BALANCE DRUID FUNDAMENTALS COURSE

BALANCE DRUID PLAYSTYLE

Welcome to our Balanced Druid Damage Course for The War Within, which is custom designed to equip you with all of the essential knowledge needed to excel in PvP. Now, in this introductory video, we're going to be teaching you the playstyle of Rank 1 Boomkins.

Now, if you're coming from Dragonflight, the Boomy playstyle in The War Within is going to be very, very familiar, but with several key damage improvements. Now, at its core, Balanced Druid is still a pacesetter, which means having the perfect toolkit to dictate where the game is going to be heading.

Central to this pacesetting toolkit is control, especially with Cyclone, which is arguably the strongest and most dynamic crowd control in the entire game. Want to speed things up or slow things down?

Cyclone gives you both options. On one end, it can be used offensively.

On enemy side... ...and healers in order to create powerful kill windows with burst TPS. And as we're going to discuss later, this is a key part of the Balanced Druid win condition in Arena.

On the other end, Cyclone can be used defensively to peel and protect your team while under pressure, slowing down the game until recovery is possible.

The best Druids are going to bounce back in between these two extremes, and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. ...and with more and more game knowledge, you're going to be able to push Cyclone to limits. is only ever half of the win condition for PvP, and it's nothing without strong, punchy damage.

There's a reason why the nickname Boomkin exists, because our burst is some of the best in the game. But before we get into that, the Balanced Druid damage profile has two vital and distinct parts that we have to discuss.

One part is consistent DOT damage, as we're going to discuss later, keeping up Moonfire and Sunfire is crucial for our overall output.

Not only because they represent a lot of damage alone, but also because our DOTs act as a massive damage multiplier thanks to our mastery, which increases the power of our spells to targets that we've DOTed.

And while our DOTs give us a source of consistent damage, we can complement that with massive waves of burst coming from our primary resources.

Spender Star Surge With the ability to pull an entire bar of Astral Power, it's possible to send multiple Star Surges back to back, which can deal an absurd amount of damage during cooldown windows, and even as a small microbursting tool when Incarnation is on CD.

So, in order to master Balanced Druid, not only do you need to understand the importance of control, but you also need to perform routine DOT maintenance, as you pull enough resources to enter periodic burst windows. Now, when all of this is combined and repeated over and over, you will have a recipe for a win.

This cements Balance as a true hybrid damage dealer, having a semblance of DOT pressure like an Affliction Warlock, combined with the punchiness of a Destro Warlock. The perfect combination for someone wanting the best of both worlds.

Balanced Druid is truly a jack-of-all-trades, with damage and CC only scratching the surface of what's possible with the spec.

With hybrid utility, micro-CC, clutch defensive play, and lots of mobility options, Boomkin has an incredibly high skill ceiling, despite being relatively easy to pick up, and we will be teaching you everything you need to know, step by step.

So, in the next video, you're going to learn your main goals in Arena, with a focus on maximizing damage output.

BALANCE DRUID GOALS

In this video, we are going to be giving you some goals you can safely follow in every arena game with an emphasis on maximizing damage and creating powerful kill windows. First up, your number one goal no matter what is to keep Moonfire and Sunfire constantly applied to your main kill target.

Not only will these two abilities be strong sources of consistent damage, but they'll also dramatically increase the damage of your Star Surge since it's on the Astral Spell School which means your mastery damage multiplier is going to double dip from Moonfire and Sunfire both being on the target.

Finally, keeping your dots up before you enter your burst window is even more important in the War Within as now Star Surge will even increase their damage by 20% when used. And speaking of burst windows, our second goal is to get into Eclipse as quickly and as quickly as possible.

Along with our mastery, Eclipse provides a huge damage multiplier on Star Surge as once again it counts as both a nature and arcane spell so making sure you maximize Eclipse uptime is going to be crucial for your overall throughput. So how do we make sure this happens?

Well in an ideal world, you would be able to enter Eclipse just by hard casting either two Wraths or Starfires in a row. But obviously that is not going to happen.

You will have to cast your own Wraith or Starfire cast to get the full advantage of the Eclipse. And that is impossible in Arena with interrupts and micro CC.

But between Warrior of Elune and Alchon Frenzy procs, you're going to have multiple opportunities to cast instant Starfires to put you quickly into an Eclipse state and you're going to want to aim for 90% uptime on Eclipse across an entire game.

And now in the War Within, an old Dragonflight tier set bonus is now part of the baseline tree. This is going to make your next two Wrath or Starfire casts to be 40% faster on Eclipse.

And that's going to be a lot of fun. And now in the War Within, an old Dragonflight tier set bonus is now part of the baseline tree.

