BFA, of all expansions, had a superb class design in regards to balance druid. Starsurge empowered both Wrath and Starfire and you had to keep balance between these buffs as they could only stack up to 3 each.
Then Shadowlands removed that and we ended up with “spam spell A for 15 seconds, spam spell B for 15 seconds” because iT wAs BeTtEr BeFoRe. Boring but somewhat coherent… I guess.
And now… You don’t even need to cycle between eclipses anymore? You just spam the same spell forever with the occasional two casts of the second spell? What even is this mess? Did someone even test this?
Ive mained resto, feral and guardian… Wanted to give balance a try in prepatch and w t f, ive no idea what this spec is supoused to do, why do i have so Many buttons, i understand eclipse but i also have stellar flare, that Moon spell, convoque, starsurge, an astral generator buttons, a mushroom button, its like wtf, button bloat anyone? How the f am i supoused to play this? Makes no sense to me… Why not just making something like this spell is good during the day and this one during the night, would be cool if our astral form was different depending on the eclipse we r in … Im also summoning fearie dragons and launching star wolves? Again, w t f…
I loved BFA balance, but it had one huge downside: there was very little incentive to hard cast spells. I’m not a fan of Eclipse, but it at least sees us casting Wrath and Starfire. I think that was the plan behind Eclipse becoming a core mechanic. I’m going to do more testing to see if I want to play balance as my main in Dragonflight instead of my arcane mage.
I feel so much weaker, when most my other characters feel just as strong if not stronger.
I thought it was something I was doing wrong, but I’m just going to put it down to poor balancing thanks to us not being max level again with the current iteration of our specs.
That, or I need to work out a better build… The cookies ain’t cutting it for me.
Balance is currently modeled after cooldown stacking burst windows. If you don’t have a trinket, eclipse, spell/talent generating AP, Ravenous Frenzy ending with a Convoke rolling during your cooldowns every 1-2 minutes while you dump Starsurges buffed by Rattle the Stars you won’t be doing good damage
Im struggling to even play it, between 3 dot spells (moon, sun, stellar) and 25% reduced uptime (just goin with starter build set) im finding my dots are dropping off before i really make any casts. Its like i spend 80% of fight just trying to keep dots from dropping off.
What Balance really needs to be more fun is Wrath and Starfire to refresh the duration of their respective DoTs. I hate having to recast Moonfire and Sunfire as much as I currently have to.
Circle of life and death is pretty much mandatory but yeah, it really sucks to have to reapply dots so often…makes sunfire duration something like 13 seconds.
Glad I’m not the only one. It feels slow, lackluster, and clunky as hell.
I love feral and want to main it but I don’t like playing a class for ONE spec.
Boomy just feels off.
Does it only do damage if you’re in the Venthyr covenant right now?
Why does eclipse feel so lame?
I’ve heard people say it’s a dot spec now but even those feel meh
What’s the big payoff? What am I missing?
I can usually pick up a dps class and have a reasonable understanding within a short amount of time and be able to play it viably… boomy is not that way and it’s frustrating
Mushroom should apply slow as soon as it’s underneath the target. Too many times an enemy can just move away from it before it goes off and that’s only a second of waiting. Mushroom applying slow right when you apply it would give balance more utility and kiting ability which they desperately need.
Balance is honestly a mess and has been for years. I remember when they first introduced the Eclipse mechanic as an effort to provide an actual rotation. It sucked, and never stopped sucking. It was ill-concieved from the start.
But you’re right that the BFA design was very superior to what we currently have. If Blizzard had sense, they’d augment it.
I just wish Stellar Flare wasn’t mandatory, it throws off the fluidity of my whole rotation… I went Faerie Dragons instead of Mushrooms just due to the button bloat. I’m going to main Balance for DF, but dang I hope it gets better.
During most of the beta, balance druids still had to alternate between eclipses. There was notably a talent you could take to reduce the duration of the eclipse of your choice to increase that of the other. They removed the alternating eclipse mechanic, as well as the talent.
On a side note, I would like it if I could pick a talent or something to have eclipses trigger after only 1 cast instead of 2.
If they gave DF balance the empowerment system from BFA it would be really fun. I don’t hate the current balance…. But I am tired of a reworked eclipse every expansion.
What’s really sad is that they had a really great balance tree in the beta, and then they made more changes to it that actually made it worse! They seem obsessed with shoving stellar flare down our throats.
I am happy wild mushrooms are back. Even though it’s not the same as cata version, still fun. The faerie dragons are cool, orbit breaker is cool. The new mastery is super boring though.
Mists and WoD were the best iterations of balance Druid with the best abilities period. Force of nature was amazing, rooting and shooting off little wraths that did alright burst damage when used all at once. Mushrooms would be landmines place where you wanted them, starsurge hit like a truck like it should, off healing was in a better spot like a hybrid should be.
Those were the days. Back when Thyraz was making montage videos.