Balance Druid DPS Guide — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Balance Mythic+ Resources

Top Balance Mythic+ Players Balance Mythic+ Heatmaps Popular Balance Group Comps

The Balance specialization provides a simple but rewarding rotation, making it great for new players while still maintaining a level of depth to keep older, more experienced players engaged and competitive. It performs well on multiple target instances and excels on single target fights, but has other skill sets and a raid buff it brings to balance out some of its less viable encounter types such as cleave and burst multi-target.

The other main goal of the rotation is to cycle through Eclipse, your main buff. There are several talents influenced by entering or leaving Eclipse, which incentivizes you to have a high uptime in an Eclipse state.

Leveling a Balance Druid has never been easier with access to the full Keeper of the Grove tree enhancing the tankability of our Treants. This allows geared players to make large pulls and keep their distance and new players to keep dangerous mobs off of them as they are DPS'd down.

Balance Druid's spells allow them to deal consistent damage from a safe distance while also being able to provide crowd control and healing to themselves and their allies.

With a moderate level of gear, Balance Druid can use its 45-yard range and Starfall spell to pull and then kite a large group of mobs, allowing for faster kill and collect quests. They can also remain in Travel, Aquatic, and Flight form while collecting many items for quests. Cat Form also allows access to Stealth which can be used in some of Azeroth's many caves.

Check out our full leveling guide for tips on your journey.

At max level, you can start to focus on sharpening your skills, and one good way to do that is by using the right tools. Our add-ons and macro page goes over several useful macros to enhance your gameplay as well as suggestions on how to search for the right Balance Bar.

Balance Druid is a spec that utilizes two major systems in Eclipse and Astral Power. Eclipse is your main vehicle for dealing damage. It buffs your spell damage and cast speed based on the type of Eclipse you are in. You can choose to enter Solar Eclipse to do more single target damage or Lunar Eclipse to do more multi target damage.

Almost all of your spells will generate Astral Power either directly through dealing damage or from some of your DoT effects. You will always want to keep your DoTs on any viable targets and do your best to always be casting spells to maintain Astral Power Generation. When you have enough Astral Power, you can choose to spend it on either Starsurge for single target or Starfall for multi target.

You will always talent into your main Cooldown, Celestial Alignment and this will give you both Eclipse states allowing you to cast whatever is appropriate while dealing increased damage.

For more information on the basics of the Spec, you can check out the Spell Summary to get a good idea of the abilities you will be using while playing Balance Druid. If you are completely new to playing Balance, we suggest taking a look at our Beginner page below to get a general idea of how to set up your new character.

If you already have some experience playing a Druid or have familiarized yourself with the basics of the Spec, you can also read up more information on how to optimize your Rotation and the individual strengths of the different Talents.

As you gear up, be sure to prioritize items with higher item levels from Dungeons, Raids, World Quests, Professions, and even PvP. Gear of higher item levels is generally better than gear of lower item levels.

Use Raidbots to sim your character and find what gear is best out of all the viable options. Using our knowledge of the class, we should be able to rule out downgrades quickly. Lower item level pieces, socketed vs. non-socketed, does it have our premium stat? These are all questions to consider when sifting through our gear. Learn more about simming on our simulations page.

Once you are brushed up on the basics and gearing up well, you want to further boost your numbers. Using the proper foods, enchants and gems will give you a sizeable damage boost.