About me: My name is Ribs and I’ve mained Balance Druid since the early days of Burning Crusade when we were a confused and out of place spec. I have done everything in the game as a balance druid scaling from high end raiding, raid leading, high end pvp including gladiator and high warlord, achievement hunting, multi realm first leveling and so much more. I am one of those I want to complete everything in the game and most of it is done as a balance druid. With that in mind I feel obligated to the community and heart of the spec to write about my opinions of iconic spells and what to me has stood out over the decade plus of experience I have playing this amazing owl. To write this thread I have gone through my memories of iconic moments with abilities that a balance druid once had in hopes to see them return.
INSECT SWARM - Probably the most iconic ability to moonkin to me that is no longer in the game. Insect Swarm to me feels as iconic as moonfire and the removal of it is something that always makes me sad. I feel like in today’s WoW IS has a core spot that could be applied to moonkin. During early BFA beta Stellar Flare was called Insect Swarm and got changed. With seeing so many old abilities for other classes be “reimagined” I feel like IS has the perfect opportunity to be included. Think death knight style disease that could spread from it’s main target to everything around it. Even just making it a talent that would replace Sunfire for a more powerful AoE would feel great.
WILD MUSHROOM - Probably one of the coolest abilities I have ever used. WM and WM detonate have such a high skill cap and when paired with the old talent, Fungal Growth, you could pull off some really sick kiting of melee. Being able to pre plan AoE like this is something balance druid hasn’t really been able to do since. Again I feel like WM has a strong place in the balance toolkit even as a talent that you take for M+ and other cleave activities.
MOONKIN AURA - This is the reason I started playing balance druid in the first place. Providing the rest of the raid a buff just because you were in moonkin form felt like you were contributing even if maybe at the time you spec wasn’t that strong. Currently this is a PvP talent that provides spell crit chance. There have been a few iterations of this providing spell haste and spell crit during different expansions. With the return of other raid buffs such as Windfury Totem moonkin aura providing a raid wide buff fits perfectly and is a core fantasy of moonkin form. To me being able to bring raid wide utility buffs is what being a hybrid is all about, spells like Windfury Totem, Totem of Wrath, Leader of the Pack all are similar and I feel like should be included and added back to the PvE aspect of the game.
MARK OF THE WILD - Currently a restoration PvP talent. I am surprised that this got cut near the end of BFA beta. It is as iconic as battle shout, arcane intellect and fortitude. There isn’t too much more to add to this except it is a buff that I feel like connect all druid specs together and is as iconic as anything to druid.
MOONKIN FORM NATURE/ARCANE DMG INCREASE - For the longest time that 10% increased damage of your spells while in moonkin form use to read nature/arcane damage. Now you may say it’s the same thing and hell even better that it’s 10% increased damage from everything, but the nature/arcane part of it is something that always stuck out. It provided outside the box thinking on certain trinkets/procs ect to net yourself extra damage if they did nature or arcane damage and to me felt like I, as a class, could harness the power of a trinket of those types better than others because of that.
TRANQUILITY - Nothing feels worse than during high damage times the only thing you can provide is your healer with innervate. When we had tranquility it felt like we were closer to our counterpart the restoration druid than feral and guardian. Since resto and moonkin hold a tighter bond in similarities than feral and guardian I see no reason to not allow us to have tranquility again. Obviously a weaker version of restoration druid’s, but being able to be hit tranquility during high damage phases screams the class fantasy of druids.
Few notes and ramblings: With there being holes in what talents moonkin has currently I see some of these abilities such as IS and WM being able to be slotted into talents. Whether it be talent or in the core toolkit of balance the removal of these have always stuck with me and when I think back on my memories of playing balance I am saddened with not being able to use what I consider the core of balance druid. I am fairly confident if the right eyes see this some of these abilities and concepts would be reconsidered.
MOONKIN CUSTOMIZATION
Slightly off the core topic of this post, but with player choice and agency being such a core concept for Shadowlands, moonkin desperately needs the ability to customize our form. There are tons of different moonkin tints and versions as NPCs scattered throughout the game and there’s a missed opportunity right now to capitalize on letting balance druids have access to looking more unique to one another.
I would greatly appreciate and be thankful for any traction you guys can help this get even if you disagree with me. My goal is to create conversation and hopefully gain enough eyes to have the powers that be at least read over this and consider some of my points.
EDIT: Few more notes I’d like to add in
Balance Arena PvP: Currently balance arena pvp is in a pretty weak state. Still able to deal a solid amount of damage but has never recovered from the celestial guardian nerf and are really weak at surviving having to sit in bear form way more than they should. The PvP talents are also very lack luster and need to be looked at. Deep Roots, Protector of the Grove, Dying Stars, Prickling Thorns, Crescent Burn are all hardly ever used. Entangling roots needs to have more incentive to use outside of Root/Beam to ever consider the talents that interact with it. Wild Mushroom would be a great fit into the toolkit to help accomplish what some of these talents are trying to do.
Balance I feel needs to be tanky enough to be in moonkin way more than they currently are. Nothing feels worse than sitting in bear form 80% of an arena game just waiting to eventually die.
I worry too if the surviving issues doesn’t get looked at that the re added eclipse system will not synergize well at will with having to constantly shift into bear form and wasting eclipse durations.
EDIT 2: My thoughts on the balance talent tree
15 - I think FoN should potentially become baseline with Treants being one of the oldest balance druid spells in the game.
25 - Renewal still feels sort of out of place in this row. Wild Charge will always be elusively used in most PvE situations. Maybe replace Renewal with some sort of amp to Stampeding Roar.
30 - With adding abilities back this row feels a lot more useful than previously.
35 - Very strange row now with Typhoon becoming baseline. Heart of the Wild I feel should be baseline and baked into whatever affinity you pick.
40 - Soul of the Forest is the only real change here. Not sure how its power will stand up to the other two talents, time and most testing will tell.
45 - If starfall returns to being decent Stellar Drift is an amazing talent and really feels great when using it. Stellar Flare I would love to do something more than just 3rd dot. It is the go to single target talent and just feels like a button you press every 24 seconds and that’s all it does.
50 - In the current state and with FoE doing reduced damage on secondary targets shooting stars will almost always be used. New Moon has been horrible since adding to the talent tree and either needs to be retooled completely or replaced with something else. The final talent row is pretty lack luster currently when it should feel like your last talent choice is meaningful and game changing.