THE ULTIMATE BALANCE DRUID PVE GUIDE - WOW Season of Discovery

hey guys it's Alto here welcome to my in-depth guide to balance Dr PVE DPS and season of Discovery in this video I'll be going over the runes and where to find them your talent builds that will help you art and raid your stat PRI on gear as well as your preus and bis gear that you'll be looking out for I'll also be going over your rotation any consumables and Buffs you might need as well as the macros and recor that will help you out there any other questions you have or suggestions you might have for a future video you can leave them down Below in the YouTube comments or catch me live at twitch.tv/ autwell I currently the rank one Boomin on logs and I hope to maintain that spot as long as possible and I hope that you guys will follow me along on this journey hope you guys enjoy the guide I'll see you guys in a bit so we'll be starting the guide off with the runin system arguably the most impactful change made by blizzard for season of Discovery what this allows us to do is Socket three brand new abilities or passive into our gear in the chest legs and glove slot these new abilities greatly improve our performance and raid so you want to pick them up as soon as possible so in the chest lot we have the fury of storm rerun this reduces the Mana cast of our wrath by 100% as well as gives us a 12% chance per wrath cast to make the next Healing Touch we cast within 15 seconds instant now at a glance this may not seem like a powerful DPS run considering it affects Healing Touch however it takes us from being one of the most man independent classes in vanilla to being one of the most Mana efficient classes in season of Discovery in the gloves spot we'll be using Sunfire which is a nature spell damage equivalent to Moonfire it's a very powerful dot in both single Target and AOE multi- dotting situations in our leg slots we'll be using the star surge Rune this Rune started out being the most underwhelming Rune in our toolkit however it has recently been buffed to a 6sec cool down and the base damage has been raised massively transforming it from our weakest ability now into our strongest and highest priority ability in our rotation you definitely want to pick this up ASAP it's great while leveling and it's great in the raid up next we have the talent builds for raiding and for leveling I'll only be providing like one talent build for rating and one for leveling because we're only level 25 there's not a lot of variation that we can have with our points we're really locked in on what we can play and raids for leveling it can be slightly different or you can just use the raiding spec it's a bit slow but you will get a feel for the spec as you go it also does a lot more damage but you'll have a lot less mobility in the open world so starting off with the raiding spec we have five out of five improved wrath and this synergizes really well with the fury of storm rage run that we talked about previously um you want to get those free barath cast you want to get them much faster especially if you have mobs hitting you you definitely want to have a faster cast time next you'll have five out of five improved Moonfire this gives you 10% damage on your Moonfire and crit chance of your Moonfire but this also affects Sunfire so you'll see that your Moonfire and your Sunfire will be critting a lot more and the dot will take slightly more as well next we'll go for three out of three thorns and while this may not affect you personally on your DPS meters you will notice that this can do like 20 to 30% of a tank's damage on AOE pulls or any boss with ads it's definitely useful and there's nothing really else that'll improve our damage so I think this is a good pickup next you want to go two out of 200 in Natures reach this definitely helps improve our range of play in a boss fight we can stand further back you know you can just uh really position yourself well for certain boss fights the range is super nice also in PvP it can be really nice to be star surging from like a mile away super good and then finally we have one point in Vengeance and while you wish you could get more points right number really kept on our crit chance so it doesn't really affect our damage too much yet but I feel like next phase when this goes up up to five out of five we get huge crits we'll have more crit chance and I definitely think Boomin will scale better in that regard so definitely want to pick up the one point in Vengeance other than that though we can do an alternative leveling spec if you want you can play balance with the spec it's probably recommended you play feral though because it does go into the feral tree for the feline swiftness you want to go five out of five in ferocity you won't be really using any of these these abilities but you can if you want to next you can go either two out of two brutal impact or five out of five feral Instinct you can decide I prefer to go brutal impact just in case there's any PVP it I'll go three out of three out of five in feral Instinct and then two out of two in freeline swiftness next you're going to want to pick up the last four points in improved wrath because you're going to be using Fury of storm rage while leveling again it's not the ideal to be balanced with