WoW Classic Balance of Light and Shadow Guide

6/21/2020

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Before you read this, I am making the assumption that you are currently stuck on "The Balance of Light and Shadow", the quest given to you in EPL by Eris somethingorother. If you aren't to that part and you need to know what to do to get to this point, I'll cover it, but only briefly. What I really want to do is help you get the Shard that you can combine with your two Eyes so you can get Benediction (or Anathema, if you're a shadow priest). (Read More)

THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW VIDEO

If you'd like to watch a video where I talk about how I completed the quest, while showing you where I stood, etc. here you go. I do NOT complete the quest in this video, I was so frustrated while doing it that I never thought to record. However, we do get to see another priest attempt the quest, though we can't see the peasants since I no longer have the Eye Of Divinity.

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THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW CLASSIC WOW
CONSUMABLES/SPELLS/RANKS

I'm going to lay all of this out first so you can get on with life and go get your staff. If you want to keep reading after this section I will tell you all of the things I did that DID NOT work, and I'll also tell you how I got killed four times when other people interfered or attempted to help with the quest. (And the one time I made another priest fail by trying to help her, which I feel awful about.)

If you don't have The Eye of Divinity, it comes from Majordomo in Molten Core. If you don't have The Eye Of Shadow, it comes from the elite demons in very south Winterspring, or from Doom Lord Kazzak in Blasted Lands. Doom Lord takes a large group, the elites can be done with a few (I had a 5 man group helping me) and the drop rate is 85% for the Doom Lord, and 2-4% for the Winterspring elites.

RECOMMENDED CONSUMABLES:

20 Major Mana Potions - this will cover multiple attempts as you will use a maximum of three per attempt

Dark Runes - If you can easily get some from Scholo, great, if not, no big. I didn't use them, but I can see how they would be handy since they don't share the cooldown of your Mana Potions.

I only used the Major Mana Potions when I completed the quest, nothing else. I will talk further down about other consumables I used when I failed, but I'm calling them unnecessary, or even a hinderance.

RECOMMENDED SPELLS AND RANKS:

Renew Rank 5 - This is the only healing spell I used the entire time. I did not use any heals that had a cast period.

Holy Nova Rank 3 - You'll need to be one shotting the skeletons with your Holy Nova, so if rank 3 isn't getting it done, move up to rank 4. If rank 3 is working and you fail, try rank 2 to save mana. The rank is all going to depend on your specific gear.

Abolish/Cure Disease - It's probably a better idea to use Abolish Disease since it attempts to cure for a bit after you cast the spell, helping you out if your peasant gets reinfected, but I used Cure Disease and it was fine.

Now, I'm going to go through my rotation.

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THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW ROTATION

1. Start the quest, immediately run to the cave and cure or abolish the diseases of the peasants with PURPLE diseases (most common in second and subsequent waves).

2. RENEW RANK 5 on any peasant you cured disease from.

3. If you can EASILY locate the peasants with green disease, cure them. If not, hit them with a RENEW.

4. Follow the peasants up the path, RENEWING any peasant with EITHER a green disease or who falls below 50% health.

5. ALWAYS CURE THE PURPLE DISEASE AND FOLLOW UP WITH A RENEW.

6. Once the peasants get to the quest giver, leave them and run to the next wave. If you wait for them to disappear you will let the disease tick down on the next wave of peasants, killing them. If you need to cast a couple of Renews before you leave the current peasant wave, that's fine, but DO NOT wait for them to disappear.

7. Pop your mana potion the moment you'll derive the full benefit from it (without wasting any). Don't wait until your mana is low because the idea is that you'll use more than one, and you need that two minute timer to run out so you can do so.

8. When the Skeletons come, let them get close and Holy Nova them.

9. Be sure to heal yourself! Cast Renew on yourself once in awhile. It's easy to forget, but if you die, you fail.

What you'll notice is that I'm not curing the green disease people. If I can find them quickly, I will, but if I have to hunt and click (which is a real possibility because all of those health bars jumble up on each other) I don't mess with it and I just renew based on the health bars.

