General Problems with Balance Druid

[Icedcream]

Preface:
I was challenged in the forum to put my explanation of why balance druids needs fixes into a better case study. Throughout writing this I have become sad and may not continue to play my druid. The further examination of stats just shows that you will never live up to the potential of other casters in raid or pvp. They are a little of everything and never something with enough boom to shock anyone. Heck, within a recent blood arena I was crit for 2k by a shadow bolt at the same time as a 1.9k chain lightning hit me. BOOM haha.

What is my background:
I played the first vanilla and I think the first five expansions of wow. In vanilla I had mained hunter and raided up to the end of BWL. I even lead a couple of our guilds runs. I had a paladin, warrior, mage, priest, and rogue at 60 and mainly geared.

Introduction:
My original pot was to explain the mana problems with a boomkin leveling. Your general experience leveling as a balance druid is that despite having points in the balance tree you will have more damage, less breaks, and a strong rhythm primarily not using balance spells to kill. You generally pull the and burst 30% off. Your damage rotation can be summarized as:

• Pre-form – wrath and staff

• 10-19 – wrath, moonfire, bear form

• 20-39 – Starfire, moonfire, bear or cat form

Part of the reason for this is that Natures Weapon is better for Feral druids than balance and so is Omen of Clarity. An ability that can be a free 40 rage or 60 cat juice is more powerful than a free wrath spam in your rotation. The strongest use is wrath or Starfire, but to cancel cast isn’t good. You have to wait till 39 to have +10% spell damage to your main attacks in the talent tree.

Why does melee work better as balence:

• Wrath gets knocked back. No work around. The talent is in the resto tree.

• Roots is ineffective cc on targets that are targeted with damage

• Spirit does not kick in for a caster the is a spammer

• No ability in balance to continue regenerating will casting

Wrath is expensive. At the very start up to 8 none of this matters since your base regen to resource pool is so high you basically don’t need to drink.

• Wrath base stats are a 0.65 – 0.8 dmg per mana

• Moonfire base stats are about a 0.76-0.88 dmg per mana if considering both direct impact and full duration tick combined. (I’ve given up working on this part, but I believe this to be uncommonly inefficient for a dot, but I think that is to prevent spamming)

• Fire ball 0.6 - 0.9 dmg per mana combined impact and burn

• Frost bolt 0.76 – 0.88 dmg per mana

• Arcane Missiles 0.85 dmg per mana

• Pain – starts out at a 1.2 dmg per mana (if full duration used) and with 2 points is buffed to 1.6 dmg per mana (duration goes from 18 to 24 seconds)

• Even smite 0.75-1 dmg per mana base level 1

• Warlock – mana efficiently doesn’t matter shadow bolt is similar to wrath, but I say this because tap, drain, bandage, armor that regens health etc Warlocks don’t stop moving

What works for others:
Priest

• Has bubble to avoid interruption in combination with some abilities gain benefit from no or low interruption within the talent tree.

• Spirit Tap [tier 1] – 5 points for 100% chance to gain 100% bonus spirit after killing and 50% regen during casting
  • 13 points into disc to receive 15% mana regen while casting
  • Pain – starts out at a 1.2 dmg per mana (if full duration used) and with 2 points is buffed to 1.6 dmg per mana (duration goes from 18 to 24 seconds)
  • Even smite 0.75-1 dmg per mana base level 1
  • New improved vampiric embrace. Heals self and team in shadow form. Mana regen which is better than you think, details follow
  Mages
  • Fire ball 0.6 - 0.9 dmg per mana combined impact and burn
  • Frost bolt 0.76 – 0.88 dmg per mana
  • Arcane Missiles 0.85 dmg per mana
  • Talent – 3 points – reduce frost spell manage cost 15% and threat 30%
  • Talent – 5 points – 10% chance on spell impact of proc’ing 100% mana cost reduction on next spell. Arcane missiles scales up to 5 hits later on.
  • Talent – 3 points – arcane meditation 15% mana to continue regenerating while in combat
  • Talent – 3 points – 30% chance on crit for spell cost to be refunded (fire and 5 mana)
  • Conjure water
  • Mage armor, allows for 30% mana to continue to regenerate while casting
  • Conjure Mana Jade
  • Do mages have evocation in classic/ turtle?
  • Arcane mages new talent for 15% mana to continue to regenerate while casting
  
  More details on druid relationship to mana:
  I can speculate that the design of a druid was for a restoration. The spell rotation being a regrowth and rejuvenation which continues to keep the tank up while you allow yourself to stop casting long enough to exit casting and get full ticks of regeneration. I believe druids focused on less mana per 5 sec stats, but would take it when available. A druid with 300 spirit gets 75 mana per 2 seconds out of combat which is 187.5 mana per 5 seconds. The exiting of combat for (3 seconds?) + 2 ticks would be very beneficial.
  
