Balance Druid Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Dragonflight 10.2.5
Legendary Powers are targetable, unique effects that you can imbue certain base items with through the Runecarving system. In Shadowlands, these enable you to customize your Balance Druid, drastically improving your performance, and are arguably the most important aspect of your gear.
The purpose of this page is to help you pick the right legendary powers (and item slots for them) for your character, depending on the content you are interested in.
As of Patch 9.1 the recommended Covenant for Balance Druid HAS CHANGED. Please check out the Covenant page of this guide for more information.
Introduction: Legendaries in Shadowlands
Legendary Powers are special effects affixed to items in the Shadowlands (through Runecarving). Most of these effects have benefits that are specific to your spec, and others work for all Druid specs. On this page, we will go through the best ones for all types of content. Please refer to our Druid Legendary Powers page and our Runecarving page for more information about these powers.
Best Overall Legendary for Balance Druid
Patch 9.2 introduced the new Legendary Power Unity which provides the bonuses of your Covenant Legendary Power. Once you unlock Unity and hit Revered with The Enlightened, you can then recraft it onto a more favorable slot with better stats. Additionally, you can now also equip a second Legendary Power which will be Primordial Arcanic Pulsar.
Primordial Arcanic Pulsar has incredible synergy with our new Tier Set Bonuses which we go into greater detail on the Gear page linked below. This Legendary will be crafted on the Ring slot and with Haste and Mastery as the chosen secondaries. If you have not gotten it already, you can pick up Pulsar at the Wrath of the Jailer event in The Maw.
The goal for all players is to have a four piece set bonus (which are acquirable in all types of content) and both Legendaries equipped. This does not leave much room for swapping as both Unity and Primordial Arcanic Pulsar are going to be the Legendaries for all content.
Pulsar is an incredibly flexible Legendary and the tier set seems like it was made to pair with this Legendary. Once you have the Balance Druid 2-Piece bonus, Primordial Arcanic Pulsar will most likely never be un-equipped again. If you are in the situation where you have no tier gear and are playing Venthyr and do not already have access to a second Legendary, you can still play Sinful Hysteria but the rest of the Covenants will still prefer crafting Pulsar first.
Stat and Slot Selection
In Season 4, there are no Legendary item level upgrades and they will still max out at item level 291. The max item level gear in the game will be 311 on Mythic difficulty. Even Heroic gear starts at item level 291.
If looking to maximize the effectiveness of your slots, you will want to craft your Legendary in a low stat budget slot that does not conflict with your tier gear. The Wrist slot should have your first Legendary and a Ring or Shoulder slot should be your second Legendary.
If you are starting out and have spare funds, you can craft your Legendaries in high budget slots like Chest, Legs, or Helm for a temporary damage boost and recraft them in the optimal slots later.
For Stats, the safest option to choose are Mastery and Haste as these are generally our most favored stats.
Covenant Specific Legendaries
The four Covenant-specific Legendaries powers that you can activate after acquiring Unity or craft on their own are:
- Venthyr: Sinful Hysteria increases the duration of Ravenous Frenzy by .1 seconds each time it gains a stack. When Ravenous Frenzy expires, you gain stacks of Sinful Hysteria equal to the lost Ravenous Frenzy stacks for 3 seconds. Each stack of Sinful Hysteria increases damage and healing by 2% and Haste by 1%.
- Night Fae: Celestial Spirits reduces the cooldown of Convoke the Spirits by 50% and reduces the channeling time by 25%. This makes Convoke a 1-minute cooldown that casts 12-total spells now. This new Convoke also has a significantly higher chance to cast a Full Moon.
- Kyrian: Kindred Affinity gives you and your partner a stat bonus based on their Covenant. This bonus doubles when you activate your Covenant ability. It grants 210 Mastery for Kyrian, 6% Haste for Night Fae, 6% Critical Strike Chance for Venthyr, and 6% Versatility for Necrolord.
- Necrolord: Unbridled Swarm gives Adaptive Swarm a 60% chance to split into two Swarms each time it jumps to another target.
It is recommended you do not craft these separately as it will be a waste of resources.
Other Legendaries for Balance Druid
Most of the other Legendary powers Balance Druid have are less than optimal. We are only going to talk about the Balance Druid ones because as of now, none of the other shared Legendaries are worth mentioning.
- Oneth's Clear Vision is a call back to the popular and powerful Legion legendary. This power currently sits lowest on the board, as even the buffed version can not hold a candle to our current best powers. Most of the reason is we generate significantly less Astral Power than we did back in Legion, and we cannot layer the free Starfalls.
- Timeworn Dreambinder is the other Legion throwback legendary. Similar to the drawback to Oneth's Clear Vision, we do not generate enough Astral Power to maintain the buff for any meaningful amount of time. Good for PvP as Kyrian and can be used single-target as Venthyr if you do not yet have Sinful Hysteria.
- Circle of Life and Death is a DoT-based Legendary Power which gets outshone by Pulsar. Can be good for spread multi-target if no other options but will most likely not be used.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Druid Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This was written by Borabank, a Balance Druid theorycrafter and raider in Muscle Memory. You can watch him on his Twitch channel or in the Dreamgrove Discord server.
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