yeah, its needed NOW But not before.
You can always redesign it too.
The question still holds, why did they remove the healing touch… just makes no sense to me
i main resto nowadays but play every druid spec regularly except feral. It’s kind of sad how much more damage balance/feral druids take compared to other classes in heroic dungeons.
From a healer perspective it literally just feels like feral/balance specs take like 20-30% more damage at all times than other classes specs.
They really need to nerf bear form survivability for non guardians, then increase passive survivability and add another defensive button besides barkskin that isn’t bear form IMO.
It is not fun to have to go into bear form to survive things that other classes can just hit one of many defensive CD’s for.
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This was one thing that we had an issue in Legion with, where our casted building spells hit for nothing, but now it has become the opposite. Our casted spells actually feel like they do something but surpassed Starsurge and Starfall by a mile. Thus, most balance druids wanted our spenders to feel like what they are intended for. A spell that you build up to and does more damage than the building spells.
Regrowth does need to be addressed, but its the defense part that we need most. We wouldn’t need to heal as much if we didn’t take so much damage. I would have to say that barkskin needs another charge for us, Moonkin form needs some sort of magic resistance and rather than armor, a physical resistance.
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Great point, and true!!
I think the reason I said that was because I felt like cast time ='ed more damage, but just couldn’t put my proverbial finger on it… I agree that the spender should deal the most damage, but I still think it’d feel more meaningful if the resource didn’t come as easy. As it is now, we basically Spam-Surge half the time in Eclipse… so the line between which one is really the ‘filler’ has begun to blur 
So overall, I’m with you in the hope that Starsurge/fall will now, again, feel more like the definitive highlights of the rotation.
These changes suck
The Starsurge buff honestly doesn’t make up for the huge loss of starfire nerfs in PVP.
Lame changes. horrid
I’ve mained balance for over a decade and have always generally enjoyed it. I’m a pvper only. For the first time, I am quitting this druid. Its the biggest turd of a build I have ever contended with. I have good gear for BGs. Can’t stay alive for nothing and certainly hit as hard as a wet paper towel. Those that are doing big damage is all from the starfall build. Big damage, but have like 2 kills the whole match. It’s embarrassing. So now I can’t decide if I just want to unsub or actually be forced to start a new main which is something I have never done. Anywho, this is a colossal failure for Balance Druid and today I’m officially flushing this thing down the toilet.
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For some reason, they think that forcing us to depend on a healer is enough to make up for Bdruids weak defense.
They need to erase Bear form defense from our kit if they are going to keep it weaker than dispersion from Shadow priests.
The starfire Nerfs were over the top and the compensation buff to starsurge was not enough. Starsurge feels like nothing
whats the point of Elune tree at this stage when starfire is pretty much hitting the same amount as star surge =/.
PVP 3v3 match.
starsurge hitting: 3.4k average -
Norm hits: 335.514 average - min 237.660 - Max 475.616
Crits
min 328.399
average: 449.795
Max: 609.506
Starfire: Average 262k
Normal Hits: 256.832 average – Min 46.620 – high 585.637
Critical Hits: min 17.081 - average 292.763 max 814.112
the highest you can hit is 1m if the stars align perfectly and if you live long enough to see the day.
Trash.
Meanwhile: Envoker just presses Disintegrate over and over – nuking, slowing, and getting random procs of their essence spell
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because all hybrids were given the equivalent of flash heals, so they didn’t have the mana efficient slower casted option that healers would use
but with all things wow, power creep outpaced the design decision until flash heals were spammed by healers anyways because mana efficiency is less important than throughput as far as healing checks go
it wasnt a great reason but that was the reason–if you are a hybrid, you got the faster casted, higher cost heal. you can thank shamans, probably…
what are these numbers with goldrinn procs? haven’t enjoyed playing balance since tbc, but was having some fun during remix… the tuning worked out really well for starsurge there.
No goldrinn procs.
I found the proc chance to be very low and inconsistent. =/. so I opted for the crit one to at least get a higher chance of getting those random big crits.
compared to how hard other casters and melee characters are hitting, while having way way better defense, our starsurge current buffed strength is subpar IMO.
Example: Envoker just pressing one button and out dpsing or matching me =/.
–immune to 3 ccs.
– just as mobile or more
– Strong CC
– one dmg spell does it all.
– heals way more than me.
now don’t get me wrong, if I have a HEALER with me, I can do stuff.
But I shouldn’t be the only class forced to require a healer to play.
