Druid Leveling Guide

The Druid is often touted as one of the best classes for solo questing and farming, and for good reason. They are among the most flexible and mobile characters, with the ability to fill any role and tons of utility. That’s as true in the Mists of Pandaria expansion as ever. With a new talent tree just for tanks, the class officially has the most options for how you want to approach the game. Their many beast forms provide you with stealth, speed, and survivability, all of which make leveling in the open world a breeze.

This guide will give you recommendations for builds, equipment, professions, rotation, and where to go as a Druid to get from 1 to 90 as efficiently as possible. Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses (and then pick them for a little extra experience), and keep your /hug macro read for any friendly trees you come across.

Strengths

• Teleport: Moonglade provides access to a class trainer, mailbox, basic vendors, and an Herbalism trainer. Alliance can easily fly from there to Darnassus while Horde can fly to Thunder Bluff. That gives you the option of setting your Hearthstone to your current questing zone instead of your faction’s capital city.
• Glyph of One with Nature gives you a way to teleport to several different zones: Ashenvale, Blasted Lands, Darkshore, Moonglade, Sholazar Basin, The Jade Forest, Tirisfal Glades, and Valley of the Four Winds. This can help you get around more quickly while leveling.
• Druids are known as jacks of all trades, with four specializations that cover every role in the game. Whatever you want to do, you have an option for it.
• You can pick who and when to fight thanks to stealth, and keep them where you want them with your many crowd control abilities. If that’s not enough, you also have powerful defensive and healing abilities to keep yourself alive.
• Druids have mobility options that other classes could only dream of, with Dash, Feline Swiftness, Aquatic Form, Travel Form, and Flight Form. You move faster naturally and can transform on demand to speed across land, sea, or air. You’ll never have to stop and summon a mount again (unless you want to show off your collection).

Weaknesses

• Druids have a lot of abilities, many of which can only be used in a certain form. Their broad toolkit can be a little overwhelming, and it can be tricky to take full advantage of.
• Bear Form, Cat Form, and Moonkin Form each have their own primary action bar, so you’ll be doing a bit more UI management as you acquire new abilities.

Talent Builds

Druids are a hybrid class who can perform any role: tanking, healing, melee DPS, or ranged DPS. The Feral build is recommended for fastest leveling, as it provides the best combination of speed, damage, and utility for solo questing and farming. You could also choose to level as Balance if you prefer casting spells, or as the new Guardian tank specialization if you want fast dungeon queues. Restoration isn’t recommended for leveling since it is a healing build and will be much slower for questing and killing mobs.

Talents

Because of the changes to talent trees in this expansion, all of your class’s specializations share the same set of talent options. Our recommendations are mostly the same regardless of spec until you reach the level 60 and 70 talents.

Balance

• Level 15: Feline Swiftness
  A flat 15% movement speed increase is going to make a big difference over time and will be more useful than having the extra cooldown from Displacer Beast. Wild Charge isn’t useful for solo questing and farming.
• Level 30: Ysera’s Gift
  This is a nice steady passive healing effect that you don’t have to think about. Renewal is a stronger heal on a longer cooldown and Cenarion Ward is more proactive. Any of them would be fine depending on your preference.
• Level 45: Mass Entanglement
  Being able to root enemies will be useful for keeping your distance as a Balance Druid. It will also help you escape if you over-pull. Typhoon and Faerie Swarm are a bit more niche in their usefulness.
• Level 60: Force of Nature
  Being able to summon a pet on a short cooldown which deals damage and roots your target can be very helpful in solo content, especially against tougher enemies when you need to keep them at range.
• Level 75: Ursol’s Vortex
  This is a strong crowd control cooldown for keeping enemies in place while you deal damage to them from range.

Feral

• Level 15: Feline Swiftness
  A flat 15% movement speed increase is going to make a big difference over time and will be more useful than having the extra cooldown from Displacer Beast. Wild Charge isn’t useful for solo questing and farming.
• Level 30: Ysera’s Gift
  This is a nice steady passive healing effect that you don’t have to think about. Renewal is a stronger heal on a longer cooldown and Cenarion Ward is more proactive. Any of them would be fine depending on your preference.
• Level 45: Mass Entanglement
  Being able to root enemies can be useful to keep them in melee range. It will also help you escape if you over-pull. Typhoon and Faerie Swarm are a bit more niche in their usefulness.
• Level 60: Incarnation: King of the Jungle
  This cooldown will allow you to use your full toolkit on mobs regardless of stealth or positioning, which is good since you’ll rarely be able to get behind mobs when you’re solo. You’ll also be able to drop into stealth from combat, making this a must-have escape tool.
• Level 75: Mighty Bash
  You won’t typically be fighting large groups of enemies, so this single-target stun will probably be most useful to you, allowing you to continue attacking the target freely.

