Heart of the wild only gets chosen because it is broken, not because it’s fun to heal for 45 seconds.
Putting Typhoon into balance affinity is only a meaningful choice for resto.
Guardian will always choose resto affinity for % of health healing.
PvE feral will always choose balance regardless of typhoon for the range and they happen to get typhoon as icing, and PvP ferals will just choose whatever keeps them alive longer in the current patch between guardian/resto.
Balance druids get to laugh to the bank because they don’t even have to make a compromise.
Typhoon is a very fun ability to use on guardian and feral(stealth LM typhoons) and they are just being screwed over so that they can say balance has an active ability. It will also really suck when feral and balance healing gets nerfed across the board because they felt heart of the wild made them too good at it. Playing guardian is much more fun with Typhoon, but I will never get to use it because Ysera’s gift is tied to our survivability.
TL;DR: I don’t want to be balanced around an enormous boring 5 minute cooldown, just to lose one of the most fun druid abilities. Take typhoon out of balance affinity and it wouldn’t change who is taking it, unless they are a resto druid (surprise) who actually gets a choice.
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So your entire complaint is about Typhoon?
Did you even attempt to read the whole post?
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More nuanced than that, and I tried to provide context, but yes typhoon and hotw mainly.
The worst part is that it’s a fun ability that we lose access to if we need the other affinities, which we do. It would feel so much better if the whole row were fun abilities to choose from, or if typhoon were just baseline. I mean typhoon is only really strong in m+.
I can’t stand heart of the wild. Our entire healing capability will inevitably be balanced around it, and that sucks because the cooldown is so long. Long cooldowns aren’t fun to me. The worst thing about hotw is that it’s an emergency button that will rarely be used for its full 45 sec duration, but we still have to pay for it with a 5min CD.
I would like to see hotw go baseline and make it weaker OR completely take it off the table and scrap it. Either way put typhoon in that talent slot instead.
I don’t think you need to put any active ability in balance affinity, it will still be taken by the same people regardless of typhoon.
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I agree on most of that. Idk why Typhoon isn’t baseline to begin with.
As for Heart of the Wild, I have no real preference here. Pros and cons for having it.
I’m not a fan of paying the “hybrid tax”. Despite talenting for Resto Affinity, my self healing is still worse than my shadow priest.
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Nothing says Feral like having to go balance for 45 sec at a time.
Am I right 
But seriously.
It’s not interesting to me.
If I wanted to be balance, I would main balance… not feral
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I don’t begrudge other druid specs fun active abilities like Typhoon, but Balance is the kind of spec where literally any active ability you gave to it would be really good for other specs too. Right now, balance is tbh, fairly low on spec-defining CC/utility/non-nuke spells. Giving balance Typhoon helps make us unique and also buffs our kiting and survivability a little bit which is very nice.
I’m torn. I get that Feral really loves Typhoon and of course they do, it’s very fun and very useful. But making it balance-specific helps give balance a bit more individuality which is something I think it really needs more of. Most balance druid abilities are also abilities other specs have access to (which is literally still true btw). I also get that class-defining is currently more of a focus than spec-defining, but the latter is important too.
Also, balance druids not having to make big compromises is nice for once. Generally speaking we kind of suck at kiting and surviving and always have, balance druids are easy to train and easy to keep pinned down. The fact that we have to choose between typhoon/bash/frost nova is bad, it’s good that we get two now.
Exactly, and if you wanted to play both because you love both styles, why not just go balance for fights that suit it and feral for the opposite?
I just don’t see anything good coming from HotW whether it’s losing typhoon or being so strong that it just gets nerfed and we don’t get typhoon OR a good talent. HotW just crowds the design space and gets in the way of fun and the class design overall.
@starla
Balance has spec defining stuff as it is. Treats/solar beam are already unique to balance and they are going to have those plus typhoon baseline plus yseras+vortex, plus mass root, plus stamp roar. Balance does not need to tuck away typhoon. Also, they can still take it if they put it back where it belongs.
Agreeing with Starla. I loved typhoon on feral but it’s been ages since it was an optimal pvp option for feral.
I do agree that hotw balancing may screw over bal/feral in classic blizz fashion. As always resto is the golden child and bal/feral always suffer for this.
Imo the best way is to keep bal/feral utility unique.
Let bal have typhoon, treants, moonkin aura, solar beam, etc.
Give Feral Lotp baseline. Give them ‘Play dead’ as well (hunter symbiosis ability).
And Guardian doesn’t even get mentioned, apparently, since it’s being crucified in Shadowlands anyway.
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Sorry for hurting your feelings.
“ Agreeing with Starla. I loved typhoon on feral but it’s been ages since it was an optimal pvp option for feral.”
Are we just going to ignore the multitude of uses Typhoon has in PvE?
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I can only speak from a pvp perspective. I’m sure someone will chime in about pve.
If your playstyle doesn’t get intruded on it seems pretty unfair to just say let balance have it do it’s unique. Balance doesn’t need to be unique. It’s the Druid class and balance is unique enough with its own shapeshift.
I don’t even want typhoon for important content, it would be nice to have for fun for what I do, but I certainly wouldn’t choose it for PvP on feral. Still nice to have in BG’s.
The bigger picture is fun and how much it would add to guardian. Why limit everyone for the sake of uniqueness? People won’t choose balance affinity for typhoon, it will harm you too much to take it unless you want the range for feral in m+.
It’s a shame to make typhoon so exlusive for a spec that is already drenched in utility.
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Guardian relies on Typhoon as a brief reprieve from packs of mobs, as a control mechanism for knocking things out of Sanguine, and most important of all, as a kiting mechanism for Necrotic.
Guardian needs Typhoon FAR more than the other Druid specs do.
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And you’ll never get to use it because your healers will cry if you give up yseras 
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Actually my healers always say that Yseras is worthless overhealing, which I agree with them on. The merits of Resto are the instant Swiftmend (which we can’t do in Shadowlands even if we take Resto affinity) and MAAAAAAYBE Wild Growth on Bursting week or something (although our Wild Growth is pretty anemic).
I think that Balance affinity is the clear winner for bears in Shadowlands, since you conserve far more health by knocking enemies away so they can’t hit you, than you get from the trivial healing that Ysera’s provides. Typhoon is a must-have on Necrotic, it’s a must-have on Sanguine, it’s the clear winner.
Nobody has ever been saved from dying by Ysera’s.
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If your healers don’t do damage I think that’s the case, but yseras will allow them to worry about you less. They just have to work with the effect
I’ve heard this notion before, that “it lets the healer stop healing and dps instead” but if your healer is only healing you for a couple percent of your health every 4 seconds (assuming you azerite for it)… time to find another healer! 
The healing impact of Ysera’s is grossly overstated; it shows up in numbers because it trickle heals for a lot, but it is still just a trickle heal. The vast majority of healing done by Ysera’s is displacement of other healing spells into overheal.
It gets taken for raid content because its the best surivival impact of the three in that context, and because have access to instant swiftmend is really good, but it’s not that great in totality. Its most impactful point is really soloing more than anything else.
Balance affinity is already great, if it gets the only access to typhoon it will be almost ubiquitous in shadowlands besides progression raiding.
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