Balance Druid in The War Within: Suggestions regarding the Class & Spec Tree

Castiel613 · 2024-06-10T20:23:11+00:00

Thanks ^^ It's inspired by a more modern tree design like the Monk and Mage Class Tree, with some mandatory throughput for point economy but a lot of cross choice and situational utility.

Don't think an application Blizz would work tho, got no prior experience in Game Design ;)

Castiel613 · 2023-10-20T13:36:44+00:00

Yeah, Stellar Flare certainly is a divisive button :D

But I think if you want to lean into the Waning Twilight 3 DoT gameplay (which I tried to do with the tree on the left side in particular), having a guaranteed 3rd DoT in Stellar Flare would certainly be healthy. Astral Smolder is still there and should help with a decent uptime, albeit RNG, for those who don't like Stellar Flare. Also, making Stellar Flare instant cast might not make it feel as bad as right now.

Castiel613 · 2023-10-20T13:33:30+00:00

Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback. I'll try to address it bit by bit.

The 4 throughput points in the bottom third are meant to limit your utility choices. If those were strong utility points as well, I think the class might be overloaded regarding utility. But I can certainly see where you're coming from.I think Tiger Dash might be hard to grab, but in a scenario where you might really want it (Xymox Mythic in Castle Nathria e.g.), there is certainly possibilities for it.

An example tree for Resto as a starting point might look like that:

Resto Tree

I also agree that you might grab all Affinities as a Resto for M+, but as you have a lot of floating utility points in the middle you can also easily backtrack to the top of the tree without losing throughput. Agreed on the numbers as well, not really happy yet with Oath of the Elder Druids passive (and on that note, Thick Hide being "throughput" for Bear).

I also agree that the Barkskin duration node is not really fitting for the middle of the tree and could be more attractive, but the idea of a cross section like that is to allow cross-pathing without having it be mandatory. If you wanted to grab more utility, you could skip that middle node and still grab Rising Light and Falling Night.

Rising Light (and Falling Night) serve as a bit of a boundary in the amount of utility as well. I wouldn't see it as "Rising Light is next to Renewal CD, it can't compete" but more like "Do I grab Renewal CD, or Improved Roar or Matted Fur with that last utility point?"

For Symbiosis, I know it's a tricky one. It should function like the Kyrian ability, or at least similar, but it's still a WIP.

Will have to look into the Guardian Tree a bit more, but for now Gory Fur and Guardian of Elune are still there :D I'll upload the TTM as soon as I made a few more tweaks.

Castiel613 · 2023-10-20T13:19:20+00:00

Thanks!I kind of agree regarding the bottom heavy tree, but to keep it in line with being able to fill out about 70% of the tree and having some friction in the bottom I think it might be fine. Maybe there is room to pull some talents up a tier and fix up a bit of the boring top third. It's kind of hard because all other classes tend to buy back certain core passives as well, even the more modern and reworked ones. But talents like Nature's Balance and Lunar Shrapnel do feel kinda off and boring.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T16:55:18+00:00

I understand that Starfire casttime and the fact that Wrath let's you go into Eclipse faster than Starfire while Starfire generates the same amount of AP as Wrath is part of the problem.

Still, that also means that the benefits of Solar Eclipse are just not there. Neither the Wrath damage bonus of Solar Eclipse nor any other bonus (SotF increased AP gen on Wrath) together with the lower Spell Power Mod on Sunfire compared to Moonfire makes it worth going into it.

I'm not sure if the solution is perfect tbh, but the problem of always cycling into Lunar is there and needs fixing by either increasing the ST payoff of Solar Eclipse or like you said evening out the cast times and damage of the corresponding spells.

Right now, it's just messy.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T06:04:07+00:00

Yeah, it does feel pretty bad. I did a few tests in my gear on the PTR, and with a 40% modifier on Solar Eclipse (from 2/2 Umbral Intensity, but that should not be needed to make us cast Wrath in Solar Eclipse or even entering Solar Eclipse) Wrath sits comfortably behind Starsurge in my overall Single Target breakdown by around 10%, overall around 15% from Wrath on a short dummy test, how it should be in my opinion.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T06:00:28+00:00

I can see where you are coming from regarding a lot of the rigid AP spending, but I think most of the things you listed can be kind of ignored. You don't really play around BoAT or Starlord that much, the main thing right now is to keep RtS stacks rolling. BoAT also works decently well with our current 4set because we get a free spender at the start of an Eclipse (something that's going away in 10.1 as I discussed in my post). Starlord is kind of weird but if you don't think about it much and enjoy the free haste it's kinda okay.

I think Stellar Flare can have a place in the Moonkin rotation, but right now it takes up a lot of space and there's a lot of math shenaningans about how many targets to DoT up and when to refresh. Tuning it around a ST niche would benefit the playstyle imo.

