Heya, so this will be quite a long post so brace yourself. Anyways, I’ve got some thoughts about Balance ever since BfA hit as we all do across many specs.
Now, as a disclaimer I don’t think Balance is in any way weak in BoD. They are statistically one of the best performing specs which means I’m not looking to have them buffed, but I want to express my thoughts of how to change their gameplay a bit because it’s very, very stale.
Also as a note: All numbers I will say obviously wouldn’t be final. This is a general guideline but they could obviously be tweaked against or in favor.
I’ll go over the changes I would like to see to the spec initially and then I’ll do a breakdown of why I arrived at my conclusions and believe what I do.
Baseline and Azerite change:
-Solar Wrath AoE explosion removed. ST damage unchanged.
-Starfall damage increased by 10%.
-Force of Nature baseline. Astral Power generation removed. Treants damage reduced by 80%. Cooldown unchanged (or increased 30s)
-Eclipse redesigned: Moonfire and Sunfire has a chance to deal X damage and generate Y Astral Power. Passively generates Z Astral Power.
-Lunar Shrapnel Moonfire requirement removed.
These are some very simple changes. The reason for each of those is that Solar Wrath being a passive cleave ability directly hinders Starfall from being buffed up. This was a change made in BfA and it also hurts Balance Druids ability to focus fire in Mythic+ because all abilities with the exception of Starsurge and Moonfire is cleave meaning in tight CC situations Balance is locked from properly doing DPS without risking breaking CC.
Solar Wrath should be brought back to a ST focused ability (and empowerment) and allow Starfall to properly be the AoE option as currently it’s more beneficial to use empowerments as AoE rather than Starfall until 5+ targets. Starfall’s low damage is a consequence of all other spells cleaving baseline.
Also, I wish to make 3 talents baseline and remove the current Eclipse passive. So first off the current iteration is very bland primarily because the empowerments themselves aren’t overly satisfying. It’s a buffed up filler spell and this passive doesn’t really show how cool the “piano” style of a rotation Balance actually possess.
The first 2 talents in question - Nature’s Balance and Shooting Stars - are great examples of “quality of life” improvements to gameplay. You can react to the steady income of AP generated through the proc of SS and generation of NB. Notice as well that I do not believe Balance should passively inherit the 50 AP given by NB currently. This passive also falls in line with the idea of making Balance less predictable and more reactionary as the current Eclipse passive was supposed to do. The problem is that the empowerments aren’t satisfying (and in fact are worth overcapping if you risk pooling too much AP) because Starsurge is so much better. Starsurge and Starfall are also very satisfying spells to use.
Finally, Force of Nature should be made baseline because of it’s importance in Mythic+. To give a good comparison imagine yourself in a Mythic+ group with a Blood Death Knight and (s)he tells you “guys I’m not specced into Gorefiends Grasp”. Note that I didn’t say “Tightening Grasp” and specifically the actual ability.
Balance Druids utility value is equal to that of a Blood Death Knight’s mass grip and it is one of the biggest reasons to bring a Balance Druid for utility reasons. Even though Nature’s Balance is by far a better DPS option you are obligated to run Force of Nature in m+ which diminishes the cool fantasy of choosing your treants because they are a neat ability into a “dammit I have to take FoN now and mechanically enjoy myself less”.
This is why I believe it should have it’s AP removed and damage cut heavily (it’s not a DPS cooldown) and embrace it as the utility spell it’s supposed to be. The damage cut should make sure it’s not used for damage purposes on bosses, but if 80% isn’t enough then all of it can also be removed.
With the baseline issues out of the way let’s move onto talents and this has been my biggest gripe with BfA personally because of how bland it is. With NB+SS and FoN baked in baseline as well as removing mindless cleave we’ve got multiple new contenders for talents as well as changing some of them up. I’ll go over my personal suggestions and ideas.
