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1 Like
Very interesting talents. One thing that I would REALLY like to see is some way to spread moonfire easier. AOE moonfire 
10 Likes
I love everything about this hero talent
Moons go pew pew
Lasers go zoom zoom
I’ll go over it in more details later, but first impressions are very good
3 Likes
I honestly love this. I’m so excited to play a magical tank in TWW.
1 Like
Interesting.
I didn’t catch it in the Keeper of the Grove hero talents, I’ll have to go back and look, but are Astral Insight and the Light of Elune pulling/reworking current talents in the Balance tree, or are current talents remaining and these are on top?
I feel this tree ignores the fundamental problem with Guardian Druid - the lack of magic mitigation. After all, this tree only provides 6% Arcane damage reduction (helping only against literal Mages) and 3% magic damage reduction overall.
This tree, much like the Wilderstalker tree, leaves the question of what changes are going to happen to the main Class Tree, which is poorly in need of a revamp.
I offer Kakaroot’s post regarding the Druid Class Tree being downright awful
Aside from that, Lunar Beam is minimally taken by Guardian Druids at present. I’m noticing these Hero Class trees forcing off-meta selections in the current Class and Spec trees to accommodate them - without any indication that the existing trees are even being adjusted in any way.
9 Likes
The tree references “Fury of Elune” in a lot of places for Guardian, but that’s not an actual talent for Guardians at the moment. Is it meant to say something else? Or are there spec changes coming that provide missing context for this tree?
Beyond that, Lunar Beam has historically been a very underused talent since it was created because it has been tuned to be garbage. It looks cool, but feels bad because it doesn’t appreciably do anything. I complained about this for years but nothing was ever done so I inevitably gave up.
I think targeting Lunar Beam for this tree is a good idea conceptually - heck the concept for this entire tree is great. However I think the base talent of Lunar Beam needs some juice over and above the buffs in this tree to make players feel good about picking it.
One thing I will mention - Blood Frenzy was nerfed because the AoE rage generation was out of control. The new talent that gives rage on GG proc has the potential to do the exact same thing - especially in huge pull scenarios. I don’t want us to go through the same song and dance simply because the problem was re-introduced.
4 Likes
I love the Lunar Calling for balance, gonna be really interesting!
2 Likes
I hope you’ll be redoing the class tree as well as the Guardian tree in general as part of this. we really need an overhaul on both or you’re going to see the same (low) population of Guardian Druids in WWI as you do now with raiding and M+.
2 Likes
I am in agreeance with Morcolas, they have been lacking magic damage reduction for an extremely long time. This makes Guardian Druids only a great selection for dungeons and raids that are almost completely physical damage instances. Yes, there is a 3% general magic damage reduction from Glistening Fur and a 6% arcane damage reduction, a far cry from what they actually need especially in comparison to tanks like Death Knights and Paladins.
Finally, a hero talent build that fits the current theme of balance as a spec.
2 Likes
How come most of the nodes in this and Wildstalker are just % buffs? The entire point of the new talent trees was to avoid that kind of thing, and it’s especially uninspired considering how thematic these hero trees are.
I guess considering the state of the Druid class tree it’s to be expected, but still.
5 Likes
I’d like to provide some feedback from a Balance perspective.
To begin, I generally like the direction of Elune’s Chosen—putting more power into rotational cooldowns and pushing our AoE and priority damage potential is great, and some of the talents directly tied to Full Moon and Fury of Elune seem to help with burst. That being said, a few of these talents are underwhelming and uninspired, and they fail to address the problem we have with ramp-up time especially in AoE.
It’s fine to have a small number of simple talents that give players an option for something with less influence on their gameplay, but a HERO tree should not be littered with multiple % damage effects—it’s boring and leaves much to be desired.
Likewise, talents that entire trees are based around should be more easily accessible. Full Moon / Fury of Elune (and Lunar Beam) need to be in the top half of the spec tree, just like Force of Nature is for Keeper of the Grove. These rotational abilities are a staple for all builds and are just as integral to Balance as Incarnation: Chosen of Elune is, and even more so in The War Within.
These are just a few symptoms of issues that stem primarily from the Balance tree. With that said, here are some thoughts on how to improve a few of the new Elune’s Chosen talents (click to expand):
Problematic Talent 1: Glistening Fur
I want to address a major problem first.