  Classic wow didn’t take into consideration a druid spamming wrath and cleanse/de-curse. Fortunately, with investment of 13 points in the Restoration tree you can added 15% mana to continue to regen while casting. At the same 300 spirit that is 11.25 mana per 2 sec= 28.12 mana per 5 seconds. (337.50 mana per 1 minute of combat). Mages get double this value with mage armor. Warlocks can benefit from raid healing and self-heal to regen mana. Priest receive mana battery talents 2% damage returned as mana, at 250 dmg per second that would give 300 mana per minute back to the priest, and each party member, and healing, and their spells are more efficient, and they get 15% mana regen while casting (likely if they spec it)
  
  
  I think the bones in the system for DPS potential are there. The damage coefficients seem to work, but there are itemization issues, and mana issues. I hope I can be seen as even handed and a step in the right direction.
  • Summary is that wrath, frost bolt, fireball, and shadowbolt all do about 216(wrath)- 249(Fireball) dps with their reduced cast time talents
  • Wrath – 57.14% spell power applied; 81.4% frost bolt; 100% fireball; 85.71% shadow bolt. These coefficients results in 200 spell power giving the roughly same DPS gain per spell.
  • Our problem is all druid sets have 50% reduced spell power over the equivalent mage or warlock. In some cases priests have the same issue, and it is because of rebalancing a combination of spell power and healing and HEALING only power.
  How would I fix this:
  
  It is hard to make adjustments without considering their end game impact. I have limited druid endgame. As well the balance tree at the first 3 tiers had abilities that are more directly beneficial to feral druids and they will be PISSED if we mess with them.
  
  General changes:
  • reduce mana cost of wrath, moonfire, and Starfire by 10%, this will be coupled with a new 20% reduction talent and removal of the efficiency from moonkin form
  • allow moonkin to cast cleanse poison from moonkin form. The second you have to leave to cleanse you spend an enormous amount of mana. You basically just have to stay out of moonkin form in some raid encounters and many PVP situations.
  • Barkskin should be a passive when stunned in moonkin form
  • Owlkin rage is unnecessary with a talented ability.
  • Review talent tree – I haven’t considered to hard on the talent shuffles and points per tier
  Talents Changes
  • Improved Wrath– Replace with “moon be praised” – 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 reduced cast time on wrath, Starfire, and roots
  • New talent – “requires moon be praise” – “stars guide us” – 25% /50%/75% chance to avoid interruption with balance spells
  • Natures Grasp – no change
  • Improved Natures Grasp– 2 point ability - 15% / 30% reduced chance of roots breaking, and 10 sec / 20 sec reduced cd of natures grasp. Current 60 second cd on a 45 second duration.Note most casters have a mass cc and or multiple cc abilities. This, yes has no cd, but is generally less powerful in most ways. I’d rather a 6 second cd over a 1.5 second cast.
  • Replace Improved Moonfire with “Inner balance” – 5% improved spell crit chance with balance spells
  • Improved entangling roots – remove
  • Natures Weapon – (comment – this ability is actually stronger for feral than balance druids, not much you can do without ruining feral druids) – no change
  • Natural shapeshifter – again a feral focused move – Move to tier 1
  • Improved thorns – pointless – no change- Side bar 18 dmg per hit at 60 is a joke. If daggers okay maybe, but a 2h is meaningless. May want to scale to weapon speed.Possible Improved form maybe, thorns applies debuff target takes 1%/2%/3% additional damage from all sources for 8 seconds. Debuff refreshes per swing. Could be good for raids then.
  • Omen of Clarity – 1) aura, cannot be dispelled 2) (comment – this ability benefits feral druids most) 3) Helps a bit with mana, but your wrath is so fast you never break free to regen mana. 4) the buff from crit should stack up to 2 charges since you can chain crit with your opener and moonfire and it just refreshes the cd. You don’t even get the benefit
  • Nature’s Reach – no change but move down further in the tree
  • Add to tier 2 – 10%/20% reduced mana cost of balance spells
  • Vengeance – No change
  • Natures Grace- Same as omen, should stack up to 2 charges since you chain crit and miss the benefit often.
  • Moonglow – revised to – 5%/10%/15% while casting
  • Improved thorns – comment – thorns as a talent doesn’t scale to end game. 18 dmg per hit is just sad. At a minimum the base spell should scale with weapon speed. 2h doing 3x of that and 18 dmg being based on daggers. You could review an improved spell leaving thorns in enemies creating some vulnerability type
  Improved Starfire – remove

