Everything you need to know about Balance druid PvP mechanics in Forever

If you’ve rolled a Balance druid for Forever and you’ve watched a good one kite a Warrior around a flag room without ever seeming to stop casting, you’ve probably wondered which of the dozen things they were doing actually mattered, and what order you should learn them in. This guide is my answer to that. It takes the movement, casting and shapeshifting skills a Balance druid lives on in PvP, ranks them from the ones you need on day one to the ones that only matter in a particular matchup, and gives each the same treatment - what it is, why it matters, how to execute it, when to use it and when to leave it alone, a drill to practise it with, and the sign that you’ve actually got it.

Whilst I’ve spent years on druids across both factions and learnt most of these the slow way, I’ll keep the caveat that sits on everything I’m writing at the moment - Forever launches on the 4th of November, nobody has fought at level 60 on it yet, and that includes me. So every mechanic below carries a label saying how sure I am of it on the Forever client, the ones I couldn’t pin down are collected at the end with how I intend to test them, and none of it is presented as something I’ve already done in a Forever battleground, because I haven’t.

Before we start

This guide assumes a few things, and none of them are a reason you can’t read it. It assumes you’re playing something like the Balance and Restoration hybrid I wrote up in the datamine post, with no points in Feral, which matters because a couple of the tools other druids lean on (Feral Charge, a Bash with rage waiting behind it) aren’t ours. If your tree leans Feral, most of this still transfers and I’ll say so where it doesn’t. It also assumes you have Nature’s Grasp and Omen of Clarity from the trainer, which everyone does in Forever, and that you’re willing to change a keybind or two, because the first tier is mostly keybinds. Classic has no training dummies, so where a drill below says “a standing target” it means a friend who has agreed to stand still in a duel and do nothing, or failing that a grey-level mob you’ve tagged with Faerie Fire, which does no damage and keeps it standing there.

Every mechanic below is labelled, and the label is doing real work, so here is what each one means:

• Confirmed in the Classic rules Forever is built on and in Forever’s own notes or beta testing.
• Probable confirmed for Classic, no sign Forever changed it, not yet seen on the Forever client.
• Unverified widely repeated, nothing solid behind it, and it goes in the test list at the end.
• Obsolete true once, and Forever has removed or redesigned it.

Notably, the list of techniques I started from was a community list rather than scripture, and challenging it changed the guide. Powershifting for energy is gone from Forever, bear weaving was removed on purpose, the hunter dead zone is narrower than the folklore says once two people are moving, and a few things I’d have called basics (walking behind a caster to break their cast, for one) turned out to be arguments on a forum rather than mechanics. Those corrections are in the text where they belong rather than hidden.

Credit where it’s due, because very little of this is mine. The jump-turn drill is lifted almost whole from BigRedKitty’s jump shot column, which taught a generation of hunters to do it and transfers to a druid unchanged. The juking drill follows the WoW Insider arena skills piece. The dead zone numbers come from the author of the Forever DeadZone addon, who measured them on the beta client rather than remembering them. Fouren’s Forever Balance overview at wow.gg and Warcraft Tavern’s Forever druid coverage did the datamine reading I cross-checked against, and the Warcraft Wiki editors keep the patch history that settles most of the arguments.

The rules underneath

Every skill in this guide exploits a rule in the game engine, so it’s worth knowing the rules first, because once you know them you can invent the tricks yourself rather than memorising mine. Essentially, a Balance druid’s PvP game is built on eight of them, and here they are with the label each one earned.

Facing Confirmed. A harmful spell needs its target inside your front arc at the moment you press the key, and a cast with a cast time needs it there at the end as well. An instant only ever checks once, which is the whole basis of the jump-turn. The arc is wide (think of a cone in front of you rather than a narrow line) which is why a part-turn is enough. The one exception worth knowing is Entangling Roots, which lost its facing requirement in patch 1.1 and in Classic can be cast on someone behind you Probable, so if a melee is on your back you don’t need to turn to root them, you need to stand still for a second and a half.

