Balance Druid PvE Guide

Balance Druid Talent Build:

Basic cookie cutter spec – click here to view

Glyphs:

Glyphs come in three varieties, Prime, Major and Minor.

Prime glyphs enhance core aspects of your class and generally provide the greatest benefit of the three types.
Major Glyphs, while not quite as powerful as Prime Glyphs, are still useful and continue to provide a myriad of benefits.
Minor Glyphs often times provide small quality of life improvements or visual changes.

Prime Glyphs:

Moonfire – Optimal
Insect Swarm – Optimal
Starsurge – Use for AoE encounters
Wrath – Use for single target encounters

Major Glyphs:

Starfall – Optimal
Rebirth
Thorns
Innervate
Focus
Monsoon

Minor Glyphs:

Unburdened Rebirth
Mark of the Wild

Rotation:

Here are your highest priority abilities.

Insect Swarm – Keep applied at all times
Moonfire – Keep applied at all times, also used to proc Nature’s Grace during a Lunar Eclipse
Starsurge – On Cooldown
Wrath – Use to activate Lunar Eclipse and during the Solar Eclipse
Starfire – Use during Lunar Eclipse phase
Sunfire – Use to proc Nature’s Grace during a Solar Eclipse

The first thing to do when beginning a fight is to apply your DoTs to the target, Insect Swarm and Moonfire. It’s important that you keep these constantly applied to your target, however, you should refresh them only a tick or so before they expire to avoid wasting time or mana.

Next you’ll need to manage your eclipse cycle, start by casting Wrath until you enter the Lunar Eclipse whereupon you’ll want to use Starfire.

Once your Lunar Eclipse fades, continue to cast Starfire until you obtain the Solar Eclipse buff and follow that up by casting wrath looping back into the first stage.

Make certain to continue reapplying your DoT’s and utilizing Starsurge whenever possible throughout your rotation.

Your Nature’s Grace buff refreshes its cooldown timer upon entering a Lunar or Solar Eclipse, and it’s suggested that you utilize Sunfire during a Solar Eclipse or Moonfire during a Lunar Eclipse to activate Nature’s Grace.

AoE Rotation

Wild Mushroom – On Cooldown
Starfall – On Cooldown
Insect Swarm – Apply to every target
Moonfire – Apply to every target

During AoE fights you should be using and detonating your Wild Mushroom spell and using Starfall whenever it’s available as well as applying your DoTs, Insect Swarm and Moonfire, on every target.

Cooldowns

Force of Nature
Innervate

Innervate should be used on yourself whenever possible unless someone else in your raid specifically requires it, such as one of your healers.

Stat Priorities:

Intellect > 17% Spell Hit Cap > Haste > Mastery > Critical

Intellect increases spell damage and maximum mana, making it your most important stat. Intellect also enhances mana regeneration through Euphoria, Innervate and Replenishment.
Spell hit is increased by hit rating and spirit. 17% is the suggested value to aim for as once you reach it your spells can no longer miss bosses, allowing you to avoid any loss of damage.
Haste decreases the cast time of spells, making them faster, and increases the rate at which DoTs tick.
For a Balance Druid, Mastery increases the damage bonus of Eclipse, and each point thereafter further enhances the effect.
Critical rating increases the chance for your spells to critically hit, making it a valuable damage increase, if not quite as much an improvement as other stats.

Reforging

When reforging gear, it’s important that you look to reforge from your least effective stat into the most effective for whatever gear goal you are currently aiming for. See our stat priority list for more information.

17% Spell Hit Cap > Haste > Mastery

The most important stat to check for when reforging your gear is 17% spell hit, the point at which your spells can no longer miss. You’ll want to always check and make certain that you’ve achieved this before reforging into other stats such as Haste and Mastery.
Once you’ve reached 17% Spell Hit your next most important/valuable stat is Haste, followed by Mastery.

Gems:

Yellow – Reckless Lava Coral/ Reckless Ember Topaz
Blue – Purified Shadow Spinel/ Purified Demonseye
Red – Brilliant Queen’s Garnet/ Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Meta – Burning Shadowspirit Diamond

As your most important stat to stack is intellect, it’s safe to forgo a socket bonus in favor of stacking +intellect gems in your gear unless that socket bonus itself grants intellect.

Enchantments:

Helm: Arcanum of Hyjal
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone
Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect
Chest: Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats
Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect
Gloves: Enchant Gloves – Haste
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Leggings: Powerful Ghostly Spellthread
Boots: Enchant Boots – Lavawalker
Main Hand: Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent
Off-Hand: Enchant Off-Hand – Superior Intellect