Keeper vs. Elune's - Balance Druids

Classes Druid
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So this is primarily a balance druid post (though can be an important design discussion for all druid kind).

The feeling I’m getting from most of the forum posts is how people seem to want to see balance go back to its various roots (pun intended). Back to times when it has no astral spells or had more nature spells, and - YES PLEASE- no eclipse system, etc.

Maybe I’m wrong but I think it’s the overall vibe and I think blizzard should take the opportunity to allow balance players to explore and enjoy these two distinct fantasies more deeply.

It could have it’s core spells in its main spec tree but then Keeper is heavily focused on nature/astral and abilities get converted to fit that: starfall becomes hurricane (and keeps its astral spell school), starsurge becomes nature’s surge (also astral), we get adaptive swarm back, treants on a shorter cooldown, better mushrooms, only aoe sunfire, etc., all with more interactions.

Elune’s gets faster starfires to act as the replacement for wrath and just focused on arcane and astral spells (only aoe moonfire as a counterpart to aoe sunfire for Keeper). All of the Fury of Elune and Moon interaction continue on their current design trajectory with the issues stated on the forums resolved.

Then you have a spec that shares basics like faerie dragons, astral generation and spending, dots (simplified), celestial alignment, but with a focus on each side and both always “balancing” back via astral-oriented spells.

I think the manic eclipse induced necessity to use all spells all the time, even when specced into specific types of abilties, just does not seem to be working out. We need soooo much ramp time in every aspect of the game and only shine in super prolonged m+ fights at the highest keys or huge brawls in epic bgs. Otherwise, we just spend so long setting up for the banger.

Maybe these suggestions will help inspire some designers to truly lean into the dichotomies of nature and arcane/lunar with some astral to unify them (or maybe not). Would love to hear other opinions on it.

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Oddly enough the eclipse system was a very good fantasy that a lot of us enjoyed when it was introduced. Communing to switch your eclipse was a feel good ability.

Boomy takes long to ramp because the damage is baked into requiring our dots to be out, which in turn amps our AP spender which is the biggest thing. The simple way to avoid this is to make starsurge have like a 10 second CD, do some decent/big damage if ramped into, but make your wrath/starfires be the core gameplay between dot cycling.

Just my 2 cents. Cata boomy & MOP Boomy were peak designs for the class fantasy.

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imma be honest i’m enjoying how classic seasons of discovery balance druids play out. Starsurge enhances starfire, and the wraths buff the starfire, and the starfire buffs the wrath. Its a nice synergy thats better then casting two wraths or two starfires to just spam the other while keeping dots up and dumping energy into starsurge / starfall.

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I agree. I said this in another post. It’s sweet and simple.

Then hero talents could have Keeper lean us into nature power more and Elune’s into arcane.

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my thoughts were buffing wrath and sunfire instead of starfire and moonfire. While adding nice things to the mushroom, maybe adding insect swarm, i mean there could even be a place for the treants? But its so disappointing with how it is now that i would just go chosen of elune and even then i’ll probably avoid balance altogether and never touch it again since hero talent tree’s are a ever green feature and i have no interest in playing druids this way.

Feral, Guardian, and Resto outside the keepers of the grove tree seems to do great so i’ll just focus on those 3 specs.

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Yeah, definitely. If wrath (a) had a stronger animation and (b) hit harder baseline while starfire had a sligjtly shorter cast time baseline (that would still further be buffed by wrath), I think they would feel better to press.

My issue is how those two should feel core but are just a drag to push. Like lava burst on shaman feels good to proc and push and even cast if you need to. You still have spenders (earthquake and earth shock) along with other fun spells to weave in.

It was an odd design choice to remove adaptive swarm from balance. Maybe make it offensive only, or spread immediately from your main target so it’s more aoe and boosts all your damage on the targets. The treants are great fantasy but they need to interact, not just be 1 min dump and forget ability…

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My problem with balance is the lack of procs and great feel abilities. Fire mage - Spam fire ball till you get your first crit, then follow up with ignite and cast pyro blast into a spell combo. Feels great and want to do more.

Frost - Cast frost bolt 5 time for ice lance / glacial spike, with flurry procs in between, this feels great.

Arcane - Cast arcane blast as it gets faster and hits harder the more you cast it before using arcane barrage. Have arcane missles proc.

Destro Lock - Climb up to 5 shards to unleash chaos bolts, get so many chaos bolts and get a free cast and a infernal, feels great.

Affliction - (this spec exists?)

Demo - dump a ton of imps and see their numbers grow, with molten core pros to make your felhounds instant and recastable as well as your hard hitting demonbolt.

Shadow priest - use mind spikes to make your mind blast crit hard and possibly be instant, get enough resources to dump a nasty dot that does a lot of damage.

Evoker has some great synergy with their abilities and has great feel good moments when you use your abilities (outside the filler spells)

Shamans lava burst hits hard and a lot of them, shamans lightning build goes zoom and zap repeatedly as the screen floods with pretty blue / white lightning.

But balance druid? Use starfire twice, then spam wrath, repeat, keep dots up (not that interesting gameplay and they don’t last long so you casting them a lot), then dump all your energy into starsurge which doesn’t feel great unless you’re seeing the wolf alongside it. I guess the moon mechanic is pretty fun and cool but it interrupts / replaces the rotation instead of adding to it.

I just feel like Balance has always been the most lack luster, and least intreguing caster spec in the game, and when i saw hero talents i thought this was their time to shine and bring unique and interesting gameplay elements and procs to the field… and outside a free covenant beam coming down sometimes its the same old stuff.

TBH the whole spec just needs reworked from the ground up and adjust the hero tree’s for balance to work for the reworked tree. The only thing i’m enjoying when I play balance is the pretty starfall animation and the mushrooms that go boom!

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This 100%.

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It won’t happen. Everytime the balance rework has come it has fell flat besides Legion because the rework was half assed since they didn’t want to make new spells and by extension new visual effects for said spells.

Legion came and introduced the new moon spells, which did somewhat change rotationally how we played, and then they pruned it away in BFA and only brought it back as an optional talent in DF.

Balance druids have stagnated since Cataclysm with a really tiny spell kit that Blizzard absolutely refuses to expand because it would take making new visual effects and animations.

Starfire and wrath and moonfire and sunfire have historically been recolors without meaningful difference of each other. They tried to differentiate starfire by making it an aoe builder but in essence made the single target rotation for balance druid even more barren by doing so.

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Exactly. And one thing I’ve noticed is how we are always the first to get “updated” for an expansion. They show our hero talents off first or the new talent trees at the beginning of DF, for example. Then say ok done with that and don’t iterate anymore. They leave other classes possibly underdeveloped at that time but then mid-expansion, give them a true overhaul when they have time. We just get gum and paperclip patches to our wonky kit.

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