Movement Confirmed. Moving cancels a cast with a cast time, and jumping counts as moving. Turning, with the mouse or the keyboard, does not. An instant can be used mid-air. Your base run speed is 7 yards a second, backpedalling is 4.5, and strafing is the full 7, which is the single most important number in this guide. Travel Form adds 40%, Dash adds 50% at its first rank and a little more at its second, for 15 seconds on a five-minute cooldown, and Forever has given Tauren Plainsrunning, which builds a percent of speed every five seconds you keep running, up to 30%, and loses stacks when you stop or get hit Confirmed. Whether Plainsrunning keeps building inside Cat or Travel Form is one for the test list.

Reach Confirmed. Melee range is 5 yards, and when both of you are moving the game adds 2.66 yards of leeway to it, which Blizzard lists as original behaviour rather than a bug. A Tauren’s larger body adds a little more, in both directions. A hunter’s ranged attacks need 8 yards, Charge, Intercept and Feral Charge all need 8 and reach 25, and your own casts and Roots reach 30, further with Nature’s Reach. Those four numbers - 5, 8, 25, 30 - are the ones to learn by eye.

Pushback Confirmed. Every hit you take whilst casting pushes the cast back, and in this era that isn’t capped at two hits the way it was from Wrath onwards, so a fast melee or a hunter pet on you can turn a two-second Starfire into something that never finishes. The exact amount per hit on the Forever client is on the test list Unverified, the fact that it keeps going is not. Damage over time doesn’t push you back, fully absorbed damage doesn’t either, Nature’s Focus gives you a chance to ignore it, and Barkskin stops it entirely (in Classic at the price of a slower cast, and whether Forever kept that penalty is on the test list).

Interrupts Confirmed. An interrupt that lands on a cast in progress locks the school of that spell, and only that school. Kick locks for 5 seconds on a 10 second cooldown, Pummel 4 on 10, Shield Bash 6 on 12, Counterspell 10 on 30, Earth Shock 2 on 6, Feral Charge 4 on 15 and a Felhunter’s Spell Lock 8 on 30 with a short silence attached. An interrupt that lands on nothing locks nothing and still goes on cooldown. For us the schools are Nature (Wrath, Roots, Hurricane and every heal) and Arcane (Moonfire, Starfire), and keeping that split in your head is an entire Advanced skill.

Shapeshifting Confirmed. Shifting into a form removes roots, snares and Polymorph, and whilst you’re in one you can’t be sheeped at all. It does nothing for stuns, fears, Daze or Hibernate. Entering a form costs mana and a global cooldown, leaving one costs neither, and because the shift spends mana it restarts your five-second rule (the five seconds after any mana spend in which Spirit regeneration stops). In Forever, Barkskin, Nature’s Grasp, Faerie Fire, War Stomp and nearly every potion work from inside a form, and the old powershift for free energy is gone Obsolete, which for a Balance druid changes nothing you’d miss.

Roots Confirmed. Entangling Roots is a 30 yard, 1.5 second cast that holds a player in place and breaks when they take enough damage. In Forever it works indoors, which is new and matters most in world PvP (battlegrounds already counted almost everywhere as outdoors), and you can only hold one target at a time unless you spend a talent point on a second (Overgrowth, as of the datamine), because a fresh Roots on a second target releases the first. Nature’s Grasp is baseline, castable from any form, and gives the next melee hit on you a chance to root the attacker (35% a hit at the Classic ranks, and I’ll read the Forever tooltip on launch). Roots share diminishing returns with Frost Nova and friends - full, then half, then a quarter, then immune, resetting after 15 to 20 seconds without a root on them.

Spells on the move Confirmed. Moonfire and Insect Swarm are instant and usable whilst moving, Faerie Fire is instant from any form in Forever, Nature’s Grasp is instant, and every shift is instant. Wrath, Starfire, Roots and your heals are not. That split, instants whilst moving and casts whilst stood still, is the rhythm the whole Foundation tier teaches.

