Keeper of the Grove
Gonna be honest here, this tree is exactly a bad omen for hybrids when compared to the mage tree. The mage tree is filled with active modifications to damage rotations and extra utility/survival spell.
Meanwhile, the balance talents are mostly boring passives whose sole utility is a pitiful 8% DR on a spell that heals for nothing. I’ve been submitting feedback for the past two expansions. REGROWTH HEALS FOR NOTHING. IT HEALS AT BEST FOR 9-10% OF A HEALTH POOL. IT IS NOT MEANINGFUL UTILITY.
Mages get extra barriers, the extra effects of the different elemental barriers, and reduction to their other defensive/CC cooldowns, spells made instant cast and aoe splash nukes, or their main cast gains a snare in the case of fire mages.
Ice Block can be changed to grant mobility. More DPS cooldowns open up to them for free.
Meanwhile Balance druids don’t get treants for free, but it’s even worse. Treants as they exist compared to their prior WoD incarnation of a 30 sec cd 3 charge summon with a utility root/stun are an objectively bad spell. They do not do AoE cleave, and their moonfire application is a pitiful 1 cast per 6 seconds, for a 1 minute cd. If you don’t remove the taunt, they die immediately in any M+ scenario. One of their talents releis on them speccing arcanic pulsar or orbital strike.
Compare this to a fire or frost mage applying living bomb cleaves more often than every 1 minute, and then on their meteor/comet storm spell they get extra aoe burst for M+ with an added comet/meteor complement.
How can anyone consider a node that gives a 12% damage buff to starfire and wrath, when these spells sit at less than 3-4% of our total damage done, a node option worth taking? Moreover, it’s painfully boring.
And boring is what defines this tree. No new spell visuals like frostfire bolt, mostly invisible passives because balance has to share a tree with a healing spec, so the nodes just like Shadowlands or BfA are made generic.
It’s adding injury to insult when the resto version gets a 100% damage boost to their nuke after casting resto spells, but all a balance druid gets after 5 spenders is a pathetic 9% HP heal that’s not even boosted, just instant cast. Most M+ aoe ticks already outdamage a full regrowth cast, it’s that bad for non-resto druids.
8% DR on regrowth is also really bad, and clearly aimed for resto druid balancing. For one, a balance druid won’t preemptively cast it and waste the healing portion just to gain DR, even as it is the squishiest spec in the game alongside shamans.
This druid hero talent tree needs to baseline treants and any affected talents its nodes interact with, and for balance druids you’d do well to revert the treant to their old WoD incarnation of 1 treant per charge on 30 sec cd that casts wraths and casts entangling growth/stun on summon. The current version of treants for balance druids is not taken for a reason. They’re a bad summon that needs to chase in melee with no target priority and no charge to keep up. Reverting to the summonable treants on a charge system from WoD would give balance druids a much needed mobile damage option with a CC utility that is still worse than mass entangle or frost nova, but it’s something.
I’ll also comment how the frostfire mage bolt proc makes it both aoe and instant while balance druids for a 1 min cd, which happens less often, are stuck hardcasting wraths and starfires for the aoe explosion proc. This is a spec with significantly impaired mobile damage yet it’s mages who get even more instant casts and spells on the move despite shimmer/ice floes.
In summary:
You can literally find ZERO youtube videos for Keeper of the Grove for balance druids or even any discord or twitch video footage. It’s that bad. Literally only resto druids are using it because their treants are actually well designed, functional, and powerful.
Unlike the really bad version of treants balance has. Bring back WoD 3 spell charge treants where it summons a treant that casts wrath or starfire based on target count and casts entangling root at the target when summoned.
Even better, take a look at Diabolist warlock. Look at how Ritual summons entities periodically. Do the same for Keeper of the Grove. Summon treants, dryads, ancients, or keeper of the groves periodically with spells, with one big spell culmination (your starfall or starsurge is empowered into a new spell at the end of the ritual count).
The Chosen of Elune tree also suffers a similar issue of highly passive tree with not much gameplay value added.
Shapeshifting is a curse, not a boon in PvE
Tying so much of our class utility, mobility, and survivability functions to shapeshifting is not a boon at all, it is an outright inferior mechanic in PvE.
To summarize, since you removed the 15% DR from moonkin form, we are made of wet toilet paper to magic damage. Our regrowth heals for a measly 8-9% HP, and rejuvenation is a waste of a GCD as we actually take more damage than we recover in the 2 GCD’s of shifting since rejuvenation and wild growth take us out of moonkin form and we lose all that armor.
So instead of relying on our heals for survival, since they’re the worst of the hybrids in the game, we have an even worse feature of having to sit on our thumbs in bear form, doing literally nothing for several GCDs, to have some modicum of survival.
This is not enjoyable. You changed Divine Shield for paladins and mage defensives for this reason. Yet druids have to sit in an otherwise useless bear form just to trigger frenzied regeneration, then waste other GCDs shifting back into moonkin form after sitting in bear form for 3 seconds.
Shapeshifting doesn’t feel good in this game’s PvE environment, because the benefits do not outweigh the costs. It is extra steps to get an inferior version of what other classes can do with half the GCD cost and access to all their spellbook at the same time.
Polymorph immunity and root clears are mainly PvP boons, these are very niche benefits in PvE that barely see use, so it does not balance out what the balance druid needs to pay to perform basic functions like mitigating damage, mobility, or healing.
AoE ramp up and mastery
Going to keep beating on this dead horse, because it is still not addressed.
Balance druids have an unreasonable ramp up to their aoe because of needing to have DoTs up to benefit from a large part of damage. This makes them feel pretty bad in everything but high M+ keys, and in raids adds die too quickly for their cleave and aoe to kick in.
You have some solutions available:
1- Wild Mushroom has been in complete disuse no matter your number increases.
You can tune wild mushroom to be our version of eyebeam, make it a strong burst aoe spell on a 25-30 sec cd with charges, so we can get burst damage out in short lived aoe encounters.
2- Wild mushroom’s dot could count for both types of our mastery, to reduce our ramp up.
3- Wild Mushroom could be our shadow crash, applying both dots to affected targets.
Bonus personal recommendation; move flourish to the choice node under tranquility as an improvment that makes it increases hot tick speed and extend duration while channeling.