Sunday, November 5, 2017

Balance Druid



      The Balance druid, also known as Boomkin or Boomie, is a medium damage caster and one of the best team players in any given raid setup. Your job as a Boomkin is not to deal massive damage but be a team player.

Talent Spec



You will have 5 points left. You can put those talents wherever you feel like they will be more helpful to you:

Genesis: It blows, don't even think about it.

Nature's Reach: I put one point, but it's perfectly fine to put another one, or none if your gear is bad since you will not pull aggro and 30yds range is plenty enough for dungeons and other easy raids.

Improved Insect Swarm: This one is bad, it's terrible actually. Once you are way past the crit cap the 3% bonus crit to Starfire is useless, and the 3% damage bonus to Wrath is always useful except if your Insect Swarm wears off, and you will not refresh it while you're in Solar Eclipse since it'd be a loss of dps, and since your Wrath is only 40% of your total damage, in the end this talent only gives you like 0.2% damage per point.

Dreamstate: One point here makes sure that you never oom if you Innervate yourself. Two points allow you to Innervate someone else without going oom yourself if the fight is not long. Three points are a little too much, but they will make sure that you never oom regardless of fight duration.

Owlkin Frenzy: Most people drop one point here. It's moronic since it only procs off physical damage taken and direct spells, but on some situations it might net you a ton of damage. If you're into that, drop 3 points there instead of one. As for myself, I skip it entirely.

Typhoon: It's good for certain situations where creatures are summoned and you're required to keep them away. It's safe to pick it as a whatever point.

Gale Winds: Don't.

Nature's Focus: This is useful for dungeons and perhaps several specific encounters to prevent loss of  dps.


Stat prios


Hit rating until capped (10%)>Spell power>Whatever


Why Whatever?

         The biggest flaw Boomkin has are the low caps in every relevant dps stat other than Spell Power. Haste cap is 401 to make your Wrath 1s cast when Nature's Grace procs. Crit cap is 37% with all raid buffs to make your Starfire crit 100% of the time. Hit rating cap is 10% (9% if you have a Draenei in your group). Once crit and haste caps have been reached, since your Wrath and Starfire each make 40% of your total damage (80% both), you basically only benefit 40% from any extra Haste and Crit stat. You can add Starfall to the list, which makes up for about 8% of your total damage. Therefore, your stat benefits are Crit (48%), Haste (40%) and Spirit (33%). It might seem obvious that you should be getting that crit up, but in practice considering all the moving you'll be doing even Spirit can surpass Crit on particular encounters. Haste can also do more benefit than Crit if you are forced to move a lot. In summary, don't give it much thought.

Meta: Chaotic.
Red gem: Runed.
Yellow gem: Runed.
Purple gem: Two Purified to activate meta, the rest go Runed.

Socket bonus +9 generally demands 3 matching gems; if at least two of those gems require red gem, you can match the third non-red socket with one Purified/Reckless/Potent/Veiled gem depending on what you need most.

Glyphs


Glyph of Starfall: Starfall is your best spell, not only because of the damage, but because it also gives you plenty of procs from Nature's Grace talent.

Glyph of Insect Swarm: Insect Swarm does slightly more damage than Moonfire.

Glyph of Starfire: The less you have to cast Moonfire, the better.

Situational:
Glyph of Wrath: For dungeons, mostly.
Glyph of Moonfire: Don't.
Glyph of Focus: Also for dungeons where your dots don't last the entire duration and the rooms are small enough to not worry for the loss of range.

 Minor

Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth: Save yourself the shame of wiping the raid because you didn't revive the healer or the tank.

How to play


1. On pull, be a nice guy and put Faerie Fire if there's no Shadow Priest.
2. Afterwards, place your Force of Nature spell right behind the boss, because Treants will do more damage if their basic hits don't get parried.
3. Use Starfall if possible.
4. Apply dots, starting with Moonfire and then Insect Swarm.
5. Wrath once, then Starfire. Here's where it gets tricky; if no Eclipse, repeat this process until you get a proc, then spam the spell that benefits from that Eclipse. The reason to do it this way is to save time and make the most out of your Eclipse.
6. Refresh dots only when no Eclipse is active or while you're moving.

Addons


The usual addon I recommend when playing a dotter: Class Timer.

Tips


-Don't be shy of using Barkskin often, specially if you're predicting tons of damage taken in the next few seconds.
-If necessary, heal yourself with Rejuv>Nourish in this order.
-Go Cat+Sprint to save yourself.
-Innervate a healer over Innervating yourself, don't be selfish.
-Your Wrath is a projectile, while your Starfire is instant hit, take that into consideration whenever you wish to hit a target that is either too far or too close to you.
-Avoid putting dots on low health foes.

That's pretty much everything regarding Boomkin. Have fun.

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