Balance Druid Issues in Phase 2

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

As a very long term Balance Druid player, who played Balance in vanilla, and was a server first balance druid on HC servers, I have some concerns about Phase 2:

*1. Nature Damage Gear: We typically swap to Starfire at level 29, when you can max out the Improved Starfire talent and it overtakes Wrath as the highest DPS spell we have. This will basically make all the nature damage gear from BFD really bad. I don’t think any other class swaps primary damage types this early after level 25. Flat spell damage cloth drops in BFD are horribly rare compared to mail and DPS leather drops; we all see the threads about how ridiculous the competition is for spell damage cloth gear right now thanks to terrible itemization in BFD, especially on Horde side.

*2. Mana Problems: Obviously we don’t know what runes are out yet, and I’m praying they give Starfire the same treatment they gave Wrath, but I really don’t expect it. Once Starfire becomes the spammed spell of choice at 29, we will run out of mana faster than before, if that’s even imaginable. With the upkeep of Moonfire, Sunfire, and Starsurge to push on CD (not much mana, but it’s still something), our mana is going to evaporate due to having to use Starfire.

*3. Threat: We have no way on horde to reduce threat. I am praying that we get salv, like how we got kings. Even in phase 1 I am pulling threat off of the MT on every boss if I am fully buffed with Boon/DMF/Drums. We are somehow generating more threat than fully geared DPS warriors. Our talents and class are basically built around crit, which generates a ton of threat. Crit is just barely under spell damage when it comes to stat weights, with to-hit being #1, like most classes. It’s crazy that we have no talents to reduce threat at all. Starfire crits are going to pull insane aggro in phase 2.

*4. Poor Itemization: We are basically forced to wear all cloth, due to almost no spell damage leather being in the game. Elemental Shaman are probably in the same boat here. This is going to be especially bad in phase 2, when Arathi Basin becomes available to grind to revered for rewards. We are LOCKED OUT of the spell damage cloth items, since they class locked them for some reason. The leather options were made for Feral ONLY and NOT for Balance in any way, shape, or form. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, unlock the class restrictions on the rewards and give me an actual reason to play AB. WSG doesn’t have these restrictions on the bracers. Please at least try to itemize the new raid with spell damage leather so I don’t have to keep stealing pieces from Mages, Warlocks and Priests.

11 Likes
2

So what you’re saying is nerf druid damage.

7 Likes
3

imagine being given a spell you can spam for free and saying “its not good enough”

6 Likes
4

Wasn’t aware “spam” was a spell on a 6 second CD. Learn something new every day I guess.

2 Likes
5

I think balance druid mostly sucks but I don’t really agree entirely with your assessment:

  1. This issue isn’t that big a deal. I have one raid drop with +nature damage on it. The rest is AH greens which are easily replaced. Kinda whatever.

  2. I’m concerned about this too, but let’s see what happens with the new runes.

  3. Yeah this is a legit problem. I’ll be like #7 in DPS and #3 in threat. lol

  4. Itemization in SoD so far isn’t that bad. I’m almost fully raid geared and only one of my BiS pieces is cloth (pants from Kelris). Everything else I think is leather. Wearing a couple cloth pieces is OK. I wish there was a leather pants option but truth be told we’d be wearing cloth if it had better stats anyway. I guess I also wish the crafted balance gloves were better, the cloth boots are way better unfortunately. But there’s no good leather caster boot option in BFD either so… :person_shrugging:

6

Yeah if only there was a chest rune that made an ability free you could keep casting while oom.

5 Likes
7

A bit early to say the world is ending since the next phase is not even out yet. Also there is plenty of leather caster gear in BFD that will still be good at 40?

8

Also I think making balance mana work how it does was a huge mistake and oversight on the part of of the developers and has lead to some really unhealthy gearing patterns. Right now it’s possible for a balance druid to ding 25 and get raid-level spellpower from the auction house, completely bypassing the requirement to get spellpower from the raid because they have no need for intellect. This has created an issue where poorly geared balance druids are running around with Starsurge damage very similar to someone with better gear, making everyone on the forums think Starsurge just always hits that hard. It has also made the damage trajectory for balance druids in raid sort of flat (you walk in doing 100 DPS and by the time you’re fully geared you’re doing like 140 at most, turtle aside).

Making intellect a worthless stat was not the move, they should have found another way to handle this.

1 Like
9

You don’t use wrath as much in the future. Mans spittin facts and you’re out here butt blasted over 25 pvp. PvE boomkin needs a lot.

5 Likes
10

better start changing that, you got a free wand that scales with spell power.

