Balance Druid DPS Mythic+ Tips — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.2.5

Balance Druid is one of the top ranged DPS specializations for Mythic+ in Battle for Azeroth. It provides moderate multi-target damage on higher level keys, as well as extremely valuable heavy single target and priority target damage. Additionally, Balance Druid provides the group with invaluable utility through both talents and our base kit.

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.

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. In an uncoordinated group, you may want to talent Starlord over Incarnation: Chosen of Elune. If you find yourself not being able to get full value from the extra 10-seconds of cooldown duration, Starlord may be the better option. Regardless of your choice of cooldown, using it early and using it often will generally be the best course of action to increase your output. The exception to this is directly before bosses or before difficult trash pulls.

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 and Skittish weeks.
• 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.
• Hibernate can be used to crowd-control Beast and Dragonkin type enemies. While Beast and Dragonkin type enemies are not particularly numerous throughout the ten dungeons, this is another form of hard crowd control that we can utilize when possible.
• Entangling Roots can be used to root patrols. If you root the primary target, the entire patrol will stop moving. Useful in tight quarters when you cannot handle additional mobs.
• Regrowth was buffed in Battle for Azeroth, and it provides much more healing than it did in Legion and can be useful to help off-heal in certain situations.
• Restoration Affinity has proven to be a strong self and off-healing option in BfA. Swiftmend is a strong single target instant heal which can help recover a quarter or even half of your Health pool. Use this if you do not need additional passive damage reduction.
• 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.

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
30	✗ Tiger Dash	✗ Renewal	✓ Wild Charge
45	✗ Feral Affinity	? Guardian Affinity	✓ Restoration Affinity
60	? Mighty Bash	? Mass Entanglement	✓ Typhoon
75	? Soul of the Forest	✓ Starlord	✓ Incarnation: Chosen of Elune
90	✗ Stellar Drift	✓ Twin Moons	✗ Stellar Flare
100	✓ Shooting Stars	✓ Fury of Elune	✗ New Moon

The way Mythic+ affixes are tiered in Battle for Azeroth has changed quite a bit since their launch in Legion.

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.
• Teeming adds additional trash mobs to certain packs throughout each dungeon.
• 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.
• 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 take 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 causes players to suffer 10% of their max Health in damage every four seconds. When handling the Bursting affix, ask how many stacks your healer can handle and try to not mindlessly DPS and exceed your healers stack limit.

• Volcanic spawns volcanic plumes underneath and around players when in combat with any enemy. When damaged by Volcanic, players suffer 50% of their maximum Health pool in damage. The more enemies you are in combat with, the more Volcanic that will spawn.
• Grievous afflicts players with a stacking DoT when they fall below 90%. Use Regrowth liberally during Grievous weeks and bring consumables to assist your healer when out of combat.
• Quaking will periodically attempt to interrupt casters by creating a damaging zone around each player. About 3 seconds after the zone forms, it will deal 20% maximum Health in damage to each player caught in the zone as well as interrupting any hard casts being finished during the shockwave.
• 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.
• Skittish reduces the amount of threat generated by tanks throughout the dungeon. Use Force of Nature as an artificial taunt on Skittish weeks.

Beguiling has set spawns throughout the dungeon. There are three different adds which must be handled in certain ways.

• Void-Touched Emissary — You want to burst this down before it bursts your group down. If possible, line of sight the end of the cast but if you can not, be sure to pop Barkskin to survive big hits. Every cast she completes increases the damage dealt by 50% (50% max Health/100% max Health/150% max Health).
• Enchanted Emissary — This reflects the damage you deal to all mobs around it. After 20-seconds, it will teleport away. You can taunt out the mob and cast Force of Nature to keep it busy for 10 of those 20-seconds while you handle the rest of the pack.
• Emissary of the Tides — This unit makes the mob around it immune to Crowd Control; however, you can Crowd Control this mob and pull the rest of the pack backwards. Crowd Control has a reduced effectiveness on Emissary of the Tides as Entangling Roots only lasts 8-seconds, so be sure to reapply.

There are no real tips to improve your damage in this affix. Control is going to be your key to excelling in Beguiling keys.

As stated on the Balance Druid Azerite Page, a single Arcanic Pulsar and three Streaking Stars are effectively best in all dungeons. Below are some of the few additional strong traits you can use in Mythic+. Use Raidbots to get the most accurate Azerite traits you can use in the situation.

• Power of the Moon and High Noon are strong extended multi-target traits. They do not offer much in regards to single target so see what type of damage your group needs before equipping these. Power of the Moon can be a strong value trait for most keys.
• Blightborne Infusion and Swirling Sands are two examples of secondary stat increasing Azerite pieces. If you can get high item level pieces of Azerite with secondary or primary stat procs, they will be useful for Mythic+.
• The raid trait Loyal to the End can be used in keys, as long as you are receiving the benefits of the rest of your party also using the trait.

The following suggestions are merely informed suggestions with minimal testing done. The more dungeons done, the more likely we will have a concrete Essence to suggest.

There could be arguments made for other Essences but these are two of the top performing Major Essence choices at the current time.

• Vision of Perfection is a strong overall essence for Mythic+. It reduces the cooldown of your Incarnation: Chosen of Elune and allows you to hit it much more regularly. This proc gained on trash and on bosses helps propel your overall damage in keys as opposed to being focused purely on one or the other.
• Essence of the Focusing Iris is a strong trash damage Azerite Essence, which can be chosen when you are looking to deal burst damage to packs and is one of the better Major Essences.

Balance Druid Minor Essence choices are very flexible and completely determinate on your playstyle and what you want to slightly improve. They do provide some good extra DPS, so they are not negligible, but you can choose between these are your discretion.

• Blood of the Enemy is a strong minor trait for Mythic+. The buff stacks very quickly and you have a high uptime on the Haste buff.
• Essence of the Focusing Iris will retain the Haste stacks if you can splash your damage to the target which anchors your stacks. This Essence will also be strongest for most bosses in most dungeons. If the mobs are constantly spread, this Essence will not be good.
• Purification Protocol does a modest portion of your damage in keys. Not good in keys with a lot of kiting or spread mobs and does not perform well on boss fights.
• Conflict and Strife stacks quickly and has a very high uptime in keys. The extra Versatility is also good for negating damage done from heavy hitting abilities and keys that require a large amount of healing.