Balance druid gameplay is underwhelming right now. Needing to apply and maintain 2 DoTs that don’t interact with the rest of your spells (in a meaningful way) feels bad. The eclipse system is kind of weird and arbitrary. Astral power ramp time + dot application makes the spec feel too slow in lower level dungeons/m+. This is annoying because the alternative is feral which is also a DoT-based spec.
It’d be neat to incorporate some of the mechanics of Legion MM hunter to create a new balance rotation. Particularly the Marked Shot mechanic, which could only be used when your Arcane/Multi shot applied Hunter’s Mark on the target. Here’s an example of how it would work:
- Sunfire and Moonfire are mutually exclusive on the target (applying one removes the other)
- Your nature spells have a chance to grant Solar Empowerment
- Your arcane spells have a chance to grant Lunar Empowerment
- Sunfire always grants Solar Empowerment if you’re currently affected by Lunar Empowerment
- Moonfire always grants Lunar Empowerment if you’re currently affected by Solar Empowerment
- Lunar/solar empowerment would have a shared RPPM of around 3 and an increased chance to proc if you aren’t in an eclipse, for example
Add a new spell to the kit modeled after Marked Shot. Let’s call it Celestial Shards. When you’re either Lunar or Solar Empowered, Celestial Shards becomes usable and fires a volley of the appropriate element at all targets affected by your Sunfire (Solar) or Moonfire (Lunar). This could either be an instant cast spell or channeled over 1.5 seconds (usable while moving).
The channeled version of Celestial Shards spell could fire a minimum of 4 projectiles at each affected target, up to 8 targets max (32). An instant cast version could fire a single beefier projectile at each target. Bonus points if the animation for the overhead arcane volley from MM was implemented somewhere as a talent (this was a trait in the Thas’dorah weapon tree).
Celestial Shards expends Lunar/Solar Empowerment and grants Lunar/Solar Eclipse. Eclipse functions as it does now except with a slightly short duration at 9-12s. This is the vulnerability part of Marked Shot except it’s a player buff based instead of a target side debuff. It also does moderately high damage and generates ~15 astral power.
Other changes to accommodate this new system:
- Wrath critical strikes extend the duration of Sunfire by 2s
- Casting Starfire on a target affected by Moonfire also casts a Moonfire on a nearby enemy (2 enemies if Twin Moons talented)
- Wild/Sunseeker Mushroom now grant Solar Empowerment and are positioned higher & more centrally in the tree. These are RNG protection similar to Windburst artifact ability for MM. Preferably these have a larger animation with a ground target reticule talent option
- Fury of Elune is redesigned to use the Orbital strike animation and ground target effect. It does arcane damage, grants Lunar Empowerment, and rapidly applies Moonfires to targets within the AoE (up to 8). Positioned higher in the tree
- Mastery and Shooting Stars are buffed to offset loss of 1 DoT on targets
- When Celestial/Incarn is activated you gain Astral Empowerment, causing Celestial Shards to deal astral damage and apply Stellar Flare to all targets affected by Moonfire/Sunfire (some of these and related effects could be moved to Incarn only)
- Starfall/Starsurge have an independent chance to proc Astral Empowerment for the duration of the CD
- Stellar Flare increases Astral damage taken by the target and optionally is mutually exclusive with Sunfire/Moonfire on target
- Various talents that incentivize mixing different types of eclipses on pure ST or AoE to add variety
- Various talent(s) that buff either Wrath or Starfire use outside of their respective eclipses to add variety
- Multiple uses of Starfall no longer overlap, instead adds to existing duration
- Add talent(s) that cause Starsurge to amplify damage or frequency of Starfall when used during the latter’s duration
- Stellar Flare as a standalone DoT removed
- New Moon and Half Moon removed
- Full Moon (optionally renamed to Moon Crash) is now an astral power spender talent with no CD and a ground target reticule, designed to work in tandem with Starfall for pure AoE damage and/or burst AoE
- Starsurge/Wrath are given talents that cause them to cleave a % of their damage onto nearby enemies (similar to Trick Shots), designed to work in tandem with Starfall for priority + AoE damage
- Convoke the Spirits removed or limited to a more specific set of spells
Balance has a lot of boring uninteractive talents. By adding a new spell and eclipse system you have more flexibility to add fun interactions via talents. The faster ramp time combined with RNG procs would also make the rotation more interesting overall.