[Balance] Ataraxia's boomkin guide

Introduction

Hi all,

this is the first guide I'm writing, so I hope it's of any use for you. I've played this class and spec for quite some time now, and it's a lot of fun to play. In Hikari's Basic Guide for Druids, some things are already explained, but I want to add quite some things to that guide, for the balance part.

Let's get started with the talents first, until lvl 40, because that's the level where you can get moonkin form with talents. It's great for yourself (+2% mana, instantly, when you crit), but also in groups, because of the +5% spell crit chance. This will benefit all caster classes, dps, healers, but also paladins, which need the damage from their spells.

Talents

Lvl 10-14: Starlight Wrath: This ability decreases the casting time of your Wrath spell, which is one of your main damage spells, by .5 seconds, which means more dps, more crits in the same amount of time and all the benefits of the crits.
Lvl 15-17: Moonglow: Decreases the mana cost of your main damage spells and your basic healing spells, which will make long fights easier
Lvl 18-19: Nature's Majesty: Increases the critical strike chance of your main damage spells by 4%. which means more damage, and more nature's grace procs
Lvl 20-22: Nature's Grace: When you crit with a single target spell, this ability decreases the casting time of your next spell by .5 seconds, which means again more dps
Lvl 23-24: Nature's reach: Increases the range of your balance spells by 20% and decreases the threat generated by your balance spells by 30 percent. While playing my druid, I'm grouped up with a friend of mine who is a protadin at leastr 90 percent of gaming time and I must say this talent is awesome while grouping.
Lvl 25: Nature's Splendor: Increases the duration from your healing over time and damage over time spells by a specific amount. Some DoT's can trigger a proc on Wrath or Starfire for example, and you kill the mobs faster this way anyway.
Lvl 26-30: Vengeance: Increases your critical strike damage bonus by 100 percent, which means your critical strike damage is twice as much as normal damage from spells, instead of 50 percent extra damage on a crit.
Lvl 31: Insect Swarm: A damage over time spell, which you get from the balance tree. The improved version triggers several very nice sideeffects. You will ghet these later on though.
Lvl 32-34: Lunar Guidance: Increases your spell power by 12% of your intellect, which is very useful, as intellect is your main attribute, next to spirit.
Lvl 35-37: Moonfury: Increases the damage of your main damage spells, wrath and Starfire, by 10%.
Lvl 38-39: Dreamstate: With dreamstate 2/3, you keep regenning mana, even while casting, equal to 7% of your intellect. This will make you last longer in fights in PvE.
Lvl 40: Moonkin Form!: In this form, which is an awesome form, you get 370% armor value from items, which makes you have a lot of armor, especially in higher lvls, when there are loads of leahter armor pieces with spell power, intellect and spirit on it, and you buff the raid with 5 percent extra spell crit, and with im,proved moonkin form, 3 percent hasterating for the whole raid.
At lvl 40 I would suggest this build

Now let's go on with the talents. I would suggest this one at lvl 80. It's a big jump, but I will explain the most important things, and which talents to take first. I'll try to keep this part short, because at lvl 40, I hope you know your skills quite well, and have sorted out some gears.

Lvl 41-43: Improved Moonkin form (after buying a new set of gears, upgrading from 30ish set, to lvl 45 set, spell power dropped from around 160, to 120, but my spells did loads more damage, because I had a lot more spirit and through this talent it greatly boosts the damage your spells do)
Lvl 44: Dreamstate (just make this one full =))
Lvl 45-47:Owlkin Frenzy (I haven't had problems with mobs coming too when they had a lot of health left, but if it happens, this ability will help you killing the mob(s ) hitting you even faster. This ability is great for AoE grinding, because you can cast hurricane than, without channeling time being lowered)
Lvl: 48-49 Wrath of Cenarius (increases effect of spell power on your wrath and starfire spell. We will make this one 5/5 later on.)
Lvl 50: Typhoon (this ability is very nice for AoE farming again. It knocks back the mobs 5 yards and does quite well damage (at lvl 52, it does more damage when not critting, than my wrath does, but this one affects unlimited mobs in theory).
Lvl 51Force of Nature (summons treants to fight for you. You'll probably pull agro off them very quick, but they will help you fighting the mobs.
Lvl 52-54: Eclipse (this ability gives you a great damage boost. The effect lasts 15 seconds, so if I'm right, you can cast the wrath --> Starfire 3 times, when you're lucky with the crits. I'm not sure if the effect stacks though. It still is a nice damage boost, because if you crit with wrath, crit chance of Starfire is increased by 30%, which, if it crits, will increase the damage your wrath spell does, by 20%.
Lvl 55-57: Earth and Moon (this talent is really great in dungeons. It increases all spell damage taken on any target you cast wrath or starfire on, by 13% and passive +3% spell damage for yourself. From this, all moonkins, locks, mages, priest, shamans and paladins benefit, as they cast spells on the target. Even enhancement shamans, with their shocks. Now max out wrath of cenarius and get starfall for some more great AoE. Fill up the points in your balance tree, which you are missing compared to the spec I linked.

EDIT: In the balance tree, take Improved Insect Swarm, instead of Celestial Focus

After that, you can take the talents I chose in the resto spec. You can also keep taking talents in balance though. In Restoration I took Furor, for +10% intellect, and a bit more spellpower, Natural shapeshifter, than improved mark of the wild, for the 4% spell damage in Master Shapeshifter, And Omen of Clarity and Intensity, for mana saving.

I hope this spec is of any use, as this is the first guide I wrote.

With these talents in the balance tree, the buffs you already give to people while casting in moonkin form, are +5% spell crit, +3% haste for the whole raid, which are both very nice.

What gears are the best for moonkins?