• Add – Improved swarm – decreases nature spell resist by 10/20

• Add – From shadow – 10%/20%/30% reduced threat generation

• Fix moonkin – The point of moonkin form is you are slow, and can’t heal now. You gain 3% crit which is like 3.33% extra damage because of the haste gained from crit. The physical damage reduction is similar to a shadow priest, but you don’t have fear, vampiric embrace, their mana efficiency isn’t as tied to the form, 15% damage boost and they can bubble themselves. I think moonkin form should be 3% spell crit to self and party, and 50% more spell critical hit damage (250% combined – 350 wrath becomes 850 instead of a 700-damage crit).

Module 2: Gear and End Game Gear

Leveling Gear:
Throughout the leveling process I generally focused on gear suffixes Eagle, owl, whale. The emphasis was intel and balancing stam, and spirit. My findings were I typically had 1x extra stam, 1x extra spirit, and 1.2x extra intel. Meaning for an example my level gave me the base stats of 50 / 50 / 50, respectively I’d have a total of 100 [St] / 100 [Sp] / 120 [In]. In the current stat you may use 50% of your mana to spam down a target. Too high, and no regen.

Pre-end game dungeons:

There are 1000’s of items to go to a dungeon to get for every class, but not really anything except rings, necks, backs, and maybe the odd weapon for a caster druid. If you added a few stam, intel, and spirit items in you would improve the desire to do dungeons. I kid you not, look at how many melee weapons are in dungeons and find leather with spell attributes. I want loot for everyone, not to take items away.

End game:

There are no items armor pieces or sets for end game Balance druids and no pvp sets for resto druids. With the launch of Turtle Wow you converted armor sets to a spell damage and healing and in the case of T1 and T2 sets you added you did spell damage and Healing PLUS the attribute healing power. In the case of PVP set, T1, and T2 all sets give a druid 66% of the spell power compared to a mage or warlock. Priests suffer from a similar problem as balance druids, but they have the opportunity to get +spell power cloth in raid and dungeons. In shadow form you benefit from a straight 15% physical damage reduction, where as a moonkin is based on armor % so you really do want the added armor (in leather you jump from 25% to ~45% reduced damage).

T1 Mage = 128 spell power, +2% spell crit, +1% spell hit
T1 druid = 84 spell power, 1% spell crit, 0% spell hit

T1 Mage set bonuses = 3 pc = 18 spell power; 5 pc = decrease magic resist of 10; 8 pc = decrease threat generation 15%
T1 druid set bonus = 4 dmg with thorns (LOL) and 50% increase duration; 5 pc = 2% spell crit (good); 8 pc = reduced tranquility and hurricane cd by 50% (arguably hurricane needs a zero cd so that you can AOE with other casters if you are going to raid, it is also a far weaker aoe)

Dungeon gear options:

Dungeon gear options are generally limited to:

• Wildheart which has no spell power, just helps with mana for raiding as a healer
  Feralheart (lol) is basically a hybrid set which favours feral druid set again, but has some spell power which if I was to explain would be so feral druids can self-heal. Surprisingly, one of the best options
  86 str, 64 agil, 95 stam, 112 intel, 85 spirit, 77 spell power and healing.
  And 15 spell power and healing with set bonus

PVP Rank 7-10 set

• Feral set again – 79 str, 58 agil, 78 stam, 67 intel, 25 spirit, 1% spell crit; 1% phy crit; 75 spell power
  Compared to caster sets – 96 stam, 83 intel, 20 spirit, 4% spell crit, 1% spell hit, 111 spell power and spell power bonus from set.

PVP Rank 12-13 set

• Feral set again – 121 str, 95 agil, 98 stam, 64 intel, 41 spirit, 1% spell crit, 2% phy crit, 85 spell power
  Compared to caster sets – 148 stam, 98 intel, 38 spirit, 3% spell crit, 1% spell hit, 169 spell power and spell power bonus from set, and 20 decrease enemy resist

Gearing from random dungeon – you have 1-2 maximum items that can even be equip if avoiding cloth

• Head - Helm of the new moon – Strat live

• Shoulder – Cyclone Spaulders – Dire Maul North

• Chest- Breastplate of the wild hunt – Cavern of time

• Hands - Gloves of the earthen power – QUEST – Volunteer’s Battle Gear

• Pants - Tanglemoss Leggings – Dire maul West

• Boots – Standstorm boots – QUEST – Armaments of war

• Belt and bracers- upgrade quest to Wildheart or buy cenarion. Think there are 1-2 items but I didn’t look.