The survivability issue Balance has desperately needs attention at the class-level, or in Moonkin Form itself. Aside from the most dire of circumstances, a Balance Druid should not have to leave Moonkin Form and shift into Bear Form as frequently as we do now—this causes a high amount of gameplay disruption compared to other specs.
Some examples to improve survivability in Moonkin Form:
- Moonkin Form increases armor by 200% (up from 125%)
- Moonkin Form reduces damage taken by 10%
Now on to the talent.
Glistening Fur
Bear Form and Moonkin Form reduce Arcane damage taken by 6% and all other magic damage taken by 3%.
Problem
3% magic damage doesn’t do much to address survivability issues for Balance. Further reducing Arcane damage taken specifically will likely be irrelevant outside of PvP against Arcane Mages and other Balance Druids.
Solution
This needs to be a blanket damage reduction in the form of a static passive, or integrated into our existing defensives or utility.
For example:
Glistening Fur
Bear Form and Moonkin Form reduce magic damage taken by 6% and all other damage taken by 3%.
- A blanket damage reduction passive with additional magic damage reduction to address survivability issues outside of defensive cooldowns.
Alternate example:
Elune’s Embrace
You are enveloped in moonlight, increasing maximum health by 5% and reducing damage taken by 5%.
This effect is increased by 100% when a defensive or major cooldown ability is triggered.
- A blanket survivability passive that doubles in effectiveness while various abilities are active, such as Frenzied Regeneration, Barkskin, and Incarnation.
Problematic Talent 2: Lunar Insight
Lunar Insight
Moonfire deals 10% additional damage.
Problem
At best, this talent is just as boring as Arcane Affinity, even if Moonfire is expected to be more prominent when factoring in these various talent effects. Furthermore, Moonfire is the biggest offender when it comes to ramp-up time in AoE. In cases where there are a large number of enemies that are relatively short lived, Moonfire is ignored entirely in favor of burst damage.
Solution
Consider adding an effect that causes specific abilities to apply Moonfire to multiple enemies, similar to Shadow Crash.
For example:
Lunar Insight
Moonfire deals 10% additional damage, and its periodic effect is automatically applied to enemies the first time they take damage from Full Moon, Lunar Beam, or Fury of Elune.
- Designed specifically with high target encounters in mind to resolve ramp-up issues in AoE.
- Both the rotational abilities and their respective procs (Orbital Strike, The Light of Elune, etc) can apply its periodic effect.
- Limiting the application frequency of Moonfire to the first instance of damage keeps the power level of this talent in check, and ensures other Moonfire “uptime” talents, such as Aetherial Kindling and Galactic Guardian, remain relevant.
Alternate example:
Lunar Insight
Moonfire deals 10% additional damage, and Starfire causes Moonfire to spread to an enemy within 15 yds of the target.
- An alternative solution to the ramp up issue Moonfire causes in multi target scenarios.
- Effectively doubles the number of targets Moonfire spreads to with each cast of Starfire.
- The target that Starfire spreads Moonfire to also immediately benefits from the Mastery damage modifier.
Problematic Talent 3: Lunar Calling
Lunar Calling
Balance
Starfire deals 40% increased damage to its primary target, but no longer triggers Solar Eclipse.Guardian
Thrash now deals Arcane damage, and its damage is increased by 12%.
Problem
The Balance effect is underwhelming and may never see play in its current state. Starfire has a painful slow cast—and low relative Astral Power generation by extension—compared to Wrath, so it really needs to be worth sacrificing an Eclipse for (essentially half of our gameplay mechanic).
Moreover, it’s competing with Stellar Command, which also increases the damage of abilities that offer both high priority target damage and moderate secondary target damage. Full Moon and Fury of Elune already play significant roles with their damage potential and gameplay interaction, so Stellar Command likely wins every time.
Solution
This talent needs more of an incentive if the intent is for Starfire to absorb, or eliminate, Wrath and the role it plays, and function as the primary Astral Power builder and filler.
For example:
Lunar Calling
Balance
Starfire deals 40% increased damage to the primary target and has 20% reduced cast time, but no longer triggers Solar Eclipse.
Note:
Only the Balance effect is shown above, as the Guardian effect remains unchanged.
- Reducing its cast time, in addition to the current effect, makes Starfire more desirable in low target cleave or priority target encounters and become less of a hassle to use where high mobility is required, all of which Wrath normally excels at.
