A few weeks ago we voted on tier set bonuses available for season 4. For Balance Druid the Season 1 bonus was selected. You can see the voting results. Almost 100% of what is being discussed will be aimed at the Season 1 4-Set bonus.
The Season 1 4-set bonus was probably one of the most interesting and dynamic tier set bonuses Balance Druid has ever had. The decision making on the free spender was completely unmatched. The Season 1 bonus was nerfed coming into 10.1 from being a free spender whenever you enter eclipse to being cost reduction. This nerf was frankly warranted as it was going to be challenging for us to wear our S2 bonus over our S1 bonus. HOWEVER, whenever Balance Druid players voted for the Season 1 set bonus they were hoping that this was going to be reverted to the Season 1 playstyle. The playstyle that we had for 1 week with the Season 1 bonus is not what people remember nor what people wanted. Additionally, whenever voting started Blizzard stated multiple times that players should vote for the tier set they thought was the most fun, not the one that was numerically the strongest. This was taken to heart by the Balance Druid community, but man do we have egg on our face now.
The Season 4 bonuses were posted with tuning. This tier set sucks for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, this is really not what players were voting for. It feels bad to have voted for the Season 1 Bonus to come back to what it was and getting this really unfun and watered down version of the bonus.
Aside from feeling misled a bit, lets talk about tuning. This tier set is horribly undertuned. If you normalize the tier set bonuses at 528 ilvl the Season 3 bonus is SIGNIFICANTLY ahead of the S2 / S3 bonuses. For a point of reference the S3 bonus is pretty in line tuning wise with what other specs are expected to get in Season 4. The Season 1 bonus NEARLY 40 ILVLS OVER the S3 bonus is a laughable increase. This makes it very challenging to even wear the Season 4 bonus OVER the Season 3 bonus.
If you try to bring it more in line with the Season 3 bonus, the text would need to read that your cost reduced spender deals 140% increased damage (instead of the 40% increased damage it will now deal in Season 4). This is a ridiculous thing to even try to tune. The saddest part of this entire thing is if you revert the S1 bonus to its old state (pre rework), it still is worse than the S3 bonus numerically. This was known for the entire voting cycle, but people voted for the Season 1 bonus because it was noticably more fun than the other options. I would like for Blizzard to please revert the S4 bonus to what it was in Season 1 instead of trying to ātuneā the numbers.
80 Likes
I agree with tettles. This season is about āfunā, right? There is 0 fun in the nerfed version of the set bonus they are proposing. The real fun one, with the free spender, even if nerfed, is preferable.
3 Likes
Sorry but we canāt trust moonkins.
100% agree with tettles. I dont get how we ended up with āthis is the fun seasonā but moonkin is one of the most unfun playstyles LIVE AND ON THE PTR right now. You know whats fun? Having free casts in your rotation. Give us the ORIGINAL season 1 tier set!! Moonkin is also SEVERELY undertuned! Its been since the middle of season 3! How do we go 8 or so months without a SINGLE ounce of tuning? How are us moonkins flying under the radar when all the stats show us being insanely squishy AND one of the lowest DPSās out there??? Just cause we pump on the ONLY council fight doesnt mean we are good AT ANYTHING ELSE! Look at us blizzard!!!
6 Likes
Bring back stellar drift if they want to give us this dog tier set bonus
2 Likes
Yeah. If we arenāt going to get the full free spender back, Iād like to retroactively change my vote to the S3 bonus (getting into eclipse faster is fun).
3 Likes
100% how it is. We do be having egg on our faces rn. I donāt even care about the under tuned damage just let us have fun pls blizzard
Yea they kinda screwed over chickens. I feel bad because I said often that they would do the right thing and bring back the unnerfed version of the tier for balance.
They did it for every other specā¦ except balanceā¦ sucks.
1 Like
I donāt play Balance myself but I 100% agree that Blizzard really really should bring it back to what the set was during the patch; not this overly nerfed boring version of it. Itās the exact same situation with Survival hunter. Please Blizzard, make the sets what they were on launch of the patch! People voted for those sets to get the version of them that were enjoyed.
1 Like
Everyone voted for the original, non nerfed version. The only reason it was nerfed originally from what I remember/understand is because it was used in season 2.
Well you wouldnāt have that problem because tier sets would very likely be turned off for War Within pre-patch anyways, or at the least before the next expansion.
Theres no reason to use the POST patch nerf over the actual patchs set bonusā¦
6 Likes
Many players were baited with the S1 set and maybe the S3 2 set should be turned into a talent. I suggest that the unused Wrath and Starfire talents could be replaced with this new talent. Currently, āUmbral Intensityā and āUmbral Embraceā are not very useful talents in both PvP and PvE, except for the occasional random big Wrath in PvP after using incarnation and the s3 4set has been bugged in pvp this WHOLE season without ever getting fixed.
Imo have a re-vote, destro would probably have voted for current tier had their m+ build been discovered before the voting period.
Blizz listen to tettles please. Show me my sub matters.
