General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices for
Balance Druids in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents and
glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Balance Druid guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are
now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance
(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).
You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between
encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.
Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and
how they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents offer a choice between 3 means of increasing your movement
abilities.
Feline Swiftness is a passive ability that increases your movement
speed by 15% at all times.
Displacer Beast is an active ability that teleports you 20 yards
forward, activates 
Cat Form, and grants you a 50% increase in movement
speed for 4 seconds.
Wild Charge is an active ability that differs based on the
shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
- No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
Moonkin Form: you leap backwards.
Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4
seconds.- Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
Travel Form: you leap forward 20 yards.
Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5
seconds.
The choice here will come down to either Feline Swiftness or
Displacer Beast. Wild Charge is generally not very useful.
Feline Swiftness will be your default choice for most fights, with
Displacer Beast being useful situationally.
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.
Ysera's Gift is a passive spell that heals you for 5% of your maximum
health every 5 seconds. If you are at maximum health, then it heals the most
injured party or raid member within 100 yards.
Renewal is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a
2-minute cooldown.
Cenarion Ward is a buff that you can place on a friendly player,
lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward
activates a 6-second HoT on the player, consuming Cenarion Ward in the
process.
Ysera's Gift is very nice because it is entirely passive, and therefore
very comfortable to use.
Renewal provides a very reliable self-heal that may be preferable
in some situations, or if you simply prefer to have more control over your
abilities.
Cenarion Ward is the weakest of the three talents.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces 
Faerie Fire,
upgrading the latter spell to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for
15 seconds.
Mass Entanglement roots all enemies in an area around the target
for up to 20 seconds.
Typhoon is a spell that affects enemies in a cone in front of you,
knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.
The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS
performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which
best suits the encounter mechanics.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 performance-enhancing talents.
Soul of the Forest passively makes your 
Wrath, 
Starfire,
and 
Starsurge casts have an 8% chance to cause 
Astral Communion to
grant 100 Lunar or Solar Power instead of activating the next Eclipse.
Incarnation: Chosen of Elune increases your Arcane and Nature damage
done by 25% for 30 seconds. This ability has a 3-minute cooldown.
Force of Nature is an active ability that summons a treant which
casts 
Entangling Roots on your current target, and then spams
Wrath on it for 15 seconds. Force of Nature has a maximum of 3 charges,
and a new a charge is added every 20 seconds. Otherwise, it has no
cooldown.
Incarnation: Chosen of Elune and Force of Nature are roughly equal
in terms of value, and the choice is up to you.
Soul of the Forest is not really able to compete with the other two
talents, currently.
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Disorienting Roar is an AoE disorient that lasts for 3 seconds and
affects all enemies in a 10 yard radius.
Ursol's Vortex is a targeted AoE slow. When enemies first try to
leave the slowing area, they are pulled back in.
Mighty Bash is a single target 5-second stun.
The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS
performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which
best suits the encounter mechanics.
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that affect your
gameplay.
Heart of the Wild increases your Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by
6% at all times. Additionally, with a 6-minute cooldown, it allows you to
viably perform roles outside of your specialisation, for 45 seconds.
- allows you to tank in Bear Form, by increasing your Agility,
Expertise, Hit Chance, and armor, making you immune to critical hits and
granting you the
Vengeance ability;
- allows you to heal efficiently, by increasing the healing of your spells
by 100% and reducing the mana cost of your healing spells by 100% (when used
with
Tranquility, it provides an extremely good raid cooldown);
- allows you to DPS in Cat Form, by increasing your Agility,
Expertise, and Hit Chance.
Dream of Cenarius is a passive ability that increases the healing done
by 
Healing Touch by 20%, and causes each Healing Touch to increase the
damage bonus of your next Eclipse by 25%.
Nature's Vigil is a 90-second cooldown that increases all healing
and damage done by 12% for 30 seconds. While Nature's Vigil is active, all
single target healing spells also damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing
done, and all damaging spells heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage
done.
The decision you will need to make here is between Heart of the Wild
and Dream of Cenarius, as Nature's Vigil is not good enough at the
moment. Heart of the Wild is probably the better choice, since it provides your
raid with more utility and survivability. Dream of Cenarius provides marginally more
DPS, but it has a much larger room for error, and it requires a lot higher
level of play to be efficient.
8. Major Glyphs↑top
No Major Glyphs improve your DPS performance, but a few of them are still
worth mentioning for the other benefits that they offer. Minor Glyphs are
entirely cosmetic and do not affect your gameplay at all.
Glyph of Stampede removes any form requirements from
Stampeding Roar, making it easy to use in Moonkin Form. As with
the above-mentioned glyph, this can save you from a loss of DPS caused by
switching out of Moonkin Form.- Glyph of Rebirth is very useful if you ever intend to use your
Rebirth, since it allows the target of your Rebirth to come back to
life with full health, meaning that they do not risk instantly dying again to
environmental damage.
- Glyph of Innervate grants you 10% of your maximum mana when you use
Innervate on other players.
- Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the range of
Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. If using this ability is vital to
your raid's strategy, this glyph is excellent.
9. Changelog↑top
- 18 Oct. 2013: Improved the Tier 4 and 6 talent discussions.
- 12 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
- 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated Force of Nature
description and the relevant discussion about that tier's talents.
- 16 Apr. 2013: Made several updates.
- Reworked Tier 1, 2, 4, and 6 talent sections to better reflect the
relative value of the talents in each tier. Also added some clarifications for
choosing between Heart of the Wild and Nature's Vigil.
- Emphasised that Glyph of Stampede and Glyph of the Moonbeast
allow you to avoid losing DPS when having to use the respective abilities.
- 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
- Updated Displacer Beast explanation to mention the movement speed buff
that it provides.
- Updated Soul of the Forest explanation to reflect the fact that you now
gain 40 Solar/Lunar Energy upon leaving an eclipse state, up from 20.
- Updated Nature's Vigil explanation to reflect the new cooldown and the
fact that the damage and healing bonus is now 10% instead of 20%.