Note the following:
This talent invalidates Lunar Amplification, a stacking buff that causes non-Arcane abilities to increase the damage of your next Arcane ability.
Without the ability to trigger Solar Eclipse, the only reasonable way to gain multiple stacks of Lunar Amplification outside of Incarn is by casting Wrath to trigger Lunar Eclipse, every 15 sec. Otherwise, the only way we consistently gain a stack is by casting Sunfire, assuming it even needs to be refreshed. One or both talents need to be revised to avoid or justify this wonky interaction.
Alternate example:
Lunar Calling
Balance
You now permanently remain in Lunar Eclipse, and your spells that deal Nature damage now deal Arcane damage instead.
Note:
Only the Balance effect is shown above, as the Guardian effect remains unchanged.
- This affects Wrath, Sunfire and Shrooms.
- These converted “Nature” spells now benefit from the Moonfire/Arcane portion of our Mastery.
- Astral spells still benefit from both parts of the Mastery as long as Moonfire and Sunfire are active (Sunfire still increases Nature damage on the target, even if it deals Arcane damage).
- You still gain both Eclipses during Incarnation: Chosen of Elune since it grants the benefits of Celestial Alignment, which states “maintain both eclipses” in the tooltip.
Note the following:
Some talents with effects that are dependent on entering an Eclipse, such as Shooting Stars and Nature’s Grace, may need to be reimagined. Rather than only activating at the start of an Eclipse, they could instead activate every few seconds at half the duration.
Also, Lunar Amplification would absolutely need to be changed if Lunar Calling functions similar to the above alternate example. See my Lunar Amplification section for a compatible example.
Problematic Talent 4: Lunar Amplification
Lunar Amplification
Each non-Arcane damaging ability you use increases the damage of your next Arcane damaging ability by 3%, stacking up to 3 times.
Problem
The issues with this talent, aside from being another maintenance buff, are the rotational implications and anti-synergy with the Lunar Calling talent in the following choice node.
Solution
Rework this talent without any weird caveats or conditions, allowing us to focus more on dealing Arcane damage instead of Nature or Physical damage. Why should we need to worry about casting multiple Wraths or Sunfires in an Arcane-centric tree?
For example:
Lunar Amplification
Each active Moonfire increases the damage of your Arcane damaging abilities by 3%, stacking up to 3 times.
- This resolves the problematic implications of using Solar-based abilities in a Lunar-based spec, while still functioning similar to the original concept.
- Moonfire is a prominent ability in Elune’s Chosen. This idea continues to build on that.
Note the following:
This talent is invalidated by Lunar Calling, which prevents Solar Eclipse from being triggered by Starfire.
Without the ability to trigger Solar Eclipse, the only reasonable way to gain multiple stacks of Lunar Amplification outside of Incarn is by casting Wrath to trigger Lunar Eclipse, every 15 sec. Otherwise, the only way we consistently gain a stack is by casting Sunfire, assuming it even needs to be refreshed. One or both talents need to be revised to avoid or justify this wonky interaction.
Additional Talent Ideas
By the Light of the Moon
Moonfire heals you for 10% of damage dealt.
- This will help with survivability and provide us with some much needed passive healing (to make up for the poor active healing Regrowth does).
- Additional survivability or damage effects can be added to this talent, or this effect can be added to an existing talent (such as Lunar Insight, if the AoE Moonfire concept is trashed).
Power of the Moon
Balance
Minor Moon pierces nearby enemies and impales them with lunar shrapnel. When the target dies or takes damage from Starfire, the lunar shrapnel explodes dealing Astral damage to nearby enemies.Guardian
Lunar Beam now follows you, and periodic damage dealt by your Moonfire has a chance to summon a Lunar Beam at 20% effectiveness while Lunar Beam is on cooldown.Both Specializations
The flash of energy now also occurs when Fury of Elune is cast.
- Balance is lacking in burst damage due to its significant ramp-up time. These effects help to address this issue.
- It would be nice to see Minor Moon do a little more than just generate extra AP and deal a bit of damage. I hope, by default, they deal AoE damage.
- Lunar Beam quality of life effect added, allowing it to follow the player.
Wax and Wane
Full Moon, Fury of Elune, and Lunar Beam increase the damage of your periodic effects by 10% for 6 sec. This effect may overlap.
