Pruning Balance

Classes Druid
1

I’m new to druid, and I’ve been playing mostly balance. I’ve read through the forums and there seems to be a concensus of balance’s ramp up time to doing damage.

Is it just me or can moonfire be rolled into sunfire (or vice versa), starsurge be rolled into starfall, and eclipse be rolled into Celestial Alignment being a general buff?

The spec seems a little bloated, especially taking into account switching into your other forms when needed.

2

Could Sunfire be rolled into Moonfire?

Absolutely, and I believe it should. Roll 50% of Sunfire’s damage into Moonfire, a talent to make it AOE, and give us back Insect Swarm as a spreading debuff.

Starsurge and Starfall are more complicated since they have different usage cases. It could be argued that Starfall is preferable since it does almost as much damage as Starsurge but is AOE. But the difference is sufficient to warrant separation.

Ultimately, it’s not the bloat that’s the problem. It’s how little anything we do seems to affect anything else we do.

This is going to be the hottest of hot takes since it just came to my mind as I was typing the rest of this post.

  • Ditch the Astral Power build/spend.
  • Make Starfall a 2-second cast spell that gives a 30-second buff instead of this 6-second duration nonsense that is cluttering our rotations.
  • Change Starsurge into a charge system where we can hold up to 3 charges. Charges refresh over 10s per charge with a talent to knock off 0.5s per Wrath/Starfire cast.
  • As above, delete Sunfire and roll 50% of its damage into Moonfire(Moonfire being our most signature spell)
  • Give back Insect Swarm as a medium damage, long duration(30s+) DOT that spreads to other mobs you are in combat with, giving either a big accuracy debuff or a flat damage debuff.

Ultimately, Boomkin should have 2 direct damage spells, 2 dots, an instant cast, and an AOE. Nice, simple, effective. A druid player has 3 to 4 entirely different playstyles to learn and one or more of them should not interfere with their ability to learn the others.

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3

So… your solution to OP’s button bloat concern is to remove sunfire, roll it into moonfire… but then add another button which is insect swarm back to the game? So basically you co-opted OP’s post to push the fact you just miss insect swarm and prefer it over sunfire. Thus, offering no reasonable solution to a complaint many people have. Which is that 2 DoT abilities feels like needless bloat on balance druid in this day and age.

4

There does seem to be some complaint about balance thematic being to moon/sun oriented, so people missing insect swarm is understandable. I would say that if it was going to replace anything, it would replace starfire and not sunfire, eleminating the extra button I was talking about. Maybe add it as a glyph or a talent that replaces starfire in the balance or keeper of the grove tree.

The astral power generator and spender makes balance unique amongst casters, and I still think that if it can be scales and balanced properly, it can do the same against single target as starsurge, but I do see the need for both.

My biggest gripe is with the way eclipse plays, it’s both tedious and uninspired.

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5

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Yes, I do miss Insect Swarm. I miss goddam Faerie Fire too.

I had it a slightly different way in a different thread. Delete Sunfire, roll 50% of it’s damage into Moonfire, give us Insect Swarm as a Combat Aura that just applies the DoT/Debuff mentioned above to anything entering combat with us.

There, now we have 1 DoT, are you happy?

1 Like
6

I think blizzard needs to add class skins to the game already. Let us change our spell animations and re-theme specs. That way people can play a more nature-y druid with a “grovewarden” class skin.

And priest nelves can get a priest(ess) of elune skin to re-theme abilities into more astral and silver moonlight spell animations rather than the current human-esque golden holy magic.

And many more. Class skins would solve so many problems people have. I see the complaint about wanting a nature druid a lot on here. This would fix it overnight.

Final fantasy 14 just announced their next expansion and they’re giving players a way to literally customize their combat animations. So a dragoon can look a different way while they are jumping through the air for example. WoW absolutely needs to let us customize our classes/specs already. The glyph system is all but abandoned and does not go far enough at all.

2 Likes
7

It doesn’t solve my initial issue with the button bloat, but I couldn’t agree more with this. Do the same thing with customizing the boomkin (or any other forms classes have gripes with) so you can deviate away from a giant chicken or a blue ghost.

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Yeah I know. I kind of went on a tangent with the other poster because what they said is a big topic on here (concerns with theming). I agree that balance druid buttons can feel a bit much. The bigger mechanical issue is how much passive/RNG damage there is. And how much ramp there is.