Balance Druid Playstyle and Rotation Guide

General Rotation:

1. Keep DoTs up on your priority target at all times (Moonfire & Sunfire), including Stellar Flare (if talented). Try to only refresh DoTs when in movement or when your DoTs have less than 30% of their duration left -- this is referred to as a “pandemic window”. If your target is about to die, you may not need to reapply Sunfire and Moonfire, as you will not receive the full effect of the damage over time application.
2. If you are playing Keeper of the Grove, use Force of Nature off cooldown.
3. Enter Celestial Alignment or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune as appropriate on the fight. Typically, you will want to ensure your cooldown is getting high value when it is pressed. This can be accomplished by pairing it with Bloodlust, your own trinkets, or during damage amp situations. Research every fight beforehand to determine when it is best to use your Incarnation, but in most scenarios, this will be on pull.
   1. If you are playing Keeper of the Grove, it is often beneficial to hold your cooldowns to ensure they line up with Force of Nature. Make sure you’re not losing any uses to do this, however! This is incredibly killtime dependent.
   2. If you are playing Whirling Stars, you will have two charges of your Celestial Alignment. Make sure you absolutely never overcap on these charges (note: if you are playing Keeper of the Grove’s Control of the Dream hero talent, it is acceptable to sit on two charges for up to 15 seconds maximum).
4. Use Convoke the Spirits with either Celestial Alignment or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune. If you are playing Keeper of the Grove, make sure you also have casted Force of Nature.
5. Use Fury of Elune on cooldown or New, Half, and Full Moons to prevent them from overcapping. With Moons, it is acceptable to hold charges until your next Celestial Alignment or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune, but it is never acceptable to overcap.
6. Spend Astral Power using Starsurge on Single Target and two targets, and Starfall on 3+ targets in AoE/Spread Targets. If you are below 3 stacks of Starlord, prioritize spending your Astral Power to catch back up to 3 stacks. It may be appropriate to Starsurge on 2 targets if one target is a priority target.
7. Enter Solar Eclipse and cast Wrath as your filler on one or two targets, and enter Lunar Eclipse and cast Starfire as your filler on 3 or more targets. In an Incarnation: Chosen of Elune window, you will want to cast Wrath on up to 3 targets, and Starfire on 4 or more. If you are outside of an eclipse but will cap on Astral Power, it is acceptable to spend a little bit of that Astral Power before entering an eclipse to prevent that overcap from happening. Note: If you are playing Elune’s Chosen and Lunar Calling, you will instead go Lunar Eclipse for every situation.
8. With the Fungal Growth part of Wild Mushrooms, you can use Wild Mushrooms to keep Waning Twilight uptime high in AoE situations. In single target, this should only be used as a movement filler ability.

Opener

Elune’s Chosen Opener:

1. Wrath twice at 3-4 seconds left on the pull timer and from max range
2. Starfire
3. Apply Moonfire, Sunfire and Stellar Flare (if talented) to the target
4. Press Fury of Elune
5. Use Celestial Alignment or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune paired with trinkets, racial abilities, and a potion.
6. Use Starsurge or Starfall as much as you are able to in order to dump Astral Power before Convoke
7. Press Convoke the Spirits
8. Spend remaining Astral Power and proceed with normal rotation.

Keeper of the Grove Opener:

1. Wrath twice at 3-4 seconds left on the pull timer and from max range
2. Apply Sunfire and Stellar Flare (if talented) to the target
3. Press Force of Nature to allow your treants to apply Moonfire.
4. Use Celestial Alignment or Incarnation: Chosen of Elune paired with trinkets, racial abilities, and a potion.
5. Use Starsurge or Starfall as much as you are able to in order to dump Astral Power before Convoke
6. Press Convoke the Spirits
7. Spend remaining Astral Power and proceed with normal rotation.

