How To Improve As Balance Druid — Shadowlands 9.0.2
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Balance Druid in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.0.2. We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
Stay Inside Eclipse
Eclipse is the new class mechanic for Balance Druids. Getting inside an
Eclipse activates your Mastery and buffs your fillers. There is only one action
that takes a higher priority than getting right back into your Eclipse and that
is Starfall.
Every time you enter Celestial Alignment
(
Incarnation: Chosen of Elune when talented), you reset your Eclipse
counter. This lets you pick the next state that you are going be in: Solar for
single and Lunar for multi-target. When coming out of your cooldowns or a
Primordial Arcanic Pulsar proc, know which one you want to enter before
you finish so that you do not end up with 1-stack of each spell.
Minimizing Movement and Cast Optimization
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.
Balance Druids have several abilities 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
combine these abilities can lead to maintaining your rotation seamlessly
through short and medium distances of movement.
Generally, you want to predict mechanics and pool for movement to the best of your ability; a dungeon or raid addon will help highlight mechanics you need to watch out for.
On multi-target this is significantly easier. Stellar Drift is a
strong talent which you can use that allows you to cast while moving. Make sure
you maintain the facing requirement of your spells, be sure to always be
casting, and remember to maintain your
Starfall.
Multi-Target Mistakes
The Balance Druid multi-target rotation is a bit more complicated than the single target one and the difference between optimizing your multi-target and being unoptimized is great.
Starfire can do an excessive amount of damage in cleave situations
meaning you want to spend the bulk of the Astral Power reserves inside of Lunar
Eclipse while still maintaining
Starfall. When you are talented into
Soul of the Forest, you even end up capping Astral Power if you
are hitting six or so targets as
Starsurge will no longer be worth
casting.
Due to how poorly Wrath scales on multi-target, it actually
is low on the priority list even inside Solar Eclipse. Use Solar Eclipse to
apply
Moonfire which will help to generate more Astral Power during
the Lunar segment of the cycle with
Shooting Stars. If there are eight
targets or more that are in cleave range of
Starfire, use Starfire
over Wrath after all targets are DoTed.
Continued practice will help you get the flow of how to play each end of the Eclipse cycles.
Changelog
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Druid Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This was written by Borabank, a Balance Druid theorycrafter and raider in Infinity. You can watch him on his Twitch channel or in the Dreamgrove Discord server.
- An Excellent Class and Spec Pick Flowchart Meme (Or Is it?)
- There Are Worse Fates than Being Carried by a Kyrian...
- Players Manipulate Turn Speed Variable while Mind Controlling Others
- Patch 9.0.2 Hotfixes: January 15th
- How to Get Raid, PvP and Any Legendary Memories Without Doing the Related Activity
- How to Loot Faster in World of Warcraft
- How to Fool Bots With Toys
- Patch 9.1 Will Be Released in Spring 2021