[WoW] Druid Help

[MonkeyWrench]

I've been playing a Night Elf Druid for the past few weeks and I've reached a bit of a slump with him at level 19.

It's become increasingly difficult to level with him. If I shift into Bear Form I never seem to do enough damage to my target. Comparred to a Warrior of roughly the same level I can barely generate rage. On the other hand if I stay in Night Elf form then I'm pretty much out of mana by the time a fight ends.

I rolled a Druid because I wanted a real versatile class, and the paladin didn't really appeal to me. Is there something I am missing? How do you play a good Druid?

[daHob]

Push through to 20, where you get Cat form. Cat does a lot more damage than the bear and should help with leveling up.

[Jake]

I'll second that. Either push through until you get Cat Form (which is awesome) or get yourself some better gear. Once I updated some stuff on my druid the other week my survivability got a lot bigger.

[GremFarlim]

I agree with them. Get to 20. At 20 you get cat form. It does substantially more damage. It takes till level 30 to get all of your cat abilities, but its more like playing a rogue. You'll never have all of their abilities, but honestly, you get enough that you can actually level more efficiently (and have more fun IMO) than a rogue. Like a warrior can stance dance, once you have cat form, you can pop in and out of several forms depending on the situation, you can pop a few heal over times and then back into your selected form. Its very efficient. Plus lots of fun. I can generally take elite mobs at my level or below. It takes practice to know when to swap and then heal, but most times I don't even need to use a healing pot or other such item.

[GremFarlim]

I'll second the idea of gear. I generally let my gear get up to 8 levels out of date. You have a little more flexibility than say a warrior who constantly has to update gear. However, you need to pick your gear depending on what role you want to play......

If you want to be mostly feral, then pick gear that gives you Strength, Agility and Stamina. (That's read.... rogue gear...) If you want to cast spells and heal, you probably want Int and Spirit. As a druid you may want to mix and match gear. If you have a good guild, they will take you in to instances as a feral druid. Otherwise, you need to know how to fill three different roles...

Tank, Healer and DPS.

[MonkeyWrench]

Thanks for the replies so far. I'll have to take more time to respond to them in the afternoon as I'm on my way out the door at the moment.

There was one question I wanted to ask though. On the subject of gear, how does the game calculate how much damage I'm doing when in Bear or Cat form?

[GremFarlim]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Attack_Power

The above will show you how it calculates Attack Power. If you sift around in there, you can get an idea of how much DPS that will equate to. Roughly though, for ever 14 points of attack power, you'll get yourself a DPS. The calculations can be worked on from there. I don't know if there is a base damage beyond that that cat and bear form get.

Just doing some quick calculations, I'm sure this is only part of the picture. I don't know what the entire picture looks like, but I can say for certain this doesn't give you 100% of the damage. I just don't know what the base damage of the cat and bear form is....

[Icon]

Echo of the above, Druid up until 20 was amongst the worst experiences I've ever had in WoW levelling a character, getting nastier the entire time.

Things get better from 20 onward.

[SeekerJST]

Echo of the above, Druid up until 20 was amongst the worst experiences I've ever had in WoW levelling a character, getting nastier the entire time.

Things get better from 20 onward.

I don't know if it was the worst experience I've had, but I will concede that it was significantly easier to level a warrior up to 20, but afterwards, and getting feline swiftness that's turned around.

[Icon]

So far the two classes I have not levelled to 20 are Warrior and Warlock.

By far, Druid was the nastiest and that includes Priest as my first character when I didn't know anything about the game.

[brooksd01]

I'm not sure from your description, but an important part of making 10-20 easier is utilizing both of your forms to the fullest.

I usually opened up with Wrath, moonfire, wrath X more times until they're close then shift to bear and finish them off.

Also, I would highly recommend the DruidBar addon that lets you see your mana bar while in forms. It’s nice to see if you have enough mana to shift out, heal, and shift back before you actually try it and lose your extra armor / hp for nothing. This is especially important if you were nuking on the way in and burned down a lot of your mana pool.

On the leveling thing: I think I've leveled all of them to over 20 now, and I'd put warrior and priest as the most annoying for me with Warrior taking the cake for me. Druid wasn't warlock / hunter fast, but once I figured out how to use caster and bear effectively it wasn't so bad and a good intro to form dancing later in my druidic career.

[Flibbertigibbet]

I'm not sure from your description, but an important part of making 10-20 easier is utilizing both of your forms to the fullest.

I usually opened up with Wrath, moonfire, wrath X more times until they're close then shift to bear and finish them off.

Also, I would highly recommend the DruidBar addon that lets you see your mana bar while in forms. It’s nice to see if you have enough mana to shift out, heal, and shift back before you actually try it and lose your extra armor / hp for nothing. This is especially important if you were nuking on the way in and burned down a lot of your mana pool.

On the leveling thing: I think I've leveled all of them to over 20 now, and I'd put warrior and priest as the most annoying for me with Warrior taking the cake for me. Druid wasn't warlock / hunter fast, but once I figured out how to use caster and bear effectively it wasn't so bad and a good intro to form dancing later in my druidic career.

Priest is terrible until you start to pick up Shadow talents. If you make it to level 40, then it gets really chill.

My first warrior made me want to scream. My second warrior I went with a Shield+Dagger combo and that was pretty chill. Also, he was a Troll, and Regeneration is pretty freaking pimp at the lower levels.

[bv728]

Priest is terrible until you start to pick up Shadow talents. If you make it to level 40, then it gets really chill.

These days you can get by with only Spirit Tap out of Shadow, then swap over to Discipline for Imp. Wand and such. Disc/Holy Holy Damage spec is actually pretty cool.