Multi Target:

1. Keep your Sunfire and Moonfire on all the targets in the pull (take note if the targets will live long enough to justify the DoT application).
2. Spend your Astral Power on Starfall on two or more targets and do not overcap on Astral Power.
3. Press Fury of Elune or New, Half, and Full Moon on cooldown if you are playing Elune’s Chosen.
4. Spend your Astral Power on Starfall to obtain three stacks of Starlord.
5. If you are playing Keeper of the Grove, use your Force of Nature on cooldown.
6. Use Starfire.
7. Ensure uptime of Waning Twilight with Wild Mushroom (if talented).

Playstyle

Handling Movement and Positioning as a Balance Druid

As the baseline rotation for Balance Druid is fairly straightforward with a lot of room for small error, one of the best ways to improve is to minimize the amount of movement you do and maximize your cast time. To do this, Ranged DPS in general often will need to develop solid prepositioning skills, as it is always beneficial to be proactive with your movement rather than reactive.

The best thought process for handling movement is always: what is going to occur next, and where should I be to minimize the amount of movement if a) I get the mechanic or b) if I don’t get the mechanic? Furthermore, what toolkit does my class have that allows me to handle this movement without significant cost to my throughput?

For Balance Druid, the main thing you have (in Moonkin Form) is Wild Charge. Wild Charge leaps your character backwards, and is on a 15 second cooldown (reduced to 12 with Elune’s Grace talented in the Elune’s Chosen Hero Talent). Wild Charge is off the global cooldown, allowing you to combo it with an instant cast ability such as Starsurge, Starfall, or one of your DoT effects. You can further extend the distance this Wild Charge takes you by a) jumping and b) casting Flap. Flap is on the global cooldown, however, so it is important to only use it when you feel you need the additional movement.

Balance Druid is a fairly solid class at handling short bursts of movement as it has a lot of buttons that are able to be pressed while moving -- Starsurge and Starfall being the most notable. However, extended movement is typically rough to play as Balance Druid, since your builders must be hard casted. Planning ahead and breaking up long movement into short movement bursts changes that weakness into something that becomes a lot more manageable.

To accomplish this, you will use your spenders and your Sunfire/Moonfire reapplications to adjust your position in the fight. Furthermore, Balance Druid benefits from having increased access to their spenders in their cooldowns through the employment of Elune’s Guidance, so you get punished a lot less than other classes for needing to move in your cooldowns, since you will have ample Astral Power to spend Starsurges/Starfalls on when you need to move. Despite this, it is incredibly punishing to have to cancel your Full Moon casts in your Incarnation: Chosen of Elune, as you will want to line it up with your Balance of All Things windows at the start of your cooldowns.

You also have access to Stampeding Roar, an ability that increases the movement speed of you and all allies around you within 20 yards by 60%. This is often not able to be used as a personal movement cooldown, and is instead saved for the benefit of your guild. The other large movement cooldown you have access to is Dash, which will shapeshift you into Cat Form and increase your movement speed by 60% for 10 seconds. The large difference between Stampeding Roar and Dash is that the movement speed generated by Dash does not remain after you shapeshift back into Moonkin Form, whereas Stampeding Roar does. As a result, you ideally want to use Dash in emergency situations, as using it will lead to significant DPS loss.

Remember: Balance Druid is a specialization that benefits largely from its inherent positive feedback loops, and downtime incurred from shapeshifting and being in forms other than Moonkin Form is fairly punishing for Balance Druid.

Cooldown Usage

As Balance Druid is one of the few specializations in the game with a 3-minute cooldown, it is incredibly important to ensure you’re utilizing your cooldowns properly. Making sure you’re getting max value out of them is key to getting everything out of the spec, so you should build a thought process that includes things such as:

• Am I going to get full use of the cooldown?
• Am I going to be contributing effective damage to the group with this cooldown?
• Is there another point in the fight that might be better suited for these cooldowns? (Damage amps, priority add spawns, lust, trinket availability, etc.)
• Will I lose a use by holding these cooldowns?
• Will excessive movement inhibit the full value of the cooldown?

