Balance Druid Midnight Talents Guide

Heading into Midnight Season 2 you are likely going to be seeing an increase in builds playing Elune's Chosen compared to previously. It is currently the highest performing hero talent tree, and started gaining popularity after the halfway point of Season 1, both on Single Target and AoE scenarios.

That doesn't mean that there aren't moments where Keeper of the Grove would be a better choice, like on bosses with a lot of spread cleave and adds that spawn on static timers, like the ones we saw a lot of in The Voidspire during Season 1. There are a couple of those fights in this tier as well, and you could very well end up seeing Keeper of the Grove played on those.

Elune’s Chosen also has a generally harder time dealing with movement because of the reliance on Starfire in order to build Astral Power, and for fights like Sszorak that feature forced movement and displacement mechanics you may end up seeing builds with Keeper of the Grove and Convoke The Spirits. The biggest difference you will notice with the Single-Target builds for Elune's Chosen from previously is that you opt for Arcane Affinity over Lunation, which means you get considerably less casts of Fury Of Elune and have to plan your Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune and Lunar Eclipse damage windows around it.

For Mythic+, the general recommended choice is still Elune's Chosen. You could make a case for Keeper of the Grove on dungeons with smaller or more spread out pulls. Elune's Chosen excels at stacked cleave, while Keeper of the Grove leans into overall buffing your damage and reacting to procs.

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Druid’s class tree provides a lot of ability to pick up talents that increase your throughput, either defensively or offensively, without having to pick up points that don’t provide much for you.

There are a few talents that are actual dps increases in the tree, and they are: Nurturing Instinct, Lycara's Teachings, Starlight Conduit, Circle Of The Heavens, as well as Lore Of The Grove. These talents are must-haves and should always be picked.

Defensive talents that you want to pick up are Thick Hide, Well-Honed Instincts, Aessina's Renewal, Oakskin, Improved Barkskin, and Natural Recovery. All those are must-haves in my opinion, giving you some much-needed defensive value. Furthermore, selecting Frenzied Regeneration gives you an option to heal yourself if you ever need to shift into Bear Form.

For the utility side of things there are quite a few things to be considered. We benefit from being a hybrid class in this regard, so a lot of our class tree is filled with solid utility options. Cyclone, Typhoon, Improved Stampeding Roar, Hibernate and Remove Corruption are examples of this.

Below are examples of what builds I use for both Mythic+ and raid.

For Mythic+

This build enables you to obtain all of your important CC, such as Typhoon and Incapacitating Roar without sacrificing too much defensively.

If you do not need Remove Corruption, you may instead put the point into Killer Instinct for a small physical damage reduction, but it’s not needed. It is also important to take Light Of The Sun in Mythic+ as the cooldown reduction on Solar Beam can be very valuable.

Healers do not often require Innervate, so you can consider removing the point and putting it into either Improved Stampeding Roar or Heart Of The Wild.

Coordinate with your group to figure out what you can go without to ensure the dungeon goes as smoothly as possible. Sometimes you may even want to drop Typhoon if you don’t feel it’s needed for the content you are doing.

For Raiding

For Raid content, here is the build I usually end up playing. The purpose of this build is to provide as much utility as possible through picking up Improved Stampeding Roar and Innervate while still maintaining strong personal talents, such as Feline Swiftness and defensive talents.

The biggest change from the mythic+ tree is the addition of Astral Influence over Light Of The Sun, as the 5 yards extra range can be more useful in raid than the cooldown reduction on Solar Beam.

The majority of Balance Druid’s power comes from baseline tuning, meaning that most talents aren’t particularly powerful and the majority of spec tree talents result in minor 1-2% upgrades. This is also why, if you look at sites like Raider.io and Warcraftlogs, you can see some clear differences in talents. While the Balance Druid spec tree provides a lot of flexibility, they generally do not change the gameplay much. The few options that do have an impact are outlined below.

