Balance Druid Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within (11.1.5)

In raid encounters, Balance Druids excel at dealing sustained damage to a single target and have strong AoE damage as well. They bring utility to the raid group through their crowd control abilities like Typhoon, Solar Beam, as well as their Innervate ability that can restore mana to healers.

Overall, Balance Druids are a versatile class that can adapt to a variety of situations and playstyles. They require a moderate level of skill to play effectively but can be very rewarding in the right hands.

One drawback of the Balance Druid class is its ineffectiveness in what can be referred to as "lower difficulty content." This mainly applies to dungeons, as raid encounters can only get so short. Many classes have many instant damage spells and abilities at their disposal that Balance Druid does not. If you are running content that is outgeared or of lower level, you may not find Balance Druid as competitive with other classes.

On Horde, Zandalari Troll and Troll performs best on the Horde side, and Night Elf is the best for Alliance. There are some more utility-driven choices, such as Highmountain Tauren or Worgen for additional mobility.

Cancelling Starlord using a macro is a neutral but sometimes beneficial option that can cost DPS if done wrong. If you would like to use Starlord cancelling, you can use it in the last 2-seconds of Eclipse and then cast Starsurge to prevent capping Astral Power. It is generally advised to ignore this and spend the Astral Power normally especially for beginner players.

There are no Haste caps for Balance Druids. All damage-over-time effects scale dynamically with your Haste and other stats. Due to a limited duration buff in Eclipse, there can be minor Haste breakpoints, but they happen so frequently that they can largely be ignored.

You can learn more about Haste and the other stat priority for Balance Druid on our stats page.

Double-dipping is when a spell or ability gets to gain the same benefit twice. The reason this is relevant to Balance Druid is because of our Mastery effect and the Astral damage type.

Our Mastery increases the damage of our Eclipse, but it only affects the active damage Eclipse type. So, in Lunar Eclipse, you gain an Arcane damage buff, and in Solar, you gain a Nature damage buff. When you use Celestial Alignment, you gain the benefits of both Eclipses simultaneously.

Astral damage is the combination of both Arcane and Nature damage, meaning when we have both Eclipses up, we gain the Mastery effect twice, thus "Double-dipping". Starsurge, Starfall, Stellar Flare, Shooting Stars, Fury of Elune, and New Moon are all considered Astral damage.

DoTs such as Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare do not snapshot with any ability or buff. They update dynamically meaning that entering or leaving Eclipse or gaining or losing buffs will apply increases or decreases depending on the power of your character at the moment of the DoT tick.