Mists of Pandaria Classic Balance Druid Leveling

Balance Druid is an excellent leveling specialization due to its multiple instant cast damage over time effects which also activate Shooting Stars which provides high single target burst damage while moving with instant Starsurge.

Combined with the Starfall cooldown which guarantees you can do very large pulls very often, Balance can consistently pull faster and kill multiple enemies more quickly than most caster specializations, and often without ever stopping to cast if you are making full use out of Lunar Shower.

In Mists of Pandaria, you will unlock a new row of talent selections every 15 levels, starting at level 15. We will give row by row recommendations in order to make leveling as quick and smooth as possible, along with a short explanation.

This tier of talents is dedicated to mobility increases and alternative options for quickly moving your character around.

• Feline Swiftness is a straightforward 15% movement speed increase, which makes it great for leveling content and added kiting abilities.
• Displacer Beast teleports you 20 yards forward like Blink which is fantastic for quickly fleeing from enemies, but has a significant 30-second cooldown and also puts you into Cat Form, which is a DPS loss as you will have to return to Moonkin Form to deal damage, making it not recommended.
• Wild Charge grants the Wild Charge ability while in Moonkin Form, which causes you to jump back when used. This is usually not of much use as you will not be able to continue casting while jumping and the jump distance is relatively short.

This tier of talents focuses on ways to self-heal and recover sustained damage, which is of critical importance while leveling.

• Ysera's Gift heals you for 5% of your health every 5 seconds, or a nearby injured ally if you are at full health. This is a good passive choice which can be taken while leveling to keep your button count down.
• Renewal heals you for 30% of your maximum health every 2 minutes. This is a decent extra defensive for emergencies, but the heal amount is low for its high cooldown.
• Cenarion Ward allows you to place a ward on a friend target which activates when the target is directly attacked and does very high healing for 6 seconds on a short 30-second cooldown. This is a good talent for solo gameplay as you will generally not be hit, making it contribute significant healing when you need it to, and can also contribute some off-healing on the tank when doing dungeons, but this comes at the cost of an additional button to press relatively often.

This tier of talents has multiple crowd control abilities. These are situational, but there are a few good leveling options which can help you be more efficient.

• Faerie Swarm allows your Faerie Fire to slow affected targets by 50% for 15 seconds. This can occasionally be useful for solo leveling, but the alternatives tend to be better because they accomplish the same goal of stopping enemies while hitting all enemies at once.
• Mass Entanglement roots every enemy around its target for 20 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. This is one of the most unique Druid talents overall, and can be very useful if a pull goes wrong, to allow you to easily run away without being chased down.
• Typhoon pushes away enemies in front of you and slows them for 6 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. Pushing enemies away generally interrupts their casts which makes this a very powerful talent, just be wary of spreading enemies while in a dungeon, as that will lower your group's DPS potential.

This tier of talents grants you extra DPS through a mix of passive effects and long DPS cooldown options.

• Soul of the Forest is a passive talent that causes your single target spells to have a 8% chance to cause your next Astral Communion to immediately push you all the way to your next Eclipse by giving you 100 Solar or Lunar Energy. This is generally useless for leveling because you can use Astral Communion freely outside of combat and fights will rarely be long enough that you can cycle through multiple Eclipse states.
• Incarnation grants you an improved Moonkin Form for 30 seconds on a 3-minute cooldown which increases your damage by 25% during Eclipse. While this is usually extremely powerful, the short duration of leveling fights makes it very likely that you will waste most of this talent's duration or rarely get to use it.
• Force of Nature has 3 charges on a 20-second recharge timer and creates a Treant ally which deals DPS and roots one enemy over its 15-second duration. These are easy to use, crowd control enemies and contribute significant DPS with a short cooldown and duration, making them ideal for leveling.

This tier of talents has another set of situational crowd control abilities.

• Disorienting Roar disorients nearby enemies for 3 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. While this is a great talent to interrupt masses of casters in dungeons, while solo leveling you will never want to be playing so close to your targets, making it much weaker.
• Ursol's Vortex is an especially interesting Druid talent which creates a ground zone that slows enemies and pulls them to its center whenever they try to leave it for the first time. It lasts 10 seconds on a short 60-second cooldown, and allows you to pull many enemies and keep them at range with minimal effort, making it the best leveling talent of this row.
• Mighty Bash stuns one target for 5 seconds every 50 seconds. This can be occasionally useful in a solo setting but if you need stuns in a group, there will likely be better baseline options from other classes.

Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria are much weaker than they have ever been since their introduction. Still, there are a few exceptions that can be useful while leveling, and we discuss them below.

While not all recommended glyphs affect your throughput, we still recommend using the glyphs listed below for their high quality of life improvements.

• Glyph of Prowl — removes the movement penalty while using Prowl, which can be a huge speed increase while leveling in the world.
• Glyph of Omens — allows your utility spells to contribute small amounts of Lunar / Solar Energy towards your next Eclipse.
• Glyph of Dash — reduces the cooldown of your Dash ability by 60 sec, making you more mobile in the process.
• Glyph of Stampede — allows you to use Stampeding Roar without needing to leave Moonkin Form, which is both a DPS gain and quality of life increase.
• Glyph of Stampeding Roar — this glyph triples the radius at which Stampeding Roar will affect nearby allies, making it much more usable in all situations.
• Glyph of Rebirth — causes players resurrected by Rebirth to return at 100% health, making them more likely to survive.

Balance Druids only have quality of life Minor Glyphs, but there are a few useful ones listed below.

• Glyph of Aquatic Form — increases your swim speed by 50% in Aquatic Form, which is a great quality of life benefit while doing world content.
• Glyph of Grace — decreases the damage you take from falling even while not in Cat Form which has this bonus baked in. This makes it much harder to die or get heavily injured from fall damage, which is occasionally useful.
• Glyph of the Stag — allows your Travel Form to carry party members, which can be occasionally useful if all of you need to move somewhere quickly.
• Glyph of Stars — makes your character's model visible while in Moonkin Form allowing you to see your gear and customizations.

Your leveling rotation as a Balance Druid is very focused on instant casts and pulling multiple targets with your dots while kiting them around with your many crowd control abilities, but against high health single targets you will want to use your cast time spells as well.

Remember to use Astral Communion before pulling to enter Eclipse and you can also use it to quickly recover Mana if needed. Also, make sure to keep yourself buffed with Mark of the Wild.

1. Apply and refresh Sunfire and Moonfire on all enemies while kiting away from them with abilities such as Ursol's Vortex, Typhoon, Force of Nature, and Wild Mushroom;
2. Use Starfall once all enemies are pulled, preferably while you are in Lunar Eclipse;
3. Cast Starsurge whenever possible on priority targets;
4. Channel Hurricane while inside any Eclipse against 5+ enemies;
5. When not in an Eclipse, work towards your next one by casting either Starfire in Lunar Eclipse or Wrath in Solar Eclipse, and continuing to cast each spell until you enter the next Eclipse.