.

But is it going to be enough? Looking at how things have been entire Wrath I seriously doubt it. Let’s look at all the buffs we’ve got so far in Wrath (ones affecting our PvE DPS).

Patch 3.1 (2009/04/14)

- Eclipse: The benefit to Wrath triggered by casting Starfire has been increased to 30% bonus damage.

- Insect Swarm: The bonus damage from spellpower on this damage-over-time ability has been increased significantly to match similar spells on other classes.

- Celestial Focus redesigned: Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Starfire, Hibernate and Hurricane by 23/46/70% and increases your total spell haste by 1/2/3%.

Patch 3.1.2 (2009/05/19)

- Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Patch 3.2 (2009/08/04)

- Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30-second cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.

Patch 3.3 (2009/12/09)

- Eclipse: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect
firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cooldown for each type of Eclipse. In addition,
Eclipse now grants a 40% critical strike chance to Starfire and 40% increased damage to Wrath,
up from 30%.

Patch 3.3.2 (???)

- Earth and Moon: This talent now increases your spell damage by 2/4/6% (Up from 1/2/3%)

Well at least it’s a good buff. And the fact that we’re getting attention keeps my hopes up. Recent Blizzard developer chat had couple good questions and answers:

Q: Any plans on looking at Balance Druids, in particular to Eclipse procs? RNG sometimes is detrimental to our dps.
A: We don’t mind the RNG aspect that much per se, but losing an important proc because it happened at the wrong time (say just before you moved) is a problem. We have a pretty cool solution for Cataclysm if we can make it work. It makes Eclipse cooler but also gives Balance more of a kit in general.

Q: Both balance druids (moonkin) and elemental shaman feel like their dps is falling behind in Icecrown Citadel. Any damage boosts for these hybrid casters currently planned?
A: We have small buffs coming in the next patch. We’ll see where they are after that when more encounters are open (including the hard modes) and once more players have tier sets and higher gear in general. We have no problem buffing them more if we need to.

If/when more buffing is needed I hope they don’t take too much time with it. I need the DPS increase now when we’re still working our way through the content… not when we already overgear everything.

And what comes to cooler Eclipse… well. I certainly hope so.

Maybe one day… I’m not incredible DPS fanatic so to speak. I’ll do my best that will hopefully be enough. If I’m at 7th or so in DPS done then I’d be pretty satisfied. Right now that’s obviously not the case and I’m really not sure how I should feel about it. On the other hand I feel like I am doing something wrong but I’m also aware the class is working far from ideal. Meh.

There is no such thing as perfect class, each one has some weakness(es). Which is fine by me but some things are just plain horrible and I can’t understand why steps have not been taken to correct them. Or maybe there is something in the works but I seriously doubt we’ll see anything before Cataclysm. Here’s two things that piss me off the most.

Eclipse

In Burning Crusade the casting rotation for balance druid was very simple; dots up, spam Starfire. It was boring but it had predictability and control. Then along comes the pre-WotLK patch with new talents and Eclipse is introduced. Certainly it made the casting rotation more interesting and you had to pay a little more attention to it but the downsides of the mechanic are just freaking annoying.

Basically the casting rotation is just one big RNG fest now. Only way you can control the proc going off bad time is not to DPS at all beyond applying dots. Also with the rather short duration of the Eclipse proc came debates when you should apply dots during Eclipse or should you do it at all. This is something people still don’t seem to agree about. Thankfully Eclipse improved a little in patch 3.2 by Lunar and Solar procs having their separate cooldowns. That was the end of debate which proc is better and at very least meant applying dots at ‘wrong time’ would not cost you so much DPS as it previously did.

However the fact that you still can’t control it makes it very frustrating mechanic. How well you know the class, push your buttons, what kind of gear you got and how well you minimize movement during encounters are the main contributors to your DPS. But once you perfect that you’re going to hit a wall, and once you bump into it you can’t help to notice how someone has spray painted ‘RNG’ on it with big pink letters. No matter how well you know your stuff a big chunk of your DPS will be determined by pure luck. If it does not proc, or it procs in bad time you’re pretty much screwed. Sure you can stack crit rating like mad to try and maximize the odds but is not going to solve it – you’ll still have awkward times when the bloody thing just is not playing ball. I’d rather have DPS rotation with 10 different spells than this. At least I would feel like I’m in control and can actually do something to improve rather than this.

Movement

Many encounters are heavy on the movement, which is fun, I like those more than tank and spank fights. However high movement fights are the ones where your DPS will be even lower compared to pure DPS classes because they got some ability to help their movement. Warlocks got teleport, mages can blink and hunters got disengage. Sure they’re not perfect but balance druid does not have anything – and neither does other hybrid ranged DPS either (elemental shaman, shadow priest).

