Method Balance Druid Guide - Gearing - Dragonflight 10.2.7 (2024)

Gear

Tier Sets

• (2) Set Bonus: Starsurge and Starfall increase the damage of your next Wrath or Starfire by 50%, stacking up to 3 times.
• (4) Set Bonus: When you enter Eclipse, your next Starsurge or Starfall costs 30 less Astral Power and deals 60% increased damage.

The revisited set from Vault of the Incarnates features a straightforward 2PC and 4PC that encourages us to pool and spend at the start of an eclipse. This plays around Balance of All Things to increase the damage of our first spender in an eclipse, and we ideally want our next globals to spend Astral Power while weaving a Wrath or Starfire that deals nearly double damage.

The Balance Druid Tier Set recieved buffs in Patch 10.2.7, with the damage of the 2-set bonus increasing from 30% to 50% and the 4-set bonus Astral Power cost reduction doubling from 15 to 30 and the damage bonus increasing to 60% (was 40%).

Balance Druid Best in Slot Gear

You should still prioritise the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Balance Druid, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

Overall Best Gear for Balance Druid

Note: The Fyrakk mace and Council of Dreams off-hand combo is best, but good alternatives are the staff from Nymue (Dreambinder, Loom of the Great Cycle), followed by the Tindral Staff (Eternal Kindler’s Greatstaff).

Best Gear from the Raid

Best Gear from Mythic+

Trinkets

The strongest trinkets are Whispering Incarnate Icon and Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows at their respective highest item levels. Neltharion’s Call to Suffering is also a considerable option due to it dropping at 535 item level on the highest difficulty.

However, due to variance the item levels that these items drop at, you could consider other options below. Furthermore, other options may see niche use, such as using Ashes of the Embersoul or Spoils of Neltharus to play a 2-minute build to better fit boss timings.

It is important to always simulate your character to determine what is best for you individually.

Some other good options are:

1. Neltharion’s Call to Suffering
2. Pip’s Emerald Friendship Badge
3. Ominous Chromatic Essence
4. Umbrelskul’s Fractured Heart
5. Irideus Fragment
6. Furious Ragefeather
7. Vessel of Searing Shadow
8. Nymue’s Unraveling Spindle

Whispering Incarnate Icon is a good stat stick trinket that is likely to be contested by the majority of players in your raid. This is both a good and a bad thing -- the bonus effects will often be activated in a raid, ensuring you have max value. However, it will be one of the most sought after trinkets in Season Four, and may require the use of an Antique Bronze Bullion.

Mirror or Fractured Tomorrows functions exactly like it did last season. It’s one of our best on-use trinkets, and has the added benefit of being fairly reliable to obtain. By completing Hardmode Murozond from Dawn of the Infinite, you can get this trinket to drop fairly reliably as EVERY single specialization in the game can get it and trade it at its base Hardmode level of 506, upgradeable to 522. If you manage to complete the entire dungeon without dying, this can furthermore drop at a base item level of 519, upgradeable to 528, making it one of the most attractive options for a Myth track on-use trinket.

Pip’s Emerald Friendship Badge is a stat stick (rotating stats) and one of the best passive trinkets for most casters.

Umbrelskul’s Fractured Heart is reworked from its previous incarnation in 10.0.0. It’s now an Intellect trinket that applies a Damage over Time effect to enemies, with an execute portion for non-boss enemies. Both the DoT and the execute can do some significant damage, especially on single target. This trinket is a very solid “in-between” option for the weeks before you have your full BiS setup.

Irideus Fragment is also great because its cooldown lines up with Incarn. Furthermore, you may also min-max the “decay” of the trinket by using a casted ability followed immediately by an instant-cast ability to break the internal cooldown of the decay. A common way we may do this is by casting a Wrath followed up by a Starsurge. It is not worth completely changing your playstyle to accomplish this, however -- just a small optimization you may do to gain slightly higher value from the trinket.

Neltharion’s Call to Suffering comes pre-packaged at an incredibly high item level, with a solid effect that also flexes quite well as a Feral Druid trinket. The damage intake from the trinket, however, does “feel” a lot worse on Balance Druid due to its inherent squishiness, so I advise caution with playing this trinket. I would encourage tracking when it procs so you can optimize your damage intake -- the damage over time taken from this trinket can proc during high damage situations and make a bad scenario even worse.

Ominous Chromatic Essence is similar to Whispering Incarnate Icon, but having both trinkets be available may make it less likely that this trinket will see 5 players in a raid all willing to pledge their allegiance to different dragonflights to proc the additional benefit. Take note of this and sim appropriately using the additional feature in Raidbots when comparing to the other trinkets.

