#1 - Nov. 23, 2011, 2:12 p.m.
Let's get the bad out of the way:
Insect Swarm is no longer a DoT. This really doesn't sit well with me as that now brings us down to having only 1 DoT. I'm not sure what this change is supposed to fix. Boomkins always excelled at multi-target fights because we could keep our DoTs up on more than one target. Taking away half our DoTs means that we aren't going to be able to keep up with all the other DoT classes out there. If this sort of change is to work you can't just apply it to one class.
Nature's Grace is down from 15% haste to 1%. Umm... what? As any boomkin with raiding experience knows, Nature's Grace was a big part of maximizing our DPS. The combination of losing Nature's Grace and Insect Swarm is a pretty huge loss.
Moonkin Aura now gives crit instead of haste. This just seems like a change for the sake of changing things, which I believe should be frowned upon. I don't see why this would be implemented at all.
Revive gone? I'm not sure if that's just a typo or something. I don't see a reason to remove our out of combat rez. Not the biggest deal as we have the guild perk rez and a battle rez.
Lunar Shower is now mandatory. I already made a thread on this topic so I won't go into detail. Bottom line is there is a reason nobody specs into it, it is a terrible design and we have made it clear we do not want this.
Some of the good changes:
Starfall's cooldown resets when entering Lunar Eclipse. I like this idea as it will certainly help enhance our ability to AoE in both eclipses. If Hurricane becomes arcane damage it will further help us in this situation.
Symbiosis is our new spell. This genuinely seems like it will be really cool. My hats off to whoever thought of this, I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of fun I can get into with this.
As a note on the talents, I don't feel like there is much selection for balance druids. There is nothing interesting to pick up in tiers 2,3, & 5. Meanwhile tier 4 has 3 talents that I would love to pick up. I'm not saying these talents need to change, but maybe mix up the tiers they are on so that balance druids can pick up more of the interesting ones.
I know it seems as if I'm saying yay to all the buffs and nay to all the nerfs but it's a little more complicated than that. I understand the need for nerfs sometimes, but these nerfs bring a big change to our gameplay. Balance druids are a DoT class, there is no need to change that. Lunar Shower alone changes a lot of peoples play style in a negative way.
There is still plenty of time for things to change, but I just wanted to get some feedback out there from my point of view.
