Balance Druid DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1.5

1. Single Target Rotation for Balance Druids

For one, two, and three targets, the Balance Druid rotation is based on the following priority list.

1. Apply and maintain Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare (if talented) on the target.
2. Cast Starsurge to consume Astral Power.
   • Keep in mind that using Starsurge grants you a charge of Lunar Empowerment and Solar Empowerment, which cap at 3 and are consumed by using Lunar Strike and Solar Wrath, respectively. Avoid generating Empowerment charges when you are at maximum capacity.
3. Cast Lunar Strike while you have Lunar Empowerment up.
4. Use Solar Wrath while you have Solar Empowerment up.
5. Cast Solar Wrath without an empowerment, to generate Astral Power. If you can cleave onto a second target, cast Lunar Strike.

At all times, you should avoid generating Astral Power when you are at maximum capacity.

1.1. Opening Rotation for Balance Druids

The ideal opening rotation at the start of the fight is as follows:

1. Stand as far away as possible from the boss and when there are 2.5 seconds remaining before the pull, cast Solar Wrath twice.
2. Apply Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare (if talented) to the target.
3. Continue casting Solar Wrath until you reach 40 Astral Power.
4. Cast Celestial Alignment (or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune, if you have taken this talent).
5. Cast Warrior of Elune, Force of Nature, or Fury of Elune (if talented)
6. Continue your normal rotation.

1.1.1. Opening Rotation using Nature's Balance

1. Stand as far away as possible from the boss and when there are 3.5 seconds remaining before the pull, cast Solar Wrath twice.
2. Cast Starsurge.
3. Apply Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare (if talented) to the target.
4. Continue casting Solar Wrath until you reach 40 Astral Power.
5. Cast Celestial Alignment (or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune, if you have taken this talent).
6. Continue your normal rotation.

2. Multiple Target Rotation for Balance Druids

This is the rotation used when there are enough targets to warrant casting Starfall.

1. Cast Starfall to consume Astral Power.
2. Apply and maintain Moonfire and Sunfire on all targets, if they will live longer than 6 seconds.
3. Cast Solar Wrath when you have a Solar Empowerment and Lunar Strike if you receive a Lunar Empowerment through the Eclipse passive.
4. Cast Solar Wrath to generate Astral Power, but if you can hit one additional target with Lunar Strike, use that instead.

2.1. When to Starfall

The abbreviations in the above table are found below.

• SF = Starfall
• AP = Arcanic Pulsar
• Strs = Streaking Stars

3. Starlord Optimization

With the introduction of Arcanic Pulsar, Astral Power generation is extremely important to our core gameplay. Equipping Arcanic Pulsar makes Starlord a more attractive talent on the level 75 row. Below, we will talk about how best to utilize Starlord if and when it is a viable situation.

3.1. Which Talents to Run

The point of this build is to maximize Astral Power gains to bring the uptime of Celestial Alignment up. The highest Astral Power generator talents are Nature's Balance and Stellar Flare. If you are using this build on multiple-targets, you can still talent Twin Moons.

3.2. Optimizing the Starlord Rotation

When playing with Starlord, your goal is to have high uptime on two and three stacks of the buff. To achieve this, your goal is to pool towards the end of your buff, and quickly cast two Starsurges to boost back up towards three stacks. Cast your third Starsurge as quickly as possible and then focus on generating Astral Power until the end of the buff draws nearer.

The opener for this rotation is the same as it is while running Incarnation: Chosen of Elune.

3.3. When to run Starlord

Starlord becomes better than Incarnation: Chosen of Elune in most situations at Battle of Dazar'alor gear levels. Incarnation can be used when you can make strong use of the cooldown or if you are undergeared.

Incarnation: Chosen of Elune is strong in Mythic+ when you can utilize the duration of your cooldown well. Incarnation can also be strong when you require a certain duration of burst damage (under 1-minute), such as during the raid fight against King Rastakhan.

4. Arcanic Pulsar Window Optimization

When you reach the eighth stack of Arcanic Pulsar, you need to prepare your next several casts. Arcanic Pulsar, when paired with Streaking Stars, can lead to very powerful burst windows in just the 6-seconds you have access to Celestial Alignment.

