Best Druid Builds – Balance Druid Spec For Patch 3.3
Posted on February 24th, 2010 by Lawbringer under Alliance, Build, Druid, Horde, Instances, Night Elf, PVE, Raiding, Spec, Tauren, World of Warcraft, WotLKMoonkin Form Druid DPS Build
For about as long as we’ve been in WotLK the Boomkin druid is always something you want in your raid for the killer buff – but might have been a little hard to justify bringing because it was tough to do great DPS as a Boomkin. Apparently Blizz didn’t want Moonkin form to be an also-ran in the latest patch, and so the Balance tree got some really significant buffage.
With the following gear, the balance druid can actually get respectably close to his feral cousin with a max theoretical DPS of 10,034. That’s a bit of a far cry from the top end feral build going at more than 11,000 but there are a couple of things to keep in mind about that. First, the feral priority list is far more complex and it’s much easier to drop or clip the rotation. Next, while people like a nice kitty around, a boomkin who can pull their weight will get a warmer reception.
Plus, how much more fun can you have than pwning face while dressed up like a giant owl? And the SNL dance – awesome. I always liked Thunder chicken more than cat form anyway, so it may be time to dust the old druid off and give him a spin around the block in the following spec.
Gear
Example T9 Gear For Balance Druid
Talents
Druid DPS Talent Build Balance Boomkin
Glyphs
Major
Minor
Of course, the minor glyphs are completely up to you, but the set above is pretty standard. If you do a lot of running around you might use the glyphs of Aquatic form or dash, since they boost movement speed (dash only occasionally). And since none of the above glyphs figure into DPS at all you might also consider the Typhoon glyph if you can find reasons to use it.
Priorities
- Flask = Frost Wyrm
- Food = Fish Feast
- Mark of the Wild
- Moonkin Form
- Faerie Fire
- Typhoon – when moving
- Speed Potion
- Innervate – when mana below 2,000
- Treants
- Starfall – when NOT under effects of Eclipse
- Starfire – when 4pc T9 buff is up
- Moonfire – if no moonfire debuff
- Insect Swarm – if no insect swarm debuff
- Wrath – until lunar eclipse procs
- Starfire – if cast time is less than remaining timer on lunar eclipse
- Wrath – if cast time is less than remaining buff on solar eclipse
- Starfire
I’m no expert on Boomkins, and I’m sure the thread will help me iron this out. But it doesn’t look like a lot has changed for a while with thunder chickens. Hit the boss with FF, pop treants, potion, trinkets, Moonfire, Insect swarm, Wrath until Lunar Eclipse, Starfall, Starfire until solar eclipse. Refresh Moonfire and insect swarm debuffs and just swap back and forth between wrath and starfire depending on which eclipse has procced. If you have neither eclipse and dots are ticking, throw starfire until solar eclipse. Past that just remember to pop treants and starfall when the cooldowns are up. I will update this based on input from the thread, but it’s basically what I was doing a year ago on my druid.
Damage Sources
It wasn’t until patch 3.3 that the boomkin really had a true chance of getting back in to the top DPS mix, but whatever they changed sure has helped. We might even convince Gavin to crawl back behind the feathers and start slinging a little chicken pain around in ICC. But one thing is for certain – it’s not just cats that Dominate any more.
Benfrew is pretty sure casting Typhoon requires taking the Typhoon talent!
Thanks for the boomkin love.
Just a piece of advanced boomkinology. Before casting the two dots after FF, hit a quick wrath – to proc your Earth and Moon extra spellpower!
And make sure your tank is cool with your unglyphed typhoons.
In the ICC sauerfang fight, the typhoon is actually helpful! Whaddayaknow?
In both our 10- and 25-man ICC runs unglyphed Typhoon is absolutely not allowed on the Saurfang fight: the last thing you want are the Blood Beasts getting blown back into melee.
This is where Raid IQ comes into play… You would place your boomkin behind your tank to blow the Blood Beast into the ranged. Make sense now?
never blow adds into range dps. they will get hit and stack up blood power not to mention scatter the range and lose overall raid dps. instead angle them so they can blow them back over hunter traps….
just tangle one and all range nuke the other…..no need for a push back from typhoon at all.
uhm actually u do want them gettin blown back towards melee, just make sure they arnt aoe’ing… gives u more time to kite and down they so range doesnt scatter stack up blood power and lose dps overall for your raid
i agreee thats the exact same thing i do
Yeah, same thing with shaman T-storm. But that’s why we mention the glyph. Since it’s a minor glyph it would make sense to take it so that you don’t get the knockback and give it a larger range. At least it would give you something other than DoT’s to throw while moving.
Just so you know I click death knight and this shows up, lol at ppl noy using unglyphed typhon only good in pvp.
u should never glyph for typhoon unless ur a scrub who likes to lose out on dps. its very handy to blow mobs back to scrub tanks with horse blinders if angled away correctly from where the tank is standing other then that it shouldnt even be in ur rotation
Just for a differing point of view on Typhoon, both our 10 and 25 like to have it unglyphed. I use hurricane about 1-2 sec before the blood beasts show to gain the initial aggro and lead them away from melee. The typhoon is only used if a blood beast gets too close to me.
4pc T9 is always up – 4% dam. Prob referring to T10.
Considering you most likely will have a Shammy or a Pally, why waste those points in mana regen? Seems a waste in raids, and with heroics just time your Innervate right. I use no points into mana regen, your crit should be high enough. Go go Typhoon!
um everyone I would like to point out that one prob with this boomer build um its pointless to use typhoon because the build doesnt have typhoon in it. =)~
Depending on gear level, a few things have changed. I will take my current of 2T9/2T10. Insect swarm is no longer part of the rotation unless the leader wants the debuff on the boss (and yes that means we unglyph it). This info was published via Elitist and I am going with it for now (basically, IS was determined to be a DPS loss with the gear set mentioned (up to 4T10)). This now means we only have one DoT to worry about so we’ll get in more DPS dealing with just 1 GCD as opposed to 2 at times. With that said, we drop the IS glyph in favor of the starfall glyph. As for previously mentioned items regarding typhoon/hurricane you may consider dropping 2 points to get these. Dropping Dreamstate would be one choice.
you all need to l2boomkin lol
Actually the Glyph of Starfall [the one that reduces cooldown, not the increase damage one] is actually better than the Insect Swarm glyph
Seems none of you have done hard modes or read strategies for them bosses arent affected by the knock back of typhoon so its free dps while moving and in heroic saurfang its necessary to use typhoon on beast i pop mine 2 seconds after the warlock slows them all ranged have switched and blow them up so fast not one melee has to stop aoe for a second
Just a heads up too, it’s fairly helpful to the tanks if you do not glyph for “Insect Swarm” because of the ICC zone in debuff. It’s pretty damn good to glyph for “Starfall” because it got majorly buffed and does a fair amount of damage.
oh also another thing, if you are hit capped and do not need “Balance of Power” in your talent build anymore it’s fairly good to get “Owlkin Frenzy” 2 points. It’s procs a lot in ICC when you are getting hit a fair bit. (Example: Cold Flame – Marrowgar, Bolts – LDW, Axes – Lootship, Bloodboil – Saurfang… etc etc) You get my drift anyhow.
Sorry for spamming as well, but unless you are gylphed for typhoon, “Gale Winds” in useless. Yes… I do know it increases your damage of it, but unless you are doing H LK attempts, it’s really not worth it. Sorry and hope I was helpful to some people.