A November 10 WoW Dragonflight hotfix has been issued to curtail balance druid’s power, as the ‘Boomkin’ class continues to dominate Blizzard’s MMORPG despite the devs’ best efforts to wrangle it.
Anyone who knows World of Warcraft will have heard the word ‘Boomkin’ thrown around in reference to balance druids. The class gets its nickname from the fact that, in many cases, it’s literally OP. With the ability to deal tonnes of single-target and AoE damage, the Boomkin is a CC menace that is just downright disgusting – but so, so much fun to play.
Bizarrely enough the spec was actually buffed in WoW Shadowlands patch 9.2.5, but coming into WoW Dragonflight Blizzard are hitting it with a slew of nerfs in order to combat just how powerful it has become. This comes in the form of a beta hotfix, which significantly reduces the damage of two of the game’s strongest spells.
First up is Starfall, which received a 15% damage buff in 9.2.5. Unfortunately, Blizzard has been quick to counter the buff with a nerf, which decreases its damage by a rather significant 30%. Basically, it’ll go back to playing the same way it did in patch 9.2.0 (remember good ol’ Eternity’s End?), but be slightly weaker. It’s still stackable and has no cooldown, though, so there’s that.
Next on the list is Starfire, as its damage has been cut down by 15%. Given that the spell is no longer empowered by Starsurge, this may influence players to rely on Wrath instead – especially because this now generates eight Astral Power instead of six.
Other classes also see a couple of fixes, including Vengeance Demon Hunter and Assassination Rogue. A full breakdown of the fixes can be found on the Blizzard website.
While balance druid isn’t likely to fall out of the meta anytime soon, hopefully these buffs do temper it a little. With the ability to shapeshift and simultaneously dismantle huge mobs and solo targets, as a shadow priest main I would love for their reign of terror to be brought to an end at some point.
Until then, I’ll be making use of the best WoW addons to give me the leg up on the competition. Additionally, it’s worth checking out our WoW Dragonflight alpha preview ahead of launch, just to get a feel for what the Dragon Isles will look like.