Balance Druid Midnight Talents Guide

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The revamp to the Class Tree in Patch 11.1.0 has streamlined the tree and has provided a lot of ability to pick up talents that increase your throughput, either defensively or offensively, without having to feel like you’re putting points in talents that do very little for you.

There are a few talents that are actual DPS increases in the tree and they are: Nurturing Instinct, Lycara's Teachings, Starlight Conduit, Circle Of The Heavens, as well as Lore Of The Grove. These talents are must haves and should always be picked.

Defensive talents that you want to pick up are Thick Hide, Well-Honed Instincts, Aessina's Renewal, Oakskin, Improved Barkskin and Natural Recovery. All those are must haves in my opinion, giving you some much needed defensive value. Furthermore, selecting Frenzied Regeneration gives you an option to heal yourself if you ever need to shift into Bear Form.

For the utility side of things there are quite a few things to be considered. We benefit from being a hybrid class in this regard, so a lot of our class tree is filled with solid utility options. Cyclone, Typhoon, Improved Stampeding Roar, Hibernate and Remove Corruption are examples of this. Here are examples of what builds I use for both Mythic+ and raid.

For Mythic+

This build enables you to obtain all of your important CC, such as Typhoon and Incapacitating Roar without sacrificing too much defensively.

If you do not need Remove Corruption, you may instead put the point into Killer Instinct for a small physical damage reduction, but it’s not needed. It is also important to take Light Of The Sun in Mythic+ as the cooldown reduction on Solar Beam can be very valuable.

Healers do not often require Innervate, so you can consider removing the point and putting it into either Improved Stampeding Roar or Heart Of The Wild.

Coordinate with your group to figure out what you can go without to ensure the dungeon goes as smoothly as possible. Sometimes you may even want to drop Typhoon if you don’t feel it’s needed for the content you are doing.

For Raiding

For Raid content, here is the build I usually end up playing.

The purpose of this build is to provide as much utility as possible through picking up Improved Stampeding Roar and Innervate while still maintaining strong personal talents, such as Feline’s Swiftness and defensive talents.

The biggest change from the mythic+ tree is the addition of Astral Influence over Light Of The Sun, as the 5 yards extra range can be more useful in raid than the cooldown reduction on Solar Beam.

The spec tree received some surface-level changes with the Midnight Pre-Patch, but the overall thought process in choosing talents stayed the same.

Most of Balance Druid’s power comes from baseline tuning, so most of the talents aren’t particularly powerful themselves, with the majority of spec tree talents being 1-2% upgrades.

The talent decisions that matter is whether you play Fury Of Elune or New Moon in Elune’s Chosen, with Fury Of Elune usually always coming out on top due to how the Atmospheric Exposure talent from the Elune’s Chosen tree works.

Another decision to make is whether to play Convoke The Spirits or Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune, with Convoke The Spirits coming out ahead on single target and raid scenarios and Incarnation: Chosen Of Elune generally being used for either mythic+ or council fights.

Then you have the decision between Starweaver and Rattle The Stars - this has historically been a very one-sided choice node, but with the buffs to Shooting Stars interacting with the Hail Of Stars talent, and the overall nerfs to Astral Power generation, the feedback loop of “cast a free spender to increase your Shooting Stars procs” suddenly seems like a very real talent choice, even on single target.

The two Hero Talents that are offered to Balance Druid include Keeper of the Grove and Elune’s Chosen.

Keeper of the Grove

Keeper of the Grove focuses primarily on enhancing your Force Of Nature.

By itself, Force Of Nature is fairly underwhelming due to the clunkiness of Pet AI as well as the overall low tuning of the damage the Treants provide. However, the hero tree augments the power of these treants by having them grant you buffs whenever they’re active, like Dream Burst and Harmony Of The Grove.

Harmony Of The Grove provides a significant buff to your abilities while the treants are active. Aside from that, some of the other strong talents include Grove's Inspiration, which increases the damage your Wrath and Starfire do, and Cenarius' Might, which provides haste when you enter an Eclipse, much like the old version of Nature's Grace.

With Midnight pre-patch you also gain talents like Sylvan Beckoning that spawns a Dryad who does a little damage and the talent Dryad's Dance which increases the Astral Power generation of all your active spells, and not passive effects like Nature's Balance or Shooting Stars.

Elune’s Chosen

The other Hero Talent selection, Elune’s Chosen, enhances the core of the specialization by providing significant generation of Astral Power and shifting power over to Starfire.

Elune’s Chosen revolves around casting Starfire to lower the cooldown of Fury Of Elune through the Lunation talent.

The hero tree is very restrictive in its design due to the inherent opportunity cost of casting New Moon, Half Moon, and Full Moon versus Fury Of Elune mixed with the interaction of the Atmospheric Exposure effect resetting for every tick of Fury Of Elune.