Causing your next two Wrath or Starfire casts to be 40% faster on Eclipse. So the TLDR is that getting into Eclipse is easier than it has ever been before.

Now regardless of whether you're in Eclipse or not, we have another very important damage goal here to avoid overcapping on Astral Power.

If you're nearing a full bar, you should always throw out one Star Surge even outside of Eclipse. since in the long run, you're going to be losing out on future potential star surges as well. You'll do nothing by camping at 100% astral power for an extended period of time.

Now, with that said, while we want to avoid overcapping our astral power, we will also want to focus on pooling it before we burst to make sure we enter Incarn or Eclipse with the ability to star surge multiple times. And speaking of which, we have our fourth major goal here.

Get the strongest burst windows possible. This involves two parts.

The first is to make sure we have enough astral power ready to cast at least three star surges in a row before we enter Incarnation.

And whenever possible, we're going to want to line up Force of Nature or Fury of Elune with every Eclipse or Incarn, since not only will these abilities add more burst damage, but will also feed us enough astral power to star surge even more during our burst windows.

Of course, damage is only half of a strong burst window, and we'll also want to make sure our damage is combined with CC whenever possible. Landing a Cyclone or simply securing a root beam on the enemy healer right before we burst will have a huge multiplying effect on the strength of our setups.

Incarnation is one of the best cooldowns in Solo Shuffle because of its raw damage output and its ability to burst. It's long duration.

Even in the early game, before dampening is stacked, it's very challenging for healers to deal with. And in the late game, when dampening is stacked high, it is even more deadly.

No matter what though, it is always twice as impactful when combined with CC. Since one of our overarching goals is to reach critical dampening for that killer Incarnation, we need a way to accomplish this task.

That brings us to our fifth main goal in Arena, to be disruptive with, our CC. And as we mentioned earlier in this course, Cyclone is arguably the strongest CC in the entire game, since it allows us to dictate the pace of the game in both directions.

While we'll definitely want to use it on enemy healers for strong burst setups, we'll also want to routinely use it defensively to slow down the game.

Cycloning an off-target DPS is a highly efficient way to peel for your teammates, and even for ourselves, especially since it can bait out kicks, potentially giving us precognition procs. Now, while Cyclone might be the star of the show, it doesn't mean you should be neglecting your other sources of CC as well.

Mass entangling melee DPS and pets, bashing to peel, or even using Typhoon on CD are all part of a well-balanced CC mindset, which we'll all discuss in great detail in our CC course.

If you can manage to stick to all five of these goals we've outlined here, if you can manage to stick to all five of these goals we've outlined here, you are on your way to playing Balanced Druid just like a pro in Arena.

But be sure to stay tuned because in the next section, we're going to be teaching you how to maximize sustained damage.

BALANCE DRUID DAMAGE PRIORITY

Welcome back to the Balanced Druid Damage Course. Now that you have a broader understanding of both the playstyle and the goals in Arena, the next step is learning how to deal maximum sustained DPS.

But before we continue, we have a massive disclaimer here. This isn't going to be a rotation, but rather a priority list for you to follow.

Now while Star Surge might be the button you might want to press, we need to do some prep work first and prioritize maintenance above anything else. Due to this, your number one priority is pretty straightforward, keep up dots at all times.

This ensures that we're always benefiting from our Mastery Damage Multiplier, giving us more downstream DPS and stronger burst windows. In Arena, you should always aim to keep Moonfire and Sunfire on the kill target and then passively keep a few off targets dotted.

Moonfire will automatically cleave one additional nearby target, and Sunfire will hit every target within 8 yards, which you guessed it is something that we can exploit.

While we want to avoid manually dotting each and every individual pet and minion, we can simply wait until a bunch of enemies and their pets are stacked and then press Sunfire to get a dot rolling on multiple targets at once, which can help us generate more passive astral power with shooting stars procs.

Our second form of maintenance comes from Maxxon's DPS, which is a very useful option for our team. It's a very useful option for our team to use to maximize our Eclipse uptime.

Getting into Eclipse is easier than it has ever been with two instant cast options and the reworked Nature's Grace, which dramatically reduces the cast time on Wrath or Starfire. We're going to cover all these methods to reach Eclipse later on in the course.

That brings us to our fourth priority, which is to use Star Surge, which we'll ideally be pressing during Eclipse, aiming to use it multiple times. One of our damage goals here is to avoid overcapping on astral power.

This means we'll sometimes need to Star Surge outside of Eclipse to avoid losing out on future damage. Next up on our priority is making sure we're using Alchon Frenzy procs, which we can consume either on Starfire to help us get into Eclipse or on Cyclone so that we can maintain or stall momentum if needed.