- Can work in tandem with Atmospheric Exposure, emphasizing our periodic damage so that Moonfire and Sunfire feel like meaningful contributions to our damage breakdown.
- Can take advantage of the overlapping stacks to cause beefy periodic damage to multiple short lived or high priority enemies.
Elune’s Call
When Owlkin Frenzy, Frenzied Regeneration, or Dream of Cenarius is triggered, you take 10% reduced damage for 6 sec.
- You benefit from the damage reduction on the hit that triggers any of these effects, in addition to any damage that occurs over its duration.
Fury of the Skies
Balance
Incarnation: Chosen of Elune applies Moonfire and Sunfire to all enemies within 40-45 yds.Guardian
Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc applies Moonfire and Thrash to all enemies within 40-43 yds.
- The area of effect range is dependent on if Astral Influence is known in the class tree.
Nature Incarnate
Balance
Incarnation: Chosen of Elune lasts an additional 5 seconds and/or generates 2 Astral Power every sec while active.Guardian
Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc lasts an additional 5 seconds and/or generates 2 Rage every sec while active.
As for visual effects, I’d like to see Elune’s Chosen modify key spells to have a greater visual impact:
-
Starfire should apply its visual above-head strike to all enemies (or at least those suffering from Moonfire) hit by its secondary target cleave effect, like it did in Legion. In addition to looking more powerful, a quality-of-life benefit to this was seeing exactly how many enemies were within its range.
-
It would be cool to see Minor Moon/Crescent Moon swipe across the screen more horizontally, like a comet, piercing through enemies. At the very least, allow it fall along its own path and not the same exact path as Full Moon (have it appear from a different source point in the air).
Other than the above issues regarding some of the underwhelming and uninspired talents, the concept of Elune’s Chosen sounds fun. I’m eager to see how it plays out.
12 Likes
This tree has exactly the same problem Keeper of the Grove had, in that trying to accommodate two different roles, you’ve screwed both specs by just giving them boring passives, not even significant effects.
Ferals are gaining growing vines visuals, more interesting procs, meaningful increases to healing and healing received.
This tree gives a useless % DR to arcane damage, which almost nobody does, so instead we get for a whole talent point a measly 3% magic resistance, which you might as well call a placebo effect.
Meanwhile warlock is popping Unending Resolve and gaining 30% of their health back or 10% of their max health as leech. You know, on a class infinitely more durable than balance druid already.
And you won’t make the defensive bonuses for balance any good since the tree is also used by a tank spec.
Dracthyr are gaining a multi-disintegrate cleave proc, warlocks are getting to summon powerful demons on top of procs that replace their usual spells with new visual effects, and empower their spenders.
We get a pitiful 10% moonfire damage increase when moonfire at ebst is 4th top damage source, long behind starsure and starfall.
All boring, uninspired passive effects that change nothing, don’t create engaging procs, don’t introduce new engaging visuals (you’re just reusing some moon spell extra proc), and completely placebo marginal numbers increase passive.
What are these druid hero trees? They’re an exact repeat of Shadowlands, where hybrids get stuck with bland multi-purpose “x does damage and healing” so the effect fits the shared roles instead of spec specific tailored spells like pure DPS got.
It’s so annoying when the kits for mages and dracthyr and warlocks and warriors keep expanding while balance druids have to sit with a stale kit because they have to accommodate a healer or tank into the talent as well.
There is nothing to look forward to here, this tree won’t be something that holds my interest for 2 years of an expansion. You need to look at frostfire mage, diabolist for warlock, and scalecommander, and find a way to deliver THAT for hybrids.
This is unacceptable.
12 Likes
From balance perspective, this hero talent tree focuses on the Arcane side of the balance, making use of Moonfire and Starfire, with secondary focus on either Fury of Elune or Moons. Combined with spec talents such as Orbit Breaker and Sundered Filament, this conjure a fantasy of Boomkin raining stars and moons from above to wreck havoc on enemies.
From gameplay perspective, Atmospheric Exposure might incentivize some debuff upkeeping by spreading out moons, or holding Fury for Pulsar/Incarn window. Lunation might play into this if the debuff end up being an important part of overall damage.
Lunar Calling is a bit hard to decipher. It feels like removing Solar Eclipse would be a big deal, but gameplay-wise, if enhanced Starfire is better, then we would use Starfire for all situation, which fits the fantasy of this hero talent spec, but reduce the flavor of the balance Druid overall. On the other hand, if it isn’t tuned better than base spec Solar Eclipse, then what is the point of this talent?
