Updated for Mists of Pandaria

Druids are a truly great class and, more importantly, a fun one. They present what I would say is the greatest variety among all the various classes in WoW. Variety counts for a lot; it keeps you interested and having fun. Tired of melee? Go Balance, or Restoration perhaps. Druids can become  Tank, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Healer, leading to a degree of difficulty along with that variety.

Still, even more important is that, no matter the role, Druids provide effectiveness. When properly talented they can tank with the best of them or, for the purposes of this guide, dish out massive amounts of melee damage in cat form.

While some Druids can go nuts at high level, what with having to juggle several forms and individual gear sets for each form, this is something you won’t have to worry about while leveling. Stick with Feral/Cat gear and you’ll be fine. You can get the multiple gear sets, if you want, at top level.

If you’re brand new to the World of Warcraft understand that the Druid will be one of your most challenging class choices for the end game, for the above reasons. There are just so many possibilites that it’s easy to get a little lost. Stick to one build while leveling and you will have an easy time of it.

Read on and I’ll give you some help towards leveling your Druid in the most efficient and fun manner possible.

Contents

Druid Leveling Guide Introduction Brief Druid Leveling Notes Choice of Race Talents Feral cat Guardian Bear Balance Stats, gear, etc. Leveling Tips Professions Kick Butt Druid Leveling Guide

Other Druid Guides Druid Class Guide Balance DPS guide Feral Druid Feral cat DPS guide Feral Cat PvP Feral bear tanking guide Restoration PvE Restoration PvP Just the Builds Druids in Mists of Pandaria Level Your Druid, Fast

 

Note: Mists of Pandaria is  changing everything in terms of talents, mana, and more. We’ll update this page accordingly when Mists launches. A couple of notes though:

• Druids will have four specs: Balance, Feral (cat form,) Guardian (Bear form,) and Restoration
• Each spec is defined by a number of unique core abilities, learned as you level, rather than unique talents.
• The old talent system is dead and gone. There are 6 tiers of three talents each. You will be able to pick one from each tier. Any talent can be picked by any spec of Druid and there will no longer be levels of talents. You will either have the whole talent (instead of spending 1 to 3 points in it) or not have it.
• Your relic slot is gone.
• A whole bunch of abilities, talents, and glyphs have either been slain or rolled into new abilities, talents, and glyphs.
• Druids have some new abilities, but one special one, which will put Druids into high demand for all groups, is Symbiosis.
• More on the abilities and such here:  Druids in the Mists of Pandaria, that page also has a video explaining symbiosis.

 

The Short Druid Leveling Guide

(See below for the longer version)

Race:

Only four races can be Druids and Pandarens won’t be one of them.

• Worgen’s crit bonus is a damage, their sprint will be useful in certain situations.
• Night Elves have a slightly higher dodge, so will be slightly better tanks. Shadowmeld can be very useful at times, since it works in combat and drops aggro.
• Trolls have an attack speed increase, and do more damage Vs beasts.
• Tauren have a bit more health and can stun nearby opponents (which is pretty useful.)
• More about races

Professions:

Skip the crafting profs if you’re leveling, they’re time consuming and expensive to level. If you’re rich and don’t care about the time, then go for it. Otherwise, pick two gathering professions from: Herbalism and/or Mining and/or Skinning.

See below for more professions info.

Builds:

Like no other class in WoW Druids really can play any role in the game. You can do it all: Tank, ranged damage, melee damage, or healer. For leveling we suggest the feral cat form. Here’s the build, with glyphs. If you like tanking dungeons then a feral bear is a great way to go. Here’s our feral bear build.

