The Keeper of the Grove tier set revolves around dumping as much damage as possible into your Dryad window to maximize the damage of your Dryad's Favor buff.

The general way to play this in raid is to use CA on pull after your Moonfire and Sunfire, then pressing Force of Nature 2 globals into your CA. After pressing Force of Nature you immediately use Convoke the Spirits.

As your Dryad fades and you gain Dryad's Favor, you press CA again to dump the empowered Starsurge casts into a maxed out Balance of All Things and Force of Nature window.

After this opener you do the same sequence as your Convoke the Spirits is coming back, but without the 2nd use of CA.

If you have Potent Enchantments talented you can fit another double use of CA in at the 4 minute mark with your 3rd use of Convoke the Spirits.

Remember to pool Astral Power for when your Dryad fades and you gain Dryad's Favor, as the window to spend the buff before Force of Nature and CA falls off is very tight.

Warrior of Elune is an off-gcd ability, making your next 3 Starfire instant for 25 seconds. The ability has a 45s cooldown that starts once you've pressed it.

If you are playing Lunar Calling you should use your Warrior of Elune charges when you have no stacks of Nature's Grace.

When not talented into Lunar Calling, use Warrior of Elune with 7 seconds remaining on Eclipse and use the charges to enter Solar Eclipse.

Use Owlkin Frenzy procs to enter Solar Eclipse, inside Lunar Eclipse or inside CA/Incarnation if Starfire will hit 2 or more targets. Keep in mind that Warrior of Elune charges are consumed before Owlkin Frenzy procs.

Whirling Stars is a talent that changes your CA/Incarnation cooldown to a charge system, with a 100s recharge. In Keeper of the Grove, you want to overlap these charges with Force of Nature and Convoke the Spirits or just Force of Nature if your CA/Incarnation will recharge before Convoke comes back off cooldown.

In a raid scenario where you pull a boss with both charges up, you want to use your 1st charge on pull, and your 2nd charge when you gain Dryad's Favor during your Force of Nature window.

In an M+ scenario, if you're talented into Incarnation: Chosen of Elune instead of Convoke, you want to use your Whirling Stars charges at any time where you can overlap with Force of Nature.

When using Elune's Chosen and not talented into Convoke, you can use Whirling Stars right after entering an Eclipse that procs Sundered Firmament, but this is not a major gain. If you're using Elune's Chosen and you're talented into Convoke, you want to overlap your Whirling Stars charge with your Convoke cooldown.

When using Nature's Grace you should make sure to start casting your Wrath/Starfire when the duration of your active Eclipse is shorter than the cast time of your Wrath/Starfire. This will make sure that you always keep 1 stack of Nature's Grace when entering your new Eclipse. This can be tricky to pull off consistently when cycling between Lunar Eclipse. Try to bank some AP for the end of Eclipse if you need to fill a GCD to time your Wrath cast correctly.

If you are approaching a pack in mythic+ you can cancelaura your Nature's Grace and spell-queue 2 Wrath casts while the tank is walking towards the pack before you've entered combat, this will make it so you are in Lunar Eclipse and have 2 stacks of Nature's Grace up for faster Starfire casts whenever you've finished spreading your dots. This can be tricky to pull off, especially if your tank is chaining a lot of packs. Keep in mind that the moment you enter combat, spreading Sunfire and Moonfire becomes the highest priority.

You can use the macro below and replace your existing Wrath keybind with it to cancel Nature's Grace when you're out of combat to help with this.

#showtooltip
/cast Wrath
/cancelaura [nocombat] dreamstate

Top Section Explained

• After taking the mandatory defensive and offensive nodes in the top section of the tree, you are required to spend 1 more point before you can progress down the tree.

  Remove Corruption and Killer Instinct are your options here. Remove Corruption is a poison/curse dispel, and is the preferred choice in most Mythic+ content, but does not offer a lot of value in raid. Killer Instinct increases your armor and physical damage done, which can give you a very minor damage increase if you are using Convoke the Spirits in melee range.