the spec but you can play it you definitely want the speed for open world movement it'll increase your leveling speed by ton otherwise you can just play cat with this and then get to level 25 and swap over to the balance build but yeah those are the only two real balance Dr specs that I'd recommend if you want to do more PVP and I probably will release a PVP guide separate to this cuz this is mainly a PVE guide you can remove improved wrath if you don't want to be hardcast in wraths all the time you can go one point in feral charge one point in Nature's grasp and the last two points you can kind of mess around with you can go in improved rra if you want or furer for maybe a bit more chance to get a feral charge off when you go into bare form you can decide so yeah those are the specs for balance so the most common question asked about balance D in the season of Discovery is what are the stat priorities because Mana is not really a problem for us at all intellect and spirit really go down far on the list on what's important what's really important though is stacking spell power and since half of our rotation Sun fire and wrath scales with nature damage and the other half of our rotation Moon fire and star surch scales with Arcane people are often confused with which one is better to stack considering they're looking at buying greens with plus spell damage you want to know if you want to be buying nature or Arcane spell damage greens the real answer to this question is both of them are about equal to each other and when you really get into the nitty-gritty of it if you're not moving as much and you're casting more wrath cast you're a bble to do a perfect rotation then nature does ecard slightly ahead of Arcane however if you are moving if you're canceling your wrath cast here and there then Arcane actually becomes a better option when it comes to PVP if you care more about PVP Arcane is a better thing because the burst from Star Surge and Moonfire will be better than the hard casting of Wrath and Sunfire so for if you're more PVP oriented then maybe go for Arcane if you're more PVE focused then you want to have a perfect rotation then nature is slightly better at the end of the day you just want to find the highest spell damage that you can find in every slot and so I'll be going over the quick breakdown of what is the most important stats to look out for so starting off with neutral spell power since this is both Arcane and nature spell power this is worth two times as much as either of them so you'll have neutral spell power as your top priority to find on gear and then you'll have nature or Arcane spell power then you'll have intellect for a little bit of crit and just in case you ever do run out of Mana the little bit of extra Mana does help and finally you'll have spirit and MP5 at the bottom okay so here we are in 60 upgrades super useful website tool that will help you track your gear that you have as well as what gear you want to be getting you can track each slot what's an upgrade what's not an upgrade and you you can make a full set for your preus a full set for your best and slot and a full set for what you have at the time so starting off with what we have here the pre best and Slot gear we have a whole bunch of greens that um you can buy off the auction house and not a lot of dungeon drops or crafted gear so keep that in mind this will be quite an expensive thing to buy but once you have it you'll definitely notice a massive DPS increase so starting off with the helmet we have the engineering gloves sorry engineering helmet which is the shadow goggles you can only wear them if you're an engineer so if you have engineering it's nice but it's definitely not mandatory it has zero spell power so it's not very valuable for us and the same thing for the necklace this is a super super expensive Boe of the auction house I would not even bother getting it I don't personally don't even have a neck right now because no spell power on the neck means that it has very little value to us and the price is just way too much for what it giv gives going on we have all these Arcane and Nature's wrath pieces keep in mind that these are interchangeable between nature or Arcane so don't like get all stuck up on whether I have Arcane here or nature these can be either as long as they're the highest spell power that you can find in that slot so the shoulders are a special example because there are a blue pair of BOE shoulders called the magician mantle and these are very very good and they're pretty much equivalent to the green single spell damage pieces the only difference is this has a bit more intellect and a little bit less spell power coefficient because it's five spell power which would be equivalent to about 10 nature Arcane this has 11 so I would say they're pretty interchangeable depending on what you want I'll probably go for the greens because these magician mantles can be very expensive and these can be pretty much optional best in slots so just pick up a pair of green shoulders and you'll be fine going on to the cloak it's the same story the chest piece it's the same story The braces it's the same the staff is the same the null casting gloves are a pretty common drop from Wetlands they're probably not so expensive on the auction