Gear and Stats:

• Leather armor at all times, esp. after 50, even in Mists of Pandaria.
• Stack Stamina at low levels, for survivability, otherwise Agility is way better than anything else (even for Bears.)
• Crit is a nice secondary stat and Haste is good, too.
• You have zero use for Strength, Int, Spirit. Even Bears.
• Use a two-handed weapon (staff) with the highest possible DPS. Get Agility on it if you can.
• Enchants, if you can afford them, should be Agility > attack power > Crit
• Gems, if you can afford them, should be Agility (“Delicate” gems.)
• Resilience is only needed if you PvP. You can get a full PvP set at 70 (from the arena vendors.)
• Heirloom gear can take any enchant that can be applied to an iLevel 1 item.
• more stats

Leveling Notes

• Questing is much faster than it once was and is competitive (if you’re a cat) with dungeons and PvP leveling.
• Dungeoning is much faster if you like Bear tanking, since the queue times to get into the dungeons are very short.
• PvP leveling can be very fast if you side wins. Help them win.
• Dungeons give you the chance of getting better gear than you will through questing.
• PvP gives you access to better gear via honor points.
• More tips

If you need to blast to 90 as fast as possible then check out this in-game leveling guide.

 Go to => Top – Short guide – Race – Professions – Talents – Cat – Bear - Gear – Tips – Level faster

 

Races

The question of “which race” for your new Druid used to be a “difficult” one, Horde (Tauren) or Alliance (Night Elf.) With Cataclysm the choices became more varied, but is still the most restricted class in the game.

Overall, Trolls might be the best pick, but pick the race that you like the best. None of the racials are devastating.

Pandarens cannot be Druids.

1. Alliance - Night Elf
   • Shadowmeld requires you to stay still. It drops aggro, so you can s’meld > stealth. Since you already have a (cat form) stealth ability, it’s somewhat redundant, but it can be used in combat, and your Prowl cannot. If you time it just so you can break incoming spells.
   • Quickness makes you slightly harder to hit, which is always nice.
2. Horde - Tauren
   • a little more health than other races, though it doesn’t scale well at very high levels.
   • War Stomp, which is a nice stun for cats and bears. Casters will generally find it to be useful in isolated situations, such as in PvP or any other time where you need to stun the opposition and run out of there. Bears should find it to be more generally useful, especially if tanking.
   • Good with Herbalism. This skill provides a small heal and a very nice Haste effect (2880 Haste at 600 skill) for 20 seconds.
3. Alliance-Worgen:
   • Can periodically run faster, which is pretty nice, but it does not stack with your travel form or your increased speed talents. Still, it has it’s uses.
   • Increased Critical chance makes a small, but useful overall damage increase.
   • Reduced duration of curses and diseases is nice, but will see little use outside of PvP.
4. Horde-Trolls:
   • Berserk increases attack and casting speed which is quite nice. Add it to a macro.
   • Greater damage against beasts will help you to level just that much faster.
   • Reduced duration of movement impairing effects (about 1 second off of a 6 second effect) ) is nice in PvP, but your shapeshift also breaks you out of these effects.

Trolls look like they may be the most efficient class for Druids, but player interest and skill will more than make up for any racial differences. Pick the race you like.

Training Note: If you don’t want to train in your native zone? Horde Druids can go to the Blood Elf area, since there is a druid trainer in Silvermoon City (why?) There’s also one in Stormwind for Alliance Druids. Ask the guards for the trainer locations.

 Go to => Top – Short guide – Race – Professions – Talents – Cat – Bear – Gear – Tips – Level faster

 

Mists of Pandaria Druid Leveling Build

(Scroll down for the actual build)

Feral is the best of the leveling trees for the typical Druid player. We’re not focusing on raiding or high-end content here, just leveling: grind out the quests and kill lots of mobs. Feral, specifically cat form, is excellent at doing just that. It’s pretty darn good at laying down the damage in PvP and instances, too.

Dungeon leveling - If you want to level up mostly in the dungeons then you can be ranged or melee damage, healer, or tank and your build will depend on your exact role. Tanks have very short wait times for the dungeons. The only question is this: how many times do you want to run the same random dungeon and how well do you play with random groups? See our bear tanking guide if you want to give it a shot. If you want to level as Restoration then just grab the build from our Resto guide.

PvP leveling - Kill fast, die faster. PvP is awesome for leveling if your side is winning. Go in with a well-oiled guild group and you’ll level fast. Go in with a random group that would rather fail than win and you might as well do quests. We have a Druid PvP page if you want to go that route.

