Alright so I had a couple of questions and concerns about both of these affinities.
First off I play my druid a little different then others just cause it’s my kinda playstyle and by that I mean stat and Covenant wise
My druid has 18% haste 9% crit 10% vers and 11% mastery And i am Also Necrolord.
I’m not one who usually builds crit but it is what it is, but it leads into choosing a certain affinity. I normally went with balance because because of the Lack or Crit that I had, But I’ve always wanted to go Cat Weaving due to me having multiple bleeds on the target and having adaptive Swarm Boost those bleeds and DoT’s but i feel like it wont be efficient enough because i don’t have a lot of Crit so i won’t really benefit from Heart of the wild Since it says something along the lines that if you crit you have a 30% chance to gain an additional combo point.
And then there is balance affinity which just boosts Overall Damage of abilities, but the only downside is that it doesn’t really benefit much off of Adaptive swarm, but it was the safer option. I’ve tried to look up different guides but no one really talked about it much
What are your questions my friend? Background and concerns are laid out, but what would you specifically like to know?
What would be the better affinity in this particular case, balance or feral, would feral be viable tho I don’t stack the crit but still get the increased damage from bleeds or just stick with balance
The big benefit of balance aff is that you dont need to run into melee to do the dmg.
As Zilve said, it’s “easier” and safer to just step back as Balance, but if you want to get the most out of Adaptive Swarms damage, you can load up Moonfire (is Sunfire restricted to Balance Aff or do you get it as Resto?), then pop Kitty form and get in Rake and a full 5cp Rip
You’ll only benifit from cat weaving if you have a good low maintenance group and have the global’s to do so.
If pugging you’ll be lucky to get free global’s this xpac and owl works out better for when you can.
I just owl weave it’s safer and the difference isn’t significant anyway.
What he said ^^ when I pug I basically try and keep up my moonfore/sunfire up and that’s it, otherwise when I go with my main group I usually catweave with circle of life and death. It also depends on the week though, during quaking I don’t usually catweave
Due to what they’ve done with tying utility to affinity, Balance might be better just for Typhoon. (At least in M+)
Your stats don’t really matter, healers don’t do that much damage and you aren’t going to see anything but a minor difference one way or another. Frankly you’d probably be better off stacking vers than crit if DPS is your goal, particularly if you go feral since the extra defensive buffer will be very useful.
Playing balance affinity is much safer and more convenient and typhoon is super useful, plus there are just a bunch of really punishing melee mechanics/affixes this expansion. Having said that, feral is perfectly viable.
If I were Necrolord I’d go with feral, just because that makes more sense mechanically. It’s also significantly more fun to play than balance affinity. I think balance makes way more sense for a Night Fae.
It honestly doesn’t matter much. Without convoke you won’t do any damage. I chose necro for pvp and I hardly ever have much time to dps outside tiny windows so you honestly could go either way and I doubt your dmg would swing much. Dungeons require too much healing right now to even think about sitting there dpsing.