Balance is perfectly fine how it is currently. The AOE damage just sucks because the damage from starfall hasn’t been buffed all expansion. I’m not sure why you’re struggling, maybe you don’t have good essences, traits and corruption gear. Even though I hate that unborrowed power determines how much damage you deal Looks like Shadowlands will be like this as well.
Anyway, this is about balance druid going forward into Shadowlands. The eclipse system sucks and i’ll say it every day if i have to :’)
Druid Legendary: When Moonfire, Rake, Rip, or Rejuvenation are on a single target, their effects are increased 30%
Inventory Type: Neck, Chest
Druid Legendary: Your damage over time effects occur 25% more quickly and your healing over time effects occur 10% more quickly.
Inventory Type: Head, Shoulder
Druid Legendary: Effects of Thick Hide, Astral Influence, Feline Swiftness, and Ysera’s Gift increased by 100%. When you shift into your Affinity’s form, you gain Heart of the Wild for 15 sec, once every 1 min.
Inventory Type: Wrist, Finger
Balance Druid
NEW Oneth’s Clear Vision Starsurge and Starfall each have a 15% chance to make the other free.
Inventory Type: Feet, Back
NEW Primordial Arcanic Pulsar Every 400 Astral Power spent grants Celestial Alignment for 9 sec.
Inventory Type: Shoulder, Hands
Ugh. I feared they’d bring Oneth’s back. I LOVED it in legion, but this will be problematic with eclipses. When starsurge procs from starfall, it will force us into MORE spam as starsurge extends eclipses. Sigh.
Yep, lackluster legos for balance. And with starfall not stacking, geting a free starfall proc will feel super weird. What a waste.
The arcanic pulsar lego is just a worse version of the azerite trait from BFA. AP generation is really slow in Shadowlands. Compare this to what fire mage got. We got rekted.
Yeah. I remember it not proccing much in Legion, though when it did, it felt great. I think this will have the opposite effect this time around. If they are adamant on keeping this boring eclipse playstyle, they should remove the effect of starsurge extending the said eclipse because it’s not a good design.
I think the pulsar one might feel OK. It depends how our burst is tbh. I don’t know why they didn’t just give us ‘‘Impeccable fel essence’’ legendary back instead? (Celestial Alignment is reduced by 1 sec for every 12 Astral Power you expend) that would have been better surely?
I think we have 2 other legendaries to be revealed but i’m honestly not even excited anymore. They have thrown this spec into the trashcan. They aren’t creative at all. Why should borrowed power like legendaries, covenants, soulbinds and traits try to make this spec somewhat fun? The core rotation should be fun in itself - and that’s my biggest issue. They’re trying to give us all these traits and abilities, despite it still being boring. It doesn’t fix anything. The issue is spamming the same button for 10+ seconds in a row with the occasional starsurge/starfall.
I have seen some ‘‘expert’’ druids argue that it’s no different to our current playstyle. This is absolutely false. I currently have control over what button i’m pressing. You are weaving spells with empowerments, at least i’m taking my finger off the same button unlike this dumb-down eclipse playstyle.
Anyway, I didn’t get the beta to test this stuff myself sadly, so I guess i’ll watch people who don’t main balance in the meantime explain how fun it feels…
I agree. I’ve seen Tettles play balance druid in beta m+, and it looks terrible, both in terms of gameplay and dps. The eclipse system looks so boring. I’m not saying the live version is perfect, but at least it feels engaging with streaking stars, where you have to cast different spells to gain max dps.
Sure, the low damage can be tuned, but the ramp up time is so long. All of our damage is tied to celestial alignment.
I think they need to bring down the AP needed for the CA lego proc.
Yeah - i don’t really know why they changed us entirely. They haven’t gave us a reason. Don’t fix something that wasn’t broken, IMPROVE it! There are a lot of issues with it currently i agree, but not to the extent of the eclipses. At least it’s not as repetitive. I feel like they don’t know what to do with balance for some reason, they’ve changed the spec every expansion since I’ve been playing (9 years).
I’m pretty sure they nerfed celestial alignment as well in terms of the duration, so hearing that doesn’t fill me with confidence. I’d rather have the ring back.
Also, considering starlord is our best talent, I don’t think this will flow nicely anymore. If the AP gen is slower, and starsurge extends eclipses, we’re cornered into a very arduous playstyle. Are we going to be able to keep 3 stacks of it up? I’m doubtful. Could end up being another dead talent.