Finally, last on our priority is using Wrath or Starfire. While this might seem incredibly backwards, we really don't want to be hard casting these spells often unless we enter an Eclipse with Nature's Grace or to consume our Dream Burst stacks when playing Keeper of the Grove.

Now as you probably know by now, hard casting is extremely limited in Arena. And when this is coupled with the fact that both Moonfire and Sunfire generate astral power, taking the time to hard cast a Wrath or a Starfire just for damage alone is pretty low on our damage priority.

These are, by definition, more of a filler spell than anything else. And that right there sums up our sustained priority.

But before moving on to the next video though, we highly recommend you practice this priority and familiarize yourself with it. This is going to be the core of your gameplay and the more you can make this priority second nature, the easier everything else is going to become.

Once you're ready, up next we're going to be delving into Hero Talents, discussing what's new, how it interacts with our rotation. We'll see you in just a second.

BALANCE HERO TALENTS: KEEPER OF THE GROVE

In this video we're going to be teaching you everything you need to know about the Keeper of the Grove hero spec for Balanced Druids in The War Within. Now the key perk of Keeper of the Grove is Dream Surge, which grants you a stacking buff after using Force of Nature.

This buff will cause your next Wrath or Starfire to explode on the target in a huge burst of AoE nature damage called Dream Surge, with the combined damage hitting harder than Star Surge. The main downside of this build is that it means you can't play Warrior of Elune.

As a result, in order to enter Eclipse and in order to proc Dream Surge while being attacked, you're going to have to use Alken Frenzy procs on Starfire rather than Cyclone. But this is a trade-off worth making since the damage of Dream Burst is honestly ridiculously high.

On top of giving you a chance to get the most out of the Dream Burst, you can also get a chance to get a chance to get the most out of the Dream Burst.

Summoning your Trance also grants a huge damage multiplier which you can layer on top of Eclipse or Incarnation for big damage, and every time you enter Eclipse, you'll even get a haste buff. And for those of you who like comps with calculated setups, then Keeper of the Grove might be perfect for you.

It makes the most sense when playing with a high-control melee like a Sub Rogue where you're able to benefit from short, small windows to free cast your damage.

And when it comes to your burst windows outside of Incarn, one thing that we should definitely note about Dream Surge is that it deals nature damage, which means that if we want to microburst with our Trance, then we should do so while in Solar Eclipse.

Keeper of the Grove also offers a unique defensive perk in the form of 8% damage reduction whenever regrowth is active on ourselves. This isn't something we're going to be able to reliably manage in Arena while under pressure, but fortunately, it's a very good option for us to use in our team.

So, if you're interested in keeping a Keeper of the Grove, then keep an eye out for it. Keeper of the Grove also grants instant regrowths for every 5 casts of Star Surge, which we highly recommend tracking with a weak aura in order to see the Blooming Infusion buff.

Although it lacks the consistency of Elune's Chosen, the Keeper of the Grove tree simply offers the biggest burst.

BALANCE DRUID BURST: INCARNATION

Alright, in this video we're going to be going over our Incarnation Burst. So to start this burst, we should make sure that we've already pooled some Astral Power so that we can freely Star Surge when we enter our Incarnation.

We're also going to have to make sure that we have Sunfire and Moonfire to kill our target, as this allows us to benefit from our Mastery and keep Regening Astral Power. Following this, we're going to use our Trent to buff our Spell Power and give us Dream Surge procs.

Next up, we'll then use Fury of Elune to give us even more Astral Power while we do our rotation. After this, we'll then pop our Incarnation and send out as many Star Surges as our Astral Power allows.

We want to do this so that they can all benefit from our Balance of All Things talent with their additional Crit chance. Once we run out of Astral Power, we can then consume our Dream Burst procs with either Wrath or two Instant Starfires if available.

And then we finish with Inferno. And then we finish with Inferno.

And then we finish with Inferno. And then we finish with even more Star Surges that we generated from our past two casts.

BALANCE DRUID BURST: NON INCARNATION

In situations where Incarn is not available, we can still do quite a bit of damage with our Trents. Again, we're going to start by making sure Moonfire and Sunfire are on the target.

Then we're going to get into Solar Eclipse with two Starfires. We'll then pop Force of Nature and use Fury of Elune.

Following this, we'll Star Surge as many times as possible to stack Harmony of the Heavens.

And once again, our goal is to consume our Dream Surge stacks as quickly as possible, as their damage with Wrath or Starfire will be higher than Star Surge, so if you have Alch in Frenzy Prox, use them, otherwise we'll cast Wrath. And proceed to Star Surge as many times as we can for the remainder of our burst window.