• There are a lot of spell power swords with crit. Seems the thing not to put crit on diggers or maces and staves have 3 design options (spell power; power and crit; healing) that divide their loyalties.

End Game Gear:

Raid Gear Tier 1

• 136 stam; 158 intel; 112 spirit; 1% spell rit; 84 spell power/healing; 68 healing 18 mana per 5 sec
  Other casters; excluding the suffering of shadow mages : 109 stam; 160 intel; 71 spirit; 2% spell crit; 1% spell hit; 128 spell power/healing; 11 mana per 5 sec

• As explained the coefficient requires the same spell power to achieve the same dps gains.

Suggestions:

tier 1 set Option 1 :: allow you to turn in set items in town for a modified version of the armor. Remove all healing stats and replace with mage equivalent damage boost to get +128 spell power and healing, 2% spell crit, and 1% hit bonus’ over the entire set. As well, modify 3 set bonus to 18 spell damage; 5 set bonus to 2% spell crit (same); and 15% reduced treat at 8 pc set.

tier 1 set Option 2 :: Secondary set bonuses – 3 pc – While in moonkin form – Cenarion set pieces receive +1 spell power and healing per healing – 5 pc – no change main 2% spell crit applies; 8 pc – While in moonkin form – receive a 15% threat reduction

THE MATH Option 2: 84 spell dmg and healing + 68 healing (becoming spell power) = 152 spell power. Mages receive 128 spell power and the 18+ bonus at 3 pc = 146 spell power. Alternatively you can give 0.9 to be exact, but find it hard to believe that matters.

Tier 2 set :: Review similar approach as Tier 1

PVP Sets :: This set is 100% feral, so is the blood ring set. The + spell power on blue set is 75 (mages get 111); and epic is 85 spell power (mages are 169 spell dmg). The agility+str shows it is a melee set and it is misleading with + 1% spell crit and 1% melee crit. Ultimately, the set was designed for feral druids to transform kill, pop out and self-heal, then back to damage. I don’t even believe it does that particularly good. If you weren’t to create a proper set you could also add different set bonuses; example for blue set : 2 pc set bonus + When in moonkin form receive 0.5 spell power per strength from set items; and 1 spirit per agility from set items; 4 pc – When in moonkin form and you are stunned triggers barksin for 5 seconds; 6 pc- no change

Blood Ring :: Could just duplicate cloth in leather with the leather graphics and let there be another set.

Zul’Gurub set - Haven’t considered, but this is a healer specific set.
Leatherworking – Dragonscale is shaman gear, a spell crit cloak, and hunter blue gear. Elemental (ironically?) contains yet again another feral druid set plus rogue raid gear. Tribal contains the corehound raid pieces for rogues/druids and healer gear. There are no balance sets outside of ironfeather a low 50’s blue set with no stamina on it. Could convert the corehound belt and Verdant Dreamer to a +dmg and healing spell power instead of healing only. Additional sets would be nice.

Rep pvp weapons and items:

Alterac Valley – The easiest to get rep contains caster offhand (okay option); Don Rodrigo’s Band (NOT USABLE by DRUIDS; only – priest; shaman; mage; and warlock) only caster excluded. The melee ring has no restrictions on it. This is a must run rep run for many melee classes.

Arathi Basin – The only good caster weapon pre-raid. Arathi is impossible to rep grind in the current state. I queue 30 mins 8 times and gave up after no matches. On AB day I get in a match after 15 minutes, to loss with 1 badge and 44 rep. It would take a calculated 370 hrs to grind 42000 rep at that rate. My point is AV gives melee basically a free weapon – 2-3 weeks into them hitting 60 and casters will never earn the AB one (on alliance at least). No idea what to suggest besides offering an AV weapon or even add a blue weapon (1H) to compliment the offhand at revered.

[Redmagejoe]

A lot of thought was put into this post and a lot of insight into the issues with the UX of Balance Druids. I would encourage you to try to clean up the presentation a bit and use images or links to the actual items and question and talents. If you're willing to put the time into making this a proper case study of the shortcomings faced by Balance, this could be used to guide the upcoming itemization changes and class change discussions the staff has been advertising.

