Review of Balance Druid Talents for Keeper of the Grove Hero - A Mix of Fantasy and Challenging Gameplay

This past week, Blizzard revealed another round of Hero Talent Trees in a sneak peek at the upcoming War Within system. Our Balance Druid guide writer, Tettles, offers an early review of the Keeper of the Grove Druid Hero Talents that offer a confusing summoner fantasy accompanied by counterintuitive gameplay.

Hero Talents in The War Within

Hero Talents are an extension of the Talent system designed to explore class fantasy with a third talent tree, separate from your class and specialization. Blizzard has revealed an early preview of Hero Talents coming in the next expansion, The War Within.

Keeper of the Grove Druid Hero Talents

Stacking on top of what we saw at Blizzcon, we recently had the Keeper of the Grove talents unveiled. These are talents that work for both Restoration and Balance, and I will be covering them from a Balance Druid perspective today. As you see below, the talents work heavily off of Force of Nature. This is an easy to obtain talent in the Balance Druid tree, that historically hasn't seen a ton of play. Dream Surge and Harmony of the Grove are the 2 main points in the tree and the ones that heavily work off of Force of Nature. In theory, whenever combined with a talent like Fury of Elune, you should have some decent burst every 1 minute. Control of the Dream is the other most impactful node for Balance Druid inside of the Keeper of the Grove tree. A node like this heavily incentivizes you to pool to 100% Astral Power prior to spending down any time. Combined with potential maximum Astral Power modifying nodes like Astral Communion, you would pool up to max AP as you enter eclipse, Cancel Aura Starlord (or have it expire before spending), and then dump all of your Astral Power into spenders before refilling your bar again. You would also potentially pre-press an ability like Fury of Elune or Force of Nature to get your damage / Astral Power over time rolling.

• Class Fantasy

A lot of this is MY opinion. Why Trees? This feels heavily like Blizzard went with a class fantasy approach to Keeper of the Grove and then shoehorned Balance to fit inside of it. Trees in their current iteration are not interesting for Balance, nor has our kit EVER been based around it. We have never been much of a "summoner" archetype of a spec, so having hero talents like this is a bit confusing. Very few people that I have talked to about this tree are excited about it from a Balance perspective, and something like Elune's Chosen that was unveiled at Blizzcon more closely identifies with Balance. I do think that Balance Druid should have something that accompanies our Nature side of being a Druid, but summoning treants is not it.

• Playstyle Implications

Again, why Trees? Force of Nature have been useful / cool before as a talent, but players don't want their spec to be based around them. They have never been that interesting, and these hero talents don't solve that either. This tree just will not be very fun or rotationally interesting for Balance Druid players. There might be major reworks with how Force of Nature functions, but without them changing we expect an awkward gameplay experience.

• 1 Minutes and Cooldown Reduction

This tree has a few nodes in it that reduce our cooldowns by 5 or 10 seconds. Damage cooldowns in WoW are multiplicative and you want to stack them together. Taking things that would reduce your cooldowns by 5 or 10 seconds is just in direct opposition to how you actually play WoW. You would want to stack everything together if possible such as Force of Nature, Fury of Elune, and Astral Communion inside of a Primordial Arcanic Pulsar window on a 1 minute cooldown. Additionally, if there is a 1 minute on-use, you would combine that in conjunction with this. Expansiveness and Persistent Enchantments are very poorly designed in this regard with how you play Moonkin.

If you're looking to turn the spec into a medium strength 1 minute burst class, Force of Nature, Fury of Elune, and Astral Communion could be interesting together. We do run into some problems with the fact that we do not get Primordial Arcanic Pulsar procs every minute. With significant portions of your damage gated behind pulsar windows, how would a 1 minute version of Balance really feel or play? It seems like it isn't set up to be successful.

This node is incredibly counter-intuitive to how you play Balance Druid. There is some level of pooling naturally involved with Balance, but the gameplay this pushes you towards is in direct opposition to how your tree works. Eclipse wants you to cast 2 builders to get into Eclipse immediately, Balance of All Things wants you to spend Astral Power the moment you enter eclipse, Starlord requires you to maintain it at 3 stacks at all times (including canceling it sometimes), you HAVE to maintain Moonfire and Sunfire at any given moment. The flow of this is heavily broken up if your spenders are now dead locked to being cast back to back relative to one another. I assume it snapshots the buff, but if it doesn't with Starfall then you would need to AFK for 8 seconds?