BALANCE DRUID OPENER

In this next part of the Balanced Druid Damage course, we're going to now go over your opener to help you build the best foundation for your matches as possible. And to do this, we're going to be following Gelu as he demonstrates each and every goal for the perfect Boomkin opener.

So as we start the match, your first priority is to get your dots rolling on as many players as possible. This is because our dots will allow us to get astral power for when we enter our burst window, while also allowing our mastery to take effect when we pull the trigger on our cooldowns.

After this has been achieved, you then want to move into an aggressive position to allow yourself to land cyclones on the healer without them being able to line of sight. Boomkins are all about tempo, so doing this early on is crucial.

After pushing in, it's then time to actually land the crowd control itself. In this instance...

Gelu does this with a quick root beam, as although he knows it will likely be dispelled by the hunter, it allows his partner to land in-cap without it being depped, which then results in him landing a cyclone off.

Once the CC chain lands, it's time to generate opening pressure by using Incarnation and sending out as much damage as we can with Star Surges. While also taking care that we re-cyclone after the first one ends to guarantee even more pressure from our burst.

Two cyclones. The first one is always better than one.

At this point of the match, Gelu has forced all he wants, and then does something that you should look to do too. He attempts to cyclone the Warlock low on their wall.

And even though this does get counterspelled, this means that he's forced to kick before the next go, resulting in his next setup being uncounterable. With cooldowns forced and diminishing returns still unavailable, Gelu then looks to reduce the amount of damage he's taking by getting to the closest pillar.

He then uses his And then once he's recovered his HP, he wild charges in and assists his partner on their next setup by first cycloning the hunter to deny kick. And then re-cycloning the Priest to deny him supporting his Warlock, at which point he can move into his win condition.

This opener checked all the goals that you should look for as a boomkin in the arena. As we maintained our dots, landed crowd control, bursted with that crowd control, and then reset to safety before going back in to strike.

Wanna see how to turn this opener into a win though? Then join us in our next video.

We'll see you there.

BALANCE DRUID WIN CONDITION

Okay, let's get into the win condition, where we're going to bring everything that we've learned together to win us games. Let's get into it.

Now, in this game, you can see that Gelu begins in stealth with his dash. This is because since he's playing with an aggressive melee, he wants to be able to get into the fight without the potential of being stopped by the enemy hunter's scatter.

Once he makes his way over to the Warlock, he immediately goes to apply his Sunfire, and then continues the CC chain on the healer with his Cyclone before the endcap runs out. It's important to notice that he's shifted his Pryo away from double-dotting at this point to be more aggressive with his CC to help his partner.

After the clone lands, Gelu then applies his Moonfire, but since the healer trinkets his Crowd Control and cocoons the Warlock, he doesn't pop his cooldowns. This circles all the way back to the opener, where you only really need to be able to get into the fight without the CC chain on the healer.

If you really want to use Incarnation early with CC on the healer, using Incarnation would be a waste as they won't be able to force anything else.

After this exchange, Gelu then tries to begin the win condition by forcing out kicks with Cyclones so he has a free range of the arena when the diminishing return falls off the Monk, and then continues to ramp his Astral Power when locked to make the go as deadly as possible.

After this, he then dumps a few Star Surges to avoid overcapping so the Warlock is low-hanging. This is a good way to get the Monk to be able to use his CC to help his partner.

While doing this, you may notice that Gelu also uses Bark Skin at high health here. This is because he wants to stay in the fight and play aggressive, so the skin acts as insurance so he doesn't need to back off and leave his Monk stranded.

Following this, Gelu reapplies his Dots to the primary targets of the Warlock's pet and the Warlock themselves, and then runs after the Mistweaver to try and bash them, denying the ability to be light-assided on his Cyclone. And although the Monk does run away, Gelu still has to fight back.

And although the Monk does run away, Gelu still has to fight back. In order to revival this, all Gelu has to do is move his character slightly so the Monk can't roll away and reclone to get the guaranteed CC out of his stun.

In order to revival this, all Gelu has to do is move his character slightly so the Monk can't roll away and reclone to get the guaranteed CC out of his stun. When possible, you should always try and imitate this, as Cycloning off an Initiation Crowd Control is far easier than cloning off nothing.

With the CC secured, now all that's left to do is simply Wild Charge back into the Warlock's line, apply Moonfire with Trentz, and demolish the Warlock with Incarnation. Smooth.

As you can see, this win condition is honestly exactly the same as the opener, with the only major difference being that you can and should be baiting cooldowns and kicks before you pull the trigger to make it easier to land your crowd controls. opener with the only major difference being that you can and should be baiting cooldowns and kicks before you pull the trigger to make it easier to land your crowd controls.

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