Some fundemental Balance druid changes

In this post I will list a couple of things I think that needs to be changed. I will start with a couple of runes.

Helm - Improved Barkskin : Just removing the attack speed/ cast time penalty is not enough to occupy a rune slot by itself. Just like they changed it in future expansions barkskin should give us total damage reduction and not just physical and it should be usable while CCed. Especially in classic where u can easily sit through 10-20 second or more of chain ccs thats the least this rune could provide to us.

Helm - Gale winds : Basically our hurricane ability NEEDS to be able to crit just like any other aoe spell that other classes have like mind sear/explosive trap+explosive shot/ Flame shock and whatnot. Currently balance druids have lackluster aoe damage and even with starfall we cant compete with others.

Back - Starfall : 1.5 minute cooldown is just too much for this spell. I understand you gave 45 sec cd reduction to our tier 1 but it requires 6 pieces and by the time we achieve this tier 1 will be almost irrelevant. Also what will happen in future tiers? Just change tier 1 6 piece set bonus to whatever and reduce the cd for 45 sec. We can barely compete with other classes anyways even with starfall active.

Druids insect swarm talent is incredibly underwhelming. Not only its damage is really low and outdated compared to SoD spells (it was a joke even in original vanilla standarts) non of our talents are working with it. Runes and new moonkin form dot buffs are also not working. No extra crit damage, no range, no mana reduction, no duration reset/increase, no moonkin form dmg increase nothing. Overall last 11 point in resto tree as a balance druid is a complete waste and there isnt really any alternatives.

Not being able to use travel form indoors. If shamans can use ghost wolf indoors I dont see why druids shouldnt be able to. Travel form and gap close or creating distance is the trademark ability of druids and since our main pvp event is completelty indoors this just hinders our potential greatly.

Lastly not being able to heal in moonkin form is such an outdated and meaningless handicap that no other class have. With recent moonkin form buffs all of our damage potential is tied to it and yet not being able to heal is just a death trap especially in SoD where incoming damage is just insane. Our wild growth rune is significantly nerfed anyways for boomies specifically so why not just balance things a bit by allowing us use rejuv/regrowth in moonkin form?

Spirit is almost useless and despite that all of our itemization is based on it. We are getting less usefull stats like int/stam/sp/crit than other classes just because we have some spirit on them. Either give us proper itemization on pieces like our rank 10 gear and whatnot or change smth so we get some SP from spirit.

Idol of the moon is bugged and giving almost zero increase to moonfire and it doesnt even work with sunfire despite it being only semi good/viable idol we have in the game. It needs to be fixed.

Overall for pve I dont know how our damage will be in raids but it doesnt look promising and we will prolly be at the bottom just like the last 3 phases and we dont have that great of a utility to be sought after in raids but I will wait till we have some solid data from raids.

3 Likes

Barkskin - agreed

Gale Winds - agreed

Starfall - depending on how its handled after T1, so with T2 and onwards (maybe T2 has a trinket or a relic that adds this), maybe change it. For now, keep it as is - disagree

Moonkin shouldn’t heal. HT on proc from wrath is plenty - disagree

As healer, I can say spirit is fine. Boomer itemization has almost non of it, and even if it does have, it works ok with Dreamstate - disagree

1 Like

Starfall - Well as long as they can confirm there will be some sort of itemization that keeps lowering the cd of it I am fine with it. But it just seems so awkward that they will keep adding random items/set bonuses for it instead of fixing the spell. And thats assuming they have plans for it so its a big maybe.

Moonkin form healing - If a sp can heal in shadow form and if a tree (resto druid) can use wrath in tree form I dont see a reason why moonkins shouldnt atleast use reju/regrowth in moonkin form. Considering how bursty sod is leavng moonkin form even for a split second is a death wish so I strongly disagree with the idea that moonkins shouldnt heal.

Cant comment for healer druids. As for spirit rank 10 pvp gear has spirit on it and thats the reason they have worse stats than other classes’ sets. You dont use dreamstate rune for pvp so it makes it almost completely useless. Overall itemization for boomies are pretty sub par (not talking about pve here) even our set bonus movement speed is relatively useless along with our glove specific buff.

1 Like

I agree with especially insect swarm. It 100% requires a rework. Its almost not worth wasting a global cd.

Also lack of proper helm runes (both for pve and pvp) and lack of proper self healing despite being a hybrid class indeed sucks. Of course I am not talking about frenzied regen which is really strong but it has a 3 min cd and act as an oh sh!?%t button. Leaving the moonkin form even for just a split second is pretty much death against every physical damage class. Especially in BRM event where we cant use our travel form we have zero mobility and cant create distance to safely heal ourselves.

2 Likes

Buff boomies

Yeah especially indoors we are pretty much just stuck in moonkin form without any healing or mobility. As I pointed out in my main post this hinders our capabilities as a class as a whole.