Balance Druid Midnight Gearing Guide

Midnight Season 2 Balance Druid Tier Set Bonuses:

• (2) Set Bonus: Starsurge damage increased by 20%. Starfall also deals some Astral damage instantly to all valid enemies in range when cast.
• (4) Set Bonus: Your damage is increased by 10% while in any Eclipse. This bonus wanes to 2% at the midpoint of the Eclipse, then waxes back to 10% at the end.

Tier Set Discussion:

The 2-set bonus is just a general buff to your spenders, with Starfall dealing some immediate damage when it’s pressed and Starsurge getting a buff.

The interesting part about the Season 2 tier set comes in the 4-set bonus. The tier set grants you the buff Akilzon’s Clarity, which is trackable in the default cooldown manager in-game.

The buff starts at 10 stacks whenever you enter an Eclipse, and gradually drops down to 2 before going back up to 10. The duration of the buff matches your Eclipse and ends up at the same amount of uptime.

The 4-set bonus puts an extra reliance on the cycle of pooling Astral Power for your Eclipse windows, since the buff peaks at 10 stacks on both the start and the end of your cooldown windows.

You should still prioritise 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 new passive Twisted Horror's Tendril trinket from the Unbinding of Kith’ix raid takes over the slot for passive trinkets this season.

For your On-Use trinket, the choice is between Freightrunner's Flask or Vile Vial Of Volatile Venom. Since both of them have different cooldowns you will have to alter some of your cooldown timings to match their cadence.

For most fights you want to use Vile Vial Of Volatile Venom, with some exceptions like on Sszorak where you might want to use Freightunner’s Flask or on mythic endbosses where Hex Lord's Dooming Idol can be valuable.

As a Balance Druid, you usually don’t play around your trinket a lot and just slam it together with your Celestial Alignment casts. It is optimal to press your on-use trinket manually right before pressing your Celestial Alignment or Incarnation cooldowns, as the Solar Bolt damage from your Apex Talent does not benefit from the stat buff of the trinket if they are macro’d together.

For Season 2 in Midnight, the crafted gear situation changes a bit depending on what items you have access to early.

The biggest upgrade early in the season will always be to secure a high item level weapon. Usually this means you would craft one in order to guarantee it early, but with the addition of the Bonus Roll system you can start rolling for Myth track weapons in Heroic raid content, which greatly increases your likelihood of getting a good weapon early, and opens up for crafting embellishments in other stat budget slots. There is a possibility that you should craft an Off-Hand early, and then try to acquire a better One-Hand.

The best course of action for Season 2 is to craft an Off-Hand with Hunter's Ritual Stone on the first week, and then use your Bonus Rolls on Ula’tek in Heroic difficulty until you get the cantrip Dagger. If you do not get it on the first try, and you have not received a myth track Main Hand through any other content yet, then you can craft a Main Hand with another Hunter’s Ritual Stone to fill out the slot.

The best embellishments are generally a mixture of Arcanoweave Lining and Hunter's Ritual Stone, with Arcanoweave Lining being the go-to for non-jewelry and non-weapon items and Hunter’s Ritual Stone being used on weapons.

Crafting with hero crests is generally not recommended as they are much more valuable being spent on upgrading pieces to hit the Hero of the Mist achievement.

Later on in the season as you acquire more resources like sparks and crests, you will want to change your crafted items and embellishments around.

Late on in the season you have some choices:

• If you have acquired a good two-handed weapon at myth track already you should craft a 2nd low stat budget slot with Arcanoweave Lining, like Silvermoon Agent's Utility Belt.
• If you have only acquired a One-Handed weapon, then you can swap out your Hunter's Ritual Stone embellishment on the Off-Hand Aln'hara Lantern craft.

Nebulous Voidcores (Bonus Rolls)

The bonus roll system introduced in 12.0.5 (Nebulous Voidcores) is returning for Season 2, and will be available from Week 2 onwards. You will gradually unlock sources of bonus rolls through the season as you progress.

Nebulous Voidcores Bonus Rolls let you target specific loot from a Raid Boss or Mythic+. In raid encounters, the item looted will be one track higher than the difficulty. So using a bonus roll in a heroic raid will drop a Myth track item, making this a valuable way to gear your character early in the season.

The table below is not a definitive solution for everybody, but serves more as an overview of which special items you should be targeting from your Bonus Rolls. The items in the list also assume that you are using your Bonus Rolls on a difficulty that drops Myth track gear, which is either from Mythic Keystones at +10 difficulty or above, or from heroic or mythic raid.

Ascendant Venomstones

Returning in Patch 12.1.5, the Ascendant Venomstone can be used to further increase the item level of fully-upgraded Weapons, Trinkets and Necklaces.

Once your item is ‘Ascendant Venomforged’ you will no longer be able to upgrade it. Items from Mythic Coiled Altar and Ula'tek will not be upgradable.

The upgrade priority is as follows:

1. Weapons:
   The best slot to spend resources on will almost always be your weapon, and since the Season 2 weapons include cantrip effects, such as the daggers from Ula’tek or Altar of Fangs, this will be where your biggest upgrade.
2. Trinkets:
   The new trinket, Twisted Horror's Tendril, from the Unbinding of Kith’ix raid, is a very good passive trinket, beating out both the passive options from the launch of the season. Your options for active trinkets are usually between Freightrunner's Flask or Vile Vial Of Volatile Venom.
3. Necklace:
   Your last upgrade should go to your Aqirbane Reliquary neck from Ula’tek, unless you have it from Mythic difficulty.

Omnium Folio

The Omnium Folio is a new player power system, released in Midnight Patch 12.0.7 and active for the duration of the Midnight WoW Expansion. By completing a weekly quest, you will unlock more of the Omnium Folio upgrade Tree and can choose from a number of player power enhancements.

It is recommended that you sim your character on Raidbots, as the Omnium Folio powers are likely to receive changes for the first few weeks after release. The 4th row includes stat procs and you are pretty much free to pick whichever one you want here, but if you just want to set it and forget about it you should use the Rune of Critical Power as Critical Strike is one of Balance’s strongest stats.

Recommended Omnium Folio Powers for Balance Druid:

• Row 1: Rune of Unleashed Fire
• Row 2: Rune of Self-Mending
• Row 3: Rune of Lingering
• Row 4: Rune of Critical Power
• Row 5: Rune of Overload

For more information on this system, check out Method’s Omnium Folio Overview Guide.