How To Improve As Balance Druid — Shadowlands Pre-Patch 9.0.1

Balance Druid operates on a dual resource system. The first resource being Astral Power, and the second resource being empowerment charges. With changes to how we generate both of these resources, it is much easier to "cap" on them.

Astral Power generation was changed significantly with the Shadowlands pre-patch; you now receive much more Astral Power from talents such as Fury of Elune, Warrior of Elune, and Force of Nature. While the overall resource generation of the class has been reduced, these talents give bursts of Astral Power which can sometimes be difficult to manage in the midst of combat.

Nearly every Dungeon and Raid encounter requires players to take certain action to avoid mechanics that would otherwise damage or kill your character. Normally, moving to a safer location is the best way to handle these mechanics.

Boomkins have several abilties they can use to handle movement. They have instant casts in Starsurge, Moonfire, and Sunfire, as well as mobility spells like Wild Charge and Dash. Knowing what to use, how to change your rotation, and how to combo these abilities can lead to maintaining your rotation seamlessly through short and medium distances of movement.

Generally, you want to predict mechanics and pool movement to the best of your ability; a dungeon or raid addon will help highlight mechanics you need to watch out for. Before movement, spend as many empowerments as possible. When beginning to move, you can follow this priority list:

1. If your DoTs are about to fall off, refresh them.
2. Spend Astral Power on Starsurge.
3. If Force of Nature, Fury of Elune, or Warrior of Elune are talented and available, use them to generate more Astral Power.
4. Reapply your lowest duration DoTs.
5. If nothing else, spam Sunfire.

When moving, you have to judge the distance of your movement. More often than not, you want to travel the shortest distance possible. If you have to move a few steps, one or two globals can fill the gap and get you where you need to go.

If you need to move a medium distance, combining Wild Charge and one or two instant globals will still create a smoothed out rotation with minimal gaps. However, if you have to travel a large distance, getting there quickly will normally be a larger damage increase than slowly waddling over. In this event, casting Dash is optimal if you either have to get somewhere very quickly OR have to travel an obscenely long distance.

The Balance Druid multi-target rotation has players going through a delicate balance of both Starsurge and Starfall. The goal is to keep a Starfall down at all times while squeezing out as many useful Starsurges as possible as you can only have one Starfall down at a time.

On top of this, Starfire can do an excessive amount of damage in cleave situations meaning you want to spend the bulk of the Astral Power reserves inside a Lunar Eclipse. This means spending the bare minimum on Starsurge during Solar Eclipse without capping resource.

All that can be done is practice the Eclipse transitions and get a good feel for how much can be generated throughout a cycle as you still want to optimally use Starsurge in Solar without using it at the very end.