Balance Druid

I know a lot of druid players in the Druid Forum thread are primarily PvE players, but Balance Druid in PvP is outright outclassed. Mobility for us is a ting of the past being that all melee have a means of getting out of roots and a vast amount of gap closers. Casters are gaining new talents for dealing with incoming damage. Balance druid needs a new talent or PvP talent to not die being looked at.
Defensives for other casters:
(preface: I will not be including micro CC, Mobility, or CC that helps keep targets off i.e. Fear, Polly, Colone)

Mage: Block and Barrier. Barrier offers the micro CC in this case but still allows for a barrier from damage being taken. Block (unless dispelled or shattered) reduces all damage to zero while also healing back to full)

Ele Shaman: Wall, Earth Ele, Stone bulwark. The days of train the blue seem to be over. The amount of defense that they can throw out has increased with the addition of stone bulwark. They also can heal but for most hybrid classes, its not that much. Bulwark offers an immense shield from damage. Wall has always been there and it is on a longer cooldown, but offers a good amount of damage reduction. Earth Elemental is a small damage reduction, offers some damage, and give the shaman a health increase.

Shamans also have their healing and healing stream totem (though it is low healing, it does help. Any healing even passive from a totem is still a positive)

Lock: Wall, Barrier, Demonskin. Locks have their wall on a 1 min CD allowing for a massive barrier from damage. They have their traditional wall that reduces damage as well with talents that reduce its cooldown when attacked. With demonskin, Locks gain a passive wall and health throughout an arena match.

Locks also have Mortal Coil. though it is a CC, its also a major tool for them as well as a means to gain health. Lock Rocks are a great way to save yourself. It blows my mind that a non Hybrid caster can heal more than any of the hybrid casters.

Spriest: Dispersion, Fade, Shield, Void Leach, DoT healing. Spriests are some shifty casters. Fade allowing for them to avoid attacks every 20 seconds. A barrier that is on a less than 10 second cooldown. Dispersion that reduces damage by 75% and heals. A new talent in the hearo talent tree that heals 3% of total HP every 2 seconds. Healing from DoT’s. Shadow priest are incredibly tanky for a class that wears cloth and have a good amount of tools to survive.

Balance Druid: Bear Form, Barkskin, renewal, frenzy regin. I am having to include the healing cooldowns here due to Balance druids having 2 defensives: Bear form and Barkskin. Barkskin is a nice defensive that offeres 30% damage and increases healing received by 20% on a 1 min CD. Bearform reduces physical damage. Frenzy Regin gives 20% of your health in 5 GCD. Renewal heals for 30% of your total health on a 1.5 min CD.

In conclusion, all other casters have a means to either completely remove all damage completely or reduce it by a large margin, or have passive healing. Other than Ice Block, balance druids loose all pressure sitting in bear form, and I dont know if its just me, but barkskin (having to take a talent of Oakskin locked behind a feral/guardian druid talent) seems underwhelming considering its our only wall.

Balance druids need (NEED) something. Passive healing with Gift of Ysera brought back. Warriors have their passive healing, Spriest have theirs, shamans (though its low) have healing stream, but have more walls and barriers. If we tag on micro CC, roots mean nothing in this game unless spamable like frost mages.

Blizzard, I know some of you watched AWC. You watched as balance druids just fall over sitting in bear form not able to do anything. We had Alpha, Beta, countless patches. (thank you for the damage buffs) But still nothing to address defense. I mean come on, you buffed new moon and half moon (a talent that no PvP balance druid would dream of taking) before even addressing balance druid survivability.

Help. What can i do to convince you to help? How much money do you want? Please.

5 Likes

I mean no player that plays boomy disagrees with you. Boomy defensives are tied to the past. Reality is that it needs 1 of 3 things; 2 barkskins, higher wall %, or an alternative to bear form.

Forcing a boomy to be in bear form is a death sentence in PVP, because now you’re actively stopping them from doing damage untilk they can recover enough in a damage meta, where not only do they have to catch up but also are required to setup for it WHILE still being under pressure.

Objectively, boomy isn’t really that bad right now. It has decent pressure and its incarn is scary, however the way you answer that is just to live the incarn and then w key them with good goes and the boomy team will always be on the back foot. But when you throw it into a lobby against cleaves that can match its mobility, namely DK cleaves, then boomy can’t really prosper.

Boomy itself would be fine if damage isn’t spikey.

I think boomy needs all the same defensive CD as Bear, but castable in boomy form. Period

1 Like

I agree completely. If I go bear form it its a death sentence. Even in raid when there are tons of raid damage going out. Going bear form then sitting there while frenzied regen ticks is not fun.
Also the free regrowth we get should not be the same icon and name as our free damage proc. Blooming infusion Hero talent needs 2 separate buffs that cant overlap.

The heal from blooming infusion needs to have a buffed regrowth. 20-30% at least.

Matted fur gives an absorb when we barkskin but only for 230k which is nothing…if they made it absorb 5 million then it would be decent

Be reasonable here. A 5 mil shield on Barkskin would be way too strong. Shaman have Stone Bulwark Totem that is a 1.9 mil shield on a 2.9 min CD.

So lets math this out. Due to Barkskin having a passive that increases the healing we take by 20%, and saying that the CD of Barkskin is the same as Stone Bulwark, I think it would be fair to say the shield it makes is 1.5 mill. Devide that by 3 with Barkskin being a 1 min CD, we should at least have the shield be 500,000.

Now say they look at it a different way, Rather than a flat 500k shield with hitting Barkskin, Blizzard could make Matted Fur a passive that gives us a shield that gives us a shield every 30 seconds for 250k stacking twice. If this is still too strong, then make it a shield that absorbs 125k every 15 - 20 seconds, stacking up to 4 times.

Something along these lines would help a good amount, yet still not be broken. However, Feral does not need such power, having Survival Instincts and the ability to heal after spending combo points. A talent like this should be for Resto and Balance only.