These legendaries seemed to have slipped past. Found on WoWhead.
2 other balance legendaries:
Druid Balance Runecarve
Entering Eclipse increases your critical strike chance with Arcane or Nature spells by 105%, decreasing by 15% every sec.
Slot: Legs, Feet
Timeworn Dreamcatcher
Starsurge and Starfall reduce the cost of Starsurge and Starfall for 10% for 5 sec, stacking up to 2 times.
Slot : Chest, Finger
Hm. I still don’t think these are very fun and engaging to be honest. Runecarve one could be strong, especially if our main stats will be crit+haste. Still doesn’t make the ‘‘eclipse’’ playstyle feel any less monotonous and interactive.
Dreamcatcher one is straight up lazy. We already have starlord which feels clunky with the new system. This just means more starsurges/starfall i guess which is already our biggest hitter, and it will extend our eclipses meaning MORE spam.
Why are the balance legendaries so dead set on us extending our eclipses when it’s already rediculously boring and spammy? hello blizzard? They don’t even hit hard. You don’t even notice which eclipse you’re in. At least make them do something and give reason for wanting to be in an eclipse lol otherwise is there even a point of this new system?
The eclipse management is in a very awkward spot. There is no incentive or reward for a long duration Eclipse and you just go from one Eclipse to another. With the release of the new critical strike legendary, you are more incentivised to just chain eclipses as quickly as possible.
Eclipse interaction with our cooldowns should be more fluid. Right now it just overwrites and consumes the remaining Eclipse duration. While acting as an Eclipse state reset is an interesting idea, it just seems that the idea is just counterproductive to the flow of the class.
The single target rotation is bland for a builder-spender rotation. The big problems with single target lie largely in Eclipse rewards. The Eclipse system is largely insignificant due to the amount of time spent inside Eclipses. The static bonuses given to our filler abilities do not do much apart from granting us mildly increased resource generation for our big spenders.
Our multi targeting resource generation does not improve with additional targets and in cases where you want to apply DoTs to additional targets it is actually slower than that on a single target. If we enter a multi-target situation without enough astral power for a starfall, it feels like the game is on pause.
Our DoTs do nothing in the way of maintaining Eclipse either through resource generation or extension making it difficult to find optimal times to cast them.
Tried the new boomkin on PTR. Very boring and spammy playstyle. Being in an eclipse feels no different than being out of one so really what is the point of having an eclipse? You don’t notice any difference. May as well bring back the lunar bar and get rid of astral power at this point. Also feels super bad hardcasting starfire with low haste. And does starfall really need to be 50ap? It takes forever to get that much since our Astral Power generation was nerfed.
What i’m trying to say is, balance druid needs the shadowpriest treatment.
I’ve heard people say that in our lunar eclipse, we want to stock up our AP and save starsurges for our solar eclipse. And in AOE we use starfire even in a solar eclipse with 3+ targets.
What??? What’s the point of an eclipse with this happening??? I give up
Big true!
In wotlk, Wrath and Starfire was primary damage doing massive damage.
In Cata we got starsurge with instant procs, Wrath/Starfire still did big damage.
The eclipse system is about boosting Wrath and Starfire, and that is where the excitement is. If Wrath/Starfire does terribly low damage, the excitement isn’t there because the damage still sucks…
I agree, the ICD makes this quite restrictive. If i could cast 2 wraths to continue AOE with Starfire, that would be nice. Problem tho, is that Wrath and solar eclipse is very lackluster.
I gotta disagree here, casting 2 wraths to enter lunar isn’t very long. If trash dies that fast, it hardly matters what you do. It takes some planing, that’s all. BUT, i agree it is sort of strange casting opposite spell for what the situation requires.
You know, Wrath and Starfire does close to identical damage in AOE and Singletarget in BFA?
You have the choice, but it’s a illusion because it doesn’t matter the slightest.
Wrath does less damage to primary target, but the splash damage still adds up to the same as Starfire on singletarget. EDIT: Tested, my memory deceived me. Starfire does slightly more damage. But still, an illusion, because the damage difference is negligible. Press whatever shines ;p
Agreed! Druid is the class dearest to my heart, i would love to main it through Shadowlands. While i massively prefer new moonkin over bfa, there is plenty room for improvements.