Foundation

These five are the habits everything else stands on, and in my opinion, and it is an opinion, a druid who has only these five and nothing from the later tiers will beat a druid who has the jump-turn and the fake cast but backpedals. The later skills are each a Foundation habit with a twist on top, so if a trick from tier two keeps failing you, the fix is usually back here.

Intermediate

Tier two is the set of tricks people notice, and each one is a Foundation habit with something bolted on. The jump-turn is strafing plus the front arc plus an instant. Corners are range discipline with a wall in the way. The fake cast is a Wrath you decided not to finish. If any of them keep going wrong, look at the habit underneath before you look at the trick.

Advanced

Tier three is less about your hands and more about reading the other player and the state of the fight. None of these four need faster reflexes than the Intermediate tier, they need you to be counting things whilst you do everything else, which is why I’d leave them until the first ten skills are automatic. A druid still thinking about which key is Travel Form has no attention spare for which school a Rogue just locked.

Specialist

These three are matchup and objective play, and I’ve put them last because they only pay off once everything above is automatic, and because the first of them is the one the community list got most wrong. A newer player who starts here will learn a hunter trick that works a third of the time and never learn to strafe.

Five fights

Skills on their own are a list, and nobody fights a list. So here are five fights a Balance druid will have in the first week of Forever, with the skills above combined into a sequence, and the place each one usually goes wrong. The sequences are plans rather than scripts, because the other player gets a say, and the decision tree below is the version I keep in my head for the first three seconds of any of them.

A Warrior closes the gap

Opponent   Arms Warrior, Mortal Strike and Intercept up
Map        Arathi Basin, open ground between Blacksmith and the Farm road
Their plan Charge or Intercept, Hamstring, Pummel the heal, win the health race
Your goal  Keep them outside 8 until their cooldowns are gone, then win on mana

Hold 26 to 30 yards whilst he’s out of combat, because Charge stops at 25 and a Warrior who has to run is a Warrior who has to run through a root. When he commits and starts running, that’s your Roots cast, started at 25 and landing at about 15, and the moment it lands you walk, calmly, to 30. Moonfire and Insect Swarm go on lightly, two Wraths, and a Starfire if the root is still holding, which with light dots it should be. He’ll trinket the root or wait it out, and either way the next thing he does is Intercept, which is a three-second stun you can’t shift out of, so don’t try.

• Hold 30
• Roots as he runs
• Walk to 30
• Dots, lightly
• Wrath, Wrath
• Starfire
• Intercept lands
• Bear, Barkskin
• Grasp roots him
• Cancel form
• Re-root or Starfire

When the stun ends you’re in melee with a Warrior in Berserker Stance, which means Pummel is available and Hamstring is coming. Bear with Barkskin inside it, Nature’s Grasp armed before he arrived so his first swing has a chance to root him, and if it does, cancel the form (free), walk out, and decide between a Starfire and the half-length second root. If Grasp doesn’t fire, War Stomp buys two seconds straight away, Bash buys more once his hits have given you the rage, and the potion works from inside the form. The fight is won by the druid who still has mana at ninety seconds, so count shifts, take the mana potion behind the Blacksmith wall, and never backpedal, because a Hamstrung druid walking backwards is a Warrior’s favourite thing in the game.

Where it goes wrong is almost always the root. Either you cast it at 20 and stood there, so the second Wrath broke it with him two steps away, or you shifted during the Intercept stun and spent a global and the mana on nothing, or you re-rooted into the quarter-length third root and were surprised when it lasted three seconds. If he’s a good Warrior and he trinkets the first root, remember the trinket is now gone for a long time, and the stun-then-Roots sequence at the end of the Specialist tier is the one that finishes the duel.

