idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Moonkin could be the form for stationary combat, wisp could be a burst form, and the third could be a mobile form. Make the wisp a cooldown, and change how it works based on which form you shift into it from (both to make it more dynamic, and to keep you from launching such strong attacks while moving).
I am not being a ******* wisp! I've hated wisps ever since getting that stupid spirit of summer pet and finding out it was a pink wisp rather than the cool fire elemental that you feed blossoms to. Every time I see one in game I want to kill it (shame they never seem to be attackable), I even hate myself when I die and have to fly back to my corpse as a stupid ghost wisp!
Apart from that, I really like the idea. Balance druids could really use a damage increasing cooldown, treants are nice enough, but I would never think about saving them for a burst phase just about taking them out as often as possible during a fight when they will be able to hit the target without being at risk of dying. Maybe they could even add in a gain to the caster when using them (like Guardian of Ancient Kings for Paladins to buff stats or the Enh Shaman spirits that heal the player when they do damage), if you got a spell power or haste boost you when they attacked they would be much better for phases where you need to be hitting hard and it would also provide better scaling for them (as the better gear you have the more of a boost their buff would provide).
Having forms for different types of damage would be interesting. I know eclipse is sort of meant to be doing this, but it doesn't seem to be very user friendly. I can do the basics of the rotation moving from one eclipse to the other and my dps is ok, but to make the most of it (as I understand) you need to be able to time which eclipse you are in for different phases of the fight depending on the type of damage needed. As someone who doesn't get a lot of practice dpsing (that is my main spec, but my guild needs me healing for heroic progress) I don't really get a chance to find out when I need to time certain eclipses and how to pace myself to make that happen at the right point in the fight. If it was based more on a form (boosting certain abilities over others rather than blocking certain spells) or even similar to Chakra for holy priests I think it would make it a lot more accessible for people coming in to the spec. I'm not saying there shouldn't be room for improvement/reward for really knowing the class, it just feels to me like the learning curve is too high for people who don't play as often with the spec (or maybe it is just me that sucks :P).
I just find it a bit frustrating that I have a hunter with much less raid (dpsing) experience and worse gear that easily outperforms my druid and I don't want to get to the point where I feel like I'm burdening my guild if they take me as dps instead of a healer. I don't think balance druids are broken, just that their mechanics are not so easy to get to grips with compared to other classes.