Guardian

• Level 15: Feline Swiftness
  A flat 15% movement speed increase is going to make a big difference over time and will be more useful than having the extra cooldown from Displacer Beast. Wild Charge isn’t useful for solo questing and farming.
• Level 30: Ysera’s Gift
  This is a nice steady passive healing effect that you don’t have to think about. Renewal is a stronger heal on a longer cooldown and Cenarion Ward is more proactive. Any of them would be fine depending on your preference.
• Level 45: Mass Entanglement
  Being able to root enemies will be useful for keeping them in melee range. It will also help you escape if you over-pull. Typhoon and Faerie Swarm are a bit more niche in their usefulness.
• Level 60: Soul of the Forest
  The damage and Rage generation from this talent are strong for leveling.
• Level 75: Disorienting Roar
  The big advantage of playing a tank is making big pulls, but sometimes you’ll overdo it. Having this available on a short cooldown will let you get out of any hairy situations you find yourself in.

Glyphs

Like talents, glyphs have been trimmed down and have a more subtle impact than they did in previous expansions. The glyphs below are our recommendations for leveling, but your mileage may vary based on your own preferences and playstyle (and what cosmetic effects you may want). There’s a bit of variety between the specs for some Major Glyphs, but they can all use the same Minor Glyphs.

Major

• Level 25: Glyph of Prowl
  Being able to sneak around at your full movement speed is invaluable for solo content.
• Level 50:
  • Balance: Glyph of Starfall
    Starfall is notorious for pulling everything in sight. Using this glyph will give you more control over what it hits.
  • Feral: Glyph of Cat Form
    This is a nice little boost to your survivability as a cat.
  • Guardian: Glyph of Maul
    Most of your options as a Guardian Druid are more geared toward group content, but here’s one that can give you a little extra damage when you’re solo questing.
• Level 75: Glyph of Dash
  Go fast, level fast.

Minor

• Level 25: Glyph of One with Nature
  This is a free teleport to a set list of locations with no cooldown. Your destination is random each time, but you can keep using it over and over. It can even be used in combat and is a much shorter cast than your Hearthstone or Teleport: Moonglade. Locations are limited by your level range so you won’t find yourself in a high level zone as a low-level character. There’s a list of locations for this spell included in the Where to Level section later in this guide.
• Level 50: Glyph of Grace/Glyph of the Predator
  You have two options here. Glyph of Grace lets you land on your feet even if you’re not in Cat Form, reducing the risk of random deaths due to falling damage. If you’re always in Cat Form, or not as clumsy as the rest of us, Glyph of the Predator will allow you to track beasts on the minimap (especially useful if you’re leveling Skinning).
• Level 75: Glyph of Aquatic Form
  This glyph is awesome anytime you need to be underwater, which is probably more often than you expect. But it’s not useful otherwise, so feel free to grab a cosmetic one instead if you prefer.

Stat Priority

Always try to stack your main stat above all. For Feral and Guardian Druids, that means Agility. Balance Druids will want Intellect instead.

Equipment

Druids are able to equip Daggers, Fist Weapons, Polearms, and Staves as well as One-Handed and Two-Handed Maces. Druids can’t Dual Wield, so Feral and Guardian Druids will want to use a Polearm, Staff, or Two-Handed Mace to maximize their stats. Balance Druids will prefer a One-Handed Mace or Dagger with a Held In Off-hand item, though they can also use a Staff if the stats are better. Weapon upgrades will often be the biggest damage increase while leveling. If you’re using an Heirloom weapon, it will upgrade automatically each time you level.

The Relic slot is gone from the character window in Mists of Pandaria, so you won’t be able to equip any of the old class-specific Idols anymore.

Druids can technically wear Cloth as well as Leather, but you will always want to use Leather Armor due to your Leather Specialization passive ability, which gives a 5% buff to your most important stat. Although Druids can tank, they can’t equip Shields.

Heirlooms

Heirlooms can considerably speed up the leveling process by granting you increased experience gains and making your character a lot stronger. They’re also a lot more convenient than having to replace your gear every few levels. To get heirloom equipment for your Druid, you’ll have to buy it on another character who has enough of an appropriate currency.

Any heirloom gear is better than nothing. If you happen to have some lying around after leveling another character, feel free to use them rather than buying new ones (as long as the stats are good for you). But these are the best pieces if you’re looking to purchase some Heirlooms specifically for leveling your Druid:

Professions

While it can be more efficient in the long run to level professions at the same time that you level your character, it will significantly slow down the leveling process. With that said, the three gathering professions – Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning – each offer useful passive bonuses that can help you in your journey, even if you don’t bother to level them. Druids have an advantage with gathering skills due to their Travel Form and Flight Form, which are instant as opposed to having to mount up again each time you need to look for the next node. You can even gather with Herbalism and Skinning without leaving these forms. Stealth also makes it possible to sneak around and gather without having to fight every mob in your path.

