Balance druid in BFA was one of the worst iterations of the spec imo
Itās kinda weird to me that Stellar Flare is yet another standalone dot, and even with a cast time on it. I always thought Stellar Flare shouldāve been a capstone talent that basically merged all 3 dots into one, replacing both Moonfire and Sunfire (if talented, adding more power to it).
Denizens of the Dream swap places with this new Stellar Flare in the talent tree, because honestly it gives me the feeling of a mid-tier talent.
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To me this is one of my main complaints about balance. If I wanted to be in bear form half the time I would be playing Guardian. No one is telling Fury warriors to put on a shield if they want survivability, why do Balance druids need to be dancing in and out of Bear to just not die?
Iām not doing higher levels of content either, even just doing T8 delves as Balance feels bad. Iād be happy for my main strategy to not involve opening my talent page and clicking activate under Guardian. lol
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NGL I really like the eclipse system in Cataclysm right now. Itās just a straight up 50% more damage while in solar or lunar. Which is fun and feels massive.
Bfa boomkin was the best that balance has ever been imo. Delete eclipse again and watch everything about the spec get better.
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Last patch of BFA boomkin really leaned into infinte stars corruption to prop it up. Felt terrible not having that specific corruption. Then Maut would one shot you from dots. By no means am I saying Boomieās current state is fine.
I am more for BfA S1-S2.5 Boomy. I just had so much fun in PvP and raiding, respectively. I didnāt like corruptions at all, S4 was when I started playing FFXIV 
NGL I really like the eclipse system in Cataclysm right now. Itās just a straight up 50% more damage while in solar or lunar. Which is fun and feels massive.
cata boomkin was definitely fun.
unfortunately, that older pendulum style of eclipse led to degenerate gameplay such as camping in one eclipse (often solar for sunfire and mushrooms) to make massive aoe gains. similarly, as much as i loved the legion playstyles with starweaver + rattle via legion legendaries, even that too was considered degenerate once the kirin tor buffs were added to our scythe of elune in legion s2/s3 (no longer viewable on the disabled scythes, but starfall also used to buff our dot damage by a decent amount when cast, so we used to have this insane positive feedback loop of starfall, starsurge, and dots), but the devs at the time decided they didnāt want us casting aoe abilities on single target fights and be rewarded for that.
i didnāt enjoy s1 bfa boomie, but the addition of arcanic pulsar in s2 made the spec fun for me again because it added value to the spenders. i think from bfa thereafter, i was stuck trying to recapture the thrill of legion and mop boomkin and it only went downhill as we kept getting stripped of our hybrid utilities (removal of tranquillity from class baseline for example, and now the removal of swiftmend from balance)
likewise, in current retail TWW S1, the removal of arcanic was confusing to me and initially i did not like whirling either because it was a paradigm shift, but after doing a lot of M+ with it, it does feel nice just to have more on-demand incarns in an M+ pull cadence, i donāt think i can go back to orbital strike.
Hey! Check out the new post for 11.1 feedback here! This thread will continue to serve as the place for longer-term core feedback on the spec. There will obviously be quite a bit of crossover but we hope to keep things in the 11.1 (and future specific PTRs) thread more focused on actionable feedback for the upcoming patch. This one will be updated every time a change occurs to ensure continued relevance. Thanks!
I have been playing a druid since 2004. I have to say I quit wow during the panda kid expansion and rejoined a year later. Balance druid in the new content take way too long to ramp up when other classes are demolishing things before you have the chance. People booting you from groups because they still utilize damage meters as a way to make sure people are not being lazy. I have 8 level 80s all around 595 or more I level, and I would put any class higher than the druid in dps. Maybe I am not doing something right but when you go into an 8+ delve it seems like everything hits for half of my 5.5 mil life. So, you have to ramp up while its beating on you or run around and chance drawing in more. Itās also kind of stupid IMO to have 1 class that has to ramp up when others donāt. I have tried downloading other peopleās builds, watching YouTube videos, and Iām always doing way less damage than all of the other classes I play. I agree something needs to be done; I just cannot point out what. I think the whole eclipse thing is garbage and needs to be removed. When my resto druids Starfire hits for almost a million and the Balance one hits for 80k until rampedā¦ thats a issue to me.
