Balance Druid Feedback: 11.0.7 and Beyond

Classes Druid
21

Druid doesn’t really need 3 more defensive cds. Barkskin is a fairly short cd and bear form should be available for big bursts of incoming damage or when you’re really in danger. The problem is that we’re always forced into bear form for every moderately dangerous hit of incoming damage. And recovery while in bear form has been significantly nerfed over the years especially in PVP combat meaning that it especially doesn’t feel good when you’re forced to remain in bear form and that’s not even considering that you’re doing about zero damage while you remain in bear form.

What druid really needs is better passive survivability (both DR and recovery) and better active recovery.

There are a few things that could go towards helping our passive survivability.

  • A large armor increase such as going back to the 360% armor modifier would go far in helping balance druids to deal with incoming physical damage. This would be especially good in PVP against double melee teams which is usually the kind of composition that is forcing them into remaining in bear form for extended periods of time. It would also be pretty good for reducing how hard we are getting hit by regular melee attacks in PVE in the open world or in solo content such as delves.
  • Ysera’s Gift. Why in the world did the druid developer decide to put Ysera’s Gift in the restoration spec tree instead of the druid class tree? Ysera’s Gift had been a valuable class-wide option in the talent tree for nearly ten years from partway through MoP until the Dragonflight pre-patch at the end of Shadowlands. That talent provides valuable passive healing over time (something balance and feral druids desperately need) as well as some minor utility when you’re at full health. Ysera’s Gift SHOULD be in the class tree instead of Natural Recovery and the fact that it was moved to the resto spec tree is a joke.
  • Non-Guardian druids have possibly the lowest health pool in the game despite the fact that we’re a hybrid class. Take the Ursoc’s Spirit talent which isn’t very good for non-guardian druids and change it to provide 10% increased stamina for all forms instead. Ursoc’s Spirit being only active in bear form is pretty bad and the Ursine Vigor talent does the same thing but better since you’re usually only hopping into bear form for a few seconds to survive a big hit or heal with frenzied regeneration in PVE.
  • For PVP the ability to survive and recover in bear form has been significantly nerfed over the years. Part of that is the aura-reduction to Frenzied Regeneration that has been in effect for a while. Another was the big nerf to the Celestial Guardian PVP talent. It used to also give you 10% increased healing taken and the defensive power of balance in pvp has been down bad since it was changed. I really don’t see the issue with having druids heal a lot and recover in bear form when Dampening is already there to throttle the power of healing as a match goes on and many other classes already have better self-healing than us. And the ability to recover to the point where we are no longer in danger means that we can shift back into moonkin form and play the game for a bit.

As for active recovery, we very simply need to increase how much healing we do when we are actively casting healing spells. Regrowth is a joke right now. I cast regrowth and I get healed for about 8% of my health if it doesn’t crit. And it’s even worse in PVP with aura reductions. Our healing is so bad that the “resto section” of the class tree is basically abandoned by all non-resto druids because not a single healing spell is worth being pressed, especially when it shifts you out of moonkin or cat form. Why is it that shifting into bear form to press Frenzied Regen provides better self-healing than chain casting 3 regrowths on myself? Rejuvenation is even more of a joke. Swiftmend was bad all of Dragonflight and now we don’t even have the option to take it anyways.

We’re a hybrid class that has on average worse healing than mages, warriors, and even some specs of rogue and hunter and that’s also accounting for the healing that Nature’s Vigil is doing. When I sacrifice dps to cast healing spells, I expect that I should gain a decent amount of healing, but the problem is that I don’t. When I compare that to hybrid dps that do have good self healing such as a DK, paladin, shadow priest, or enhance shaman we aren’t even close. And if Rejuvenation is a joke for non-resto druids then the Improved Rejuvenation talent is even more of a joke.

What druids need is an aura modifier to increase the healing of their healing spells. If I’m casting regrowth, I should at the very least be healed for 15% of my health pool. And if I hit Swiftmend, it should heal even more. Speaking of Swiftmend, it should be added back into the class tree as a option and something like Rejuvenation could easily be made baseline to make room for it. If you want Improved Rejuvenation to be considered by any non-resto druid, then you have to make it actually valuable to have. If Improved Rejuvenation gave you the ability to cast Rejuvenation in all forms or something then it could be an actual valuable pick to consider, especially if Rejuvenation actually heals for more than the pathetic amount it does now. And I do mean pathetic. 4% of my max health over 12 seconds is a really pathetic amount of healing. That wouldn’t even be very good as a passive heal.

