Hello, I am a main Balance druid player multiple cutting edge raider, and a casual mythic plus player. I play Balance druid since BFA battle of dazar’alor.
I want to discuss something in the kit of the balance druid which is Primordial Arcanic Pulsar, AKA pulsar. Pulsar is something thats been in the kit of the balance druid since a long time ago and this ability has a lot of flaws built into it.
Considering what the balance druid has in his kit, you might say that pulsar is something really fun and interesting to play with, in reality that is not really the case. This ability requires the player to keep casting so it can proc, and whenever you have to move from an ability, you lose value to pulsar. So in reality whenever we talk about this ability that means the more you move the less damage you do and vice versa. This ability is unstable and it changes a lot in mythic progression where sometimes you get it in times you need it and sometimes you dont, and that is really frustrating because it really sucks whenever I get unlucky and get an ability I lose so much for just being unlucky.
Lets go back a couple of years ago, BFA. BFA boomie was average and the reason they used to bring boomies back then is because of their utility (off heals, innervate, typhoon, solar beam …ETC). So they did not bring boomie to mythic progression because of his damage, no they brought him because of his utility. Pulsar was invented back in BFA to be exact (8.1.0).
Lets skip a couple of patches ahead, we go to shadowlands. There were 2 patches were boomies were really good and the first two patches did not have pulsar in the meta, it was a legendary but we did not take it. Back then boomies were really good in damage and they had different play styles, which is convoke and ravenous frenzy. It was really good and felt really good playing with those 2 main abilities instead of pulsar. The third and fourth patch we took pulsar and went back back to bottom row. I remember seeing boomies in heroic statistics in top 5 and in mythic it was bottom 5, and btw before the patch started they nerfed boomie.
If we compare the boomie gameplay with pulsar and without pulsar, am pretty sure we can say that boomie have seen better days (in terms of damage).
We fast forward into dragon flight season 3 we also get nerfed even though we are not top 10 in the mythic statistics.
The explanation to that is simple, the class developers are referencing the simulations as a way to balance out classes, and if we think about it a little bit, pulsar is really good at simulation and hitting target dummies, meanwhile thats not the case in mythic progression. There are a lot of mechanics to do and movement and that really sucks play pulsar with and every pull I get a different timing of pulsar because I get different variation of mechanics each pull.
I have tried to think of ways to solve this problem instead of deleting this ability, and I have not thought of any. Pulsar works similarly as Grand warlock Design in the warlock talent tree, where with every soulshard spent the cooldown of your main demon is reduced. This has been rework to just a flat number reduction. I see this change as a healthy way to change the talent and to balance the class around this change, so whenever it comes to simulation this talents value will not be different that real fight.
As a boomie player I say that this ability really had its time and now its time to change is with the new expansion because it has been meta for ages now. I would like to send a messege to Balance druid class developers is that this ability has been in the boomie’s kit for so long, ever since BFA. Please change this ability and whenever I am mythic progressing I wont keep cursing this ability and the way it is unstable, because I really care for this spec and I really enjoy playing it and I do not really want to change it.