The Balance Compendium is meant to be a comprehensive guide that puts effort into providing in-depth information. While this information is very valuable for people trying to master the class, it is also true that reading through many conditionals can be intimidating for new players (and sometimes not worth it - considering that they often provide minimal DPS gains).

Below you can find a general overview of the Balance Druid playstyle aimed at providing you with a baseline understanding of the spec. Once the fundamental mechanics are understood, we encourage you to improve your rotation by following the detailed priority lists.

Fundamentals

• Always keep Moonfire and Sunfire on your targets. Refresh both of them when they're about to expire or before using your main cooldown (CA / Incarnation).
• The rotational loop consists of building Astral Power and spending it with either Starsurge or Starfall.
• You spend your Astral Power with Starsurge in Single Target or Starfall in AoE. (The rules around Starfall can change depending on talent builds, see priority list for details)
• You build Astral Power with Wrath in Single Target or Starfire in AoE. (Use Starfire in both situations if you're playing Elune's Chosen and have Lunar Calling talented)
• Remember to never overcap Astral Power! (But don't spend too much to the point where you don't have casts available for movement).
• Eclipse is your most important cooldown and effect, and a large part of your damage. Generally you want to make sure you spend your time in Eclipse casting high value spells, like Starsurge or Starfall, and not spells like Sunfire or Moonfire.
• Using Celestial Alignment/Incarnation: Chosen of Elune grants you both Solar Eclipse and Lunar Eclipse, and will cancel and reset any duration left on either buff.
• Or you can enter it by pressing Solar Eclipse or Lunar Eclipse. (The Eclipse spell will change to the specific version based on the builder you use, but this happens automatically so you shouldn't worry about it too much)

Cooldowns

Important: A big portion of your DPS comes from properly aligning your cooldowns. How to do it is not immediately obvious, and the timings become more confusing if Control of the Dream is talented. Here are some rules you can follow:

• Convoke the Spirits is a major cooldown that you can talent into. It's a channel that will generate AP and cast a flurry of damaging spells over its duration. You want to use this during your main damage cooldowns, like CA / Incarnation.
• Fury of Elune is a minor cooldown that you can talent into. It does some damage, but it's biggest value is as an AP generator. You should ideally be using this before your main cooldowns to help you cast as many spenders as possible.
• When you play Keeper of the Grove, Force of Nature becomes a major cooldown due to Harmony of the Grove. Pressing it will increase your damage by 12%/16% (depending on hero talents) for 10s. It is important to note that Force of Nature does not inherently do any damage on its own, which means that you should be using it before using other cooldowns like CA / Incarnation or Eclipse.
• You should always pair your cooldowns together to maximize their damage, if for some reason you can't, then you should delay them until they line up.
• You want to use Eclipse as soon as it's available, or hold it for a Force of Nature cast that would be cast without CA / Incarnation. If you can't do either of those, then you should delay it until you can.

TLDR

• The 12.1 changes add up to around a ~10-12% damage increase in total. An accurate number is not known, as there were no sims available before the very end of the tuning cycle.

• We lost the 12.0 4p TierSet which made Starweaver really good. Starweaver is however still worth playing on fights between 2 to 5 targets, or boss fights where you want to be doing both Single Target damage to the boss and AoE damage to adds.

• Orbit Breaker is now trackable in the CDM.

• Touch the Cosmos got nerfed, but is still a good talent.

• Sculpt the Stars and Astral Communion swapped locations in the talent tree.

• Stellar Amplification can only be applied to 1 target.

• Elune's Chosen hero talent Star Cascade got nerfed. You can now fully ignore Wrath while playing Elune's Chosen.

• Keeper of the Grove hero talent Bounteous Bloom no longer adds 1 tree, but rather adds 4 seconds to the Force of Nature effect.

  All Changes:

• All damage dealt increased by 8%

• Moonfire damage increased by 5%.

• Sunfire damage increased by 5%.

• Wrath damage increased by 10%.

• Starfire damage increased by 20%.

• Starsurge damage increased by 7%.

• Starfall damage increased by 4%.

• Shooting Stars damage increased by 10%.

• Meteorites damage increased by 15%.

• Rejuvenation healing increased by 25%.

• Wild Growth healing increased by 25%.

• Regrowth healing increased by 25%.

• Umbral Intensity has been updated – Now increases Wrath and Starfire damage by 12% at all times.

• Apex Talent: Ascendant Eclipses (Rank 2) – Astral Smolder damage reduced to 10%/20% of critical strike damage (was 12%/24%) and its duration is increased to 8 seconds (was 6 seconds).

• Apex Talent: Ascendant Eclipses – Solar Bolt increased by 27% and Lunar Bolt damage increased by 10%.

• Celestial Fire increases the damage of Moonfire, Sunfire, and Shooting Stars by 10% (was 8%).

• Orbit Breaker effectiveness reduced to 50% (was 60%).

• Touch the Cosmos chance to trigger from Wrath reduced to 12% (was 15%), and chance to trigger from Starfire reduced to 15% (was 20%).

• Total Eclipse chance to trigger increased to 15%/30% (was 10%/20%).

• Sculpt the Stars and Astral Communion have swapped positions in the talent tree.

• Sculpt the Stars reduces Eclipse cooldown by 3 seconds (was 2 seconds).

• Stellar Amplification can only applied to 1 target.

• Orbit Breaker aura can be tracked in the Cooldown Manager.

• Fixed an issue causing some Cooldown Manager elements such as damage-over-time timers and buff trackers to sometimes not show accurate information.

Elune's Chosen

• Star Cascade no longer triggers off of gaining Astral Power with Wrath.
• Star Cascade has a 30% chance to launch a Starsurge at 50% effectiveness (was 40% at 70% effectiveness).
• Bask in Moonlight increases the damage of Starsurge by 5% (was 10%).

