Dear Blizzard Support / WoW Dev Team,
I’d like to provide feedback on the current state of the Balance Druid interrupt ability, Solar Beam. As it stands, it has a base cooldown of 1 minute, which can be reduced to 45 seconds if specced into, yet this is still significantly longer than the 15-second cooldown interrupts available to most other classes.
This discrepancy creates serious problems in solo content like Delves or Horrific Visions, where failing to interrupt key abilities often leads to death or wasted attempts. In particular, certain bosses cast high-impact spells every 15–20 seconds, and with only one interrupt every 45 seconds, it becomes impossible to stop more than a single cast per minute.
This is not just frustrating, it feels unfairly punishing, especially when all other classes are equipped with more reliable interrupts. For a class that’s meant to be flexible and hybrid, this glaring limitation makes Balance Druids feel incomplete and underpowered in solo PvE scenarios.
Please consider:
- Reducing Solar Beam’s cooldown to 15-20 seconds baseline ( Like other classes ).
- Or introducing an additional utility talent or PvE glyph that makes it more competitive.
I love playing Balance Druid, but this issue makes the experience feel fundamentally flawed in modern content.
Thank you for your attention.
Best regards
Unfortunately solar beam is probably one of the most powerful aoe cc in the game at the moment. So if you did this balance in mythic plus would have solar beam on every pack and it would just become ridiculous, and you can perma silence whole packs with dh sigil plus 2 solar beams, I get that it sucks in solo content but the buffs you are suggesting will make it extremely powerful in other content too where it is already extremely powerful.
You mentioned that the class is not flexible but you can just as easily spec feral druid and have access to a 15 sec cd interrupt. I know it sucks that you would have to switch spec to have access to this interrupt but changing solar beam comes with a lot of repercussions.
1 Like
(I cannot see solar beam changing) Maybe provide a talent that halves the CD but makes it single target.
1 Like
You can’t ask for it to be the same cooldown as “other classes”, because it isn’t the same ability as the interrupt you see on other classes.
Solar Beam is an AoE Silence. All those other classes you refer to, they get to stop one caster every 15 second. Balance druid gets to silence an unlimited amount of enemies for 8 seconds every 45 second.
It is simply a different ability. And arguably much stronger, for example in M+ and some raids. Even in solo play, if you are good at rounding up mobs, for example use some LoS to get all casters at the same spot - now that Solar Beam is much stronger than an interrupt.
Because we have this very strong AoE silence, we don’t get to also have an interrupt, which is fine. Not all classes have an interrupt - balance druids are not alone. Holy Priest, for example, does not either. But at least Balance have a busted AoE silence that can also be used for interrupting. And that is on top of how many other ways you have to delay casts (like Typhoon and Incapacitating Roar, insane mobility to LoS or out-range casts). And you have a defensive with zero cooldown (Bear Form) on top of a 1 min strong defensive (Barkskin). You have the tools to stop casts, and if you have to take one once in a while, you have arguably much better tools to face tank it than most classes. Ursine Vigor Bear + Barkskin + Frenzied Regen + Matted Fur + Renew combo and you won’t even need to interrupt.
We already had Blizzard make all classes more or less the same a few years back. They finally realised that’s dumb and made classes more unique, with strengths and weaknesses - and that’s a good way to design the game. A weakness for balance druid is that they can’t interrupt a single target repeatedly with a low cooldown. But we can do other things that literally no other class can do.
1 Like
Solar Beam is super strong, i really dont see the need nor i see it happening Op.
if they could just make a choice node with the 15 sec cd reduction, you choose either that or a single target 15-20 sec cd, easy fix
2 Likes