Cyclone is a power CC but it does has it double-edged sword in pvp. The enemy is completely immune. I’v been effed by so many druids Cycloneing at the wrong time.
Roots pretty much just tickle. Its main worth is roots and Sunbeam when tickets are down.
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Havent played boomy yet but i have healed a couple and it is certainly noticeable when im grouped with one.
They feel a lot like shamans or hunters last expansion but worse; where if i dont keep lifebloom on them or have an ironbark ready they just splat once there’s any real aoe damage. Things that are bringing the other dps to half are leaving them at 30% or lower and they dont ever recover themselves the way ret paladins or spriests (other hybrid dps) seem to outside of renewals cooldown.
Feral’s catform and balance’s boomy form probably need a 5-10% DR tagged to them. Keep them spec specific so theres no worry of resto or bear getting involved in the tuning but boomys little armor buff isnt covering it anymore.
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I like your observations, they seem very close to my experiences. However, rather than DR (which would be great), I’d rather see a 100% increase in Regrowth healing, such that Ferals (at least) can effectively self-heal outside of Frenzied Regeneration/Renewal.
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Im all for a regrowth buff but recommend a DR cause blizzard stated they want dps and tank self healing to be weaker this expansion. They wanted more of a groups survivability to be handled by healers; its why regrowth (and a lot of other dps heals) got nerfed mid beta and why tanks got that large set of nerfs at the end of testing. Doing all those changes game wide it seems unlikely regrowth will get an exception.
Meanwhile shaman and hunter sucked to heal last expac but feel fine now, their healing was nerfed too but they got a rework beta to give them a decent set of passive and non-passive DRs in the class and hero trees, so even with the nerfs they come out ahead in survivability. Giving boomy and feral the same treatment so they dont take 20% more damage then everyone else with all their passive DRs and higher hp pools would bring them up to par with at least the next squishiest class.
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Harmonious Constitution and Empowered Shapeshifting are the answers to this.
I’m not currently playing Wildstalker because the 25% bonus to Regrowth is simply not enough. I do find the cat Frenzied Regeneration to heal for enough, but its cooldown is too long - it would probably be perfect with 2 charges.
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Yea I’ve reached the point as a long time boomy main where I’m just going to play evoker instead.
The “live or die by the cyclone” playstyle is so played out and annoying. I miss actually having survivability with Frenzied Regen and heals. Like, you have a couple dots on you and FR doesn’t even outheal those anymore. It’s extremely demoralizing.
On to greener pastures(or should I say skies?).
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So theyre not going to give us that because were already given the tools to survive.
FR in cat form allows us to heal, get a bump in max HP, and continue to maintain our damage.
On the other hand you can make it so that you build buff for bear form in cat form, and when you do have to go bear form for FR, you get to stay in bear form and enjoy higher HP, armor, and that increased bear form DPS.
And then with Wildstalker you get the stronger spammable heal. Which is also why Hunters got a buff defensively. Their heals are on a CD meaning they’re a one and done for heals
Maybe I’m being pessimistic, extrapolating the amount of group damage currently being done to mythic keystones. And it certainly will improve as we get better gear. I just don’t see it being that fun to help out the healer with respect to my incoming damage compared to DF (a lot more reliance on CDs).
It’s not really a buff so much as it is encouraging us to actually use the left side of our spec tree. All of our AoE damage was moved into Rampart Ferocity which meant there wasn’t much reason to take anything on the left side of the tree, which simplified the rotation pretty significantly and disincentivized us from taking Predatory Swiftness. With Bloodtalons now affecting Rampant Ferocity, our standard spec tree builds look a lot more normal.
So we can usually pop Barkskin every pull. We’ve got Pred Swiftness popping off 6-8 times a minute, SI for something big and nasty, and now that we can build up big damage for Bear form, pop bear form, pop FR, use Shred/Rake to get back into Cat form without burning an extra GCD, all the while FR is no longer dropping off and remaining in cat form.
And in any content that you’re taking that much damage that consistently, you should be playing with Incap Roar which is another quick way to pop off an FR. We have the tools, and a lot of the tools that people had been asking for. It’s just going to take some time to learn to utilize it.
I was using the left side anyway…all that extra damage going into Rips and FB and PW…too hard for me to pass up (and muscle memory would have me doing 3 different abilities even without BT being chosen).
Spenders doing less damage than generator abilities prompted it.
IE if backstab did more damage than eviscerate they would nerf backstab and buff evis because spenders doing less damage feels bad
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