Hi all,
I love the druid class tree mostly except the Soothe talent feels wasted for PVP since there are few situations in which it is good. A suggestion: replace Soothe with Adaptive Swarm. This would be a powerful talent that feels good to unlock, and would enable Moonkin to use Adaptive Swarm to synergize with our other abilities. I just think Soothe is a wasted point in PvP and talents which are so situational as enrage removal shouldn’t be required to unlock core class capstone talents like Heart of the Wild
Also I think it’s cool to reward shapeshifting, I wish there were more benefit to build a Cat Form focus into a balance druid. Bear form always makes sense for druids since it prevents you from dying, but cat form often feels counterproductive as a boomkin. It’s sad to waste points on the Rip finishing move to unlock 15% movement speed. Faeline Swiftness above Rip would make more sense, especially if Rake were baseline, because druids could go directly into the mobility option under Rake. Then you could also swap Tireless Pursuit with Maim, since that would put it closer to the new position for Faeline Swiftness. This way cat finishers would be a bit deeper than cat mobility and you wouldn’t need the cat-specific stuff unlocked to unlock the non-cat-specific stuff.
At least thrash is nice for stealthers. Rake seems amazing but for some reason most high rated boomkin take neither rake nor maim stuns, seems odd since stuns are pretty strong. There is strong potential synergy between cat bleeds and moonkin dots. You can rake, thrash, shred, rip to double the pressure or maim them to stun, and rake is an excellent opener. Overall cat dance with boomkin stuff feels scattered, you’re trying to do too much cat stuff when blizzard just wants you to spam wrath, but it seems like something you could utterly destroy people with, due to overwhelming damage over time effects
Also it sucks to have to take 2 talents which break moonkin form, rejuvenation and swiftmend, just to unlock remove corruption, which does not break moonkin form. I do see the power of getting the healing talents on a boomkin though, since the dots have pretty long durations, you could do a ton of work offhealing.
I’d make rake, frenzied regen, rejuvenation, starfire all baseline, so every druid has something interesting to do in each major form without spending anything. Then replace soothe with adaptive swarm (or remove the talent node) and make soothe baseline, so it feels like a big unlock to get adaptive swarm after tiger dash, instead of a wasted point. Swap Faeline Swiftness with Rip, and swap tireless pursuit with maim. That way we can unlock cat mobility BEFORE cat finishers. Also would love to see a talent to reward feral play by boomkins, like enable moonkin spells to extend cat / bear bleed durations and likewise allow cat/bear bleeds to extend moonkin dots. Give me some reason to rake, thrash, shred, rip, and maintain those bleeds in PVP.
TLDR, some talents feel useless but required. For example Soothe → Stampede, Rip / Maim → Faeline Swiftness / Tireless Pursuit, and Rejuvenation / Swiftmend → Remove Corruption feel counterproductive to balance druids. No adaptive swarm for balance druids feels like a glaring omission.