defensive and another defensive all together when we only have 2 out of all these classes that have 5+?

AND ANOTHER THING, with the meta of INTERUPTS; devs are saying they’re happy with the amount of interrupts in dungeons and in the game in general being used and needed and how utility is playing a massive role (i.e. that Nagura interview where she asked if they’d ever fix/look at Moonkin Solar Beam Interrupt and she had to clarify to them that it DOESN’T WORK ALL THE TIME.) Why do we not have in our spec tree a meaningful decision for Solar Beam as an interrupt? Lowering it from 1 minute to 45 seconds is NOT WORTH. Why isn’t there an option to change it from an AOE 1 minute to a Single Target 20 second interrupt like all the other normal casters have? Solar Beam needs an overhaul with today’s form of interruption meta. Solar Beam DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK, the AOE is very hit or miss, very not easy to guess/gauge, and 1 whole minute for an AOE interrupt vs 5 ST interrupts rotated is HUGE in a LOT of today’s dungeons and content.

AAND AND ANOTHER THING (lol) I wanna touch on Starfall. This ability DEFINES Moonkin and has given us the title “Best Spread Cleave In The Game” for several years. Well, Blizz can’t seem to figure out what they want to do with Starfall anymore though, one minute it’s top damage the next it’s nerfed to the ground. It’s on a cooldown back in BFA then it’s off cooldown and huge and stacks again… Can we make up our minds? Make Starfall Great Again! How is it on a fight like Broodtwister it’s not COMPETING in AOE damage with a LOT of other specs? Are Blizz afraid of it being too OP or just not paying attention to it since it’s many nerfing/tunings? I say we make a talent node to change it to be like Rain of Fire or Blizzard where it is a targetable area of AOE, muti-castable for stacking damage, and it does 50% more damage in that smaller castable area than the giant AOE. Since Starfall is baseline again why can’t we have fun nodes to change how Starfall can function in different scenarios? It’s huge for the same amount of damage or give it a damage boost for a smaller-targetable area? I’d prefer it just goes back to Legion playstyle (as I mentioned above in my opinion that Legion Moonkin was THE BEST FORM of Moonkin, with it’s ease, fun, simplicity,a nd damage). So can we have a choice and ability to make Starfall GOOD again? Whatever means necessary? I am just so tired of being out AOEed by SO MANY CLASSES NOW that it’s like, “what happened to Balance Druid being Top AOE Dog with Starfall?” It doesn’t do JACK anymore!

Those are all my major complaints for my spec. I’ve played (started) since Legion and Moonkin was THE most fun back then. Every since Legion it’s been a steady decline down and down and down and I have YET to find ANY iteration of it fun ever again. Every retuning, every talent change, every little thing blizz changes feels SO BAD. It feels like whoever they have working on this spec, or druid class in general, has never played one for more than a few minutes. It shows in every Alpha, Beta, PTR, and onward! It’s getting really annoying and rough and I want to enjoy and have fun with my class again. PLEASE look at this post and ALL the posts above. Everyone has something they NEED fixed with this spec and it NEEDS to be ACTUALLY CURATED TO FOR ONCE!

Thank you!

7 Likes
5

I think one of the issue with the Druid class tree is trying to fit 4 different specs in it. Either split it in to 2 separate trees(Like 1 for DPS, and the other for tank/heals) or maybe add more points??

4 Likes
6

-Agreed with Eclipse system. It needs to go or make it not be tied to dmg buff at all. Idk make it like warrior stances or something where you choose which eclipse you’re perma chillin in. I got no ideas but I don’t like eclipse buffing dmg.
-Agreed with our dmg being passive a lot. I do like simplicity though so I’m not sure if I’d want them to change that lol. Risky
-Treants being one of our two main talent trees is so underwhelming.
-Full Moon needs to be way more viable. Faster cast time or make it like Earth Shock and instant and costs Astral Power. Especially because getting interrupted while casting Full Moon = your death and completely locked out of all schools (barkskin and renewal too).

3 Likes
7

I completely disagree with the take on Eclipse. Empowerments made Moonkin feel like every other builder-spender in the game with wet noodle builders. As someone who has played a balance druid since late vanilla, it was the worst feeling iteration of the spec. It’s crazy to me that people are saying that Balance is simple and boring when they want an even simpler and more boring gameplay style. Even then, I think there should be a Single-Minded Fury like talent that turns Eclipse into a stacking buff like Empowerments.

