This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this killer Druid Guide.

Click here for the Druid Class Guide, also check out this page for more World of Warcraft leveling tips & tricks.

• 1.0 - Introduction and 3.1 patch
• 2.0 - Talents
• 3.0 - Stats & Progression
• 4.0 - Leveling Notes
• 4.0 - 1-80 Druid Leveling Guide

Introduction

Druids are a truly great class and a fun one, more importantly. They present what I would say is the greatest level of variety amongst all the classes. Variety counts for a lot; it keeps you interested and having fun. Tired of melee? Go Balance, or Healing perhaps. At all times you still remain capable of fulfilling up to three or more roles such as: Tank, Melee DPS, Healer, and, (with Balance,) Damage Caster.

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 abot while leveling. Stick with Feral/Cat gear and you'll be fine. You can get the multiple gear sets after hitting 80.

If you're brand new to the World of Warcraft understnad that the Druid will be one of your most challenging class choices.

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

3.1 Patch Notes, briefly

• The 3.1 patch introduced seven new major glyphs to pick from. That gives Druids (and the other classes) more to play with and experiment with. If you have Inscription, or enough cash, just swap glyphs until you hit on a set you like. Our leveling (for Feral) recommendation is below, but it's your choice.
• 3.1 also introduced the Dual Talent build system. If you have 1,000 gold (and why wouldn't you?) you get twice the talents and twice the glyphs.
• Mana regeneration from stats (Int and Spirit) has been nerfed.
• A bunch of misc. other small changes and a few bug fixes. Complete patch notes are here.

2.0 – Druid Talents

0/60/11 Feral Druid Leveling Build

Here is another leveling build (0/51/20) It gives up some Feral talents and takes a few more from the Restoration tree for a little more emphasis on healing.

Feral is the best of the leveling trees for the typical Druid player.We're not focusing on raiding or high-end PvP here, just leveling: grind out the quests and kill lots of mobs. Feral is excellent at that.

Rotation:

• Keep Savage Roar up at all times.
• Use Mangle and Rake to build combo points (CP)
• at 5 CP use Rip
• The above should be enough, but supplement withTiger's Fury and Berserk, as needed

The Feral talent build is entirely focused on providing the greatest level of possible damage primarily while within cat form, although it can be used for those bear form lovers out there. Either way, with a combination of massive DPS and respectable healing capabilities, this can easily set the pace to match both rogues and hunters at the head of the leveling race.

While most class talent trees are a mixture of excellent and filler (you will be forced to drop a point here and there to simply fill the gaps between the truly desired abilities,) for the lucky Druids, this is not the case at all. Instead, our tree is largely a stacking improvement of abilities, all the way from the top tiers to the bottom of the tree.

Ferocity helps by reducing the rage/energy cost of your widely used attack abilities while in feral forms. What’s not to like? Although it seems like a small decrease, you’ll really notice it as time passes. In moments when your rage/energy pool is tight and you need to finish the enemy, it comes in handy.

At one point in time Brutal Impact was worth the couple points to make a good one-two punch in PvE or PvP. However, I'd like to skip that this time around and focus on alternate choices as apparent in the build.

Feral Charge provides us with an opener, a very useful thing to have, and also reduces the downtime between combat. With this you can now charge opponents immediately upon entering combat by using Furor, the Restoration talent.

Predatory Strike, Heart of Wild, Shredding Attack, Savage Fury – these choices all present stacking buffs to our offensive and defensive capabilities. By the time you’ve picked them all up you should have an easily noticeable increase in damage output.

Leader of the Pack along with Improved Leader of the Pack results in a large damage increase via critical hits, as well as a small accompanying health return when you do critically hit, a win-win situation in my eyes.

Finally, Predatory Instincts and Mangle round out the Feral combat tree, giving us an always helpful increase to critical strike damage, as well as a new and extremely effective attack ability. Overall the Feral tree ends in spectacular fashion, making you a lean, mean DPS machine.

3.0 – Stats & Progression

Feral Druids, our leveling spec of choice for this guide, focus primarily on melee stats in a similar manner to other melee-based classes, such as enhancement shamans, rogues, warriors, etc.  To put it simply, this makes it fairly easy for us to gear up, given the massive amounts of DPS gear that exist at all levels from 1 to 80.

In order of priority, Strength comes first.  Strength equals an increase in attack power which is augmented further by your Heart of the Wild talent, meaning a lot of attack power overall and, therefore, a lot of damage. All your feral cat abilities scale with Strength.

