Druid Leveling Guide

The druid is a very interesting class in that it starts out pretty slow but turns out into, in my opinion, the best leveler. Whether you choose Balance or Feral you will do very well, as you still have the ability to heal yourself after combat. I have to say though, even though Moonkin is an option I highly recommend going the feral route. Because of this I will only cover Feral leveling in this guide.

The downside to being a melee class is that your gear decides greatly how fast you kill mobs. If you’re looking to solve this problem you can have a look at my Secret Gold Guide Review. In the review I cover all the features of this renowned gold guide.

Let’s get back to feral leveling. I suppose I haven’t mentioned it and as such I will now, don’t even consider going restoration to level. For those druids wanting to heal dungeons as they go through the levels I suggest you simply go moonkin as it gives you plenty of ability to heal the relatively easy dungeon content (at least till around level 50) while not losing your damage capabilities when soloing.

With that said I will finally get into the core of this guide.

As previously mentioned druids are slow starters. The reason for this is because from level 1 through 10 you only have a few spells and a staff to deal damage, while from 10-20 you’ll be in Bear form which is made for taking damage, not dealing it. This doesn’t mean it won’t be easy to level though, especially in bear form there’s very little risk of dying and the damage isn’t that bad.

The next point I’d like to stress is that if you want a good feral talent point you will have to carefully choose your points, namely between damage and survival talents. Remember that even though you will spend most of your time in cat form, your bear form is still there for those clutch situations where you get in over your head.

Click here for the feral build

As you can see I didn’t create a level 80 build. This is done to make sure you only get the talents that are good. Afterwards you get the talents from the restoration tree after which you can freely spend your last 2 talent points as you see fit.

Now I’ll cover some of the talent choices. Unfortunately the talent choices aren’t too nifty until you start getting Feral Swiftness at level 20. Feral Swiftness is the beginning of the greatness that is the feral tree, giving you a superb 30% movement speed increase in cat form on top of some well needed dodge chance. Swiftness allows you to speed up your leveling in so many ways, from mob traveling time to getting around before you get your travel form and mount. You will always get full benefit from this talent.

My choice of Survival Instincts and Thick Hide is to lower the chance of dying as this really puts a hamper on things. I’m a big fan of spending some scattered points in keeping yourself alive as not only is corpse running boring, it takes a lot of time as well. Especially Survival Instincts is great as you can use this in cat form as well.

After the slow start you’ll now start getting your damage dealing talents for your cat form. This is mainly Primal Fury as it gives you twice as many combo points when your critically strike with your combo points. This is especially powerful when soloing as mobs will die so quick that you don’t a long time to build them up.

I’ll now explain why I didn’t pick up Shredding Attacks. There’s not much to it. Al though it is a must have if you’re dealing damage in a group or raid situation it is rather useless solo. It’s a hassle setting up situations to get behind your target. On top of this is shred very dependent on effects such as bleeds and glyphs to deal good damage. This leads to Claw/Mangle being your combo point generator of choice.

Once you get deeper into the feral tree you will find even more talents that subtly boost your damage. This is until you finally hit level 40 and you can pick up mangle which will finally remove your silly claw attack. I chose not to max the improved version as the return in talent points spend isn’t worth it while soloing. After mangle you can start picking up King of the Jungle which changes your tiger’s fury from a cute little buff to a powerful on-demand energy boost. It’s easy to forget having it, so I hereby remind you to use Tiger’s Fury on cooldown as soon as you pick up at least a single point in King of the Jungle.

Now we get to Rend and Tear, which is another superb talent for soloing and will show you some great druid ability synergy. Your main attack being mangle, increases the bleeding damage the target takes while inflicting high damage. This is followed by using rake on the target to put a bleed effect on it. Then you look at Rend and Tear and you realize your Ferocious Bite now has an increased 25% chance to critically strike. Considering this is a finishing move that is usually used when your target is already weakened it makes this even better at what it’s supposed to do, namely finishing stuff.

After this you can move on to the restoration tree and pick up those talents to further increase your damage. Especially clearcasting is great as it ends up requiring you to pay attention to when it procs and making the best use of it afterwards.

All in all I can recommend going feral for anybody who wants a unique but powerful leveling experience. If you’re ever looking for a change you can always have a look at the Balance tree, but as I find feral faster and more enjoyable I’m afraid you’ll have to look for a balance guide somewhere else .
If on the other hand you’re looking for a step-by-step questing guide I recommend you check out Dugi’s Guide which you can find through my Dugi’s Guide Review Here.