Crafting professions require a bit more work (or a lot of gold to buy the materials on the Auction House), but they can provide powerful items to make leveling smoother. Leatherworking and Engineering both offer some very useful gear and utility for Druids. You can also get a head start on whichever professions you wish to focus on in the endgame, or choose professions that will be useful to your other characters in the meantime.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that gathering with Archaeology, Herbalism, and Mining gives character experience as well as profession experience. (Skinning does not.) The amount of experience you gain doesn’t really make up for the extra time you need to spend leveling them, but at least it’s something.

Rotation

Now that you’re all set up, here’s what buttons you should push and in what order!

For the first few levels, you’re stuck using Wrath and Moonfire. By level 10 you should be able to have more of a rotation going.

Balance

• Always be in Moonkin Form.
• Use Moonfire to apply or maintain its DoT.
• Use Sunfire to apply or maintain its DoT (level 18+).
• Use Starsurge on cooldown (level 12+).
• Use Starfall on cooldown if you’re in a Lunar Eclipse (level 76+).
• Use Wrath until you enter a Lunar Eclipse.
• Use Starfire until you enter a Solar Eclipse.

Remember that you have plenty of crowd control options to keep enemies at range while you blast them from a safe distance.

Feral

• Always be in Cat Form.
• Use Rake to apply and maintain the bleed effect.
• Use Savage Roar to apply and maintain its debuff if you have 5 Combo Points (level 18+).
• Use Rip to apply and maintain its bleed effect if you have 5 Combo Points (level 20+).
• Use Ferocious Bite if you have 5 Combo Points.
• Use Mangle to build Combo Points.

You can skip Savage Roar and Rip for weaker enemies who will die before they can have much of an impact.

Guardian

• Always be in Bear Form.
• Use Mangle on cooldown.
• Use Thrash to apply and maintain its bleed effect (level 28+).
• Use Swipe on cooldown if you’re fighting more than one target.
• Use Faerie Fire to apply and maintain the debuff (level 28+).
• Use Maul if you have a Tooth and Claw proc (level 32+) or if you are close to maximum Rage.
• Use Lacerate as a filler (level 38+).

Where To Level

Getting Started

Like all classes except for Death Knights, Druids begin in the starting zone for their character’s race. Completing your starting zone should get you through the first dozen or so levels. After that, you can head to your faction’s capital city to train professions, use the Auction House, and decide where to go next. A good place to start is the Hero’s Call Board in the center of The Trade District in Stormwind City or the Warchief’s Command Board in front of Grommash Hold at The Valley of Strength in Orgrimmar. This board will always have a couple of quests directing you to a zone in your level range.

Teleport: Moonglade & One with Nature

At level 14 you’ll unlock Teleport: Moonglade, which takes you to the village of Nighthaven in Moonglade. This area is a kind of class hub for Druids, with a few different conveniences that are especially useful for leveling: a class trainer, a mailbox, basic vendors, and an Herbalism trainer. You can also fly to Darnassus (Alliance) or Thunder Bluff (Horde) from there. You won’t need to complete class quests here to learn your forms like in the pre-Cataclysm days, but it’s still a good place to make a pit stop every now and then.

From level 25 on, you’ll also be able to get Glyph of One with Nature, which allows you to instantly teleport to a random location from a short list. You won’t be sent to zones that are higher level than you, so you’ll have an easier time getting to the place you want to go at lower levels, because the list of potential destinations will be shorter. Here are the places you can travel to with this ability:

Note that there are no locations in Outland, but you can teleport to the Blasted Lands to reach the Dark Portal.

Leveling Beyond Your Starting Zone

Level 20 is when you’ll be able to get your first mount. After that, you should train new riding skills as soon as they become available. Your riding skill will also affect your Flight Form. Don’t forget to also train your professions, upgrade your gear, and pick up glyphs when you have new slots available.

At level 30, you can learn Dual Specialization from a Druid Trainer, which will allow you to have an alternate build that you can swap to when you feel the need. If you’re planning to heal at endgame or want to heal in dungeons, this is a good way to get started without sacrificing your leveling build.

For the first 58 levels, you’ll be questing or dungeon grinding in Classic zones and instances on the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Your One with Nature ability will come in extra handy in these continents, where zones are spread out and you don’t have very fast riding skill yet. When you get into the higher levels, you should head to the next expansion’s zones as soon as you’re able to: Outland at level 58, Northrend at 68, Cataclysm at 78, and Pandaria at 85. There’s a big jump in loot and experience for each expansion that makes it well worth abandoning whatever you were doing before and moving on.

If you’re not worried about taking the fastest, most direct path to level 90, feel free to break up your leveling process by trying out different activities. There are plenty of things to do in World of Warcraft that grant experience besides questing and killing mobs. You can get a little bit of experience from gathering with Archaeology, Herbalism, or Mining. You can run dungeons with other players, or compete against them in PvP battlegrounds. The new pet battle system also gives experience.