So I just found out that you can put a glyph of stars and make it so I am not a chicken o_o Giving this spec a try I am actually pretty impressed. But I need more help understanding the greater context of this game.
My context is coming from FFXIV where this class seems the CLOSEST thing to red mage-- a highly valued utility class with a combat revive (can’t spam combat revives here) and heals to pick up when everything else hits the fan.
1: I see we can spec into getting healing abilities or tanking abilities through specs. How practical are these? My knee-jerk reaction from my context is that the heal is super useful.
I notice I do lose one GCD though to apply my HoT and help the healer though to swap back to moonkin form.
2: How strong is the AOE Damage relative to others? I noticed when I tried on PTR that the AOE from starfall is uhhh… stupidly insanely huge? Idk how else to describe it the entire field was covered in it.
How good is balance for m+ dungeon runs for this?
3: How good is balance and their utility for things like raids? Mythic + ? Is it a desirable role?
Given how battle revive was ripped away from engineering now all druids, warlocks, DKs are the only classes that get a battle revive. Is this going to help me get the edge for a spot?
4: Mass entanglement, ursol’s vortex, stampeeding roar movement boost, summon 3 traunting treants and other utilities…
How good are these really? To me this seems like a pretty decent host of utility. But I fail to have the years of game experience to really know.
Balance is a pretty good choice. Druid overall has tons of utility and they’re always desired in group content for their battle res.
It’s important to note that engineering will still have a battle res in shadowlands, they’re just removing the one from BFA engineering. Shadowlands engineering will have its own version.
Not really helpful, you won’t be able to throw out enough heals unless you have resto affinity. Same thing with guardian affinity, you won’t be tanking something because you don’t have the defensive ability/rage generation.
Weak as of current wow, and not insanely better in SL.
Good enough for casual raiding/m+, other classes perform better and bring far more useful utility. We’ll see how SL goes but it’s not looking any much better.
Battle rez is having a Shadowlands engineering item, so that’s just another utility people can consider.
Mass entangle is decent in certain situations, if add need to get locked in place e.g. robots in Mechagon or psychopage in N’zoth.
Ursol’s vortex is much better utility cause you can assist with adds who peel off from the tank or if the tank needs a getaway.
Force of nature competes with Nature’s Balance which is a more reliable + contributing talent for your role as a DPS. However, it can be useful for tanks who have trouble building threat or needs a few seconds to kite. Will probably be more useful early in the expansion as people are learning the dungeons.
Overall, Balance druid is a mid-low tier DPS spec.
As to damage, this goes up and down between and within content tiers, so it’s hard to say. Balance was solid in 8.2, mediocre-low in 8.3 and a big question mark in 9.0.
It has pretty solid burst, so you can have some fun in arenas with it though.
As to utility, let’s put it this way, when feral druids complain about utility, we hold up balance and ask why we can’t have the shiny things that balance has. (Trees and Innervate, mostly.)
Also as to utility, balance is unique in the game for its interrupt. It’s on a horrifically long cooldown (1 min, thx Hruuken) but it is literally the only aoe silence spell in the game. It can completely change how a group pulls a pack with multiple casters. Only Blood DK mass deathgrip has a more profound effect on multi-caster trash packs.
I wouldn’t really compared Balance to RDM. Red Mage is a hybrid if I remember correctly between melee and magic damage. Your closest bet there would probably be Enhancement Shaman.
You generally won’t be healing your group even with the restoration affinity. The game is just not designed for that. DPS checks are usually tight enough that if you stop to heal your going to hit some type of enrage timer. The only situation I could see this happening is if you overgear content and dps isn’t a concern. Also, if you do happen to heal you will go OOM (out of mana) really quickly.
As for your question of utility, Balance has some of the best utility of any of the classes in the game.
Oh, right, the original question. Yeah, balance healing (and tanking) are things you only do in an emergency, when things are already going very, very far south. If there’s just one death, you probably used a BR and went back to DPS.
If you want a true caster/healer hybrid, you’re looking for discipline priest.
If you want a melee/healer hybrid, you’re looking for holy pally.
If balance disappeared from the game and it wasn’t in patch notes, it would take me months to notice.
The last time I did content as balance, it was on a heroic ilgy, months ago, and it was on a dare/bet. The deal was that if I beat our actual balance druid, he had to delete his character. I almost got him.
Shadowlands balance is like, overflowing with utility. It has so much that I worry it won’t all make it live. Right now You have a choice between HOTW/Mass Root/Bash, Ursol’s Vortex/Group Dash, Typhoon, Treants if you want to give up some DPS output, Solar Beam, Cyclone, Single target root, Hibernate, Innervate, Battle res, Resurrect, off-healing, stealth, taunt, and Soothe. On top of that, you can move while casting with no cooldown at the cost of 50 AP without losing your AOE. That is a lot of utility on a single caster, and Balance was already a high-utility class. Now you get all of what we used to have + free Typhoon and a second utility spell from your affinity.
As for its DPS, I don’t know, it’s always been on the low side. Never been super great in PvP outside of a brief period when Solar Beam had twice the radius and Beam+Vortex could lock a caster down for like an eternity.