Balance Druid DPS Gear and Best in Slot — 12.0.5

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Balance Druid for Midnight Season 1! Check this page to learn everything you need to know to make your character as powerful as they can be!

Upgrading gear in Midnight continues to use the Crest system which lets you increase the item level of gear along tracks that relate to where you obtained the item, which harder content dropping gear that can be upgraded to higher Item Levels. For more information, read up on our dedicated page on how the gearing system works and what has changed in the Midnight expansion.

OverallMythic+Raid

This list contains the best overall items for Balance Druid using all available content. This is gear to chase towards but will not include gear that can not be reliably obtained, such as some gear from the Weekly Vault.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. Depending on your previous Great Vault choices and the gear you have available, your BiS gear might look different in some spots than the below list.

FAQHow Strong is the Tier Set?

The Balance Druid Midnight Season 1 Tier set is extremely strong for single target and even more powerful for multi-target. On single target, the 2-piece is approximately a 5% DPS and the 4-piece is approximately 11%. The 4-piece is even stronger on stacked multi-target.

FAQWhich Tier Set Pieces Do I Want?

For Midnight Season 1 as a Balance Druid, you will want to try and prioritize getting the Helmet, Shoulder, Chest, and Leg set pieces. Completing the bonus is more important than getting the perfect items so take whatever you can get. Additionally, if you have spare Catalyst charges, you can turn your cloak into Leafdrape of the Luminous Bloom which has great stats.

Balance Druid

1.1.

Overall Best in Slot

Branches of the Luminous Bloom Helm

Catalyst or Lightblinded Vanguard Empowered Hex of Leeching

Gloves of Viscous Goo Hands

Skyreach

Amulet of the Abyssal Hymn Neck

Midnight Falls

Barksash of the Luminous Bloom Waist

Catalyst

Seedpods of the Luminous Bloom Shoulders

Catalyst or Fallen-King Salhadaar Amirdrassil's Grace

Phloemwraps of the Luminous Bloom Legs

Windrunner Spire Sunfire Silk Spellthread

Rigid Scale Cloak Cloak

Skyreach

Canopy Walker's Footwraps Feet

Crown of the Cosmos Shaladrassil's Roots

Trunk of the Luminous Bloom Chest

Catalyst or Chimaerus Mark of the Worldsoul

Occlusion of Void Ring

Nexus-Point Xenas Enchant Ring - Eyes of the Eagle

Shirt

Omission of Light Ring

Nexus-Point Xenas Eyes of the Eagle

Tabard

Vaelgor's Final Stare Trinket

Vaelgor and Ezzorak

Silvermoon Agent's Deflectors Bracers

Crafted by Leatherworking

Gaze of the Alnseer Trinket

Chimaerus

Splitshroud Stinger Main Hand

Magister's Terrace Acuity of the Ren'dorei

Aln'hara Lantern Off Hand

Crafted by Inscription

This list contains the highest DPS setup with farmable gear from Midnight Season 1 Mythic+ Dungeons.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. Depending on your previous Great Vault choices and the gear you have available to yourself, your BiS gear might look different than this list in some spots.

TipsWhich Dungeons Should I Farm?

If you have limited time to play the game, we recommend to farm the following dungeons:

• Windrunner Spire: Both trinkets from Windrunner Spire are strong. There is both a passive and on-use trinket.
• Nexus-Point Xenas: Drops a pair of set rings which at high item levels are our Best in Slot rings.

Balance Druid

1.2.

Best Mythic+ Gear

Branches of the Luminous Bloom Helm

Catalyst or Lightblinded Vanguard Empowered Hex of Leeching

Gloves of Viscous Goo Hands

Skyreach

Barbed Ymirheim Choker Neck

Pit of Saron

Snapvine Cinch Waist

Windrunner Spire

Seedpods of the Luminous Bloom Shoulders

Catalyst or Fallen-King Salhadaar Amirdrassil's Grace

Phloemwraps of the Luminous Bloom Legs

Windrunner Spire Sunfire Silk Spellthread

Rigid Scale Cloak Cloak

Skyreach

Boots of Burning Focus Feet

Skyreach Shaladrassil's Roots

Trunk of the Luminous Bloom Chest

Catalyst or Chimaerus Mark of the Worldsoul

Occlusion of Void Ring

Nexus-Point Xenas Enchant Ring - Eyes of the Eagle

Shirt

Omission of Light Ring

Nexus-Point Xenas Eyes of the Eagle

Tabard

Emberwing Feather Trinket

Windrunner Spire

Silvermoon Agent's Deflectors Bracers

Crafted by Leatherworking

Soulcatcher's Charm Trinket

Maisara Caverns

Splitshroud Stinger Main Hand

Magister's Terrace Acuity of the Ren'dorei

Aln'hara Lantern Off Hand

Crafted by Inscription

This list contains the highest DPS setup, only using gear from the raids in Midnight Season 1.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. Depending on your previous Great Vault choices and the gear you have available to yourself, your BiS gear might look different than this list in some spots.

