Kyrian Abilities
- Kindred Spirits
Likely the go to covenant for Balance going into Shadowlands. This is probably the most polarizing covenant choice at the moment and the hardest one to use to its full potential. The thing people seem to dislike the most about this ability is that half of its damage does not show up in your own damage breakdown but rather in the breakdown of the person you’re linked to. On top of that, the ability requires you have intimate knowledge of other specializations’ damage patterns on any given encounter in order to know who you should be linking to, and it is very punishing to mistime. However, this also ties into its greatest strength. The versatility Kyrian offers by being able to always link to the best class for any given situation, as well as the fact that it is equally beneficially on single target, cleave, and aoe puts this ability at the top. - Warning for this ability: Do not use the conduit Deep Allegiance ever. As of writing this the conduit is a DPS loss in all situations. You do not want this ability on a shorter cooldown, as it desyncs the ability with Celestial Alignment, all on-use trinkets that Balance may want to use, and the cooldowns of your chosen bond.
- Summon Steward
A nice addition to your survivability. The steward gives you what is basically a 3rd healing potion alongside Healthstone and Spiritual Healing Potion that restores 20% health once per encounter. It also removes all bleeds, curses, poisons and diseases.
Venthyr Abilities
- Ravenous Frenzy
A rather straightforward ability that it used in conjunction with Celestial Alignment to really give Moonkin some potent burst on a 3m CD. This ability makes Venthyr a top contender for M+ players, and a good overall choice if you’d rather not deal with the complexity of Kindred Spirits. - The potency conduit Endless Thirst is a strong choice when playing Venthyr as it enhances Ravenous Frenzy, but not necessarily a must-have anymore. Warning for this ability: Inexplicably this ability is the only one for any class and covenant to have a downside built in, so if you like to occasionally pvp at all you should stay far far away from this thing.
- Door of Shadows
Another straightforward ability, this one lets you teleport a sizable distance after a short cast-time. Not much practical use in M+ but one that may allow you to avoid specific mechanics during a raid encounter, such as crossing a void zone covering the floor that would tick on you if you tried to walk or Wild Charge over it.
Necrolord Abilities
- Adaptive Swarm
Essentially a damage-over-time/healing-over-time version of the monk ability Chi Wave. This ability will start out either as a dot on your target or hot on an ally depending on who you cast it on and then jump to a new target, affecting 3 targets total. It also serves to amplify any active dot or hot effects on the target by 30%, increasing further if you have the potency conduit Evolved Swarm equipped. An effective covenant choice when you’re fighting a low number of targets or want to play multiple druid specs effectively, but not the best choice for any situation. Notably this ability is nearly nonexistent when it comes to aoe situations and as such this covenant is a bad choice if you play M+ often. - Fleshcraft
A 4 second channel for a 20% health shield, increased up to 50% if channeled near enemy corpses. This signature ability is a pretty versatile survivability tool, and like all absorb effects it can be used to pre-mitigate incoming damage which can be especially strong against very hard hitting M+ and raid bosses.
Night Fae Abilities
- Convoke the Spirits
Probably the ability that has changed the most during the alpha/beta cycle of Shadowlands, and one of the most poorly implemented ideas in the game. No Druid specialization has a 2min cooldown, guaranteeing this ability will frequently be out of sync for all Druid 3 minute cooldowns such as Celestial Alignment. The “flurry” of 12 spells that it casts (nerfed from 16 a couple months ago) has several drawbacks that make this ability that used to be very fun and satisfying to use into something not a great cooldown.
You must not be in melee range of any mob, or it will cast Rake and Thrash which do pitiful damage. - You must not be low on hp, or be grouped with anyone low on hp, or it will cast extra Regrowths and Rejuvenations.
- You must have already dotted all targets with Moonfire, or it’ll waste a large number of casts preferring to Moonfire your enemies.
- Finally, if you’ve met all these conditions, the amount of Wraths and Starsurges it will cast is completely random, and the targets chosen (if there is more than 1 present) are completely random, making this ability increasingly less ideal as the number of targets increases beyond the first.
In theory this ability could be a lot of fun. If the spells it cast were more strictly tied to your form it could be truly great. For example, if you wanted to choose to only cast healing spells you could enter caster form. But it should not cast healing spells in
Moonkin Form, and it especially should not be casting
Thrash or
Rake outside of Bear/Cat forms.
If you’re dead set on choosing Night Fae, be sure to use the conduit
Conflux of Elements to boost Convoke for single target scenarios.
SoulshapeStrikingly similar to the old Druid talent
Displacer Beast, this signature ability instantly teleports you forward 15 yards and increases movement speed for 12 seconds, and can be recast twice during the duration to teleport again. One of the more powerful signature abilities, unfortunately dragged down by being tied to a terrible class ability for Druid.
Overall Night Fae is a missed opportunity to make something fun and unique, and I can’t recommend this covenant unless you're a diehard for the aesthetic.
