Balance Druid 8.3

[Valks 2,375]

This thread is for comments about our Balance Druid guide.

[Guest ugn]

Thanks for the hard work and the update for 8.01, but recommending Twin Moons as talent AND equipping Lady and the Child Legendary seems wrong... at least until lvl 115.

[Valks 2,375]

3 hours ago, Guest ugn said:

Thanks for the hard work and the update for 8.01, but recommending Twin Moons as talent AND equipping Lady and the Child Legendary seems wrong... at least until lvl 115.

Legendaries and talents stack in 8.0.1.

[Guest rtim75]

Is there any sense in using Lady and the Child with Twin Moons? We don't get 3rd hit of Moonfire so maybe there is another legendary which is better to use with that talent?

[Valks 2,375]

9 hours ago, Guest rtim75 said:

Is there any sense in using Lady and the Child with Twin Moons? We don't get 3rd hit of Moonfire so maybe there is another legendary which is better to use with that talent?

As I answered above, the effects stack. You get the bonus damage from both of them. When used together, in situations where Lady is good, it is a very good combo.

[Guest ugn]

1 hour ago, Blainie said:

As I answered above, the effects stack. You get the bonus damage from both of them. When used together, in situations where Lady is good, it is a very good combo.

Came back to say: You, Sire are right! Madness! Fun! Thanks again

[Valks 2,375]

6 hours ago, Guest ugn said:

Came back to say: You, Sire are right! Madness! Fun! Thanks again

It's pretty awesome, indeed! 

[Guest T0MK4T]

Great guide!

So when you're doing single target and you're getting large amounts of empowers and too much astral power, do you cast starfall to help remove excess? or do you just go ahead and waste empowerments?

[Bora 8]

Hi, thanks for reading and enjoying it. Generally you want to avoid getting to that point at all costs. There are two exceptions to this rule. The first exception being movement and the second being pooling for a priority target. In the event that either of those things happen, youll want to Starsurge. 

I find that capping only seems to happen in those two situations and with improper use of Warrior of Elune. You want to seemlessly fit the 3 globals of instant cast Lunar Strike into your rotation as opposed to 3 Lunar Strikes in 3 casts. Do not bother pooling too much of 1 empowerment just keep them as low as possible all the time and the Eclipse passive will not lose you DPS.

As a rule of thumb from now one, keep your empowerments at 1 or 0 and or your Starsurge below 40. If you have 2 or 3 charges and your Astral Power is at 10, you can safely spend Empowerments. Vice versa if your Astral Power is at 80 and you have 0 charges, youll be fine too.

[Guest rtim75]

Have seen a lot of logs with Force of Nature. Is it really so efficient? Or the main reason to use it is mechanic which is much easier than Warrior of Elune? Would be glad to hear your opinion.

[Bora 8]

7 minutes ago, Guest rtim75 said:

Have seen a lot of logs with Force of Nature. Is it really so efficient? Or the main reason to use it is mechanic which is much easier than Warrior of Elune? Would be glad to hear your opinion.

Force of Nature is really strong for single target esp with the high amount of haste that we have. Force of Nature scales with our best stat and if there are really no cleave opportunities in a fight you should take it.

 

[Guest Vorch]

Too many bullcrap in that guide. How's Sephuz's Secret is better than Fel Essence if you can't proc it almost nowhere in Antorus? Fel Essence gives same amount of stats, but Haste >> Crit and this is not even counting legendary effect. Why boots suddenly became best single-target legendary? Trinkets/legendaries/talents choices - 0 reasoning, 0 maths behind them, all Feelcraft.

[Valks 2,375]

2 hours ago, Guest Vorch said:

Too many bullcrap in that guide. How's Sephuz's Secret is better than Fel Essence if you can't proc it almost nowhere in Antorus? Fel Essence gives same amount of stats, but Haste >> Crit and this is not even counting legendary effect. Why boots suddenly became best single-target legendary? Trinkets/legendaries/talents choices - 0 reasoning, 0 maths behind them, all Feelcraft.