TLDR: Increase passive survivability with things like more armor in moonkin form, add Ysera’s Gift into the class tree, give us a bigger health pool, make bear form better in PVP. And increase the amount of healing that our actual healing spells do.

8 Likes
22

I also personally would like to say that the lower duration double charge CA is maybe one of my personal most hated changes boomkin has ever gotten. Talk about a pointless change that did nothing positive and convoluted the spec and disjointed the CDs even more.

2 Likes
23

Add free starsurge procs off dot ticks like MoP thanks.

2 Likes
24

These, and many other suggestions in this thread – are great!
What concerns me is that, by observing what abilities were pruned or re-added from WoD til now, it’s evident that specs have unfortunately lost a lot of uniqueness.
Balance Druid should NOT be as squishy or mobile as a mage… but probably not as tanky and immobile as a Warlock should be (and has been historically). We belong somewhere in the middle.

In PvP, especially nowadays with faster class gameplay pacing and the abundance of “Micro-CC’s”, adding more passive defense to the spec would largely solve all of its issues. Somewhat akin to it’s Legion ‘feel’ maybe.

Some of my past suggestions include: Buffing Thick Hide & Natural Recovery to 5-6%, adding a passive alternative to Nature’s Vigil that leeches, say, 15% of all single-target damage or healing dealt while in CA/Incarn as Absorption shields / or buffing Matted Fur, buffing Celestial Guardian or baking it into Elune’s Chosen.

I was sad when Umbral Intensity was nerfed, and same with Power of Goldrinn. I think they should have remained two-stack talents for those willing to focus on more single-target damage.

I won’t go into the general Druid class talent tree issues this time around…

And this should indeed replace Touch of the Cosmos.

I personally love the left side of the post-11.0.5 “rework” Balance spec talent tree! All the DoT-based procs with Elune’s Chosen are fun – but that Hero talent build lacks defense and burst in comparison to Keeper of the Grove (which I like less for various reasons). Needless to say, DoTs are also easily dispelled and cost GCDs. I personally prefer to use the simplest build I can, and build on passive talents so I can dedicate more time within a match to strategize and make impactful use of every GCD. I think that’s what made BfA Boomy feel so fun for me… Every ability had “weight”. Maybe this has to do with damage tuning as well, but I think our current mechanics also lend more cumbersome-ness than complexity to the spec.

Mechanically, I personally far preferred the BfA Balance Druid design to the current Eclipse iteration, because Eclipe as it is now takes too long to ramp up, locks you into buffing only one filler/builder which you might not be using, etc. I’ve made suggestions including detailed lists of mechanics that could replace Eclipse. Yes, the spec would be a bit more “bare-bones”, like the BfA version with my suggestions, but passive talents AND new and fun active abilities both could be iterated on top of a more well-rounded builder-spender to make for even more fun and effective build options. In other words, I always advocate for reducing the skill floor while increasing the skill cap of the spec.

4 Likes
25

I read all the suggestions in the subsequent threads and resonate with all of it. I miss having meaningful off-healing as a hybrid class, with major cooldowns like tranq and swiftmend. as others have pointed out in this thread, our off-healing is so bad that it’s not even worth wasting the talent points to spec into. Balance druid off-healing was a staple of the spec since 1.x up until one or two expansions ago. I would love to have overall more utility as a boomkin as well, like improved interrupts without being forced to spec into skull bash (and/or make fluid form enables skull bash to be cast from moonkin)

The builder spender playstyle was incredibly fun for me in Legion and BFA, and it baffled my mind in DF that, despite the class being mostly playable, the fact that starweaver and rattle the stars were put as competing options on the same node, instead of both of them in sequence with one being the capstone for that lane. It’s a common complaint that our capstones all suck in terms of gameplay, and yet the combination of starweaver and rattle was one of the best gameplay systems for balance introduced from Legion legendaries, and somehow in DF they weren’t designed to be a gameplay defining capstone? This was a lay-up in terms of boomkin gameplay design and the design team missed the shot. Arcanic pulsar was one of the best gameplays of BFA and the decision to remove it from DF to TWW is also very unfavorable to me. Touch the Cosmos? interesting on paper but ultimately too unreliable, especially with GCD gating how fast you can spam spenders.

