Balance Druid DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.2.5
In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Balance Druid in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2.5.
Balance Druid in Mythic+
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.
Balance Druid Mythic+ Rotation
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.
Covenant, Legendary, and Soulbind choice
With Patch 9.1, Balance Druids began prioritizing Venthyr due to the strength of its cooldown paired with several nerfs to the Night Fae playstyle.
Venthyr Recommendations
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 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 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 Recommendations
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 good for
Mythic+ and gives you more opportunity 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 their 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.
Balance Druid Tips
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 Utility
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.
Mythic+ Talents for Balance Druids
Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+, these talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.
Level | Choices | ||
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15 |
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25 |
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30 |
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35 |
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40 |
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45 |
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50 |
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Level 15 Talents
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.
Mythic+ Affixes
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.
Tier One Affixes
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.
Tier Two Affixes
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.
Tier Three Affixes
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 combat with, 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.
Seasonal Affix
Encrypted is the Shadowlands Season 3 Affix. In several trash packs
throughout the dungeon you will have 3 additional enemy mobs that look like
shapes. These provide buffs to the enemy pack and once all three units are
killed, an Automa spawns. Killing the Urh Relic first grants movespeed
and invisibility, killing the Wo Relic first grants a 20% Haste Buff, and
killing the Vy Relic first grants 25% cooldown reduction. All of these
buffs last 45 seconds.
Seasonal Tips
This is another uninvolved affix for Balance Druids. The adds do not need to be
controlled but you should start every pack by bursting down an agreed upon
mob. You can either cleave them down after that or avoid killing the last unit
until the pack is finished. If you are trying not to cleave, watch out for
multi-dotting and Starfall in particular.
Legion Timewalking Affix
The Legion Timewalking affix, Infernal, is another
miniboss-spawning affix similar to
Tormented except most of the
spawners are located by bosses. They spawn one of three random Legion Commanders
with special abilities as well as continuous add waves to be cleaved.
This type of affix is okay for Balance Druid as are most add-spawning affixes, however given the placement of each Legion beacon, you will be largely reliant on lower cooldown classes to kill the Commanders quickly as you will normally want your cooldowns for the boss.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 21 Feb. 2022: Page reviewed and approved for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Updated to mention the Legion Timewalking Affix.
- 12 Jul. 2021: Updated for Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 2.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 01 Feb. 2021: Updated seasonal tips and Legendary selection.
- 07 Dec. 2020: Updated for Prideful season.
- 16 Nov. 2020: Improved Blood of the Enemy recommendation.
- 09 Nov. 2020: Added Blood of the Enemy to recommendations.
- 17 Oct. 2020: Updated Essence and Azerite sections.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for level 15 and 50 talent choices.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Druid Guides
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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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