As the title says I think balance druids are really lacking either dmg or more valuable utility like the ones that shadow priests have in a raid environment.
Currently I see no reason why anyone would waste a spot on a balance druid when they can stack 2-3 shadow priests for great utility, healing, insane on demand AoE dmg. Or simply fill the raid with pure dps classes that can easily do x2 x3 times the dps balance druids are doing. The 3 percent party wide crit buff just doesnt compansate the horrible dps we have.
Lets just quickly compare the utility they bring between balance druids and shadow priests since they are doing roughly the same dps according to the logs and my personal experience.
Shadow priest : Great passive healing thanks to vampiric embrace which is invaluable especially in challenging content. Homonculi is a must for melee oriented groups which is and will be the meta for the rest of the SoD from the looks of it. Eye of the void which provides free warlock curses and last but not least the strongest on demand burst AoE in the game thanks to void zone+mind sear.
Balance druids : 3 Percent party wide crit buff and thats about it. Innervate and combat res on a respectively 6 min and 30 min CD which any other druid spec (ferals and resto druids) can bring.
Even in AoE department we got the short end of the stick. Despite the attempt to buff our completely useless hurricane ability with gale winds, the ability is still far from effective. First of all the mana cost is an absurd 1000 mana even with 20% reduction from the rune. Secondly the spell doesnt have any coefficient whatsoever and doing tooltip dmg unlike any other spell. And lastly for some unknown reason the ability is unable to crit. For a 10 second channeling spell all those factors still make that ability not worthy to even put on our action bars. Maybe if there are stationary 10+ targets idk.
We either need more dmg or some more utilities like perhaps 3% spell hit with our faerie fire, more crit from moonkin aura, better aoe dmg and the list goes on. I really dont want the ‘meme specs’ of the past to remain meme specs in a raid environment and would HATE to see the raids at lvl 60 to be all warriors, shamans, priests, hunters and rogues.