A Look Back at Balance Druid in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial
14.02.2024 - 01:37
/ wowhead.com
/ Dragonflight
/ Wishlist
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.
Our Guide Writers have reviewed their specs throughout Dragonflight and share wishlists of what they'd like to see in the War Within. Check out all of our released editorials below.
Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists
Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK
Havoc DHVengeance DH
Feral DruidGuardian Druid
Restoration Druid
Augmentation EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker
BM HunterMM HunterSurvival Hunter
Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage
Mistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk
Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin
Holy PriestShadow Priest
Assassination RogueSubtlety Rogue
Elemental ShamanEnhancement Shaman
Restoration Shaman
Affliction Warlock
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