Balance Druid Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Shadowlands 9.2
Legendary Powers are targetable, unique effects that you can imbue certain base items with through the Runecarving system. In Shadowlands, these enable you to customize your Balance Druid, drastically improving your performance, and are arguably the most important aspect of your gear.
The purpose of this page is to help you pick the right legendary powers (and item slots for them) for your character, depending on the content you are interested in.
As of Patch 9.1 the recommended Covenant for Balance Druid HAS CHANGED. Please check out the Covenant page of this guide for more information.
Introduction: Legendaries in Shadowlands
Legendary Powers are special effects affixed to items in the Shadowlands (through Runecarving). Most of these effects have benefits that are specific to your spec, and others work for all Druid specs. On this page, we will go through the best ones for all types of content. Please refer to our Druid Legendary Powers page and our Runecarving page for more information about these powers.
Best Overall Legendary for Balance Druid
Patch 9.2 introduces the new Legendary Power Unity which provides
the bonuses of your Covenant Legendary Power.
Once you unlock Unity
and hit Revered with The Enlightened, you can then recraft it
onto a more favorable slot with better stats. Additionally, you can now also
equip a second Legendary Power which will be
Primordial Arcanic Pulsar.
Primordial Arcanic Pulsar has incredible synergy with our new
Tier Set Bonuses which we go into greater detail
on the Gear page linked below. This Legendary will be crafted on the Ring slot
and with Haste and Mastery as the chosen secondaries. If you have not gotten it
already, you can pick up Pulsar at the Wrath of the Jailer event in The Maw.
The goal for all players is to have a four piece set bonus (which are
acquirable in all types of content) and both Legendaries equipped. This does not
leave much room for swapping as both Unity and
Primordial Arcanic Pulsar are going to be the Legendaries for all content.
Pulsar is an incredibly flexible Legendary and the tier set seems like it
was made to pair with this Legendary. Once you have the Balance Druid 2-Piece bonus,
Primordial Arcanic Pulsar will most likely never be un-equipped again. If
you are in the situation where you have no tier gear and are playing
Venthyr and do not already have access to a second Legendary, you can
still play
Sinful Hysteria but the rest of the Covenants will still
prefer crafting Pulsar first.
Creating and Leveling Legendaries
When you craft your first Legendary, it is likely to be either Rank 1 or 2. There are 8 total Legendary Ranks this patch and leveling a Legendary only affects the stats on it, not the powerful effect. Each Rank results in about a ~35 DPS increase from the last. You should look to create both Legendaries and then choose which one you prioritize leveling, based on the content you prefer.
Stat and Slot Selection
Tier sets reduce the overall slots you can craft your Legendaries on. As your Legendaries are always your highest item level pieces you want to craft them on high budget pieces if possible. In the new raid Sepulcher of the First Ones, the Helm and Leg slots are regular item levels and will be good candidates for crafting slots depending on what you have tier in.
For Stats, the safest option to choose are Mastery and Haste as these are generally our most favored stats.
Covenant Specific Legendaries
The four Covenant-specific Legendaries powers that you can activate
after acquiring
Unity or craft on their own are:
- Venthyr:
Sinful Hysteria increases the duration of
Ravenous Frenzy by .1 seconds each time it gains a stack. When Ravenous Frenzy expires, you gain stacks of Sinful Hysteria equal to the lost Ravenous Frenzy stacks for 3 seconds. Each stack of Sinful Hysteria increases damage and healing by 2% and Haste by 1%.
- Night Fae:
Celestial Spirits reduces the cooldown of
Convoke the Spirits by 50% and reduces the channeling time by 25%. This makes Convoke a 1-minute cooldown that casts 12-total spells now. This new Convoke also has a significantly higher chance to cast a Full Moon.
- Kyrian:
Kindred Affinity gives you and your partner a stat bonus based on their Covenant. This bonus doubles when you activate your Covenant ability. It grants 210 Mastery for Kyrian, 6% Haste for Night Fae, 6% Critical Strike Chance for Venthyr, and 6% Versatility for Necrolord.
- Necrolord:
Unbridled Swarm gives
Adaptive Swarm a 60% chance to split into two Swarms each time it jumps to another target.
It is recommended you do not craft these separately as it will be a waste of resources.
Other Legendaries for Balance Druid
Most of the other Legendary powers Balance Druid have are less than optimal. We are only going to talk about the Balance Druid ones because as of now, none of the other shared Legendaries are worth mentioning.
Oneth's Clear Vision is a call back to the popular and powerful Legion legendary. This power currently sits lowest on the board, as even the buffed version can not hold a candle to our current best powers. Most of the reason is we generate significantly less Astral Power than we did back in Legion, and we cannot layer the free
Starfalls.
Timeworn Dreambinder is the other Legion throwback legendary. Similar to the drawback to
Oneth's Clear Vision, we do not generate enough Astral Power to maintain the buff for any meaningful amount of time. Good for PvP as Kyrian and can be used single-target as Venthyr if you do not yet have
Sinful Hysteria.
Circle of Life and Death is a DoT-based Legendary Power which gets outshone by Pulsar. Can be good for spread multi-target if no other options but will most likely not be used.
Changelog
- 21 Feb. 2022: Page reviewed and approved for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 01 Feb. 2021: Updated recommendations.
- 07 Dec. 2020: Updated crafting choices and stat selection.
- 21 Nov. 2020: Page added.
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This was written by Borabank, a Balance Druid theorycrafter and raider in Muscle Memory. You can watch him on his Twitch channel or in the Dreamgrove Discord server.
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