Thinking About Rolling a Druid? Or Seeing Some Art?

When you go to the Character Creation screen in WoW, there’s a little blurb about each class and race and faction. That little paragraph doesn’t do this class justice! For a new player it might be okay, but for a veteran or some more curious players, it just isn’t enough.

I’m going to explain a bit about druids and their roles, quirks, and signature abilities. So if you’re on the fence about rolling one or just curious about them, this should help things along.

Basic Class Information

Druids wear leather and cloth armor from the start. Only Night Elves on Alliance and Tauren on Horde can be druids. We can use daggers, staves (plural word of ‘staff’ by the way), one- and two-handed maces, polearms starting at level 20, and fist weapons.

Druid spells do Nature and Arcane damage, but we can also heal. Our signature ability is shapeshifting into various animals for combat and travel, and all shapeshifting is instant-cast. We get flying training for free with our flight form, but have to pay to get the epic flying skill before getting our epic flight form.

We can drink potions and use certain items while in shapeshift forms. Moonkin and tree druids can craft things too, but we can’t mount up in any form except caster (Tauren or Night Elf form). Unfortunately we can’t wear costumes like from Noggenfogger elixirs that turn you into skeletons, or holiday costumes like being a snowman since shapeshifting removes the costume :(

You can skin dead things and pick herbs (and some quest items) while in any form. We just can’t mine minerals. Sorry, need thumbs for that!

With technical stuff out of the way, here’s the meat and potatoes of the class.

Shapeshifting

We’re the guardians of nature, and we take on animal forms because we’re so in tune with the natural balance of the environment. Horde cat and bear forms are different in appearance from Alliance cat and bear forms. The stats are the exact same, so it’s just a visual difference. Here’s a picture. The various flight forms also have a faction difference, which is pictured to the left (Alliance left, Horde right; click for larger image). The Moonkin forms are different as well, shown here (Alliance left, Horde right).

[Bear Form] – high armor and health, low damage output, designed for tanking and handling a large number of attackers. Bears use the rage system like a warrior (rage starts at 0 and is gained from taking/putting out damage, up to 100). You get abilities that can only be used in bear form, which is learned at level 10 through a quest.

An upgrade to this form is called [Dire Bear Form], which you learn at level 40 from the class trainer. It has more armor, which is on par with how warriors and paladins go from mail to plate armor at the same level.

[Travel Form] – no special abilities, but a 40% speed increase on land so you can run faster. It also breaks snares so it’s handy for escaping when things go wrong. You learn this at level 16 from the class trainer.

[Aquatic Form] – similar to travel form, but a 50% speed increase in water so you can swim faster. It also allows you to breathe underwater for those long diving quests. This is learned at level 16 from the class trainer too.

[Cat Form] – very high attack power and damage output, designed for putting out lots of DPS on single targets. Kitties use the energy system like a rogue (energy starts at 100 and ticks back very fast for rapid attacks). You get abilities that can only be used in cat form including stealth, which is learned at level 20 from the class trainer.

[Moonkin Form] – has high armor and provides an aura buff for your group that increases their spell crit by 5% (nice little bonus, giving us the nickname “Crit Chicken”). When the right talents it gives a boost to your spellpower. This is our caster damage form, and it’s only obtainable from putting 31 points into the Balance talent tree. The minimum level to get it is 40.

You can only cast damaging spells in Moonkin form, but there are some exceptions like the spell to remove poisons/curses, and some defensive ones.

[Tree of Life] – high armor and a healing boost with the right talents in the Restoration talent tree. Your healing spells cost less mana in this form, and you give an aura buff for your group that increases their healing received by 6%. This is our healing form, and it’s only obtainable from putting 35 points into the Restoration talent tree. The minimum level to get it is 50.

You can only cast healing spells in Tree of Life, but there are some exceptions for defensive spells.

[Flight Form] – allows you to fly at the same speed as a regular flying mount. This form cannot be used while in combat, but it is an instant cast (so you can fly really high, shift out, fall and shift back in to save yourself). When you learn this from the trainer at level 60, you get the flying training for free. You could buy a wyvern or gryphon if you wanted, without having to pay for the riding training. You save 640g, since the spell itself costs 10g.

You flap at 60% speed increase on land, while in the air you move at 150% increased speed.

[Swift Flight Form] – allows you to fly at the same speed as an epic flying mount. This form cannot be used while in combat, but it’s an instant cast (yay more skydiving!). You have to pay 5000g for epic flying training before you can learn this from the trainer at level 70. No freebies here.

You flap at 100% speed increase on land, while in the air you move at 280% increased speed.

