The changes to the talent tree just gave us access to Solar Beam, but at the cost of being able to pick up any capstone. I would hope blizzard sees this “rework” as a complete failure, but it doesn’t seem like it with 0 changes coming in the next patch. I would like really for balance druid to not be tuned/balanced around a scenario that pretty much doesn’t exist. How many 45+ second long multi-target fights are there really? Because it sure feels like I only exist as a utility bot outside of Primal Council. We have no burst, and just spend most of our time applying dots just for everything to die before we get to the time where the dot application means anything.
Balance has become one of the worst dps specs after the changes to our talent tree. Combined with the lack of ANY tuning coming in the next patch, it sure looks bleak moving forward as a druid dps. We’re right at the bottom with Aff lock (which is feels like we’re just diet Aff lock anyways) at the higher to set the goal post the worse the class becomes.
TL;DR We lost all our capstones in our talent tree rework, and no future tuning coming out makes me feel sad. Give us back Ravenous frenzy or something.
3 Likes
just give up , reroll sadly druid is in its worse state .
Only doomers say that lol
Agreed!!! 100%. The change made our choices worse. No capstones are taken at all now unlike last patch.
None are worth taking and poor mushrooms which we took often are now only good for burst AOE.
This change was a failure.
All the capstones being worthless feels pretty bad. Even before the changes, this is by far my least favorite iteration of this spec going all the way back to cata.
You’d think capstones would be our playstyle defining talents. Waning twilight, for example, should be a capstone, with stellar flare just below it. And balance the other, hopefully new capstones be be roughly equal, and maybe have one that makes our ST less garbage, that would be nice. Idk something like radiant moonlight making all moon spells instant cast as well, or reducing the CD along with the extra full moon.
This class forum is a joke.
Enjoyment aside, Balance does great damage in 20+ keys. Unfortunately, since most people, myself included, aren’t doing that kind of content, Balance definitely seems underwhelming.
Totally subjective, but I hate the waning twilight/stellar flare playstyle. I’d rather have a burst damage option so I don’t feel useless in the lower levels of content that I actually play.
You could play Orbital Strike 
I do play orbital strike, actually. That by itself is far from making Balance a competitive spec in lower keys. lol
Have you tried Full Moon? I refuse to play a 3 dot build and have been messing around with Full Moon in PVP. It can definitely chunk and give some good burst damage. But the long cast time and threat of getting kicked on astral makes it have a pretty big draw back in PVP at least.
I haven’t tried that. I keep thinking about just totally dropping Waning Twilight and Stellar Flare, but just not sure what talents I could take to make up the lost AoE damage. Slow casts are always an issue, both in PvP and M+ due to the constant need to move.
Nothing we do is going to make us “strong” in lower keys unfortunately, just strong-er. It’s hard to get away from Waning Twilight because a consistent 8% is a lot to give up.
Could go for some kind of Starfire based Umbral Intensity/Smoulder build and play Warrior of Elune maybe? Not sure how good it would be overall, nor what to give up to make this build, but it’s something I guess?
It’s WoE and Shrooms really for on demand burst aoe if at all, and Orbital Strike I suppose. Waning Twilight and Stellar Flare kind of feel like they warp the talent tree a bit, would love to see them reworked. Feels like Stellar is still kind of mandatory even if Waning didn’t exist because it procs Shooting Stars/Orbit Breakers.