Hi!
I’m a Frost Mage main. And I decided to pick up balance druid as it appears to be on track as being one of the strongest caster classes in S3 (The story so far, at least.)
I’m having such a hard time getting muscle memory down for the rotation and visual coordination. But the rotation seems pretty simple.
Is the rotation indeed simple or is my head giving me signs that there is indeed a learning curve?
i love balance
I’ve never liked balance. It’s one of those specs that just never clicked with me.
Good luck to you.
Might be more of a question for the druid forum, but I just came back from WoW after a long break. Balance is my main spec and I’d like to know the answer to this as well.
I felt that it scaled very well with gear, if this is relevant. It’s also quite good on very large pulls but the on-demand ST damage is low, it needs buildup time. So if you enjoy M+ expect to be not super amazing in low keys, but get much better as the key level becomes higher and you group with tanks who pull a lot of mobs who live for a while.
The rotation is unique. But when it clicks, I promise that it is beautiful.
It is a perfect blend of timing and resource management. It feels quite musical and very intuitive. Playing boomie feels something like playing a party/fighting game like Smash Bros.
There is the on-the-fly decision of what Eclipse to enter as a pull is initiated or adds appear.
There is the fun attempt to start casting the opposing spell at the optimal time to maintain your current eclipse (you want the opposing spell projectile to land the moment eclipse ends).
There is managing and pooling astral power and anticipating where it will be after your current spell succeeds, knowing that you can follow it with a spender, and how this interplays with the eclipse.
I can’t even outline everything.
I am in love with this iteration of Balance. The blend of resource management through Astral Power and time management through Eclipse creates a work of art in gameplay.
I implore you to give it a serious chance.
Yay. I was pretty much looking for this.
Having a balance sucks, I prefer to mix things up and let one side have the reins for a time to see what chaos it brings. Whatever said side is anyways.
Wait, we talking about the Balance Druid spec? Ah, then, well, I hope at least I got one person to chuckle a bit, or perhaps maybe not. Questions for later.
Played it for a while. The theme and abilities are satisfying, damage can be very good with time and practice. You get all the perks of being a druid.
Now, though? I’m tired of ramping classes. I want on demand damage, so I’ve been playing other specs.
Just to show you how hyped I am, here is a very early preview of my grand class-fantasy fully animated WeakAuras.
I was inspired by the new Moonkin forms to really embrace the fantasy of the class.
This is my timer (very rough) for Incarnation: Chosen of Elune. This is maybe 5% done for the overall concept. The two basic eclipses are presented as done by the Moonkin, while having both active is presented as an intervention from Elune who lifts the White Lady to focus a sphere of her own light onto the player.
It’s a great time to be a big fat space chicken.
Balance is great. If there’s 1 issue I have with them is their 1min interrupt. I wish there’s a way to actively select either skull bash or solar beam from the talent tree rather than having just solar beam as a default ability
I’m happy it’s no longer a joke
Balance is fine, kind of lacking in single-target damage though. It has a bit of a ramp up, and you really need big pulls to shine.
Big pulls that last awhile. If you’re with strong bursty classes, you can kind of fall over. Really I just play feral below a +15 key, unless I’m in a group I know will pull big and isn’t decked out with strong/geared specs.
But I like the overall flow and feel.
Except stellar flare. Which always lurks there, when that’s the “best” it quickly becomes the worst feeling spec to play. I did not enjoy S1 when I played balance…at all. Stellar flare babysitting and trying to get it on the mobs it was missing on. It was functionally my “filler” instead of actual filler spells. Just gross.
I will not go back to spamming stellar flare.
Stellar flare should be a single target only DoT and strong at that, to allow them to have a knob to adjust for a single target damage that’s not just “more damage on starsurge” because that opens up all sorts of problems in things like PvP.
Only good in 20+ keys due to the massive ramp up to aoe, and even then it will only compete in fortified weeks, in tyrannical +20s you’ll still get hosed because it takes so long to get the aoe damage started.
Another massive weakness of the spec is its defensives. It leads all specs in the most M+ related deaths, because it’s that squishy, with really bad defensives and even worse heals.
Its strength in keys comes in boss damage because boss fights even on tyrannical are fairly short compared to raids and your Incarnation burst window is really high.