Keeper of the Grove

• Bounteous Bloom now extends the duration of Force of Nature treamts by 4 seconds instead of adding a fourth Treant.
• Cenarius' Might haste increase reduced to 6% (was 8%).
• Potent Enchantments haste increase reduced to 6% (was 10%).
• Sylvan Beckoning Dryad's Starfall damage increased to 250% effectiveness (was 200%).
• Spirit of the Thicket increases Starfall damage by 18% (was 12%).
• Dream Surge damage increased by 30%.
• Power of Nature increases your treant melee damage by 300% (was 200%).

The cooldown timers for Elune's Chosen are much simpler than for Keeper of the Grove, and generally line up better with 2 minute trinkets.

2:00 Trinket

Celestial Alignment×2

Fury of Elune

Eclipse×2

Open in planner →

The cooldown timings for Keeper of the Grove may seem to have gaps in them, but because of Control of the Dream it does not end up losing any uses over the encounter. Keep in mind that after 2 minutes, when your Celestial Alignment is on cooldown, you have to start holding onto Eclipse casts in order to line up with Force of Nature.

2:00 Trinket

Celestial Alignment×2

Force of Nature

Convoke the Spirits

Eclipse×2

Open in planner →

Here is an example using a trinket with a 90s cooldown, which usually lines up better with Keeper of the Grove than a 2 minute.

90s Trinket

Celestial Alignment×2

Force of Nature

Convoke the Spirits

Eclipse×2

Open in planner →

By far the biggest change going into the Midnight expansion has been the complete rework of Eclipse, turning it from a maintenance buff into a 32 second cooldown with 2 charges. A very common mistake that players make is getting stuck on old and antiquated ways of thinking about Eclipse, and not fully utilizing the effect of the cooldown.

Eclipse has 2 charges, and does not benefit from any CDR effect, meaning that any moment spent sitting at 2 charges is wasted damage. The most important thing to note about Eclipse is that it is a damage cooldown, meaning that you want to line it up with moments where you have access to high value spells. This usually ends up in moments where you have to pool Astral Power and delay using your cooldowns for a few seconds, which can feel unintuitive at first, but will result in higher damage overall.

The distinction between what is a good spell and what is a bad spell to cast during cooldowns can sound confusing, but is not that complicated. Generally speaking, bad spells to use during cooldowns include spells that don't inherently do much damage on their own, but aim to either buff or enhance your damage in other ways. This includes spells like Sunfire, Moonfire, Force of Nature and Fury of Elune. It is optimal to press these buttons before starting your cooldowns. As for Sunfire and Moonfire it will depend on their remaining duration, but generally you want to refresh before starting a cooldown sequence. Getting into the habit of reapplying your DoTs during your Eclipse downtime ensures that you won't need to spend any globals doing it during your damage window, while also providing some quick Astral Power generation to help in pooling for a new cooldown window.

A good spell to use during your cooldown window is a spell that has a high base damage and therefore benefits more from the damage increase provided by Eclipse. This includes spells like Starsurge, Starfall,Convoke the Spirits and any Wrath / Starfire cast that consumes the instant cast from your Ascendant Fires apex talent or generates Astral Power to further increase your spender casts.

Lastly, it is important to note that CA / Incarnation grants you both Solar Eclipse and Lunar Eclipse, and will cancel and reset any duration left on either buff. This means that if you use it while having an active Eclipse, you will reset the duration of that Eclipse while gaining the other one. You then generally want to avoid using CA / Incarnation while having an active Eclipse, unless there is a specific reason to do so. It's worth to keep in mind that Celestial Alignment lasts 15 seconds while Incarnation lasts 20 seconds, and that you are unable to press any Eclipse during this window; so you should enter an Eclipse before using CA / Incarnation if the cooldown would cap at 2 charges during the duration of your CA / Incarnation.

The choice between Elune's Chosen and Keeper of the Grove mostly comes down to personal preference. With the changes coming from last expansion, the spec has access to more instant casts, making the movement tax from playing Elune's Chosen less punishing. The highest simming builds for Elune's Chosen also pick up Rattle the Stars, making the potential value in big AoE pulls in m+ higher compared to Starweaver builds.

The damage profiles of both hero trees are very similar now. In the previous expansion Elune's Chosen would provide a flat and static damage graph, while Keeper of the Grove played around powerful burst. With the nerf to Harmony of the Grove and the change to Bounteous Bloom, this is no longer the case, and both hero trees provide close to the same damage profile. That being said, Keeper of the Grove has been the preferred choice for raid encounters and Elune's Chosen for mythic+. There are multiple bosses that are 2-target cleave, which could increase Elune's Chosen value.

Keeper of the Grove compliments Convoke pretty well when you use it with the dmg increase from Harmony of the Grove and Celestial Alignment. Convoke is also good for priority damage and boss fights in M+. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune is good for AoE scenarios, or in situations where Convoke would use spells on targets you don't want to hit. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune also pairs well with Whirling Stars in M+, giving you very consistent cooldowns on most packs, and allows for more flexibility in when your damage spikes, as opposed to Convoke. If you're playing Convoke in M+, you should use it in AoE with the conditions outlined in the "Rotation" section.

Control of the Dream lets you hold on to either Celestial Alignment / Incarnation, Convoke or Force of Nature for up to 15 seconds without losing a use, subtracting the amount of time you held the ability from its cooldown.

Depending on the fight timer, this talent is stronger than Power of the Dream which it shares a choice node with. As always, you should research the fight you are preparing for on warcraftlogs or sim your character to make an educated guess.