Balance Druid Guide for The War Within - Dragonflight 10.2.7 (2024)

Last updated on Jun 10, 2024 at 21:10by Bora94 comments

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

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

Balance Druid has received a minor rework to the specializationtree as well as the class tree. The largest change coming with The War Within isthe removal of Primordial Arcanic Pulsar, a staple playstyle since itsintroduction as an Azerite Power back during Battle for Azeroth. However, withthis removal comes no major replacement for the core gameplay loop of recentexpansions.

While there are some talent changes, nothing in the core kit has changed.The Eclipse system is still the primary playstyle. The builder-spenderplaystyle 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 inthe first season of The War Within.

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

The Elune's Chosen Hero Talent Tree focuses on buffing your Lunar based spells.Adding additional effects, increased Astral Power generation, and increaseddamage. 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 andsingle-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 thebonus buffs from the Talent Tree. You will be playing with nicely increasedAstral Power generation, including some random procs of Astral Power throughthe normal rotation.

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

Defensively, The Elune's Chosen focuses more on damage reduction. Thereis only one talent in Glistening Fur, which is a conditional damagereduction, but since it is on magic damage as a whole, this will normally behelpful in some way. It also can increase your mobility or slow enemies tohelp 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 earlyon which can limit your points later. Unlike in Elune's Chosen, where you arenormally defaulting to Fury of Elune/ New Moon, this does requiresome 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 importantthan in previous expansions. The last talent Harmony of the Grove, playsinto this damage window playstyle as well.

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

Power-wise, the Keeper of the Grove Talent Tree is just as flexible as theElune's Chosen. Force of Nature is a tough trade-off as this was anextremely 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 extrapoint into the early talents and does not fit seamlessly into the normal talentflow. This could make it more difficult to make more powerful as you will alwayshave 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 stackwith Barkskin or just used independently.

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

• Druid Balance 11.0 Class Set 2pc — Starsurge damage increasedby 8%. Starfall damage increased by 8%. This is just a flat damageincrease to our spenders, which increases single and multi-target evenly.
• Druid Balance 11.0 Class Set 4pc — Lunar Eclipse and Solar Eclipse eachincrease the Astral Power Wrath generates by 1 and Starfiregenerates by 2. This increases Astral Power generation smoothly throughoutthe rotation.

There is not much to be said about these bonuses as Blizzard intentionallydesigned 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 afew extra spends over the course of a dungeon or raid.

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