Cast time would technically be a nerf in PvE, unless it was like 0.5s in which case it isn’t much difference in PvP anyway, but still limits Druid mobility.
Either way, the issue with Starsurge is it provides too much power comparatively to the rest of the druid’s kit, especially with the scaling component.
Personally I’d rather some of that power redistributed to other areas of the spec, or in a form other than raw damage from Starsurge.
Scaling down to 0.6 coefficient and adding nature damage to it’s scaling by changing it to Astral damage (less overall scaling but more diversity), and then either a) directly buffing the rest of the druid’s kit or b) adding a debuff/buff that in someway incentivises casting another spell would be my desired fix.
People are going to hate it more if it interacts with Imp Starfire though in P2…
True, but to be fair the opposite is also true.
The druid can’t do anything if you simply walk away as most classes currently have better mobility than balance druid (not true in P2 with Travel Form).
Said druid also needs to have respectable gear for it to be of concern as well, typically whilst opponent does not have decent gear (or has gone full PvE wombo with 0 stam on gear).
Yep, people see the clips but don’t realise they also need the gear to be relevant for it.
Noone is getting killed by a druid only using Starsurge over >20s with no interaction unless they themselves were afk or also had 0 braincells.
Without BFD gear or AH arcane gear Starsurge is not really very scary. On average it would take 5-6 non-resisted hits of Starsurge to kill a regularly geared (not raid geared) character at 25. That’s 24-30s of combat which is massive in PvP.
If the opponent is dying to that without doing anything, be it engaging or running away, that’s most likely on them. (Again I will clarify this will not apply in P2 where Druid has the tools to both kite and chase much better and this will become substantially more of an issue)
I’ve seen a few people do the reroll also only to realise the truth and abandon said druid for being “boring”.
Honestly not a bad suggestion, although that’s the other glaring problem of druid (there are a few).
Firstly WG being as dominating as Starsurge, if not more so, but secondly the simple fact that even aside from WG’s dominating performance, the other 2 Resto runes just really aren’t of any value to take anyway.
At the point of everything else being irrelevant why not take the low mana instant damage spell, same with the chest slot, since Living Seed is irrelevant why not take free Wrath with a potential instant HT.
I know when I swap to Resto all I do is switch Sunfire and WG, as I’m sure many others do.
I don’t feel like the issue is them being together though, in PvP I can’t imagine many people are running WG and Starsurge and having a dominating performance because of it.
WG individually isn’t exactly overpowered, and does cost a huge amount of mana. It’s mostly it’s group performance that makes it broken, and that’s not something you can guarantee in PvP.
Having WotLK Omen would actually be a huge boon to both Balance and Resto. Being gated by Natural Weapons is a bit of an annoyance though.
Yes, BFD geared, with full BiS or crits.
Level 25 Starsurge is 162-198 damage before resistances and scaling.
300 damage non-crit would require 102+ spell power which is incredibly high, whilst requiring a strong roll on the base damage.
Not something most players have as spell power gear is largely unavailable outside of raid (and has an incredibly poor drop rate in raid).