Druid Leveling Guide

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Druid leveling guide.

[Guest jabberwockie]

You mentioned that Feral Druids can heal themselves one a minute with Natures Swiftness/healing Touch.

They also have the passive ability Predators Swiftness which allows them to cast an inform instant cast healing touch for no mana cost, 20% chance per combo point.

So in other words 100% chance with a 5 point finisher. This can be used much more frequently than once a minute.

(ps love the site, I use it a lot:) )

[PitjePuke 0]

Apply Moonfire and Starfire on targets who will live for more than 10 seconds.

sunfire not starfire

[Guest LS]

No guardian leveling guide? Would love to see you alls input on that. Love the guides and all the help.

thanks

[Jaittok 2]

The only difference I see in leveling Guardian is that you can't rip or savage roar. It's much quicker (IMO) to quest in cat form and just know that if i accidentally pull to much I can stance dance into bear form.

I could easily be wrong though. So input is always welcome.

[Guest southpaw]

I realize it was mentioned above (so im not trying to reitarate) about the cats passive ability to heal with combo points. I guess im really asking if this forum is going to be updated at all. I would personally love to have an updated guide for heroics and raiding especially : )

[Guest southpaw]

I do agree catform was the easiest to level for me.

[Guest brun]

sunfire not starfire

These are not feral skills in character. Maybe should be in Balance forum?

[Guest MfBuddha]

These are not feral skills in character. Maybe should be in Balance forum?

This thread is for comments about our Druid leveling guide.

[Brunhill 4]

The only difference I see in leveling Guardian is that you can't rip or savage roar. It's much quicker (IMO) to quest in cat form and just know that if i accidentally pull to much I can stance dance into bear form.

I could easily be wrong though. So input is always welcome.

As a former cat, gone Guardian, i can state that the difference is night and day between Guardian bear spells/skills and "bear" skills from feral cat. Is not that you are wrong, but until you try Guardian, you have no idea how much more powerful G. bear is! Feral cat is great for leveling but Guardian rocks in Pandaria as a solo toon, and, you can still use "feral cat" stealth for moving around undetected. For me.. once i tried Guardian, there was no going back to cat, lol. I fly in on bat form, drop down in stealth form, and pop out into bear when I attack. What's not to love? lol And bonus to me was I didn't have to change out my agility gear from cat days as Guardian uses the same stats. Cha Ching!

[Guest Meowmonster]

Mangle to generate combo points --- big NO -- ALways use shread -- it does 500% damage plus 380 and also does 20% extra damage as long as there is a bleed on the target, the only time you should ever use mangle is when you cannot get behind the target. -- otherwise decent guide --- I love that we have the savage roar back to its former glory!

[Guest Solkig]

Other than the earlier mentioned PS (which is a hell of a survival ability) i would modify some talents as well. As i see the talent tree advised to feral druids is exactly the same as the balance, and that's bad. If i were leveling my druid now, i would use a talent tree something like this.(using it for questing these days) Wild Charge is more effective, when you go stealth, charge and attack, then the constant speed buff. Cenarion Ward, because you can use it before fight, and it does a decent healing (as of patch 5.2), you don't have to trouble yourself healing up every 1 min. (and you don't really get to too low hp) Basically Typhoon is a balance or resto ability, no use for a feral druid outside of pvp (in pvp only if you have to knock someone off from somewhere, like in Eye of the storm), feral is melee what good does it make to knock someone from melee range? If you need it to escape from mobs, use Mass Entanglement, its much more effective and easier to use. Finally Force of Nature is pretty much useless, it can be considered better for leveling, because it has shorter cd, but if you need this to simply kill mobs, than you do something wrong. If you want more constant dmg, than use Soul of the Forrest, otherwise use Incarnation. Use this to finish up mobs fast or even to escape from them, if they don't leave a dot on you, than you can just simply go to stealth and run.

@Meowmonster: outside of dungeons and raids you can't really use shred (unless you quest in group with a tank), so to say always use shred only good for scaring newbies off, because they think they do something wrong, that's why they cant use shred always.

[Guest Ghash]

As a former cat, gone Guardian, i can state that the difference is night and day between Guardian bear spells/skills and "bear" skills from feral cat. Is not that you are wrong, but until you try Guardian, you have no idea how much more powerful G. bear is! Feral cat is great for leveling but Guardian rocks in Pandaria as a solo toon, and, you can still use "feral cat" stealth for moving around undetected. For me.. once i tried Guardian, there was no going back to cat, lol. I fly in on bat form, drop down in stealth form, and pop out into bear when I attack. What's not to love? lol And bonus to me was I didn't have to change out my agility gear from cat days as Guardian uses the same stats. Cha Ching!

I have yet to level my druid from 85 to 90, but I did level a Monk to 90 as Brewmaster, and it was insanely fun. I can imagine Guardian is much the same. You can pull 10-15 mobs at a time and not worry about getting your face ripped off. Until 87 or so, I could throw up Guard on a pack of 10 mobs and not take a single point of damage but I'm sure Guardians have similar methods. Leveling as tank is always fun with all the self-healing in the game now.

