Hey balance droods
Back in beta of BFA, when balance Druid’s we’re getting some changes, Seph made a great post outlining the thinking behind the changes that were coming (see link below to post in Cyouskin’s thread)
Seph’s post in thread
At the time, the thing that caught my attention was the empowerment’s mechanic (chance to grant solar or lunar empowerment). Sephs comment on it was “This doesn’t instantly make Empowerments the most interesting class mechanic in the game, but it should be a step forward.”
Now that Shadowlands is announced, I’d like to know what the interesting mechanics coming to balance druids are? If this iteration was a step forward, what have we been moving towards?
Has anyone got any thoughts or ideas? Do you like empowerment’s, or, like me, are you a little bored by them and are waiting for the next step forward to the most interesting class mechanic!!
Naikyr
I’m mostly happy with empowerments. I think they did a good job making it feel powerful with the damage bonus, haste bonus and extra effect on solar wrath.
Sometimes I waste empowerments because they’re RNG and I have Dawning Sun and Power of the Moon traits. I like both of those traits but they lead to wasted empowerments.
I think stellar flare sounds so cool and I like to cast it just for the noise but it does such little damage that it feels worthless.
I wonder if they could change it to increase dot tick rate on the target and also increase astral generation of subsequent spells used against the target that has stellar flare active.
The other spell I love is New Moon and I really want to use it. Shooting Stars is boring but I don’t know how to fit New Moon into a rotation. I already feel frantic at times trying to spend my empowerments without capping AP and New Moon will make that harder.
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Desperately waiting for some changes. Empowerment’s are okay, but spells like stellar flare and star fall are super underwhelming. I kind of miss the moon abilities we had as the core rotation back in the day, which are now under-powered talent options that nobody picks. Even the mushroom AoE made it somewhat cool and interesting. The spec seems really bland, not to mention little to no customization of the moonkin form/glyph itself.
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Stellar Flare is more interesting than it looks, since it serves as a gap closer for the small AP discrepancy you’ll typically get in a normal ST rotation.
Starfall is just brokenly weak though. Bring back hurricane plox.
Would love it if the moons made it back into the base toolkit. Dropping that huge moon was awesome!
Also, variations on the moonkin form would be so cool! I don’t really like the ogre animations, and considering we spend a lot of our time in moonkin form, it would be good to be able to customize (the bear and cat forms from legion are freakin awesome). The zandalari balance form is great for variety - would be neat to get something less ogre-like on alliance (night fae druids…)
But back to play style; I’d like to see something like the mages fireblast mechanic make it in - off the GCD ability that lets you empower either solar wrath or lunar strike while casting based on a proc… I like the fast pace of it
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Stellar flare could be turned into insect swarm, and starfall into hurricane.
I still want to bring back nature spells and lose some of the astral focus we’ve been forced into, though I admit I do like the yin-yang feel of solar/lunar empowerment.
I wonder how it would feel if New Moon consumed empowerments making it a conditional cast if added back baseline. Consumes one each but hits harder & a change to half-moon to cleave like LS.
I know Streaking Stars is the go-to trait & it doesn’t cause me any capping issues, but when stuck with a couple of the other traits, they can cause situatonally wasted empowerments. I just wonder if they might’ve been more desirable traits if empowerments could be consumed in another manner.
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I had suggested a rework for new moon some time ago that would cause it to have different effects based on empowerments.
It would not be castable without an empowerment. If you cast it with solar empowerment, it “drops a sun” on the target (nature damage, big solar flare thing that descends from the sky and does aoe damage). If you cast it with lunar empowerment, it “drops a moon” on the target (arcane damage, single target heavy hitter). If you cast it with both empowerments, you either get both effects, or maybe a meteor shower type thing that mixes lunar and solar damage over the target and area.
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Dude I love the sounds of this!!
I wonder if you could keep each phase of the moon (and sun equivalent) by consuming 1-3 stacks of empowerment. Like:
- 1 lunar empowerment = new moon
- 2 lunar empowerment = half moon
- 3 lunar empowerment = full moon
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