TipsWhich Raid-Items Do I Want Most?

If you need to submit a list of highly-important items to your raidleader, or simply want to focus on the most important bosses and items, we got you covered!

• Vaelgor's Final Stare: Our best on-use trinket. Drops from Vaelgor and Ezzorak which also drops our Tier pants.
• Gaze of the Alnseer: Our best raid encounter passive trinket.
• Belo'melorn, the Shattered Talon is our best weapon. It drops from Midnight Falls. It also drops several powerful double-socketed jewelry pieces.

Balance Druid

1.3.

Best Raid Gear

Branches of the Luminous Bloom Helm

Catalyst or Lightblinded Vanguard Empowered Hex of Leeching

Vaelgor's Fearsome Grasp Hands

Vaelgor and Ezzorak

Amulet of the Abyssal Hymn Neck

Midnight Falls

Barksash of the Luminous Bloom Waist

Catalyst

Seedpods of the Luminous Bloom Shoulders

Catalyst or Fallen-King Salhadaar Amirdrassil's Grace

Phloemwraps of the Luminous Bloom Legs

Windrunner Spire Sunfire Silk Spellthread

Draconic Nullcape Cloak

Vaelgor and Ezzorak

Canopy Walker's Footwraps Feet

Crown of the Cosmos Shaladrassil's Roots

Trunk of the Luminous Bloom Chest

Catalyst or Chimaerus Mark of the Worldsoul

Sin'dorei Band of Hope Ring

Belo'ren Enchant Ring - Eyes of the Eagle

Shirt

Eye of Midnight Ring

Midnight Falls Eyes of the Eagle

Tabard

Vaelgor's Final Stare Trinket

Vaelgor and Ezzorak

Silvermoon Agent's Deflectors Bracers

Crafted by Leatherworking

Gaze of the Alnseer Trinket

Chimaerus

Belo'melorn, the Shattered Talon Main Hand

Belo'ren Acuity of the Ren'dorei

Aln'hara Lantern Off Hand

Crafted by Inscription

Itemization

Enchants and Stat Priority

Looking to optimize your character? Check out our Enchant and Stat Priority guides for more information!

EnchantsStats

There are many usable trinkets for Balance Druid in Midnight Season 1. The two best overall options are Vaelgor's Final Stare for an on-use choice and Locus-Walker's Ribbon for our passive trinket option.

Aim to pick up one trinket from each of these categories as a pair:

Balance Druid Trinkets

On-Use - Vaelgor's Final Stare or, alternatively, Emberwing Feather
Passive - Gaze of the Alnseer is our primary passive trinket

There are quite a few other valuable trinkets out there, so make sure to click on our ranking chart to see if they are worth equipping.

Click for Balance Druid Trinket Rankings

Ranking	Best Balance Druid Trinkets
S Tier	Vaelgor's Final Stare Gaze of the Alnseer Locus-Walker's Ribbon
A Tier	Soulcatcher's Charm Heart of Wind Shadow of the Empyrean Requiem
B Tier	Emberwing Feather Vessel of Tortured Souls
C Tier	Eye of the Drowning Void Reality Breacher Wraps of Cosmic Madness Nevermelting Ice Crystal

Midnight's patch 12.0.5 introduces two new, yet familiar systems:

• Nebulous Voidcore can be used to acquire specific items from specific bosses or dungeons, by letting you gain a guaranteed piece of loot from a specific drop-location. Which item you will receive is random, but once an item has been acquired in this way, your next use of a Voidcore will grant one of the remaining items you haven't yet acquired.
• Ascendant Voidcore can be used to further increase the itemlevel of Hero or Myth track items if they have reached the highest possible itemlevel already, as well as Radiance-Crafted items at max quality. This will further boost their power, similar to the additional upgrade from previous Turbo Boost events. They only work on Weapons and Trinkets.

Seasonal Mechanics

Voidforge and Voidcores

Check our our guide on the Voidforge to learn how to acquire this powerful upgrades!

