Serious balance Druid feedback for the devs

Classes Druid
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I’m putting this here as a means of putting honest feedback that could help the devs see what we think and provide solid feedback for balance Druid. There are so many posts about what we feel and what we think but they are many posts throughout this Druid forum.

My thoughts to start. Better defense with either another wall, or bark skin has 2 charges.

Moonkin form needs to provide a small magic damage percentage. Either that or add it into mark of the to make that buff mean a bit more than just 3% verse.

Starsurge needs a buff. 10% at least and that’s still not enough. If some damage needs to be taken away from wrath and starfire, that is fine. A spender should feel worth it to press.

Regrowth, and frenzy regeneration need a buff. Regrowth needs a 20-25% buff. That or the talent Blooming Infusion should provide that buff when proced. Frenzy regeneration needs to be bumped to 40% of health. Due to it being spread over 3 seconds, you still can die in any content, especially pvp after the first tick of HP.

Really wanting serious thoughts. Maybe show blizzard we put our trust in them to make the right moves.

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Thank you for this post.
I’d like to chime in and basically copy-pasta some of my own suggestions.
Largely, I identify the same problems as you do. I am FAR from the best Boomkin out there, but these are what I feel to be the main pain-points, and plausible solutions; after playing Balance in PvP, both RBGs and Arenas/Soloshuffle for a little over a decade, while enjoying the occasional dungeon and raid.

To me, Keeper of the Grove just doesn’t work with the feel and vibe of Balance Druid now, and, the Treants on a 45 sec cooldown don’t feel satisfying to press… I think that build should focus more on Wrath, and turn Sunfire into Insect Swarm just for visuals (and, as suggested above, maybe Starfall into Sunfall or even Hurricane)

And so, I chose… Elune’s Chosen. For now, Fury of Elune build, though I’m seriously contemplating trying a Full Moon build. Overall, I enjoy it a bit more than Dragonflight, but that’s mainly because of how the Moonfire talent procs and Fury of Elune feel better now. With that being said, the overall rotation still feels rather clunky.

  • Moonfire - The ability to pick talents that create Beams and drop Moons at the target as procs feels great, although having active abilities to press feels better. IMO it should hit 3 targets or splash better.
  • Sunfire - feels worse to use now. IMO it could be changed to something else under Elune’s Chosen, maybe red-shifting it a bit and making it an OGCD, or outright replace it with something like Minor Moon that splashes AoE. Maybe that could be the proc. Then, Moonfire under this build could be upgraded as well, and changed back to a two-hands animation, ideally a bit more like channeling the power (so, more weight with the arms).
  • Wrath - To me, used to feel better to cast than Starfire, but this might now change. I think it’s becoming a bit redundant, especially with Lunar Calling. IMO, it should be changed to Lunar Wrath with Elune’s Chosen – Purple/Red-Shifting the spell and making it hit harder, possibly proc, or be affected by Owlkin Adept would be nice.
  • Starfire - It’s nice that it hits harder, but it shouldn’t hit harder than the spender/s. IMO could use better casting animation (at least for Night Elf - more power channeling)
  • Starsurge - IMO, felt best at the Start of BfA - agency + weight. IMO Rattle the Stars should not reduce its cost, but the damage bonus should be buffed. I REALLY like proccing Goldrinn’s Fang…
  • I don’t use other rotational ability talents since I mainly PvP and prefer to keep a simplistic but powerful build… but I think Legion Starfall was fun. All in all, I want to see more options with more cohesiveness, uniqueness, agency & “weight” (meaning, casting time >= resource spent = more damage.)

