Balance Druid Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Balance Druid. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Balance Druid spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Balance Druid, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Balance Druid has received a minor rework to the specialization tree as well as the class tree. The largest change coming with The War Within is the removal of Primordial Arcanic Pulsar, a staple playstyle since its introduction as an Azerite Power back during Battle for Azeroth. However, with this removal comes no major replacement for the core gameplay loop of recent expansions.

While there are some talent changes, nothing in the core kit has changed. The Eclipse system is still the primary playstyle. The builder-spender playstyle is the primary playstyle as of this point in the Beta.

The War Within brought two new Talent Trees in the Hero Talent Tree update. The two talent trees are Elune's Chosen and Keeper of the Grove. In addition to these, there are also new tier sets that will be introduced in the first season of The War Within.

In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

The Elune's Chosen Hero Talent Tree focuses on buffing your Lunar based spells. Adding additional effects, increased Astral Power generation, and increased damage. Primarily, this is buffing Fury of Elune or New Moon.

The first and last Talents are Boundless Moonlight and The Eternal Moon. Boundless Moonlight adds increased multi-target burst to Fury of Elune and increased damage and Astral Power Generation to New Moon while further increasing these bonuses with The Eternal Moon. These talents just serve to make commonly chosen talents for multi-target and single-target much better.

Gameplay-wise, there will be a focus on optimizing talents such as Lunation to get more benefit of the lower cooldown spells and all of the bonus buffs from the Talent Tree. You will be playing with nicely increased Astral Power generation, including some random procs of Astral Power through the normal rotation.

Power-wise, this seems to be the more well-rounded and easy to execute of the two Talent Trees. There are good single and multi-target Talents in the tree that allow good flexibility depending on the type of content. If Lunar Calling were to be the most optimal talent, it could be a sluggish single-target playstyle but there could still be changes in the coming build.

Defensively, The Elune's Chosen focuses more on damage reduction. There is only one talent in Glistening Fur, which is a conditional damage reduction, but since it is on magic damage as a whole, this will normally be helpful in some way. It also can increase your mobility or slow enemies to help kiting.

The Keeper of the Grove Hero Talents focus primarily around the spell Force of Nature. This does require you to always take this talent early on which can limit your points later. Unlike in Elune's Chosen, where you are normally defaulting to Fury of Elune/ New Moon, this does require some sacrifice.

The Keeper of the Groves main bonus is Dream Surge which turns Force of Nature into a damage window making the skill usage more important than in previous expansions. The last talent Harmony of the Grove, plays into this damage window playstyle as well.

Gameplay-wise, there is a focus on builders and Force of Nature. Most of the talents are passive buffs such as increasing Astral Power capacity and Haste. There is also a talent that buffs the primary cooldown talent you choose for your Celestial Alignment.

Power-wise, the Keeper of the Grove Talent Tree is just as flexible as the Elune's Chosen. Force of Nature is a tough trade-off as this was an extremely niche talent in most expansions or rarely used as a pure DPS upgrade. With the current talent layout, Force of Nature will always force an extra point into the early talents and does not fit seamlessly into the normal talent flow. This could make it more difficult to make more powerful as you will always have that off-set Talent point.

Defensively, this Talent Tree focuses on healing spells. However, Protective Growth puts on a solid damage reduction. This, combined with Blooming Infusion could allow for an on-demand damage reduction to stack with Barkskin or just used independently.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Balance Druid in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Druid Balance Season 1 2pc — Starsurge damage increased by 8%. Starfall damage increased by 8%. This is just a flat damage increase to our spenders, which increases single and multi-target evenly.
• Druid Balance Season 1 4pc — Lunar Eclipse and Solar Eclipse each increase the Astral Power Wrath generates by 1 and Starfire generates by 2. This increases Astral Power generation smoothly throughout the rotation.

There is not much to be said about these bonuses as Blizzard intentionally designed them to not impact gameplay for the first season of The War Within.

The 2pc bonus is about a pretty negligible damage bonus and numerically weak. The 4pc is also extremely underwhelming, sometimes not even adding more than a few extra spends over the course of a dungeon or raid.

The total expected value is between 3-5% and is weak in power.

Strengths

• Strong sustained multi-target with ability to abuse spread out enemies and
• encounters.
• Both Hero Talents introduce shorter cooldown damage windows making Balance Druid
• less reliant on long cooldown spells.
• Provides strong utility in all parts of the kit.

Weaknesses

• Balance Druid remains a squishier ranged class with reliance on external Heals
• and Bear Form.
• Lacks a strong primary cooldown which is appararent with the loss of Pulsar.