Go to Guide

Which item you want to chase after depends heavily on the items you have already acquired through content such as the Great Vault, or whether you expect to down certain bosses on Mythic difficulty, as you do not want to waste your Voidcores on items you may be able to get on a higher difficulty track in a few weeks.

Voidcore (Bonus Roll) Priority

1. Mythic Vaelgor's Final Stare
2. Mythic Gaze of the Alnseer
3. Replace low item level, high stat budget pieces where possible

Because a high item level crafted staff or main-hand with Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt is both strong and easy to obtain, you should not need to roll for a weapon unless most of your other gear is already max item level.

Using your Ascendant Voidcores follows a similar priority list as using your Crests:

1. Your Staff or Main-Hand weapon is the highest priority
2. Your on-use trinket
3. Your passive trinket
4. Your Offhand if you use one

You will also want to prioritize Myth track items over Hero track ones, unless you do not expect to get a Myth track variant of said item. I.e. it is fine to upgrade a Hero track Vaelgor's Final Stare if you do not expect to kill Vaelgor and Ezzorak on Mythic anytime soon.

Crafting items is entirely determined on both when and what you need at any given time. If you have a max item level Staff, you should definitely not craft a staff. If you have high item level boots and low item level bracers, it would be best to craft your bracers. With that in mind, here are some of the better craftable options for Balance Druid:

• Early on, crafting an Aln'hara Cane can be a huge DPS boost for those without a weapon and for new characters.
• Aln'hara Lantern is an off-hand which can use weapon embellishments. Great for when you have a main-hand but cant find a suitable off-hand to pair with it.
• Low stat budget pieces such as Cloak and Wrists and mid level stat budget pieces such as Belt and Boots are good options to put embellishments on as they do not share slots with tier and since they will be crafted at a lower item level, do not affect you as negatively as losing 4 item levels on a high stat budget piece such as a Chest piece.

In our overall Best in Slot list, we recommend crafting on Gloves and Boots for our embellishments as it is difficult to find high item level pieces with good secondary stats on them. There may be worse items to replace especially early on but in our end-game, max item level setup, we prefer using these slots.

For more information about crafting gear you can visit our Professions page.

Embellishments all provide approximately .5% to 1% DPS increase. There are two good setups for embellishments depending on what slots you are looking to fill first. The two different setups are crafting weapons or crafting low budget, filler pieces.

Early on, crafting an Aln'hara Cane paired with Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt can be an easily obtainable DPS boost. Most bosses in the raid provide Haste and Mastery which are good secondary stats for Balance Druid.

If you have a high item level weapon, crafting two low stat budget pieces with Arcanoweave Lining is the overall best Embellishment you can have. It provides consistent primary stat to you and an ally. This sims as the best Embellishment without even considering the group DPS increase.

As always, it is recommended to sim yourself to see what would be best with your gear situation.

You can add sockets to Helmets, Belts, and Bracers with the Radiant Jewelbinder consumable that you can get if you do not select any of the choices in your Great Vault. Not picking a choice will grant you tokens, six of which can be traded in for the Radiant Jewelbinder item that allows you to add a socket to the above piece of gear, if you acquired them in Season 1.

Early into the season, or if you have just started playing an alt, you will have limited access to upgrading-crests such as Myth Dawncrest. These can be used to upgrade gear to higher itemlevels. Since crests are limited each week and upgrading different items costs the same amount of crests regardless, you will want to prioritize your usage of them on items you plan on not replacing anytime soon, or that offer the biggest benefits.

1. Weapon and Trinkets often provide the best value for each item level
2. Helm, Chest, and Legs have the highest stat bonuses
3. Shoulders, Boots, Gloves, and Belt have medium stat bonuses
4. Cloak and Bracers have the lowest stat bonuses
5. Jewelry is the lowest priority as it does not have primary stats

As always, it is recommended to sim yourself to see what would be best with your gear situation.

Throughout this page and elsewhere in our guide, we regularly refer to the importance of simming yourself on Raidbots. This is because every character is unique, and each gear piece you have access to can change what is best right now for you.

While we do offer recommendations for gear and trinkets, these are not complete replacements for simming yourself. The only way to truly optimize your character to that degree is by making use of the tools available!

Optimization

Simulations and Tools

For further reading on how to truly maximize your character's potential, check out our guide on Raidbots!

Go to Guide

Bora

Guide Author

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This was written by Borabank, a Balance Druid theorycrafter and raider in Country Club. You can watch him on his Twitch channel or find him in the Dreamgrove Discord server.