WoW Classic Druid Leveling Guide

Welcome to our druid leveling guide for WoW Classic! Druids are one of Azeroth’s most unique classes, using their shapeshifting ability to dispatch of their enemies. With shapeshifting, druids have the ability to fulfill any combat role in the game, making them excellent at leveling. Any class with healing tends to be great for leveling, but druids take this further with plenty of damage and utility at their disposal!

While level 60 druids typically play as Restoration, you’ll need to play completely differently while you level. The Restoration specialization doesn’t deal good damage, a big requirement of making leveling efficient. The best way to level a druid is to actually utilize Cat Form and build as a Feral druid, making their playstyle similar to a rogue, but with plenty of healing and spells to back it up.

To successfully level your druid, there are several things you can learn to make the process quicker and easier! We’ll cover all of that in this guide, including how you should play and build while leveling. Druids are definitely one of the easier classes to level past level 20, but we’ll also include some leveling tips to speed things up.

Pros

• One of the quickest classes to level.
• Excellent soloing capabilities thanks to Bear Form and Healing Touch.
• Great utility providing crowd control.
• Not dependant on gear or weapons to succeed.
• Very versatile with use of forms and spells.
• Getting around is a breeze with stealth, a sprint, and Travel Form.

Cons

• First 10-20 levels can be tough without Bear Form and then Cat Form.
• Lower damage output than pure damage-dealing classes.
• Usually relegated to healing with Restoration once you reach level 60.
• Understanding and juggling various resources can be confusing.

General Leveling Tips

Reaching level 60 is no quick task in Classic WoW, meaning you’ll spend a great deal of time during the leveling process. You can shorten this duration with some of the following tips, but your biggest focus should be on having fun! This ultimately comes down to picking the right class for your desired gameplay, but it also means taking time to enjoy the journey. Every gear and spell upgrade you get is significant and you’ll feel how it adds to your power. Picking a class is a huge commitment, but the versatile druid gives you a taste of several different combat roles, so you can’t really go wrong with one!

Here are some helpful tips to make the leveling process simpler and hassle-free:

• Try to fight enemies one at a time. It can often take you several seconds, or even a minute or two just to kill one enemy. When you throw another into the mix, you’re receiving double the damage while having double the health pool to clear through! This is a quick recipe for death, so pull slow and steady!
• Make sure to fight enemies that are the same level as you as often as possible. You will only gain full experience from enemies that are the same level. Lower level enemies offer less experience, although are easier to fight. On the other hand, higher level enemies not only give more experience, but are also tougher to kill!
• Grouping up is almost always beneficial. Even though druids make fantastic soloing classes, they’re perfect for any group. Grouping up will allow you to tread into much more dangerous areas and quickly dispatch of targets with focused fire from multiple characters.
• Don’t run out of food and water! You will have some passive health and mana regeneration from Spirit, but it won’t be enough to keep you sustained. There’s nothing worse than running out of mana when you don’t have water and you’re nowhere near town.
• Considering much of the glamor of WoW Classic is in the journey, try to keep the immersion by figuring quests out yourself! Your map won’t display quest turn-in locations or objective areas, which makes them more engaging and challenging! If you’re ever truly stuck, don’t feel bad about looking them up!
• One thing that can really slow down your leveling progress is choosing poor leveling zones. Some zones are designed for Alliance, while others are oriented for the Horde. Make sure you choose the appropriate zones for your faction and level, prioritizing those that you already understand well or have quest-giving hubs that are closely grouped.

Druid Specific Gameplay Advice

• Druids technically have two buffs. Mark of the Wild is a fantastic boon increasing your armor, stats, and resistances that lasts 30 minutes. Thorns will cause damage to anyone that attacks you, lasting 10 minutes. There is no reason not to have both buffs active on yourself at all times!
• Use all your spells immediately so that you’ll be able to benefit from MP5. After not using a spell for 5 seconds, you’ll start to regenerate mana in combat. This means you can start pulls with a spell or heal, then immediately switch to attacking with Cat Form.
• When traveling between locations, quests, or even monsters, you’ll always want to use Travel Form for quicker movement speed. If you know you can benefit from the full 15 second duration, use Dash whenever it is available for even-quicker traveling speed!
• Your combo points only stick to one enemy. Make sure you use them before switching targets, otherwise you’ll have wasted them.
• If you only want to pull one enemy, but there’s another close nearby, use Entangling Roots to keep one at bay! You can also use the Nature’s Grasp talent to have this naturally applied to an enemy that attacks you.
• If you plan on healing, rank 4 of Healing Touch is the most mana-efficient heal you can use once you learn it. Until then, it can be extremely helpful to throw a Rejuvenation on yourself before switching into Cat Form.
• Interrupting isn’t something that you can do easily as a druid in Cat Form. You’ll need to switch to Bear Form and use Feral Charge. Alternatively, you can cast Bash, also requiring Bear Form, but which will also stun the target.
• Your mana will continue to regenerate naturally while in animal forms. Rage or energy based abilities will not prevent mana per the 5 second rule to be interrupted. Shifting into a Form counts as a spell, which affects your mana regen, whereas shifting out does not.
• Use Teleport Moonglade as a second Hearthstone. Set your Hearthstone to wherever you are questing, then Teleport: Moonglade when you need to go back to a major city for training.
• Remember that Entangling Roots and Travel Form are only usable outdoors.
• There are no diminishing returns on mobs with Entangling Roots.
• Bleed damage bypasses armor so it is effectively pure damage.

