How high? Would like to see what key level you playing to justify.
I hardly see Druid at 23+. Playable? Maybe, but if I completed a 23 key that’s because my teammates were too good. Switch me to my hunter we do 25
Balance needs… balancing, I’ll see my way out.
3 Likes
Let’s quickly list the current “Meta druids” for M+.
In tanks we have the guardian druid who is practically in the penultimate of all the tanks (beating the Warrior) and why? simple, the druid tank Unlike the current meta tanks (BDK, DH and Monk) is highly dependent on his CD (3min incarn) to be able to withstand big pulls, he does good damage in aoe I do not deny that but in unitarget he has the worst of all (since basically his unitarget damage is: Mangle, Maul and Moonfire. I’m not counting the other spells/hots because they’re aoe).
Now the meta, meta, meta of healers in M+ (does my sarcasm show?) the druid is currently the 4th best healer in M+ (in raid it is something else, I even dare to say that I prefer that they improve our dps and we nerfed on healing). Anyway, the druid is behind the Hpriest, Rshammy and Hpally. Why? For two reasons:
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It does not contribute anything to the group, they can say that we have Soothe (which is used sometimes and during Enrage week), roots, brez, Roar, etc. But what is problem? These spells are outclassed by other classes and even compared to other healers kit they can’t even be matched, so why do you need a druid’s brez if you have Warlock, DK and Engi Brez. Or why do you need Roots if a Rshammy can use Poly or a hunter Ice Trap. Or also why do you need a Roar if you have WO or in the best of cases it has almost no influence due to its long cd and its short duration. Comparing to other healers: Hpriest (Mass Dispell, PI, Purge, Wings/Angel and Mind Control) and Rshammy (Kick, Lust, Rock/Para agro in emergencies, Poly, Totem stun, etc.)
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Our performance (as well as paladin and Monk as mele dps) is inferior to casters (minus Disc priest who desperately needs a damage buff) thanks to the aoe cap and pretty much our beautiful GCD (by changing form that every druid knows) leaves us far behind compared to other healers (who basically stay in the same form to do dps) and that they have a much easier dps and healing rotation than the druid (except the paladin who is beating him alone for having even better dps than a somewhat low healing).
I can’t say much about the dps (Feral and Boomy) because I haven’t played them, but I have seen that they are currently horrible (at least the boomy in particular that shows that it was too dependent on a borrowed power), currently the druid does not is meta with none of the 4 specs and that many classes (except Warrior and DH) at least 1 spec is meta (that is, it is among the best top 3 or have a better performance)
2 Likes
boomy hasnt been meta since legion
If the class cant do certain rolls competetively, thats a class problem by definition.
That seraph guy is brain dead every boomy post he’s in there calling it fine, yea man really enjoyable play style of boomkin rn on top of being the worst pve spec in the game outside a 3 minute cd then do nothing, arena the 3 min cd actually does nothing and u sit bear form while a completely overturned class like dh solos everyone ur just there to be a target dummy. Then you got classes like rogue, mage, fury, dks, dh who literally are he top pve classes and top pvp classes because the game is just about doing pve damage now.
Ever notice every single forums has a handful of people that clearly dont play the game but reply to every post?
1 Like
Actually no. The reason they don’t get tuned yet is because people complain if they’re not meta. Everyone wants their spec to be meta, but not every spec can be meta. Every class wants to be meta, yet not every class is going to be meta. Also, in every other raid, a Druid spec was in the meta, especially Balance, yet it really has been 1 tier of it not being a meta spec, yet everyone thinks the sky is falling.
Also, before you go and assume I play Destro, I actually only play Affliction, so I play one of the worst specs in the game outside of Nathria days, and I still do things just fine.
At the really high end level is it bis? Absolutely not, but you realize what small % of players do higher than level 23 keys, correct? The answer is an extremely small niche group of players do above 15 level keystones, and an even smaller group do above 20. An extremely small segment of players do higher than Heroic raiding, too, for that matter.
Most of the playerbase that do keys generally do 10-15s, and most of the raiding playerbase is Heroic level. Not normal, not below 10s, but 10-15s and Heroic level. That’s where the majority of the playerbase doing raiding or doing mythic+ actually fits and stays. In this regard, every spec is good, as they all complete the content that isn’t super high.
A: The people you’re competing against don’t have an active pulse
B: The raid is full of off-meta specs
C: This is made up
Which is it?
Ya man, those destros are really off meta. They may not be performing perfectly, but the spec infinitely outshines boomy.
Maybe it’s just a git gud situation that 6 different guilds I’ve trialed for had this exact same thing happen o.o
Git gud.
problem in this game is not how player a is better than player b, its how lazy devs don’t do anything to try to have some form of balance, 3 specs, boomkin, feral and elemental received nerfs before the start of the season and were pretty much ignored for months while destruction got aoe nerfs and st buffs and the decision was postponed to the end of the current season
Your post is rather vague. You state that not every class can be meta, which is true, but there shouldn’t be a night and day difference between classes/specs. You basically need a destro and a survival hunter for push keys. And so what if there is a small margin of people doing high end content? Should they have to suffer because they don’t play the meta comp and spec? A spec shouldn’t be punished in one form of content if its decent in another (raid vs. keys).
