wow Dragonflight Beta Upcoming Balance Druid Changes: September 7th

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There are major changes coming to Balance in the coming weeks of the DF Beta and Blizzard have detailed them below. From a rework of the spec's Mastery and Eclipse, a Starfall redesign, as well as Starsurge and Shooting Stars receiving changes, there's a lot to take in:

September 7 (Source)

Hey there Boomkins,

We are working on the next iteration of the Balance talent tree along with some baseline changes that you should see in the coming weeks. Players will see some of our changes in next week’s build, but the full suite of changes will not be in the Beta until the following week. That said, we want to give you a quick preview in the meantime:

Druid – Balance:

• Mastery: Total Eclipse has been redesigned to the following:
  • Renamed to Mastery: Astral Invocation.
  • “Your Nature spells deal increased damage to targets affected by Sunfire. Your Arcane spells deal increased damage to targets affected by Moonfire.”

The previous design of Eclipse and Mastery: Total Eclipse created a situation where the power of the spec was dictated by Celestial Alignment, allowing for double dipping the mastery bonus. While this is fun, it takes away from the power and feel of the spec outside of cooldowns. With this new Mastery our goal is to further reinforce keeping your DoTs active while continuing to allow for Starsurge, Starfall, and Stellar flare to be able to gain extra benefit from Mastery even outside of cooldowns.

• Eclipse
  • Eclipses no longer occur in alternation.
  • Eclipses no longer reduce casting time.
  • Lunar Eclipse now increases the damage of your Arcane spells by 15%.
  • Solar Eclipse now increases the damage of your Nature spells by 15%.

From reviewing feedback and discussions, we found two common themes for Eclipse: 1) There is a lack of control with the rotation that can feel bad in both single target and AoE. 2) Having to cast 2 unempowered Wraths or Starfires to enter an Eclipse combined with their weaker base power and Starfire’s long cast time is underwhelming. With these changes our goal is to allow you to exit an Eclipse, say Solar, and then re-enter Solar Eclipse by casting 2 Starfires again. We’re also looking at adding talents to improve the feel of casting unempowered Wraths and Starfires between Eclipses.

• Starfall has been redesigned to the following:
  • Instant. Costs 50 Astral Power.
  • “Calls down waves of falling stars at the targeted area, dealing Astral damage over 8 sec.”

We gave a cooldown version of Starfall a chance again for Shadowlands and we don’t feel it has played as well as we had hoped. Having a Starfall that moves with you is awesome and something we had hoped to keep, but for gameplay we feel it’s better to be able to choose to spend additional Astral Power for more Starfalls.

• Improved Starsurge has been removed. Starsurge no longer empowers the damage bonus of active Eclipses.

Improved Starsurge encouraged pooling resources more than we would like and the mechanic was hidden enough for some players to be unaware of the gameplay it encouraged.

• Shooting Stars
  • Has an increased chance to occur.
  • Stellar Flare damage now has a chance to proc Shooting Stars.

While we do not have plans to increase DoT damage, we feel we went too far in toning down Shooting Stars, so we’re looking to allow for it trigger more so that Astral Power generation from DoTs is more noticeable in AoE. Stellar Flare’s lack of gameplay hooks has made it an underwhelming talent choice, so we’re allowing it to trigger Shooting Stars.

This is only a small peek at what we’re working on and by no means a complete change list. Our goal with posting some of our larger and more systemic changes is to gather initial feedback and take that into account when continuing to implement our remaining changes. We appreciate the feedback thus far and look forward to hearing more of your thoughts regarding Balance Druid in the coming weeks.