To sum up, I think having to spam weak but long-lasting DoTs is by now outdated, and doesn’t feel good. Boomkin damage should be able to start-up faster, so I would change Moonfire to be a more powerful, shorter DoT, and Sunfire into something else that it’s an AoE oGCD with a very short cooldown, or something like the Minor Moon procs. I think the post-SL Eclipse system remains the biggest problem with our ramp-up overall. I’d take Empowerments back if we could, and would prefer it if we had LESS Astral Power generation but that builders and spenders had more ‘weight’. Ideally, I even wish we’d get options to choose from various mechanics we’ve had over the years, but WoW currently just isn’t that customizable. More realistic and applicable solutions, and a new core mechanic should IMO be tested ASAP.
See my previous list for more detailed mechanical suggestions:

Balance Druid Redesign schematic:

(Druid)

  • Less spam but more impact feels better. Agency and ‘weight’, cast time = damage should be a design priority.
  • Buff Thick Hide & Natural Recovery by 1-2% :dracthyr_heart:
  • Displacer Beast returned / better Tiger Dash (e.g. ~40 sec cooldown, +~160% speed +~40% Dodge decaying over 4 sec and/or slow/root immunity for ~1-2 sec)
  • Revert the Dragonflight hybrid healing change. Less casts, more powerful. Maybe (optional? Or ideal?) 3 Swiftmends useble in forms w/ 20 sec recharge instead of Regrowth as the baseline heal (big heal).

(Balance)

  • Shorter, stronger DoTs (ideally: ~30% shorter GCD)
    Perhaps a 3-5 sec CD, or one buffing the other, so we can decide which to cast first depending on ST/AoE.
  • Astral Empowerment (Replaces Eclipse): Casting Starsurge causes the next 3 Wrath or Starfire casts to deal 50% additional damage, and their casting time is reduced by 25%.
  • Celestial Call: Consuming 2 stacks of [Celestial Empowerment] on the same casted spell causes a Shooting Star of the appropriate type to crash down upon the target, applying Astral Burn: dealing damage over time (Lunar - AoE, /Solar - ST) and slowing by 15% for 3 sec.
  • Celestial Alignment / Incarnation - Instant, 2 min cooldown. (~)+30% damage, 20% haste, 10% crit for 20 sec.
  • Full Moon / Fury of Elune - 1 min CD. COSTS 100 AP, instant, big damage. Perhaps using CA/Incarn makes the next one free? Or cost 50?
  • Celestial Bulwark - An absorption shield, either as a cooldown / weaker passive alternative to Nature’s Vigil, or a passive Balance talent for Bear Form e.g. from using Ironfur or taking damage, maybe a PvP talent)
  • Choice between room or area Starfall? Both versions empower DoTs. IDK that stacking it feels fun tho. Maybe Starfall could last longer, and be a debuff that makes Starsurge splash AoE?
  • Starsurge shouldn’t cost below 40 AP, or 36 AP… But should have ‘umpf’ to it.
  • Wrath should also hit harder baseline.
  • Orbital strike is fun. Perhaps some interaction with Fury/Moon (instead of as suggested in CA/Incarn)

IMO this design would be very fun to play.

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Just comparing it to elemental shaman in terms of defensives,rotation and utility its pretty crazy.

The amount of utility ele has over balance is crazy. Not to mention it feels way better to play.

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Currently every spec feels better to play then Balance :pensive:, seriously I can’t think of anyone who plays Druid as a class would of made the decisions we got and the team behind them saying “yes this is a home run”. I personally think we are in shambles.

I’m as strong as 1 ply wet toilet paper and essentially press wrath twice to spam Starefire, rinse and repeat. Ohh and 3 Starsurge for Starlord buff, such intuitive design.

Keeper of the Grove has so much potential to be amazing, visually too, but it’s so dull and odd.

Thankfully we had months of Alpha/Beta feedback about the class right?.

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I’m playing balance atm pvp focused hard and have to say everything that’s said here is true but it also goes even deeper, class tree, spec tree and hero talents all have to get looked at for us to feel good when playing.

I play EC because keeper is just sad and I’m almost always in top 2 of dmg on any bg because we really are just omega glass cannons it don’t matter if it’s fury or moon builds but holy hell do we just die if we don’t have a pocket healer even mages heal more than us.