I think for a balance druid, it's best to stack on spell power and critical strike rating, but also intellect and spirit are very important. Intellect is needed to have endurance in long fights, in dungeons or raids for example, and spirit increases your mana regen while not casting, but also your spell damage. And it might not seem useful, to regen mana faster while not casting, but if you're running from one mob to another, and you target it, it might be something like 5 seconds, for example. At 52, with 150 mana per 5 seconds, while not casting, it means an extra wrath, or starfire cast for me, with the amount of mana I get in these few seconds.

In lower levels, you shouldn't be ashamed to take cloth questrewards, or buy cloth armor, with spell power, spirit and intellect on it, just because you can use leather. I've done this in earlier lvls. before I got spell damage from spirit, and I must say that worked out very well. If you play it right, and have some good gear, gear with the right stats that is, you won't have any problems in killing the mobs you need to kill. Most of the time, they will hardly hit you before they die.

Enchants:

Enchants are also very useful for druid, and also useful for lvling. The basic enchants, the Pre-TBC ones, aren't really useful, for the amount of money they cost. after having lvl 35 or higher items (requires lvl 35 on dungeon or BoE items, and item lvl 35 on quest rewards), you can start looking for burning crusade enchants.

The mats are less expensive than the pre-TBC ones most of the time (at least on dragonblight they are), but it also works very well, to just buy a bunch of outland greens in the auction house and look for an enchanter to disenchant them and give you the mats back.

If you want to get enchants as cheap as possible, I recommend installing the auctioneer addon, with which you can check, which enchanting mats you get from a specific item, and how big the chances on these mats are for that item. This is very reliable. I'm an enchanter myself on my rogue, and the numbers were always right, on more than hundreds of items. (I will upload a screenie of this addon, as soon as I'm able to go on my laptop)

Enchant Bracer - Superior Healing (+15 spell power) Requires: 4x Greater Planar Essence and 4x Primal Life

This enchant is a bit expensive at lvl 35, as the greater planar essences are quite expensive.

I would recommend Enchant Bracer - Major Intellect It gives you +180 mana, the regen from dreamstate increases slightly and you also get slightly more spellpower.

Enchant Gloves - Blasting
Requires: 1x Lesser Planar Essence and 4x Arcane Dust I strongly recommend this enchant. It's cheap and especially at lower lvls, like at lvl 35 it increases your crit quite a lot for that lvl.

Enchant Chest - Major Spirit
Requires: 2x Greater Planar Essence This enchant gives you more mana regen, and increases your spell damage, with the improved moonkin talent. The mats itself are quite expensive, but with the auctioneer addon, you can get them a lot cheaper.

Mystic Spellthread
Requires: 5x Primal mana and 1x Rune Thread If you find some good bind-on-equip leggings for your boomkin, and you can afford buying the 5 primal mana from AH, or maybe farm them with your main, I strongly recommend finding a tailor who can make this item. If you have your bind on equip legs, don't equip them yet. You need to trade the legs and let a lvl 60+ attach them to the legs. It increases your spell power and stamina a lot. If you can afford this and a good pair of legs, buy them. They will last a lot longer than they would last, without this enchant. Maybe even until Outlands.

Skills when in combat

In Hikari's guide, he stated that entangling roots gets broken on a specific amount of damage automatically, which is true. I would suggest to open with it though. When you are far away, that means in a 30 yd range approximately, you can open with starfire, but immediately after that, root the mob. You can apply moonfire and insect swarm to the target than, which are DoT's. At that point it will break somewhere, but if you start spamming wrath immediately after you put moonfire and insect swarm on the mob (mostly I root --> insect swarm --> moonfire --> wrathspam)the mob will be dead very fast. At lvl 48-50, I could solo mobs of my lvl, with the spellcircle I just pointed out, without them being able to hit me

well, maybe they hit me once, but I was just once wrath cast away from killing them, as soon as they got to me, without being in max range. So that's one great benefit of roots, although it will not prevent them from moving until they are killed. What you also might wanna use, when you pull two mobs on accident, you can use nature's grasp. I've had quite often, that you pull two mobs, at a time. I could use my hurricane than, but that sucked away my complete mana pool in a few casts, which with pushback didn't last long. Mostly you pull a second one, by casting a spell on another mob. Root one mob, turn on nature's grasp and if the mob that runs to you hits you, walk back a bit. It roots that second target also. After you're done with the first mob, reroot the second one and kill it.

I haven't had any raid experience yet with my druid, as it is on lvl 52 only, but I hope I've been able to help some people out a bit with this guide. I think, in raids or dungeons though, it's important to keep up moonfire and insect swarm, and while they're up, keep casting wrath --> Starfire --> Wrath --> Starfire.

What Ive seen a lot in-game (mostly on other chars), are balance druids, which aren't in moonkin form, because they also wanna cast healing spells. Just go in moonkin form. As soon as you cast a healing spell, you will get out of moonkin form (this one doesn't cost mana if I'm right) and immeditaly after that, shapeshift back. Works like a charm, and you also have the +5% crit, +3% haste and the extra spell damage from spirit.

The addon for tracking prices (price/stack, price/item and percentage compared to average price over 3, 7 and 14 days, plus the disenchantplugin) can be found here. Download it with manual install and than extract it to your WoW directory WoW/interface/AddOns.

I would advise to take herbalism and alchemy on your druid. They are easy to lvl, compared to other professions, and there are some potions and elixirs which are great money makers.

Have fun playing,
Ataraxia.

Oh, btw.
If you have any advise or comments on my guide, about things which can be added, like addons, or skills, or whatever, or if anything is not right, please give me a sign than. I will add it than and I will also keep updating this guide, as long as I'm lvling.