I don’t mind being slightly lower on potential damage as hybrid vs the pure but I think the movement fights give unfair advantage to the pure classes. Also with the unpredictability of Eclipse you often just waste most of your proc because you had to run somewhere.

Well aren’t they the unholy duo, Eclipse and movement. Gragh. Often I just feel like I’m dragging this huge iron ball in a chain on my feet while trying to play. What balance druid really lacks in my opinion is the feeling that you’re in control. Too many vital things are just based on pure chance. These two things are what I would really want to see improved in Cataclysm but I don’t have very high hopes about it happening. Let’s keep fingers crossed anyway.

1. Easy to level

One reason why I rolled a druid back in the days was because I read it is a good soloing class. And you know what.. it is. You start off a bit slow with only fraction of your abilities but as you gain levels it only gets easier. You can attack from range, stealth past enemies, heal yourself, travel fast in water and turn into bear form for extra durability. Prior to patch 3.2 and lowering the level required for mounts the travel form also was a nice addition to make your life easier. It’s not completely useless nowadays either though. Since you can use it even while in combat unlike normal mounts it provides means of escape and significant tactical advantage in PvP.

2. Versatility

Great thing about druid is that you can literally play any role; tank, melee dps, ranged dps and healing. There is no other class that can do all that. There was a time when only healing part was end game viable but that is long gone. If you just know your stuff any of these roles can be done well enough. Granted the DPS part is somewhat behind of the pure classes but not so far that you should feel bad about it.

3. You provide tons of buffs to others in your group

Many players might not like playing druid enough to do it themeselves but they will love you for playing one.

Basic things every druid has:

Gift of the Wild + Imp. Mark of the Wild
One of the best buffs in game. Personally I think it’s 2nd only to the paladin Blessing of Kings. And once they change how stats work in Cataclysm it is going to be even more amazing.

Innervate
Surely very welcome to any caster. If you don’t need it yourself there’s always someone who does.

Rebirth
Someone is bound to die… but have no fear.. you’ll be there to res him so he can die again. Err.. no it came out right I think. Just don’t die yourself.

Thorns
Used on tanks but how much it contributes is another thing. Last I checked tanks haven’t had any problems generating aggro. Oh well.. it’s there anyway.

Balance druid:

Moonkin Aura + Imp. Moonkin Form
Everyone loves to crit. And with increased haste maybe crit even sooner?

Improved Faerie Fire
Getting the hit cap is annoying task and every little bit of hit you can leave out from your gear is more stuff invested on DPS.

Earth and Moon
Simply amazing increase to your caster DPS.

Restoration druid:

Tree of Life
Other healers love to heal for more and rest love to receive more heals. Win win all the way.

Feral druid:

Leader of the Pack + Imp. Leader of the Pack
Melee loves to crit too. And free heals? Wehey.

Quick note about these… my experience about Feral and Resto is very limited so if I am missing something please feel free to correct me on comments.

4. Easy to learn but challenging to master

When you look at the basics on any guide it’s pretty obvious there isn’t much to playing a druid. However from experience I have to say I’ve bumped into more medium level players than high end. Not really sure why… and yes I can be totally wrong here. This is just the impression I’ve got. You can read and pick up the basics in 5 minutes but I guess executing it is still difficult. Plan is only as good as person seeing it through.

5. Rich lore and representation

If you’re into lore there’s bucketloads of it in WoWWiki and I could make a whole post or two from it so let’s leave it to that.. for now. Representation? In addition to player controlled ones you can bump into druids just about anywhere. Do quests for them and even grind reputation for them. We even got our own zone in Moonglade and the holiday event Lunar Festival is hosted by druids. Remember Silithus back at the very late vanilla? Druids. Who did you have to do stuff with in order to repair close to Serpentshrine Cavern? Druids. Who set forth the killing blow on Archimonde before he could steal the power of Nordrassil and use it against whole Azeroth? Malfurion Stormrage, and yes he was, is, a druid.

6. Interesting class quests

It’s shame you do not have to do them anymore because they’re very well done. Even the infamous Trial of the Sea Lion. Yes it sent you to literally to other side of the world but man what an adventure it was back in the days. Personally I had never been to Westfall or anywhere near it until I got this. Traveling there really showed me the world. And almost made me drown when I chose to swim from Wetlands instead of walking… good times.

In Burning Crusade we got the quest for Swift Flight Form which was the best and the most epic quest I’ve ever done. You got to fight all these bosses and really use your abilities to the fullest if you wanted to be able to solo them. Then you ended it all with a highlight in Sethekk Halls. Another memorable thing at least for me was the tauren woman in Nagrand. She was so nice.

7. You get to stand out from other druids

Big problem with gear nowadays is that eventually everyone will look same. With the shapeshift forms changing based on your hair/skin color at least you can get some diversity. For now this is only treat of the ferals but eventually balance and resto will get their share too. Let’s just hope it’s sooner than later. At least the poor resto druids could really use a makeover.