I've let Bora know about your comment and I'm sure he'll respond to your points, but I'd like to bring up one thing.

Have you checked any of the logs for Balance in Antorus? If we take every set of top 10 and add them together, we have 110 "top" logs. Out of 110, 107 use Sephuz. 

That's 97.2% of top parsing Balance Druids currently using Sephuz - are you really certain that the guide is feelcraft, or could it be that your evaluation of Sephuz vs. Fel Essence is? 

[Bora 8]

2 hours ago, Guest Vorch said:

Too many bullcrap in that guide. How's Sephuz's Secret is better than Fel Essence if you can't proc it almost nowhere in Antorus? Fel Essence gives same amount of stats, but Haste >> Crit and this is not even counting legendary effect. Why boots suddenly became best single-target legendary? Trinkets/legendaries/talents choices - 0 reasoning, 0 maths behind them, all Feelcraft.

I apologize if you find the guide unhelpful but i will try to elaborate further here. Sephuz is a strong legendary because it takes our top 2 stats (Haste>>Crit) and gives them to us over budget. When I say over budget I am referring to  the 2% haste passive that comes with Sephuz. I believe you can proc sephuz on  IFE is not as good as Sephuz because we generate a good portion less Astral Power than we used to, it has a dead stat on it (Mastery), and our cooldowns were severely nerfed (loss of Moon and Stars artifact + weaker base cooldown). IFE can be good if the fight times allow it though.

Promises of Elune became the best pure single target legendary with the shift of power from Starsurge to Lunar Strike and Solar Wrath. In Legion, much of our damage came from the actual casting of Starsurge as opposed to the casts following Starsurge thanks to Mastery scaling and Artifact traits. Lunar Strike and Solar Wrath are now much more impactful spells in the rotation and make up a larger portion of your damage. Thus a legendary that directly buffs two already strong spells becomes strong on pure ST.

The math has been done and is in fact still being done to this minute (some possible changes coming soontm) as people continue to work tirelessly and redo old APLs (action priority lists) and look for new ways to min-max the class. I will be working on a simulations page come BFA to put your mind at ease when taking my word.

[Guest Ozolz]

Hello. Great guide! I just have one question. On the DPS Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot page, under noteable trinkets u mention Aman'Thul's Wisdom. I suppose you mean Aman'Thul's Vision since Wisdom is the restoration legendary? Thanks for your awesome work!

[Valks 2,375]

On 7/24/2018 at 1:05 PM, Guest Ozolz said:

Hello. Great guide! I just have one question. On the DPS Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot page, under noteable trinkets u mention Aman'Thul's Wisdom. I suppose you mean Aman'Thul's Vision since Wisdom is the restoration legendary? Thanks for your awesome work!

That's correct! Will get it fixed.

[Ishootthings 0]

I feel you lack explaining how to play around with the Starlord talent. It seems as if it can make some changes to the rotation. What is best, to pool up AP for 3 Starsurges in a row in order to gain the 3 stacks and get 9 % haste for the 20 secs minus the 3 GCD of Starsurge, or is it perhaps better to just maintain the 3% haste buff always by casting Starsurge when ever the Starlord buff is falling off or when AP is close to capping? Please a nice explanation as I feel this is a crucial point that has been overlooked.

[Bora 8]

On 7/28/2018 at 5:14 PM, Ishootthings said:

I feel you lack explaining how to play around with the Starlord talent. It seems as if it can make some changes to the rotation. What is best, to pool up AP for 3 Starsurges in a row in order to gain the 3 stacks and get 9 % haste for the 20 secs minus the 3 GCD of Starsurge, or is it perhaps better to just maintain the 3% haste buff always by casting Starsurge when ever the Starlord buff is falling off or when AP is close to capping? Please a nice explanation as I feel this is a crucial point that has been overlooked.

