Here’s another old feedback thread from the Burning Crusade Beta forums, 10/28/06

Lissanna’s Balance Analysis (Take 2)

Okay, now that I’ve gotten a chance to play with all the new talents, it’s time for me to write another review of the balance tree.

B) Talent analysis:

Most of my original problems with the tree have been fixed (Thank you!) However, there still are a few weaknesses:

1) Insect Swarm: Now that it is castable in moonkin form, I’d like to point out the fact that it has really poor damage and doesn’t scale well with gear or talents. Honestly, I can’t tell much of a difference between when I forget to train the higher ranks or not when I respect. This is a problem. Possible fixes? Add it to Moonfury, to receive a 10% bonus to the damage.

2) Improved Faerie Fire: It does Nothing to help casters, at all. Balance druids don’t mele. So, to make this talent worthwhile, please add something to it that helps casters. This would also be a great way to increase our group/raid desirability.

3) Improved Starfire is back to being what it was before patch 1.8, just a stun. (yes, I can remember back that far). It wasn’t worth taking then, so it’s back to not being worth taking now. However, this gives you a wonderful opportunity to add our anti-interrupt for starfire: just tack on a 15/30/45% chance to not be interrupted while casting starfire. All the balance druids would be very happy about it.

4) Force of Nature does a lot more damage now (thank you), but it still doesn’t do anything else, where as most other class’ pets similar to this (through talents or trainable) have a secondary effect (ie. Mana burn, frost nova, et cetra). Maybe give our trees a chance to proc roots?

B) The mele moonkin problem still exists. Really, it is pointless to try to mele in moonkin form, ever. Fortunately, our increased DPS & mana efficiency is making it easier to solo without having to resort to mele.

Trying to cast and mele at the same time causes melekin these three main problems:

1) High casting interrupts,

2) lower spell damage through gear since we have to pick up more mele stats and talents, and

3) limitations on weapons due to swing timers.

4) Low Mele DPS. This means it is better to cast than mele, even with a high amount of interrupts. Mostly, the proc is becoming more and more of a joke the more +damage gear I get, since my mele dps is the exact same that it was at level 60, where as the mobs hit me a lot harder.

C) PvP viability:

Basically, every pvp encounter I’ve run into, I’ve died. It’s not a matter of gear, since Lunar Guidance puts my +damage well over 500. World PvP, if one person attacks me, I’m basically dead. It doesn’t matter what class they are, I just don’t stand a chance of killing them. The problem is that I can’t cast starfire in PvP, and this is the damage spell where all my PvE dps comes from.

Now, my experience is limited, due to the lack of opportunity for PvP on the Beta server, but this is *really* where druids in general are getting frustrated. I’m hoping that hitting level 70 and getting Cyclone will help, but other classes get other tools to expedite the process of getting free HK’s from me.

Being a balance druid just doesn’t feel useful for PvP. Arena battlegrounds are basically going to require healing, which makes being a feral or balance druid worse, so I really hate the 2v2 arenas, and no one wants to do the 5v5 ones (where I think being a moonkin might start not sucking so bad).