You stating that there is only a small amount of people who do higher keys makes you sound very ignorant. Yes, there is a learning curve for certain content like that, but not so much that you basically have to forfeit playing your spec because it’s so bad (feral druid in my case).
Good for you for playing Affliction. If that is the spec that makes you happy, keep on playing it, regardless if it’s meta or not. Since you said you do content just fine as your spec, I’m going to assume you don’t participate in much if any high end content like Mythic raiding or high keys, which is fine; but when you say things like “most players do heroic and 15s for content” you are entertaining the idea that class balancing isn’t an issue. It very much is an issue, and not every player does the simple content like you stated. The class balancing issue shines through when you try to do higher end content, not regular “playerbase” content.
A: I’m arrogant.
B: I’m childish.
C: I’m only on these forum posts to argue and attempt to boast.
D: All of the above.
Which is it?
1 Like
I do decent on my boomy. Granted I’m doing like +16 keys tops. I really only get waxed in the meters by Destro and SV and maybe outlaw in a ≤ 5 target situation. You can def keys your KSM minimum as balance
Nobody says you can’t get KSM with balance druid, I did it myself the first weeks before I even had 2sets. The thing is, boomys have a very bad gameplay design while doing “ok” damage, it requires a lot of setup to start doing damage(except with ca) and can’t even spend AP properly bc Starfall is not stackable, hasted, or add damages from the previous cast.
Can boomys do ksm? yes, like any other spec at this point in the patch. Does it do good damage? No, it certainly lacks in aoe scenarios. Does it feel fun to play? I have to say a big NO. but hey that’s my opinion after being my main for raid, PVP, and m+ 
1 Like
I don’t understand why starfall isn’t hasted or stackable, that would help alot
I just started doing keys with a guild; im at about 1900 rating right now and I agree with what you said.
It isn’t that you can’t do well, it’s that it’s very hard to justify yourself. You do good damage to bosses, but fall behind enormously to regular cleave specs now.
I hope that they do something to help raise the AOE damage a bit; I feel like the boss damage is solid but not overpowered.
How much boss damage do you do? I’ve only played with a few boomies in keys and they did some of the lowest overall damage I’ve seen…they were doing less than tank dmg on a lot of pulls.
some of the nerfs should be re-looked at again, in my opinion.
having much more fun on my survival hunter and warlock. 
druid has always been and will be forever my main… but it does feel bad right now.
i personally doubt anything significant will change, at least until the new “dps flavor of the expansion” is revealed. (will be “shocked” if it is evoker… lol)
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Nevermind tuning and trying to say people are whining because they aren’t #1. Numbers are a single patch (though it is a little funny that bear, boomy, and feral were all nerfed extremely early for 9.2…) but the issue with boomy is the actual play.
In AoE you spam a filler. You have 1 cool aoe ability to press and you pick a talent that puts it on a 12 second cd. So you spam a filler.
You generate resources so you can what? Single target starsurge in the middle of AoE? OHHHHH BIG FUNNEL! Nope, not in the same realm as when a spec is genuinely a strong funnel.
Stellar drift is anti synergistic with the core ability of starfall to extend dots. But it doesn’t matter anyway because if you actually tried to set up dots, beyond a sunfire, you’re not going to get value out of them while everything is obliterated in even very high level fort keys. The pain of 3 minute classes and the urh meta (i.e. big trinket dependence and desync from your CDs) is patch specific, but it does make you take a second look at CA and ask, “tell me again, why is this a 3 minute cd?”
The single target: spam single filler, press spender OH SNAP REFRESH TWO DOTS, back to spam…
If you want to say balance druid is designed to be a simple spec, this “rotation” is below even that standard. No synergies or reactionary play. If you want to try and line up something like a pulsar you could find yourself doing literally less than passive healer damage as you sit on all of your spells because casting any damage beyond moonfire spam would trigger things that you don’t want to trigger.
I wasn’t following balance development for SL too closely, but I think the initial idea was that you were trying to stay in an eclipse and extend with starsurges or something like that? Which makes sense. Casting starsurge is then not a lost GCD during aoe and the currently irrelevant empowerment would actually have some time to stack up. But people didn’t like that, so it was scrapped for fixed-time eclipses. But the other mechanics weren’t reworked to compensate.
Make starfall stackable, and ffs remove the CD from stellar drift. Everyone is uncapped again. The scary uncapped-boomkin threat is gone.
Make starsurge empowerments exciting/reactive/or anything other than what they currently are.
Make the eclipse cycle reset on clearing combat. If I want to enter an eclipse at the end of a pack I shouldn’t be punished by getting stuck in the wrong eclipse for the next pack. It’s not some high level, big brain, exciting play to plan eclipses, it’s just bad gameplay being forced to sit on your hands.
edit:
Also, can we please bring shooting stars up to a 5-8 soft cap before getting DRs?
Again. Everyone uncapped. Just a lingering punishment for a spec that was tuned around an uncapped niche.
3 Likes