Introduction
Welcome to the Rudar Balance Druid PvP Guide. The guide is a deep dive into the strategies used by top balance druids in arena. Much of the information in this guide is credited to many of whom I've watched and theory crafted closely with. Some of the most influential include, Dipi, Camel, Supatease, Corkiri, Shamms, Astralisk, Jaybeezy, Asbur, and many more.
This guide selects strategies and playstyles that have worked for over a decade. Many of which can start to feel obscure when LFG or SOLOQ teammates demand you do this and that because X balance druid does it at high rating. This is the clarity, what I teach in this guide is what I believe is the best general way to play regardless of rating.
The reason I share the following is to prove through purely executing the strategies in this guide, you can carry any team:
At the time of writing my first draft of this guide, I ended the season as the highest ever rated SOLOQ player in the world with frequent top 20 and sometimes 1 3v3 ladder placements: Check-PvP. In addition, I placed 2nd in the Void Solo Shuffle tournament cashing in $1000. This tournament included mostly AWC competitors and winners from both EU and NA regions. During this tournament I was the only player to not use Discord.
This guide weighs the pros and the cons of many playstyles, displays general optimal strategies into specific comp archetypes. Many of which can only truly be discovered from iterating game after game at end of season rank 1 rating. This guide displays how to play the game with the grain using strong fundamental strategies learned from over 30,000 arenas like prioritizing damage, kiting, and positioning. This guide opens the flood gates to opportunities within arena and equips you with the tools to both recognize and take advantage of them.
Best Practices
This guide is best used sequentially as earlier chapters build on later ones. As you get higher and higher rating the later chapters matter more and more. This guide is meant to be used over about a 4 week span and to be referenced afterwards when you find plateaus or need quick Addon/UI imports.
How I use this Guide
Personally when I take a break for more than 3-6 months, I like to re-read this guide to ensure I play properly. There is no reason to rediscover how to play when its already written down. I find the closer I adhere to the rules in this guide the better I play. However, nobody is perfect. I know that I can only play with 70-75% accuracy, and when very practiced maybe 80%. Given this, I believe the skill ceiling to boomy is far higher than people know. Players like Dipi and Prev I believe when very practiced adhere to 80-90% of the guide in any given arena.
If there were more players and more competition, I'm sure there would be players reaching the 95% threshold on a consistent basis. At that point you can solo carry your team with pure fundamentals, making games hard to lose.
If I were to give one thing to my younger self before I started PvP back in 2015. It would be this guide.
Previous Iterations: