Balance Druid DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.1

Balance Druid is a strong ranged contender for higher level Mythic+. While it does come with ramp up making it worse for lower level content, once the pull is in full swing, Starfall and Starfire are unparalleled in their uncapped multi-target damage.

In addition to our strong throughput, we have the largest utility toolkit as well as solid off-healing.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our dedicated Mythic+ page below.

Both the single target and multi-target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content. For more information about the Balance Druid DPS rotation, refer back to the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

With Patch 9.1, Balance Druids began prioitizing Venthyr due to the strength of its cooldown paired with several nerfs to the Night Fae playstyle.

In Mythic+ you have two options, each with their advantages and disadvantages. In a perfect scenario, you would fully utilize Ravenous Frenzy, a massive damage output cooldown to help obliterate dangerous packs of trash. The downside with Venthyr is the planning involved in making it work. On low keys or in groups not optimized for a long-duration cooldown like ours, it can really lower the output we have in ways of losing uses because packs do not warrant being cooldowned or packs you cooldown dying too quickly.

That being said, if you can work out good timings for Ravenous Frenzy, especially if you pair it with Sinful Hysteria, you will be unbeaten each time you do cooldown. If you cannot use Sinful Hysteria well, you can swap over to Primordial Arcanic Pulsar. Try not to go all in on Ravenous Frenzy if you can not optimize it because your damage will suffer immensely.

For Soulbinds and Conduits, we will mainly be using Theotar the Mad Duke. He has a strong Mastery Buff in Soothing Shade as well as several other stat bonuses either in the form of Potion use or Wasteland Propriety which also buffs your party. For Conduits, you will always run Endless Thirst. For the second option, if you are using Sinful Hysteria, you should always pair it with Precise Alignment. If you are running some other Legendary option, Fury of the Skies or Umbral Intensity are both strong Mythic+ options.

Night Fae is no longer the powerhouse it once was but is still a satisfactory and comfort pick for Mythic+. It provides better sustained damage with less thought as it has a shorter cooldown with easier applicability.

For Legendary choice, Primordial Arcanic Pulsar is really good for Mythic+ and gives you more oppurtunity to burst packs with Convoke the Spirits. Normally you will choose Niya as your Soulbind as she provides a large amount of Mastery through multiple Soulbind traits. Your Conduits will be Conflux of Elements which is mandatory and, as with Venthyr, you can also run Fury of the Skies or Umbral Intensity.

If you can make use of Korayn for her Critical Strike bonuses through chain-pulling or in places where more enemies spawn while you are fighting a pack like the gauntlet in Sanguine Depths, Korayn will be slightly better.

One of the most important things to do in Mythic+ is to pool your Astral Power towards the end of every trash pull to reduce the ramp-up time needed to reach your maximum output. Being able to get directly into your rotation pack-to-pack is extraordinarily helpful when bursting down priority targets.

Use your cooldowns liberally. Treat the whole time you are in the dungeon as though it were a raid encounter. You never lose uses in raid if you can help it and you should work to do the same in Dungeons. Exceptions being the occasional massive pull or important DPS race boss.

Balance Druid provides support for the party through damage, healing, and other additional effects such as dispels and mob management.

• Solar Beam is one of the strongest silences in the game. Solar Beam can be used to silence a large amount of mobs for 8-seconds in a small radius. This can enable pulls which would otherwise be impossible, due to an interrupt requirement.
• Typhoon is an iconic Balance Druid spell. This will knock enemies in front of you away in the direction the cast was aimed. Use this to knock enemies away from the tank, yourself, or away from special mob specific mechanics such as Sanguine pools.
• Force of Nature acts as an artificial taunt that relieves the tank of all melee damage. This talent has become almost a staple for Mythic+ due to the threat generation nerf applied to tanks that came with Battle for Azeroth. This is also particularly useful during Necrotic.
• Soothe has been added back to our baseline kit and will dispel all enrage buffs applied to enemies. This talent is particularly useful during Raging weeks.
• Entangling Roots can be used to root patrols or crowd control immune packs. In those packs, the main target can normally be rooted, allowing you to handle the leftovers more easily.
• Innervate is best used on heavy group damage boss encounters. This will allow you to expand your healers Mana pool and allow them to extend the duration of the encounter if needed.
• Ursol's Vortex is another group crowd control which can assist in kiting mobs.
• Mighty Bash is a good pickup with Typhoon baseline. A strong 5-second single target stun is one thing we did not have without sacrifice in BFA.
• Cyclone is now baseline in PvE. This can be used to block healing, as a last resort interrupt, or block the application of dangerous enemy buffs.
• Stampeding Roar is also back with Shadowlands. Provides some additional mobility for skips or just to get through the dungeon faster.

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+, these talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.