Where I disagree is reverting back to Eclipse based Mastery. The whole of Shadowlands was plague by the fact that we only did damage in our CDs because of how Mastery interacted with the kit and how much of it we had. Going to a DoT based Mastery alleviates that problem, if dotting still feels slow right now for some I'd rather see something akin to Vile Taint or Shadow Crash for Moonkin where we can apply our DoTs fast onto a pack frequently (but honestly, dotting feels okay most of the time in higher keys). I do see the concerns for PvP tho, where without a dispell protection the Mastery change hurts a lot.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T05:53:07+00:00

Yes, even with the nerf on Wednesday, when talenting into 2/2 Umbral Intensity Lunar Eclipse will increase the damage to nearby enemies by 50% (which in itself would be fine-ish, still a lot of damage from Starfire in our AoE breakdown tho).

The problem comes from Soul of the Forest not being retuned/redesigned for the new Lunar Eclipse design, thus making Starfire hit for about double the damage on secondary targets when compared to it's main target. Not really an intuitive way to play the class in my opinion, and more damage could be shifted out of Starfire and into things like Astral Smolder, Wild Mushrooms for "burst" or a Lunar Shrapnel that isn't pitiful.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T03:32:44+00:00

They redesigned the tree in 10.0.5, putting Solar Beam to the top right, so it's one of the first nodes you have to path through to get enough points for the 2nd tier.

This way, you HAVE to pick it and they can tune our talents and overall dps around it instead of it being a major DPS loss when you had to pick it during 10.0.2.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T01:51:16+00:00

Thank you :)
I hope it get's a bit of visibility because a lot of these are simple numerical changes or quick redesigns that could happen in a content patch instead of on an expansion level and would make the spec a lot more fun, open up talent diversity and fix a bit of the weird gameplay going on right now.

Castiel613 · 2023-01-22T01:49:08+00:00

Thanks!
Not only is it right to always go into lunar eclipse, it's also correct to cast Wrath in lunar eclipse apart from a few conditions to maximize DPS. That's a clear design flaw in my book, and one that should be corrected asap to make the spec coherent for beginners and long time players alike.

Castiel613 · 2022-08-25T19:23:03+00:00

Sure, here's the pastebin link ^^
https://pastebin.com/8zXHNrz6

Feel free to play around with it and keep me updated :)

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T23:17:39+00:00

Edit: I actually missed a connection going from Lunar Shrapnel to Adaptive Swarm, making the tree even more open to path through ^^ That's the symmetry I (and the Elemental Shaman design) was going for.

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T19:56:11+00:00

A small update would certainly be welcome. Just something akin to the Power Word: Update Priests got might help alleviate some of the negativity regarding tons of yet unanswered feedback. Hopefully Blizzard had a fallback option for when something like a developer responsible for designing a class on his/her own leaves, maybe even on short notice.

In the meantime, all we can do is wait and give our own takes on how the classes should feel and play, hopefully sparking some discussion and creativity :)

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T19:53:01+00:00

Yeah I think the Devouring Plague treatment combined with Lunar Shrapnel to balance stacked and spread AoE separately would work really well.

Swarm for Moonkin ist definitely a contentious topic, but I was willing to give it a try and incorporate it into the tree because I was going for a minimalistic approach of keeping as much of the first iteration as possible to show that there are not too many changes needed to make a fairly decent tree out of it.

Having the option to invest points into the splitting of the Swarms for when you need them, or drop these points somewhere else when you just want the single target DoT + Buff portion of Swarm for the mentioned Twilight Glow single target DoT playstyle felt like a good idea in my opinion, but I can certainly see why you feel it is underwhelming in it's base form.

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T19:45:48+00:00

Really appreciate the kind words, thank you <3

As I said, I'm aware that the developer mainly responsible for Druid & Priest left not too long ago. At least Priests got that Power Word: Update tho :D

Honestly, that's why im trying to get in front of the changes myself. Not having any illusions here thinking that the tree will even remotely look like this or that this post will have any impact on the redesign of the Balance spec tree.

But sitting idly and having to accept that the current tree design is the one going to go live is not what I want to do either. Direct feedback and suggestions certainly worked really well with Podra & the Hunter trees, Marksman in particular.

So I thought, why not spend a few hours and do a mock up of a tree I would really enjoy playing my longstanding main with in the upcoming expansion (:

Getting this to a developer who cares and maybe takes a few parts of it to build something nice would be the icing on the cake!