In order to fly in Northrend, you have to purchase Cold Weather Flying. Druid flight forms are treated like mounts, so you have to thaw your wings first! We also benefit from the Paladin Crusader’s Aura, which increases mounted speed by 20%. It doesn’t work on Travel or Aquatic forms though.

All shapeshifting breaks movement impairments or snares on you. You are also immune to polyform in these forms. Also if you’re polymorphed while in your caster form, you can shapeshift out of it.

Talents: Balance (caster damage)

Balance is all about spellcasting to put out damage. Like I mentioned above, we use Nature and Arcane spells. Generally balance druids have very bursty DPS in later levels because our rotation depends on a random buff proc from a random crit. You can’t really fall asleep at the keyboard in that rotation! We also have a few AoE spells in different flavors (one moves, one covers a massive area, one is channeled) which can help out when farming or for boosting DPS in raids.

Moonkins are okay for leveling, but we have gear issues pre-Outlands because caster leather is hard to find. Even then the cloth gear tends to be better all the way to 80, but you have more leather options. Usually you can heal instances despite being balance up to level 60 or so, depending on your gear. The dungeons aren’t that hard, but if you grab a tanking friend that you know (so you know how to work with each other) or a really good one you can go through Outlands healing dungeons.

Talents: Feral (melee damage and tank)

Feral could really be split into two groups – cat and bear. Some talents give a boost to both, while others are biased towards the big butt or swift claws. Feral druids are VERY zippy while leveling, since you can stealth around mobs as a cat and take on a bunch at once in bear form. There isn’t too much difference between the two forms in terms of gearing, so a cat-geared druid will tank something just fine as a bear up to level 70 or so. Likewise a bear-geared critter will put out some sweet damage up to the same point. Things get harder in Northrend instances, so talents/gear/glyphs will have more of an effect up north.

Cats are known for having a difficult rotation to master for raids, since they have to track so many abilities in such a short amount of time. You don’t have to master it fully to do well, it’s just that players who DO nail everything will be putting out very high numbers.

Bears are fun tanks, but I’m biased. We can’t block or parry (again with the lack of thumbs) so we have unusually high health, dodge, and armor to make up for it. And you don’t need to stack defense like those plate-wearing tanks do – we’re uncrittable from the Survival of the Fittest talent! Yay no more number balancing! To those of you that are leveling you might be thinking “What on earth does she mean?” It means that you don’t have to scrutinize your gear to have exactly 540 defense – for the most part I just look at the stats, see what gives me more dodge/health/armor and go with it.

Talents: Restoration (healer)

Oh the lovely world of trees! The shining druid healing spell is the heal-over-time or HoT spell. We have several and they all work together to make a beautiful river of health flowing constantly on many targets at once.

Healing over time spells are great since most of them are instant-cast; so we can heal on the move, and you can roll HoTs on multiple targets at once pretty easily (i.e. without sucking too much mana). Just cast one of your HoTs on a target, and it’ll give them a little bit of health every few seconds. The only thing we can’t do is shield people like priests/paladins can…but we’re too strong for that anyway! You can keep your sissy shields!

It sort of goes without saying that leveling as a healer is downright painful. You can hardly kill anything even though it’s hard to kill you, but it’s very very slow. Certainly you can do it through instances, but groups for lowbie dungeons aren’t always easy to find.

Again as a caster druid, you won’t find much caster leather available while leveling pre-Outlands. Healers shouldn’t worry about their armor rating too much anyway, so cloth is a viable alternative.

Druids in Cataclysm

I know, the upcoming expansion is still very far away (more than a year, presumably) but what’s in store for druids?

So far we know that Malfurion Stormrage will be returning to fight Ragnaros in the plate of the Elements, which is amazing on a lore scale. Trolls and worgen will be open to the druid class as well with their own druidic models for different forms. There isn’t much to go on, but if you’re thinking about rolling a druid you might want to roll one now and look at a race change later on down the road…not that Night Elves and Tauren aren’t sexy, of course!

Artwork Contest Wrap-Up

Thank you to everyone who sent in artwork! All of the submissions are pictured here with their creators noted. The Arch Druid winner of the 60-day WoW gamecard is Maurelius of Moon Guard, who illustrated the fighting felines in the black and white piece! Congrats :D

And many thanks to these blogs who helped spread word of the contest around the blogosphere:

Azeroth @ Metblogs, Empowered Healing, Diabolical Minds, Trick or Tree, Jaded Alt, Lucky Lurky, and Leafy Appendages

If you made a reference to the contest but didn’t get a link, email me and I’ll edit you in (I think I got everyone though).

Much love, guys! Just goes to show that our class has the bests artists out there. I dare any other classes to outdo this awesomeness, and I hope that this post encourages some players to try out this wonderful class.