- Author: Nevermore
- Date: July 7, 2024
- Updated: July 20, 2024
- Expansion: WoW Classic
Welcome to our Season of Discovery (SoD) Phase 4 Balance Druid DPS Guide. Compared to their previous Classic Era version, Balance Druids rapidly gained popularity in the Season of Discovery as one of the more exciting caster specializations, being able to provide a solid damage output, a lot of utility, and even off-healing if required.
This guide focuses exclusively on the Balance specialization, exploring key components such as Runes, Talent Trees, Stat Priorities, Rotations & Abilities, BiS (Best in Slot) items, and Race Choices. With the new Rune System introduced in the Season of Discovery, Boomkins are no longer seen as a completely non-viable caster class, instead, they generate a solid damage output while also bringing a lot of utility and filling the off-healer role when required.
Talents
This is the standard Balance Druid Build for Phase 4. The build has no room for variations without the tier-set bonuses from Molten Core.
This is a variation for the Standard Balance Druid Talent Build which focuses on empowering Thorns through the Improved Thorns talent at the cost of losing range from Nature’s Reach and reduced mana cost for Moonfire and Starfire from Moonglow.
Runes
- Helm: Gale Winds
- Cloak: Starfall
- Chest: Fury of Stormrage
- Wrist: Elune’s Fires
- Hands: Sunfire
- Waist: Eclipse
- Legs: Starsurge
- Feet: Dreamstate
- Ring: Arcane Specialization
- Ring: Nature Specialization
Stat Priority
- Hit Chance
- Spell Damage
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intellect
- Spirit
Rotations & Abilities
Single-Target Rotation
- Maintain Moonkin Form
- Cast Faerie Fire (Upkeep it)
- Cast Starfall (Burst Phase)
- Cast Insect Swarm (Manually Refresh it)
- Cast Moonfire (Maintain duration by casting Starfire)
- Cast Sunfire (Maintain duration by casting Wrath)
- Cast Starfire (On full Eclipse stacks)
- Cast Wrath (Main Filler)
- Cast Starsurge (On cooldown)
AoE Rotation
- Maintain Moonkin Form
- Cast Starfall (Whenever it’s available)
- Cast Hurricane (Recast after its last damage tick ends)
Best Races
Druids have very limited race options in WoW Classic Era, with Alliance only having the Night Elf race as a viable option for the Druid Class while the Horde has the Tauren race as a viable option.
Night Elf
Tauren
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About the Author
I think the importance of talents like Vengeance are vastly overstated and/or misunderstood. They read so much better than they are.
20% increased critical strike damage bonus. This is multiplicative, not additive.
The base critical strike damage bonus for spells is 50%, meaning a crit deals 150% damage of a normal spell.
20% (multiplicative) bonus of this 50% number is thus 10% in additive bonus.
Your critical strikes thus deal 160% of normal spell damage. This is an increase of 160/150 = 6.66(…)% compared to not having the talent. But only on critical strikes.
I don’t remember what the crit% of spells are at level 25 with level 25 gear is, but we assume a generous(?) 15% spell critical strike chance, each point in Vengeance adds 1% to overall DPS (.15*.0666…).
I am not impressed.
Still, not like there are lots of better options – but it’s a lot of point investments to get to that (assumed) 1% increase. 🙂
One point in Vengeance isn’t going to make or break the build for sure, but as you said, there really aren’t that many other options anyway.
Additionally, the previous Crit chance isn’t super important, as Blackfathom Deeps will add new gear, and that could very well be Crit chance gear.
If that investment could get us anything else valuable, we would absolutely take it.
for anyone planning on farming the plans for spell power gogs, keep in mind that the lowest level mob that is confirmed to drop them is lvl 34 in SM.
While that is accurate, the goggles themselves are Bind on Equip, meaning they can be sold similarly to other Classic Era crafts like Nightfall.
I’m sure there will be groups forming to try and farm the plans since they will be BiS. just dont want to get the average player hyped to get them as it will be difficult or expensive. Appreciate all the guides! <3