Balance Druid PvP Guide for WotLK Classic

Balance Druids have extreme burst damage during cooldowns, and can open from stealth, but also require a lot of hard-casting for damage and are easy to shut down, as Starfall stops working while the Druid is crowd controlled.

They have decent control tools in Cyclone and Entangling Roots, but also a hard time using them while under pressure as both require hard-casting. Typhoon can also be a good disruptive tool, which helps particularly against melee cleaves.

Druids have a relatively easy time evading melee pressure due to shapeshifting breaking slows and root effects and Travel Form giving movement speed on top, but running around will cause Balance DPS to plummet, especially if Moonfire and Insect Swarm are being dispelled by the enemy team.

Overall, the Balance Druid is a cheesy caster who can easily steal wins out of nowhere with Starfall and Force of Nature or uninterrupted casts, but fails to make an impact at the highest levels of coordinated PvP.

While somewhat similar to the standard PvE spec, you will be dropping the low impact Improved Faerie Fire, Improved Insect Swarm, and Furor in favor of Nature's Focus, Subtlety, Improved Moonfire, and Owlkin Frenzy, all of which have strong PvP use cases.

If you are playing on a composition trying to nuke a single target in large-scale PvP, an argument could be done for Improved Faerie Fire, and longer fights promote Dreamstate, but for 2v2 and 3v3 Arena the suggested build should be ideal to maximize your chances of winning.

Glyph of Starfall, Glyph of Insect Swarm, and Glyph of Monsoon are the best major PvP glyphs.

For minor glyphs, you will want to use Glyph of Dash, Glyph of the Wild, and Glyph of Thorns.

As a Balance Druid, you will look to start with strong burst from stealth, quickly using Starfall and Force of Nature to burst enemies down along with your damage-over-time effects and any hard-casts you can pull off.

As Starfall stops working while you are crowd controlled, it is very important to have your Medallion of the Horde at hand to stop any crowd control during Starfall, and also to coordinate CC on the enemy team in order to limit their own CC potential.

If enemies turn the pressure on you, you can kite away from them with Travel Form and Nature's Grasp, endure the pressure with Dire Bear Form and Frenzied Regeneration, or use Barkskin, but remember to always keep at least some pressure with your instant-cast damage-over-time effects.

You can find our recommended gear, gems, and enchants for PvPing as a Balance Druid in the link below.

These are some of the strongest Balance Druid compositions in each Arena bracket:

In 2v2, Druid + Rogue, Druid + Mage, and Druid + Warlock are your best compositions, as Balance's cooldown-based gameplay lends itself to double damage comps relying on high pressure for a quick kill in the opener, and it also helps if the Druid partner has strong crowd control abilities.

In 3v3, Druid + Affliction Warlock + Restoration Shaman is your best composition, with very high damage over time, Starfall, and Bloodlust, allowing for extreme pressure from the start on the entire enemy team.

In 5v5, a Balance Druid can take the spot of a Mage or Warlock in a composition, or even work alongside those classes in a powerful caster cleave, but extra care needs to be given to staying out of crowd control during Starfall, as the damage potential on 5 enemy players is insane, and thus all of the enemy team will be looking to crowd control you as soon as the stars start falling.