Balance Druid Gearing Guide

Balance Druid TWW Season 2 Tier Set:

• (2) Set Bonus: Your damaging spells have a chance to hit a Jackpot!, growing a Wild Mushroom at a nearby enemy’s location at 100% effectiveness. Casting Celestial Alignment or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune always hits a Jackpot!.
• (4) Set Bonus: Starfall and Starsurge damage against targets affected by your Wild Mushroom’s damage over time effect is increased by 20%.

The tier set for TWW Season Two is incredibly solid and grants us some on demand burst AoE when we pop our cooldowns. More importantly, the four piece buffs our spenders by quite a sizeable amount when the DoT from your mushrooms are active.

You should still prioritize the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Balance Druid, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

The best trinkets currently for Balance Druid are the Eye of Kezan and House of Cards.

Other solid trinkets include the SIgnet of the Priory, Mug’s Moxie Jug, and Carved Blazikon Wax.

Another very, very solid trinket also includes the Suspicious Energy Drink at 665 item level. This is a delve trinket, and is only obtainable at that item level from the vault, making it relatively challenging to properly obtain at such an item level.

Many players at the beginning of last season, myself included, opted for as much player power available early and crafted a 636 Vagabond’s Bounding Baton with the Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension embellishment, pairing it with the 610 Algari Competitor’s Leather Wristwraps embellished with a Writhing Armor Binding to also acquire an early socketed piece that amplifies the effect from the Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension. If you’re looking for as much power as possible on Week One, this will not be possible this time around as we will not have enough sparks to make this craft in the very first week of prog.

You still have the option of spending your Gilded Crests on an off-hand with this embellishment effect, however, and potentially use a PVP craft to craft an offpiece with the Writhing Armor Binding to get yourself a 675 offhand. If you’re planning on playing long-term, you may also opt to fill out off-pieces with Dawnthread Lining and/or Elemental Focusing Lens (very solid on single target, especially with more sockets). The most important thing is to SIM YOURSELF and think about what your goals are!

This Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension embellishment will be the go-to embellishment for Balance Druid for the entire tier. However, if you are thinking long-term, the technically optimal Best In Slot build will have a 639 Main Hand and a crafted 636 Vagabond’s Torch offhand with the Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension embellishment.

The ideal piece to pick as your second crafted piece is an item that has a low stat budget, such as your wrists or your cloak. If you obtain a solid Polluted Spectre’s Wraps early on from Mythic Bloodbound Horror and want to commit a socket to them ASAP, that would mean it is optimal for you to craft on your back instead. The choice for this second craft may vary depending on your gear, so it is important you sim yourself and plan ahead! Most players will find that crafting on back will be optimal for them, but it may not be for you!

Patch 11.1.5 Dinars: What To Spend Them On

In Patch 11.1.5, Blizzard introduced a way to obtain loot on-demand through the Puzzling Cartel Chips. These are obtained by completing a weekly quest to kill four raid bosses from the Liberation of Undermine raid. This awards you one Puzzling Cartel Chip, and you need to exchange three of them for the item off of the vendor you want, who will provide Weapons, Trinkets, and other items. Here is a list of what Balance Druid would want to spend their dinars on, but once again, think about your character and your goals for your character! If you’re looking for long-term power, then this serves as a list of what you should look for in terms of getting your BiS setup. However, the priority or order you may want to purchase these items may depend on what you currently have or need.

1. The Jastor Diamond. This item is far and away the best item for Balance Druids available in the raid, and a Heroic version of this ring is comparable to many Mythic iLvl rings.
2. Best-in-Slots. This item is the best weapon you can get from the raid, as it provides you good secondary stat procs and an on-use effect that can be useful for your second Celestial Alignment pop. Balance Druid does fairly well with a double on-use set up, and having the Best-inSlots allows you to accomplish this without sacrificing the more attractive trinket options from the raid such as Eye of Kezan or Mug’s Moxie Jug. Furthermore, this weapon is also Feral Druid’s best weapon available, so it allows you to have a weapon that can easily flex between specializations. Just remember to swap it using the out of combat on use -- don’t enter a fight as Moonkin with an Agility weapon or have an Intellect weapon on a Feral Druid!
3. House of Cards is the best on-use trinket available for this season. The only on-use trinket that is comparable from this season is Signet of the Priory, which can be difficult to obtain at the highest item level as you need to obtain it from the Vault on Myth track.
4. Mug’s Moxie Jug is a very good stat stick you can obtain from Mug’zee that works similarly to how Ravenous Frenzy did. This trinket is very solid for Balance Druid and is the trinket you would want to play in Mythic+ and on shorter duration boss encounters.
5. Eye of Kezan is a fantastic stat-stick trinket that provides you a significant amount of main stat as the fight progresses and a small damage proc when it stacks up to 20 times. This is a great trinket in general, but may see less value as fights become shorter on farm and damage buffs cause bosses to die extremely quickly. Furthermore, this trinket requires some coordination to ensure you don’t lose uptime in Mythic+, and the effects can be diluted due to things like unavoidable dungeon RP causing you to lose stacks in between pulls.

Cyrce’s Circlet

With the advent of Patch 11.0.7, Blizzard is introducing Cyrce’s Circlet. This is a powerful ring similar to the Onyx Annulet from Dragonflight’s Patch 10.0.7. There are a myriad of unique effects, but for Balance Druid, you’ll want to pick the gems that give you additional Mastery and not worry about the other gems as much.

These gems are as follows:

• Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine
• Stormbringer’s Runed Citrine
• Legendary Skipper’s Citrine

This will give you a powerful ring that scales up to 658 item level that grants you your highest primary stat, and a small amount of all other secondary stats. This ring is more powerful than all other available options barring a 639 Seal of the Poisoned Pact, and you can expect roughly 1% DPS from equipping this ring over the previous Best In Slot set-up at 639 item level.

The Cycre’s Circlet will likely continue to be played, as of the tuning of it when this was written, until you get a Miniature Roulette Wheel with high Mastery at ~665 item level.