WotLK Classic Balance Druid Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Druids.

With the introduction of Ulduar and Tier 8, Balance Druids will be leaving most Mana issues behind, but also need to do longer fights, where Moonfire performs better than it used to.

Thus, Improved Moonfire is back as a strong DPS increasing talent, and so is Glyph of Starfire. We also recommend maxing out Nature's Reach to avoid threat issues on Hodir, but you can also maximize Improved Insect Swarm instead for slightly more DPS.

Finally, we would recommend taking out Glyph of Typhoon for Ulduar, as the knockback is useful on multiple fights, such as when knocking back exploding adds in Freya.

Balance Druids are tight on points, as you want to go very deeply into the Balance tree for Starfall, and there are also multiple strong talents at the bottom of the Balance tree that all but force a huge amount of points to be spent in the tree.

With Tier 7 gear and bonuses, as well as the short fights of Naxxramas, Improved Moonfire is skipped, as the short fight rotation does not use it other than as a movement filler, since to be good Moonfire requires two glyphs and two talents that can be spent elsewhere for more damage and a smoother rotation.

If you have Mana issues, we recommend taking out Improved Insect Swarm or Nature's Reach and investing into Dreamstate. You could also remove Typhoon and Gale Winds for more single-target damage, but the gain you would get is so small that it is almost never worth losing these area-damage-focused talents.

While somewhat similar to the PvE spec, you want to drop Improved Faerie Fire, Improved Insect Swarm, and Furor in favor of Nature's Focus, Subtlety, Improved Moonfire, and Owlkin Frenzy, all of which have strong PvP use cases.

If you are playing on a composition trying to nuke a single target in large-scale PvP, an argument could be done for Improved Faerie Fire, and longer fights promote Dreamstate, but for 2v2 and 3v3 Arena the suggested build should be ideal to maximize your chances of winning.

In Wrath you will be able to unlock Glyphs that improve your abilities and can be swapped around freely as long as you have the consumable glyph item on your bags.

As a Balance Druid in PvE you will want to be using Glyph of Focus, Glyph of Starfall, and Glyph of Insect Swarm for maximum damage, especially in AoE scenarios.

For PvP, keep using Glyph of Starfall and Glyph of Insect Swarm but swap Focus for Glyph of Monsoon for extra radius on Starfall and a lower cooldown on Typhoon.

For minor glyphs, you will usually want to use Glyph of Typhoon in PvE to lower Typhoon's Mana cost, make it larger and remove the knockback. In other situations simply pick any glyphs you like out of Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, Glyph of Dash, Glyph of the Wild, or Glyph of Thorns.

The Balance Tree carries most of the power of a Balance Druid, as would be expected. It also has a lot of PvP utility, which you can learn more about in our Wrath Balance Druid PvP guide.

Nature's Grace increases your casting speed by 20% when you critically hit with a non-periodic spell. This allows you to have a huge amount of Haste very often, especially during Eclipse when your Starfire critical chance is highly increased.

Insect Swarm is a powerful damage-over-time effect with an equally powerful glyph option in Glyph of Insect Swarm. When combined, they make it worth casting in most scenarios, as explained in the Balance rotation page.

Improved Insect Swarm is not nearly as good as it reads, as it is only a conditional 1% damage increase per point, and you will often not even be casting Moonfire at all.

Owlkin Frenzy causes attacks against you to have a 15% chance to give you a 10-second buff that increases your damage, removes spell pushback, and regenerates Mana every second. While the buff is extremely strong, you will rarely be directly attacked in PvE, making it only great for soloing and PvP.

Eclipse defines your Wrath rotation and forces you into an alternating cycle of Wrath and Starfire spam in order to activate Lunar / Solar Eclipse, respectively, at which point you swap to the opposite spell until a new Eclipse is triggered.

Typhoon is a new spell which causes some damage and knocks back all targets in a huge radius in front of you, also slowing them for 6 seconds. This makes it very useful when soloing, in PvP, and also in group PvE when used with Glyph of Typhoon.

Force of Nature creates 3 treant allies that deal significant damage during their uptime, but also has a significant 3-minute cooldown.

Starfall causes up to 20 stars to fall on enemies around you over a period of 10 seconds. These stars deal significant damage which splashes to nearby enemies. Essentially, you will be doing top area damage and competitive single-target every time you press this spell, as it is incredibly powerful!

The Feral Tree provides no real benefits to Balance and should be ignored.

The Restoration Tree is mostly used for Improved Mark of the Wild, Omen of Clarity, and some minor stat buffs.