  Hibernate is a viable option for pathing, but the spell has no real value in any current content.

Middle Section Explained

• In the middle of the tree, you have noticeably more options to choose from. After choosing the mandatory talents in this section, there are 4 points to spend before you can progress further down the tree.

  Either Feline Swiftness and Well-Honed Instincts are necessary to progress down the left side of the tree. Feline Swiftness is a good movement speed talent, while Well-Honed Instincts gives a minor defensive every 90-120 seconds, depending on the talent below it. It is beneficial to take both options in reasonable content.

  Either one of Typhoon or the Ursol's Vortex node are needed to progress down the right side of the tree. They are both situational utilities you can use dependent on what content you're doing. You are likely to use both in Mythic+.

  Matted Fur is a very minor defensive talent that gives you a small shield when you press Barkskin.

  Light of the Sun reduces the cooldown of your Solar Beam by 15 seconds, making your interrupt have a 45 second cooldown instead of a 60 second cooldown.

  Astral Influence increases the range of your spells by 5 yards. Good talent to take if you're in a situation where you need to outrange an ability. Good point to spend if you have no better options available.

Bottom Section Explained

• After choosing the mandatory talents in this section of the tree, you're left with 4 more points to spend on optional talents.

  Improved Stampeding Roar is an often relied-upon option for progression fights where your raid can benefit from a group-wide movement speed increase. Talk to your raid leader and make the decision that's best for your group.

  Nature's Vigil is a situationally helpful talent for your raid. Talk to your raid leader and healer team and make a decision that's best for your progression when considering this talent.

  Forestwalk is a situationally good node, giving you increased movement speed and healing received after casting Regrowth. This can be strong when paired with Blooming Infusion and Protective Growth for fights that require good defensive value.

  Incapacitating Roar is a good option to make use of in Mythic+.

  Lycara's Inspiration was reworked from previous season and now gives 3% AoE damage reduction when in Moonkin Form. This talent is okay defensively, but not mandatory.

  Ursine Vigor is a solid defensive node that increases your health and armor by 15% for the first 4 seconds of entering Bear Form. This talent is a solid choice in general.

• For the Balance Druid spec tree there are currently a solid number of talent iterations to choose from that don't provide a meaningful increase to your damage. Talents like Soul of the Forest, Crashing Star, Touch the Cosmos, Hail of Stars, Umbral Inspiration and Sundered Firmament are mostly interchangeable in ST with Keeper of the Grove, which is the recommended hero talent for raid encounters. Below there will be short explanations for each talent. Keep in mind that most of these options don't provide any changes in your rotation or decision making.

Top Section

• Stellar Flare is currently simming noticeably worse than Wild Surges on ST and is generally untakeable outside of niche situations where you can maintain dots on targets that are far apart. Wild Surges is the recommended choice for most content outside of the niche scenarios where Stellar Flare can be useful.

  Nature's Balance sims around 0.6% higher than Twin Moons on pure single target, but loses out whenever there are more targets, where you can benefit from Twin Moons spreading Moonfire.

  Aetherial Kindling is a preferred choice for any sustained AoE scenario where you can benefit from your DoT effects being extended. Very good for m+.

Middle Section

• Sunseeker Mushroom is the preferred option over Wild Mushroom and is taken in most builds, both for single target and AoE.

  Stellar Amplification is recommended for ST scenarios where you cast Starsurge enough to keep good uptime on it, taken for most raid encounters.

  Touch the Cosmos lost some power since the start of Season 2, heading into Season 3 it is an optional talent for Keeper of the Grove in ST scenarios, and a talent you never take as Elune's Chosen. The 11.2 Elune's Chosen tier set only procs when you generate Astral Power with Starfire which devalues any talent that increases Astral Power generation or ones that give you free spenders.

  Umbral Intensity is a very good talent for both Keeper of the Grove and Elune's Chosen. It also routes towards Astronomical Impact which is a mandatory talent for Keeper of the Grove whenever playing the 4-set.