Talents:
Level 15:
I believe Warrior of Elune should stay. It’s a very interesting option for movement heavy fights. The problem currently is that NB does basically the same but generates more AP and the amount of Lunar Strikes given by WoE could be accomplished by smart play in fights to pool Starsurges and wisely time when you refresh dots without losing GCD’s.
WoE also suffered because it’s damage is comparable to treants and in fact during Uldir when NB was never played due to how weak Mastery was it was still worse than FoN on a damage level. However, with those 2 out of the way we can put in new talents that gives WoE it’s niche and also open up more doors.
For the remaining level 15 talents I believe we should reintroduce 2 effects from the legendaries of Legion - Oneths Intuition and The Emerald Dreamcatcher. Both of those were very interesting effects that opens up more doors for gameplay changes. Oneth’s was my personal favorite because this is what a satisfying proc is to me - something that’s quite rare, affects the spells which made me choose the spec in the first place and lets my spec really shine.
The Emerald Dreamcatcher would also be a fairly interesting piece to throw in here. This would leave us in a place (theoretically) where we have an option between some RNG that could really get out of control if it procs back to back and you react to it accordingly. Or if you need that extra movement for a specific fight (Mythic Rastakhan comes to mind during Inevitable End if we’d use a current raid example) or you want that just raw, reliable turret fire.
However, I also have an idea about SotF in place of The Emerald Dreamcatcher. More on that later.
I wont spend much time on the level 30, 45 and 60 rows as this post will already be way, way too long. Personally, I want to see the affinity row reworked (goes for all specs except Resto) because they are so bland and doesn’t live up to it’s promise as it’s never a DPS gain to go Kitty as Balance or Moonkin Form as Feral nor does any ability help Guardian whatsoever (except rare instances of kiting where you can Swiftmend yourself in Mythic+). This row should be expanded as the shapeshifting nature of Druids should be a core strength, but it is not in combat.
However, I do believe it has value for Resto in it’s current state. Catweaving is some of the most fun I’ve had in Mythic+ and you can also go Balance if you want. Both passives are beneficial and the added gameplay flows very well with Resto’s HoT based gameplay.
The level 60 row is also rather redundant as this could be expanded and simply have the CC abilities share a CD baseline but it’s not a big deal at all. You just have to adjust the CC you prefer so it’s kinda whatever as every spec have this exact same bland talent row.
Level 75:
For this row I’d like to swap Starlord with Twin Moons. This mostly goes to serve a proper AoE and ST build at the same time. A case can be made to make SotF a level 15 talent in place of The Emerald Dreamcatcher to give Starfall a proper SotF>Twin Moons>Stellar Drift>Fury of Elune type of build. A big issue with the Starfall centric playstyle is that Twin Moons and Stellar Drift currently competes against eachother which makes very little sense.
For my take, Starlord should be removed. I’ll never get behind the /cancelaura macro which Starlord forces upon anyone who wants to maximize their play. That said I know some people really like it and I’m fine keeping it in the level 90 row. Depending on scaling, it might need tuning to be paired with Incarnation OR the haste levels will be too high to make proper use out of and they might balance themselves out.
Level 90:
With Starlord and Twin Moons changing place this row would pan out as Stellar Drift, Starlord and Stellar Flare. Now for me personally I’d like to redesign Stellar Flare. This talent falls into the same category as the current Eclipse does - It’s very unsatisfying. This is a talented, castable, worse Moonfire. That’s the best way to describe it. Numberswise this talent is powerful but I find it redundant to add an extra dot to manage that is weaker than the baseline ones. This is one of the few talents I find to be a chore and forced to use (similar to FoN in m+) rather than “let’s spice up my gameplay with something new!”. This talent is more inline with the TBC style sl/sl lock DoT gameplay, not the modern Balance Druid gameplay.
I’d redesign it in a way in which it instead replaces both Sunfire and Moonfire and inherit both of their strengths except that it should not give AP based on both. Sunfire and Moonfire each generates 3 AP each but I don’t think this talent should reward 6. It should stay at 3. This way it significantly ramps up our damage and gets us going faster. It’s a very simple idea.