Firstly, you want to pool a reserve of Astral Power. The goal of this window is to:

1. Fit two Starsurges in this 6-second window.
2. Between every spell cast you will want to cast Solar Wrath.
3. Avoid casting Lunar Strike unless you do not have the Astral Power to cast Starsurge and have already cast Solar Wrath as your previous spell. Also avoid overcapping Lunar Empowerments during this window.
4. Finally, your last global during this window will be to reapply your lowest duration instant DoT ( Moonfire or Sunfire).

If you play correctly, you should receive six or seven Streaking Stars stars hits in this window.

5. Cooldown Usage for Balance Druids

As a Balance Druid, you only have one DPS cooldown, by default: Celestial Alignment. You should use this during periods of increased damage to the boss. In any case, it should be used as many times as possible during the encounter.

6. Recommended Read: Mastering Your Balance Druid

While the rotations we gave in the previous sections will yield very good results, there are a few subtleties that you should understand in order to truly excel at your role.

6.1. Mastery: Starlight

Your Mastery: Starlight increases the damage of your Starfall, Starsurge, Empowerments (Lunar and Solar), as well as Moonfire and Sunfire.

6.2. Lunar and Solar Empowerments and the Eclipse Passive

Each time you use Starsurge, you gain 1 stack of both Lunar and Solar Empowerment. These buffs increase the damage of your next Lunar Strike ( Lunar Empowerment buff) and Solar Wrath ( Solar Empowerment buff) as well as granting your Solar Wrath the ability to cleave to additional targets. The exact amount depends on your Mastery. You can accumulate up to 3 stacks of each buff, but each Lunar Strike or Solar Wrath cast only consumes one stack.

When you are casting Solar Wrath and Lunar Strike, you have a 20% chance to generate an Empowerment of the opposite type. Be careful when casting an ability that can overcap you on either spell. The trick will be to even out your charges before continuing your normal rotation.

6.3. Mitigating Movement DPS

With the loss of Stellar Drift in our single target and multi-target rotations, movement management is more important than ever before. Try to line up windows of movement with instant cast spells like Moonfire, Sunfire, and Starsurge. Additionally you can delay using Warrior of Elune and save any amount of charges for movement.

If you know there is movement coming in the coming seconds, do your best to hold 40 Astral Power so you can move and cast a Starsurge. Depending on the distance being traveled, you can instead Dash, Wild Charge, or Tiger Dash to reach your destination more quickly. If you cannot reach your destination within two or three globals cooldowns, it is best to use a movement ability.

For single target, you should practice what is called "Astral Power pooling" or "Astral Power floating". This is where you purposefully do not use Starsurge until you have a large amount of Astral Power saved up (about 80 normally). This way, when you need to move, you have enough Astral Power to cast at least two Starsurges, giving you about 2 seconds of movement without any penalty to your DPS.

For multiple targets, Astral Power pooling is still important, but not as much. In this scenario, you can take advantage of Stellar Drift's casting while on-the-move if you talent it. When running Twin Moons, you can use Moonfire as a filler when you have no Astral Power to put down another Starfall.

6.4. Using Your Defensives

Balance Druid has a wide array of healing utility and defensive spells. From our base kit, we can shift into Bear Form which will grant us additional Health, we can Barkskin to reduce our damage taken, and we can also heal ourselves and others using Regrowth.

Our strongest survivability combination would be from talenting Guardian Affinity for the 6% damage reduction, casting Barkskin for a 20% damage reduction, and shifting into Bear Form for the 25% Stamina increase and then casting Frenzied Regeneration for the heal.

You want to view each situation and use personals ( Bear Form / Barkskin) accordingly. Barkskin does have a 1-minute cooldown while Bear Form has no cooldown whatsoever. For big hits, pop Barkskin and sometimes even Bear Form to mitigate as much damage as possible, if the hit should not kill you, there is no need to shift into Bear. For little hits, you can just cast Barkskin if there is no other incoming damage in the next minute.

If there is downtime in a fight but still damage being dealt to either yourself or the raid, you can help off-heal using Regrowth. Any time there is a large amount of damage being done to a player or the raid, you can always help off-heal as one or two globals can be the difference between a wipe or a kill. Dead DPS is no DPS.

7. Changelog