Traditional leveling, aka questing. Gather ‘em up and knock ‘em out. This has the big advantage of not having to deal with iffy groups and allowing you to schedule it on your own time. You can also mix this up with PvP anyway and the dungeons. Also, questing is about as fast as either PvP or Dungeon leveling these days.

If you’re questing then get a leveling guide that’s smart enough to track it all for you and you’ll be at the level cap before you know it.

 

 

Mists of Pandaria Feral Spec (cat form) Abilities

First off, you will have a set of abilities defining your capabilities. Here they are, and you will note that they are oriented towards damage and more damage. You’re not a tank, clearly, but you excel at moving from target to target and destroying them.

Feral (Cat) Abilities
10	Tiger’s Fury - Increases damage for a few seconds and restores energy.
14	Feral Instinct (Passive) – Better prowling.
16	Shred - Hard hitting strike, must be behind target, awards a combo point.
18	Savage Roar - Increases your damage for a while.
26	Predatory Swiftness (Passive) – Chance for free spells.
38	Omen of Clarity (Passive) Chance for free spells.
48	Berserk - Reduces the cost of all your Cat Form abilities for a few seconds.
50	Leather Specialization (Passive) – 5% more agility for wearing only leather.
54	Ravage - Powerful strike, must be prowling and behind the target.
80	Mastery: Razor Claws (Passive) – Increase the damage done by your bleeds.

Feral Cat Leveling Build

Talents are pretty simple these days. Any spec of any Druid can pick any one talent from any row. You will have six total talents at level 90. You can also easily switch them at almost any time, much as you would with glyphs. Click any row that has a learned talent and follow the instructions in the popup.

This build will serve you well in dungeons as “damage,” (DPS) and also in PvP. If you really want to crank through the levels mixing up questing, dungeons, and PvP then get a smart leveling guide.

This is just a suggested build and it assumes that your are mostly questing for your leveling. They are chosen to add greater flexibility to the “all damage, all the time” of your abilities. Not that lots of damage is a bad, thing, far from it. Feel free to shuffle things around depending on your game.

Talent Descriptions Feline Swiftness – 15% movement speed bonus. This is a generally useful talents. Renewal – Instantly heals the Druid. Useable in all shapeshift forms. Typhoon – Summons a Typhoon that strikes targets in front of the caster, knocking them back and dazing them for 6 sec. Useable in all shapeshift forms. Useful if you’re a bit overwhelmed. Incarnation – Grants a superior shapeshifting form appropriate to your specialization. For cats you can use abilities outside of Prowl and yo do not have to be behind the opponent to Raavage. You may freely shapeshift in and out of this form for the duration of Incarnation. Mighty Bash - Invokes the spirit of Ursoc to stun the target. Useable in all shapeshift forms. Stuns are a generally very useful ability. Nature’s Vigil – Increases all damage and healing for a short time. While active, all single-target healing spells also damage a nearby enemy target for some of the healing done, and all single-target damage spells and abilities also heal a nearby friendly target for some of the damage done. See this Talent Build at Wowhead

Glyphs: Prime glyphs are gone, Majors handle abilitiy changes, and Minors are mostly cosmetic or have minor utility changes to abilities. You will get one of each at levels 25, 50, and 75, for 6 total at 75.There are a number of useful or interesting glyphs, but this set should serve you well.Major Prowl – No more slow stealth. Shred – While Berserk or Tiger’s Fury is active you do not need to be behind the opponent. Dash – More Dashing about. Minor Grace – Less falling damage in any form. Chameleon – Random hair colors Stag – Now can carry your buddy. Get to level 90, Fast

 Go to => Top – Short guide – Race – Professions – Talents – Cat – Bear – Gear – Tips – Level faster

 

Guardian Druid Leveling Spec

Once upon a time Guardians and Cats shared the same spec, both were “Feral,” but no more. More the tank form is the Guardian and is intended to round up the opposition and keep their attentions while the rest of the team burns it down.

