Learning your Roots: Balance Druid Part 2

Bosque is about three bubbles away from 63, I’ve split time between doing PVP and leveling, hence the slower climb to 70. Still enjoying it though and I managed to hit 375 Herbalism and sitting pretty at 315 Alchemy. I’ve already got some of the high level plans for Alchemy that should garner me some money, hopefully enough for swift flight form.

Alright let’s get down to it. When last we spoke, I began to talk to you about the Balance Tree, today I aim to continue that conversation.

Brambles is the first talent that you’re going to see in the third row. This talent will affect the damage done to a target by both Thorns and Entangling Roots. Thorns is a self cast spell that gives out damage to anyone attacking you. I have Thorns on me all the time, its second nature to have the damage ticking off of a mob. While Nature’s Grasp is a totally wasted talent, this is one that serves two good purposes and shouldn’t go without some love.

Insect Swarm is a spell exclusive to Balance and one that is actually an instant cast spell and incredibly useful. While Farie Fire is great when you’re a melee beast or when you’re working with a group, Insect Swarm is the best when you’re soloing. Two reasons, first it does give a small chance that the target may miss when aiming for you but more importantly, it does some damage over time. So in theory, when you get this talent, you could do Entangling Roots, Moonfire, Insect Swarm and then Wrath. This would give the first spells time to work on the health of the mob while you spam Wrath.

Nature’s Reach is a gimme, you HAVE to have this talent. It increases the reach of your Balance spells. So any casting spell will basically have a longer reach. This is great for those range pulls. It gives you more time to take down a mob before it even reaches your front door. A great way to make sure that your caster loving self has enough time to bring that mob down to a manageable size before they make you caster worms.

Vengeance is the talent that you have access to if you put points into Focused Starlight (which you should have done). It’s a five point talent that increases the critical strike damage bonus of your three bread and butter spells as a caster. You drop the five points and it’s a 100% increase, which is absurdly wonderful for the Moonkin in all of us. I’ll tell you why it’s all sorts of goodness further down the tree.

Celestial Focus has two uses. The first it gives up to a 15% chance to stun a target when hit by Starfire. I know that’s not much but it’s the second thing that it does that you want to put points in here for; you can have up to a 70% chance to resist spell interruption when casting Wrath. So if you’re running around and a mob is hitting you, you can still get Wrath off and cause serious hurt to the target causing you grief.

Lunar Guidance is great. For three points you can increase your spell damage and healing by 25% of your total Intellect. As a caster you’re going to be looking for any type of gear that’s going to have intellect on it to begin with. So this is a nice bonus to reward you for making sure you have enough intellect to get a high mana pool.

Nature’s Grace. This is a one pointer that’s going to be feeding off your critical strikes as a caster. Your point will gain you an ability that will produce with each critical strike you achieve. It reduces the cast time of ANY spell by .5 seconds. That, that’s a GREAT little trick. As a Moonkin you’re going to have an aura that gives a 5% chance to crit. Your gear will be set up to give you a better chance to crit as well. Case in point Bosque currently sits just over 16% crit chance. I’ve already gotten 2k crit hits, I’m only level 62.

Moonglow is a mana reducer. It reduces the cost of just about all your spells by up to 9%. As a Balance Druid you’re ALREADY going to have issues making sure your mana pool doesn’t go dry after every fight, getting this will help making sure the pool stays somewhat steady.

::WHEW!:: Okay, I think that’s it for today. I wanted to try and crunch it all down to just two entries but you’ll have to wait for tomorrow for me to finish this bad boy out. I will say this though, aside from maybe one or two talents on this tree, I feel that all the talents on here are not only viable but essential for a Moonkin to be good at what he/she does.

So, there you go.