Node by Node Analysis

Other members of the Dreamgrove community and myself went over the complete Keeper of the Grove nodes and gave our general thoughts. If you would like a 45 minute video where we cover the talents, you can check it out below.

A recap of some of the talents covered in the video:

• Tree of Life - We're interested in if the Moonfire is our Moonfire or not. The HOTs from Grove Guardians are not the same as the HOTs from Resto Druids, so we don't expect it to be our Moonfire. Do the trees proc Waning Twilight or Twin Moons is something that needs testing. This talent seems more practical for M+ dotting generally, but there also are practical issues with Trees and how we DOT currently for M+. You tend to DOT while your tank is grouping mobs, and rarely do you re-dot. If the trees are our personal moonfire and not a different one, it's hard for this to be super useful.
• Protective Growth - We think Protective Growth is generally pretty awesome for M+, and anything to keep Moonkin out of Bear Form in M+ is well received. For Raid it's less practical to Regrowth yourself for DR, and it isn't a super strong effect like you would hope for in raid. At the same point this is never something you'd be upset to take. Our biggest complaint is that it's in a Hero Talent tree. We would love to see Protective Growth moved from the Hero Talent tree into the class tree itself and replace something like Forestwalk.
• Expansiveness & Persistent Enchantments - These talents point towards potential talent changes in the spec tree. For Expansiveness, what does the future of Astral Communion look like? Is this a talent that will be receiving secondary effect changes? Will you be able to get to 140 Astral Power and combine it with something like Primordial Arcanic Pulsar? There are a lot of questions left unanswered with Expansiveness. With Persistent Enchantments, the future of Orbital Strike is called into question. Orbital Strike already applies Stellar Flare to mobs. Is it going to change functionality? The fact that Persistent Enchantments also points at Primordial Arcanic Pulsar is a bit concerning as well since we need Orbital Strike and Pulsar's nodes separated to have Orbital Strike be a viable option in PVE content. Additionally, why is Stellar Flare only being applied for 20 seconds instead of 24? (also bring back Promise of Elune, the Moon Goddess)

• Dream Surge

Force of Nature grants 3 charges of Dream Burst, causing your next Wrath or Starfire to explode on the target, dealing Nature damage to nearby enemies. Damage is reduced above 5 targets.

• Harmony of the Grove

Each of your Force of Nature treants increases damage your spells deal by 3% while active.

• Cenarius' Might

Casting Starsurge or Starfall increases the damage of your next Starsurge or Starfall by 10%, stacking up to 2 times. Casting another spell cancels this effect.

• Control of the Dream

Time elapsed while your major abilities are available to be used is subtracted from that ability’s cooldown after the next time you use it, up to 5 seconds. Affects Nature’s Swiftness, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Force of Nature, Celestial Alignment, and Convoke the Spirits.

• Early Spring

Force of Nature cooldown reduced by 10 seconds. Grove Guardians cooldown reduced by 3 seconds.

• Treants of the Moon

Your treants cast Moonfire on nearby targets about once every 6 seconds.

• Protective Growth

Your Regrowth protects you, reducing damage you take by 8% while your Regrowth is on you.

• Expansiveness

Your maximum mana is increased by 5% and your maximum Astral Power is increased by 20%.

• Persistent Enchantments

Orbital Strike applies Stellar Flare for 20 seconds and Primordial Arcanic Pulsar grants Celestial Alignment for 2 additional seconds.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a major concern for Balance Druid coming into TWW. Tuning aside, the playstyle this promotes is incredibly concerning. If this is tuned close and we end up taking this hero tree, it will be an incredibly unsatisfying way to play the spec. The concept of Cenarius' Might and Force of Nature based gameplay is not one that many Balance Druids are happy with as well. I would encourage a full redesign of Cenarius' Might and change Keeper of the Grove away from Tree centric buffs.

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