For those that haven’t seen the spoilers yet, see here: Grimoire book amazon previews - more spoilers
On to the speculation/desire: Could the energy that Elune’s worshipers not actually have anything to do with the moon or stars or astral energy at all, but rather it be anima? Anima being used on the mortal planes.
It’ll be blunt. Ever since the shift to being based on Moon and Sun and Stars, I have not liked the thematics or lore related to Balance Druids. What do laser beams and shooting stars have to do with Life?
Balance Druids have always been a hodgepodge of weird ideas thrown together. Wrath at least used to be green and was more obviously understood as Nature energy. Cyclone and other wind and weather based skills are carry overs from Druids of the Talon. A few non-rotational things were clearly life based, like Entangling Roots and Insect Swarm. And the spec has always had Starfire.
What should have always been Balance’s display was the cycle of life and death, which we now have represented more of through Ardenweald and the Winter Queen and Elune - who is obviously heavily tied into the Balance spec.
I believe this would be a good readjustment of what Starfire and otherwise what has so far been interpreted as Astral and Moon energy are, in that that lore wise they could have been a misunderstanding of the aesthetics of Anima, and could better recontextualize the Balance spec to something more cohesive rather than laser chickens carrying around Goldrinn’s tooth.
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Agreed.
I once said that I would’ve loved for Balance Druids to have a playstyle similar to a Grass-type pokemon would. Using Nature offensively with Treants and razor leaves/vinewhips. I’m mostly upset because they took away all the elements that made the Priestess of the Moon class and left us with light wielding regular human priests in night elf skins.
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Nah. Balance druid isn’t the life spec, this would be resto. Balance druid is and should be about what they are now, the balance between day/night, sun/moon. This is basically what they are. Same as how feral and gardian are about shape shifting and not just life.
Balance druid being about star also serve as a link for the MOON goddess to be part of the live realm.
Just wild guesses on my part, but I imagine the spec was thematically doomed as soon as it got Moonfire, given how memey that spell ended up becoming due to its spammability, and you can’t really separate night elf influence from the class. As much as I wish arcane mages got the astrological themes instead, I don’t think it’s entirely out of place; weren’t real-world druids astrologers?
I imagine it probably didn’t help that it might otherwise share some more theme space with shaman’s elemental stuff. I’d have thought Typhoon would’ve gotten axed too.
Well actually… that could be true. Anima isn’t strictly a death-related thing to my knowledge. If I remember correctly, Ion hinted at anima having a relation to another section (presumably Life) of the cosmology after being asked by Belllular where it came from.
We know anima is built up in life…and harvested in death and used there. However, we do not know the source of anima, and why there seems to be an infinite amount of it.