Zevan

The problem with an altitude barrier is people will be able to fly over and drop into the thick of combat if they have things like parachute cloaks and certain abilities.

Cry more, it's a lot harder trying to deal with the tree changes as balance.

You know WoW Insider is really annoying me of late. If you are going to cover druids then cover all 3 specs, don't just ignore one because you don't know anything about it. Go hire/find someone who does know about balance and stop treating it like it doesn't exist.

It's no different to BC with dranei shammies and belf pallies. Yes there will be an abundance of new ones created but they soon spread out when intermingled with the existing class base.

I love how my posts keep getting stuffed up when I try to post something

No, because high level end game casters are automatically hitcapped from gear without gemming for it that is best in slot regardless of the hit rating on it. So as far as raiding goes it's still only really useful for tanks for extra threat gen and dual wielding players.

Dmg/Haste(after 1394 dmg)->Crit/Haste(largely depends on the gear)

The most interesting change for balance druids in WotLK is the PvP side of things, It seems like balance druids have been designed with tanking melee specifically in mind. Roots and NG and Owlkin frenzy are all really nice melee centric buffs for PvP.

You forgot to mention balance druids will still want to spec into resto for master shapshifter offering a 2/4% increase in spell damage.

You also forgot to mention owlkin frenzy a huge buff against melee for pvp, by it decreasing casting time and making us immune to pushback.

You also forgot to mention Earth and Moon and Eclipse, the former being a weaker version of curse of elements that gives you a 100% chance on spell hit of increasing nature and arcane damage taken by the target by 2% stacking 3 times and the latter being an attempt to get balance druids to use more then an MF,SF rotation. Eclipse would be alright for PvP but still rather pointless in PvE as wrath spam would still not scale as well as starfire even with the 10% increased damage for 30 seconds after a 60% chance to proc on starfire crit.

Finally you forgot the 3 point Imp Moonkin aura, which allows all casters in the party to increase their spell haste by 20% for 8 seconds every time they crit though the effect has a 30 second cooldown. Therefore during a 5 minute fight it should work out to be around 5.34% haste.

All in all it looks like blizzard wants balance druids to focus more on crit and damage like an elemental shammy then the current hit->dmg/haste(at 1394 spell damge)->crit gearing that you currently find. What with eclipse triggering off crit, imp moonkin form triggering off crit and our clearcasting ability on crit.

Also while 2 key issues with balance was addressed there is still the issue of a spell interrupt and the fact that balance druids are still undesirable when compared with elemental shamans. Especially now with flametongue totem being an increase in I think 73 spell damage and wrath of air becomming a 10% spell haste totem. So combine that with Totem of wrath and you have elemental shamans offering: 73 spell damage, 10% spell haste and 3% spell crit and 3% spell hit RAID WIDE.

Let's compare this to the balance druid:
Balance druids get 3% hit to all types now raid wide, 5% spell crit, approximately 5.34% spell haste assuming the ability is immediately procced every time the cooldown is off though this depends more on the individual party member as to its effectiveness and we now also offer 6% increased Nature and Arcane Damage.

So to summarise balance druids:
Raid wide 6% Arc and Nature Dmg buff(Like a lesser CoE) RAID WIDE

Simple:

My main is a female tauren balance specialised druid who's primary profession is engineering and raids sunwell, 3 minority groups covered in one person I'm like Obama but with an actual chance of winning.

I want to Horde all of these sexy laptops.