house and they have neutral spell power which is quite powerful there's the belt which you can only find in Arcane and that's the same with the legs so if you're looking at options for belt and legs keep in mind you can only buy Arcane spell damage for either of those slots and then you have the boots which can be either as well so going on to Rings we have the lke keepers ring this is Warson Gulch honored and it's very powerful this is your best and Slot ring farm that up as soon as you can the lavishly jeweled ring or any other intellect ring is fine so if you can find a green ring with intellect that's fine there's no other spell power ring so just pick up any intellect ring it's probably a low priority as well so don't spend too much on it and then trinket wise there's not many options um the minor recombobulator acts as like a semi Mana pot so you can get one of those it's off the Mana pot cool down so if you ever need Mana you can just pop this it only has three charges and can only be used by Engineers so as you can see with the shadow goggles plus the minor recombobulator engineering is one of my preferred professions along with tailoring which you'll see with my best in slot set so the Run of perfection is also from waron Gulch I'll put a text up whether it's friendly or hon it I can't remember right now and it decreases the magical resistances of your Target by 10 and this does matter on the last three bosses of the raid that have fairly high resistances this will increase your DPS by a fair amount on those two bosses three bosses sorry moving on to the B and Slot set that I have set up I will be going through each slot as well as giving you maybe an option if there's something else that drops in the ra that you might want to go for keep in mind though that each of these pieces is pretty set in stone as B and sloth there's not a lot of option besides maybe the shoulders yeah so going with the helmet we have the tier set helmet and we are using the two set which does pull it above using this ramas T tatted thinking cap so this is technically by itself a higher DPS increase but with two sets from the set you have the helmet and the chest piece I would go for that instead and it's leather and all this leather spell power gear that drops from The Raid is pretty much free for you because there's not a lot of competition if you're on hard side you might have some Shaman healers or Elementals trying to go for that gear if you're on a lion side there's literally only holy paladins and a Resto DRS that'll compete with you and you'll probably be the only Dro in the raid so not a lot of competition you'll be getting a lot of the stuff quickly uh it's only the cloth pieces and some of these weapons and trinkets that will be a big competition so hel helmet I would definitely pick up the leather helmet if you can otherwise the cloth two set is an alternative probably harder to get as well as the thinking cap which by itself is pretty good there's the necklace which is the only spell power neck in the game so I would definitely pick that up it's a big priority is the shoulders as I mentioned they're best in slot all magicians mantle is an optional Choice as well whatever you can pick up they're both good the cape from is also best in slot definitely pick up one of these if you can the chest piece um it's definitely powerful with the two set by itself it's equivalent to any green that you can buy as well so it's just a flat increase then you have the glowing leather bands it's a leather wrist piece very strong much better than any other option you can if you don't have them then you can go for a green there's the Epic staff this is by far your biggest increase as you can see I have spell power weighted very highly so it's way better than anything else that you can get obviously there's a dagger and off hand combo which comes out to around 19 spell power but um this is obviously higher with 26 so definitely pick this up if you can it's going to be highly contested though then there's the Slick fingerless gloves these are nature only and healing power so the competition for these will be very low and they are slightly better than the black f this gloves there's the Ancient M cinch leather belt much better than the green and it's free to get pretty much there the soul Le pants which are very powerful legs but they drop off the final bus and their cloth and there's no other spell power leggings that are better than a green this one is obviously worse it's only seven the green gives 16 so definitely try to get these cloth pants if you can get them off a castle it's going to be tough and then finally there's the tailoring boots for body pieces I get a question a lot of whether it's better to go leather working or tailoring I definitely think tailoring is a better option considering these boots have a flat seven spell power and 1% hit the hit means pretty much nothing it has no weight because the hit cap of the raid is 5% if you have the weld buff plus your Mana oil you need 0% hit after that so hit technically at the moment means very little I wouldn't worry about the hit and the leather working gloves also have 1% hit but zero spell power and they have an onuse that gives 10% damage which is very good but it only lasts 10 seconds and has