(Yellow texts are links!)Guides
Starters
Basic Icy Veins Guide
Intermediate - Best place to start if you're an experienced ranged caster rerolling into a Balance Druid.
Gebuz's Guide
Guides are very helpful but might be Tl;DR at times, so I'll cut to the chase for the most important things to know. Also, I will be providing information on FAQs I've answered in the Balance Druid Discord channel.
We have 3 talent builds that we will be using: Single Target, Hybrid, AOE
Single Target: Starlord, Incarnation, Blessing of the Ancients, Nature's Balance
Pure ST fights, or where adds are up less than 25% of the fight. Trilliax, Krosus, Star Auger, Chronomatic.
Hybrid: Starlord, Incarnation, Shooting Stars, Stellar Drift
Standard build for Mythic +, if adds are dying slow in Chronomatic use this talent build instead.
AOE: Starlord, Soul of the Forest, Shooting Stars, Stellar Drift
Where adds are up more than 50% of the fight. The rest of NH.
Livin in a Padders' Paradise - Starfall Notes
UPDATE FOR 7.2.5 - Starfall is being nerfed by 10%. But it's OKAY, the new artifact traits gave us +12% Starfall damage anyways. Also, in return they're buffing our ST spells, FINALLY!!!
Yes, you can have multiple starfalls and the damage stacks. Yee, it's lit fam. But.. the stellar empowerment that buffs your dots only refreshes when the first starfall ends, and you have a casted a new starfall.
Even when you're talented for AOE, use starsurge over starfall when there is only 1 target. Starfall when there are 2 or more. Make sure you are pooling for at least 80 astral power if you're expecting extra adds. This will give you the ability to burst AOE over our ramping AOE damage as we will be able to have 4-6 starfalls up at the same time. The fastest and most efficient way to pool astral power to cast starfalls is by spamming solar wraths and any empowered lunar strikes.
Notes on Mythic Progression as Balance Druid
Sure, you've had these amazing parses in normal/heroic as you did over 9000 damage with a bazillion starfalls. Well, now you're in Mythic Prog, and you just can't pad as much anymore, Skorp is still relatively the same. For some of the fights, we're going to have to switch from our typical AOE spec to our ST spec with the exception of keeping shooting stars.
Keep the same dps talent-builds for the first 3 mythic bosses, and Krosus.
For the first 4 bosses, I recommend taking feral affinity(15% movement) as well as wild charge (disengage) or displacer beast (blink) since you'll be dealing with high movement mechanics.
High Botanist - Starts with 3 bots, and you would think this would be a padders' paradise, but no. When one botanist dies, the others regain full hp. Therefore we will be using our ST spec to maximize the damage done to each botanist, individually. We can keep shooting stars because our dots on all 3 bots will give us more AsP to spend on starsurging the target botanist.
Spellblade - The dps talents will be the same for this fight; take SotF/SS/SD. Use incarnation while adds are up and spam starfall. Since there isn't much movement in this fight, the utility talents I recommend are guardian affinity as well as renewal. Guardian affinity for it's 6% DR, and renewal for it's 30% instant cast heal. The frost ticks for a lot of damage and Barkskin might not always save you, especially with multiple replications.
Tichondrius - The standard strat for this fight is to hold onto the 6 bloods till Echoes of the Void, and then burst down the adds. If you attack the bloods prior to this, it would be considered "padding". So you might think that taking a ST or Hybrid build might be better, like High Botanist. However, due to our new trait giving us 12% more damage to starfall, taking a full AOE talent-build will give similar boss damage to our ST talent-build as long as dots are on Tich with stellar empowerment(from starfall). Also, this talent build will allow us to quickly burst down bloods, and phantasmal bloodfangs which become a priority during those phases.
Star Auger -
More notes will be added with more progression...
Emerald Dreamcatcher Info
Only when you equip this legendary, will you have to obtain a certain breakpoint of haste in order to maximize the legendary's buff. 30% or 11250 is the required haste value where you can cast 2 solar wraths in between starsurges to refresh the ED buff. So to jumpstart on using your new legendary, follow this simple rotation. Keep in mind you need to be talented for Starlord in order to complete this rotation, and Single Target talent build to maximize.
First, make sure you have at least 2 solar wrath empowerments, and at least 90 Astral Power before starting the rotation.
SS > 2x SW > SS > LS or Half Moon > Rinse & Repeat till you run out of Astral Power. Then, re-pool your Astral Power (AT LEAST 90 AsP) by using your moons/empowerments, make sure your dots are refreshed, and follow the rotation again.