I do think that our defensiveness buff should be spread between hero talents/spec tree/class tree
(EC could give us a shield every time we renewal or something, while there could be a talent in the spec tree that makes owlkin frenzy gives us armor or damage reduction and the class tree really should just be better overall since it’s the worst in game)

For our healing really regrowth needs like 30% buff or atleast the capacity to get to there but that needs to come with a class tree overhaul, also a way to cast wild and rejuv in moonkin form would be huge (we have a pvp talent THAT AFFECTS SWIFTMEND but they removed it from us wtf)

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While I love the idea of incarnation gaining 30% damage like we had in MoP, it would be a bit too powerful in the iteration of the game we have today. That being said, a 10% buff would be a great idea. Reason I say this is due to a talent in the Keeper of the Grove talent tree that gives 10% dmg increase to incarn, so 20% would be in line with other classes in the game.

The idea of less AP generation and AP spenders being worthwhile has had its moments. Legion was where Starsurge hit like a truck and cost 40 AP with talents to increase the cap of AP to allow for 3 starsurges to be fired off. Full moon has always been a love hate relationship. When it was introduced, classes were given big hard hitting abilities in legion with the introduction of artifacts. Locks, DK’s and balance Druid were all given amazing abilities with full moon being ours. However, balance Druid had one issue from the get go. Where demo locks summoned a ton of pets and their big hitting spell with a long cast hit hard based on the amount of pets on the field, DK’s needed to apply wounds to apocalypse, Balance druids had to go through a very obvious rotation of casting New Moon, and Half Moon, before the painfully long cast of Full Moon. It was an obvious indication to be kicked or CC’d. A mechanic such as what you listed would be the answer. Full Moon should be an instant cast yes, but the trade off IMO should be you have to build the AP to get there. New Moon and Half Moon should now award AP, it should be the two cast to get to something powerful. Balance Druid’s should either cast Wrath, Starfire, or wait for shooting stars to fill that AP bar to 100 before dropping a moon on someone.

Keeper of the Grove should be as follows:

  1. Force of Nature removed from balance tree leaving warrior of Elune as a Stan alone talent.

  2. Force of Nature now just at the top of Keeper of the Grove. Reads as follows:
    Wrath, Starfire and Starsurge all have a 15% chance to spawn a treant at the targets location for 15 seconds casting moonfire on targets every 5 seconds. May only have 2 treats proc once every 30 seconds.

  3. The “capstone” talent for Keeper of the Grove should be as follows:
    Celestial Alignment/Incarnation instantly summon 3 treants at the targets location, increasing damage of treants by 20%. If treants are already summoned, their duration on the field is refreshed and only 3 will be summoned.

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In my opinion, Balance does need more defense and the best way to do it is just restore some of the passive mitigation moonkin form used to have. When moonkin form first came into the game, it had close to the same armor modifiers that bear form had.

Over time the defensive value on moonkin form has been nerfed into oblivion. A spellcaster should never be forced to silence themselves by going into bear form for defense. Bear form isn’t ice block or turtle. Lowering your damage to zero isn’t a fair trade off for the defense or recovery Bear offers.

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I would agree that most casters have a means of damage mitigation. Locks have a bubble that they can still cast in to do damage, mages have ice block that stops everything and heals them, shamans just have a wall, but they have more tools with their totems to gain passive healing and peel for themselves.
Blooming infusion on Keeper of the Grove I’m guessing was he idea to be able to have an instant heal to help. Problem is that regrowth is weak and doesn’t do much after having to fire off 5 starsurges. The talent just needs a bit more. It was so close. IMO an addition should be to increase the heal by 30% after 5 Starsurges.
Oak skin was really nice to get as well, though it’s locked behind 2points of Instincts of the Claw. As balance players, we all know we don’t need that talent so it’s a waist of 2 points.

