Where is the Balance Druid really in lore? Is what we see more kaldorei magic than real druidic? Is this a case similar to the Tidesages and Blood Knights where the calss you play is not properly fit to the fantasy - except for this one, they wanted to give it, had no where to put it, and the druid was the closest fit..?
I say that because despite being a part of the class, you never hear about this part of it in the books or lore. Lots of trees, healing, emerald dream, animals, even hurricanes and storm - but calling down stars, stellar and astral arcane magic, solar power, Elune creatures? This sounds more like a mage and in lore only shows up with night elf related arcane or priestly callings. It has shown up in the priest and highborne/Nightborne mages, and lore mentions this more in relation to kaldorei civilization.
Did you never not wonder what both arcane magic and Elune stuff was doing in a druid toolkit? The stars, the arcane Well of Eternity, Elune, the Moon and the night have always been kaldorei thing - we see this in War of the Ancients before Malfurion becomes a druid, we see it in the arcane culture, we see it in the priesthood, we see it in the druid class in the long vigil.
I Suspect
My guess it is more a racial feature, magic more particularly tied to the night elves. Just like the trolls seem to have a connection to blood magic more so than any, Forsaken to Death magic, sor t of thing. I suspect it shows up in the druid class, because unlike priest and mage who also have historical very strong ties with the ngiht elves, druid was the only one that was exclusive to them (until wow ofc where it was kept relatively exclusive with only 1 additional race allowing - so Priest and Mage already had other identities, despite the night elves creating the mage class, Krin'tor and high elf magic is already established by the time the night elves are introduced, as is the Light and the priest class. So Mage and Priest don't have signs of this, except in classic if you were a night elf priest you had starshards to reflect this, and in classic the Darnassian night elves hadn't returned to the arcane so there was no need to reflect this in the mage class. It's only avenue became the druid - especially since iti s quite unique to the magic toolkit of the Kaldorei set.
However since the druid, it has actually continued to play a role in the Kaldorei priests and arcane wielding Moonguard, highborne and nightboren, with rarely a mention in the druidlore.
1. Druid class has the abilities - but there is no mention in lore or the books like Stormrage or WotA of druids calling down the stars or moon. In WotA Cenarius casts a powerful ball of sunlight energy. Which wrath spell eventually becomes in Cataclysm onwards. Other than that, in the books the druids cast things like vines, hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, thorns, rally the living creatures and animals to fight with them, they wak e up the trees as welll
I suspect that this aspect of the spec is more like the Tidesages and the Blood Knights - basically an aspect that isn't really the class, but doesn't have a full enough kit.
Musings
The balance druid seems to be more a kaldorei culture thing - using the star, moon and sun magic - is a very elven, especially kaldorei thing. We see the priestesses of Elune using this magic, we also see the Nightborne and Moonguard in Suramar using this sort of arcane magic related to the stars.
Furthermore, the balance druid form was chosen to be an Elune thing, putting it in the kaldorei culture realm.
What I think has happened, is that like the Tidesages aren't really shaman but use the shaman tool set, the balance druid set isn't really druidic but because druidsm is heavily night elf influenced, part of the class has this arcane/astral magic side.
Kaldorei - means Children of the Stars,
Stars and moon play a heavy role in the night elf art set, history etc. Night elf civilization was full of Astrological towers, Temples to Elune head moon and star symbolism, and the night elves draw the arcane energy from the stars.
We get a deeper look into the civilization side of things in Suramar, Star Augur Ertraeus and the Astromancers and the spells they cast, we also see the High Botanist using the same solar, lunar, stellar magic in the balance druid toolse.
Bu