Balance Druid DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands Pre-Patch 9.0.1

Balance Druid is strong 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.

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.

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.
• 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.
• 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.

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	✓ Stellar Drift	✗ Twin Moons	✗ 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.

Fury of Elune is the more often best when you are certain that the targets will be stacked often while Solstice is more flexible and better for more sustained damage.

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.

Awakened spawns four lieutenant style mobs that allow you to skip trash throughout the dungeon without using a Rogue.

The only way to enter the void realm and kill the mini bosses is to click on an obelisk which requires a cast time and is generally guarded by a pack of mobs. You can not click while in combat. When running with a Rogue, Mage, or any class with a way to kite mobs and drop aggro, you may want to consider using Mass Entanglement. Mass Entangle does not put you in combat and can be used to keep the kited mobs in place while your final group member enters the realm.

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

• Force of Nature is viable to tank spells, physical hits, and adds in certain pylons. It is particularly useful against Urg'roth, Breaker of Heroes, to eat the potentially fatal Spirit Breaker.
• Remove Corruption can dispel two debuffs applied by Voidweaver Mal'thir.
• Solar Beam is good as a ranged interrupt when kiting Voidweaver Mal'thir and on the Mind Flay adds inside the Blood of the Corruptors' obelisk.

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 ( Vision of Perfection + Strive for 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.
• Worldvein Resonance ( Worldvein Resonance + Lifeblood) is a powerful and more importantly short cooldown, usable every pack in high keys or every other in lower ones. This helps to set up more burst windows than the traditional Vision builds.
• Blood of the Enemy ( Blood of the Enemy + Blood-Soaked) works very similarly to Worldvein. The 90-second cooldown keeps it lined up with our cooldowns and adds a burst debuff that increases Critical Strike chance and damage. The bonus to Critical Strike effects synergizes well with Starfire and Soul of the Forest.

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.

• Strife still gives enough Versatility to be good in all situations.
• Blood-Soaked is the Mythic+ and overall multi-target choice with its stack gain faster on multi-target with DoT and Starfall ticks.
• Ancient Flame is out-performing Reaping Flames on overall damage output and since we no longer need the Corruption resistance, can be swapped into its place in most situations.