Balance Druid Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide

Balance Druid general rotation revolves around a priority list. This means that with every GCD, we go from the top to the bottom of a list and use the spell with the highest value.

The priority lists below assume Keeper of the Grove in a typical single-target build, while Elune’s Chosen assumes a Mythic+ oriented build. If you want to play Keeper of the Grove in Mythic+, just swap out Starsurge for Starfall on 2+ targets and aim to overlap Force Of Nature with Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune, since you likely won’t be playing Convoke The Spirits.

Keeper of the Grove

1. Apply Moonfire
2. Apply Sunfire
3. Use Force Of Nature with Celestial Alignment or Eclipse
4. Press Fury Of Elune and align it with either Eclipse or Force Of Nature
5. Use Celestial Alignment if you just used Force Of Nature and you will have a charge of Celestial Alignment back before Convoke The Spirits
6. Use Convoke The Spirits together with Force Of Nature and Celestial Alignment
7. Enter Solar Eclipse if you are at 2 charges, or try to enter with enough resources to spend all Ascendant Eclipses stacks in your next 3 GCD’s
8. Spend Starweaver and Touch The Cosmos procs on Starfall if Ascendant Eclipses is not up
9. Press Starsurge as your main Astral Power spender, spend all 3 Ascendant Eclipses stacks early in Eclipse
10. Wrath

The general rotation for Keeper of the Grove aims to overlap the damage buff from Harmony Of The Grove with other cooldowns. This usually means that you hold Force Of Nature for a few seconds in order to use it together with either Eclipse or Celestial Alignment.

An important skill for Keeper of the Grove in raid is researching information like fight lengths or if the boss has a damage amp phase to determine where your cooldowns are more efficiently used. More information about cooldowns can also be found below!

Elune’s Chosen

1. Apply Moonfire to every target
2. Apply Sunfire
3. Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune if you’re outside of Eclipse and Fury Of Elune is off cooldown
4. Fury Of Elune
5. Enter Lunar Eclipse if you’re above 90% Astral Power and you’re about to overcap on charges
6. Press Starfall to consume Starweaver and Touch The Cosmos
7. Starfall if you’re about to overcap on Astral Power and you’re fighting 2 targets or more
8. Starsurge if you’re about to overcap on Astral Power and you’re fighting 1 target
9. Starfire in Lunar Eclipse / Celestial Alignment
10. Wrath whenever out of Eclipse / Celestial Alignment

The whole idea behind Elune’s Chosen revolves around maintaining casting uptime in order to reduce the cooldown of Fury Of Elune through the Lunation talent. Since Atmospheric Exposure increases your damage to targets affected by Fury Of Elune you are stronger on stacked cleave, whereas Keeper of the Grove in AoE is better on spread cleave.

Maintain Sunfire and Moonfire on as many targets as possible. Only refresh them during movement or when they have less than 30% duration left; this is referred to as a “pandemic window”.

Enter Solar Eclipse and cast Wrath as your filler up to and including 3 targets, and enter Lunar Eclipse and cast Starfire as your filler on 4 or more targets.

Note: If you are playing Elune’s Chosen you will enter Lunar Eclipse for every situation.

Openers

Keeper of the Grove Opener:

1. Start pressing Wrath at 3-4 seconds left on the pull timer and from max range
2. When combat starts, apply Moonfire (if you’re playing Convoke you can skip this step)
3. Apply Sunfire
4. Enter Solar Eclipse (if you’re playing Convoke you can skip this step)
5. Wrath (if you’re playing Convoke you can skip this step)
6. Refresh Sunfire early if the remaining duration is less than 16 seconds
7. Fury Of Elune
8. Force Of Nature
9. Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune (Celestial Alignment if you’re playing Convoke)
10. Starsurge / Starfall

Elune’s Chosen Opener:

1. Start from max range at 4 seconds on pull timer and cast Wrath 3 times
2. Apply Moonfire and Sunfire to the target
3. Enter Lunar Eclipse
4. Use Fury Of Elune
5. Starsurge / Starfall to spend the Ascendant Eclipses stacks
6. Cast Starfire to generate AP and procs
7. Press Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune
8. Spend your remaining Astral Power and proceed with normal rotation.

The Balance Druid opener in Midnight aims to use Eclipse as soon as possible to get it on cooldown, then spending the 3 Apex Talent buffed spenders before using your cooldowns.

The general sequence of “Sunfire > Fury Of Elune > Force Of Nature > CA/Incarn” is also how your cooldown window usually looks, with some exceptions based on whatever cooldown is left on Fury Of Elune.

Cooldown Usage

As Balance Druid 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?
• Is there another point in the fight that might be better suited for these cooldowns? (Damage amps, priority add spawns, lust, trinket availability)
• Will I lose a use by holding these cooldowns?
• Will excessive movement inhibit the full value of the cooldown?