Other than the purple diseases I don't do anything by clicking on the actual peasants. Instead I click on the bars, which are much easier to grab individually.

If there were an easy balance of light and shadow addon that would let you see the debuffs by the health bar, this whole thing would be much easier, but I haven't found one. I tried Neatplates, but it didn't display the debuffs of the peasants.

If you happen to find an addon that does display the peasant debuff, please comment as I'm sure other people would like to know. - UPDATE: I am hearing that people have used Threat Plates with a lot of success.

Now I'm going to talk about my spec during all of this because I did have to respec, even though I am a main healer in our raids.

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THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW SPEC

This is a picture of my normal raid spec. It's my ONLY spec. I don't respec for other things (Benediction is the exception) and I base my spec on things I actually use. I never use Holy Nova or Prayer Of Healing in raids, so I don't spec into them, no matter how many guides say I absolutely should.

If you have Holy Nova, all the better, you're going to need it.

Here is the spec I used in order to complete the balance of light and shadow quest.

As you can see, I've specced into anything that will make my mana pool larger and give me a chance to do more with Renew. I've also specced into some things that have (probably) a very small chance of helping me, like Inspiration and Blessed Recovery, but I figure if I can crit a heal on myself, or if one of those skeletons manages a crit hit on me, it might help.

I also like Power Infusion for this because you can absolutely trigger it twice in the fight, giving you 30 seconds of extra power for heals and Holy Novas. Just don't forget to trigger it.

Now, much of your success with this spec might be based on your gear, so let me tell you what I'm wearing. I'd show you, but there's no WoW armory for Classic characters, unfortunately.

All of my gear is either T1 (from Molten Core) or high level from Zul Gurub, with a T2 piece from Onyxia and a few blues that I haven't managed to epic up, yet.

Basically, I have very good gear, not the best, but mostly epics.

If you're in green and blue gear as a rule, you may need to increase your Renew spell so you get more out of the healing.

Now I'm going to go over some other things that may help you complete the quest, including bringing a friend along.

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THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW GROUP
PASSIVE SPELLS, TOTALLY STILL

I know there are loads of articles on Reddit that talk about all the different classes that can come along to help you. These might work, I don't know, but I do know what ABSOLUTELY works, and what has a chance of killing you.

BRING A DRUID FRIEND

If you have a 60 druid friend (all the better if they are tank spec, but mine was a fellow raid healer and it worked fine) have them come along.

Let them cast thorns on themselves and on you (and of course make sure you are using your Fort/Spirit buffs) then have them go stand 10 steps in front of the cave.

Once you start the quest, they CANNOT MOVE! Not at all. They can't heal, they can't run, they can't do anything. They need to stand there, period. Anything else could trigger The Cleaner, who will come out and one shot you, the priest trying to do the quest.

I recently helped a fellow priest get his Benediction, and I did it on my priest. I stood still, cast Holy Nova anytime I got into combat or got dazed (or anytime I saw him get dazed) and it all went smoothly. I'll post the video below so you can see exactly what I did.

At first I just started using Holy Nova one after the other, but I quickly went OOM. I would definitely suggest waiting until you get into combat or dazed.

DIPPING YOUR NAILS AT HOME - THE DIP FLU IS REAL

HOW TO HELP WITH THE BENEDICTION QUEST WOW CLASSIC

THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW QUEST
MECHANICAL YETI/TRINKETS/ETC

Do you remember the quest you did in Un'Goro Crater where you had to fly around and scare three Goblins? Once you finished you got a Mechanical Yeti with three charges as a reward.

If you still have that (I threw mine away), bring it with you and put it out once you start the fight. Also, if you have ANYTHING else that will fight for you (like Barov's Peasant Caller), any trinket that brings out mobs to fight, etc, use that now. You have to have The Eye Of Divinity equipped of course, but you have one trinket slot free where you could use a trinket that summons a friend. If you have this in addition to the Yeti, all the better.

My druid friend had her Yeti so she summoned it and verified that it did indeed hold skeleton aggro.

I have also heard you can farm Wild Thornlings from DM, or if you're an Engineer you can bring a Battle Chicken, a Training Dummy, etc. Anything you have that is meant to fight or hold aggro, use it here to keep those skeletons off of you, it'll save you mana by not having to Holy Nova.