Also, as far as it’s interactions with Twin Moons goes - I’d say it keeps the added damage of that talent but not the “twin” moon itself. I think it’d be a bit too powerful if we’d have 2 Sunfire AoE effects going down each GCD in 2 different locations. This talent, while simple in theory could easily become stupidly powerful as you’re not wasting GCD’s on dotting and instead actively getting more AP which then funnels into Starsurges so this ones numbers would have to be taken carefully.
It is also a conscious decision to have Stellar Flare and Stellar Drift compete as combined they’d probably be way too powerful on Fortified weeks.
Level 100:
Both Fury of Elune and New Moon should stay imo. While I deeply miss baseline New Moon I can understand a case to be made for this one to be a level 100 talent to really make your active gameplay different. It’s imo the best designed Balance spell across the board. However the critical flaw here is that it does worse damage than SS and worse AoE (Full Moon) than Fury of Elune does. It also has a longer recharge than FoE and it’s only redeeming quality is it’s slightly higher AP generation.
This is where I want to remove Shooting Stars and reintroduce a new talent, solidifying New Moon as a great ST spell and decent burst AoE when timed right. Right here I would love to add a completely new talent that’s based off how Streaking Stars interacts. For each new damaging spell you deal you either deal small amounts of bonus damage like Streaking Stars does OR you gain a stacking damage buff. This is very similar to Windwalkers Hit Combo I’d imagine and it’s also why I am still glad to this day that Streaking Stars is the go-to Azerite trait (even though I’ve been stuck at 2 for the longest time) because this idea of always changing active spell really embraces what I described above - the “piano” style of a rotation that Balance possess. This is not the usual “press Sinister Strike/Shred 5 times and then dump into AoE or ST” which is present across the board. Because Balance possess Sunfire and Moonfire as well as empowerments this means we essentially have 4 filler/maintenance spells and a passive that benefits this style would go a much longer way to make those spells feel powerful and impactful instead of what we have currently.
To prevent that one from overtaking New Moon like Shooting Stars does currently the tuning has to be on point. This passive (we can name it Piano Stars or some other class fantasy nonsense) should be more about a balance of the active AoE and ST gameplay rather than purely ST (New Moon) or purely AoE (Fury of Elune). Those active options should be stronger in that particular scenario.
At a quick glance I would also suspect this idea works a lot better in a Mythic+ scenario as you’re actively rotating spells with each trashpack and boss encounter where as New Moon/FoE is the heavy hitter boss abilities, however in fights that require more target switching it could be really good in a raid as well.
This is the type of strategy and thinking I want in talents. I don’t want a set template. The same way I always keep Resto Affinity for bursting weeks I want to be able to spice up my gameplay in new ways and playing it well should be rewarding and not this Shooting Stars passive nonsense none of us can control. SS is a great baseline idea, not as a talent simply put.
This would leave us with a talent row something like this:
Level 15: Warrior of Elune, Oneth’s Intuition, Soul of the Forest
Level 30-60 unchanged
Level 75: Twin Moons, Incarnation, The Emerald Dreamcatcher
Level 90: Starlord, Stellar Drift, Stellar Flare
Level 100: New Moon, Fury of Elune, Piano Stars
This could leave multiple builds. Heavy ST focus where any level 15 works, Incarn/ED>Starlord/SF>New Moon/PS and we also have smooth Starfall build with SotF>Twin Moons(Incarnation can also be justified)>Stellar Drift>Fury of Elune.
I can also see a WQ/open world style build using WoE>Twin Moons>Stellar Drift/Flare>FoE/PS.
These are just examples obviously but to make sure that all talents synergizes together rather than what we have right now.
If you stuck by this one then cheers and feel free to share your thoughts/opinions about this post and also what you’ve been thinking of changing. Remember that it’s about leveling up the gameplay of the spec. I think damage and utility wise we’re in a good spot (just make FoN baseline) but it just feels rather boring, especially compared to what we had in Legion.