BALANCE DRUID ADVANCED TIPS

INCARNATION

In this video, we are going to be covering all there is to know about our most powerful cooldown, which is Incarnation, Chosen of Elune. Coming in with a 1 minute, 30 second cooldown with 2 charges, thanks to the extremely powerful new talent of Whirling Stars, Incarnation usage can make or break a Boomkin's gameplay.

Get it right, you're going to be doing some of the highest DPS in the whole freaking game. Get it wrong, you ain't going to be doing any pressure at all.

Well, Incarnation allows us to benefit from both Eclipse states simultaneously, doubling our mastery and significantly increasing the output of Star Surge, an Astral spell that scales with both Nature and Arcane damage.

And when you combine this with the Haste, the Crit, and Star Surge cost reduction from Elune's Guidance and Incarnation itself, well, it's easy to see why this cooldown is so freaking overpowered. Now, if you're wondering when we use our first Incarnation, there's a few checks that we have to make.

First, these are that we have Sunfire and Moonfire on our kill target, as this is going to allow us to generate constant Astral power throughout our go, and make sure that our mastery is being used. You're also going to want to summon your Trents for their spell power and Dream Surge procs.

And if you're really on the ball, you can also use these and replace up the Moonfire step, as they'll apply it to the nearest target that they're summoned on. Then we're going to use our Fury of Elune to keep generating Astral, so we don't lose any of our Astral power.

And of course, we're going to press Incarnation and then immediately dump Star Surges, as due to our talent balance of all things, we'll have a ton of critical strike chance at the beginning of our Incarnation, so we don't want to waste this time on our Globals.

After this, it's a good idea to get your Root Beam and Cyclone out too, if they're freely available for a massive setup. Although do take note that it's honestly not always necessary to crowd control the Healer on the first Incarnation, as the enemy team are also going to be popping their offensive cards.

So, if you're going to be able to do that, you can also use the Stun and Stun to get your Stun and Stun to get your Stun back.

Now, as for your second Incarnation, this is where things get a little bit tricky, as although you could wait until your trends are back before pressing again to be fully optimal, you can also just send it out when you land any sort of crowd control on the Healer, as this is going to allow us to get our guaranteed pressure on the go.

Rather than playing scripted, you can force cooldowns on these Curveball CCs, just do make sure you've pulled enough Astral, Astral Power for it to be worth it.

So, as for our third Incarnation, and even fourth if you're lucky enough to get there, you should be able to sync these with your Grove Guardians and Fury of Elune for unhealable damage once again, as dampening is just going to be that high, that any Micro CC is just going to result in a win.

CYCLONE TIPS

Now, it wouldn't be a Boomkin guide without a little bit of Cyclone shenanigans, would it? Let's be honest.

Cyclone, otherwise known as one of the best crowd controls in the whole game, is our 5 second immunity that isn't just undispellable, but also denies incoming damage and healing on the target. Much like Incarnation, if you can't handle Cycloning, then you're really going to have a bad time as a Boomkin.

So let's cover the main ways to use this potent ability. Now, when it comes to Cycloning, there's 4 different ways we can utilize it throughout our games.

The first and most common one is to Cyclone the healer. This will, of course, deny them from assisting their team when paired with our Incarnation, which will allow us to generate some massive pressure.

This is particularly good with high wins, as we don't need to be as close. We can't always Cyclone off nothing, though.

As more competent healers, they're going to look to line aside our cast. So a common practice is to first bash them.

Then we can use our partner CC to attack the healer, and then follow up with Cyclone. Or just simply chain it off our partner CC when it's available.

The next most common Cyclone you should look to achieve throughout your games, though, is to Cyclone the enemy's offensive cooldowns. Which is going to result in them dealing far less damage.

Boomkins in general, they're pretty squishy, so by Cycloning high damage targets, we can survive for longer and swing momentum in our favor. And since we're on the subject of momentum, another way we can maintain it, is by Cycloning enemy defensive cooldowns.

As this not only means that the target's health gets frozen low, but like in this clip here, it can force the enemy to shrink it, or risk not being able to be healed when the Cyclone ends.

Cycloning defensives is particularly effective into preservation of Ochres too, as their Emerald Communion doesn't heal through Cyclone. So by cloning them on this, you're going to negate their biggest healing cooldown.

And finally, the last but most risky way you can utilize Cyclone, is Cycloning targets low. Now this can be a very, very dangerous play, and it isn't always good to do, especially for playing with a class that relies on constant pressure.

However, by Cycloning the target low, you can allow yourself time to crowd control the healer afterwards, so this risky play really isn't without its benefits.

Here, Gelu low clones the Hunter, as it allows the diminishing return to fall off the enemy healer, meaning they can crowd control them after the Cyclone ends on the Hunter. So, that's pretty much it for this video.

If you liked it, please consider subscribing and hitting the bell icon to get notified of future uploads. I'll see you guys in the next one.

DOT MANAGEMENT

While Boomkins are definitely able to pump out incredible single target damage, they're also all about keeping those damage over time effects up to deal consistent damage. So in this video, we're going to be going over why that is and how we can do it effectively.

So as you may well know by now, our main damage over time effects are Moonfire and Sunfire. Both of these will generate astral power when applied and they enable our mastery to work, which increases our star surge damage and absolute dump truck load.

So other than these more obvious facts, having dots up is also going to give us a ton of extra pad damage and astral power through the Shooting Stars talent, as well as our new Sunseeker Mushroom talent, which gives our Sunfires a chance to spawn a wild mushroom, which deals some pretty serious AoE damage while, once again, giving us more astral power.

