I didn’t play Druid in Wrath, but some of the changes they listed drew from that expansion. What are some of your thoughts for the class changes and also the Balance changes?
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I am disappointed.
Swiftmend was changed to an instant heal because consuming a HoT felt bad and now we’re back to that. I don’t like them bringing Nourish back. It wasn’t a good heal at the time and I don’t feel like it will be a good heal now. Loosing access to Typhoon is a really tough pill to swallow as well and I don’t think gaining access to Cyclone and Stampeding Roar is anywhere near adequate compensation.
It feels like, to me, that these changes are designed to modify how the class plays and make it less effective in Mythic plus. None of the changes enhance our ability to compete for a slot in a raid which is extremely disappointing. The toolkit that a Druid brings now just can’t compete with Disc, Holy Pally, Shaman, or even Monk.
Tl,dr - Rather than enhancing our toolkit and shoring up the biggest glaring weakness (Raiding), it feels like we received nerf’s disguised in the form of class changes to hamper our ability in the area of the game we excell, Mythic+.
Edit: Also, where is Mark of the Wild? If we’re bringing back class defining core abilities, not having that is a HUGE miss.
Edit2: Also, my PoV is of a healer (obviously).
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As I posted in the General Discussion thread, the changes are underwhelming. The Guardian & Feral ones in particular are bad.
Guardian will be operating at a loss since we won’t be able to have Typhoon and Vortex anymore, it will be one or the other.
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I won’t fully know until I see it play out, but I’m not happy about most of the Balance chances. I hated the Eclipse system and if we’re going back to essentially spamming either Wrath or Lunar while they’re powered up, instead of alternating between the two like now, I think it’s a change for the worse. The wording isn’t very good though so I need to see it play out first before I really know if it’s pretty much the old system or a mix of both old and now.
I’m absolutely THRILLED to have old Starfall back though. I hated the change to placing it on the ground to begin with.
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I fear feral will lose the blood talons snapshot, since now for a buffed rake/shred/trash you should cast it almost one after the next (since now it procs of using a combination of your cp builders).
It was weird to use a healing ability to do damage but the idea was proccing a buff at the best moment paying attention to omc and tf buffs. Now it seems only rip/fb will be snapshoted and the rest just fillers.
And no lotp and motw won’t be like wotlk so pretty much no difference in our toolkit so no place in the meta.
But well, I can start being frost with shadowmourne and warriors will be op as f*** in pvp
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I’m actually quite interested in the moonkin changes. Balance has always been an enjoyable spec for me. The shadow priest dream is dead because I don’t think devouring plague is ever coming back and balance druid was one of my fall backs just in case.
I didn’t play in WotLK either, I started in Cata. But I didn’t level a druid until MoP. So I’m not sure what to really expect when they say it will be more similar to the WotLK play style. But the way it sounds is kind of like the WoD pendulum style too? I’m not sure if WotLK and WoD balance were similar in that way or not. I’d love if someone could clarify.
But I’m super happy about old starfall though! Time to pull all the things again!!! 
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All of the changes just seem kinda … boring.
Yea we get some cool stuff like Roar and Cyclone baseline, but all the other spells they listed that all specs were getting baseline are ones that either only one spec didn’t have (Feral getting Barkskin) or abilities that we got anyway from using an affinity.
Guardian seems to be losing being able to bring both Typhoon and Vortex because both are being split up into different affinities.
Eclipse is coming back for Balance? I didn’t play when Eclipse was a thing but I haven’t heard anything good about it. It sounds like Blizzard is bringing it back simply to move away from a builder/spender rotation rather than any specific reason. Starfall now being an AoE around your toon instead of a click and place sounds cool. I honestly don’t care about that as long as Starfall actually becomes worth casting again.
Feral and Guardian both got like one change each. Is there really nothing else to change? It just reads to be so boring. The wording on the Feral changes concerns me: “When Feral Druids use Shred, Rake, and Ferocious Bite in quick succession”. Do I have to use those 3 abilities back to back? Or can it be any combination of them? And how will our opener look trying to get an empowered Rip on the target?
Swiftmend change I also don’t like. It works fine like it does in Classic, but for WoW in its modern setting I’m not really digging it. Nature’s Swiftness sounds okay I guess, but knowing Blizzard I’m worried that they’d put it on the GCD and make it barely even worth using.
Compared to all the other classes I’m reading, nothing actually seems cool.
Now it seems only rip/fb will be snapshoted and the rest just fillers.
Actually, it doesn’t even say that FB will be empowered; Bloodtalons is reading that it will only empower our Rip. Doesn’t effect Rake or FB.
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Yes. And how quick is “quick”? We pool energy a lot. We aren’t a spammy spec.
I feel underwhelmed by the changes. I wanted other spells baseline, not what we got.
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This is really solid feedback. If NS is on the GCD it would be useless.