The current iteration of Eclipse is very unfun due to the ramp but also due to the fact that it requires absolute hardcasting. Empowerments were better because it made it not mandatory, and Pendulum meter was better because you could push the meter with instant cast dots (Moonfire/Sunfire) during movement to avoid boss ground mechanics. Have the devs played zekvir ?? as a boomkin? Eclipse management feels utterly garbage in that encounter.

Our stat priorities have also gotten so convoluted over the years due to too many talents proccing too many stat buffs that in a lot of ways compete with the item gearing aspect of the game, probably intended to free us to pursue mastery stacking but our mastery continues to change from expansion to expansion leading to inconsistent damage ramps. Balance of All Things was something i heavily eschewed in Shadowlands as uninteresting gameplay despite numeric superiority, because all it did was try to reinforce eclipse cycling, by offering massive buffs from entering an eclipse, when eclipse itself should naturally be the massive buff.

I enjoyed 2-dot style boomkin prior to DF but then waning twilight was introduced, and i feel like that talent alone, while making for some kind of dot management to build around, ended up becoming a burden to design and play around. prior to DF we had various passives or masteries that already required moonfire/sunfire on the targets. The multiplier is too good not to pick up yet it feels completely disjointed from the rest of the spec or forces other talent choices that are otherwise not that interesting nor is there synergy or syzygy. astral smolder which only procs from builders and not spenders for instance, or having stellar flare be a choice node with a passive 10% crit on builders that doesn’t affect spenders. Some of the choice nodes should definitely be re-examined. If we were to make parallels with the mop-thru-SL talent options, I would have liked to see either FoE or NM share the choice node with Stellar Flare rather than there being a passive talent, especially as sundered firmament got moved to the dot side of the class tree, but that’s in my dreamworld where rattle and starweaver were the capstones of the right side. Better yet, make stellar flare baseline and then put FoE/NM as well as radiant moonlight on the dot side to line up with sundered firmament and orbit breaker.

The latest change to mushrooms having an option for active cast vs passive proc is great for gameplay.

I understand that previous expansions, especially from legion onward, really made the spender side of builder-spender too strong and there was feedback to make wrath and starfire feel more important as spells worth casting, but right now it feels the pendulum has swung too hard back in the other direction. it feels bad having to pick up so many talent points that don’t line up with each other for pure performance, and yet the fun talent points are so undertuned that you end up with an undercooked build if you spec for fun gameplay. Hopefully the next balance/tuning/rework will lead to more viable combinations that address the issues brought up in this thread.

4 Likes
26

I don’t dislike eclipse, but In general the changes from DF to tww made balance the least interesting ranged spec to play by quite a margin.

Astral power gen reduction, pulsar removal, choice node between orbit and sunder and more, like eew, who the hell designed this garbage?

4 Likes
27

Waning twilight is a rarely mentioned gigantic flaw in the current version of balance. I could not agree more it has forced awful gameplay to use it (remember use stellar flare in aoe in DF?) and it creates unfun RNG based damage since passives are often needed to complete it. Removing it entirely would be a massive boon to the spec.

5 Likes
28

I really wish the developers could figure out how spell & talent interaction work before making changes to talents and spells based on bad logic. Your post about Waning Twilight reminded me about one of the more ridiculous recent examples of this.

The complaint was made going into DF that Stellar Flare still felt like it was a really underwhelming ability that did too little damage and that very few people liked to use it. As a result, the developers gave Stellar Flare the ability to proc Shooting Stars.

The developers noticed that we were doing too much Shooting Star damage in single target so they nerfed the proc rate and nerfed the Solstice talent.

In early DF, balance druids were forced to play Stellar Flare in all target counts, both single target and aoe, and the only reason we actually played it in aoe was because it was the only way to get reliably high uptime with the Waning Twilight talent. And Waning Twilight was too much damage for balance druids to not take or to not play around. Developers noticed that we always took Stellar Flare and decided that we shouldn’t be playing Stellar Flare all of the time.

As a result, they removed the ability for Stellar Flare to proc Shooting Stars. However, they never reverted the nerfs to Shooting Stars or to the Solstice talent. This wasn’t easily noticed right away since the tier bonuses in DF season 2 were based around Shooting Stars and Crashing Stars procs.

