So, I used my Shadowlands boost on a fresh balance druid. I played balance when it used the old Eclipse mechanic, when it had the cute little lunar / solar bar under your health and mana.
I’ve seen a lot of complaints about it… and I don’t really understand why. Maybe it’s because I’m new and unexperienced with the class, but I really enjoy it. I don’t think it’s clunky at all.
Anyways, I have a few questions and I hope you all will indulge my questions, I really need all the help I can get!
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What do I do if I’m fighting a single target while leveling and I’m on my Lunar Eclipse / have to cast the two Starfalls? Is it worth using that eclipse or should I stick to wrath for the faster cast times?
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When should I pop Celestial Alignment?
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What’s my primary interrupt? I have so many knockbacks, it’s hard to know which one to use.
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How do I kite effectively as Balance?
Its hard to complain about something when thats all you know. People expected a balance druid rework that was a little bit better but instead we just got no new abilities no new stuff just a old system we use to have back in the day.
- most of the time its worth using eclipse damage wise at higher levels (get a addon to test it out for lower levels) regardless of aoe.
- CA is our Big cooldown so pop it when you need more damage, bosses, large mob pulls etc.
3.solar beam, typhoon
- excluding talents, you use typhoon to push back slow and daze enemies while you apply dots and starfall. With talents use mass entanglement,wild charge, ursols vortex, or incapacitating roar to create distance. Swap in and out of cat form when using dash or swap in and out of travel form for speed increase (should outrun most mobs).
Main complaints usually come from a lack of sleep understanding how to properly optimize the system. Their brains are wired to: use AoE abilities in AoE and they don’t like having to use single target spells in those situations.
But the Eclipse system has that taken into consideration with how they buff the proper spells with their correlating Eclipse.
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Kill it with Starsurges 
- but I’m going to say, stick to your eclipses empowered abilities, just so you get in the habit of it.
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Whenever you need/wanna do a lot of damage 
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And main interrupt? Like as in to stop someone from casting a spell? That would be Solar Beam 
but also take in what Tlachi said
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Tlachi also summed this one up pretty good. But for basics and starters, try getting used to using Typhoon/Wild Charge (in moonkin form) + (mass)Entangling Roots. Puts distance between you and them, and stops their pursuit. Gives you a few seconds to get your bearings and make a game plan!
I find it quite nice myself as someone who has seen all iterations of boomy. As to your questions…
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Always stick to the eclipse. An empowered starfire is not much slower than an non-empowered wrath. Also when using Soul of the Forest (which I’d highly recommend for anything but pure long ST fights) it’s even more valuable to stick to it. The extra splash dmg on starfire for ST may not alleviate much (the extra damage, crit chance, and reduced cast time far make up for it by themselves) but the extra AP generation from wrath on aoe helps not feel like you’re doing something wrong. Either way, stick to the eclipses always. With higher mastery this is even more important.
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When you want more damage essentially. Bosses. Large packs of mobs, etc. It’s good idea to stack other buffs with it as we like potions or blood lust or that stuff. Another use of it is eclipse manipulation. Say you’re starting a boss and enter solar eclipse since you have a choice. You do solar, then when it’s about to run out, pop CA to be able to continue using solar. Then when it expires, you can choose again and start another solar. Conversely this also works with lunar obviously.
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Primary? I’d say typhoon if movement will interrupt it. It’s a baseline short cd knock back that also dazes. Solar beam is a 1 min AoE silence/interrupt. It’s better used on multiple people or targets farther away. You may also use bash if talented to stun them, incap roar if talented as an aoe disorient, warstomp if Tauren, etc. Overall I’d say Typhoon for most cases.
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Kiting is fairly easy as a boomy. You have many tools available, many of which were previously just mentioned.
–Typhoon is baseline and great for creating distance. It’ll knock enemies back and daze them so they can’t approach very quickly.
–Wild Charge if talented is a nice distance creator that you can pair with typhoon for a lot of distance between you and others.
–Rooting is always effective (mass entangle if talented) at keeping enemies away.
–Ursol’s Vortex if talented is a nice slow that’ll keep enemies at bay for a while. Conversely Incap Roar can “pause” enemies for a bit.
–Bash if talented just to stun so you may run away with any plethora of movement cds.
–Dash and stamp roar are both strong movement abilities that let you run even from un-snared enemies.
–Can take stellar drift to be able to cast on the move while starfall is active. Useful to pair stamp roar with this to move very quickly as that carries into any form unlike dash.
–Force of nature will tank adds for you on a fairly short cd and do good damage (of course not applicable to pvp).