Alright, now let's talk about the stuff that will kill you, like other people interfering in your quest.

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THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW GROUP

I died four times on this quest, and all four times were from people moving through the quest area. Twice it was my Druid friend because we didn't realize she shouldn't move, and twice it was Alliance running through on the way to help an Alliance friend do their own quest.

The problem is that you never quite know what will trigger The Cleaner.

On my first attempt, my Druid friend stood beside the cave, too far to get aggro from the skeletons. Also, she was not shape shifted, so it would have killed her faster anyway.

While I was working on the quest (and wasting precious time trying to find green disease peasants) an Alliance Paladin ran through and started consecrating. He was jumping all over the place, but it didn't mess with the quest. I failed, but only because too many peasants died.

The next two times I died because my Druid friend moved, thinking it was fine because the Paladin had been running around. I think one time she tried to heal herself, which is a big NO NO.

I died again when an Alliance Druid stealthed through, causing The Cleaner to kill him and kill me. And finally I died the fourth time when the same Alliance Paladin came through again, running around and consectrating, though I have no idea why it didn't trigger The Cleaner the first time he came around.

My point is that anyone running through or moving around has the potential to totally mess you up. I do not recommend it.

I also messed up the quest for an Alliance Priest when I tried to help her. I had read that you could help other priests, but I didn't realize it was only if you were in the same faction, only if you both started the quest at once, and only if one priest did the cave stuff and the others just stood still on the quest giver rock, healing and dispelling peasants as they got close, but NOT MOVING. I still don't know if this will actually work, but if you have a couple of priests in your guild who need it, it might be worth trying, since the balance of light and shadow reset time is only 15 minutes, not the two hours that it used to be.

I saw an Alliance priest working on it and thought that, since I could see the peasants, maybe I could heal them for her. I healed one, The Cleaner came out, killed her and me, and she was (from what I could tell of her emotes) really, REALLY angry.

My point is that you can absolutely bring a friend, but it needs to be a friend with a COMPLETELY PASSIVE attack like thorns. I would not recommend having someone throw down totems, consecrate, etc. If you have a plate wearer that will draw aggro, great, just have them stand there and get beaten on, easy. Even better if they have a way to passively hurt the skeletons, like thorns.

I'm going to finish up by addressing a few other things I read about, and then I'll leave you to it!

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THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW SHADOW PRIEST

I read a lot of questions from shadow priests asking if they could do the balance of light and shadow as a shadow priest.

The short answer is that you probably can, but it would be difficult. You really need your heals maximized, and you need that Holy Nova. I would not recommend attempting it in shadow form, but would instead recommend spending the gold on a respec to get the quest done.

I realize this is not the answer you want, especially if it takes you a few attempts and you have to stay out of shadow spec for a raid or two while you get your staff. Hopefully you're guild will understand, and hopefully it'll get some of them to step up, thorn up, and come be bait so you can get this done as quickly as possible.

CUTTING YOUR HAIR AT HOME WITH THE DOUBLE UNICORN METHOD

THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW RESET TIMER

As I said earlier, the balance of light and shadow reset timer is 15 minutes, but that's only if you fail or die. If you succeed, the quest giver remains and the next person can go ahead with their attempt, which is how I did it.

When I finally got the quest completed it was actually after I'd done a rez run back to my body (after The Cleaner killed me) and was going to log out before giving it a try the next day. I was on my Mac (that's how I play WoW), no mouse, no pad, nothing, sitting on the couch being frustrated, when I got to the quest giver site and saw something like 14 Alliance toons all standing in a semi circle near the cave.

I was intrigued because I thought there might be some group way to do this, so I decided to sit and watch. I went AFK so they'd (hopefully) know I wasn't going to mess with their priest, and they started the event.

In hindsight their strategy was kind of brilliant. Every person in that semi circle would have drawn skeleton aggro. They might not have been able to kill the skeletons, but at least they were getting hit instead of the priest getting hit.