8. More /dance moves than any other class

Balance and resto druids get 4 and feral 3. Counted cat and travel form only as one since it’s the same thing. Only other class getting more than 1 is shaman.

9. We’re all family here

This is interesting social bit what I should talk about in more detail someday. There seems to be some sort of honor among druids thing going on with druids of opposite factions. At least I’ve got tons of lovely emotes from Horde druids every now and then. Maybe all this Horde vs. Alliance rubbish doesn’t apply, at least so heavily, on druids. How can you fight against each other when the universe is going to hell in a hand basket. Rubbish.

10. Good gear availability

In theory anyway. Feral druid shares loot with rogues, balance and resto with each other. Mostly the itemization is just poor at least for a balance druid and makes you turn to cloth. But in all fairness there’s always few really nice non-set items that pop with new content. Like Boots of the Unreleting Storm and Leggings of the Awakening from ToC 25 and their heroic versions.

Here is a longish post about my career as balance druid from beta to present. Especially the early levels were rather interesting and maybe some veterans recognise themeselves on similar past.

For a little more insight on how things used to be I dug up some old talent trees, beta 8 and 2.0.3. Instead of listing all talents here and making really long post even longer I made a separate (rough) page for them, just click this link to view them.

First of all I love elves – did not play much else in Warcraft 3 – so it had to be something what they can be. Warrior, hunter, rogue, priest, druid. Ending up with druid was probably because I already had a fixation to that type of stuff from my real life. I’ve done a fair share of studying and reading about nature-based religions and witchcraft. There’s something in the mysticism and magick I find very intriguing. So, druid it is.

Back in the beta when I started playing I can honestly say I did not have much clue about what I was doing, how game mechanics work etc. Pretty much I always just went with what felt nice and just cope with that. That’s how I ended up picking balance tree – it felt the most appealing to me. I liked the offensive spellcasting and that was the only tree that boosts them. I suppose at that point it was not so important how practical my spec was as long as I enjoyed playing – and I did.

I’ve always thought playing a druid is very easy, it is a versatile class with options to just about anything. You can attack from range, heal when needed and you’re not bad in close combat either. Of course later you have to pick one part where you really excel but at early leveling phase the gap between all three is very small.

The way I played obviously prefered the range. Open with Starfire, followed by Moonfire, Entangling Roots and another Starfire – Wrath when SF was not available (pre lvl 20). And then the funny part; finish the last few health points by smacking the mob with melee weapon. Well hey there used to be confusing talent called Weapon Balance that increased your melee weapon damage by 10% – not that I remember did I actually spec into it. Using melee for the last few health points saved mana which was probably the main factor, same as you’d wand the last bit. Also using cat form for stealthing past mobs was something I did a lot.

What comes to gear I had no clue, absolutely none. If I could get intellect I’d go for it but beyond that nothing. Heh, most driving factor for choosing gear was pretty much how it looked. So I ended up using gear that was very old for my level but man I looked good!

My first instance ever was Blackfathom Deeps during the beta. This is when I found the aspect of the game I would come to love above all else; team playing. It’s a whole new level of gameplay when you have to fill different roles with other people to achieve a goal what you could not do by yourself. That felt absolutely epic. And look at those shiny rewards. Blue items?! Woah. Getting the Rod of the Sleepwalker was truly something.

Speaking of filling different roles in group. I did not even think I should join specificaly as damage dealer. Rather just do what was needed – if I was only person capable of healing then I just healed. Nobody even ever asked am I specced for it. Not that it would matter at early stage but still. I might have tossed the occasional Starfire or Moonfire but other than that I pretty much sticked to healing.

As time passed, beta turned into retail and levels went up it came time for bigger instances. Stratholme, Scholomance and Blackrock Spire. Challenge went up as did group size. UBRS with 15 people was a whole new level of gameplay for me. Eventually they turned the group sizes down a little, Stratholme into 5 instead of 10 and Blackrock Spire into 10 instead of 15. At first that felt somewhat annoying because I enjoyed the gaming on larger scale so much but it also turned the difficulty up so in the end I think it was for the best.

I had been in a small guild since level 20ish and by the time I was at late 50s we merged with a bigger guild. Bigger number of members meant a shot at raiding and more of that epic feeling. 40 person groups? Jeez. At that time it was of course the legendary Molten Core.

I was still going with balance spec but healing in raids, and only buying healer loot. Just as before I had no problem with this. Mostly I was just grateful I was allowed to keep my spec and experience the wonders of raiding.