Level	Choices
15	✓ Nature's Balance	✗ Warrior of Elune	✓ Force of Nature
25	✗ Tiger Dash	✗ Renewal	✓ Wild Charge
30	✗ Feral Affinity	? Guardian Affinity	✓ Restoration Affinity
35	✓ Mighty Bash	? Mass Entanglement	✓ Heart of the Wild
40	✓ Soul of the Forest	✗ Starlord	? Incarnation: Chosen of Elune
45	✗ Twin Moons	✓ Stellar Drift	✗ Stellar Flare
50	✗ Solstice	✓ Fury of Elune	✗ New Moon

All level 15 talents are usable in Mythic+. Force of Nature is best when you need to help the tank survive packs. Nature's Balance is best with longer downtime between pulls. Warrior of Elune is the theoretical multi-target best when targets are all cleaved with Starfire.

There are now three weekly affixes and one seasonal affix. The first affix available instantly at level two and three, the second affix starts at level four, the third affix enabled at level seven, and finally the seasonal affix at level ten.

• Fortified increases the Health pool of all non-boss enemies by 20% and damage dealt by 30%.
• Tyrannical increases the Health pool of boss enemies by 40% and their damage dealt by 15%.

Fortified and Tyrannical are the two affixes every player will see. These affixes shift the focus of dungeons from boss to trash depending on the week. Balance Druids will excel during Fortified weeks as our multi-target damage has a short ramp up time and then will sustain at very high numbers with or without the use of cooldowns. During Tyrannical weeks, players may want to take more single-target oriented trinkets, gear, or even talents but that will be both dungeon and key level dependent.

• Raging increases the damage dealt by enemies below 30% by 100% until they die. This buff is dispellable using Soothe. Not all enemies will need to be Soothed, but you should Soothe enemies that deal excessive group-wide damage.
• Bolstering buffs remaining enemies Health pools and damage dealt by 20% when an enemy dies nearby. To counter this affix, DPS all mobs down evenly and focus your casts into high Health mobs if there are any. Use Cyclone to prevent applications of the buff to a single enemy.
• Sanguine places a pool of blood on the ground when a mob is slain. This pool will heal remaining enemies who stay inside the zone and also damage players. Balance Druids should use Typhoon to push enemies off of each Sanguine zone.
• Bursting forces enemy mobs to detonate when slain, afflicting the group with a stacking debuff that deals damage to the whole group. Try not to kill everything at the same time unless you have some way to deal with the large amount of damage.
• Inspiring grants Crowd Control immunity to all targets within 15 yards of buff holder. The target with the buff is not immune to Crowd Control and you can use Entangling Roots to hold the target away from the rest of the mobs you are killing.
• Spiteful causes all creatures to spawn a shadow when they are slain. This shadow can be cleaved down, but should be kited as it loses Health over time. Stay out of melee to avoid being hit and use Typhoon, Ursol's Vortex, or other Crowd Control and allow it to kill itself.

• Volcanic spawns volcanic plumes underneath and around players when in combat with any enemy. When damaged by Volcanic, players suffer damage and are knocked into the air. Use Wild Charge or Flap to mitigate if you are hit. The more enemies you are in combatwith, the more Volcanic that will spawn.
• Grievous afflicts players with a stacking DoT when they fall below 90%. Use Regrowth to remove stacks of the debuff to assist your healers as the initial hit counts as direct healing.
• Quaking requires you to be split from your group after the 3-second debuff expires or risk taking a large chunk of damage. Even when alone, you will still need to stop casting or risk being locked out.
• Explosive will occasionally spawn Explosive Orbs that need to be targeted and burned down within a short period of time or they will deal significant damage to the party. Explosive Orbs are not cleaveable and the amount of orbs that spawn scales with the amount of enemies pulled.
• Necrotic debuffs the target of enemy melee swings with stacking healing reduction and minor DoT. Balance Druids should utilize Typhoon and Force of Nature to assist tanks in kiting enemies before they become unhealable.
• Storming is Volcanic for melee, as long as you are not on top of the mobs you should not have to worry about this but just do not get hit if you are.

Tormented is the new Shadowlands Season 2 affix. It adds four Lieutenants to each dungeon layout which each have their own special ability and aura similar to the final seasonal affix of Battle for Azeroth. It is recommended to defeat all four minibosses before engaging the final boss as not only will they grant their strength to it if you do not, but each mini boss killed grants you additional powers.

Overall, Balance Druids have very little extra role in dealing with many of the abilities these Lieutenants have. Just follow their mechanics which normally involve staying at range and avoiding void zones on the ground.

On Incinerator Arkolath, you can try to throw in some Heart of the Wild healing around to help sustain if needed, Oros Coldheart just asks you to be loosely spread, and Executioner Varruth has you dance between spread and stacked for his two main mechanics.

As for buffs, our best buffs are:

• Soggodon the Breaker grants access to The Stone Ward which provides great defensive capabilities for a DPS player.
• Incinerator Arkolath has three damage-boosting abilities but Champion's Brand provides the most consistent effects.
• Executioner Varruth has a single-target option ( Dagger of Necrotic Wounding) and a multi-target option that also crowd controls ( Volcanic Plumage). Choose whichever one fits your scenario the best.
• Oros Coldheart only has one throughput option in Handbook of Uncivil Etiquette which is still poor with our 60-second cooldown on interrupts.