Balance Druid DPS Mythic+ Tips — The War Within (11.1.5)

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 good throughput at higher key levels, we have a large utility toolkit.

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

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 all of 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 are the occasional massive pull or important DPS race boss.

With Whirling Stars, it is important to keep one charge on cooldown at almost all times to maximize usage in the key.

The Elune's Chosen Hero Talent build focuses on Arcane-based spells such as Starfire and Fury of Elune. Starfire is your primary damage dealer with talents such as Umbral Intensity, Umbral Embrace, and Soul of the Forest adding several multipliers of damage to our primary filler spell.

Focus on ramping into each pack quickly by applying your DoTs and then stack Starlord with Starfall.

Lunation paired with Radiant Moonlight allows you to have Fury of Elune up every pack and sometimes multiple times each pack. Use these smaller cooldowns as they come up, with the exception of if a pack is going to die before the end of the effect. Orbital Strike works with Lunation and resets your Fury of Elune extremely quickly.

Keeper of the Grove does quick burst damage and also has shorter ramp times to get into the standard DPS rotation. Treants of the Moon allows you to focus on applying Sunfire and then go right into Eclipse or cooldowns. This means you can Sunfire into Force of Nature and then Orbital Strike a pack for massive damage.

Control of the Dream gives some flexibility to your main cooldowns, allowing you not feel the need to use each one as it comes up and but as each feels best to use. Sometimes holding a cooldown at the end of one pack, will let you get off two uses in the next pack.

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 number of mobs for 8 seconds in a small radius. This can enable pulls that would otherwise be impossible due to an interrupt requirement.
• Force of Nature acts as an artificial taunt that relieves the tank of all melee damage. Ask your group before starting if this is needed, as it comes at a damage loss.

• 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.
• Ursol's Vortex is another group of crowd control that can assist in kiting mobs.
• Mighty Bash is a strong 5-second single target stun. This does require you to be in the melee range of the target.
• Incapacitating Roar can be used to stop a group of enemies from casting.
• 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.
• Cyclone can be used to block healing, as a last-resort interrupt, or block the application of dangerous enemy buffs.
• Mass Entanglement can root a group of enemies. It can sometimes be used in niche strategies for bosses.

• Soothe will dispel all enrage buffs applied to enemies.
• Remove Corruption will dispel Curses and Poisons.
• Innervate is best used on heavy group damage boss encounters. This will allow you to expand your healer's Mana pool and allow them to extend the duration of the encounter if needed.
• Stampeding Roar provides some additional mobility for skips or just to get through the dungeon faster.
• Nature's Vigil can provide valuable healing, especially on Tyrannical bosses with constant damage.

In The War Within Season 1, there is one rotating affix each week that starts at key level 2 and interacts with your group. If you handle this affix correctly, you will be granted buffs which help you time the key. At key level 12, these affixes are removed and the key is Tyrannical, Fortified, and further buffed by an additional 20% from Xal'atath's Guile

Xal'atath's Bargain: Ascendant creates motes that begin casting. These motes can be interrupted and destroyed with crowd control. They come down in waves so wait for them all to spawn and then cast spells like Typhoon or Incapacitating Roar to dispel all of them.

Xal'atath's Bargain: Pulsar spawns orbs that rotate around you and must be soaked by another player.

Xal'atath's Bargain: Voidbound spawns an add which grants damage reduction to the pack you are fighting after 15-seconds. Killing this grants you cooldown reduction. Try not to have your cooldowns available when you kill this enemy as they can be used more often on these weeks.

Xal'atath's Bargain: Devour debuffs your party with a ticking health absorb shield which can be dispelled by any means or healed off. Save Remove Corruption to dispel yourself every time.