- Author: bobodingo
- Date: July 20, 2022
- Updated: March 4, 2023
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Balance Druids have a fairly simple rotation, anchored around our 2 Eclipse procs: Eclipse (Solar) & Eclipse (Lunar).
Rotation
- Maintain Faerie Fire on the target if no other Balance Druid is doing it.
- Cast Starfall on cooldown outside of eclipse procs. The first cast should be used as your 1st or second (if you have to throw up Faerie Fire) and you are within the range of the spell. Otherwise cast Force of Nature to ensure they get hero/lust if you cast that spell at the start of the pull.
- Cast Force of Nature on cooldown. Your first cast of this spell should be right before hero or lust. Your trees will then gain the haste buff when it is cast. If your trees are not out before the Haste buff, they will not receive it and it will reduce the damage to the trees quite significantly.
After hero/lust has been cast and force is up for the 2nd or 3rd time just cast it in between an eclipse proc. - Spam Wrath during Eclipse (Solar), and spam Starfire during Eclipse (Lunar).
- Spam Wrath after leaving Eclipse (Solar), and spam Starfire after leaving Eclipse (Lunar), until the next Eclipse procs.
- Use Insect Swarm right after lunar and keep it up during solar. You may also use it when spamming wrath to proc lunar.
- The only time to use Moonfire is when moving. it has been shown to be a DPS loss to use it before a lunar
When to use DoTs
Balance Druids have 2 DoT spells: Insect Swarm & Moonfire. They contribute a good bit of damage, but you need to be careful with how you use them.
- Refresh your DoTs when out of Eclipse. If in Eclipse then use Wrath or Starfire
- The only time to use Moonfire is when moving. it has been shown to be a DPS loss to use it before lunar
- Use Insect Swarm right after lunar and keep it up during solar. You may also use it when spamming wrath to proc lunar.
- The best time to refresh your DoTs & Faerie Fire is when you need to move out of a mechanic (like fire on the ground!) or move to a certain spot. You cannot cast Wrath or Starfire while moving, so this maximizes your damage output.
About the Author
bobodingo
Sup yall! My name is Bobodingo and I've been playing wow since its release. I'm an avid player trying to make some good, quality content and share my ideas with the rest of the WoW community. I'm always down to have a conversation and bounce ideas off each other!
Now my question is: both dots are down and you left say lunar eclipse. You then refresh Insect Swarm but ignore Moonfire or? It’s unclear to me
The idea here would be to refresh Insect Swarm when you leave Lunar, so that you have it up when you enter Solar and don’t need to refresh it during Solar.
The opposite then going for refreshing Moonfire when you leave Solar, so that you have it up when you enter Lunar and don’t need to refresh it during Lunar.
Generally you do want to refresh both outside of Eclipse though, because they are good damage and you want to not waste Eclipse time, but if you are in a burst period, for example you have Bloodlust or trinkets or similar, you want to spend as much of that time in Eclipse as possible and using DoTs takes away from that.
Question I’ve got. I always precast my next wrath or starfire. So eclipse will proc while I’m in my next cast. Say I procced lunar eclipse and my next wrath is already starting. Should I finish the wrath and then swap to starfire? Or should I interrupt and go right to starfire?
Absolutely a valid question. Ultimately I think it’s better just to finish your cast just because it doesn’t make much sense to stop and that’s a TON to track. It’ll give you the same amount of dps if you cast one over the other.
Question;
You are writing ;
“Boomkins experience a bit of an odd transformation, going from a 1-button spec to having one of the most complex rotations of any spec in Wrath.”
But at the rotation section, you are writing
“it’s a fairly simple rotation”
As someone who wants to try Boomkin but are afraid of a complex rotation (I am 34 years old and don’t have the time nor energi to top meters with a complex playstyle.
Are they easy or hard? And if you know – are shadow priest better dmg and more easily?
100% a valid concern and a mix-up on my part. It should have said simple rotation, challenging to master. It has been changed now. But to answer your question, this is a fairly easy rotation to get down. If you aren’t trying to top the meters, this will be a great play style as no matter what you really do, it will be very hard for you to top the meters on a boomie outside of AoE packs. this allows for you to have some leeway as everyone isn’t expecting you to be at the top of every pack you pull. The reason it’s challenging to master is trying to time procs, with on use with eclipse and the list of things you would need to try and pull off would require some skill. The baseline skills, however, just take a little bit of time to get down but after that, is super easy and eventually will just become second nature.
Shadow priests I would say are a little easier but way less fun and do a lot less DPS. They don’t have many buttons to press but crits and even, hitting the mob in general, are way less rewarding and don’t feel as good. I would say stick with the boomie as they will be easy to level, pump on DPS, and the baseline single target skills (if you’re not trying to parse) is easy to learn.
Question:
If I were to skip Moonfire & Insect swarm completely in the rotation (Only use them while moving instead), approximately how large DPS-loss are we talking about? The dots seem like the most complex and boring part of the rotation and I would love skipping them if it doesnt make me completely worthless in raids.
So insect swarm is a nice debuff for your tank as it reduced the chance for the boss to hit. It’s also a decent amount of damage. Starfire is just an easy dot to throw up, does decent damage and you can increase it’s time with the glyph of starfire. Granted you spec into improved insect swarm, insect swarm increase wrath damage by 3% and moonfire will increase your starfires chance to crit by 3%. You don’t need to have both dots rolling (not having both will be a little bit of a loss) but depending on your eclipse phase, not having the respective dot up is a large DPS loss.
Some other sites are showing skipping Moonfire completely is a dps gain and helps prevent running out of mana. Any ideas on that?
Fully agree. Until I think ICC when dots can crit, you won’t use moonfire. Really the only time to use is if your moving out of a mechanic. Not so much for mana but its better to use a GCD on starfire in lunar phase. IS is however a dot we should be using when in solar or between eclipse procs.
As far as an opener, is it best to start with Wrath spam to get Lunar eclipse first?
Correct. with all the CDs, hero, and the last bit of your pre-pot, your Starfire will do massive damage. Typically ill be at the top of the meter for about 15-20 seconds because of the lunar opener + the Starfire to proc solar.
Something I don’t understand : you said “refresh Insect Swarm after Eclipse”. But, isn’t there a loss of time to use a gcd instead of casting another wrath or stellar fire to try proc the next eclipse ?