Things start to get more interesting when you bring in haste proc enchants and trinkets into the mix, as it allows you to cast longer cast-time spells instead of the 2x SW or LS. More detailed information on that can be found on Gebuz's guide above.
Now if you want to get a little bit more spicy, we can jump into a BiS list, Talent/Legendary Analysis, and Legendary Comparisons.
Itemization & BiS list
If you've read the guides above, you now know that we have to be gearing for haste/mastery as our primary secondary stat. The following will be a BiS list so that we can have the best possible itemization for haste/mastery.
Tier-19
Currently there are 6 Tier pieces, but only 4 are required to receive the full set bonus. The tier pieces that you will want are the following:
We are going to steer away from the helm, and glove pieces because of the excessive amount of crit. We will never be using the tier gloves, and the only exception on using the head piece is if we're currently using the Lady and the Child legendary (Shoulder piece).
Now the remaining pieces can be filled from mythic + and/or NH, as long as they are haste/mastery. Haste/versatility or Crit/Mastery can be used on a couple slots as long as they're at least a 5 ilvl upgrade. iLvl will completely outweigh the secondary stats if it is over 10 iLvls. If not, fuggedaboutit.
BiS from NH
Helm
Wrists
Neck
Gloves
Belt
Boots
Ring
Trinket-ST
Trinket-ST Best ST Trinket
Trinket-AOE Best non-lego AoE Trinket in game
Keep in mind that legendaries will replace these in it's respective slots.
The Crit/Haste Neck is listed here because of how easy it is to kill Mythic Skorpyron. The immense amount of haste provided by this neck at a high iLvl + it's frequent accessibility, outweighs farming other content for a 900+ haste/mastery piece. Obviously, replace if you do get lucky with a titanforged haste/mastery neck.
The Haste/Vers belt, and boots are listed here because of the large amount of haste from those pieces replenishes the lack of haste from our tier pieces. This will also put you between 2-3000 versatility which is the optimal range.
There is only 1 ring listed that you would want from NH because it's the only one that provides haste/mastery. Jewelry pieces are our money maker when it comes to boosting our best secondary stats. Therefore, if you don't have IFE legendary on the second ring slot, farm mythic + or mythic EN for a haste/mastery ring.
If you were fortunate enough to get the unstable arcanocrystal, it will be on par with whispers and beat any metronome under 900 at its base iLvl.
Trinket List - More in depth trinket list where you can adjust the bars by inputting your stat weights in it's respective cells. Made by Gebuz & Jundarer.
BiS Legos
- Best Overall
- Best Single Target // Followed by IFE > OI > Eko > Prydaz > ED > Elune > Sephuz
- 2 Target Cleave
- Best AoE/Spread // Followed by IFE > OI > Eko > Prydaz > ED > Elune > Sephuz
- Best Burst AoE
LEGO SIM ANALYSIS
IMPORTANT
Note: Always sim your character Patchwerk for Single Target, and 3 enemies for Multi-Target. After simming you should obtain a pawn string of stat weights, which you can input in the addon "Pawn", to see if a piece of gear is an upgrade or not. Now, some people will use a string of stat weights they found on Icy Veins and use it. You do NOT want to do this.
Only when you sim your own character will you have the true weights of your currently equipped value of stats.
For example, if you found a string of stat weights on a guide with 1.2 - 1 - 0.8 - 0.8 (Haste/Mastery/Crit/Vers respectively) Sounds about right, as haste/mastery are our best secondary stats. But let's say you currently have 1000 crit or versatility with 9000 mastery, after simming, crit/vers will outweigh mastery. This is because as you gain more of one attribute, the others gain more value in relation to it's true dps bonus. Ultimately, in order for us to have a true balance of secondary stats the weights will be equal like on a seesaw. Therefore, always, always sim your own character and use your own pawn strings.
Okay fine, all this stuff was too ez, where's the good stuff at? I want to parse! How can I min/max? Check this post/guide made by Slippykins. Using Modified SimCraft APL, he has blessed us with talent and legendary analysis. Clicky Bonus: Relics' Sim analysis is provided as well.
A lot of credit goes to the experts and theorycrafters in the Druid discord server, Dreamgrove, specifically the #balance channel. Check that out if you haven't already. Also, feel free to message me on discord or in game (MOONDAZE) if you have any questions! Hope this helps!