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I have the same concern. Management of snapshots was one of the central aspects of what drew me to Feral and made the spec feel unique. I’m concerned that we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater and getting rid of that interaction for… for what? What does this new Bloodtalons do? The description is depressingly vague.
I think the intent may be to shift the “finisher snapshot buff” aspect of Bloodtalons away from using a GCD to cast a spell you may or may not need or might not be useful right now into something that feels like a more natural part of our rotation. But I’m not entirely sure what this new Bloodtalons is aiming to accomplish. So I’ll just end with a cautionary statement to Blizzard: Bloodtalons is a very identity defining aspect of Feral and you’d better triple check any changes you make to it.
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Not to mention with Sabertooth … you never apply a new Rip, you just extend the duration of the first? So this really makes Bloodtalons pointless except for the first application.
It’s like Blizzard doesn’t even know how what their own classes do
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I don’t know how to feel about balance changes. I feel kind of… anxious maybe??? about the changes
I really do not like the starfall change. While I do like that it extends our dots (that seems like it would be really nice in pvp!) I do not like that we’re going to go back to Starfall falling around us instead of a specific area we command.
The change of being able to place your starfalls was really nice because it prevented accidentally pulling unwanted mobs. Starfall back then also had constant problems of clipping through walls, floors, and ceilings. Current starfall still runs into that issue sometimes (mainly if you’re below deck on a ship) but I remember it doing all kinds of things I really didn’t want it to do back when it wasn’t an aoe you could place on the ground.
It’s kind of funny because when they initially implemented the starfall placement change, I was sad because I liked having a bunch of stars around me. But I quickly realized it was a very much needed change.
As for everything else… I guess I’m okay with it? I played moonkin in wrath so I’m sure I’ll be able to pick up on it quickly and get used to it, but, I actually enjoy how moonkin is right now because of our streaking stars azerite trait which lets us alternate between wrath/starfire so I’m not just sitting here spamming 33333333333 (my wrath button) and giving myself arthritis
i dont remember if it was cata or wrath but i remember not being thrilled with the solar/lunar/eclipse/idk system at the time because I felt like i was in solar most of the time and mashing wrath got really tiring.
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The re imagining of Bloodtalons actually made me wonder if it’s a sign that they’re planning on doing something to Sabertooth, which I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to. Sabertooth is a relatively new kid on the block and I certainly wouldn’t mind if we went back to actually managing our Rip rather than setting it and forgetting it. But it comes back to the vagueness of what we have here being concerning.
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Pretty underwhelmed by the changes. Really got into feral originally and i’ve enjoyed the snapshotting/planning aspect of bloodtalons. Didn’t always run BT but I liked that aspect of it and this proposed bloodtalons sounds like a mess. I feel like they had moved in a good direction of preserving the BT/snapshotting style for those who enjoy while having viable alternatives for those who don’t, and now they’re messing it up.
As mostly a resto player currently, I’ve loved having separate rows to pick a useful utility (bash vs typhoon) based on what the dungeon calls for. Tying utilities to affinities is just miserable, particularly when catweaving is a really fun aspect that drives my enjoyment of the healer in M+. Swiftmend change sounded kind of interesting and I like the idea of having a tradeoff of sacrificing hots for additional single target burst, but already swiftmend was a bit of an emergency ability and having to slow down your limited single target burst healing by following it with reapplication of a hot just slows down our ability to respond to a situation when needed.
Eclipses and the change to starsurge sounds blah, and while I’m all in favor of making Starfall not a useless spell, unless I’m reading it wrong it’s a player centered AOE and going into melee as an rdps to be able to do your job is always fun.
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Unless I’m reading the changes wrong, it appears that Balance is returning to the back and forth meter. I honestly wasn’t a fan of it. That along with being unable to hop back into resto after End Times released back in Cata made me switch classes altogether.
I would hate that to be the case again since I’ve been with my balance druid since they got rid of the system but luckily, I’ve got other alts.
The only positive I see is the Starfall change. It was an awesome way to clear packs of mobs. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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Exactly! It was such an awkward ability design that didn’t really feel good and was awkward to keep track of. Ever since they removed it, I’ve enjoyed resto druid healing.
I was planning on being a resto druid in SL, but I am extremely hesitant to do so because I don’t want that play style!
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I knew Blizzard would mess this up for Balance when they said they were going back to older class design.
Balance has been amazing in Legion and BFA. I hate, hate, HATE eclipse. I will not play the spec if it comes back.
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I never played moonkin when eclipse was a thing because I didn’t like the way it played. Please don’t bring it back. Old starfall was fun if they fix the pulling through walls etc issues and make it do some actual damage again.
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I always felt like a human yo-yo when the eclipse bar was still a thing.
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I’m not digging the eclipse system, or the changes to Swiftmend. I really hope they undo these changes prior to the actual expansion.
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