[Naonak1945]

It's classic. Devs wanted classes to played a certain way and gear reflects that

[Icedcream]

I have updated this post as per redmagejoe's suggestion.

Naonak1945. Turtle wow has made several unplayable classes playable. They made feral and paladins tank, improved shadow priests, and so on. I think the goal here is just to make another fun spec that everyone can enjoy.

I don't believe anyone will read this, but if even a bit of this improves I may play my druid in the future. At this time there is low motivation to gear, because it will never feel powerful.

[Redmagejoe]

The revision to the first post is excellent. This should help the Class Changes Team immensely.

[Darktifa]

tldr!

[Aydea]

A lot of thought was put into this post and a lot of insight into the issues with the UX of Balance Druids. I would encourage you to try to clean up the presentation a bit and use images or links to the actual items and question and talents. If you're willing to put the time into making this a proper case study of the shortcomings faced by Balance, this could be used to guide the upcoming itemization changes and class change discussions the staff has been advertising.

The revision to the first post is excellent. This should help the Class Changes Team immensely.

I love these moments when you read posts like the one from Redmage Joe. Faith in TWoW community restored.

[Grin]

They are a little of everything and never something with enough boom to shock anyone.

They are druids who's aim is never to boom anyone since moonkin they were named originally. They are one of the hybrid support classes unlike warlocks or mages and thus they have way more vertasile abilities and less destructive powers. It takes practice and a lot of effort to learn and utilize them but that what makes this class-tree so special and rarely played and mostly complained about. Balance is a widely misunderstood support PvP spec that has the ability to heal, turn cat and prowl, cast rooting spells aided by the option of a high armor value spell casting form and I could go on explaining further but learning its ways is a trial and understanding it to the point to support changes requires you to first master the class. I believe they were proper before and even now.

[Lahire]

tl;dr please make birb OP

[Icedcream]

They are a little of everything and never something with enough boom to shock anyone.

They are druids who's aim is never to boom anyone since moonkin they were named originally. They are one of the hybrid support classes unlike warlocks or mages and thus they have way more vertasile abilities and less destructive powers.

ETC ETC

You are entitled to your opinion, but turtle wow has greatly changed many talents and abilities and a large amount of players have come to the server not to play the exact same game from 20 years ago. I think there is something fun in making tank paladins, tank druids, feral dps druids, arcane mages, and so on. You don't have to agree with having a dps casting druid in your raid, but these are my suggestions to making it possible.

The boomkin comes at the time of burning crusade when they added 1-2 damage buffs to the tree and some mana efficiency tools.

As for the pvp stealth and subtlety, yea that is a thing if you play resto. Not really what this post is about. I just called out that there aren't the gear options for them either for pvp. As well that type of combat was very common in PVP arena set ups, which this game doesn't have that subtly since there is no weekly arena rankings and team queue only.

[Wafflecrusher]

I'm a big fan of what you've posted here, and appreciate the time and effort that you've put into this post. I think making balance druids more enjoyable to play, while keeping their unique flavor, is something to strive for. I enjoyed reading this post, thanks.

[Xudo]

I leveled druid in balance spec before turtle and want to point, that his "rotation" is not spamming wrath.
His rotation is: root, run away a bit, starfire, repeat. When you engage animals, then roots from rotation are changed to sleep.
You get nature grasp at lvl 14 and roots without pushback at lvl 19.
They allow you to ignore all feral talents available in balance tree.

Pulling enemies with starfire and turning to a form is less efficient than prowling and opening on mobs with "ambush".

Improved thorns is super good talent for support in the raid. Mobs usually attack with 2.0 speed. If your tank holds multiple enemies, then 18 damage per hit is 9 dps.
9 dps for a tank means 9 dps for each member of a raid. Reflective damage is very powerful. I don't recall exact stats, but it can be 1/3 of all damage output of a tank.

Nature focus in restoration tree don't affect wrath and starfire. It is only for healing spells.

I do agree that druids could use some improvement. But it should be related to endgame raiding.

One good feature of leveling in balance is that you can be healer. Your gear contains int and spirit. Ferals can't heal because they need gear with str and agility.

[Icedcream]

I leveled druid in balance spec before turtle and want to point, that his "rotation" is not spamming wrath.
His rotation is: root, run away a bit, starfire, repeat. When you engage animals, then roots from rotation are changed to sleep.

etc

I strongly disagree and think you are living with the disease instead of treating it. I guarantee your tactic will kill the mob, but you will level at 1/2 the speed of any other character. I cannot fathom how slow this would be. I only use this tactic on farming elites. I assure you, wrath is your primary dmg ability.

