I think it’s about time we talk about how bad the state of Druid of the Claw is for Guardian Druids on Season 2 of Midnight. Ever since that stupidly strong build on Season 1 of Midnight, that was overperforming on both PvE and PvP , Blizzard hasn’t been able to balance it properly, either being way too strong or underperforming by a lot.
I’ve made a lot of recent testing with my current gear (315 ilvl) and turns out Elune’s Chosen Hero Spec is ahead by miles offensivly, and a bit ahead defensivly. Offensivly, Elune is able to have peak bursts of around 500k DPS on 5 targets, 200k DPS burst on single target, while Druid of the Claw barely reaches 350k on 5 targets and doesn’t get above 100k on single target. Defensivly, even thought Claw has a greater defensive kit when comparing with Elune’s, it still is below for a few reasons i’ll list below.
Elune’s Chosen damage superiority is a fact atm, on a full arcane build, Thrash being its main source of damage (around 60% of your damage always) followed by Moonfire (25% ish of your damage). The reason it’s damage is super high compared to Claw is a group of talents that have great synergy on hero spec and spec tree:
#1 Lunar Insight: Moonfire 8% increased damage. Red Moon 30% increased damage.
#2 Atmospheric Exposure: 6% damage increase to targets affected by Lunar Beam.
#3 Penumbral Swell: Lunar Beam increases 10% arcane damage while active
#4 Lunar Calling: Thrash deals ARCANE damage and 12% damage increase to it.
#5 Astral Insight: Increases arcane damage by 10% while incarnation is active.
#6 Eternal Moon: Lunar Beam increases Mastery by additional 15%, deals 30% increased damage and lasts 3s longer.
#7 Fury of Nature: 30% flat Arcane damage increase.
#8 Twin Moonfire: 8% Moonfire Damage and it hits 1 additional target.
#9 Galacitc Guardian: 300% Moonfire Damage Increase to your next moonfire.
Now on Druid of the Claw’s which is a physical damage build damage spins around Thrash (40% ish of the damage) Ravage (25% of the damage including dreadful wound), (Moonfire 20% ish of the damage) and Mangle (10% of its damage while being pressed a LOT). It has pretty decent synergy talents:
#1 Empowered Shapeshifting: Increases Mangle damage by 25%
#2 Dreadful Wound: Bleed that does decent damage and also increases bleed damage over time effects by 15% and can have its duration extended.
#3 Bestial Strength: Flat 10% damage on Maul/Raze.
#4 Strike for the Heart: Mangle damage increase by 10% and extra 10% crit chance.
#5 Killing Strikes: 8% agility increase post ravage.
#6 Twin Claw: A hit that has 18% chance to follow up any single target melee ability or Ravage cast and deals damage (REAL WEAK ATM).
#7 Claw Rampage: Thrash, Maul, Swipe have chance 20% chance to make Maul become Ravage.
#8 Killing Blow: Maul and Raze may consume up to 20 more rage to deal up to 70% additional damage.
Even so with that heavy melee combo, the damage it deals is way lower compared to Elune’s, due to Ravage damage being low, Thrash damage being way further behind on damage increases compared to Elune’s and Mangle damage being low, Twin Claw deals no damage (before it used to be a massive hit).
Now on tankiness metter, Druid of the Claw has a great kit, Dreadful Wound giving a flat 15% dmg reduction to affected targets and its duration being extendable with your rotation. A Flat 6% Magic Reduction from Empowered Shapeshifting, Strike For the Heart healing 5% of your life when pressing mangle and an extra flat 10% hp increase from pressing frenzied regen, all of this is great, but it turns out Elune’s Chosen is still ahead.
That being because you have more rage to spend fully on Ironfur (as you should), Lunar Beam being a shorter and stronger cd (which is fine, Arcane Build) and you gain way more value from Ursoc’s Fury (35% of Thrash and Maul damage get converted into a shield). In theory, Druid of the Claw should benefit way more from Ursoc’s Fury, as Maul/Raze/Ravage benefit from it, but Thrash damage on Elune’s is way higher (Beating both Thrash and Ravage damage from Druid of the Claw) due to the arcane talents combo i showed above.
For Druid of the Claw to be viable again, Ravage damage has to be increased by a LOT, it has to be meaningful both offensivly and defensivly, as whole hero spec is based on it. Amplify Thrash damage on some part of Druid of the Claw Tree, maybe even reworking the Tear Down the Mighty (Reduces Sundering Roar CD by 15s) talent for guardian, buffing it to increase its duration to 15s instead of 12s and also increasing Thrash’s damage while active by idk 10-20%, for it to have same ammount of burst and agro keeping potential. And possibly either increasing Mangle’s damage more on Druid of Claw Tree (to make it feel more rewarding) or buffing Twin Claw (making the proc chance be 20% and increase it’s damage) to keep mangle as it is right now. By making that, I think that Druid of the Claw Ravage/Thrash can compete with Elune’s Chosen Thrash/Moonfire spam.
I love Elune’s Chosen and Druid of the Claw, and I would love to be able to play with both of them and not being weaker by playing one of them. All I ask for is for both of them to be balanced on performance terms.