Getting into raiding wasn’t all for the best though. Until now there was no judging people based on how they were specced but after I got to raiding there was always few people who would take every chance to pick on it. Of course it didn’t feel nice but ultimately I just didn’t care – I was having a blast with raiding so I am not going to let few people drive me off. Not that it justifies such behaviour but obviously the balance tree was utter crap at that time. But also life was simpler. For a druid the spec did not ultimately determine how you could play – it was the gear. Even the resto druids in our guild had couple among them who were specced high enough to feral tree to get the Heart of the Wild. Mostly you just lost the Innervate if you did not go mainly resto, nothing else.

Until now I did not really have items with spell damage since all leather with some exceptions had only healing on them. The AQ patch brought some amazing items I could bid on without having to feel kinda dirty about it. Leggings of Immersion from the first boss in AQ40, Gloves of Ebru from the bug family and the Southwind’s Grasp from AQ20. I also ended up with Genesis Shoulderpads and Genesis Boots. Before this the only item with spell dmg I had was Staff of Dominance.

This was truly a time of wonders. And even more followed when (after I nagged about it) guild leadership decided to drop the class restrictions on old instance loot. This meant Robe of Volatile Power, Ring of Spell Power and Zandalarian Hero Charm for me. Caching! Spice that up with Libram of Focus and Zandalar Signet of Mojo and you’re rocking.

Suddenly I had a spell damage gear and this inspired me to get back to the thing where I could play my spec: PvP. And I did that a lot. Hours and hours.. and I don’t think I was that bad at it. Back then there was no cross-server battlegrounds so you really got to know your opponents and remember the nasty ones. Makes me wonder did anyone learn to recognise me. I sure as hell gulped every time I saw a specific warrior, shaman or mage. Eventually I was a regular sight on some premade groups and those guys accepted me for what I was without any further comments. Thank you for that, truly.

I don’t remember it but I probably fainted when I saw the talent changes and spec specific tier sets. At that time I still did not know was it good enough to valid me a raid spot as DPS but it surely looked promising and I was determined to do my damnest to try.

Comparing from where I came, leveling in TBC was a joke. I don’t mean it would have been boring or anything.. just easy – my druid pretty much annihilated everything on her way. Well, this again looked promising but what about playing in instances then. Pretty much the same really, well I would not use such an extreme term as ‘annihilate’ here but new talents and gear proved the DPS was high enough.

It wasn’t all red wine and prawns (or would you prefer milk and honey?) though. This is the time when I first noticed a decrease in quality of pugs and started to avoid them at all costs (nowadays I don’t pug at all). Also I noticed some of the fellow balance druids weren’t that connected either. Of course there is bad players no matter the class and spec but this was the first time I actually paid attention to it. Expansion also spawned a whole army of new balance druids. Some of them I knew had been resto or feral before – grr! In the original game it felt like the balance druids were somewhat of a secret society. It honestly felt I knew each one on the server and they were so few you did not even need all fingers to count them. And now a sudden boom in numbers.. I felt like a sellout. Heh.. it’s just so funny, a while ago majority could not care less and radicals spit over their shoulder three times when you walked past. I am not saying you have to walk trough broken glass as rite of passage to becoming a ‘real’ balance druid or anything. I just found it funny how people changed. That was not very well expressed wasn’t it? Meh… Look, a flying kodo!

New expansion did not bring anything game breakingly exciting. New talents were a buff yes and the casting rotation got more interesting with Eclipse. Inscription and glyphs made it possible to refine the aspect of the game you had your focus on – PvE vs PvP.

Speaking of buffs. During WotlK so far… first they buffed Insect Swarm. And now in the upcoming patch 3.2 Eclipse will get a significant buff. I hear other classes complaining about nerfs all the time but what about us, balance druids. I don’t even remember when there ever would have been a nerf. Well during TBC the Moonfire idol did get a nerf but that wasn’t because of us, but rather because of resto druids abusing it on arenas, and it also got changed back later. Glyph of Starfire used to increase Moonfire duration indefinetly but I think that was a bug. Other than those two ‘nerfish’ things I can’t think of anything. While it’s nice you’re not getting nerfs I can’t help to think are we just constantly below others so much. That can’t be good either. Would be funny to see Blizz overdo a buff to us and then tone it down. Ideally of course I would want balance DPS to be on target but I suppose that’s impossible no matter what class you’re talking about.

Expansion is still fairly young but I haven’t enjoyed it as much as I did enjoy previous one. I suppose everything turns old at some point. But one thing I can say for sure: playing over the years and getting to this point has really been an adventure of a lifetime. Things you’ve done and shared with other people is just undescribable. There has been bad times too but still I would not change anything.. not really. Even some pointless drama enriches the experience. Hopefully this journey will continue few more years.

Last but not least I would like to thank three different types of players who really made the game so wonderful for me.

* old guild leadership who did not enforce specs.
* my PvP buddies who were the first to truly accept me.
* all my friends over the years who supported me – you know who you are.

Well that came out kinda long. Did someone actually read it? If so, /hugs for you.