So because of all these facts, it's imperative that we maintain dots on multiple targets, including pets, throughout our games, as it eliminates the need to hard cap, and allows us to generate power for star surges.

Now other than this maintenance, dotting multiple targets is also important, as it allows us to swap targets easier without having to pre-dot them first.

However, if you're playing a composition that relies on crowd control like Boomkin Rogue, speccing out of improved Sunfire and Twin Moons can absolutely be beneficial to not accidentally break vulnerable crowd control.

Now there's also one effect that we haven't mentioned yet, which currently we don't really play around with when we're playing a game. So if you're playing a game that's really focused on the power of the Moon, you can use the Moonfire effect to get a lot of power from your Moon.

So if you're playing a game that's really focused on the Moon, you can use the Moonfire effect to get a lot of power from your Moon. Now when Orbital Strike is meta, this buffs up far more often as we can get that guaranteed third dot on the target to activate waning when we want it.

However, while Short Incarnation is meta, we're only going to be gaining this proc through our Wild Mushroom procs and our occasional Astral Smolder from Starfire and Wraths. All in all, while this may seem minor, waning Twilight just drills down further the importance of maintaining Moonfire and Sunfire at all times.

HOW TO SURVIVE AS A BALANCE DRUID

If you look at the data, Boomkins actually have some of the highest first blood results in all of shuffle. Meaning not only are you going to be the one to be targeted every single game, but you're also going to be dying far more often than everyone else.

So to counter this, we've designed this video to allow you to survive like the pros do. The first way you're going to be surviving as a Boomkin is of course Cyclone.

Cycloning a lot is far better than being in bear form as it allows you to get counter pressure while being in bear form effectively removes you from the game as your offensive output is flat out zero. The bottom line is, if you can't fake cast as Boomkin, your survival is going to go down the drain here.

You need to learn to fake cast. It's not to say that bear form is useless though, as you should be using it for frenzy regeneration when it is available, shifting into bear for bigger renewals and trying to pre-bear stuns when you're off diminishing return.

But sitting in bear form is a lot better than being in bear form. It's a lot easier to get into bear for too long, which is going to eventually lead to you being absolutely overran.

A great trick you can do to try and pre-bear stuns is this one, where you just go in bear as soon as the enemy reaches you as they're going to often want to stun you as soon as possible.

Bear form can also be excellent when paired with Wild Charge for surviving too, as you can Wild Charge totems or enemies that are further away which allows you to kite melee while keeping up the extra stamina from bear to allow your healer to top you.

Wild Charge isn't just great for bear form though, as you can also use it to survive by shifting into human form and leaping to your healer to get distance and kite melees back which allows you to avoid their kicks.

Or really you can just simply shift it to travel or boomkin form to leap forwards which is going to be excellent when we combine it with our Typhoon, out range the enemy's gap closers while also applying a snare to them.

Now as for our other movement abilities of Dash and Stampeding Roar, these two can absolutely be useful in a pinch and should be used to create distance, but do be wary not to get caught in cat form as you're going to take absurd amounts of damage here.

The best way to use these sprints is to kite around pillars, denying the enemy to reach you at all as you easily dodge their attacks as you can avoid being snared.

So moving onto Renewal, other than using it in bear for higher HP as it scales with our stamina, we can also just use it for tempo and boomkin form if we don't want to go on the defensive.

Just remember that this is a heal, thus is affected by dampening, so it shouldn't be held onto for too long, just send it out when you see fit.

As for our final defensive of Barkskin, we generally want to use this when we get put into stuns at high health as its low damage reduction won't really help us if we use it too low.

And it's also worth noting here that Barkskin also increases healing received, so we should also be using it similarly to Renewal where we press it to stay in the fight, and remain active rather than being forced into bear and being passive.

SOLAR BEAM TRICKS

Want to get more value out of your Solar Beam? Then watch on as we share some tricks you should start implementing into your gameplay today.

Now, as a Boomkin, we have one of the best, or in some cases, the worst, kick in the game. Now, its cooldown is very long, yet if we can manage to get the healer stuck in it for its whole duration of mass entanglement, it's going to last six seconds since it's also a blanket silence.

But you probably already knew all that. What you may not know, however, about this is that you can win games by using your Beam as a simple blanket silence when facing healers that can remove it, as doing this, and then following up with a clone, still limits the enemy healer and it prevents them from escaping.

And since we're talking about escaping Root Beams here, when you face Hunters, have you thought about doing this to stop their freedom? Cloning the pet and Root Beaming the healer initiates the game-winning chain, as the Red Paladin has already freedomed themselves, which forces them to Sanctuary the healer instead.

Although a bubble might have been handy. You can do this into Red Paladins too, by just cloning them first, and then Root Beaming the healer afterwards, removing that annoying Sanctuary or freedom from breaking our CC.

And as a last note on Beaming healers here, remember that Priests will try to fade or death your Root when you run up to them, so we can just simply wait until they use it, and then Root Beam after. Simple, but effective.

Now Beam isn't just awesome to CC with though, as due to its blanket silence effect, we can also stop many different defenses from being pressed in stuns.

Things like a Warlock's Wall, a Death Knight's Icebound Fortitude, or in this case, the Paladin's Blessing of Protection, they're all unable to be pressed in silences. But if you can't get anything fancy going, just don't be afraid to Beam as an interrupt instead, as it is a kick after all.