a 10 minute cool down so an average BFD rate if you're doing well is like 30 40 minutes you'll only get like three or four uses and it's not that big of a portion of the boss fight so I definitely value the seven spell power at all times more than this 10% damage proc or on use effect so that's my opinion on the crafted items then you have the ring from keris the best ring the only other spell power ring in the game The W on guring from previous very good the trinket of the last boss Quest item is definitely something you want to pick up if you can it's very competitive everybody wants it it's the only trinket that actually does anything in the game so try to get this if you can it drops every single week hopefully you get lucky I haven't gotten it yet hopefully I get it it's a pretty big upgrade for me alternatively you can use the minor recombobulator or the Insignia of the alliance can be useful in certain situations in the raid I do not believe there's many hard CC abilities though so you can equip it if it's the only trinket you have if you ever get cced you can use it there's also the black meroc egg which is mainly just a cosmetic trinket someone's a little meroc that does pretty much nothing except gives you five Shadow resist so yeah definitely not important but it's a you can pick it up if you want and that's about it um just to quickly go over the weapon again cuz I didn't explain the alternative is there's this Dagger of willing sacrifice as well as the off hand which let's see if I can find it how do I find it here uh I probably won't be able to find it but I will show it up on the screen it is a pretty good alternative if you can't find it it also has some bonus armor on it in case you want to PVP so it's not a bad option so yeah that's the gearing guide moving on to the next section in this section of the video I'll be going over the AOE and single Target rotations for the balance Dr if you're wondering which rotation to use on which boss I have a separate video that I made earlier this week that goes over each boss in the raid explaining which boss to use which rotation on and any other tips you might have so I'll be leaving that in the top right hand corner and let's go so the single Target and AOE rotation for the balance sh is actually very similar and and the best way to explain the balance Ro rotation is in a 12 second cycle so this cycle repeats every 12 seconds and as long as you can perform it perfectly each time you'll do the maximum amount of DPS that you can do so each fight starts off with a precasted wrath into a star surge hopefully both will land at exactly 0 seconds into the fight you'll follow that up with a Sunfire a Moonfire a wrath another star surge three more ws and then the cycle will repeat keep in mind if you're required to fairy fire in your raid you'll replace the first wrath cast in every fight with a fairy fire and then replace the fairy fire if it ever falls off with whenever you have the next wrath cast so if fairy fire is about to fall off whenever your wrath is about to come up in your rotation you just replace it with a fairy fire again to refresh the debuff other than that if there are any ads you need to be dotting so this is the AOE rotation you want to replace any wrath gcds with a Sunfire on a multi- DOT Target so you can only fit in four extra targets to multi- Dot and keep in mind for each ad that you multi dot you're more likely to run out of Mana at the start of at the end of the fight so keep Mana pots on hand in case there are lots of AOE mobs you need to be multi doting otherwise the rotation is very simple just follow this 12C cycle on every single bus and you'll do you'll do great and finally since you'll be getting a bunch of Fury of storm rage procs and you're likely to have a large amounts of Mana in the fight should the ra leader or healers ever call for help you can throw out some instant cast heals and this is a nice piece of utility that's unique to balance shs and if you enjoy the hybrid play style in a raid then that's something you can be doing as well so we'll be moving onto the consumable and buff section of the video keep in mind that some of these will be more mandatory if you want want to perform at a higher level and some of them will be more niche in case you have a bit of extra gold you can get some survivability or utility options as well when it comes to well Buffs there are three that can be obtained in the first phase of season of Discovery keep in mind that these are all very impactful to your DPS so dying in a raid will massively affect your performance the first of these Buffs is the Boon of the black fathom which is a 25 spell power 3% hit and 20% movement speed buff it lasts for 2 hours and it can be obtained in either Thunder Bluff or Daris whenever someone hands in the quest item from the final boss in the raid this can be Chrono bounded and it's very important to do so as soon as you get it up next we have the 10% damage buff from Darkman fair this can be obtained while the event is active in either elwin forest or Thunder Bluff and finally we have the ashenvale rally and cry this can be obtained in the PVP event in Ashen Vil by looting one of the mini bosses or little ads that you kill during the event this will give you a Mark that