The Talent tree should offer all defensive and self preserving talents in the middle. Their offshoots should be the CC and niche abilities with the outside of the tree being spec specific. Allowing for subclasses to start at the desired top of the tree and work down to the middle.

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Regrowth for moonkin needs a huge buff that is definitely true. I don’t think just giving it to KoTG makes sense though, elunes needs that boost too. Rejuv in the class tree for dps Druids should be buffed by at least 100% as well. It’s literally garbage and does less than nothing.

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While I agree that gate keeping it in KotG is not the best, I am trying to find ways for blizzard to make quick changes to help the class. Resorting the tree to make all defense and heals to the center of the tree would hopefully help that.

Elune’s chosen is supposed to be the more offensive hero talent tree while KotG is to be the more defensive. Thus, they put that instant heal in there.

For regrowth, 100% would be too powerful. Currently with full honor gear as a Tauren Druid (stam increase racial) I’m sitting at around 6,665,000 health. Regrowth heals for 550k making for 12 casts to heal to full. A 100% buff might be too much but a 30% buff would make it only 8 cast to full. That would mean that you could heal to full from half HP where most people begin to self heal. At the same time, we have healers. Blizzard already stated that they want healers to feel like they are needed (this is where the hybrid tax comes in). Conclusion would be a 20% maximum buff to regrowth to fulfill blizzards vision for healers, as well as allow us not to die to a few trash mobs out in the world and have that “hybrid” feel.

Edit:

Checking numbers, maybe max buff to regrowth should be 30% max.

550k heal x 30% buff = 715000 making it 9.3 times to cast to heal to full for a Druid with 6,665.000 HP. This is dropped down to 9ish times due to HoT. But the HoT really doesn’t matter until the final cast because we are not waiting for the HoT to fall off before casting again. Maybe increase the mana cost for balance by 10% to compensate. But at least we would feel the heal.

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Well the glass cannons just took a hit, but no changes to healing…

“* Balance

  • Lunar Calling now increases Starfire damage by 50% in PvP combat (was 65%).

  • Umbral Embrace now increases the damage of Wrath and Starfire by 40% in PvP combat (was 75%).“

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See I love the idea, honestly make the Treants ranged and I’m all in.

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I did see this. This change will probably dive people away from Umbral embrace and Umbral Inspiration.
The increase to starsurge and starfall is welcome though and something a good amount of balance druids wanted. The change to Harmony of the Heavens is also a good change allowing for 6% increase damage with only having to cast 3 starsurges from 5% casting 5 Starsurges.

So if the next wave of changes we see droops before September 10th and has changes to defense and healing in a positive direction, I’d be happy with it. And who knows, the damage numbers might be tuned again.

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I hate using treants, i would love keeper of the grove just being a sun theme build.

Balance needs a defensive\mobility i say bring back displacer beast, make it replace sprint or something.

Also the free regrowth after x starsurges should be baseline… So should starfall. We shouldnt need to talent into starfall it should be baseline like most other range classes aoe.

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i would say…
With the current changes being applied, especially in PVP, Keeper of grove would be better choice over Elune now…

Elune tree build was hit too hard in PVP .

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I guess we will have to see what happens before Sep. 10th. The current consensus is that the Hero Talents are underwhelming. KotG hits hard if you’re not being targeted allowing to spam wraths after dropping trees to do alright damage, but the treants feel like they do not last long or do too much. It is nice to not have to spam wrath though with the treants casting that for you.
Elunes Chosen feels too much like a DoT class for me to call us Boomkins and Blizzards attempt at making Moons feel relevant failed. No one wants to cast 2 spells to get to a 2.7 second cast that gets kicked or allows for enemies to pop defensive coolies. Furry of Elune is nice but you get it with Keeper of the Grove as well so its not that special for a Hero Talent tree.
Last, out Defensive and healing capabilities need love. Ill wait on a rework on the Hero talent trees if Blizzard addresses the major problems for Balance druid.

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