I’m currently working on an arc where my worgen character Arian, is supposed to learn the ways of a Druid of the Moon/‘Balance Druid’ type, but I’ve had some difficulties to find a clear understanding how it works in the lore or even in RP how a ‘Balance Druid’ work with the astral magic, and I’ve had either conflicting results in finding it.
As far as I got from the wiki it says: ‘‘The elements that carve form into the universe are fluid forces of nature. Some beings seek to bend the power of these natural elements to their will. Druids, however, worship the protecting spirits of nature. Long ago, nature’s equilibrium was thrown out of balance, leaving the world vulnerable to catastrophic events, including the first invasion of the Burning Legion. By leveraging the sacred powers of the moon, the sun, and the stars, balance druids access arcane and nature magics—made more potent still through shapeshifting, when the spellcaster takes the form of the moonkin—to aid in the fight against imbalance that threatens the natural order of all things.’’
If anyone could help understand how Balance Druid works,how this could be applied to a Worgen as I understood their abilities is connected to the celestial I would be appreciative. Thank you.
Sadly, I don’t think there’s much lore to them. They just kind of appeared out of nowhere in vanilla WoW when, for some reason, the designers gave all the moon-themed spells to the druid class despite there having been no prior indication that the druids in any way get their powers from Elune.
Even their Legion artifact, the Scythe of Elune, has nothing to do with the moon-and-sun aesthetic, and instead its lore deals with Goldrinn and the worgen.
The safest interpretation is probably that these “Druids of the Moon” are simply druids who have specialized in transforming into moonkin, who are creatures of nature empowered by Elune. Much like how a druid in cat form is naturally able to move like a cat, so a druid in moonkin form is naturally able to cast their spells.
There’s also the question of what exactly this astral magic that the moonkin use is, but there doesn’t really seem to be a definitive answer to that. You can probably find some interesting ideas in one of the headcanon threads, but it’s never really been elaborated on on Blizzard’s side afaik. In other words: just don’t think too much about it.
As for your druid being a worgen, I don’t think it’d matter much. Your druid’s learned how to transform into a moonkin from a more experienced (night elf) druid and that’s that.
Finally, you could also take a look at the Valewalkers, who were introduced in Legion and are said to be some sort of proto-druids who combined arcane magic with nature magic. They’d fit the bill pretty well if it weren’t for two problems, namely that 1. Valewalkers do not have the ability to transform into animals and 2. as far as we know Farodin is the only Valewalker alive and he doesn’t seem to be training any students.
I figure it’s the same that it’s a balance of celestial energies from cosmic bodies that Balance druids try to pull from, that depending on the view, can be nature, arcane or astral magic, but still bound to the natural world that they can access.
What makes this more intresting in retrospective is maybe what connection the Scythe of Elune does to Balance lore. The Worgen orginates from the attempt of trying to calm the wild nature of Goldrinn through Elune magic (Aka celestial magic from what I presume) but evolved when the pack form tried to resist the spell.
While Worgen can be feral in nature without control, there has to be a balance between both their sanity and their bestial side in order to stay in control of who they are, thus be able to connect to Elune due to her hand in their creation. That’s how I see it at least.
The other way I can regard is that druids that maybe have a stronger connection and understanding of the cosmic can draw their energies from it and use it without risking becoming addicted to it, like arcane.
I could ofc be taking bogus here, but that’s my view on the matter.
It is true there isn’t much lore but in that sense the field is rather open for personalized interpretation.
Indeed the Druid of the Moon would be the appropriate path for the Balance druid and the moonkins their ultimate form - we know they were a gift to the wilds from Elune herself so a rather religious aspect to it at least for night elf druids.
As for the powers itself I like to think the Moon druids draw on Elune’s powers but in a different way that the Sisterhood does. There is still the natural connection and so I personally imagine it as a blend of religious worship of Elune and asking for her powers and study and research into the celestial bodies of Azeroth, their movement and their effect on nature.
They sort of remind me a bit of the Celtic druids in this regard as their position would be slightly different than the other paths the druids can choose.
I imagine it would be also a nice take if one would incorporate the state of the moonkin and wildkins in the world into the rp, they have suffered a lot and many are crazed so having a druid of the Moon who is trying to help them might be an interesting concept.
Sadly, the lore surrounding druids of the Moon is thinner than paper - all that we have is their name, and that some of them shapeshift into Moonkin Form. I’d argue that because of that, it is best to keep it vague - but that doesn’t mean we cannot create headcanons.
Personally, I believe them to be druids who place a focus on the worship of Elune. But because there is a clear distinction between the roles of druids and priestesses, they differ in their tasks; druids tend to nature first and foremost, whereas priestesses serve as military and spiritual leaders of the kaldorei.
To continue on that, druid monikers tend to be based on the path they choose to walk: druids of the Antler follow Malorne, druids of the Claw follow the Twin Bears and so on. In the same vein, druids of the Moon are named so because they choose Elune as their patron. They draw their magic from the stars and the moon, and take on the form of Elune’s creation - the Moonkin.
The worgen curse has an innate connection to Elune, though it doesn’t impact how they practice druidism; your worgen could’ve simply learned under one of the night elves in Val’sharah.
Sadly, the horde side of the lore is just as lacking, with approximately 3 total lore lines detailing Lun’alai Zandalari and a couple NPCs.
Astral powers are arcane magic; therefore they work under the same principles too. I imagine a balance druid would require a vastly different mindset than a normal one, understanding order within nature. That’s a conflict on its own to master and build upon.
Just wanna note that is not necessarily true, but rather one of (several) interpretations. It becomes especially tricky when you take solar magic into account, which is a part of astral magic, but is usually classified as nature magic and in some contexts said to be related to the Light (see the high arakkoa or potentially even the Sunwalkers). We’ve also had a recent interview with a Blizzard dev (Danuser iirc?) where it was stated that we shouldn’t always look too much into damage types.
That said, I do like this “headcanon” the most. It’s not like the idea of a balance between arcane & nature magic isn’t present in druid/night elf culture (moonwells are a thing after all), plus the idea of drawing arcane (astral) power from space as a regular druid would draw power from nature is pretty cool.
I think Astral powers that Balance druids call upon is a hybrid school of magic between Arcane and Nature, just more natural in it’s form for a druid to access and tap into, rather than pure arcane that mages tap into. It’s also possible that Balance druid, like other druids tap into a patron of some sort- For Feral Druids it’s either Ashamane or a certain loa (Can’t recall who it is for Zandalari, but for Kul Tiran it’s drust magic) -For Balance Druids I think, it’s Elune they commune upon to grant their powers, as well as whoever is the solar counterpart, which for Tauren it’s An’she - To give them the astral powers of the sun, moon and the stars. It’s possible that like Moburon said, it’s a balance of both nature and arcane, just more natural like I said it’s form rather than pure arcane or pure nature.
