PvP Balance Druid Guide

PvP Balance Druid

Stat Priority

Talents & Builds

Pre-Bis & Best In Slot (BiS)

Glyphs, Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

Welcome to the Balance Druid PvP guide for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King!

In this guide, you will learn how to properly play a Balance Druid in PvP scenarios, whether those might be battlegrounds, arenas, or the open world.

The Balance Druid is a caster specialization that emphasizes burst damage, assuming the form of a Moonkin to bring the wrath of Elune down onto the mortal plane. For the most part, the Balance Druid is characterized as a hybrid class: it has plenty of tools to outfit the player with high-burst damage capabilities, damage mitigation, healing, crowd control, and some debuff abilities.

This guide covers the Balance Druid as of the patch 3.3.5, and includes BIS gear, gems, enchantments, gameplay, and spell rotation tips.

Arena Team Setups

When it comes to teams for the Arena you will want to try the following combinations:

2 vs 2 teams:

• Balance Druid/Affliction Warlock
• Balance Druid/Subtlety Rogue
• Balance Druid/Combat Rogue
• Balance Druid/Elemental Shaman
• Balance Druid/Arcane Mage
• Balance Druid/Frost Mage
• Balance Druid/Shadow Priest

3 vs 3 teams:

• Elemental Shaman/Affliction Warlock/Balance Druid
• Holy Paladin/Balance Druid/Affliction Warlock
• Destruction Warlock/Balance Druid/Elemental Shaman
• Arms Warrior/Holy Paladin/Balance Druid
• Balance Druid/Restoration Shaman/Unholy Death Knight 
• Marksmanship Hunter/Restoration Druid/Balance Druid
• Balance Druid/Shadow Priest/Elemental Shaman
• Discipline Priest/Balance Druid/Frost Mage

Best Races

Since the expansion we are reviewing is Wrath of the Lich King, players only have two options when playing a Druid: Night Elf for the Alliance or Tauren for the Horde.

Horde

• Tauren: The only available race for the Druid class in the Horde, Taurens are mighty creatures with a strong connection to nature. They provide several interesting racials for PvP encounters that bolster their overall survivability.
  
  First one is the Endurance, which increases their base health by 5%. Meanwhile, the War Stomp is a stun that takes 0.5 seconds to cast and lasts 2 seconds, providing increased survivability in clutch situations. It may also provide a way to chain up crowd control to set up a kill.
  
  Another useful racial is the Nature Resistance, which reduces the chance to be hit by nature spells by 2%, a similar passive to the Blood Elf racial. Lastly, this race provides a racial which can help guide your profession choices – Cultivation, which increases your base Herbalism skill by 15.

Alliance

• Night Elf: The only available race available for Alliance players who want to play a Druid, Night Elves are a proud race who have been blessed with immortality by the World Tree, Nordrassil. After losing their immortality after the third war, the Night Elves nonetheless retain an extreme bond with nature and offer several interesting racials.
  
  The first of these is Shadowmeld, which offers several interesting effects. First one is making you invisible as long as you remain standing still. Meanwhile, the second one is vastly powerful in PvP: it removes your opponent’s target from you, forcing them to target you again. This effect can offer you the edge over your opponents – the split-second you gain can be used to interrupt a spell from being cast or a channel effect.
  
  The second interesting racial is the Wisp Spirit, which offers a 75% increase to your movement speed while dead. While this ability is entirely useless in arenas or battlegrounds, it is quite useful in open-world situations. Hey, at least you can respawn faster, right?
  
  Elusiveness is a racial that reduces the chance to be detected if you are in stealth or Shadowmeld. Other beneficial racials are: Quickness, which reduces the chance to be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 2%, and Nature Resistance, which works the same as the Tauren passive.

Best Professions

• Herbalism will generate you a very good source of income, especially when paired with Alchemy. It also offers one, potentially life-saving ability for PvP scenarios – Lifeblood, which offers a heal-over-time effect that can save you in clutch situations.
  
  One of the reasons why Herbalism is such a great choice for Druids is the ability to pick the herbs while maintaining Swift Flight Form. This offers you a great advantage compared to your competitors, because you do not need to dismount.

• Alchemy offers a variety of useful potions and flasks. While you are generally unable to use any potions in arenas, you can still use one specific flask dedicated to alchemists: the Flask of the North. It offers either spell power, attack power, or raw strength and is the only usable flask in an arena.
  
  Alchemy also offers potions like Free Action Potion, which can be used as an improvised trinket in dire situations.

• Engineering has always been the number one profession when it comes to player-versus-player content. Since the early days of WoW, it has provided players with several gadgets that have given them an edge over their opponents, some of those being the Nitro Boots, Saronite Bomb, Mind Amplification Dish, Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket, and the Frag Belt.

• Tailoring comes with the ability to craft your own gear in the first phases, which allows for a very powerful advantage. However, as the time progresses, it becomes more obvious that the true benefit of this profession is its Lightweave Embroidery enchantment.

• Enchanting offers you the ability to enchant your equipment, as well as your ally’s equipment with various magical effects that give you an edge. This profession also allows you to disenchant equipment to break it down into rare magical essences required not only for the practitioners of this craft, but for other professions as well.
  
  Picking up Enchanting gives you access to special enchantments for your rings. For example, casters can benefit from +23 spell power bonus placed on each of their rings.
  
  This profession is best paired with Tailoring due to the Disenchanting ability, allowing you to effectively craft equipment that can be broken down into magical essence.

• Mining will generate you a good source of income, while also generating enough raw materials to level up professions like Engineering or Jewelcrafting. Most people underestimate the profitability of mining, but rest assured that it will go a long way.
  
  Not only will it provide you with a sustainable source of gold, but it will also grant you a special passive that will enhance your PvP potency – Toughness, which will increase your stamina by 60 at max rank.

• Blacksmithing grants you the ability to forge equipment from ingots and other materials. This profession can be quite profitable, since you can craft a lot of bind-on-equip gear pieces and sell them. Aside from the gold that you can gain from this profession, Blacksmithing allows you to utilize two extra sockets for your equipment: one for the gloves and one for the bracers.

• Leatherworking is a profession that allows you to craft gear pieces from leather you have been gathering from animals all around the world. Leatherworkers have the Fur Lining ability, which allows them to place a special enchantment on the bracers. This enchantment has different bonuses – a particularly beneficial one for this build will be Fur Lining – Spell Power, which will increase your spell power by 76.

• Inscription is a profession that allows you to create various glyphs, trinkets, and special parchments which are usable by the Enchanters. This profession gives you access to a special enchantment for your shoulders – Inscription of the Storm, which can offer different effects, including increased spell power and critical strike.

• First Aid comes with the benefit of crafting bandages from various cloth items you can find throughout the world. You will find these useful in a few different situations – they can often prove to be lifesavers.

• Cooking is a profession that allows you to create delightful dishes to satisfy the needs of others. With Cooking you can create powerful food items that can buff you and your allies. However, keep in mind that you cannot use those buffs in arenas.