Balance Druid Frequently Asked Questions — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, we go over several of the most frequently asked questions regarding Balance Druid in World of Warcraft — Battle for Azeroth Dragonflight 10.0.7. This will be updated as more common repeated questions surface over the course of the expansion.
How good is Balance Druid in Dragonflight?
While tuning is ever ongoing in the Blizzard office, the tools that Balance Druid has at its disposal are as good as they have ever been. Lots of utility options as well as strong talent builds for single-target, multi-target, and hybrid encounters should make them a high-priority class in most dungeon, raid, and PvP groups.
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.
What are the best Balance Druid races?
On Horde, Troll performs better 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.
Is There A Haste Cap for Balance Druids?
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.
What is "Double-Dipping"?
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.
Why do Balance Druids not take Solar Beam?
Solar Beam is the iconic Balance Druid interrupt that interrupts the
main target and silences enemies around your target. This has been a great
utility option in the Balance Druid kit for multiple expansions and has even had
encounter strategies made around this powerful tool.
The issue is the location of the talent, both on the specialization tree,
and its spot on the tree. Solar Beam has to compete with all of our
damage-increasing talents and on top of that, it is gated behind multiple
poor two-point talent nodes. Getting to Solar Beam costs three Talent
points which is too much to give up unless the spell is vital.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Added a footnote to the the first question.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Druid Guides
Guides from Other Classes
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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