Second tier stats include Stamina and Agility. Agility adds yet more increase to attack power and damage. Stamina gives you more health, and thus survivability.  I’ll leave it up to you to prioritize these depending on your current health at any given level. If you decide to become a tank then Stamina will be far more important, if you want the high damage, then Agility is more important.

Finally, last place is given to Intelligence and Spirit.  Int is fairly useless to search for on armor unless it also possesses decent damage stats, such as some strength, agility, or attack power. As a Feral Druid your mana pool is exclusively used for healing after going through multiple fights, and that doesn’t take much to do. Both of these stats are far more useful for Resotration and Balance Druids than they are for Feral.

For leveling you should choose gear that emphasizes ripping your opponents to pieces rather than zapping them to death. The gear you pick up should reflect that. So, more or less in order of preference:

1. Strength
2. Agility
3. Stamina (if you need the health)
4. Hit rating, till you hit 164 rating
5. Crit chance - more is always better
6. Attack Power - ditto
7. Armor penetration - Good, may be best after 200 rating.
8. Expertise - up to the cap of 164
9. Haste rating - up to the cap of 164
10. Spell power - don't need it if you're all claws and teeth.
11. Intellect - Same as Spell Power
12. Spirit - No use to the Feral Druid.

While leveling you really only need to think about the first three.

Overall, itemization for druids is fairly well done, and I doubt you’ll experience difficulties finding the right equipment at any level.

Enchanting and Gems

As you level you will occasionally come across gear with gem sockets. (As you raid you will find many more.) If your gold stash allows you to buy the gems then go for it. Same with Enchants. If you can afford them, then go for it. Make sure you have enough left over to buy the occasional gear upgrade and any mounts (yeah, Druids use them at times) where approporiate.

The Enchants should be easy to find on the Auction House. They are the high end enchants, there are similar ones that are less expensive.

• Head - [Arcanum of Torment] - Ebon Blade, revered
• Shoulder - Master's Inscription of the Axe (Inscription 400) > [Greater Inscription of the Axe] (Sons of Hodir, Exalted
• Back - Swordguard Embroidery (Tailoring) > +22 Agi (Enchant)
• Chest - +10 Stats, Enchant
• Wrist - Fur Lining - Attack Power (Leatherworking) > Greater Assault (Enchant )
• Hands - Hyperspeed Accelerators (Engineering) > +20 Agi (Enchant)
• Legs - [Icescale Leg Armor] or Nerubian Leg Reinforcements - Both Leatherworking or Auction House.
• Feet - Icewalker, Enchant
• Finger - +32 AP, Requires Enchanting
• Weapon - Berserking > Mongoose > Massacre > Executioner

• use [Delicate Scarlet Ruby] (+16 Agility) in all slots unless you need Stamina. In that case use ...
• Solid Sky Sapphire - +24 Stamina

4.0 - Leveling Notes

• Quests are your friend and they're worth the time to figure out. Try and do more than one at the same time and you will level much faster than just killing off a bunchof mobs (grinding.) Plus you get cash and prizes for completing them.
• Make a level 1 alt to do all your banking. When you come across items than can be sold on the Auction House, or have stacks of skins, herbs, or ore to sell, then you ship them to your alt to sell. That way you can pay attention to leveling and don't have to run back and forth from the big city.
• Level with a friend. Your XP per kill will be lower but your kill rate will be faster and downtime will be less, more than making up for the reduced XP per kill.
• Instances/dungeons can be great for gaining rapid XP if you have a fun group. Not to mention the cool gear you can find. The're not necessary though. Check out a full leveling guide for leveling 1-80 without a group or a dungeon.
• Always have the biggest bags you can afford.
• Always have an adequate stock of whatever food or supplies you'll need.
• Loot everything, always, and vendor off all the grey junk. Send anything white or better to your alt to sell later.
• If a quest is too hard, or you're on a PvP server and the gankers are out in force, just skip it for now and come back to it later. Or call in help to do the quest or get revenge. That's what Guilds are for.

5.0 1-80 Druid Leveling Guide

Now that you're on the way to becoming a lean, mean, killing machine you should consider a full blown leveling guide for your 1-80 blast. Why? It will save you many days of in-game time and will also save a good deal of frustration, even if you already know many or most of the quests.

Our recommended leveling guide is Zygor's Guide. Zygor's automates the whole 1-80 path (automatically updating as you complete tasks and quests) and is like having an expert helping you every step of the way. Pick your starting point, whether it's level 1 or 79, and the guide automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes all the important quest info.

You will probably never need to look at your quest log again!
Grab your copy of Zygor's Leveling Guide, here