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PLEASE bring back the Legion Solar and Lunar Empowerment system. It made the most sense with the builder spender aspect of the spec and was really fun. It got me into playing druid for the first time. I also think it made talents that generate AP feel far better as you would use them at the start of your opener in order to build AP to spend which would then generate your empowerment. As it is right now we have to wait until weāre in an eclipse state before we want to really build/spend, its horrible. I have no idea why they went back to the eclipse system in Shadowlands other than for the sake of nostalgia and apart of the big āunpruningā push they were attempting to do at the time. Empowerments were amazing and I miss them 
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Getting rid of the eclipse system would be my number 1 item. Having to constantly watch and maintain the right spells with the right buff is a lot in the heat of battle. If you miss it and mess it up it is punishing.
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I meanā¦the whole idea of the hero talents KOTG is to avoid playing class mechanics. (sadly)
You press your cdās than spam either SS or SF, than 45 sec later repeatā¦theres hardly any class mechanic gameplay when chosing that hero talent.
Chosen of Elune is kidna removing half of the class mechanics since u only toss in 2 Wraths every 15sec or so.
So yes I actually agree might as well remove the eclipse system all together and make Wrath the st build and SF the aoe builder. Hero talents already doing most of that job.
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There is a bigger problem now with balance druid going forward. If you read all the threads of which iteration of boomie players like, its all over the place. Some people like the Cata boomie, MoP, Legion, BFA, DF. Then there is the split of people that love AoE, and single target Boomie. Finally, there is the split of performance in PvE and PvE. If there is a Blizzard dev that steps up to rework the entire kit for balance druid, a good amount of players will feel alienated and still come to the forums being upset. Balance druid never had a core foundation. At the start we were the balance of Nature and the stars. That slowly became the balance of night and day some how being a chicken laser rave show.
I dont know how they will fix Balance druid. What is the core essence of the class? Are we a tanky caster that can just be a turret? Are we the class that can kite using CC and speed to run and heal while doing damage? With that last one in mind, do we want to be tanky, or be off healers, or that fast mobility class?
There are so many questions of what balance druid even is. Its the only class that has this problem of identity.
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Sega, youāre absolutely correct. This is why I wish that Hero Talents did more to modify class identity, visual effects and variety of mechanics. To this end, I propose that Eluneās Chosen gets more tankiness and focuses on rotating moons and beams. Keeper of the Grove can be the more mobile version, shapeshifting into a barbershop customizable Keeper/Dryad form (new capstone talent) that focuses on summoning Treants and slowing with roots, maybe casting Wraths that poison and even (bringing back Insect) Swarms that spread. Each should have the option to focus more on ST or AoE as necessary. And, thus, every known playstyle from the past can be catered to. That could include more spammable or harder-hitting spenders, etc. Thereās a lot that can be done, but so long as agency and customizability are the focus, the spec can appeal to more players. Iād even bring an Orange Glyph of Stars, one thatās more translucent (like Glyph of Shadow), etc. I wish we would also get a Druid of the Nightmare hero talent variant, which would red-shift our spells and perhaps have some cool customizations like horns, etc. Again, the possibilities are nigh infinite, we just need more communication and earlier testing.
My biggest problem overall is the disparity between the class talents and the spec talents. There is little synergy all together. Moonkin form should be baked into the class for both Balance and Restoration (since itās unlikely the original Treant form and aura will be brought back for Restoration).
Also, another thing Iām not happy with is the Hero talents will eventually be replaced, leaving the ones we have now placed in the main two trees. How will they be split, and will that inherently break the current Hero talents/class fantasy?
Speaking of class fantasy, itās been said before. Where did the fantasy go? If player characters are going Evergreen, how? Because as it stands now, Balance has no real fantasy as itās all over the place. Druids, in general, have always had a bit of a messy fantasy. Feral/Guardian and Balance/Restoration should be the ideal for the fantasy part, separating the melee from the casters, with only basic overlap.
These are just my opinions, not trying to lump everyone into the same thoughts.
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