Season of Discovery Balance Druid DPS Stat Priority

Before we begin, it should be said that gear in Season of Discovery, such as Extraplanar Spidersilk Boots, tends to be very unique. Thus, you will often be chasing very specific items, rather than simply following a stat priority list. Still, a more detailed explanation on each of a Balance Druid's relevant stats will help you understand why those pieces are so sought after.

1. Spell Hit Rating (5% is needed to cap hit against Sunken Temple bosses, see below for details);
2. Spell / Nature / Arcane Damage (some spells scale better with it than others, but for the most part you will be casting spells that benefit greatly from it);
3. Spell Critical Strike (200% damage for a spell crit with maxed Vengeance);
4. Intellect (grants spell critical strike and increases your maximum Mana);
5. Spirit (minor Mana regeneration with Reflection).

• Mana every 5 seconds (for Mana regeneration while you are casting);
• Resistance (strongly reduces Magic damage taken of a specific element);
• Stamina (more health per point);
• Agility (dodge);
• Armor (less physical damage taken).

Spell Hit allows your spells to land more often, which is a huge DPS increase. Keep in mind that you will always have at least a 1% chance to miss with spells. Depending on the level of your enemy, you might need more or less Spell Hit to reach this 1% cap:

• For an enemy of the same level as you, 3% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 1 level higher than you, 4% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• (Sunken Temple Bosses) For an enemy 2 levels higher than you, 5% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 3 levels higher than you, which is the case of raid bosses, 16% Spell Hit is needed to cap.

Unfortunately, Balance has no talents that increase Hit and, as such, needs the full 16% Hit to max out against bosses, which diminishes its damage potential greatly.

Spell Damage is applied to each spell based on its casting time.

The coefficient is calculated by dividing the cast time of a spell by 3.5. This is because a 3.5 second cast benefits from 100% of your gear's Spell Damage. For example, if you have 20 additional Spell Damage from gear, then this will simply affect your spells as follows:

• Damage Increase per spell cast = n * 20
• n = spell's coefficient

Instant single target spells typically only get around 43% of the benefit, with area of effect spells having an even greater penalty, while a short cast time spell like Wrath gets roughly 57%. Meanwhile, a longer cast spell such as Starfire gets 100% of the Spell Damage in your gear as added damage.

This means that 100 Spell Damage on your gear would cause Wrath to deal 57 extra damage per cast, but Starfire would only deal 100 extra damage, using the same gear. A table with the exact coefficients for all spells in WoW Classic can be found in this reddit thread, by u/RobertVests.

Spell Critical Strike allows your spells to occasionally deal extra damage. Balance has Vengeance to increase the damage from critical strikes from the regular 150% up to 200%, but also relies on the damage over time of Sunfire, making critical strike a good, but not excellent, stat.

Intellect is a fine stat for Balance Druids, as it increases total Mana pool and spell critical strike. Due to Fury of Stormrage removing the cost of Wrath the value of Intellect is lower than it used to be in vanilla, and you can probably get away with not stacking it in your gear, as you will get plenty by default on caster gear.

For Druids, Spirit provides Mana regeneration, mostly when outside of combat, and up to 15% inside combat with Reflection talented. Overall, not that useful due the same reasons explained above for Intellect, but it can be useful when combined with Innervate, for example in the form of swapping to a weapon with high Spirit when receiving Innervate.

Resistance, while inherently niche due to different bosses dealing different magical damage types, can be very useful while progressing specific bosses. Wearing resistance gear of a type makes you take less damage or even completely avoid damage when hit by that type of magical damage.

Stamina is the only stat that will help you survive all types of attacks, and as such, should always be valued.