Spec in Review: Balance Druids (The Essentials)

I've got to be totally honest here - my druid is one of my least-played characters. It's actually funny, because when I first started playing, the druid was a competitor for my secondary Alliance character, competing with my hunter. (When BC came out a few months later, I started playing a Draenei Shaman who actually made it to 63 or so before I found out about Wrath of the Lich King, at which point I had him hang up his totems and wait around to be reborn as a Death Knight.)

Balance is going to be very, very different from its old incarnation, and given that I'm not what you'd call an expert, I'm going to stick the the most notable and noticeable aspects of the Warlords changes.

Day and Night Cycle Now Based on Time:

Since Cataclysm, the Day/Night eclipse cycle has been the core of the Balance Druid's mechanics. Eclipse was originally just a talent that would make your Wrath crits buff Starfire and your Starfire crits buff Wrath, but Cataclysm turned it into a key rotational dynamic. That remains true, but the way it works is different.

Your Eclipse bar will now naturally cycle through day and night while you are in combat. And you will always have some level of Eclipse bonus - rather than hitting the limit and then getting the bonus as you make your way back toward the center, you'll simply get a more pronounced bonus as it cycles  further to one end or another. You'll have to cast the right spells, reacting to the change.

Moonfire/Sunfire Snapshots Eclipse:

Mainly this is just for Moonfire, which will actually spend half of its time as Sunfire, changing when the eclipse meter is one the appropriate side. While snapshotting for DoTs has mostly been removed, your Eclipse amount will determine the total damage of these DoTs, so you'll want to cast them at the terminus of your meter to maximize damage.

Moonfire and Sunfire Are Somewhat Different From One Another:

Moonfire will last longer, but Sunfire will apply its DoT to other enemies near your target, so you'll be able to cycle between more efficient single-target damage and easier AoE.

Starsurge and Starfall... Are Different:

Starsurge and Starfall have a shared two charges and a shared recharge time. Starsurge will deal Spellstorm damage and then buff your other filler spells, while Starfall will be what you use in AoE situations. I also believe that Starfall becomes Sunfall during the day half of the cycle.

Other Changes:

There's a lot going on with Balance, but those are the key ones, as far as I can tell.

Level 100 Talents:

Euphoria:

This will make your day/night cycle twice as fast, and the affected spells will get a 20% cast-time reduction when you're in the relevant half of the cycle.

Stellar Flare:

A spell that benefits most when your Eclipse bar is at the center, dealing Spellstorm damage and then leaving a 20-second DoT.

Balance of Power:

Your Wraths will extend Sunfire by 4 second and your Starfires will extend Moonfire by 6 seconds, and both DoTs will deal 10% more damage. In practice, this should more or less make your DoTs fire-and-forget, allowing you to focus on casting your direct-damage spells, at least in single-target situations.

Breaking it Down:

Again, as a non-expert, I can't really say which of these talents will be best for which situations, but Balance of Power will certainly make the rotation easier. Euphoria will make it easier to fix things if you let a DoT fall off at an inopportune time, and of course will make you more of a rapid-fire laser-chicken. Stellar Flare is there if you've decided that with two filler spells, a nuke, and two DoTs to carefully time, you just don't have enough balls to juggle.

Moonkin Revamp in the Works...

One last thing: apparently they still want to do a revamp of the look of Moonkin form. Famously, Druid animal forms were revamped in the middle of Wrath of the Lich King, Treant form was redesigned in Cataclysm, and of course now we're getting model revamps for the vanilla races (3/4 of Druids.) Moonkin form, thus, is one of the very last player models that has not changed in appearance since vanilla. I'd love to see a more elaborate version, perhaps with racially-appropirate charms and such adorning them. Fingers crossed for some time during Warlords!