Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we're heading back into the world of nasty, little over-budget talents bothering balance druids as we fight to save our 1 keys from total disaster.

It's been a harsh week in my little corner of the world. Between attempting to get up for work, falling back down to sleep for 5 more hours, taking medications that I can't even pronounce the names of, and several other unpleasant things that have been plaguing me for the past five days; there's been little time for actual coherent thought in my life. So forgive me if this week's article is a little short (I can already hear people cheering) and slightly confusing. I promise to try and make this post as readable as possible, but I am bound to ramble on incoherently at some point; though I'm not entirely sure how that's any different from normal.

Last week, Shifting Perspectives took at look at the various possibilities for changing Eclipse. This week, that trend will continue as we explore ways in which or other problem, if less vilified, talent can be adjusted. Yes, folks, I'm talking about Nature's Grace. This long-standing talent that has been a staple in balance builds since WoW was released. Much like Eclipse, Ghostcrawler has already stated that Nature's Grace is high on the list to be changed. Also like Eclipse, many people wonder why Nature's Grace hasn't already been changed as it is so problematic. While Ghostcrawler mentions it's a big deal, many people fail to understand how big of a deal Nature's Grace really is.

Nature's Grace is an awesome talent. It is a tad over-budget, but not nearly as much as Eclipse is, and, honestly, having an over-budget talent here or there isn't necessarily a terrible thing in of itself. The only thing that plagues Nature's Grace is how easily it allows for Wrath to be GCD capped. Again, though, this isn't so terrible of a prospect in of itself. After all, this is a mechanic that balance druids have been dealing with since haste was introduced into the game. Wrath ramming into GCD issues like the Titanic hitting an iceberg only became problematic when balance druids also failed to turn just a little to the left during patch 3.2. Prior to patch 3.2, Wrath was maybe only 10% of our overall damage done, so any scaling issues that it had was fairly trivial. When patch 3.2 came around and Wrath jumped from 10% of our damage, or less, to being 40% or more of our damage, the scaling issues became a real problem.


This is why Nature's Grace became a very hot topic for balance druids during patch 3.3. It was just not to be, though. Changing Nature's Grace, as Ghostcrawler and I said, is a very big deal. Not merely in terms of the DPS it provides, but also in terms of the scaling factors and the influence it has on PvP. Balance druids are notorious for our relatively low crit scaling, and quite a significant chunk of that scaling is tied into Nature's Grace. Any change or nerf to Nature's Grace is also going to have to address those scaling issues either by modifying an existing talent or by adding in a new talent -- which balance druids can hardly afford to have at this point in time. The PvP utility of Nature's Grace also cannot be ignored. Balance PvP is focused around several abilities with short cast times, predominately Wrath, but also Cyclone and Entangling Roots. While Nature's Grace isn't always up for these spells, it is still a factor to consider. The faster the druid can get these casts off, the less likely they are to be interrupted or suffer any pushback on them.

[View Remaining 11 Paragraphs]