You’re complaining about mana when Wrath is free. There’s starsurge. There’s sunfire. Hurricane buffed, cooldown removed. Balance is looking insane.
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I just realized that out of all the specs in the OP. All of them have an activatable ability to use except for Balance Druid. Even the meme specs: Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman, Smite Priest, etc. receive an activatable ability…
People forgetting that the free wrath talent is literally a resto talent from later expac. Balance Druid so hard up on mana a free cast of wrath is seen as a boon. Remember wrath is an incredibly weak offensive spell (basically a scorch for druids) probably one of the weakest, it’s nature damage (puke), it will be a decent talent for resto druids to be able to farm world mobs at cap and probably good for duels. No curse for it is bad, starfire will still be better.
Wrath pumps in era…
This lol. Wrath is a higher DPS spell than Starfire and scales better. The only reason we Boomkins dont use Wrath is because of how mana intensive it is. If mana was not an issue, Wrath would be the primary spell for balance druids. IE in SoD, without knowing the other runes, Wrath is going to be bread and butter. No mana, higher dps and allows Moonfire and Sunfire to be kept up since those will be your only mana costs.
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And in SoD it is getting a built in chance to proc a NS which is amazing for pvp
Sure you rarely get to spam wrath on a target - but if you do, they drop real fast, and you get a chance to heal like 50% hp instantly XD
You’re accurate in the sense that Wrath scales better, but at 60 in the current state, it’ll be Starfire. Even with the Wrath rune, it’ll still be Starfire since it’s more DPS with mods.
The only difference is what you pointed out, Wrath allows for Sunfire and Moonfire in tandem with being able to sustain that rotation, but from a technical DPS stand point. Starfire currently still wins.
No it doesn’t. Only way Starfire out scales Wrath is if you stack arcane dmg vs spell power. Wrath has always been a higher DPS spell in Vanilla. Balance druids are brought for utility which is the Moonkin aura and have to use Starfire in Moonkin form for two reasons, 1 you cant cast wrath, 2 it is the only way to combat mana problems. If mana is removed from the equation (which it is now) Wrath does quite a bit more damage over time
Now maybe runes will change that and I sure hope they do. Being able to use Starfire, Moonfire, and Sunfire would be dope. As it stands, Balance druids will be expected to stay out of form, spam Wrath, Moonfire, Sunfire and supplement the raid with the insta cast healing touch procs
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Free casts also generally dont activate the 5s rule so you can potentially spirit regen while casting wrath.
Nope, at level 60 Starfire is the winner in Era/Vanilla.
Here is the breakdown:
Starfire
- 452 Intellect
- 13% Spell Hit
- 42.33% Spell Crit
- 855 Spell Power
- 2.85 effective cast time
- Normal: 1525 (1475-1575)
- Crit: 3050 (2950 - 3150)
- DPS: 732 (708 - 756)
Wrath
- 449 Intellect
- 13% Spell Hit
- 41.28% Spell Crit
- 867 Spell Power
- 1.53 effective cast time
- Normal: 751 (736 - 766)
- Crit: 1502 (1472 - 1532)
- DPS: 666 (652 - 679)
You’re more than welcome to look at the theorycraft resources that I’ve created if you doubt the math. I don’t claim them to be 100% accurate, but they’re on par. I do share all of the mathematics and formulas in the resources.
Not doubting anything since I’ve never tried to compare them - but are you taking into account the talents?
Fast wrath = lots of Nature Grace procs = even more wraths. Though maybe with GCD this actually tilts in the favor of starfire vs target dummies… not sure.
Also a big part of what makes wrath powerful (in pvp) is that you actually have the time to cast it vs good players. If you are able to cast a starfire you basically already won the fight because your enemy is more or less afk.
Yep, BIS set up with on-meta buffs and consumes, as well as accounting for MS input delay.
Well considering every non-trivial encounter in classic has you moving, we can shave off 10% from starfire and they seem about even 
I’m joking xD but wrath is mostly a pvp spell anyways.
Starsurge should probably also receive benefits from moonfire talents as well, since I think it receives no benefits from wrath talent points since it is already instant cast. + add “all effects received from talent points are doubled.” Then it would probably actually be kinda cool having a high stun chance, higher crit chance, moderately strong ranged attack for boomies.
My issue for Balance Druids come Season 2 when we have Moonkin form is that Blizzard is going to have to design a Rune that’s going to have one hell of a wall of text realistically to make it functional and viable solely for Moonkin Form.
Or a series of multiple runes to fix it, while other classes are going to get runes that further increase their strengths we will be getting runes to make a spec viable.
What pure dps casters?
Yea, it really just goes to show how busted the spec is in Vanilla. Even its TBC and WoTLK iterations aren’t great. It progressively got better though.
I’m really hoping they come up with something a bit more unique then slapping the Lunar/Eclipse system from other expansions over a rune. Though, again, to your point that still won’t be enough.
The tree needs a overhaul.
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It does seem like an oversight that wrath talent does literally nothing for starsurge and really only starfire does anything. It feels like maybe at some point maybe starsurge did have a cast time but they removed it at some point and forgot to update the rune.
It seems like they are still modifying runes as we speak so maybe they will alter starsurge from receiving bonuses from wrath (.5 sec off cast time) and starfire (.5 reduced cast time & 15% chance to stun)
To instead receive bonuses from moonfire (10% increased damage and chance to crit) and starfire (.5 sec reduced cast time & 15% chance to stun)
What’s interesting about this too is that WoWhead’s datamine shows that Nature’s Swiftness modifies Starsurge. Which is redundant as it’s already an instant spell. Meanwhile, Improved Starfire looks like it won’t be modifying Starsurge.
For all we know, WoWhead isn’t entirely accurate and/or to your point they’ve been making adjustments. Still, after seeing what modifies the spell it doesn’t make it at all something to be excited over 
Ele pvp wise is going to literally make people rage quit pvp