Defensives

Baseline defensives on Balance Druid unfortunately are really poor and largely stem from the fact that Druid is based around having access to the admittedly powerful Bear Form. To compensate, Druid is one of the only classes that lacks any stamina gain in their Class Tree, so you will sometimes find that a 470 Beast Mastery hunter can have the same HP pool as a 487 Balance Druid. To work around this, you will have to ensure that you are using your defensives appropriately, which will often include needing to use Bear Form. With The War Within, the only change to address this was adding a talent to increase Barkskin to 30%. As a tradeoff, however, Thick Hide got brought down to 4%. A few defensive talents are featured in Hero Talents as well.

Barkskin is your main defensive that you’ll need to keybind to something that is easily pressable, because it is your first line of defense against incoming damage. It is a one minute cooldown button that gets a lot of value from Holy Priest’s Symbol of Hope to help get it back off cooldown, and will allow the Druid to take 30% less damage over the course of 12 seconds. You will always want to press this proactively before incoming damage, as pressing it after a damage event largely does nothing for you. This is NOT on the global cooldown, so there is little excuse for not using it!

Renewal is another defensive that is off the global cooldown, and can be used both proactively and reactively. It heals your character for 30% of their maximum health, which can be amplified by using Bear Form. The most common use of this button is to use it reactively after you’ve taken damage, but knowing when to use it before you take damage to top-off your health so you survive the incoming damage is key to help ensure you’re living throughout the fight.

Well-Honed Instincts is a free Frenzied Regeneration that gets applied to our character when we drop below 40% health. It will place a debuff on you for 120 seconds (or 90 if you’re playing two points into it) that prevents you from receiving this effect again. This is a very solid passive defensive, but it is important to note that when this is applied to your character, you will not retain the Frenzied Regeneration when you shapeshift AT ALL. If you see that this procs and shift into bear, you lose it entirely, causing it to be incredibly frustrating to work around. Furthermore, if it procs and you need to do something like break your root on Tindral Sageswift, it will disappear from the act of shapeshifting.

The last thing we have access to in our caster form is really just small and largely unimpactful offhealing through Regrowth. You’ll find that this doesn’t move your health bar too much, so it is really only used in times of complete desperation or downtime. In 95% of scenarios, you’d rather go Bear Form and cast Frenzied Regeneration to heal yourself. WIth Keeper of the Grove, you may proc instant-case uses of these through Blooming Infusion, which also provide 8% Damage Reduction through Protective Growth.

Nature’s Vigil is a very solid but unreliable heal that you can never really count on to do effective healing to yourself in group content. You’ll want to press this with your major cooldown and then on CD afterwards.

Outside of caster form, our defensive toolkit expands with Bear Form, and the main ability that comes with it: Frenzied Regeneration. By itself, Bear Form allows you to increase your stamina by 25% and your armor by 220%, which is a great boon for when you need to survive large bursts of damage. In raid, however, the vast majority of damage that you as a ranged DPS will take is magical, and it is rare that you will use this armor increase, with the last relevant time being six tiers ago in Castle Nathria on Sludgefist. However, it is quite honestly one of the strongest defensives in the game by itself, but comes with significant tradeoffs to your baseline defensives and your overall damage -- pressing Bear Form means you stop doing 99% of your damage until you resume playing in Moonkin Form.

Frenzied Regeneration synergizes inherently with Bear Form, as it is just a 32% heal over the course of 3 seconds. Aside from Renewal (and Healthstone/Healthpot), this is your best way to help healers top your HP bar. Opting into Heart of the Wild allows for two charges of Frenzied Regeneration during the duration of Heart of the Wild, which can be incredibly useful for long-duration movement events that cause you to take a lot of damage, such as Broodkeeper Diurna’s staff channel if it is targeted on you.

You may find it worthwhile to review each player in your raid’s external defensive abilities and begin tracking them. It may be worthwhile to steal a Ret Paladin’s Blessing of Sacrifice to help you survive an encounter, for example. You can accomplish this through the use of Method Raid Tools.