[Bayanni]

The post is huge so I can't go point-by-point like I'd prefer, so I'll at least give my endgame experience to the post for some perspective.

Raiding as a balance druid has real issues early on due to gear and overall lower damage than almost every other damage spec. Turtle alleviated a lot of gear issues but mainly through world bosses, so many players will never have access to these integral pieces of loot, some of which are BiS forever. This is being mostly alleviated from an endgame perspective with the changes coming to T2.5 and also giving some more meaningful progression than off-tier pieces, but there's still a few gaps from what's been announced. We won't know until 1.17 is fully implemented and the new loot tables are revealed, but I suspect a lot of the raid progression will be mostly resolved for the spec.

Mana issues at 60 are essentially solved. Clearcasting gives a lot of mana and multiple procs in a row can even trigger OOC regen, although this is not reliable. The additional mana reduction form moonkin form, the talent restructuring to allow 3/3 reflection to be specced at no cost to damage, and the addition of tea with sugar as a farmable resource largely solves mana issues. I only ever go OOM on fights that use my potion CD more than once like Kel Thuzad and that's even alleviated by using innervate on myself, now possible in form, instead of on a priest.

Damage at 60 is not up to par with other raiders, but you are incredibly good at pvp damage so adding more is not easy to balance. You have the advantage of being the best at applying the Faerie Fire debuff, one of the best "damage" spells in the game for raids, since ferals have a 6s CD and rarely any spell hit, so at least one boomkin will increase trash clear by a lot at the expense of their parse numbers. Unfortunately, many guilds will completely ignore the number of faerie fires cast or other utility spells and just focus on the damage number, actively incentivizing boomkins to NOT apply Faerie Fire since it not only costs them damage but makes other dps look better at the same time. It's just silly, but that's the reality. You won't put up the big numbers and will only be used in limited quantities, so you're going to need a hybrid spec and set at the ready.


None of this is speaking on leveling as balance as, frankly, I don't know why you would. I didn't because I knew feral was just faster, easier, and better for dungeons in particular since very few are outdoors, meaning roots, one of your best spells, is dead in the water a lot of the time. If your ideas would generally alleviate that and allow more diversity in leveling specs I'm for it, but I can at least say that boomkins at 60 are in a mostly good spot that only really feels problems with limited gearing options due to where the gear actually comes from and overall lower dps than everyone else.

[Icedcream]

Since the post two months ago I've run Kara, ES, MC, ZG, AQ20, and almost through BWL. My feelings remain the same. It looks like they are going to a token system on T1&2 for a boomkin set (AWESOME), and T2.5 was fixed and is amazing looking.

I can say in raid:

1) with equivalent gear you no cannot keep up with a caster or several other classes. Still even in full cloth. You will be contributing still and can be accepted. It'd be nice to be as strong if you spend the time on your gear.

2) I think druid casting is a little counter intuitive and in the past has relied on third party apps to increase your dmg by managing the omen & GCD problems. I think this is bad for the game and think maybe part of it was fixed on the GCD in 1.17. I don't understand the mechanics of omen proc, but I feel it may be proc'ing more on slower casts like starfire. Based on Dmg coefficient, and cast time wrath should be more DPS, but some how starfire keeps working out better on long fights. Testing showed up to 20% more overall dmg is possible due to the mana efficiency side . I reviewed the resistance of bosses on BWL, ZG, AQ, MC and I don't see a higher amount of nature resist. The spell only appears 10% more mana efficient, but should also be 10% slower on DPS. I'd like to hear more on these two abilities. I find wrath more fun, and it's almost impossible to find a warlock on this server so we can't all benefit from +shadow/arcane curse. Most likely to have an enhance shaman proc'ing nature vuln.

3) Talent changes:
3.a) Improved swarm - I'd increase spell dmg coefficient 25% minimum. Make it so more then 1 druid can cast it on a target, but don't make the debuff stack. Improved swarm could be 10/20 (2pt) spell pen general to make it beneficial to the raid. Then this debuff would be massive
3.b) Threat is less of an issue then expected, but may be more of a problem in 2.5 gear and if t3 gets a rework.
3.c) We suffer from weak AOE. I think balance druids really need 2 points to buff hurricane to gain zero CD so they can spam. Possible a review on mana cost, and coefficient. Many guilds run smaller raid groups due to the player base and server time. We don't have as many utilities and ever slot counts.
3.d) stand by my other comments.