The 20th Anniversary patch has some changes brought to the Balance Druid specialization! This patch mostly contains spec talent tree updates to Balance Druid where a few of the 2 point nodes are being consolidated into 1 point nodes,
Starfall has been made baseline, and there are a few brand new nodes as well! The spec will fundamentally be the same, so if you were hoping for a full rework of core mechanics then this will be disappointing for you. However, you were already playing Balance Druid and enjoying the spec then it is improving (kinda). This will be a common talking point below, but it seems unlikely that you will be playing any of the new and shiny talents that they added in the 11.0.5 patch.
In this article, I'll discuss some of the changes in 11.0.5, how they affect Balance, as well as some concerns and issues.
What is Changing in 11.0.5
We'll start with what was changed on the 11.0.5 patch. You can check out the
notes here for a comprehensive change list. The TLDR of this article is: If you are already playing Balance Druid, and you find it fun then it will probably be a slight improvement. The Celestial Alignment changes are fantastic. If you were hoping for some sweeping overhaul, this might be a bit disheartening.
New and Changed Talents
On the patch, you will immediately notice that there is a few nodes that have been added.
The two most interesting nodes here are
Whirling Stars and
Sunseeker Mushroom. Whirling Stars changes
Celestial Alignment to a 100 second cooldown, but the duration is reduced to 12 seconds. This can be kind of interesting for Keeper of the Grove Single Target builds with
Control of the Dream. The ability to be able to flex around where your Celestial Alignment is pressed is interesting. Only weird thing could be where you're pressing
Convoke the Spirits relative to Celestial Alignment since you are now desynced on 3 abilities (
Force of Nature,
Convoke the Spirits, and
Celestial Alignment). Sunseeker Mushrooms is a completely passive version of
Wild Mushroom. This will help you maintain
Waning Twilight with the nerf to
. Mushrooms in general are a pretty cool and satisfying node, so having them in any capacity is nice.
There are also some nodes that have been edited. I am only adding the most important ones and a small note to what has changed.
Starfall moving baseline is an awesome change. The ability to have Starfall for all situations is a positive one. There were a few spots in Nerubar Palace in which you would talent Starfall without any of the supporting nodes, and now you will now just have +1 node in a lot of AOE situations. The remainder of the node changes are welcome, and condensing down 2 point nodes into 1 point nodes is something that a lot of specs received over the course of Beta that Balance Druid did not. It helps modernize the spec tree a bit and put it in line with other classes.
New Connector Nodes and New Positions
Balance Druid received some changes in the position of where some of the talents are positioned. In addiation to that they received some new connecting points, making it easier to path through the tree. Some of the most important ones were the
Force of Nature to
Celestial Alignment,
Umbral Intensity to
Starlord, and swapping
Sunseeker Mushroom with
Waning Twilight. Below is a sample talent tree in which you can see these connector nodes and get an understanding to where all the new stuff was placed.
What isn't Changing in 11.0.5
Now for the dooming. The changes coming in 11.0.5 are likely a nerf in all content. Around .5-1% in ST and 3-5% in AoE. We get some new talents in the middle of the tree meant to synergize with Starweaver and Touch the Cosmos, but these talents are currently performing worse and are mostly untakeable because of better throughput talents in that section of the tree.
Playstyle
The playstyle isn't changing at all. There were a few things that changed about Balance Druid talent wise, but none of them change how the spec functions. A big complaint with Moonkin was post removal of
Primordial Arcanic Pulsar the spec had no payoff with the gameplay. A lot of specs have these burst moments of really cool interactions with their spec, where I would say the curve of Balance Druid fun-wise for a rotation is incredibly flat. Outside of your multi-cooldown stacked opener, there is no moment of satisfaction in the gameplay itself. A lot of the time you're trying to optimize your
, but the issue is that Eclipse doesn't do anything that feels impactful and fun enough. Eclipse was previously our mastery, which made it more important, but it still was just as boring of a mechanic. There are very few times in which players will optimize their Eclipse 100% and be like "that felt great."
The talent selection is more or less the same as it was in 11.0. If you take a look at
this spreadsheet outlining damage gained on a per node basis, you will notice that our capstone nodes are still untakable in most situations. The middle part of the tree is strong, but on a per node basis our tree is relatively weak compared to what it has been in the past. The sample talent build is one that we are likely to play in M+ post 11.0.5. The new talents they added lean into a Starweaver + Touch of the Cosmos synergy with more Solstice uptime feeding into Crashing Star and Orbit Breaker, but they are all untakeable because of better options in that section of the tree.
Talking about Hero Talents a bit, it was assumed Hero Talent reworks were off the table for mid-expansion updates, but Hunter got Dark Ranger changed in the same anniversary patch. Balance Druid is in desperate need of Hero Talent updates. The Keeper of the Grove hero tree, while objectively overkitted on what trees provide, is incredibly boring. It doesn't feel like anything
you do actually impact the trees at all. The
Force of Nature ability is just a bad one to design a full Hero Talent around. Elune's Chosen plays pretty heavily off pre-existing gameplay of Balance Druid and changes very little with how you play, and it also does not feel satisfying to play. Additionally, we have 0 VFX for either of our Hero Trees; we get puffs of dust for Keeper of the Grove or puffs of dust for Elune's Chosen. When I compare it to some of the other classes I've been playing (Shaman, Evoker, and Warlock) our Hero Talents just feel so noticably worse than the others. Diabolist is a great example of what I think Keeper of the Grove could have been, but instead we get some thing that is far less interesting.
Class Tree
I'm not sure I could say much more about the class tree that hasn't been said before. I co-authored
an article with Pumps, Guilty, and Voulk a few months ago talking about the Druid Class tree coming into TWW. A lot of the problems are the exact same with the Druid Class tree even now.
The taxes that you pay in the Druid class tree are just too high. There is a level of missing out on talent points that many other classes don't have, while at the same time you end up putting ~5 points into completely useless nodes. These useless node taxes are incredibly frustrating, and they create a much worse class tree. Defensively, Balance Druid is still one of the worst specs in the game and it feels impossible to live in most situations. Frost Death Knight players have more HP than my Druid in Bear Form. That feels pretty telling on the state of the spec defensively.
