In this article, we present you with various talent trees for Balance Druids (WoW 4.3) that you can use in specific situations. We also give you pointers for customising your talent tree and adapting it to a particular boss. The other articles of our Balance Druid guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the left.

1. Standard Talent Build↑top

The following build is the standard choice for Balance Druids.

2. Customising Your Build↑top

First, we will present the fixed talents that a Balance Druid should always take, as well as the optional talents on which the variations are built. Then, we list the various mandatory and optional glyphs.

2.1. Talents

In the following image, the fixed talents have been hightlighted in green, while the optional talents have been hightlighted in red:

Most of the optional talents are not direct DPS increases, and none of them are valuable enough that they should always be taken. Rather, they each have situational uses (survival, crowd control, more mana, etc.).

• Balance Tree
  • Typhoon: grants you Typhoon, which knocks back enemies who are in front of you and damages them;
  • Owlkin Frenzy: direct attacks made on you (AoE damaging attacks do not count) have a chance to increase your damage done;
  • Gale Winds: increases damage done by Hurricane and Typhoon, and increases the range of your Cyclone spell;
  • Solar Beam: grants you the Solar Beam interrupt and silence;
  • Dreamstate: provides you with more mana from Innervate, when you cast it on yourself;
  • Fungal Growth: grants you the ability to slow enemies with Wild Mushroom;
  • Lunar Shower: enables you to do good damage by spamming your Moonfire and Sunfire in high movement encounters.
• Feral Combat Tree
  • Furor: gives you more mana.
• Restoration Tree
  • Blessing of the Grove: increases the instant damage of your Moonfire. Useful in high movement encounters;
  • Perseverance: reduces damage taken.

As you can see, there are a lot of optional talents, so you have a lot of freedom when it comes to choosing them. The only two constraints are:

• You need to spend 6 points freely in Owlkin Frenzy, Gale Winds, Solar Beam, Fungal Growth, and/or Lunar Shower to reach at least 31 points in the Balance tree;
• When you take Lunar Shower, it is advised to also take Blessing of the Grove (and vice-versa).

2.2. Example of Variations

This talent build grants you a higher mana pool, allowing for more liberal use of Hurricane to AoE targets.

This talent build does not contain Fungal Growth, in case there is no need to slow targets during the fight.

2.3. Glyphs

The glyphs that we advise to take in our default build for Balance Druids will give you satisfaction most of the time. However, it is important to know what your options are and how you can benefit from them, so that you can adapt to the situations you are faced with.

2.3.1. Prime Glyphs

Most of the times, you will want to use the following 3 Prime Glyphs:

• Glyph of Moonfire provides a simple increase to the damage of your Moonfire DoT.
• Glyph of Insect Swarm provides a simple increase to the damage of your Insect Swarm DoT.
• Glyph of Wrath provides a simple increase to the damage of Wrath.

Glyph of Starsurge is a situational glyph that you can replace Glyph of Wrath with, when the encounter has multiple enemies present in the fight for extended periods of time, making Starfall very strong. In such a situation, Glyph of Starsurge is very beneficial as it causes each successful Starsurge cast to lower the remaining cooldown on your Starfall by 5 seconds.

2.3.2. Major Glyphs

Glyph of Starfall, which reduces the cooldown of Starfall by 30 seconds, is the only Major Glyph that increases your DPS.

>Glyph of Rebirth causes targets revived by your Rebirth to come back to life with full health. This glyph is practically mandatory, since it reduces the chances that players you resurrect during combat will die again right away to environmental damage.

For the remaining Major Glyph, you can choose freely between the following glyphs, based on personal preference and encounter demands.

• Glyph of Thorns reduces the cooldown of your Thorns ability by 20 seconds, allowing you to cast it more often. Useful in fights where the tank is tanking several enemies at once for an extended period of time (making Thorns more useful), but it is not recommended due to Thorns' very high mana cost.
• Glyph of Barkskin reduces your chance to be critically hit by 25% while Barkskin is active. This is useful if you are using Barkskin when you are taking damage from adds (such as in cases when the adds in the encounter fixate on you, for example), making the damage you take lower and smoother.
• Glyph of Innervate grants you 10% of your maximum mana over 10 seconds, when you cast Innervate on someone other than yourself. This is useful in case you are regularly using Innervate on someone else.
• Glyph of Solar Beam increases the duration of Solar Beam by 5 seconds. It can be useful in encounters where you need to keep adds silenced for a long amount of time.
• Glyph of Focus increases the damage of Starfall by 10%, but reduces its area of effect by 50%. It may offer a slight damage increase (assuming that it does not miss any enemies because of its reduced ranged), although it is generally not useful.

2.3.3. Minor Glyphs

None of the Minor Glyphs is mandatory, so you can freely choose from these four glyphs:

• Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth reduces the need for a reagent to cast Rebirth.
• Glyph of Dash reduces the cooldown of Dash by 20%.
• Glyph of Mark of the Wild reduces the mana cost of Mark of the Wild by 50%. This is useful if you are rebuffing Mark of the Wild during a fight.
• Glyph of Typhoon lowers the mana cost of Typhoon and increases its range, but causes it to no longer knock enemies back. This glyph is useful if you wish to use Typhoon without knocking back the adds.