Mangle to generate combo points --- big NO -- ALways use shread -- it does 500% damage plus 380 and also does 20% extra damage as long as there is a bleed on the target, the only time you should ever use mangle is when you cannot get behind the target. -- otherwise decent guide --- I love that we have the savage roar back to its former glory!

This is a LEVELING guide, not a PvE guide. The only time you'll ever be able to Shred while questing is if you have the mob stunned. That's why they said to use Mangle to build combo points. There's no point in mentioning Shred when you probably will never use it unless you're in a dungeon or jumping the opposite faction.

[Guest Whitwell]

Mangle to generate combo points --- big NO -- ALways use shread -- it does 500% damage plus 380 and also does 20% extra damage as long as there is a bleed on the target, the only time you should ever use mangle is when you cannot get behind the target. -- otherwise decent guide --- I love that we have the savage roar back to its former glory!

The leveling guide is telling you to use Mangle because it's assuming you're going to level while solo-questing. When solo-questing, mobs will always auto-rotate to face you in combat which renders Shred useless unless opening from stealth - in which case you should probably be using Ravage (which is basically a better Shred, but only usable while on the prowl). If leveling either in dungeons or while questing with a friend who can hold aggro, then you are correct - stay behind the target and shred away.

[Tarazet 144]

I leveled from 85-90 as a Guardian at MoP launch, without doing any instances. It took about a week to hit 90 and shortly afterwards finished Loremaster of Pandaria. Cenarion Ward was strong for soloing then and even moreso now, and if you are tank spec you have to mess up pretty badly to get yourself killed. Run with every free stat point in Critical Strike, since there's no need for Hit/Exp when fighting mobs on level and the healing from Leader of the Pack is actually meaningful when you don't have a healer. If you do need to run from mobs, you can use Travel Form in combat as long as you're outdoors.

[Guest Tyler]

Where's the rest of the guide? Will you be updating it to include all the other levels soon?

[Guest DN]

 

From the Feral 85 - 90 leveling guide: "Thanks to  Nature's Swiftness, you can heal yourself every minute with  Healing Touch. As a Druid, you are especially suited at hybrid roles, so do not hesitate to make use of your entire arsenal to help you level up."

 

Uh, guys, Nature's Swiftness is only available to Restoration and Balance Druids (it's right there in the tool tip, see?) - so how is it possible to use as a Feral Druid while leveling?

[Vlad 411]

Uh, guys, Nature's Swiftness is only available to Restoration and Balance Druids (it's right there in the tool tip, see?) - so how is it possible to use as a Feral Druid while leveling?

 

Thanks for pointing this out. We forgot that it was mentioned there, so we didn't remove it when Nature's Swiftness cease being a talent. Updated now.

[Guest Shodan]

Mangle is a Bear form only ability now

[Guest Glen]

Barkskin is no longer available to ferals

[Vlad 411]

Barkskin is no longer available to ferals

Thanks for that. I'm going to fix it :)

[Guest Summerisle]

I would love to see this updated for Warlords of Draenor. I am finding it frustrating leveling on my druid as kitty, and slightly less frustrating leveling as guardian.

[Vlad 411]

I would love to see this updated for Warlords of Draenor. I am finding it frustrating leveling on my druid as kitty, and slightly less frustrating leveling as guardian.

What do you mean updated for Warlords of Draenor. It already is updated. I haven't included Guardian leveling because, frankly, I'm not sure it's needed. In what way are you finding leveling as Feral frustrating?

[Guest guest - kenra]

tried leveling using balance, feral and guardian.  i agree with some posters that in WoD, so far Guardian is so much easier to use.  the ability to pull a large amount of adds with almost no chance of dying and killing them all at once in a short amount of time makes questing very fast and easy.

[Guest Audax]

 

I would love to see this updated for Warlords of Draenor. I am finding it frustrating leveling on my druid as kitty, and slightly less frustrating leveling as guardian.

What do you mean updated for Warlords of Draenor. It already is updated. I haven't included Guardian leveling because, frankly, I'm not sure it's needed. In what way are you finding leveling as Feral frustrating?

 

Just tried out feral on a druid that I'm leveling as Guardian, and quickly noticed some problems with the Feral guide here. As someone else noted, Wild Charge is much better for feral than Feral Swiftness - if you have to move a significant distance you'll be doing so mounted or using travel form - and I recommend using Glyph of Travel  where you can't fly, because while it doesn't benefit from the mount speed guild perk, the instant "mounting"  is worth the slight loss in speed unless you are going more than about 30 seconds mounted before dismounting.

 

For major glyphs the best choice by far is Glyph of Savage Roar (learned for free at level 50). This gives you a free 42 second Savage Roar when you open with Rake or Shred while prowling. You can even make use of this while using Wild Charge to gapclose if you Wild Charge from prowl and mash your Rake or Shred hotkey in midair. In a leveling context this should effectively give you 100% Savage Roar uptime at no cost. Drop the Glyph of the Master Shapeshifter, as mana is of little concern as a Feral druid.