I’ve loved the Eclipse mechanic since Wrath, every other iteration hasn’t felt as good. Optimizing getting as many spells in the window is fun to me.

With that said, there is room for improvement! I do think that Eclipse should do something to Starfire and Wrath besides increasing damage. A big reason why Eclipse in Wrath felt good was Wraths were cast like a gattling gun and Starfire crit constantly. It could be spiced up a little.

A lot Eclipse’s issues and the “outliving” its time is due to how the rotation has been the same since Balance Of All Things has been in the game> I could argue that its been feeling the same since Starlord has been in the game even without Eclipse. 3 Starsurges to get the rotation going and making the start of Eclipse the main damage window has been the name of the game for so many years. The haste and crit of both do feel good but they limit the gameplay.

To add to those issues with the things stapled to Eclipse: passive damage and passive astral generation. In this case, I could not agree more with the OP. So much of our damage is in passive modifiers like Denizens of the Dream or Shooting Stars. Damage effects that are very hard to see and even harder to notice.

Lastly, the inexplicable talent placement and design. When I first read Umbral Embrace, I legit thought that it affected the other spell, not your current one (casting Wrath makes Starfire astral, vice versa). Giving a boon to the other spell would shake up the rotation a bit. Why is Starweaver not better than Rattle The Stars? Wasn’t one of the main design philosophies with these new talents suppose to get away from passive effects being the better DPS option? Before the small rework we got, we had talents that you could path to without taking Starfall that buffed only Starfall. Why do we have 4-6 talents affecting Shooting Stars and they are all over the place even though they synergize with each other? I know why Waning Twilight is a talent, it rewards having dots up, but that should be a play style choice against casting non-dots and not mandatory. Why isn’t Wild Mushroom off the GCD? It would feel great to use it between spells as we enter Eclipse.

As for the Hero talents, they could use some spice too. Keeper of the Grove should make treants bigger and summon 2 more when you take the damage talent. Entangling Roots should also be added as a dot to the rotation, since y’know that was one of the Keeper of the Grove’s main abilities (and please can we have Thorns baseline?). As for Elune’s Chosen, the main special effect for sure could be a touch more bombastic, but its in a good spot in my opinion visually. So any laser beams!

TL DR: I disagree that Eclipse is boring or has outlived its lifespan, I agree with most of what OP said. Balance druid has so much potential just right there with a few tweaks.

1 Like
8

Appreciate the response! I think the main issue that we are trying to get across with Eclipse is that your point about it being rewarding to get spells in, kind of doesn’t exist anymore. Balance of All Things isn’t played around meaningfully and Starlord also doesn’t really care about spending at start of eclipse but rather just pooling before it falls off so that you can stack it back to 3 regardless of where you are in eclipse. I personally wasn’t a huge fan of BFA empowerments so I wouldn’t necessarily advocate for a return to that, but there are previous iterations of this spec that utilized “Eclipse” that were dramatically different than what we have now. This iteration isn’t really comparable to Legion, MoP, WoD, etc and there are 0 active interactions with it beyond hitting your 2 generators to start the buff. Its been a slow grind over the years with little things changing here and there (mastery going from eclipse-centric to dot-focused, the alternating nature of eclipse being taken out, the power of abilities like BOAT being nerfed down heavily, etc). Ultimately what we have been left with is just a husk of a system that is masking what we are which is just a basic builder-spender. The issue is that it doesn’t just mask it, but it also draws too much focus of certain talents and design space which pushes out potential for other things and constrains design. Being a build-spend focused spec does NOT mean it would need to be simpler or boring. In fact, part of the feedback is aimed at wanting us to have more interactive procs, resource management goals, or other gameplay loops beyond what we have now. Basically the TLDR of my response is that modern day eclipse is not what it once was and is really only giving you the illusion of depth beyond just a builder spender when in reality its just a mostly meaningless maintenance buff at best and a build-constraining flaw at worst.

