A Look Back at Balance Druid in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist – Editorial

With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Balance Druid Writer, Tettles, offers a retrospective highlighting Balance’s journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec’s next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.

Balance Druid Retrospective & War Within Wishlist

Dragonflight

Balance Druid has had an interesting journey over the course of Dragonflight. At the beginning of the expansion the spec tree was incredibly different. You were locked into one specific build for raid and a slightly different build for M+. There was also a major dilemma of not being able to take Solar Beam without incurring a 6%-10% damage loss. Whenever 10.0.5 hit we got a rework of the spec tree. This allowed for far more diverse builds just as a whole. Even with this being the case, there are still a few issues that I would like addressed heading into 11.0.

Tuning wise, Balance has been one of the best M+ DPS for the entire expansion. The very strong sustained AOE while losing minimal amounts of Single Target due to talent changes is incredibly nice. On top of that, the spec is largely plug and play with few requirements of being catered to or played around pull wise. Cooldowns in M+ have largely been non-relevant for Balance the entire expansion as Incarnation: Chosen of Elune is more about can you get the full duration on a trash pack / boss. The spec is incredibly tempo based with Primordial Arcanic Pulsar, and if you ever die or misuse a pulsar then you are losing significant damage. The spec also has decently long ramp up time on AOE, so naturally it is worse in low level keys. There was a point in time where we were Stellar Flareing on AOE which further escalated this ramp up time issue, but that has been largely alleviated.

Tuning for raid has been pretty consistent the entire expansion. Moonkin has been one of, if not the absolute, worst single target specs in the game the entire expansion. We have popped off on fights like Council of Dreams or Primal Council, but largely Balance has been incredibly lackluster in raid. Mark of the Wild has been doing its job and still allowing us to be brought in most groups, but there has not been a full expansion or 3 tier stretch in memory that has been worse for Balance Druid. Defensively in raid, Balance has been incredibly poor. A heavy reliance on Bear Form and getting baby sat by your healers in raid is not a satisfying playstyle. Rotationally in raid, the spec is more or less fine. Season 1 with the set bonus was amazing with the decision making in regards to 4pc spending. Since then the rotation has been okay, it isn’t anything to write home about, but it isnt awful.

Balance Druid’s Overall Gameplay

Dragonflight’s Balance Druid gameplay experience has been SIGNIFICANTLY SUPERIOR to BFA and Shadowlands. Both BFA and Shadowlands had non-functional AOE where Starfall has been more or less fixed this expansion. Our Mastery: Astral Invocation was changed as well to affect our DOTs instead of being tied into Eclipse. While this increased our ramp-up time on multi-target, this is still a superior tie in to our Mastery and makes our overall rotation feel better. There have also been some really cool talents introduced this expansion in Wild Mushroom and Orbital Strike. It is unfortunate that neither of these talents have been tuned to the point where they are reasonably playable, but the design of them is really cool.

The current version of Balance is a multi-resource builder spender. You build Astral Power with Wrath or Starfire to spend on Starsurge or Starfall. Additionally you have Eclipse on top of the builder spender model. This is a mini-game where you press specific builders according to your Eclipse. The Eclipse system has been the largest failure for Balance Druid this expansion. There is no cohesion with the Eclipse system and your rotation. Blizzard also added in a lot of talents that work with the Eclipse system, but feel very clunky when talented together. Nature’s Grace, Balance of All Things, Umbral Embrace, Umbral Intensity, and Starlord are all the main offenders of this. They create a weird dynamic where you either want to build with specific spells at specific moments or use spenders in different ways. They pull you in separate directions pretty heavily. In addition to this, the Eclipse system is not very fun. It is important for Balance to have some variance in the rotation beyond just pressing Wrath and Starsurge on Single Target, but this current iteration of Eclipse has been a failure. It is very bland and is not cohesive with the rest of how Balance plays.

