Balance Druids

[mbusund]

Trying to get back into the game and used to love playing balance. Is this spec even viable/fun anymore. I saw some people use it during the Blizzcon arena tournament but no idea how it is in PVE

[Mgemnusratsl]

It is a mediocre dps spec in bfa. People prefer balance when they need utility like battle ress and/or treants( fon talent). Balance is not preferred for damage in most cases

[exochaft]

When it comes to M+, we're good for utility more than our damage output, although lining up our CD's and Azerite traits provides some pretty good burst every 3 minutes. For raiding, pretty similar as we can exploit damage windows and downtime due to the nature of our abilities, where are niche is spread extended cleave with the occasional burst damage window. We're certainly not bad at all, but our DPS levels are nowhere near as powerful as Legion levels when it came to AoE scenarios... mostly because of how Starfall and our DoT spells scale right now. Boomy is still pretty terrible at short-lived AoE and weak on pure single-target with no gimmicks compared to other classes with comparable skill/gear.

[JepJepa]

I dont know about others but my damage in m+ is insane. Mythic raids tho.. Not good or bad, some fights you can shine but some are just carbage for boomies. And pvp, you are pretty much bis spec.

[iddqd]

I dont know about others but my damage in m+ is insane. Mythic raids tho.. Not good or bad, some fights you can shine but some are just carbage for boomies. And pvp, you are pretty much bis spec.

What kind of keys do you run? Must be very high ones pushing... i do mostly very, very bad in M+ but hey, we are not in for damage, are we? Equally geared DHs do like 150% of my damage, there is nearly no class or spec (from the popular ones) that is doing less damage than my moonkin.

[exochaft]

What kind of keys do you run? Must be very high ones pushing... i do mostly very, very bad in M+ but hey, we are not in for damage, are we? Equally geared DHs do like 150% of my damage, there is nearly no class or spec (from the popular ones) that is doing less damage than my moonkin.

Even in very high ones, our damage output overall is heavily dwarfed by many other classes, especially the popular ones like rogues and DH's. The plus side about higher level keys is that mobs live much longer and let our DoT's actually do something, but that only brings us closer to other classes versus beating them consistently. The real problem is that most of our burst damage is heavily tied around CA/Incarnation, so every 3 minutes with good setup we can wreck face, but most other classes have far more consistently higher damage or shorter CD's on burst damage than we do. I suppose you could say timing is everything? Even with Incarnation + Lively Spirits up on a ST boss fight, I generally don't start shooting ahead of other classes until their CD's run out since most don't last 30 seconds like ours does (basically, we don't hit harder, we just hit hard for longer during our CD's). Again, this isn't to say boomy is bad for M+, far from it, but if we didn't bring the utility that we did, boomy representation would be a LOT lower since other casters/melee can offer much more DPS than we do.

[JepJepa]

What kind of keys do you run? Must be very high ones pushing... i do mostly very, very bad in M+ but hey, we are not in for damage, are we? Equally geared DHs do like 150% of my damage, there is nearly no class or spec (from the popular ones) that is doing less damage than my moonkin.

I was referring to 13-16 keys mostly. If mobs die quickly DH is gonna shine since they have insane burst aoe, boomkin on the otherhand is gonna shine if mobs last longer, atleast that's my experience. I get 800 intellect from archive which is insane tbh and i prefer Starlord over incarnation almost every time , i have 1650 haste so it has huge value for me, im getting 37% haste with starlord alone, then Quick navi procs and one Overwhelming power is gonna bring it sky high also im playing when night elves get 1% haste instead crit (racial) and i have nice Ignition mage's fuse which gives Starlord even more value. When i pushed my mythic+ score and ran those 15+ keys we had rogue and mage in group aswell and on boss fights without Incarn i was doing same amount of damage than they did, it just had small ramp up time.
Cheers.

[iddqd]

JepJepa, exochaft: good answers, thanks for those, exactly my findings.

My druid only has an ilvl of 365 and i am 100% pugging, so i do run key from +5 - +7. I also just recently found my first azerite piece with Lively Spirit and i got none with Archive

The class is still fun though!

[Yhcti]

Ive noticed it's a utility spec rather than a dps spec however... its still very fun, the damage is still good and you're wanted in 90% of groups. I want to push high M+ so I'm dabbling inbetween Resto and Balance, it's a really strong combo!

[Bako]

Balance is and was on of the top dps specs in bfa, in 8.0 and in 8.1 even stronger, if u felt like u do no dmg, then u can not play correctly

[groparu]

I'm having pretty satisfying experience in M+ on my druid on +10 to +12 keys, it's a bit sad that I'm mostly top dps on bosses with incarn+BL and average on trash.

I think that the most frustrating thing for me, due to dungeon layouts, is the fact that I almost never have the opportunity to use starfall, I guess I always felt that balance druid should be a monster on AoE and do decent on single target and not the other way around.

[Argenon]

Balance is and was on of the top dps specs in bfa, in 8.0 and in 8.1 even stronger, if u felt like u do no dmg, then u can not play correctly

First, If we are talking about raids, I am pretty sure that the stats/logs for 8.0 don't support this. Balance was not a top single target spec, but it is also not an awful spec. It is a perfectly viable option in the raiding scene. Second, the automatic jump to calling players bad just isn't necessary or helpful at all.

We did get buffed in 8.1, but so did many other specs as well. It is just too early to tell how we will be in 8.1. Any logs from right now don't mean a whole lot; most people are now over geared for the content they are doing which skews numbers.

Besides, this stuff doesn't matter for the majority of players or guilds. As long as you know how to do mechanics and are not a hindrance to your raid, it doesn't matter what spec you play; play what you enjoy and do well at.