Balance druids stopped playing Stellar Flare because Astral Smolder was buffed by a large amount and moved to a better place in the talent tree. Since it was based on crits, it also had strong interaction with the new and powerful Wild Surges talent that was now on a choice node with Stellar Flare. Balance druids could now reliably get a high uptime on Waning Twilight with Astral Smolder, and as a result Stellar Flare was never used in DF PVE again except for one council fight in season 3.

Now, developers have nerfed Astral Smolder again and we find ourselves using Stellar Flare in single target once again. This also feels pretty bad for our AP generation since we’re encouraged to play Stellar Flare instead of Wild Surges. And what I don’t understand is why in the world Astral Smolder and Stellar Flare are not on a choice node with each other. They clearly fill the exact same PVE role of getting a high uptime third dot on the target in order to activate Waning Twilight. One of the easiest good changes to make to the current spec tree would be to simply swap the positions of Wild Surges and Astral Smolder. This would allow developers to directly balance the damage and uptime of the two talents against each other while easily allowing players to select Wild Surges no matter which of those two dot talents is preferable.

Recently, Waning Twilight was “stealth-nerfed” from 9% to 6% and moved to be in the bottom section of the talent tree which is (or at least should be) where more valuable talent choice is made. We also never received an aura-buff to compensate for the nerf from 9 to 6% and people wonder why we were doing less damage than before the most recent talent changes. As part of the most recent weekly hotfixes to increase balance damage and to encourage us to use some of the new talents, Shooting Stars (and Crashing Stars) damage was buffed by 20% which is a fairly large buff to be making as a hotfix. I wonder if the lack of Shooting Stars damage had anything to do with the Shooting Stars nerf and Solstice nerf made back in DF season 1 to control Shooting Stars procs from Stellar Flare that were never reverted.

And as a final thought, I absolutely detest the Waning Twilight talent. It’s not fun or interesting and just gives us a strong damage buff for having three dots on a target. It’s strong enough that we’re forced to always take it and the power of our spec is therefore balanced around it. It has forced us into bad talent choices such as using Stellar Flare in aoe back in DF season one. And it’s an all or nothing talent. We get zero benefit from having 2 dots on the target. The spec would be better off if Waning Twilight was removed and replaced with any interesting talent. All it would take is a 6% aura buff to compensate for not having it to buff our damage.

A possible rework (if developers aren’t willing to remove and replace it) would be to have the talent give X% damage increase per dot up to a cap equal to three dots. For example, if the talent gave you 2% damage per dot up to 6%, you would gain actual benefit from it when you only have moonfire and sunfire up on the target and it wouldn’t exceed it’s current max power nor would it incentivize you to get more than 3 dots on the target.

2 Likes
29

Most of the feedback looks good but the one for eclipse system, i personally like the idea of it, i wouldnt mind an iteration of it but remove it enterly to favor “proc” reaction seems off, there are other classes like shaman that are more like that, i wouldn tlike druid to become an ele shaman with skin, i’m fine playing a predictable rotation that doesnt react to every light that pops up

30

Well, I don’t think it’s so much that we want to play based off procs. Again, I think the Empowerments (BfA) system had huge potential… but it wasn’t particularly popular either. I’d say what the majority of Balance Druids want is more agency over their ability toolkit, alongside more cohesion and Less rigidity in the rotation. By these standards, Eclipse has major problems.

31

Please give us a better defensive option rather than just making Bear form as our default defensive choice.

Doing high keys and being stuck on bear form because your barkskin ran out and the boss is dotting millions per tick is not fun…

Give us better self-healing as well. I just did a 12 NW with an enhancement shaman. I cast 15 regrowth, and the overall healing is literally 7.5 million, while the Shaman cast 5 healing surges and healed 6m.

Our defensive is just lacking as well…

We have 1m cd Barkskin, Bear Form + 30s CD Frenzied Regen, Bear Form + 90s CD Renewal.

Meanwhile, other DPSes just have better overall DPS Profile (Single target, AOE, and Cleave) while having amazing utilities and/or defensive. And we’re stuck with being unable to DPS while we press our defensive.

3 Likes
32

Not really, they just need to buff both casting and melee skills on the same nodes, rather than creating a bunch that can be totally useless for half the specs. Unless all 4 specs could use a skill or benefit from a passive in normal gameplay, it shouldn’t be in the general tree, or they need to add extra effects, so it does benefit all specs.

1 Like