I’ve never felt so squishy as a boomy as I do currently in pvp. Elune’s Chosen gets a whopping 3% magic damage reduction (6% vs arcane wowie) and that’s it, meanwhile Druid of the claw gets a 4% magic damage reduction on top of their bonus to frenzied regen, their bear form benefits for 6 seconds in cat form, healing for 10% of damage taken when shifting to bear form, and their frenzied regen and iron fur in cat form.
You can always choose the Balance/Resto option where you can get a free regrowth every 5 starsurge/starfall casts or the hard cast regrowth play, vs feral/resto getting much stronger regrowths on their instant regrowths every finisher, on top of just having an additional wall in Survival Instincts.
This isn’t to say I think feral should be squishier, but give boomy some love in the defense department. Its not a fun feeling to die in 10 seconds through barkskin, heart of the wild, and sitting bear form.
100% agreed, and well put! We’re long overdue for a defensive buff. At the very least, a fix to Frenzied Regeneration, which currently seems bugged (or purposefully, severely undertuned) in PvP. There could be many approaches to quick fixes until we can get our talent trees reworked again… e.g. PvP talent buffs, Hero talent passive buffs, etc. The mechanical QoL that every spec (and class) other than Boomy get, particularly in PvP for the purposes of survivability and recovery, indeed show that the spec is wildly outdated. Another easy fix would be to revert the DF Hybrid Healing Mana/Value change (buff Regrowth). At this juncture, really anything will do!
A good fix that would be quick and easy is shift Instincts of the Claw and killer instinct. This allows balance Druid to have an extra talent point to put somewhere else while feral isn’t affected.
From there, barkskin should be baseline for balance and resto, with taking the talent point for barkskin granting two charges of barkskin.
The instant heal from blooming infusion needs to increase the regrowths heal by 20%. (The starfall build with star weaver grants more regrowths, so being higher percentage would mean we would almost be unkillable)
The other idea would be to increase the HoT with blooming infusion by 400%. This would allow for regrowths HoT to tick for about 60k and would be fair due to a fair amount of classes that have a purge.
Moonkins are the squishiest class in the game…even fire mages are tankier. On top of that our heals might as well not even exist. It takes me 10 regrowths to heal to full. That’s rediculous. Ele shamans get immunity and a bubble. All casters have a bubble except for moonkins. We get barkskin…its never been good. EVER. Bear form is useless as a moonkin…it doesn’t tank anything. It is total trash and should not exist in its current form.
Ages back I remember I suggested a talent tree option that could be ‘Decisioned’ between either picking Cyclone or an additional effect for barkskin to give a reflective shield ordeal, where it provides a damage-absorb shield, and despite however long the shield lasts – Whilst the barkskin effect endures — All damage taken is additionally reflected back onto the enemies dealing it.
Aside from giving some additional survivability, this bonus effect would also give opportune moments to take advantage of tricky situations that pose danger to the character.
The reason I had it as a decisioned talent choice between that and cyclone, was to present a balance in PvP — So they wouldn’t appear too overpowered, along with also providing a tactical talent route for PvE players; especially for M+
I think your heart and mind are in the right place with this… But Cyclone is absolutely crucial for Boomy in PvP… If we want to make an appealing alternative for it… It has to be REALLY, REALLY (x5) strong. SO strong, in-fact, that we would practically need to be tankier than all tanks… because Cyclone is most reliable means through which we do almost everything:
Setup a target to burst, peel enemies from ourselves or teammates, deny cooldowns, pressure enemy healers to trinket, pressure enemies to use cooldowns, pressure a team to alter its positioning axis, etc… Cyclone has a billion uses, and the spec has been nerfed both defensively AND offensively, I suppose because Cyclone has NOT been touched during all the big CC nerfs. I’d even add that it’s BECAUSE of the choice of keeping Cyclone as it is, that we’re becoming more and more of a ‘glass cannon’ to our detriment.
So, if we want Boomy without cyclone to be viable, Yeah friend…
That other defensive would have to border on game-breaking
Like a 10 sec immunity on a 20 sec cooldown… something of that magnitude.
Perhaps a more realistic version could be indeed an alternative to Nature’s Vigil that is a passive absorption accumulation on damage… with an additional reflective effect while using a defensive or an offensive cooldown.
So, basically, Brambles made baseline or a general Druid talent. Kinda how Flameglow used to be for Mage during WoD.
I’m with you, though, on the general sentiment that more options would be nice there…
Perhaps it IS time to re-think the whole design of the spec
I personally wouldn’t mind a Cyclone nerf as I’ve echoed both here and on the Arena forum many times before… I’d love to be more durable and would basically trade every other aspect of the spec down a notch if that would be a necessary sacrifice. I think it would be more fun for the Boomy because we’d be able to get more spells off throughout the match, but also more fun for our opponents tbh as Cyclone is so strong.
I can think of a couple of ways that they could buff boomy defense.
The easiest one would be to just give them a new ability, maybe a PvP talent like lava shield that they were going to give augmentation, a decent sized shield with interrupt immunity.
The next one would be to buff our current stuff, give some armor back to moonkin form, strengthen barkskin, or just buff the hero talent “defensive” nodes for boomy.
Lastly would be adjusting the talents in the Druid tree so that we’re taking less dead points, though we’d need defensive points we could actually choose instead.
I can’t speak for resto but feral doesn’t need a defensive buff. They got a lot of it in their hero talents and that’s good.
This would be the start. There are too many PvP talents that are never taken. A simple shield would do the trick. This or a PvP talent that allows for an instant root every 30 seconds that can not break for 3-4 seconds.
The armor nerf back in DF needs to be reverted for sure. Barkskin is in a good place with Oakskin, however, Oakskin does not need to be locked behind Instincts of the Claw. In terms of buffing the defensive hero talents, the instant regrowth that we can get needs a buff when we get it. 20-30%.
I am assuming that you are referring to Instincts of the Claw as your major concern. It is for me.
The single target build is in keeper of the grove. Place trees, two starfires, 2-3 starsurges, get as many wrath’s as you can, starsurges. All while making sure your DOT’s aren’t dispelled and kiting like your running to get some water cause the pizza roll you just ate is lava in your mouth. All extremely clunky, the opposite of fluid, no talents seem to work together. Yep.
Can 100% confirm Keeper of the Grove is better. It’s like 15 surges in a row lol
And even though it has some more QoL in all aspects… I prefer the Elune theme nonetheless (Even though I think it was underwhelmingly delivered on!) and our issues with DoT-dependence, ramp-up and lock-in (Eclipse) are definitely still there, of course.
I have a really hot take – what if Cat Form became the surviving form? Nine Lives (Glyph) was 10% damage reduction… I’d like to see a buffed Tiger Dash (with a shorter cd, or some more freedom and immunity baked in) as a viable option, and passive Dodge maybe…
Bear Form could remain the block/recovery form, whereas Moonkin would also share more passive damage reduction and a magical shield/leech passive a la Brambles / Flameglow.