[Flibbertigibbet]

These days you can get by with only Spirit Tap out of Shadow, then swap over to Discipline for Imp. Wand and such. Disc/Holy Holy Damage spec is actually pretty cool.

I started leveling with that but I really didn't like it. I feel like it really doesn't come together until level 60, when you get both Searing Light and Force of Will, plus some +spell damage gear. I could see getting wand spec early, though, that's pretty huge.

[bv728]

I started leveling with that but I really didn't like it. I feel like it really doesn't come together until level 60, when you get both Searing Light and Force of Will, plus some +spell damage gear. I could see getting wand spec early, though, that's pretty huge.

Wand Spec + Spirit Tap are really all you need for a leveling spec as a priest. Everything else is incididental so long as you keep your wand up to speed.

[Flibbertigibbet]

Wand Spec + Spirit Tap are really all you need for a leveling spec as a priest. Everything else is incididental so long as you keep your wand up to speed.

I found my leveling went much faster once I respeced to Shadow around level 30. Just my own experience, obviously, more power to you if you do it with one of the other paths.

[TygerTyger]

Wow, this thread switched from druid to priest pretty damn fast.

OP, push through that last level to 20. As mentioned above, cat form will make your fights go immeasurably quicker. You'll also start to gain some nice high-damage attacks in the following levels, which will only improve things further. What sort of talent build are you aiming for with your druid? Feral talents make leveling pretty painless if you invest in them heavily enough.

[Mr. Horrible]

I'm really curious about this point: those responders who say that raising a druid from 10 to 20 was painful ... were you Night Elf or Tauren? And if you were NE, were you raising up mostly in Darkshore?

I've found the 10-20 range to be very painful ... for Night Elves in general. At first I thought it was the class I was playing (my first NE was a shadow priest with Spirit Tap), but I've come to believe that it's less a class issue, and more that Darkshore kinda sucks. ;)

As a Tauren druid I never once encountered the "Ugh, What A Pain" issue that some are reporting.

[Unferth]

I've found the 10-20 range to be very painful ... for Night Elves in general. At first I thought it was the class I was playing (my first NE was a shadow priest with Spirit Tap), but I've come to believe that it's less a class issue, and more that Darkshore kinda sucks. ;)


I'd buy that. I haven't taken my tauren druid above level 14 yet, but my third serious character was a night elf warrior, and Darkshore was staggeringly painful. Especially after doing Westfall and Loch Modan with my other characters.

Darkshore might be OK on its own, but the lack of easy access to any other 10-20 zone makes it a lot worse.

[GremFarlim]

I think its just a NE thing. Honestly Darkshore just doesn't have enough quests in the area. Its hard to grind through. Once you know the tricks of running to multiple zones, leveling any toon, druid, warrior, rogue, priest, etc... from 10-20 is easy. Its just harder for NE because you have to have someone port you to SW or Ironforge and spend an hour running around getting flight paths. Its doable. It just takes more time.

[brooksd01]

I'm really curious about this point: those responders who say that raising a druid from 10 to 20 was painful ... were you Night Elf or Tauren?

I think you may very well have something here. I took a NE druid to 24 and stalled several times before I got him to 20, but my Tauren shot right into the high 20s before he got a break (which is saying something with me...)

[MonkeyWrench]

What I meant to ask was how much does the weapon you're using play into your damage output in Bear or Cat Form? Right now I'm using a 2h Mace, would switching to a faster weapon let me generate more Rage?

Also, what sort of Talent builds should I look at for a Druid who spends about half of the time soloing and the other half in groups?

[Njorhg]

The Damage and Speed of the Weapon you use doesn't affect your bear and cat forms, however the Stat bonuses stick around so you'll keep your +strength, stamine et.all as minor, added benefits

[TygerTyger]

Yeah, the only things you should look for on druid weapons, if you plan to fight in animal forms, are stat boosts and "on equip" effects. Nothing else - enchantments (besides stat boosters, of course), "chance on hit" effects, raw damage, attack speed, DPS, nothing else - matters. Until Burning Crusade, anyway.

[Vargen]

Now trinkets with chance-on-hit effects... those things do work in feral forms.

It's just for weapons that stats are everything. Truthfully I like it that way; I had trouble with my short-lived Warrior not being able to keep up because I didn't know how to go about getting good loot, and it's nice to be able to melee without having to worry about that.

[Flibbertigibbet]

What I meant to ask was how much does the weapon you're using play into your damage output in Bear or Cat Form? Right now I'm using a 2h Mace, would switching to a faster weapon let me generate more Rage?

Also, what sort of Talent builds should I look at for a Druid who spends about half of the time soloing and the other half in groups?

Feral. Much faster soloing,. In instances, feral tanks well, does ok DPS with backup healing, can mail heal decently (or so I've heard) and can generally be flexible as hell. Balance is probably not gonna do much for you. Resto is great for instances but doesn't offer a lot for soloing. (Balance and Resto will get better once the expansion hits but still, I'd go Feral.)

[Stickman12]

I'd agree that Feral is the way to go for a 50/50 solo/grouping Druid. In taking my Tauren to 60 I was either solo or in a group with a Warrior, Shaman and Hunter. I spent 90% of my time in Catform, and was consistently top or second in terms of DPS. I *could* tank but never picked up the specialised gear that made tanking a little easier (armour bonuses on weapons or high sta gear).

For soloing I wuold almost always stay in cat, as it's dps makes levelling pretty easy. Gets some decent potions and really it's just a question of finding a quiet spot and getting in the xp :)

Feral healing is possible but the constant shape dance can get annoying, especially until you have lots of mana or the talent that cuts costs. Really, if you want to heal, stay in caster form :)