Also interestingly, Lunar Eclipse is traditionally reserved for multi-target rotations. With this hero talent, I imagine we will also try to cast Starfire for ST (or do current ST with Wrath/Solar Eclipse and feel bad), which seems awkward in the current mindset, but perhaps tuning/further development will resolve this.
I love this for bear. Please work on the General and Spec trees as well, because as it is we will still have talents we never take, and talents we are forced to take that we never use.
I love the concept of arcane moonbear, and this hero tree delivers quite well on that. The two immediate builds I see both suffer from the same issues:
NoCarn Moonbear:
Carn Moonbear:
Both of them waste 5 talent pts in the general tree in balance and resto talents we simply cannot use as bears.
Both of them ignore a number of talents in the spec tree that simply do not offer enough for the point investment.
Please make the rest of our trees as nice as this hero tree.
3 Likes
Guardian Druid Elune’s Chosen Hero Tree Feedback
My problem that I have with the the elune’s chosen hero talents is that this tree is based off a talent point. I’m assuming druid of the claw is also based around a talent point (raze), but it likely won’t be fully useless since maul still exists. Further, my issue is that one big talent point in this hero tree converts thrash to arcane damage, now benefitting from arcane amp talents & thrash talents. One problem, thrash talents are on the opposite side of the tree.
While I understand that thrash is not the main focus of the tree, it will probably feel pretty bad that we can’t actually play around thrash talents because not only are we needing to select lunar beam, but we also will likely be playing elune’s favored.
I personally would love to play rank 2 flashing claws with arcane thrash, but with the current way the tree is setup, for m+, that probably isn’t going to happen. Not without dropping something like rend & tear, elune’s favored, incarn cdr, or blood frenzy. all of which are kind of needed for m+ or to synergize with each other. Maybe not rend & tear, but then you lose dmg on your magical abilities as well which is the whole point of the Elune’s Chosen tree.
What I would prefer
Lunar beam is not a talent point, but rather given to you if you select Elune’s Chosen. Honestly, I was kind of hoping that druid of the claw would be treated the same but with rage of the sleeper or raze(probably rage of the sleeper to keep it in-line with being similar to lunar beam).
Another thing, lunar beam is a bit weird when it comes to using it in m+. In raid its fine, but in m+ when it comes to grouping or initial threat, lunar beam does not do well with either of those. I would prefer with the above suggestion but with lunar beam being given to only elune’s chosen and rage of the sleeper being given to only druid of the claw. meaning if i play elune’s chosen, i can’t play rage of the sleeper at all.
With that being said, I would like to see lunar beam be made into a buff like rage of the sleeper, be taken off the GCD, and move with me. A more rage of the sleeper type playstyle without dealing with the m+ frustrations of, “oh, i gotta move out of my lunar beam which is a super powerful talent”, “oh, my frostmage placed their frozen orb/blizzard here but my lunar beam is over here”, “oh, I couldn’t aggro that mob at the start of the pull because i used up a GCD for lunar beam instead of an ability that does a bigger hit for initial threat dmg”.
Also maybe it’s just me but i really don’t want an additional cooldowns. We already have incarn, barkskin, rage of the sleeper, survival instincts, and an on-use trinket. Do we really need lunar beam to make it 6?
Conclusion
Overall, I like the idea of the tree, a lot. I would like it more if it didn’t add more, but just changed the current playstyle and identity of the spec (which is what I thought it would be. rage of the sleeper for an arcane bear is a little bit weird). By this i mean, lunar beam being only for elune’s chosen and rage of the sleeper being only for druid of the claw.
2 Likes
Nothing screams “bear” to me like moonlight and arcane damage.
But it does scream Druid.
Let us moon bears be happy, and hopefully Catbear will be more your flavor.
4 Likes
But with Lunar Calling, presumably we will still need to cast unempowered Wraths to trigger Lunar Eclipse. Those two plus a refresh of Sunfire will max the Lunar Amplification buff right there at the start of Lunar Eclipse, right?
Yeah I think that’s the intention. Really leaning into to everything Lunar by making Starfire preferred at all times. I imagine, though, that it will have to be tuned higher than what is listed to make it competitive with the other choice (increased damage to Full Moon and Fury of Elune, seeing as they will both be rather prominent too).
1 Like