I noticed that the priest wasn't dispelling like crazy, so I looked at the peasants and saw her level 5 Renew.

Once they were done, I decided to give it one more shot (tapping away on my track pad instead of using my mouse), skipping the intense cleansing I'd been doing, and focusing only on cleansing purple and renewing everyone who was lower than 50% OR who'd I'd cleansed.

As you can tell, that's how I got it done. No help, no oils, no aggro drawing friends, and two mana pots.

It wasn't pretty, but no one ever said it had to be.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions, I am more than happy to help, if I can.

Ty

7 Comments

Tim

7/29/2020 12:29:33 am

For anyone looking for help with nameplates, I used threat plates for the quest and it made it heaps easier!
The nameplates can be customised to show debuffs and in my opinion theyre much easier to see/read for this one.

https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/threat-plates-classic

Sheila (Ty The Hunter)

7/29/2020 07:28:36 am

Tim! You might just be a life saver here. Does it show the debuffs on the nameplate? I tried Neat Plates, but it didn't help. Something on the actual name plate would have been amazing. Thanks for the heads up!

7/29/2020 05:11:09 pm

Hey Sheila, yeah you definitely can. It takes a little bit of configuration but its not difficult.

Looks like this for friendly NPC's that get buffs or debuffs (depending how you configure it)

https://imgur.com/a/dCwyHly

Just use "/tptp" in chat to get the config window, and then
Widgets -> Auras -> Debuffs (& Buffs). It's all configurable down to how big or small you want to make buffs/debuffs as well. Theres honestly so much customisation in this great mod. Just head somewhere busy and turn plates on and then just start messing with settings to get the desired look and feel :)

Hope that helps you and anyone else looking for something like this! :)

Draxxenn(The Happy Priest)

9/4/2020 03:47:15 pm

This quest can be done and completed by more than one priest at a time. I just completed this with 3 priests all with the eye. For us the key was only the person who activated the quest could move normally all others could stand still and use pots or spells without causing the Cleaner to spawn. But they could not move at all for any reason. For two priests i would station one just outside the cave entrance to heal, debuff the diseases, and destroy the spawning mobs. The active priest should babysit the spawn group all the way down the run till 2 or 3 despawn as saved. For three priests we had one at the cave mouth, one halfway down the path, and the active priest was babysitting the rest of the way. Just remember ONLY the active priest can move around until the quest is complete or you will have a really bad time.

For those trying to complete the quest at the same time you must be half way down the pathway or closer to the activating priest or you will not get the quest activation. The person stationed at the cave will not get the quest and it will need to be run again. But this is ok, if you are successful, Eris does not despawn and you can do them back to back. I would still take a few mana potions and immolation oils just in case. The active Priest will still be pretty busy and MP5 potions and buffs are always a huge plus. But with two priests or more this was very manageable.

Hope this helps someone!

10/29/2020 12:00:14 pm

Hey Draxxenn! I thought I replied to this a long time ago, sorry about the delay. I would love to see a couple of priests do this together, it sounds very cool. I recently helped a fellow priest do it by standing near the cave and casting Holy Nova, so it's really nice to know there are a few ways to make this less difficult. If you ever come across a video of a few priests completing it let me know. I'd love to link it in the post. :)

Melkree

10/21/2020 03:03:15 am

This guide was the tipping point for me.
During my first three tries, I followed other guides, which recommended higher spell ranks than this, the use of Flash Heal and Oil of Immolation.

These tries cost me a lot of gold and frustrated me a lot.

I searched for other guides and found this one. While I didn't find the Mechanical Yeti of that much help (the skeletons still mostly went on me), the insight of not using flash heal helped a lot.
In my succeeding try, I only used Flash Heal three times (and at one occasion the peasant died anyway).

Also, using Threat Plates Classic is a life saver! Make sure to have stacking name plates, buffs and debuffs enabled. That way you can easily identify and click the ones with a disease and you can keep track of who already has a Renew on them.

Thank you so much for your guide!

10/21/2020 07:34:28 am

Hey Melkree! I'm so glad it helped. This quest is such a pain in the butt, but I guess it gives us some bragging rights when we're walking around with Benediction. :)