Your abilities are designed around survival and soaking damage. While questing you should be able to round up groups of enemies and burn them down without worry. In PvP your survival is hard to beat, but your damage isn’t that hot.

As a Guardian, your abilities are: 

Guardian (Bear) Abilities
10	Savage Defense - Increases your chance to dodge for a few seconds.
10	Vengeance (Passive) – The damage you take increases your own Attack Power. Stamina once figured into this ability, but no longer.
14	Thick Hide (Passive) – You have more armor, take less damage, and take fewer crits.
20	Rip - Finishing strike that causes your target to bleed.
22	Bear Hug - Stun the target and do damage for a brief time. The more health (stamina) you have, the more damage.
22	Remove Corruption - Chance for free spell casts.
28	Thrash - Thrash all nearby enemies doing damage and applying a bleed.
34	Nurturing Instinct (Passive) – Your Agility adds to your Spell Power.
38	Infected Wounds (Passive) – Various attacks slow the targets(s) for a short time.
46	Leader of the Pack (Passive) – Increases crit chance of entire party/raid, also has a chance for your strikes to heal you and restore some mana.
50	Leather Specialization (Passive) – More stamina by equipping leather armor in all applicable slots.
54	Survival Instincts - Reduces all damage taken for a short time.
64	Skull Bash - Charge and silence the target, increase the mana cost of their spells.
76	Enrage - Instant rage generation.
80	Mastery: Nature’s Guardian (Passive) – Increases your armor.

Guardian Leveling Build

This build will work well in dungeons as “Tank” and also in PvP. If you really want to crank through the levels mixing up questing, dungeons, and PvP then get a smart leveling guide.

This build supplements your baisc abilities, adding a bit more flexibility and control. It’s easy enough to switch abilities if you need to change up for a fight. Just click any in-game row with a learned talent and follow the directions in the box that will pop up on your screen.

Guardian Talent Descriptions Feline Swiftness – 15% movement speed bonus. This is a generally useful talents. Renewal – Instantly heals the Druid. Useable in all shapeshift forms. Faerie Swarm – Causes 3 applications of the Weakened Armor debuff and reduces the target’s movement speed by 50% for 15 sec. Incarnation – Grants a superior shapeshifting form appropriate to your specialization. For cats you can use abilities outside of Prowl and yo do not have to be behind the opponent to Raavage. You may freely shapeshift in and out of this form for the duration of Incarnation. Disorienting Roar – Invokes the spirit of Ursol to roar, disorienting all nearby enemies. Any damage caused will remove the effect. Useable in all shapeshift forms. Heart of the Wild – Increases Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by 6% at all times. When activated, dramatically improves the Druid’s ability to perform roles outside of their normal specialization. See this Talent Build at Wowhead

Glyphs: Prime glyphs are gone, Majors handle abilitiy changes, and Minors are mostly cosmetic or have minor utility changes to abilities. You will get one of each at levels 25, 50, and 75, for 6 total at 75.There are a number of useful or interesting glyphs, but this set should serve you well.Major Prowl – No more slow stealth. Shred – While Berserk or Tiger’s Fury is active you do not need to be behind the opponent. Dash – More Dashing about. Minor Grace – Less falling damage in any form. Chameleon – Random hair colors Stag – Now can carry your buddy.

 

Stats and Gear

The order of importance of your stats is…

1. Agility is your #1 stat, whether Bear or Cat, and scales better with level. At the highest levels it is much better than other stats.
2. Mastery, from level 80, will be the 2nd best stat.
3. Stamina is useful for leveling and very useful for Bear tanks. At low levels stack up as much as you can (you should be able to find some cheap Stam enchants.)
4. Strength – Forget Str, get Ag. whether you’re Bear or Cat.
5. Intelligence – Essential for caster builds, not at all important for bear/cat builds.
6. Spirit – Of no value to anything druidic.
7. Reforging (level 80+) – If you care to do this you should reforge everything into Mastery. It’s not a big deal until you
   hit the end-game content.
   • Hit, Crit, Haste, etc., to be reforged into Mastery.
8. Resilience – only for PvP, useless otherwise. Pretty uncommon on gear before level 70. At 70 you can get a full set of the epic arena gear (from the Dalaran arena vendor) for less than 2k honor.