A Mage at range

Opponent   Frost Mage, Counterspell and Blink up, Polymorph ready
Map        Warsong Gulch, the ramp and hut on your side of midfield
Their plan Nova, Frostbolt, sheep the heal, Counterspell the Starfire, kite with Blink
Your goal  Fight at a corner, stay in a form, spend their Counterspell on a cast you didn’t need

Casters are the matchup where the Foundation tier matters least and the corner matters most. Pick the hut before the fight and fight within three steps of it. Stay in Moonkin, because a form can’t be sheeped and a Balance druid who shifts to caster form to heal has just handed a Mage a long window with a sheep in it. When their cast bar starts, step behind the hut and it fails. When yours starts, you’re the one out in the open for a second and a half, which is the trade. A Frost Nova is a Travel shift, and because Nova is only ten yards wide they’ll have Blinked away before you’re out of it, so don’t chase the Blink with your legs, chase it with a Moonfire and let them come back to you.

• Pick the corner
• Moonkin, dots up
• Starfire as bait
• Counterspell lands
• Roots, Nature is open
• Wrath, Wrath, Wrath
• Nova, Travel shift
• Moonfire the Blink
• Starfire when they return

Counterspell is the fight. It’s off the global, it lands from 30 yards and it locks a school for ten seconds on a 30 second cooldown, so the plan is to spend it on a Starfire you didn’t need, take the Arcane lock, and use the 30 seconds that follow to root and Wrath without fear of interruption, since Roots and Wrath are Nature. Insect Swarm is worth more here than its damage suggests, because the hit reduction applies to every Frostbolt. If they go for the sheep whilst you’re in Moonkin it doesn’t land, and if you have to leave the form to heal, do it behind the hut where the sheep can’t be cast either.

Where it goes wrong is the open ground. A Balance druid in midfield against a Mage is in a casting race against someone with a cheaper, faster cast and an escape, and the only thing that changes the maths is terrain. The other failure is chaining roots into diminishing returns on a target who was never going to stand there anyway, because a rooted Mage with Frostbolt is a rooted Hunter, happy to be stood still.

A Hunter

Opponent   Marksmanship Hunter with a cat, Scatter Shot and a trap ready
Map        Arathi Basin, Lumber Mill, the ramp down to the river
Their plan Open at 35, Wing Clip if you close, trap you if you stand still, Viper Sting your mana
Your goal  Take away the one thing a Hunter needs, which is the right distance

The fight is decided by who sets the range. If you see them at 30 before they see you, Roots first and everything else second. Then walk in to about 6 yards whilst the root holds, which is the only moment the dead zone is a place rather than a theory, because a rooted Hunter can’t step back to 8 or forward to 5. Hibernate the pet, which works on beasts and lasts long enough to matter, Insect Swarm and a light Moonfire on the Hunter, and Wrath from inside the band. They’ll Scatter Shot you, which is four seconds you spend disoriented and a cooldown they’ve spent, and they can drop a trap at their own feet, so stay a step off them.

• Roots at 30
• Walk in to 6
• Hibernate the pet
• Insect Swarm
• Wrath, Wrath
• Scatter Shot
• Root breaks
• Bear at their feet
• Barkskin, Grasp
• Bash, walk through
• Re-root into the half

When the root breaks you have two good places and one bad one. Bear at their feet is good, because you’re inside 5 and the only thing hitting you is a sleeping cat. Thirty yards with line of sight broken is good, because a Hunter with no line to you is a Hunter doing nothing. The bad place is 20 yards in the open, stood still, which is where Viper Sting and Aimed Shot live. The October Forever notes add a half-second standing rule before an Auto Shot fires, which rewards you for keeping them moving.

Where it goes wrong is the folklore. Dancing at 6 yards against a Hunter who is also moving puts you inside a melee reach that leeway has stretched to nearly 8, and the Wing Clip that follows is a free one. The other failure is the jump-turn, which is the most predictable moment in your kite and exactly when a good Hunter times the Scatter Shot, so against Hunters, turn less and strafe more.

