I concur and would like to relay some of my insights from a PvP perspective.
I most recently enjoyed Balance Druid, also in PvE, mostly in early BfA out of all modern expansions. The spec’s toolkit felt tactile, with the exception of Empowerment stacks and their ability modifications having been shared between Wrath and Starfire; I think the feel of player agency and thought when dealing damage and the passive durability of the spec were unparalleled. I hold that this is how Boomkin should feel. Individual abilities, both casted and spenders should hit harder, but be slower to cast. Every ability should be possibly relevant for a given situation, even if it isn’t glowing on your spellbar. This is where variety and skill expression come from. I think pooling two Starsurges that hit really hard felt great and tactical, and you still had room for error. We have complexity outside of the rotation, with crowd control and utility abilities. Still, I think we should be able to talent less-into those, and more into interactive damage: e.g. EC’s FoE, Full Moon, maybe something new for Keeper e.g. a Dryad Form Incarn that switches Wrath to Green and instant, and Starsurge to a Nature stacking DoT that explodes and blisters a Wild Mushroom. To parallel that, an empowered Starfall for EC that stack on its own and makes abilities cleave like our current tier-set, sustained with AP like the original FoE.
I’ll always push for ‘less burst but more passive survivability and sustain / casted damage’ in tuning the spec, also for its often not-too-shiny Raid performance, but again because that is what makes it play better for players learning and enjoying PvP.
Specs shouldn’t be designed or tuned in isolation, and hybrids in particular should offer a multitude of competencies in performing various tasks. Balance Druid has the latter, but it remains squishy, and I think tuning some AoE down and nudging our consistent ST DPS up would benefit the spec overall.
I’ve detailed ideas before on how I think the playstyle could be made more engaging, but the first change would be to further ease into or remove Eclipse altogether. I’d then look into the spammy nature of spenders, which I must say afflicts ALL Damage specializations in the game today. Less ability spam, more influential numbers would be my motto. These are just preliminary steps, but I think they should be the basis of any future changes and additions to the spec and its Hero talents… Speaking of which, where’s Druid of the Nightmare?! Imagine red Wraths and cleaving bolts, Lingering root tendrils instead of Mushrooms, ramping DoTs and a scary red-glowy form burst with a modified Cyclone fear proc.
Also, for visual updates, we need Astral forms that work like Glyph of Shadow for Priests, that let us see more of our character, so we aren’t fully translucent and lost in terrain. Legion introduced the border-glow effect that is visible with character outlines, that could also be given based on Hero spec (Green for Keeper/Dryad, black/blue for Elune and Red for proposed-Nightmare, also update spell animations to more distinct colors etc.)