  Astronomical Impact is a mandatory talent whenever you're playing the Keeper of the Grove 4-set as a considerable amount of your damage relies on Dryad's Favor critting.

  Soul of the Forest in itself is an okay talent in ST and the extra Astral Power generation can help you in dealing with spots in raid where there is a lot of movement. It is mandatory in AoE.

  Crashing Star is an optional talent in ST, and is good when paired with Soul of the Forest.

  Hail of Stars is an optional talent in general for ST, but loses out on AoE because of diminishing returns on Shooting Stars when there are more targets.

Bottom Section

• Power of Goldrinn got a buff heading into 11.1 and is recommended for all ST encounters.

  Umbral Inspiration can be swapped out on ST for another talent, but is generally recommended for all content.

  Sundered Firmament is optional for Keeper of the Grove, but mandatory for Elune's Chosen since it helps provide uptime for Atmospheric Exposure.

  Orbit Breaker is good whenever paired with Hail of Stars, as the increased duration on Solstice helps saturate Orbit Breaker procs.

  Sundered Firmament and Orbit Breaker both benefit from the damage increase from Radiant Moonlight.

  Denizen of the Dream is a strong single target node, but loses value in AoE scenarios. Recommended for all raid fights.

  Fury of Elune is a mandatory talent for Elune's Chosen and optional for Keeper of the Grove. If you use this talent for Keeper of the Grove you should aim to line the cast up with your cooldowns or whenever there are more targets up.

The key differences between the two different hero trees lie mainly in their distinct damage profiles. Elune's Chosen has a very flat damage graph with solid damage over the fights duration and mainly revolves around keeping good uptime casting Starfire. This has been solidified in Season 3 with the new tier set reducing the value of generating Astral Power since you can only proc the free Starsurge casts whenever you generate Astral Power with Starfire. In ST scenarios you forego talents like Nature's Balance, Rattle the Stars, Touch the Cosmos and Convoke the Spirits because these either help generate Astral Power or reduce the cost of spenders. Elune's Chosen is generally a stronger pick in M+ as the flat damage profile fits a dungeon scenario better than Keeper of the Grove's burst oriented cooldown windows.

Keeper of the Grove revolves around doing big damage in your Force of Nature window and using the window to fit all your high damaging abilities in. The Season 3 tier set also plays into this, spawning a Dryad that does solid damage during its duration. 3% of the damage you do during the window your Dryad is active gets pooled into a buff increasing the damage of your next 2 Starsurge casts whenever the Dryad despawns. The damage profile from Keeper of the Grove fits well for raid content and is not as taxing as Elune's Chosen when it comes to movement. The Dryads Favor buff is capped to 10x your intellect whenever the Dryad despawns. With 715 ilvl you will have around 120k intellect, which makes the cap be 1.2m, and means you will have to do 40m damage inside your Dryad window in order to hit this cap.

Since Elune's Chosen mainly revolves around casting Starfire and having uptime, it is natural that this hero tree values Haste more heavily, where as Keeper of the Grove values direct damage stats like Crit and Versatility more, this can cause a noticeable difference in your Top Gear when simming different talent builds.

Keeper of the Grove compliments Convoke pretty well when you use it with the dmg increase from Harmony of the Grove and Celestial Alignment. Convoke is also good for priority damage and boss fights in M+. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune is good for AoE scenarios, or in situations where Convoke would use spells on targets you don't want to hit. Incarnation: Chosen of Elune also pairs well with Whirling Stars in M+, giving you very consistent cooldowns on most packs, and allows for more flexibility in when your damage spikes, as opposed to Convoke. If you're playing Convoke in M+, you should use it in AoE with the conditions outlined in the "Rotation" section.

Control of the Dream lets you hold on to either Celestial Alignment/Incarnation, Convoke or Force of Nature for up to 15 seconds without losing a use, subtracting the amount of time you held the ability from its cooldown.

Depending on the fight timer, this talent is stronger than Power of the Dream which it shares a choice node with. As always, you should research the fight you are preparing for on warcraftlogs or sim your character to make an educated guess.