The Gear

• At lower levels, gear that is “of the Monkey” or “of Agility” or “of the Bandit” is what you want to look for.
• Before you hit 70 do enough PvP to accumulate about 2k Honor. Then buy the level 70 epic arena PvP set from the legacy vendors in Dalaran Sewers and Gadgetzan.
• At level 77 start grabbing Cataclysm gear, the stats are far better than non-cataclysm gear.
• At level 81 put your guild heirlooms back on
• At 85 buy or make the crafted PvP set (vicious leather) or start buying M of P gear off the Auction House.

Weapons

Weapon damage factors into your claw damage. You want to be looking for two handed weapons that do as much damage as possible, next for weapons that have stats on them. So the priority is:

1. Weapon DPS
2. Agility
3. Stam
4. Secondary stats (at high level) to be reforged into Mastery.

Gems and Enchants

Gem sockets don’t really appear on gear until the 50s and then it usually only on high end gear. High end gems can be expensive and you will level quickly enough that you probably will be out of that piece of gear fairly soon.

Gear with gem sockets usually has a bonus of some kind for socketing the “correct” color of gem. If you are going to use gems then I suggest that you just ignore the bonus and stick a red Agility gem in that socket. Agility gems will be of the Delicate variety.

If you’re a bear tank then gem for Stamina.

Note that Mists of Pandaria gems will be much better than Cataclysm gems, unfortunately you will need item level 417 gear or better to use those gems. (Go here if you need tips on how to get more gold to buy the gems.)

Enchants

While leveling I will often look for cheap enchants. Visit the Auction House and browse Consumable > Item Enhancement, then search on cloak, boot, etc. Sort the items to show the cheapest first. You will often be able to find useful enchants selling for very little money. (The Auctionator Addon makes this sorting very easy.)

Buffs

You can get scrolls and foods to buff your Stamina or Agility. Stam scrolls are generally dirt cheap these days, so buy a bunch or talk to your friendly, neighborhood Inscription expert.

The better buffed you are the faster your leveling will go. Keep your Armor and Agility buffs up at all times.

Foods of certain types buff your Stamina at low levels and other stats at higher levels. Get cooking or keep an eye on the Auction House for interesting foods. Check WoWhead.com for current recipes appropriate to your level. Also, prices and availablility on the AH vary wildly, so keep that in mind when shopping.

Scrolls add to your Stam or Ag and are generally very cheap to buy, but with 4.0 they are considered “battle elixers” and won’t stack with other battle elixers or potions.

Potions can add to various stats as well as recover health and/or mana. Consider Herbalism and Alchemy to keep yourself in Pots as you level.

Quest Rewards – Every now and then a quest reward will provide a buff or buffing item. An example is in Tranquillen (Ghost Lands) where one of the quest givers will give you potions Vs undead in return for undead parts.

 Go to => Top – Short guide – Race – Professions – Talents – Cat – Bear – Gear – Tips – Level faster

 

Leveling Tips

Questing – This guide assumes that most of your leveling will be by doing quests. This has the additional benefit of gaining fly points, rep gains, incidental farming for gaining cash, and so on. Also, you don’t have to be on someone else’s schedule or deal with the sometimes quirky group dynamics.

The in-game quest guide will show you where to go so that you can knock off your quests in an efficient order. It’s a big improvement over the old way (of looking things up on some website,) but it’s much slower than a real leveling guide.

Note: Save the quests that take you out of an area (such as to the big city) for when you have several of them and/or your are done with the local quests.

Grinding – feel free to grind (endlessly mash down endless piles of mobs) if you want to slow your leveling speed down. Other than grinding certain mobs for cash and prizes there is little value to grinding. Plus, it’s boring.

Dungeons – Starting at level 15 you can start using the random dungeon finder. If you enjoy grouping then it’s a good way to level more quickly than otherwise. If you do not enjoy dungeon teams then you can skip them with nothing lost except maybe a bit of leveling speed.

• As Feral you will be Queueing as “Damage” (DPS) and your wait times will usually be anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. Sometimes longer. So combine your dungeoning with questing.
• As Guardian you will be the tank and you waits will rarely be longer than 2 minutes. Our Feral Bear page will have tanking info.
• If you are new to dungeoning then figure out which member of the group is “the tank” and stay near him. Listen for instructions, ask questions when needed, and keep a thick skin in case some party member hasn’t had his drugs yet.
• Dungeon teams tend to move quickly, so pay attention and keep up.
• Good guilds often run their own dungeon teams. These are usually more fun or more tolerant of mistakes and new players than random dungeon groups.
• You can pick up some decent gear by dungeoning, but you might want to keep an eye on gear from the Auction House, in case your gear isn’t dropping or you’re not winning the rolls.

PvP Leveling - Random battlegrounds are much like the random dungeons, except that you get to kill other players. If you win you can level very quickly. Losing isn’t any faster than questing. You also gain Honor Points which can be traded to certain vendors for nice gear.

• Most of the BattleGrounds (BGs) have control points to fight over and/or flags to grab and return.
  • A couple (Altarac Valley (AV) and Isle of Conquest (I of C) ) have generals to kill, in addition to the control points.
  • Strand of the Ancients is all about the tanks and braking down the fortress walls (or defending against such.) As always, fighting in the middle areas is useless.
• All of your efforts should be to defend and control those points, to kill those defending their points, to return (or help to return) the flag, or to kill the other flag carrier.
• If you’re not fighting near a flag or carrier then you are gaining less honor than you could be and you are not helping your team, which means you will gain a lot less XP when you lose.
• By the way, the extra speed that you get from Feral Swiftness makes you a pretty good flag carrier in Warsung Gulch and Eye of the Storm.

Leveling Tips

• Make an alt to live at the auction house. Send all of your white loot, and better, to the alt to post on the AH. This will save lots of time. Vendor all the gray stuff.
• Carry the biggest bags you can afford.
• Always log out at an inn to get the “rest XP” bonus.
• Minimize downtime by carrying potions and foods so that you can regain health quickly.
• Buffing foods make you that much tougher and/or allow you to kill things just that much faster.
• Potions of Healing and Troll’s Blood potions mean less form switching, less mana use, and less downtime. Hardly essential, especially for Druids, but a healing potion on the action bar can be a lifesaver.

 

Kick Butt Druid Leveling Guide

Once you’ve created your new Druid, or dusted off the older one, you’re looking at thousands of quests and a million mobs to grind the trip to 90 (in Mists of Pandaria) and that can be a bit daunting.Not to mention wondering where to go and what to do, especially if you picked up a few levels in the dungeons or PvP.

To solve that problem we recommend an in-game leveling guide. Start from any level, hit the dungeons for a few levels, work the battlegrounds for awhile and when you come back to questing the guide will detect where you are and advance appropriately. New to WoW or experienced, geared or not, heirlooms or not, even if you’re running Recruit a Friend the levels will just come boom, boom, boom and you’ll hit the level cap a lot faster than you ever did before.

Dugi’s in-game Leveling Guide takes care of all the “looking up stuff.” No more switching from game to quest log, no more asking questions in chat or guild, no more browsing some website for tips. No more doubts or questions about what to do next.

Dugi’s guide appears as an in-game window (very small and moveable) which tracks the quests you’re on, and the objectives (kill this, collect that.) It automatically updates as you complete tasks and quests and provides all of the “where to go and what to do” info that you will need to levelquickly.

Where it beats WoW’s in-game quest helper all to heck is by laying out the best path all along the way. Plus, if you spend some time in the dungeons or PvP leveling then, when you return to questing, Dugi’s will automatically update to your new level and show you where to go next.

Always updated for the latest patches and expansions, even Mists of Pandaria and beyond, Dugi’s will never be obsolete. Grab your copy here and get leveled fast.