I’ve always been a fan of dueling and participating in wpvp action, and I wanted a new caster spec just for that playstyle. So, are boomkins a good choice?
Balance is more of a team fight spec right now, IMO, since you kind of need to play off of other people to get your big damage off (convoke, all balance are night fae - right?). There are things better at 1v1 than balance since they can do their own set ups (mage, destruction, shadow priest).
That said, this is just IMO. I haven’t played mage or shadow in SL.
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Ele, Fire mage , shadow priest are all better at 1-1 compared to Balance
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It’s very good 1v1, but it is countered by certain things (e.g. spriest, ele).
You’ll want to use a defensive legendary (e.g. Oath of the Elder Druid or Natural Order’s Will) in general for solo play, and personally I’d say go Kyrian over Night Fae.
The 55% HoT potion is huge, and having reliable 1min burst is going to be superior to a single burst window every 3min.
For dueling and WPvP, the Prickling Thorns PvP talent that no one takes can also be incredibly fun. Just causes your hard-casted roots to absolutely melt people, which is excellent when you’re getting the jump on people.
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I love using prickling thorns during questing, it feels like an extra dot that can kill mobs pretty quickly without having to cast anything else lol.
But tbh, I feel like boomkins might get a nerf because they’re currently topping the charts in almost every aspect of the game, and that might affect their 1v1 capability.
I think you might be right.
I usually spend my time outside Stormwind watching people duel whilst waiting for my queues to pop, and most boomkins I’ve seen generally try to burst someone down at the very start, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll waddle around in bear form using frenzied regeneration to stay alive as they wait for the cds to come back.
They definitely have the burst potential, but they really can’t do much outside of their cds against a good player.
Absolutely true, which is why Kyrian is superior, allowing you to burst every minute. And having Prickling Thorns can provide serious damage outside of burst, depending on your opponent’s susceptibility to roots.
That said, most boomkins playing at the moment are also fotm Convoke one trick ponies who don’t know how to play the druid class. lol
I’ve actually noticed that as well. Most of the Boomies I see have less than 100 Win/Loss ratio in duels which most likely means they’re new to pvp, or at least dueling.
In regards to covenant abilities, I was told that convoke is usually what RBG teams look for when selecting a boomy. Is that actually true? Because I’d love to go Kyrian and try something other than convoke.
I’ve tried prickling thorns along with Deep Roots, and I definitely love the damage potential it could do, especially against healers who get stuck under solar beam. lol
Boomkins are highly sought after enough that you’ll have zero issue finding RBGs as Kyrian.
Fun fact: the damage caused by Prickling doesn’t go toward the root break cap, meaning you don’t have to take Deep Roots if you aren’t playing with other people.
I typically only take it for solo play though, because even with Deep Roots your roots are going to break almost instantly if you’re grouped with other people damaging into them.
For solo play, I just open from stealth with a hard-casted root+beam, put DoTs up, cast a wrath, then root and wrath again. That’ll take someone to like 50% before you even burst (or force a major defensive/trinket), without danger of the roots breaking.
Just don’t take mass entangle with Prickling. Only does 1/3 damage.
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I’m actually glad to hear that Convoke isn’t necessary for RBGS then because although it’s pretty strong with CDs, auto-killing someone with no thought put into your gameplay is kinda boring tbh.
Thank you for the useful Deep Roots tip, I’ll keep that in mind.
One last question before I stop bothering you. Do you find it easy to fight specs like Shadow, Ele, Fire and WW? These specs all seem to have something that can hinder Boomkins in some way.
Fire isn’t a big deal. You can straight-up tank their bursts in bear form while outhealing with Frenzied, and outside of that they deal little damage.
Shadow and to a lesser extent Ele are rather hard counters to Boomkin, and there’s not much we can do to change that. Shadow has GFade up for every single burst of ours, and can disperse if we burst them in a bash. That said, outside of a setting with Dampening, you also shouldn’t really die.
A good WW will also be really hard, but they’re grossly overtuned right now, so they’re difficult for most anyone. Worse WWs will flop to burst, because they don’t know how to survive.
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Feral 
10char
I would say typically Balance is good against casters who can’t reliably self heal, or melee who can’t mitigate your burst.
Ele should beat you with healing surge, and any melee that can stick on you will also beat you.
Balance should easily beat mages with powershifting and reset spamming. Not to mention Rets.
So it’s about average, better in practiced hands of course.
I hold my own against most classes. Have trouble with spriests, ele, and monks tho
I’ve never had any problem with 1v1.
This was very helpful thank you