Furious Ragefeather is a trinket that provides baseline Intellect with a solid damage-over-time effect. It may be frustrating to work with, however, when it sometimes breaks CC before they’re applied (for example: having an active Starfall out on Raszageth may cause a Furious Ragefeather to proc on an add meant to be CC’d before the CC is applied, causing it to break).

Vessel of Searing Shadow is typically outclassed by the other options, but it is still a solid “in-between'' trinket that also has the added benefit of being another way our class can proc the Seal of Filial Duty. The only other way to proc the Seal of Filial Duty is the Incandescent Essence helm enchant. This ring is our best option for a ring in the patch, and the shield can help provide some added defensive benefit.

Nymue’s Unraveling Spindle is generally not the greatest option for us, but if you are unable to obtain other options, it isn’t the worst thing to obtain. However, it is a much better option for other casters, and you shouldn’t prioritize spending an Antique Bronze Bullion on it.

Antique Bronze Bullion

If you played Shadowlands Season Four, you may be somewhat familiar with the Dinar system that was introduced in Shadowlands Fated. Dragonflight Awakened will feature a similar system that works off of the item upgrade system.

The currency you accumulate each week in Season 4 is the Antique Bronze Bullion, and you will be able to exchange this for specific items purchased from a vendor in Valdrakken. You will not be able to trade these special items back to the vendor in exchange for the currency, so it is essential you make proper decisions based on your own character and the raid around you.

For example, if you would compete against other Druids, Priests, Death Knights, or Rogues for the Neltharion’s Call to Suffering with your raid, then you may want to consider grabbing this. On the other hand, if you’re somehow the only caster who can use the big ticket Vakash, the Shadowed Inferno, then that could be something that influences your decision making.

Furthermore, Whispering Incarnate Icon is looking like a fantastic trinket, but will inherently have high competition for it due to it being incredibly popular across many specializations. I always recommend simulating yourself to help make this decision!Here is a brief list of items that you may want to consider purchasing with this Antique Bronze Bullion:

• Vakash, the Shadowed Inferno
• Whispering Incarnate Icon
• Voice of the Silent Star
• Seal of Filial Duty
• Neltharion’s Call to Suffering
• Trickster’s Captivating Chime
• Eye of the Rising Flame

Embellishments

Currently the best simming embellishments are Toxic Thorn Footwraps and the Toxified Armor Patch (applied to a crafted leather item) to empower the boots further.

This is a fantastic early option when sparks are limited, as the effect from the Toxified Armor Patch does not scale with item level -- it simply doubles the damage of the Toxic Thorn Footwraps. Investing Aspect Crests in the upgrade of the Toxic Thorn Footwraps is fantastic value as a result.

It was incredibly common for players in top guilds to craft these alongside wrists with a socket from the Great Vault, since item levels on wrists are one of the lowest budget items, and the socket may make 486 wrists competitive with higher level options from the raid, especially as crests are restricted and wrists are likely the lowest priority item to upgrade. However, this causes your build to be relatively inflexible, as you are forced to craft boots instead of having the effect be applied to other pieces.

Crafting two pieces with Blue Silken Lining is also incredibly competitive, and may be better in most situations as the patch progresses. This embellishment typically sees increases in value as healers obtain more gear and can more reliably keep your health bar topped. Furthermore, this is likely going to be the best option for Mythic+, so it is not unrealistic to imagine this is one of the most popular crafts.

It is always important to note, however, that this embellishment will see varying results on each fight. Some fights simply have more passive damage intake than others, and you will never receive full uptime on the mastery buff. A fight like Sarkareth with intense ticking damage will see you have lower uptime than Igira the Cruel, where damage is upfront and bursty.

Raidbots has a feature where you can simulate yourself to account for uptime. As a squishier class, your uptime could be as low as 25%, so be mindful of this!

You will likely craft these on at least one ring and wrists. The ring is a great way to get an early socket, and is a powerful early craft as a result. Season 3 wrists with a socket already applied are very solid, so they are likely the most common application for the Blue Silken Lining. However, Blue Silken Lining allows us to be incredibly flexible in its application, as you can remove it from crafted gear and replace it on either a separate piece of gear, or swap it out entirely with another embellishment.

For Mythic+, the Toxic Thorn Footwraps and Toxified Armor Patch isn't too much lower than the more AoE beneficial alternatives; however, if you want to build your gear out specifically for Mythic+, I would recommend using two Blue Silken Lining pieces, or a Verdant Conduit. You can also swap either the Blue Silken Lining or the Verdant Conduit for Elemental Lariat when you have the maximum number of sockets on your gear later on in the season.