The Balance Druid spec tree is okay, but could improve. The largest problem with the spec tree is that we are very reliant on Primordial Arcanic Pulsar for all situations AND it is on a choice node. Pulsar is incredibly polarizing for our kit and contributes a significant damage increase. There are even situations where we need to Cancel Aura or hold the proc by not doing damage in order to make sure it is lined up properly. Pulsar also artificially keeps Incarnation weak as Blizzard won’t let our 3 minute CD feel like a 3 minute CD. Three-minute cooldown classes have been largely pruned to 2 minutes, and 3m cds are really bad for most raid situations. Blizzard also tried to correctly separate the choice node of Orbital Strike and Primordial Arcanic Pulsar, but PVPers complained too much, so we can’t have nice things. Separating Orbital Strike from Pulsar would be an excellent addition to our spec tree.

Class Tree

Please fix it.

I’m sure you’ve seen this comment in all the other Druid retrospective posts, but the Druid class tree is an abomination. The Druid class tree is broken into 3 types of points. There are throughput points, utility / mob control points, and defensive points. There are so many mandatory throughput based points that it is near impossible to to talent utility without a significant survivability decrease. The pathing on the class tree is far too restrictive, and when you need talents like Remove Corruption you end up losing 3 points worth of survivability talents. This works completely different than any other class I have played. Most other classes have 5 “flex” points that they can easily move around, and Druid has 0. Most other classes have ZERO dead-end node choices outside of capstones, but Druid has 8. This creates very rigid structure to the tree and allows very little choice. It has been “reworked” twice during Dragonflight, but it is still a nightmare.

The most recent example for this being terrible for Balance is on a M+ week like Incorporeal. On Incoporeal you want a spell like Hibernate. Additionally you might want a spell like Remove Corruption due to the needs of the dungeon. This means you lose 4 talent points to take 2 abilities. These 4 talent points almost always come from defensive value nodes at the bottom of the tree like Well-Honed Instincts or Ursine Vigor. It’s hard to tell if it is an issue of 4 specs in the class tree or what, but it is significantly worse than any other class I’ve played this expansion.

Value of Defensives

Balance historically has been one of the tankiest specs in the game, and there was a time that Barkskin was considered the best defensive in the game. There has been a significant decrease in this now as Balance is the least tanky spec in the game. If you sort by death’s in raid Balance Druid is BY FAR the worst class at living.

A lot of this comes down to the HORRIBLE passive nodes in the spec tree and no self sustain. As it currently stands Balance Druid does less healing than Mages and Rogues, which are not classes known for their healing. Thick Hide is generically very strong, but it is the only Passive DR node in our class tree. When most other classes have Stamina Nodes + a DR node + other GROUP defensive nodes, this leaves moonkin in a state where it is incredibly squishy versus all damage types. It also puts you in a position where you have to either go Bear Form versus small to medium hits or die. That is an incredibly unsatisfying way to play your defensives as being in Bear Form does not allow you to do damage. On top of this, even if you did want to heal yourself with Regrowth, the spell does around 8% of your health bar per heal cast. This means you’re not outhealing any real incoming damage, and you are completely reliant on your healer.

Conclusion

Balance has been significantly more fun this expansion than it was in both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands in my opinion. With that being the case, it still can improve significantly. A lot of stuff with refining the Eclipse system, fixing class nodes, and just some minor tweaks to our spec tree would go a long way. On top of this, we have an unacceptably low level of survivability compared to other classes. I hope Blizzard really looks at these things going into TWW.

The Hero-Talents that we saw showcased were also about as expected. I have a major problem with the Cenearius’ Might talent as it is controlling our rotation fully. This is similar to the criticism I had above about too many effects stacking with Eclipse in weird ways.

About the Author
Hello, my name is Tettles, and I am currently a Balance Expert in the Dreamgrove. I am a top Mythic+ player, competed in MDI #2, and am a raider in one of the top NA guilds, Vesper – Area 52- Horde – NA. You can find me in the Dreamgrove Discord, on Youtube, or on my Twitch.

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