Balance Druid DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.1.0

A large portion of gearing is reliant on item level. Try not to overthink gearing, as most upgrades should be easily identifiable. After item level, you can further scrutinize the Secondary Stats looking for Mastery gear and items with sockets.

For more information on stats, you can check our comprehensive Stats page and Gems and Enchants page.

It is crucial to use Raidbots to get an accurate idea of what gear is good and what is terrible. There are so many variables that can change which pieces you would equip. While a cursory glance can be enough to determine what is usable, deciding what is best among what is good is a more nuanced decision.

The Tier 30 set has two bonuses:

1. The 2-piece increases Sunfire, Moonfire, and Shooting Stars by 20% and also increases the cleave radius of Sunfire by 3-yards.
2. The 4-piece bonus gives Shooting Stars a 20% chance to deal more damage and generate more Astral Power.

Both bonuses are approximately 5% on single target and multi-target (10% in total). The set bonus does work for multi-target better but the difference is negligible. The set is purely passive and you will not be playing around and procs.

If you are upgrading from Tier 29 to Tier 30, do not swap from until you can at least wear 2 pieces of each.

Once you hit max level in Dragonflight, it is time to get some gear. Start by doing Heroic Dungeons, Mythic Dungeons, low-level keys, and World Quests to upgrade your Questing gear.

You should supplement your items with crafted pieces. Professions offer access to some fantastic crafted gear you can use to bolster up your item level and clear the content more easily.

The best crafted items are locked behind Spark of Shadowflame.

Dungeon farming is not as important as it once was with crafting being available. You will have at least 6-slots determined by Tier and embellishments and the raid trinkets are quite good this time around. Farming Brackenhide Hollow for an early weapon to upgrade with Flightstones or Neltharus for a good trinket.

For personal, tangible benefits in Raids and Dungeons, we recommend taking Alchemy. It grants extra healing on potion use as well as movement speed.

Professions come to Dragonflight with massive perks to crafted gear called embellishments. These can be added to some crafted gear and preloaded on specific pieces.

Embellishments grant additional bonuses that boost your character's power. They are even active in raids and dungeons, so they play a large role in getting geared up.

The best overall embellishments:

Source	Embellishment
Leatherworking	Slimy Expulsion Boots
Leatherworking	Toxified Armor Patch

Slimy Expulsion Boots are the best overall embellishment in Patch 10.1.0. This embellishment is made stronger with the Toxified Armor Patch which will take up your second embellishment.

While Blue Silken Lining can sim the highest but the buff has a conditional that requires you to be over 90% Health. This is not always possible and the other embellishment choices do not have this same downside..

When you are gemming your Elemental Lariat, keep in mind that the proc of this item is based on gem type. Keen Neltharite will proc Haste and Keen Ysemerald will proc Mastery.

This weekly loot system remains the same and will unlock with the activation of Mythic +. You can loot one of nine total pieces depending on how many raid bosses you kill, how many dungeons you do, and how much Honor you earn. All rewards scale off of the difficulty of your content.

You can learn more about this system on our dedicated Great Vault page.

The Valor Upgrade system is gone in Season 2, and is replaced by a new system that allows for item upgrades to be obtained from a wider variety of content.

Dragonflight Season 2 introduces two new currencies: Flightstones and Shadowflame Crests, both obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game. They can be used to upgrade gear up to Item Level 441, which is entry-level Mythic Raid Item Level. They can also upgrade Crafted Gear up to iLvl 447, which is late-Mythic Item Level.

For more information on the new Gear Upgrades system, check out our dedicated page for it below.

As with Valor, the cost to upgrade scales differs per slot, but now also increases quickly as item levels go up.

Each upgrade path is dependent upon what you have already looted and at which levels you looted each item at. Below are a few items you can look to upgrade to fill in some of your weaker slots.

• Spoils of Neltharus from Neltharus
• Ancestral Stoneshaper from Brackenhide Hollow
• Loop of Pulsing Veins from Neltharion's Lair
• Bromach's Disentombed Locket from Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr

Providing a concrete "Best-in-Slot" can mislead many newer players. With the ease of simulating your gear options, there is no reason to equip gear blindly.

With rarer items dropping off specific bosses and the randomness of the loot from your Great Vault, what is best for one person could be second or even third best for another as they might have lucked into gear the other players did not.

High-impact items such as Trinkets, Weapons, and Jewelry can be better targeted than less impressive pieces.

The absolute best trinket in all situations will be Neltharion's Call to Suffering. This grants a large boost of Intellect while also dealing a small amount of damage to you over 12-seconds.

You can also look for some of these trinkets as viable alternatives:

1. Ominous Chromatic Essence from The Forgotten Experiments
2. Screaming Black Dragonscale from Kazzara

From Mythic+, you can get Spoils of Neltharus from Neltharus which is the best trinket after the available raid trinkets or Irideus Fragment which could find some use in the raid as a burst trinket but a DPS loss to its primary contenders.

The best weapon for Balance Druids will be Bloodfire Extraction Conduit and Echo's Maddening Volume. You may want to have a one-handed dagger crafted early on if you are not able to get one of the higher item level weapons early on.

If you are farming dungeons, Brackenhide Hollow drops the Ancestral Stoneshaper. Getting one from the Great Vault would be preferable but not something in our control.

Magmorax's Fourth Collar is a strong neck piece with a heavy Mastery weighting from one of the mid-tier bosses in the raid. If you can farm or loot a high item level Bromach's Disentombed Locket from Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr.

You can also have Signet of Titanic Insight crafted by a Jewelcrafter with Haste and Mastery. This comes with a socket as well, which adds value to an already great item. Torc of Passed Time is the profession Jewelcrafting neck option.

Entropic Convergence Loop is a good ring from the raid and while it drops early, item level on rings are less valuable than on pieces of gear with Intellect so it balances out. You can also farm Neltharion's Lair for Loop of Pulsing Veins.

In Patch 10.0.7, you can find a new item called Onyx Annulet from the new activity, Zserka Vault. This will have 3 empty Primordial Stone slots. Primordial Stones can be obtained from completing tasks in the Forbidden Reach. The Onyx Annulet has no secondary stats and scales with the level of your Primordial Stones but only gets increased Stamina.

The Primordial Stones mainly grant on hit effects, healing, shielding, tertiary buffs, or buff other stones.

This item is quickly outscaled by well-stated item level 421 rings. These can still be useful when gearing up for current content.

If you are catching up, you can use the following Primordial Stones for single target.

• Desirous Blood Stone
• Prophetic Twilight Stone
• Storm Infused Stone