I’d like to hear advices from experienced balance druids regarding leveling and other tips. What difficulties and advantages? I’m going to level up in balance (healing in instances). Is there profit from owls in general? Do i need moonkin form? 
Shouldn’t be many difficulties. Balance druids are widely regarded as one of the best leveling classes, due to reasonable defense, fast and versatile healing, and quick movement speed.
You don’t see many moonkin druids in classic because they are extremely advanced spec to play, but once you get the hang of it, they are one of the strongest DPS classes in the game, just behind fire mages.
I suppose, the biggest disadvantage is that there is not as much challenge to the game, and you may get a bit bored because it’s too easy to kill things and you are too powerful. But you can get around this by heading into slightly higher level zones.
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you must be raiding with SL-imp mana drain warlocks.
First of all, ignore the troll before me.
For leveling, Balance is slower than Feral. The advantage if you want to heal in dungeons is you’ll be able to share most gear pieces between healing and DPS (nearly all for most of the journey to 60), but until you reach Moonglow there won’t be any talents helping you with the healing (although Improved Thorns may be mildly useful to the tank).
This said, all druids can do a good job healing dungeons while leveling regardless of the spec; at 50+ you may want to be specialized or at least a hybrid build with points in Restoration, but it all depends on the rest of the party and mainly the tank.
About your challenges as balance:
- You need to drink a lot. Omen of Clarity is really only useful for Feral specs, and your only mana regeneration talent, Reflection, is in Restoration. This gets better with gear but balance druids struggle with mana in raids too.
- Your endgame damage is low. Balance druids are at the bottom of the DPS scale. You bring utility and Moonkin form boosts other casters and is one of the few redeeming qualities of this spec, but many people will just prefer the higher raw damage provided by nearly anybody else
- Raid DPS rotation is boring: you only use one button because in raid the number of debuffs on a target is limited (so no Moonfire or Insect Swarm)
Some aspects of Classic weren’t particularly well designed and unfortunately Balance was a victim of it.
There are some upsides though:
- PvP is quite good although less straightforward than most classes.
- Hybrid resto/balance builds are good for healing (getting Moonglow for mana efficiency) and leave you with decent solo viability because of your balance talents
- In Dungeons Balance is much nicer: you can DoT everybody and Hurricane, you can off-heal, and Hibernate or Soothe Animal can be occasionally useful.
Balance isn’t an easy path. If you like the style be ready to carry a lot of water and mana potions for emergencies. You’ll also find yourself healing in dungeons quite often, so besides Improved Wrath and 1 point in Nature’s Grasp for survivability you may want to put points in Restoration down to Reflection and Insect Swarm relatively soon.
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Lmao what nice troll
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So i shall level up in feral? 
yes that would be by far the only viable option
Dafuq? 
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Well, they are objectively good.
But Feral is one of the best so… yeah they pale in comparison.
But they are good !
they are not objectivly good at anything
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Its an aweful leveling spec. No spell pushback protection. No way to regenerate mana once oom, and no fallback when oom like other casters that can just Wand the mobs. You also run out of mana a lot faster than any other casters, and you have no tools such as Mana Gems, Evocation, Life Tap, pets to offtank, or talents like Spirit Tap to keep you going like the other casters.
You get Innervate at 40, which helps a little bit, but a long cooldown means its not going to be there whenever you need it and you end up spending a lot of time drinking.
On top of this you have a relatively low damage output, and a low access to gear due to most caster gear with high int/spirit being leather. There’s almost next to no Spellpower itemization like casters can get with Dreamweave, Shadowweave/Azure gear while leveling.
Its a spec that is just poorly designed, and you will have a frustrating experience leveling as Balance compared to just going Feral where you have both a higher damage output, no downtime and an easier time dealing with additional mobs due to having the option of going Bearform, which is incredibly tanky at lower levels assuming your gear is even somewhat up to date.
If Balance appeals to you for the class fantasy then by all means go for it. But its by far one of the worst leveling specs in the game.
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All joking aside (please don’t take my previous post seriously): yeah there’s a reason all the druids you see are feral not balance.
Balance druids are the worst class in the game. I adore the theme of the balance druid but leveling one in vanilla game just drove me loopy and I gave up by level 40.
For leveling content, other ranged dps get slows and pets to prevent them from being attacked by the mob and interrupting their casting. You get no protection. Which means you try casting a basic Wrath or Starfire and a mob will slow the spell three times before its cast.
The damage itself is very low, so you can struggle to kill even one mob your own level. Failing to outdps a same-level mob, without healing yourself, and dying, is one of the most depressing experiences you can have.
So you’ll empty your health bar on almost every fight where a mob is targeting you. And also, your mana managing is awful so you go OOM every fight or every two fights.