you can hand in to one of the main leaders in your main base camp it will give you a consumable that lasts for 2 hours and cannot be bned that gives you a 5% damage and healing buff keep in mind this cannot be boned so you have to use it in the raid and if you want to save it for a second or third raid you can only do it by logging out for the for the week this will reset at the beginning of every weekly reset so Tuesday if you're na or Wednesday if your EU so try to make the most of it while you have it there aren't many consumables in phase one of season of discovery that provide a meaningful impact to our DPS however the BFD Mana oil is a priority to get as it gives 2% hit and 12 MP5 this only works in the raid however alongside the world buff it allows you to achieve the hit cap without any gear up next we have the Mana poot or the Lesser Mana poot these aren't needed for many fights however it's nice to have a couple in case case of emergencies especially on bosses where there's a lot of ads that you're multi- doting you might risk running out of Mana so if you can afford the large Mana Poots then get those otherwise the less Mana pots work as well when it comes to food buff you want to be using the smoked Sage fish for the 3 MP5 and if you're missing a mage in your group you'll want to replace that Arcane intellect buff with either a elixir of wisdom or a scroll of intellect to finish off the consumable list I'll flash some options on the screen for any utility or survivability consumes that you might want to pick up keep in mind that none of these are mandatory but they're nice to have if you have the goal to buy them okay for the final section of this video I'll be going over any macros or we oras that I use in the raid I'm personally not a fan of having an overly complicated UI so I did set up my own we ORS to track my DOT timers and my fairy fire any Fury of the storm rage procs that I get and the star surge cool down but I also also have a weak aura that tracks the debuffs on name plates as well so if you're close to the mobs and you're multi- dotting you'll able to see the debuffs on each mob around you you have to be quite close since the max range on name plates is quite short on classic and besides that I'm also using the Barney raid kit black fathom deeps this isn't really necessary if you have the dbm but I use it just to help with tracking the fights CDs um just a quick demonstration on the weak ORS so if I walk up to the Mob you can see the weak or that I made just tracks the Dots here F fire and if I get a proc it would show up on the left and you can also see the debuff on the name plates as well so if I have AOE mobs let's say like over here I pull a couple mobs in hope you don't die you can see it's tracking the name plates the debuffs on each of the mobs it is quite useful so you can see which M you haven't DED yet I recommend picking it up again I'll be linking all of this in the description below if you want to pick up any of them you can find it there and when it comes to macros um I also don't use many macros I only have one for healing touch this is just a mouse over macro so I don't have to swap off my target that I'm WRA or doing my rotation on I can just hover over someone on The Raid press the healing touch key bind and it'll instantly heal them without having to swap off my target it's super useful if you do want to off heal though so I recommend picking this one up this macro I use for the boots it's a bit underwhelming considering I thought that the threat reduction from the boots would be permanent it is only temporary and as far as I can test it's not actually 30% threat it's actually just a flat 999 threat that gets removed for the duration that the debuff is active so you do get that 30% damage dealt debuff for 6 seconds as well as 30% reduced threat it's actually 999 reduced threat and once you cancel Aura the boots it will give you the threat back so this isn't as good but it is a pretty good panic button to press if you pull aggro you can press it you'll lose aggro and then hopefully you can cancel it as soon as the tank has a Taun active or whatever finally there's the dynamite macro if you're an engineer all this does is it throws the dynamite at your cursor without having to double press it because when you would press a dynamite it would like first activate um the the reticle and then you'd have to click again to throw it all this does is it just throws it immediately at wherever your cursor is so quite useful if you're an engineer okay so if you made it to this part of the video I want to thank you so much for watching I really appreciate the support on the last video I appreciate all the subs the likes the follows all of that stuff um this video in particular was quite more complex to edit than the other videos that I've made but um it was a lot of fun I learned a lot and I hope you guys learned a lot as well um I'll see you guys in the next video keep tuned any suggestions you have for improvements if you want it to be a bit more edited if you want it to be a bit less edited more content any questions just leave it down below I'll see you guys in the next video

Channel: ItsAuto

Views: 38,876

Keywords:

Id: gJrJq7hPOuA

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2023