2 Likes
If this is done for Boomkin S4 tier set, it should be done for the Survival S4 tier set as well. Blizzard did the same exact treatment to our winning tier set as they did for Boomkin.
The tier set that won for Survival is also only good on ST, and itās pretty laughable on AOE. Please revert both of these to their former glory, and if possible, buff the butchery/carve damage on our tier set, or make it so it doesnāt consume a charge of butchery/Carve.
Thanks
Strut
7 Likes
+1. I voted for the season one bonus under the the suggestion by blizzard that it would be tuned and brought in line with the other sets. I think this suggested likely that it would have been changed to its S1 pre nerf state, but more specifically it was voted because pre nerf it was the most fun, gameplay changing version of DF Balance druid with trying to min max the free spenders on eclipse / incarn when Astral power wasnāt as available without the S2/3 haste and shooting stars ASP Generation, and in turn making Pulsar an ASP gen source itself.
It also made me feel a little less dumb for not pooling sometimesā¦ I suppose the answer to this is ājust poolā but the 4p tier allowed us to just slam Incarnation if we had 3 stacks (or even 2, then free Starfall/Surge) of the 2 set bonus, spend Umbral embrace and 2p 3 stack with less worry about miss calculating and not being able to spend a 2p 3 stack because you need to spend the 2 stack in order to get ASP for that final Surge / Starfall that would originally have been used to get the third stack, or wait for a ShS tickā¦ 
This also synergizes with WoE in large target count situations (and I suppose smaller counts too because we use it to enter solar eclipse quickly on ST now too, and I suppose this becomes even MORE relevant because weāre losing S3 2p), but we will also get to use WoE for damage now too in M+!
Taking advantage of Incarn / Pulsar entrance to get free valuable spender GCDs for movement was also a win.
Overall this was an extremely fun set, and I think the cost reduction takes away from the ability to guarantee fully taking advantage of 2p in some situations and at the same time makes pooling more important but in a not as fun way. This is the final tier set, and itās not like weāre choosing to wear an old set over a newer undertuned set in comparison such as the S1-> S2 Tier transition.
Like Tettlesā said, if it was nerfed initially entering S2 specifically to make sure that we actually equipped the new tier set at the time the second raid came out since it was so good, I would imagine the pre nerf state is what was being voted for under the suggestion that the sets would be ātuned for S4ā since we were no longer making a transition from S1 ā S2 tier.
free spender blizzord pls.
(also give us embellishments to have a 2p of any season set w/o contributing to 4p)
jkā¦ ā¦unless?
I hope they keep it as is, balance druids deserve to be in the gutter for a little while more
Nowhere does it suggest that. People were hoping and letting emotion overrule logic.
They said be tuned to be brought in line. Thats why it was nerfed in the first place.
Its still a strong bonus. Its just not as strong. Still helps out if you didnt pool as well as you should have.
Given that, i wouldnāt complain about unnerfing it and giving a free spender upon entering an eclipse.
But at the same time, i dont know if i can go back to normal cast speeds. Entering eclipse nearly twice as fast feels amazing
3 Likes
this, as much as i support a cause like this.
voting for a tierset cause you believed blizzard would tune it back to its original power or tune it to a competative % in a meme season is just dumb.
theres a good reason why the ret voting thread derailed to a huge mess. people who knew better knew that the popular s2 set needed to be buffed by a 1000% to be competitive to t3 and that wasnt realistic at all. same goes to buffing tier sets to their most broken state. if you voted with anything other than sim numbers or potential fun with the tierset as is, in mind then thats on you.
1 Like
It actually isnāt a strong bonus. Itās still quite a weak bonus compared to the Season 3 bonus at 489. It requires max ilvl of the new tier to replace the old bonus.
Itād still be worse relative to the S3 bonus at 528 if it was the pre-nerf S1 bonus. Iām not mad about the vote, but I will say Iām a bit frustrated that we didnāt know what we were voting for.
1 Like
Sure youāre right about it not really being said or suggested directly, but in terms tuning it was said that being brought into line with other class tier sets for upcoming S4, not going from S1 to S2. We would of course never wear the S2 tier if S1 wasnāt nerfed, but now that problem isnāt the case anymore as weāre going from S3 ā S1 again.
Iām not sure anyone is arguing that it should be buffed to its tuning during season 1 compared to other sets at that time, because it was blatantly overpowered. But more that itās significantly less fun not having the free spender.
In the original bonuses voting thread, there were tons of comments asking for clarification that we never directly got from blizzard re: free spender, or not free, and we were told to vote on what was most fun rather than numbers and that they would figure out the tuning after the voting was complete.
I donāt think it was unreasonable for people to vote expecting that it would be treated as getting the S1 tier set having the functionality it had in S1, rather than the state it was in during the season we werenāt supposed to be using it anyways.
Regardless, I was just posting in support of the free spender gameplay since this is a feedback thread, and hopefully blizzard at least acknowledges how much less fun it is in its current state.