I love moonkins but I found it too frustrating, and I say that as someone who quite enjoys a challenge when leveling.
i do not agree as a bala druid, but i didnt solo leveled to 60 whole time.
“Omen of Clarity is really only useful for Feral specs” - this is not correct as well, with clever use of weapon hit and spell cast it very offten gives you free moonfire(coz its best to use MF for free from all those spells)
not even talking now many times it will save you it battles in open world when questing or healing in dungeon wehn oom, or if you just want to same some mana and you know that mobs dont do cleave or kicks or stuns/silences , you can just stand and hit, waiting for omen and free heals 
etc… i can continue but it would be TLDR 
os i will cut it here
Frogling explained well the problems you’ll face as balance, although I disagree on the pushback being such a big deal unless you get attacked by multiple mobs (wrath is fast enough not to worry about it).
If you like healing and want flexibility, 0/31/20 is a good spec. You kill stuff as a caster levels 1-9 first, and bear 10-19 and cat 20+ using feral leather. You’d start putting talent points in the feral tree to make things easier (better damage, faster cat form). At 35 Heart of the Wild also increases your intellect to help you heal and at 40 you start putting points in Restoration; in 45-60 you finally get strictly healing-oriented talents, which help you deal with more challenging dungeons.
Feral is just much simpler and more effective for leveling. You use energy to kill stuff while recharging mana and you heal yourself between mobs; if you want to heal dungeons you just need some bag space for a caster gear set and you’re ready to go.
This is not to say you can’t level as balance, and unless your absolute priority is to get to 60 as fast as possible you should do it the way you enjoy the most (I enjoy the process and I’d never choose a spec that made me miserable). This also applies to Restoration, although in that case I’d recommend getting either 5/5 Improved Wrath + 1/5 Nature’s Grasp or 5/5 Ferocity before anything else, depending on whether you want to kill things as a caster or a cat.
IMHO
Dont even take this seriously. Most of your times questing in open world is outside , so with roots you can easily pull two mobs at same time , you kill first one veryfast unitl he even reaches you, keep second in root, you can add MF if you want to speed it up and have free mana.
Dont mistake damage with DPS, your DPS output will be fair unitl lvl 60 even better then most clases(except mage), bala druid is burst DPS not a sustain AA type.
"Struggle to kill one mob on your owl level " im sorry this guy must be out of his mind or never played bala in vanilla.
There is one tip for you from me, while leveling its very usefull to combine ur staff with wrath till lvl 20. Since there is not a shared CD on those attacks, its a bit tricky coz of spellbatching/delay and u have to practice, but once you learn it you can hit with weapon+cast wrath(maybe some addon will help you time those accurately)and at the end of cycle at same time, thus saving mana and do some extra dmg(would reccomend 5pts in Wrath skill to reduce it to 1.5sec cast since mob will hit u as well).
After you get starfire you will usually open from afar with wrath+MF followed with starfire by then enemy is at 25% or dead if you crit, depend on mob type ofc.
On lvl40 once you have MK form ,fighting with staff+wrath as i mentioned above is still valid solo tactic and saving mana will get much easier with that 380% armor boost, inervate and barkskin +hurricane helps as well if you want to AOE down pack of weaker mobs at once.
Bala druid is very very gear dependant on 50+ you have equip with BiS.
Still very good DPS output, you will start loosing on 60 you need to invest a much, more time to farm and gear BiS which some you share with mages, if you read guides(i personally do my own theoryC ) will be hard to get. And even after you get them, your DPS will be half of mage class or even less, but still ur activeDPS will be same or higher then other classes.
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There’s no “clever use of weapon hit and spell cast” because casting spells resets your autoattack swing timer, so either you cast spells or you melee, and if you do have some mana left spells deal more damage, so it’s better to get it over with soon to start drinking or get out of the 5-second rule.
If you wanted to autoattack just for the free spells and that sweet thorns damage it’d be more efficient to shift to cat for the extra AP and additional energy-based attacks.
OoC as a caster is a talent of utter desperation, when you’re absolutely out of mana and you have a mob all over your face so you use your melee weapon for laughable damage, hardly worth the talent point. That’s all.
I am just speaking from my own experience. I would start attack from as far range as possible. And I would struggle to kill things my own level.
This was a few years ago, my memory is not great, but that is how I recall it.
You don’t need to be rude and say I am out of my mind.
If you want to heal during leveling, go up to moonglow and then go to resto talents. Only good thing about leveling as balance is imho some elite quest with hard hitting enemies could be cheesed by moonfire(incest swarm) + roots.
Typo of the day 
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Hmmm No. it happens very often when you cast wrath and mob is near you your staff with 3.7s attack will hit the mob right after spell cast. If you time it well you can cast another spell right after ,sometimes even before animatio of melee hit begins . Happens to me many times, hope im not dellusional Maybe i can record it once i get home