2 Likes
11

I don’t think it will matter as much as you think it will as this is SoD and not pure classic. I’m not a balance main like you but rather just looking through spell ranks and talents so feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong, I want to learn here as I might go Druid myself pretty soon. Overall I agree with your post.

I do see this sucking 100% but I don’t think it will be an issue for most Balance Druids as it’s not needed for leveling and we should hopefully have better-itemized gear for lvl 40 for you to farm. Till then it will be lame for min maxers.

Buffing up Starfire is not nearly as important as it used to be in my eyes as you have Starsurge being your #1 spell now that costs nearly 0 mana and Wrath no longer drains your mana but rather is free.

Improved wrath and the rune makes Wrath rank 6 a 0 mana cost spell with 139-158 damage on a 1.5-second cast, so it’s 278-316 in the same time as Starfire’s 3s cast with the talent that’s only doing 201 to 242 before adding in the 10% damage and crit from the other talents you will take. Was Starfire, not only the better than wrath spam option because it was better damage per mana without the SoD runes or am I missing something here?

Personally, if I was Blizzard rather than making it free like Wrath I would make it a little stronger or add an effect so it’s something you use to dump mana at the start of the fight before swapping to Wrath as a replacement between Starsurge + DoTs. I’m sure most Balance Druids want the extra damage for parsing.

Do balance Druids have increased threat or is this a you issue? More specifically you doing too well compared to your friends.

12

You won’t be using wrath in phase 2. You didn’t even read the post, obviously.

1 Like
13

You will when you are OOM and Innervate is on cooldown. Spamming wrath (with the rune active) does not interrupt mana regen, so Blizard basically gave Druids a Wand in the form of Mana free Wrath.

Also you are failing to take into account other classes will have increased DPS meaning shorter fights.

Also there are the new runes to consider, we don’t know what they are yet.

14

Rank 3 Starfire: 212 to 253 damage plus 100% of your spellpower. 77.5 plus 33% of your spellpower dps with Improved Starfire.

Rank 6 Wrath: 142 to 161 damage plus 57% of your spellpower. 101 plus 38% of your spellpower dps with Improved Wrath.

Looks to me like Wrath will be better at lvl 40 :woman_shrugging:

edit: fixed mistake with starfire spellpower scaling

2 Likes
15

Balance Druids have no Threat Drop abilities nor threat reduction talents.

well I mean we could go catform and cower but that requires us to be melee and if our threat is high enough to the point that if we go melee the boss is likely to turn and face us because we no longer have the extra 20% aggro range buffer that people at range get, resulting in our death.

16

While Starsurge is our most damaging spell right now, you still have to keep up moonfire and sunfire and fill in starfire (phase 2) or wrath until the 6 second CD is up.
Starfire benefits 100% from spell damage coefficients, while wrath only gives around 57%. Then you have Nature’s Grace, which only makes starfire push even more ahead, as the CD reduction is just flat better for it, than it is for wrath. Wrath is a DPS loss and it just feels bad having to swap to it when you go OOM the first min of a fight, unable to keep up a basic rotation.
A fully geared boomie, back in vanilla, would pull threat. If you were unlucky enough to crit starfire’s back-to-back-to-back (this happens a lot with end game gearing), you really pissed tanks off.
I run in multiple sub-30min BFD runs, with tanks who are geared out the ###, and I doubt it’s their lack of skill. I tend to parse in the high 90% in BFD, but it’s always at my tank’s and healers expense, unfortunately.

1 Like
17

lol imagine getting a second free spell

2 Likes
18

Balance is still very underwhelming in PvE, please ignore all of the “QQ muh starsurge at lvl 25 pvp” posts. Going forward it’s still going to have the mana issues and low damage.

The only reason to bring one is to bring an rdruid/boomy hybrid so the leather int stuff doesn’t goto waste.

19

Just a notice to everyone here. Starsurge stats phase 2.

  • 4 mana
  • 100% bonus crit damage
  • 15% chance to stun the target
  • 10% increased damage
  • 3% increased critical strike chance
  • Instant cast
  • 42 yard range
  • 100% spell damage coefficient

It’s hitting for 500+ damage right now. It’s going to delete people in phase 2, and the one’s it doesn’t are going to be stunned until the next one deletes them. We need to nerf hunters before this happens.

2 Likes
20

You just gonna conveniently leave the cooldown out and not mention that health pools are going to grow much larger, people are going to have more utility to stun/connect to a druid which can already die in about 2-3 seconds to any melee or hunter that touches it?

It hits for 500 damage if it crits with all world buffs, it realistically hits 200-300 right now. Please stop. This thread isn’t even about your level 25 garbage 1v1 gameplay.

4 Likes