Holding Blacksmith alone

Opponents  A Rogue and a Priest, incoming from the Farm
Map        Arathi Basin, Blacksmith, the building and the flag
Their plan Sap or stun the defender, cap the flag, hold it until help comes
Your goal  Delay, not kill. A flag that never ticks is a win even if you die on it

Call it the moment you see them, with a number, because “2 inc BS” typed early is worth more than any spell you own. Then fight on the flag and not near it. The capture is a channel that any damage breaks, so a Moonfire ticking on whoever touches it is a cap that never completes, and Hurricane (which the Forever notes say has lost its cooldown, a Probable I’ll check on launch) channelled over the flag is a wider version of the same idea, although every hit you take shortens the channel in this era, so cast it when they go for the flag rather than for you. Faerie Fire goes on the Rogue the moment you see him, because a Rogue who can’t re-stealth is a Rogue who has to fight you in the open, and Nature’s Grasp goes up before the opener you know is coming.

• Call it, with a number
• Grasp up, Faerie Fire the Rogue
• Opener lands
• Trinket only if it lets them cap
• Bear, Bash, Barkskin
• Roots the Rogue, corner the Priest
• Moonfire anyone on the flag
• Hurricane when they cap
• Repeat until help arrives

Root the Rogue, with Faerie Fire still on him so a Vanish doesn’t free him, and corner the Priest, in that order, because the Priest can’t cap whilst Moonfire is on him and the Rogue is the one who kills you. The building is your wall and the flag is the thing you never step more than ten yards from, which means you’ll give up a lot of good positions to stay close, and that’s correct. A Priest will fear you, and shifting does nothing for a fear, so the trinket question is simple - does the fear let them cap? If yes, trinket. If no, let it run. Hold for 30 seconds and the base is usually saved, hold for a minute and it certainly is.

Where it goes wrong is the chase. The Rogue steps off the flag, you follow him for the kill, and the Priest starts the cap behind you. The other failure is Travel Form, which is the right answer to every snare in the guide and the wrong answer here, because a druid who runs has left the flag. Die on it if you have to. The tally screen doesn’t count bases held, but your team does.

Running the flag out of the tunnel

Opponents  A Warrior and a Mage, arriving as you pick up
Map        Warsong Gulch, Alliance flag room, tunnel, midfield, your ramp
Their plan Hamstring and Nova in the tunnel, Intercept in midfield, Counterspell the Roots at the ramp
Your goal  Cross the map with the flag and more than half your mana

Nature’s Grasp goes up before you touch the flag, not after, and the pick-up itself is the only moment you’re stood still. Then Travel Form the instant you’re moving (Warsong counts as outdoors almost everywhere, flag room included, as far as I can tell, and the test list has the exact spots) and run the route the team called. A Hamstring in the tunnel is a Travel re-shift, a Nova is another, and each one costs mana you were going to need, which is why the mana you arrive with decides whether you cap. The Warrior’s Intercept is the one thing on the route you can’t shift out of, so the moment it lands you Barkskin from inside the form and wait the three seconds out, and the Mage’s sheep can’t touch you whilst you’re in Travel.

• Grasp before pickup
• Travel Form
• Tunnel, full speed
• Hamstring, re-shift
• Nova, re-shift
• Midfield
• Intercept stun
• Barkskin, wait
• Roots the Warrior at the ramp
• Travel, cap

Twice on a good run you’ll need to stop, and the rule for the stop is the same as for every fight above - do it at a corner, root the fastest thing chasing you, and go again. At the bottom of your ramp the Warrior is usually the one still with you, and a Roots there, with Grasp having already taken one of his earlier attempts, is the cast that ends the run. Leaving the form is free, so the sequence is cancel, Roots, Travel, which is one shift’s mana rather than two. If you have to drop below half mana to get there, you’ve done it right. If you arrive empty, you got lucky.

Where it goes wrong is the early run. A druid who picks up with the enemy carrier alive and their team in midfield is running into five people, and no amount of shifting fixes five people. The other failure is the healer who runs, because the team now has no healer and a carrier who can’t heal themselves in Travel Form. If you’re the only healer, leave the flag for a Warrior to pick up and heal him across.