2 Likes
9

It’s a bit weird to me that the complains - rightfully - for months (years?) have been that Balance is too simply and bland and the moment they add some management and depth (CD’s you have to manage a bit, fitting stuff into dmg windows), it’s suddenly too complex.
While their current changes hopefully are not the last, they are certainly a step into the right direction.

I also disagree about the Eclipse system, once you step out of raid only content, it’s more engaging. I agree it should be improved and modernized, but I don’t think it’s outlive it’s usefulness. Not the system itself is the problem, but where they moved it. It should be reworked to be the base of a more modern, interactive and engaging Balance playstyle.

It’s also nice that builders are not completely useless like they have been in the past and it’s only on the two spenders we have, although I agree that some further shift or diversification might be needed.

Like another poster said, I also think that things like Starlord are a way bigger problem than Eclipse, restricting you unnecessarily.

Which brings me to my primary point: It’s not necessarily the current base systems that Balance has that are the issue, but the talents. Their current iteration is either very restricting or entirely passive, there’s no decision making or reaction incorporated.
That’s the core of the issue and also the reason why things like the DF s1 setbonus where so well received by a lot of people - it was extremely simple, but added interaction, management and some boom.
So, on that point we agree.

Better visuals would be nice, but are very, very, very low on the priority list. At the end of the day you’ll learn to ignore and phase them out visually very quickly, since there’s a lot of other stuff to pay attention to if you play high M+ or Mythic raids.

I agree on the rest of the post.

1 Like
10

As an only PvPer, THANK YOU. The melee zug is real and we have the worst defensives arguably. We should be the tankiest caster in the game by far. Ugh

1 Like
11

The reason in part that DF S1 was enjoyable was because you got into eclipse quickly (wrath 2x) and didn’t care otherwise. You cared about getting into eclipse but minmaxed other buffs, rattle/weaver gameplay, and pulsar timings, use of mushrooms. (Side note it’s funny they nerfed that but then lunar calling a thing, which casting Starfire ST is beans).

The point is that it’s holding back the design of the class and not allowing growth/change and opening room up for other play styles. The gripe isn’t that it’s hard, plenty of people that dislike it are the best druids and parse high, the gripe is that we’ve had more enjoyable play styles in the past.

12

This is probably one of the main reasons I don’t like playing Balance. I mean the theme is cool, solar/lunar, but it is to hard to know when the eclipse is changing without using add-ons (which should not be required) and pressing a spell in the wrong eclipse state always feels bad. I would not be opposed to them removing it altogether. Balance is already known for having a hefty ramp time. The Eclipse system does not help with that.

P.S. I read most of the post but have to get going, will add more later if needed, great post though!

1 Like
13

Yeah this is good to clarify. I dont think the concern is that Whirling is too complex. I actually enjoy the concept of being flexible with CDs in theory. I think the main issue is with the number of desynced cooldowns that we have and I dont think that is the “fun” kind of depth/complexity people are after. It doesn’t bother me much because for prog I just make reminder notes in MRT but most people probably aren’t doing that and we get questions often in Dreamgrove about how to use this and then people say something like “that sounds not fun I’ll just play Orbital”. My primary gripe with Whirling is that is shortens the duration on an already shortened (from DF) cooldown. While that in isolation isn’t necessarily bad, it just compounds on the fact that our CD windows dont feel “exciting” or impactful often. This could be fixed by having a tighter payoff/buildup moment like Arcane or in many other ways but at the moment its very much “just squeeze as many unrelated globals into a tight window as possible because its giving you a marginal buff and robot says its best”

1 Like
14

I think a big problem comes from the current mastery, tying damage to a dots being out creates a weakness to quick dying adds that is overly punishing. Before current mastery balance struggled here but not to such a dire state. I think throwing out this version of mastery would be an overall boon

1 Like
15

Let us move and cast in starfall again.

1 Like
16

Thanks for clarifying!

Dreamgrove is a lot of times a drama echo chamber (even if changes are just a few % or turn out to be positive) and sometimes downright toxic in their behavior. For example, just recently someone got /spit on just because they engaged there and disagreed on some small details with a long-time chatter; that and similar behavior often gets tolerated.
That doesn’t mean the opinion of not liking the desync cooldowns isn’t valid, it totally is, but I wouldn’t put too much weight onto it.

