How are fellow Balance Druids feeling in regards to HFC encounters?

[Deleted]

Hi 5/13 Mythic here and wondering how everyones thoughts are on Balance in HFC?

Personally I'm finding us to be quite ineffective in some of the scenarios, especially with rings becoming more common.

Assault: On paper sounds like a dream, but stuff is dying before I get half my starfall off at best in heroic. In mythic (since I don't have the seed yet), I'm using surge more so I can't cleave as much as I'd like.

Reaver: No complaints, its one of the only fights in here I feel its a fair test in DPS.

Kormrok: Hands die in 1 cataclysm or what ever warlocks do, or combat rogue shinanigans. I end up just single targeting, cant help feel that they may as well bring a mage/lock over me both in heroic and mythic.

Council: Again pretty much no complaints, we're very effective in 3 target scenarios (#PrayForFelRageOnMe). Again if I had the Seed I could probably parse WAY higher. My only real complaint is the timing on Windwalk is about 20s before 3m CDs which is very irritating! :P

Kilrogg: Meh annoying fight tbh, small adds don't last long enough to warrant a starfall or DoTs unless we're getting overwhelmed which isn't supposed to happen. God like in the other room though.

Gorefiend: Annoying. Can't use CDs on the pull because the Feast phase timing is awful for us. Inside the belly adds are OK warrants a starfall and vigil is helpful to help healers. However outside I feel like I should just tunnel the boss/tank add, the others just die too quick, occasionally starfall seems worth it but not consistently. On mythic however this changes drastically depending on what role I'm playing, managing the left over souls I feel very useful, but SPriests/UH DKs/Enh Shams seem to be just as good if not better, so I've ended up on spirit tunnelling duty the past few raids. However this is what we're progressing on ATM and a seed would do us wonders I think. tl:dr hc hate it, mythic I'm OK with it.

Socrethar: Free loot boss, our DPS with rings means we can just kill it in 1 phase now, so meh.

Iskaar: Actually really enjoy this fight and it works well for us, the timings are pretty good too.

Fel Lord: Single target /snooze. Seriously though may as well bring a mage/lock, better single target and they can soak better.

Xhul: 100% best balance fight in here, if I had a Seed I'd have a party here.

Tyrant: Similar to Fel Lord tbh, I guess we're fine but I don't really enjoy this encounter or any other pure DPS check fights.

Mannaroth: Awesome, multidotting, roars, even solar beam is very useful, and we can be quite competitive.

Archi: I've been having a lot of trouble understanding how we're supposed to compete here. We're VERY good for Infernals, and pretty good in the smaller add phase, but I can never seem to get good parses here.


Those are my opinions on fight by fight, however I think a lot of it has to do with how much value is in the Seed/DSI/Ring/Tier. Without those I don't believe its possible to get a good parse, because previous to this I'd generally get 85-98% ish parses', but I'm struggling to keep above 75% atm and I don't feel I'm playing bad.

Anyone else feeling this?

[Nightrage]

Again if I had the Seed I could probably parse WAY higher.

I don't think Seed would do a huge difference in Council's encounter, unless you have at least a heroic version of it. I was using it's normal version and I found it a quite useless (depending on your luck) in some attempts. So I decided to switch to another trinket. But, If you want to keep single-targeting' Gurtogg and pray your Starfall will have a good uptime along the fight, it's totally okay.

[wing5wong]

Assault: On paper sounds like a dream, but stuff is dying before I get half my starfall off at best in heroic. In mythic (since I don't have the seed yet), I'm using surge more so I can't cleave as much as I'd like.

Just starfall manually, no issue here.

Reaver: No complaints, its one of the only fights in here I feel its a fair test in DPS.

Kormrok: Hands die in 1 cataclysm or what ever warlocks do, or combat rogue shinanigans. I end up just single targeting, cant help feel that they may as well bring a mage/lock over me both in heroic and mythic.

Would be nice if we could aoe well here, but w/e, just let the locks/warriors go to town.

Council: Again pretty much no complaints, we're very effective in 3 target scenarios (#PrayForFelRageOnMe). Again if I had the Seed I could probably parse WAY higher. My only real complaint is the timing on Windwalk is about 20s before 3m CDs which is very irritating! :P

Great fight for us. I CD the pull and i believe the second split, cant quite remember the top of my head.