First off, the choice at the top of the tree between Aetherial Kindling and Meteor Storm is pretty straightforward, as neither talent really changes what button you press, with Aetherial Kindling excelling at mythic+ type prolonged AoE encounter and Meteor Storm being better at sporadic add spawns with a priority target, the kind that is usually found in raid.

When you play Elune’s Chosen, you have the choice between playing New Moon or Fury Of Elune, with Fury Of Elune usually coming out on top due to how the Atmospheric Exposure talent from the Elune’s Chosen tree works. For the Season 2 PTR there have been some builds that forego taking any of the talents, opting into Total Eclipse instead, making most of the Elune’s Chosen talents give an error message. This build is however not very likely to see play.

Another decision to make is whether to play Convoke The Spirits or Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune, with Convoke The Spirits coming out ahead on single-target and raid scenarios and Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune generally being used for either Mythic+ or council fights.

Then you have the decision between Starweaver and Rattle The Stars - this has historically been a very one-sided choice node, but general buffs to Shooting Stars and the introduction of Meteor Storm has made Starweaver a viable choice. It has taken a few hits going into Season 2, but with a sizable portion of the raid having adds or cleave encounters, it could still be worth picking up over Rattle The Stars.

Apex Talents is the new feature for classes in Midnight, and for Balance Druid they are called Ascendant Eclipses, and all the point interact with Eclipse in some way.

The first point gives a buff when you enter an Eclipse, empowering your next 3 spenders cast and making your next Wrath / Starfire instant cast.

The second and third point provide a stacking debuff whenever you score a critical strike inside an Eclipse based on the damage of said critical strike.

The fourth and last point changes your Eclipse to shoot out a single target Solar Bolt or an AoE Lunar Bolt depending on which Eclipse you enter. Pressing Celestial Alignment or Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune or proccing Total Eclipse shoots out both bolts. These bolts are also guaranteed to crit, which means they benefit the previous Apex Talent point.

The two Hero Talents that are offered to Balance Druid include Keeper of the Grove and Elune’s Chosen.

Keeper of the Grove

Keeper of the Grove focuses primarily on enhancing your Force Of Nature.

By itself, Force Of Nature is fairly underwhelming due to the clunkiness of Pet AI as well as the overall low tuning of the damage the Treants provide. However, the hero tree augments the power of these treants by having them grant you buffs whenever they’re active, like Dream Burst and Harmony Of The Grove.

Harmony Of The Grove provides a significant buff to your abilities while the treants are active. Aside from that, some of the other strong talents include Grove's Inspiration, which increases the damage your Wrath and Starfire do, and Cenarius' Might, which provides haste when you enter an Eclipse, much like the old version of Nature's Grace.

You also gain talents like Sylvan Beckoning that spawns a Dryad who does a little damage and the talent Dryad's Dance, which increases the Astral Power generation of all your active spells, and not passive effects like Nature's Balance or Shooting Stars.

Elune’s Chosen

The other Hero Talent selection, Elune’s Chosen, enhances the core of the specialization by providing significant generation of Astral Power and shifting power over to Starfire.

Elune’s Chosen revolves around casting Starfire to lower the cooldown of Fury Of Elune through the Lunation talent.

Lunation also shares a choice node with the talent Arcane Affinity, which is just a passive 3% buff to your Arcane damage. This talent is generally a preferred choice on Single Target, which means that you will end up with considerably less casts of Fury Of Elune than you would with Lunation. The best performing builds also opt out of Radiant Moonlight, making Fury of Elune a static 60 second cooldown. These builds generally function the same way as Keeper of the Grove, where you want to use Fury of Elune on the GCD right before using Celestial Alignment or Eclipse to enhance your damage window.

The hero tree is very restrictive in its design due to the inherent opportunity cost of casting New, Half, and Full Moon versus Fury Of Elune mixed with the interaction of the Atmospheric Exposure effect resetting for every tick of Fury Of Elune.