Always had a druid main going back to 2004, most of the time balance spec. Just picked up that old main after returning to the game and did a bit of solo questing and I cannot believe how weak it feels now. Used to aoe grind with the same character and had no problems but now even in moonkin he’s going down in a few hits to equal level enemies.
I’d heard some players say moonkin was weak now but I had no idea it’d be that bad.
Honestly, having played Druid since Cataclym… It’s really been a gradual process. You don’t feel it until enough nerfs have been put in place for it to feel that way. WoD felt worse than MoP, Legion, BfA and SL felt better to me, DF worse, and now in TWW – Slightly better, but there’s still much to be desired. Cyclone is getting nerfed in line next patch, and some class talent tree improvements, albeit VERY slight, seem like changes in the right direction to me. Again, though… there’s still a long way to go IMO. Boomkin should not be as squishy as a mage, if it lacks the shield, stop/reverse and immunity to deal with it. It doesn’t make sense from a lore perspective, in regard to armor type, but also from mobility, utility, and whatever other metric. It’s indeed frustrating. I’d far prefer if some things were nerfed even more, if our durability was brought up a small notch.
I remember Balance survivability going down in Legion. It was only mitigated at the time due to the artifact weapon and general craziness of power scaling that expansion. We used to have a 15% incoming damage reduction and a large armor bonus. We don’t have the damage reduction anymore, and the armor bonus we have isn’t very noticeable. Also, our self healing has been reduced as well.
-pokes a boomkin’s belly- They’ve always been squishy.
More seriously, yeah, what Fangsong said is true – there’s just been a series of nerfs to moonkin’s survivability ever since Legion. Nerfs to overall damage reduction, reductions to armor in moonkin form, self-healing being reduced, Devs seeing Bear Form as some sort of panacea for moonkin survivability (and simultaneously forgetting that that means the moonkin is putting out all of zero damage)…
I’d say the big kicker was at the start of Dragonflight. Nothing changed about Balance specifically… but Druid was one of the first classes to get their talent tree revealed and it was clear that Blizzard changed what they wanted to do with talents as they went along. Druid never really got updated to the new paradigm.
The result is that most other classes got a lot of defensive power baked into their talent trees while Druid simply… didn’t. So Balance and Feral ended up unusually squishy compared to other DPS specs (and at least Feral has Survival Instincts).
Druids do have some good healing and defensive options… but they’re almost all proactive while many classes have a lot more passive DR and reactive defensive tools. So Balance Druids are going to die a lot more often when played by the average player or in unfamiliar content.
Maybe they should give moonkin form soaring like dracthyr =p
Tbh our heals just suck now. Rejuve isn’t worth the global we lose to change back to balance and regrowth is absolutely pitiful.
I’ve played for 20+ years and I can’t understand why they have let the “pure” dps classes have so many heals and immunities while balance is left in the stone age. We get pretty new spells but that’s it.
Ofc my frustrations are more obvious in pvp settings.
I’ve noticed it this expansion more than any other.
And it doesn’t seem I-lvl increases have made much of a difference, normal mobs hacking large chunks of HP quickly. Especially at the start of an encounter, like they ignore armor value or something.
This bugs me the most.
From a PvP (and probably PvE) perspective, Balance heals are so weak they aren’t even worth the time they take to cast in combat. Out of combat you gotta spam Regrowth a million times to heal up and rejuvenation does next to nothing.
The only heal worth using in combat is Frenzied Regeneration which has its own issues.
Balance shouldn’t be getting constantly out healed in BGs by classes like Arms/Fury Warrior and Mages, imo.