I actually planned on adding a section on Starlord to the "Mastering your Balance Druid" section or possibly some other section entirely. So the best way to use Starlord is keep your uptime really high, on fights where you arent moving very often you want it at 90%+ uptime on 1 stack. The best way to do that is once you get to your 3 stacks (which will normally happen around 9-12 seconds) you play as though you have 40 Astral Power baseline. So you get to 80 and you can Starsurge and then build back up. You dont want to cap at all and if everything lines up well you can go into the next Starlord buff with 1 Starsurge and some change if not 2 Starsurges. If nothing is happening at all, you prioritize reaching 3 stacks as soon as possible as long as it does not cap your empowerments. So after your first stack is up and your 20-second timer is ticking, everytime you hit 40 Astral Power you Starsurge.

Talents as a whole dont really require much thought right now as they are pretty unimpactful damage wise. Prepping Starlord stacks is like 1% maybe 2% damage increase but it is nice for min-maxers. Times where you would NOT be following this pattern would be movement where you pool Astral Power to move or priority target swapping where 2 Starsurges on a target that needs to die is more important than your 1-2% overall DPS increase. 

As a note I plan on making everything much more in depth as more and more information surfaces about various playstyles and we stop getting ninja changed. 

[Guest Tepn]

The 100 talent section explanation should say "Fury of Elune will be used on 3+" instead of "Fury of Elune will not be used on 3+". 

[Guest Snapchat]

Probably a noob question but it's been a few years since I've raided. Is DOT snapshotting still a thing? Like reapplying when you gain a haste or int proc? 

[Bora 8]

On 8/3/2018 at 11:08 AM, Guest Tepn said:

The 100 talent section explanation should say "Fury of Elune will be used on 3+" instead of "Fury of Elune will not be used on 3+". 

Fixed, thanks for the catch.

4 hours ago, Guest Snapchat said:

Probably a noob question but it's been a few years since I've raided. Is DOT snapshotting still a thing? Like reapplying when you gain a haste or int proc? 

Nope, there is currently no snapshotting via dots, trees, etc. Everything is dynamic except spell casts currently. Example being if you have a 1 second cast and get a 25% Haste buff, if you start that 1 second (now .75 second) cast and the buff falls off halfway through, the cast time will not increase. So a way to min-max Haste buffs or cast speed increases with a fixed duration is to make sure you end the buff with a hard cast which will effectively increases the duration of the Haste increase.

[Guest Pandalishis]

With legendaries becoming more or less useless in a week or two, are there no other recommended Weak Aura strings?

[Valks 2,375]

16 hours ago, Guest Pandalishis said:

With legendaries becoming more or less useless in a week or two, are there no other recommended Weak Aura strings?

There will be more added if there are useful/recommended ones come BfA, but for now, we're still in pre-patch where legendaries matter.

[Bora 8]

18 hours ago, Guest Pandalishis said:

With legendaries becoming more or less useless in a week or two, are there no other recommended Weak Aura strings?

Any idea on what youre looking for in particular? I personally run very little for Balance Druid other than the AP pro which is linked. If you have an idea on what youre looking for, I can include it or even make it myself.

[KrayKaz 0]

Sorry, newbie Druid here. Did a test trial on one for BFA and really liked it so I am going to run one for a while.

Anyway, question. From the guide:

Quote

4. Stat Choice for Balance Druids

Currently, you will want to prioritize stats as follows:

Intellect;

Haste;

Critical Strike = Versatility;

Mastery.

My question is, why would not want to stat Versatility over Crit Strike (or, how does Crit Strike = Vers)? I am not a numbers guy by any means as I am a super casual player (but trying to learn more), but from what the stat's description depicts, Versatility does the increase of dam / healing dealt, and decrease of dam taken (by a percentage for each). Whereas, crit strike only has a "chance for extra effectiveness".

Edited August 10, 2018 by KrayKaz