Mists of Pandaria Classic Balance Druid Talent Builds

With Mists of Pandaria the talent system was heavily reworked to focus on a small amount of highly impactful choices and Balance Druid has multiple talent options for different encounters and gameplay profiles, ranging from high survivability to high DPS.

In Mists of Pandaria you will be able to unlock a new row of talent selections every 15 levels, starting at level 15. Each row has a specific theme in order to keep the choices balanced with each other, and thus the choice will mostly rest on what type of defensives you want, or mobility, or utility, for the situation.

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 and is ideal for world, leveling, or dungeon content.
• Displacer Beast teleports you 20 yards forward like Blink which is fantastic for quick movement and avoiding mechanics, 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 later.
• Wild Charge grants the Wild Charge ability while in Moonkin Form, which is usually more than enough for quickly moving out of mechanics, especially as it has a short 15-second cooldown.

This tier of talents focuses on ways to self-heal and recover sustained damage.

• 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, but not particularly impactful.
• Renewal heals you for 30% of your maximum health every 2 minutes. This is a good extra defensive for emergencies, but also has a significant 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 or contributing tank off-healing, but bad for healing yourself in group situations as it requires direct attacks to activate.

This tier of talents has multiple crowd control abilities. These are very situational, and you will need to frequently change them to suit the encounter you are doing.

• Faerie Swarm allows your Faerie Fire to slow affected targets by 50% for 15 seconds. While this can occasionally be useful in solo situations, you will generally have other classes with better tools for slowing enemies when in a group.
• 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 while situational, it is a must-have for encounters that require extended crowd control of enemies vulnerable to roots. It also has strong synergy with Solar Beam.
• 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 out 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 decent 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. While this can allow you to completely skip the low DPS phases in between Eclipses, these are usually very short due to Haste stacking and Euphoria, anyway.
• Incarnation grants you an improved Moonkin Form for 30 seconds on a 3-minute cooldown which increases your damage by 25% during Eclipse. As it is relatively easy to always ensure full Eclipse uptime during Incarnation, this is the most favored talent in most situations.
• 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 and contribute significant DPS with a short cooldown and duration, making them ideal for solo situations or whenever enemies will not live through the 30 seconds of Incarnation.

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. Since it has an extremely short cooldown and no downsides, this is one of the best tools for countering masses of caster enemies, provided you have managed to stack them close to yourself first.
• 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 combos very well with Typhoon to avoid spreading enemies after you push them away or even have them stack more tightly than before the Typhoon!
• 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.

The final tier of talents provides small throughput increases to your role and large potential throughput increases to your ability to fill other roles temporarily.

• Heart of the Wild increases Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by 6% at all times. It can also be activated to massively increase your performance at off-roles for 45 seconds. For Balance this will usually mean temporarily tanking in Bear Form or throwing some strong heals if needed.
• Dream of Cenarius increases Healing Touch healing by 20% and casting it increases the damage bonus of your next Eclipse by 25%. While this effect helps with off-healing and is a damage increase, it falls short of what the other two bonuses provide.
• Nature's Vigil increases your damage and healing by 12% for 30 seconds and during its effect your healing effects damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing done and damage effects heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage done. With a 30-second duration on a 90-second cooldown, this is an additional cooldown you can use to help keep yourself and your raid healthy during incoming raid damage.

There are only two categories of Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria: Major and Minor Glyphs. Major Glyphs tend to improve or change how major abilities work and thus have direct impact on your performance, while Minor Glyphs are mostly cosmetic or small quality of life improvements for niche spells.

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 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. As area damage and ground effects are very common in raid encounters, it is very likely that a player returned at low health will instantly die again, wasting the combat ress. This glyphs makes the player much more likely to survive, making it one of our recommended picks.
• Glyph of Dash — reduces the cooldown of your Dash ability by 60 sec, making you more mobile in the process.

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.