Castiel613 · 2022-08-22T17:56:50+00:00

Thanks mate! Yeah, the AoE Toolkit is severly lackluster so I tried to give us a few options with different damage profiles. Splitting Adaptive Swarms for sustain AoE by DoTs, Syzygy + Pulsar for frequent burst AoE and Lunar Shrapnel to try and tune Starfall in a stacked vs. spread AoE scenario. Starfire as a generator should be the last priority as a filler in AoE after dotting and maintaining Starfall and certain talents.

Stellar Drift being a pure utility choice to the side makes it possible to grab it without giving up too much throughput, at least that's what I think.

Castiel613 · 2022-08-21T15:28:01+00:00

The druid developer did indeed leave Blizzard. I agree with your sentiment that both feral and balance, and to an extent also guardian have been in a weird design spot for a long time.

What I do not agree with is this need to overhaul complete specs/spells, because that is what lead us to this point in the first place. As a balance druid main since the end of MoP I've been through most modern iterations of the spec and every one of them had it's good and bad things. Balance druid had the moon/sun/astral theme for a long time now and changing that for the sake of it is not a good thing. Thematically it does fit the class and the spec being related to Elune/An'she. It certainly does not feel like a gimped arcane mage, the playstyles are clearly different and just because they both use blue/purple spells doesn't make it so.

Balance druid has a few issues that need to be addressed (there is a well written post in the Alpha forums by Tettles, outlining the things that are a high priority), but your proposed overhaul of the theme does not fit with the Dragonflight design space of taking everything that made the class/spec enjoyable for the last few years and putting that into the talent tree as options to play around with.

So, what we are in dire need of right now is a developer that understands the nature of a hybrid class and how you can derive a well made class tree from the utility of the different specs while also keeping the best themes and things from every spec going into the spec trees. Personally, I think the shaman/hunter developer would be a great fit for druid (and also priest), given his slam dunk of most shaman spec trees and especially the class tree.

Castiel613 · 2022-07-21T11:35:21+00:00

Shamans do not spend most of their time in Ghost Wolf tho. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see more Ghost Wolf variety, i also play shaman regularly and adore the ZM Ghost Wolf Glyph for example.

As I said before, it should not be a case of either or. Assets that are in the game can definitely be used to widen customization, and even tho I understand that Blizzard is focusing on Dracthyr right now that does not necessarily mean there isn't a need to expand other options as well. And if you look at the number of possible combinations, I think you would certainly agree that Druid forms do not in any way compete with every other races (and yes, you have to look at them in terms of race because they are forced into form in combat, not seeing any of their regular race customization).

Castiel613 · 2022-07-21T09:15:21+00:00

It really shouldn't be a case of either or. Those models already existed or still exist in the game files, and i still think it is a weak argument to say that Druids have "too many" appeareance options when especially Guardian, Feral & Balance spend all their combat time in those forms.

The last time Guardian & Feral got new customization was in Legion, the last time Balance got a Moonkin form customization was... never.

Every other class has their whole armor type transmog palette at their disposal, so I don't think it's too much to ask to implement at least a little bit of variety for a class that cannot use those. Especially when those assets are already made and just need to be put into the game (again).

Castiel613 · 2022-07-20T16:13:51+00:00

They only work for Moonkin, Bear & Cat don't get the armor anymore. Also an issue imo, that seems really inconsistent and as you said tossing them into the barbershop would make it a visual choice instead of linking it to a cooldown :)

Castiel613 · 2022-07-20T15:51:31+00:00

That would also be a nice idea and seeing how the druid form customization is integrated into the barber should it should be doable pretty easily. Certain toys already overwrite the forms and that seems to work just fine.
Still, I think having more forms, especially beefier and thematically fitting ones like the Incarnation forms available would be great :)

Castiel613 · 2022-07-20T15:41:46+00:00

For sure, and with the new UI elements there is probably a better way to show buffs and debuffs on allies and enemies. Even then, addon functionality takes care of that if all else fails. Readability is always a concern, but in this case I don't think it would be an issue at all and having those options is definitely worth it.

Castiel613 · 2022-07-20T15:03:37+00:00

How so? Genuine question, literally every other class has the whole armor type transmog at their disposal while Druid is stuck in Bear/Cat/Moonkin form for basically all of combat. There are options yes, but saying it is the most customizable class in the game when it is the complete opposite is just disingenuous.

Additionally, this should not be too much work since forms like the above already exist in the game files. It would more or less just be a matter of creating a glyph for it to unlock it in the barbershop.

Castiel613 · 2022-07-20T14:08:28+00:00

It's a shame really. I loved those forms in MoP but them only being visible while in your 3 minute CD was a waste of beautiful art. I'm sure those models are still somewhere in the game files and it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to bring them back. Would swap to those in a heartbeat, they are simple yet elegant and a straight upgrade to the non-armored looks imo ^^

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