Kilrogg: Meh annoying fight tbh, small adds don't last long enough to warrant a starfall or DoTs unless we're getting overwhelmed which isn't supposed to happen. God like in the other room though.

Not sure why you wouldnt starfall with 3 small, 1 large, and 1 boss.

Gorefiend: Annoying. Can't use CDs on the pull because the Feast phase timing is awful for us. Inside the belly adds are OK warrants a starfall and vigil is helpful to help healers. However outside I feel like I should just tunnel the boss/tank add, the others just die too quick, occasionally starfall seems worth it but not consistently. On mythic however this changes drastically depending on what role I'm playing, managing the left over souls I feel very useful, but SPriests/UH DKs/Enh Shams seem to be just as good if not better, so I've ended up on spirit tunnelling duty the past few raids. However this is what we're progressing on ATM and a seed would do us wonders I think. tl:dr hc hate it, mythic I'm OK with it.

Keep starfall up, use CDs during the feast (it line up for 3 feasts, and hold rings for feast - i dont think timing cooldowns appropriately is

Socrethar: Free loot boss, our DPS with rings means we can just kill it in 1 phase now, so meh.

Fight is too easy. we one cycle mythic with only 1 beast add spawn. Starfall and dot adds and tunnel dominator > boss.

Iskaar: Actually really enjoy this fight and it works well for us, the timings are pretty good too.

Another good fight. hold CDs for first add spawns, and again for 3rd add spawns with lust (we burn boss off the edge and ignore adds. i mean pad the adds while still maintaining a kill)

Fel Lord: Single target /snooze. Seriously though may as well bring a mage/lock, better single target and they can soak better.

We have good movement with displacer for seed and coming out of underground. pretty easy fight really. Never had an issue with soaking.

Xhul: 100% best balance fight in here, if I had a Seed I'd have a party here.

Not killed on mythic yet, but a lot going on, a lot of adds. Should be a decent fight. We have good mobility for the debuffs too.

Tyrant: Similar to Fel Lord tbh, I guess we're fine but I don't really enjoy this encounter or any other pure DPS check fights.

Another good fight for us, mutliple targets, good mobility for edict (sacrifices)

Mannaroth: Awesome, multidotting, roars, even solar beam is very useful, and we can be quite competitive.

Not killed mythic.. pretty boring fight on heroic, dot adds, kill boss, nothing special

Archi: I've been having a lot of trouble understanding how we're supposed to compete here. We're VERY good for Infernals, and pretty good in the smaller add phase, but I can never seem to get good parses here.

Everything dies too fast now... same boat as mannoroth. nothing special here

[Gmoney999]

Many of the fights you are underperforming on you might do better dps as feral (fel lord, tyrant etc.) I mean you can't expect to be consistently outperforming pure dps classes, that run multiple specs, if you are only running one spec.

Boomkin has a really strong role (great cleave without sacrificing much single target) but that can't be relevant every fight. Also gorefiend seems to be a great Boomkin fight to me, the cooldowns line up perfectly with feast of souls. But if you have too many other classes (like shadow priests) that compete for the same role, well you won't shine.

Druids in general provide a lot of utility this tier even when we aren't top dps. Ursol's vortex is just insane in hellfire citadel.

[xtramuscle]

Nearly all your complaints OP stem from not have hc+ soc.

Balance is in a great spot right now, you just need to play to your class strengths, and not sulk when other classes are more suited to the jobs than you. A good boomkin will always have a raid spot in HFC.

[dark666105]

Thing on xhul is since you want to pretty much keep starfall up all the time when both of the major targets are up and especially when imps and voidfiends spawn the unreliability on seed really hurts and then when you hit 20% where dps really matters single target trinkets would do you better. Basically I think you are better off using your single target MBRF trinkets here and managing starfall manually for 100% reliability.

Even with HWF there were times where the lack of reliability was just unacceptable, especially then because i would have less haste and crit I would have a much higher chance at shooting stars dry spells.

[Deleted]

Boomers are super good, not super duper broken as in Foundry but still pretty damn good on almost any fight, guess mannoroth is kind of meh for us but the rest is really good. I honestly would't bother with SoC unless it's heroic or higher, the RNG on normal one would just drive me crazy (Even heroic SoC can be enraging).