Handling both cooldowns and movement as a Balance Druid in raid revolves heavily around being proactive and planning ahead for the fight, either through tools like Lorrgs.io or just looking up other people’s timers on Warcraftlogs.

The fundamental idea behind Balance Druid cooldowns is to maximize the value of your casts in Eclipse, while also making sure your Convoke The Spirits stays on cooldown, and you don’t overcap charges of either Celestial Alignment or Eclipse.

When you play Keeper of the Grove, you also have Force Of Nature as a damage cooldown that gives you 16% increased damage whenever it’s active. If you talent into Early Spring it instead gives you 12%, but has a shorter cooldown. You should always aim to use Force Of Nature together with your other cooldowns like Celestial Alignment, Eclipse or Convoke The Spirits. The first priority is to align it with Celestial Alignment, which should naturally line up with Convoke due to the 120 second recharge.

After about 3 minutes into the fight you will have uses of Force Of Nature that you can’t use with Celestial Alignment, and you want to hold your Eclipse and use them together instead.

The usual flow of Balance Druid cooldowns in a regular single-target fight starts with using Force Of Nature, Celestial Alignment and Convoke with an on-use trinket in your opener and then doing the same thing again every 2 minutes.

If you are playing Whirling Stars you will have 2 charges of Celestial Alignment and therefore have a floating charge; you should overlap with Force Of Nature whenever possible.

Planning cooldowns for Mythic+ as a Balance Druid is slightly easier, as you generally won’t have to worry about aligning Convoke The Spirits here. Your thought process should be to plan your Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune windows around your on-use trinket timer. If you’re wearing 2 passive trinkets, you should just send your cooldowns whenever you can to avoid overcapping on charges of Incarnation.

Keep in mind that to get the full value of your cooldowns, you should not use them at the end of a pull or in a pull with low target count unless you are overcapping on charges.

Movement and Positioning

Dealing with movement and positioning as a Balance Druid, the same as handling cooldowns, revolves heavily around planning ahead and being proactive. You should try to be aware of what is going to happen in the particular fight 10-15 seconds ahead and already have a plan for how you’re going to deal with it.

The general approach to dealing with movement is to let it dictate your Astral Power spending and generating, using instant casts like Starsurge or Starfall whenever you are forced to move; this is where the importance of planning comes in, because if you get caught out with a mechanic and you don’t have the Astral Power to spend you are potentially losing out on several casts worth of damage.

Utilizing tools like Wild Charge is also very good since you can use instant casts like Starsurge and Starfall during the animation.

You can also use windows of movement to refresh Sunfire and Moonfire, but this should be your lowest priority option.

Balance Druid is a spec very reliant on maintaining casting uptime. More casts mean more Astral Power, and more Astral Power means more spender casts, which equate to more damage.

This also plays into utilizing your defensives properly to reduce the amount of times you need to shapeshift into Bear Form, as shapeshifting effectively kills your uptime. Druids are often relied upon to use tools like Stampeding Roar, which automatically shifts you into Bear Form, and it’s important to communicate with your party or raid leader on the best moments for you to use this.

Defensives

Baseline defensives on Balance Druid are, unfortunately, poor and largely stem from the fact that Druid is based around having access to Bear Form. To work around this, you have to make sure you are using your defensives appropriately, which will often include needing to use Bear Form.

Barkskin is your main defensive tool that you will need to keybind to something that is easily pressable, since it is your first line of defense against incoming damage. It is a one minute cooldown button and allows the Druid to take 30% less damage over the course of 12 seconds. You always want to press this proactively before incoming damage, as pressing it after a damage event does nothing. This is NOT on the global cooldown, so there is little excuse for not using it!

Aessina's Renewal is a passive and minor defensive talent that makes you heal 10% of your max health whenever you’re hit by an ability doing at least 12% of your max health. This is a mandatory node both for its useful passive and to continue traversing down the tree.

The Well-Honed Instincts talent is a free Frenzied Regeneration that is applied to your character upon dropping below 40% health. It places a debuff on you for 120 seconds (or 90 if you’re playing Perfectly-Honed Instincts) that prevents you from receiving this effect again. It is important to note that when this is applied to your character, you will not retain the Frenzied Regeneration after you shapeshift. If you see this proc and you shift into Bear Form, you lose it entirely, causing it to be incredibly frustrating to work around.

With Keeper of the Grove, you can proc instant casts of Regrowth through Blooming Infusion, which also provide 8% Damage Reduction through Protective Growth. Regrowth is a 1.5 second cast, which is the same as the global cooldown, meaning that whether you use the instant casts or not is only relevant for movement and not for damage uptime. Having Regrowth active also procs Forestwalk, increasing your healing received.

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 years 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.

Heart Of The Wild is getting some changes for the Midnight pre-patch and is now a 2 minute cooldown spell that gives you an effect depending on your current shapeshift form. Using this in Bear Form increases your max HP and retains its effect after shifting back to Moonkin Form. Using this without a shapeshift casts an empowered Wild Growth that heals up to 5 allies.