Hey! I’m a Balance Druid theorycrafter and guide writer at Dreamgrove.gg and just an overall Moonkin guy. The Dreamgrove community has posted our feedback and thoughts in a different thread that you can find here. We also posted an identical thread over on the US forums since those are historically more used.
Anyway, I would like to give my thoughts on the questions asked in the OP of this thread.
The Balance Druid Apex Talents do not feel very impactful by themselves. The Solar/Lunar Bolts that get sent out when you enter Eclipse helps with providing some visual and audible effects whenever you enter Eclipse, but they don’t impact your rotation outside of that. The top Apex Talent increases the damage of your first 3 spenders in Eclipse which is largely unnoticeable and give you an instant Wrath/Starfire at the start of your Eclipse.
The free Wrath/Starfire cast is also currently consumed by Nature’s Grace.
I would say the Apex Talents hit these points considering they are purely passive nodes that don’t impact your gameplay much in general.
Currently on Alpha, the Solar Bolt and Lunar Bolt spells do not get sent to your current target, meaning they can hit mobs that are heavily DR’d, immune or irrelevant. Convoke the Spirits also has issues with fights like this, which from recent memory affected Forgeweaver Araz, Mug’Zee, Cauldron of Carnage, Nexus King Salhadaar and Dimensius. In fights where adds like this are present you would very likely not talent into the bottom Apex Talent.
For the Lunar Bolt it makes sense for them to not fire at your current target considering they are AoE spells and you normally only enter Lunar Eclipse on AoE situations, but the Solar Bolt would consistently get sent on a random target on encounters where single target damage matters.
The Lunar Bolts do not interact with Lunation on the Elune’s Chosen tree and they do very little damage on Single Target encounters. Since Lunar Calling exists and you won’t be able to enter Solar Eclipse I would say the Apex Talents favors Keeper of the Grove more than its counterpart. However, the relevant feedback to take away from that would be to make a viable Single Target option for the Elune’s Chosen Hero Talent tree that opens up for entering Solar Eclipse.