Drills and the checklist

Every skill above came with a drill, and here is how I’d put them together into a week, because a drill you do once is a thing you read about. Twenty minutes a day, in this order: five minutes of Foundation on a standing target or in a city (strafing laps, the front arc circle, instants on the move), ten minutes of whichever Intermediate skill is newest, and two duels with a single rule attached, such as “I may root three times” or “I say the form before I press it”. One tier a week is a reasonable pace, and the Specialist tier is for the month after that. If you want to know whether it’s working, the mastery indicators are the test, and they’re deliberately things another player would notice rather than things you’d feel.

So before you queue, ask yourself the questions this guide is really about. Are your strafe keys where your fingers rest, and is S gone? Can you say which school a kick would lock before you cast? Do you know where 25 yards is from the way your bar lights up? When the last duel went wrong, was it a trick that failed or a habit underneath it? If the answers point at the habits, start at tier one again, and no shame in it, because every later tier is built on those habits.

Still to test

Everything marked Unverified or Probable above is on this list, with how I intend to settle it once the servers are up, because a guide that says “confirmed” about things nobody has tested is the thing I’m trying not to write. I’ll edit this post as each one is settled, and say so at the top when I do.

• Pushback per hit, stand in front of a friend’s Warrior with a stopwatch and cast Starfire, and count how much each swing adds. The two-hit cap is Wrath’s, not ours, and the exact Forever number decides how bad hard-casting in melee really is.
• Roots behind you, have someone stand directly behind me and cast Roots without turning. The 1.1 note says it works, nobody I trust has checked it on this client.
• Roots indoors and where indoors is, cast it in the Ragefire Chasm tunnel, the Blackrock Mountain interior, the Orgrimmar bank, and every battleground building I can find, and write down which refuse. My working assumption that Warsong and Arathi count as outdoors nearly everywhere needs checking spot by spot.
• Nature’s Grasp and diminishing returns, let a friend eat a Grasp root and then cast Roots on them, and see whether the second is half length. The Wrath table says it will be, and the Wrath table isn’t Forever.
• The Forever trinket, read the Rank 2 tooltip the day someone earns one, and find out whether it removes roots for every class.
• Barkskin’s cast penalty, read the tooltip. The Forever guides say the slower cast is gone, and if so Barkskin becomes a casting tool as well as a defensive one.
• Plainsrunning in forms, run 150 seconds in Travel Form and then in caster form and compare, then take a hit in each and see how many stacks go.
• Bash, War Stomp and the stun category, Bash a friend, Stomp them as it ends, and time the second stun.
• Shift costs at 60, read every form’s tooltip with and without Natural Shapeshifter and replace my rough 350 with the real number.
• The facing cone, BigRedKitty’s 60 degrees a side is a 2007 measurement, and the Forever client may differ. Strafe a circle around a dummy and find the angle at which Moonfire refuses.
• Hunter traps in combat, how long a Freezing Trap holds a druid in Bear, and whether Forever’s Scare Beast still works in Travel Form.

All of this to say, the skills are learnable, the order matters more than the tricks, and the honest version of a mechanics guide written three days before launch is one that tells you which of its claims it has checked. If you drill the Foundation tier until it’s boring, add one Intermediate skill a week, and treat the rest as things to try once the first ten are automatic, then I wish you every success in the first fortnight of Forever, and I’d expect the Warriors on your server to stop enjoying the sight of you fairly quickly.

I’ll be running every drill in here on the stream from launch day, badly at first like everyone, and correcting this post in print as the test list gets shorter. You’ll find me live most weekdays from midday AEST, the build it all hangs off is in the Restokin approach, and the datamine that moved some of these talents is in the datamined changes.

Contributing to this guide

If you’ve tested something on the list above, or you can show me a mechanic here that’s wrong on the live client, I want to hear it, and I’ll credit you by name when I correct the post. The easiest way is to tell me on the stream, and the way that doesn’t get lost is to open an issue on the Restokins GitHub, with a clip if you have one. A clip beats an argument every time.