I actually like both Whirling and Orbital but I get your points and understand where you’re coming from - more interaction of the spells and some more payoff would be great, I agree on that, but it’s a double edged sword.
While the Arcane payoff does feel great it comes at a high price - if something happens in these windows or you have to use defensives your damage suffers a lot and renders you non-consequential for some time 'til they come up again.
So if Balance gets something like that, it shouldn’t be bound to the CD window, so that it would also spice up the general gameplay out of these CD damage windows.

But I still think it’s a massive improvement compared to before AND you do have Orbital as an alternative.

If you boil it down to that, it’s basically WoW DPS in a nutshell, regardless of class and specc.

17

Yes and amen. Trying to set up the most damage goes in PvP is such a nagging thing as boomy!
“Okay let me get my 2 dots up first before I CC and pop incarn.”
dispels
“Okay let’s try again…”
melee zug in your face the entire time you’re trying to maximize dmg and create these big boom windows. It’s 100% frustrating knowing I don’t have max dmg potential when I cast full moon sometimes. But I can’t afford to waste that time cuz Full Moon ain’t something you can just cast free willy. You have to plan it or you’ll eat a fat lockout or they’ll just CC you to death with micro stuff so you’ll never get it off.
My personal solution (controversial probably) Make the eclipses a toggled stance (like warrior Battle/Berserker/Defensive stances) so you also don’t have to worry about missing your window trying to get the Full Moon off.
And definitely change that mastery oof

1 Like
18

I think we need to talk about how Balance’s damage profile is designed and how the spec fails to excel in the content it is seemingly built for.

Boomkin is supposed to deal the most damage it can when we have many mobs that live for a very long time. That only happens in ONE type of content in the game: High End M+. The spec as it is currently designed can only get a chance to shine here, however our survivability continues to be an extreme pain point.

We also bring the absolute WORST interrupt in the game for PvE content to this setting, making Boomkin very awkward to succeed anywhere in the game at the moment. We need some sort of choice between a shorter interrupt that is single target or this “AoE Silence” (that mostly does not truly silence mobs) Solarbeam.

As mentioned in the starting post, there is a lot that needs to change in the Class Tree for ALL druid specs, but specifically for Boomkin and on the survivability note, Boomkin is often forced to quickly shift into bear form to have higher HP and defenses to survive in M+. This is extremely unsatisfying and hurts our rotation and sustained dps. A big spot for this is obviously on bosses where min/maxing every second of dps is crucial (cause again remember, we’re only good in High M+ where bosses live a long time and deal a ton of damage). A simple fix would be to add a Talent that is reasonably accessible by at least the Resto and Balance side of the tree to temporarily give us Bear Form HP and Defense, thinking a 1-1.5 min CD with a 10-15s duration. It would add more value to the nodes that boost Bear Form HP and defenses while not forcing us to sit in bear form when we are a ranged dps class. Currently our best hope is shifting into bear form, maintaining a constant regrowth on us while playing KotG for an 8% DR, a 1 min Barksin and prayer.

Seeing Boomkin get a “rework” only for us to DROP in single target Raid DPS standings when one of the main goals of the rework was to increase ST Dps feels HORRIBLE. More tuning should be done ASAP to achieve the other goal of providing more build diversity while also truly increasing our potential ST damage. Boomkin’s ST should not be so low if we only get to use the best part of our kit in a very specific and high-skill type of content.

19

Additionally (same author just updated my Character), some of core Balance spells continue to be in our Class Tree: Sunfire and increasing how it spreads and allowing a connection from Starfire to our Dispel would be HUGE.

Also, saw that we were stealth buffed to our healing but one of the things buffed was our SWIFTMEND which we cannot even take… So… Why? Also our self healing is TERRIBLE. Make Regrowth meaningful for us to have on ourselves OR give us Healing Touch instead of Regrowth and again make it semi-meaningful healing. Right now the best thing a Regrowth cast by a Boomy can provide is an 8% DR only to the Boomkin who cast it.

1 Like
20

I’ll take a 360% armor buff moonkin form again. Or if armor is too weird now as far as stats work just give us a flat 20% physical dmg reduction while in moonkin or something. Tired of 2 globals just to receive a dinky bear heal. Still feels like poo when I played this morning even after regen buffs.

1 Like