Shadowlands: Balance Druid

The Shadowlands version of the Balance Druid is both very fun and incredibly powerful. As more people are giving the spec a try, many have asked questions about how to play one. In this guide, I’ll give an overview of how the class is played, what tools they have at their disposal, and teach you how to make your laser-chicken go BOOM!

This is not really a return to me actually blogging about WoW, but since I’ve been asked to write guides on how to play this spec in particular, I decided I might as well put it on the blog instead of just writing it up in Discord. 

Side Note: I threw this together in a few hours, because a couple of guildies had asked about it. I haven’t bothered proof-reading it, and I didn’t do much in the way of research to make sure I had all of my numbers right, so there may be a few minor mistakes of that variety floating around. 

 

Warrior Heirlooms

Welcome to the Warrior Heirlooms Guide for Legion. This post will cover all three of the Warrior specs, including the optimal enchants. Please keep in mind that heirlooms are designed for leveling, and the choices of which pieces of gear to use as well as which enchants are designed towards leveling rather than raiding. In many cases the choices are the same, but if something seems odd then I’ve likely chosen it for a reason. Feel free to ask if you’re confused or care to offer other comments or suggestions. In the long run, as long as you’re wearing heirlooms with the right primary stats on it, it doesn’t necessarily matter which ones you choose.

Arms (DPS)

Slot	Item Name	Enchant
Helm	Polished Helm of Valor	N/A
Neck	Eternal Emburfury Talisman	Gift of Critical Strike*
Cloak	Worn Stoneskin Gargoyle Cloak	Gift of Critical Strike*
Shoulder	Polished Spaulders of Valor	Greater Tiger Fang Inscription
Chest	Polished Breastplate of Valor	Peerless Stats
Legs	Polished Legplates of Valor	Angerhide Leg Armor
Ring 1	Captain Sander’s Returned Band	Gift of Critical Strike*
Ring 2	Dread Pirate Ring	Gift of Critical Strike*
Main Hand	Bloodied Arcanite Reaper	Crusader
Off Hand	None	None
Trinket 1	Swift Hand of Justice	N/A
Trinket 2	Swift Hand of Justice	N/A

If you don’t have access to the enchants mentioned above, you may choose others. Your stat priorities are as follows (from Icy-Veins.com):

Strength > Crit > Mastery > Multistrike > Haste > Versatility

Fury (DPS)

Slot	Item Name	Enchant
Helm	Polished Helm of Valor	N/A
Neck	Eternal Emburfury Talisman	Gift of Haste*
Cloak	Worn Stoneskin Gargoyle Cloak	Gift of Haste*
Shoulder	Polished Spaulders of Valor	Greater Tiger Fang Inscription
Chest	Polished Breastplate of Valor	Peerless Stats
Legs	Polished Legplates of Valor	Angerhide Leg Armor
Ring 1	Captain Sander’s Returned Band	Gift of Haste*
Ring 2	Dread Pirate Ring	Gift of Haste*
Main Hand	Bloodied Arcanite Reaper	Crusader
Off Hand	Bloodied Arcanite Reaper	Elemental Force
Trinket 1	Swift Hand of Justice	N/A
Trinket 2	Swift Hand of Justice	N/A

If you don’t have access to the enchants mentioned above, you may choose others. Your stat priorities are as follows (from Icy-Veins.com):

Strength > Haste > Crit > Mastery > Haste > Multistrike > Versatility

Protection (Tank)

Slot	Item Name	Enchant
Helm	Burnished Helm of Might	N/A
Neck	Eternal Talisman of Evasion	Gift of Critical Strike*
Cloak	Ripped Sandstorm Cloak	Gift of Critical Strike*
Shoulder	Burnished Pauldrons of Might	Greater Tiger Fang Inscription
Chest	Burnished Breastplate of Might	Peerless Stats
Legs	Burnished Legplates of Might	Angerhide Leg Armor
Ring 1	Captain Sander’s Returned Band	Gift of Critical Strike*
Ring 2	Dread Pirate Ring	Gift of Critical Strike*
Main Hand	Bloodsoaked Skullforge Reaver	Crusader
Off Hand	Flamescarred Draconian Deflector	Vitality
Trinket 1	Swift Hand of Justice	N/A
Trinket 2	Swift Hand of Justice	N/A

If you don’t have access to the enchants mentioned above, you may choose others. Also, while Mastery is higher on your stat priority list than Crit, you don’t actually benefit from Mastery until level 80, which is why I suggest Crit enchants on ring, neck, and back rather than Mastery. If you want to switch the enchants out at level 80+ feel free to do so, but I personally reuse my heirlooms because I level an army of alts as well, so I prefer to get the most bang for my buck by benefiting for as many levels as possible rather than getting maximum effect for only 10-20 levels and nothing for the previous 60-80.

Your stat priorities are as follows (from Icy-Veins.com):

Strength > Bonus Armor > Mastery > Crit = Versatility > Haste > Multistrike

 

Where I’m Gaming Right Now

I took a look today out of curiosity to see just how little I’ve been on this blog this year. I knew it was low because of my inactivity as well as my jumping around from one game to another so much this year, but I wasn’t expecting to see just 2 posts for the entire year. I wrote one leveling guide which I never finished, even though I have both of the follow-up posts mostly written, and one post about changes to WoW heirlooms that are either on their way or have already gone live (I don’t know honestly, because I haven’t been playing or paying attention).

Today I figured I might as well write a quick post about what’s been going on in my gaming world and give you a bit of a heads up on where this blog might be going in the near future (if anywhere).

 

5.4 Enchanting Change

Alright, first I’m gonna show it to you here in case you haven’t seen the patch notes for 5.4 (full link here).

So this is going to blow the doors wide open on enchanting your gear, allowing any enchant to be cast on any item so long as it’s the appropriate type of item (you can’t enchant your chest with a weapon enchant and such, but all weapon enchants are available to all weapons unless there’s a two-handed requirement etc).

Since heirlooms are something that I place a high amount of focus on, even when I’m not actively playing the game like right now, this is a big deal that I do want to be able to cover everyone. That being said, until we’re able to do some testing on these changes it’s not going to be clear which enchants are the best for which items. So up until 5.4 goes live, consider my current Guide to Heirlooms to be correct on all fronts, but once 5.4 is out don’t believe the old guide in terms of enchanting until I’ve updated it with the results of testing.

 

2012 in review

I’m not usually big on letting my blog post things for me, but what the heck. Figured I might as well share this with you.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 690,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 13 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

Click here to see the complete report.