In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Balance Druid (WoW MoP 5.3). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other articles of our Balance Druid guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Imsupersdw, one of the best Balance Druids in the world, who raids in Method.

1. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents offer a choice between 3 means of increasing your movement abilities.

• Feline Swiftness is a passive ability that increases your movement speed by 15% at all times.
• Displacer Beast is an active ability that teleports you 20 yards forward, activates Cat Form, and grants you a 50% increase in movement speed for 4 seconds.
• Wild Charge is an active ability that differs based on the shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
  • No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
  • Moonkin Form: you leap backwards.
  • Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4 seconds.
  • Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
  • Travel Form: you leap forward 20 yards.
  • Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5 seconds.

The choice here will come down to either Feline Swiftness or Displacer Beast. Wild Charge is generally not very useful.

Feline Swiftness will be your default choice for most fights, with Displacer Beast being useful situationally.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.

• Nature's Swiftness is an active cooldown that makes your next Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Healing Touch, Hibernate, and Rebirth instant cast, free of mana cost and usable in any form. Moreover, it increases the potency of the spell by 50%.
• Renewal is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a 2-minute cooldown.
• Cenarion Ward is a buff that you can place on a friendly player, lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward activates a 6-second HoT on the player, consuming Cenarion Ward in the process.

Cenarion Ward is the weakest of the three talents here. Between the other two talents, it will depend whether you want to be able to help the raid out ( Nature's Swiftness) or have a simple and reliable self-heal ( Renewal).

Nature's Swiftness is also useful for providing more Healing Touches that help you get more benefit from the tier 6 talent Dream of Cenarius. We recommend this macro for pairing Nature's Swiftness with Healing Touch, for easier use. Also keep in mind that once Nature's Swiftness is activated, it will remain active (and its cooldown will not start ticking down) until you cast a spell that consumes its effect, so you can activate it before the pull to make sure it's already ready when you need to make use of it.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.

• Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces Faerie Fire, upgrading the latter spell to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds.
• Mass Entanglement is an AoE root, that roots up to 5 targets.
• Typhoon is a spell that affects enemies in a cone in front of you, knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.

The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which best suits the encounter mechanics.

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 performance-enhancing talents.

• Soul of the Forest passively grants you 40 Solar Energy each time you exit a Lunar Eclipse and 40 Lunar Energy each time you exit a Solar Eclipse.
• Incarnation: Chosen of Elune increases your Arcane and Nature damage done by 25% for 30 seconds. This ability has a 3-minute cooldown.
• Force of Nature is an active ability that summons a treant which casts Entangling Roots on your current target, and then spams Wrath on it for 15 seconds. Force of Nature has a maximum of 3 charges, and a new a charge is added every 20 seconds. Otherwise, it has no cooldown.

Assuming that Force of Nature functions properly on live realms (it had some bugs on the PTR), then it will provide the highest DPS increase when fighting one or two enemies. Against more enemies (or if Force of Nature is still bugged), Incarnation: Chosen of Elune will be better. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune will also be a better choice if there are periods in the fight where the boss is taking increased damage.

While Soul of the Forest will provide you with more energy, making the transitions between eclipses quicker (resulting in more time spent in an eclipse state), it should never be taken, since the other two choices are better.

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.

• Disorienting Roar is an AoE disorient that lasts for 3 seconds and affects all enemies in a 10 yard radius.
• Ursol's Vortex is a targeted AoE slow. When enemies first try to leave the slowing area, they are pulled back in.
• Mighty Bash is a single target 5-second stun.

The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which best suits the encounter mechanics.

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that affect your gameplay.

• Heart of the Wild increases your Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by 6% at all times. Additionally, with a 6-minute cooldown, it allows you to viably perform roles outside of your specialisation, for 45 seconds.
  • allows you to tank in Bear Form, by increasing your Agility, Expertise, Hit Chance, and armor, making you immune to critical hits and granting you the Vengeance ability;
  • allows you to heal efficiently, by increasing the healing of your spells by 100% and reducing the mana cost of your healing spells by 100%;
  • allows you to DPS in Cat Form, by increasing your Agility, Expertise, and Hit Chance.
• Dream of Cenarius is a passive ability that grants you a healing bonus each time you deal damage, and a damaging bonus each time you heal.
  • Wrath, Starfire, Starsurge, and melee abilities increase the healing done by your next healing spell (except for Tranquility) by 30%.
  • Healing Touch increases the damage done by your next 2 Moonfire or Sunfire casts by 65%, or your next 2 melee abilities by 25%.
• Nature's Vigil is a 90-second cooldown that increases all healing and damage done by 10% for 30 seconds. While Nature's Vigil is active, all single target healing spells also damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing done, and all damaging spells heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage done.

Currently, the best talents are Heart of the Wild and Nature's Vigil, depending on the encounter, while Dream of Cenarius lagging behind.

Nature's Vigil is ideal for fights with any kind of damage-increasing effects, since you can stack Nature's Vigil with these effects for added benefit. For any other fight, Heart of the Wild is best due to the passive Intellect it provides, as well as due to the healing capabilities it offers.

8. Major Glyphs↑top

No Major Glyphs improve your DPS performance, but a few of them are still worth mentioning for the other benefits that they offer. Minor Glyphs are entirely cosmetic and do not affect your gameplay at all.

• Glyph of the Moonbeast allows you to cast Rebirth, Tranquility, Healing Touch and Rejuvenation without canceling Moonkin Form. This is extremely convenient, and it can avoid a DPS loss.
• Glyph of Stampede removes any form requirements from Stampeding Roar, making it easy to use in Moonkin Form. As with the above-mentioned glyph, this can save you from a loss of DPS caused by switching out of Moonkin Form.
• Glyph of Rebirth is very useful if you ever intend to use your Rebirth, since it allows the target of your Rebirth to come back to life with full health, meaning that they do not risk instantly dying again to environmental damage.
• Glyph of Innervate grants you 10% of your maximum mana when you use Innervate on other players.
• Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the range of Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. If using this ability is vital to your raid's strategy, this glyph is excellent.

9. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated Force of Nature description and the relevant discussion about that tier's talents.
• 16 Apr. 2013: Made several updates.
  • Reworked Tier 1, 2, 4, and 6 talent sections to better reflect the relative value of the talents in each tier. Also added some clarifications for choosing between Heart of the Wild and Nature's Vigil.
  • Emphasised that Glyph of Stampede and Glyph of the Moonbeast allow you to avoid losing DPS when having to use the respective abilities.
• 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated Displacer Beast explanation to mention the movement speed buff that it provides.
  • Updated Soul of the Forest explanation to reflect the fact that you now gain 40 Solar/Lunar Energy upon leaving an eclipse state, up from 20.
  • Updated Nature's Vigil explanation to reflect the new cooldown and the fact that the damage and healing bonus is now 10% instead of 20%.