I much prefer the Legion/Bfa iteration than Shadowlands. Although, I think i’d be more content with it if starsurge didn’t extend our eclipse, if eclipse was actually noticeable and interactive, and if astral power was removed and replaced with the lunar cycle that we had Pre WoD. I don’t mind going from lunar to solar vice versa, but the spec at the moment feels very bland. I tried it on PTR, and there’s just something off about it.
I really liked the MoP version because we had starsurge procs. I’d welcome that back as well but i highly doubt they will do that.
Agreed, while Lunar have interesting cleave damage which is really nice, Solar eclipse is very Meh. I have spent many hours on the PTR, doing some PVE and arenas. The returned utility feels incredibly good, makes a huge difference.
But the build spender system for Starsurge/Starfall is so boring/bland and predictable. Casted spells are weak, merely a generator.
I don’t think it would take a lot of work to replace Astral power. After all, it only fuels two spells. They did this for shaman, and shaman feels much more free.
Also when testing on the PTR, unequip the heart of azeroth necklace. Azerite traits and essences will be gone in Shadowlands. Feels very different.
I honestly like the new eclipse, i think the problem is that Wrath/Starfire feels more like filler and generators rather than actual damaging abilites.
There is also a strange/dissatisfying moment where we need to pick between Starfall, or extend Lunar eclipse for Starfire AOE with Starsurge.
Also, while testing on the PTR the occasional procs by Vision of Perfection(Essence) make the rotation far more dynamic, allowing us to alternate and “reset” the eclipse cycle to once again Chose the eclipse.
Something like a baseline Celestial Alignment proc could be nice, also acting as a reactive buff for Starsurge/Starfall.
Current PTR/Beta version needs more dynamic, something to react to, something that makes our trigger finger happy.
Moon/Sunfire is in a strange place, you just sort of “keep it up”.
What i fear the most is that druid/moonkin already had our time for attention when we got the eclipse, or maybe they got it out early to get feedback, and hit us with a big update when they had enough feedback
Our Dots feel really frustrating to use since they don’t interact with eclipses at all. I feel like moonfires duration should be extended in lunar eclipses or it’s damage should be increased if you use it in lunar eclipse.
I also feel there is an issue with timing of the spec. You often because of extended eclipses have to refresh dots during eclipses, which feel so bad. Could be fixed if dots were extended by starfire or wrath, or just make it so that starsurge doesn’t extended eclipse.
Starsurge should be changed. The extending eclipses feels bad. Maybe revert it back to mop where it’s on cd and where our dots resetted the cd. Maybe make it the hard hitter of the spec, because right now the specs lacks those hard hitting moments that feel good.
Astral Power should be removed. I feel like that resource is quite unnecesary with the way our eclipses work. And it wouldn’t hurt the spec if starsurge was reworked as mentioned above, and give starfall a cd.
Astral Power feels quite awkward with the eclipses. I’d rather have no resource like the new shaman, or have the eclipse bar back from MoP/WOD. I would LOVE them to remove the fact that starsurge extends the eclipse, i don’t think it’s needed. I would rather our starsurge and starfall go back on the CD and have it proc again.
I was hoping they would make new moon baseline. It fills that class fantasy element, and adds more flavour to the rotation. Still keeping it as a talent feels lame. It feels awkward on the row now since FOE is AOE, SS is cleave/AOE and moons are single target since the splash dmg does nothing.
My biggest gripe is that eclipses don’t feel different enough to not being in one. I can barely feel the haste or damage difference.
They have ruined Balance druid, along with the game. People who play long enough the game agree. If that wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t launchh “WOW Classic” You have no chance pvping against any spec with B.D. moonfire and sunfire barely do any damage. Half of Balance druid spells are ornamental. I play Balance druid since 2007 and after every patch Balance druid becomes even greater disapointment. The old talent tree was light years better.Instead of becoming better, the game becomes worse every year. Now you might say (But on statistics B.D comes first.) Yes, people who know how this works, will tell you that this damage is distributted to 15 players, as a result, you can’t kill even flies. Mage and Warlock for example concentrate their damage on one player. I suggest you change spec, and get a Demon hunter. This would be a good notification for blizzard if we could all do it.
Looks like Shadowlands will be like this as well.