Cat Form vs. Travel Form vs. Mount

• If your next point of travel is 16 seconds or less away and you have points in Feline Swiftness, you should use Cat Form to get there.
• If your next point of travel is 24 seconds or less away, you should use Travel Form.
• Any further distances will be quickest with a 60% mount.

Stat Priority

1. Agility
   • Without a doubt, your strongest stat is Agility. Not only does Agility give you useful Attack Power, but it also gives you a slight boost to your Crit chance and Dodge chance. This makes it great for increasing your damage, but it can also help keep you alive!
   • Increases Attack Power by 1 per point.
   • Increases Crit by 1% per 20 points.
   • Increases Dodge by 1% per 20 points.
2. Strength
   • Strength is great because it also boosts your Attack Power, twice as much as Agility in fact. Unfortunately, it doesn’t grant any other benefits.
   • Increases Attack Power by 2 per point.
3. Stamina
   • Your next best stat is going to be Stamina. This increases your max health, allowing you to soak more hits and giving you extra time before needing to cast a heal.
   • Increases health points by 10 per point.
4. Spirit
   • Spirit is also an excellent stat to pick up while leveling. This will increase your out-of-combat health and mana regeneration, which means less downtime eating and drinking. This indirectly increases your leveling speed.
   • Increases health & mana regeneration rates.
5. Intellect
   • You’ll also want Intellect, but it isn’t as important as any other stats above. This will increase your maximum mana pool, allowing you to cast more spells. Most of your time will be spent in Cat Form though, making mana much less important.
   • Increases mana points by 15 per point.

Rotation

Your rotation is going to constantly evolve as you level up. Several abilities are fantastic to use, but require a specific level before you can train them. With that in mind, you should remove any abilities that you don’t have access to yet in your rotation, but don’t forget to incorporate them once they become available to you!

Prior to level 10, you can only use spells in your humanoid form. You’ll want to pull with Moonfire, and then immediately pelt enemies with Wrath. Stop to heal yourself if need be.

Your top priority is to apply Faerie Fire (Feral) once you’ve unlocked it in the talent tree. This reduces your target’s armor, making you deal more damage! This does require you to be level 30, so you can use Moonfire as a ranged pull ability until you get there.

After pulling you’ll want to apply a Rake for the bleed effect. Now you can simply use Claw until you’ve generated 5 combo points. If you know your target will still have at least half their health after spending combo points, use Rip. Otherwise, cast Tiger’s Fury, and then finish with Ferocious Bite.

If you have multiple targets on you, you’ll want to switch to Bear Form. Immediately cast Demoralizing Roar once you have the rage. Any other rage you can spend on Maul.

To simplify:

• Single Target (Cat Form): Faerie Fire (Feral) (keep applied) > Rake > Claw to 5 combo points > Rip or Tiger’s Fury / Ferocious Bite
• Multiple Targets (Bear Form): Demoralizing Roar > Maul

Rotation by Level

Talent Path

Even though Restoration is the best end-game specialization for a druid, you’ll have a much better time leveling as Feral. However, you won’t receive Bear Form (or talents for that matter) until level 10. Furthermore, you won’t even learn Cat Form until level 20. Because of this, there are some druids that like to start with the Balance tree at level 10, placing points into Nature’s Grasp, Improved Nature’s Grasp, and Natural Weapons. This will give you the greatest damage boost between level 10-20, but you’ll need to reset your talents at level 20 if you choose to do this.

Abilities to Train

• Level 1-20 – Learn every ability and upgrade that you can train. You’ll also want to complete the quest that unlocks Bear Form.
• Level 28 – Claw rank 2
• Level 30 – Faerie Fire (Feral) rank 1, Mark of the Wild rank 3
• Level 32 – Ferocious Bite rank 1
• Level 38 – Claw rank 3
• Level 40 – Mark of the Wild rank 4, Ferocious Bite rank 2
• Level 42 – Faerie Fire (Feral) rank 2
• Level 48 – Ferocious Bite rank 3, Claw rank 4
• Level 50 – Mark of the Wild rank 5
• Level 54 – Faerie Fire (Feral) rank 3
• Level 56 – Ferocious Bite rank 4
• Level 58 – Claw rank 5
• Level 60 – Mark of the Wild rank 6, Ferocious Bite rank 5

Alternative Builds

Class Quests

• Bear Form: There’s only one really important class quest to complete, the one that gives you Bear Form! You’ll unlock access to this at level 10 and you’ll want to complete it immediately. Until level 10, you’re restricted to casting spells in humanoid form. Bear Form, despite the limited damage it offers, is still stronger than trying to cast spells. With Bear Form you gain your first shapeshifting form, giving you your first taste of what the class is all about! 
• Cure Poison: You can obtain this quest at level 14. This spell can be useful in Wailing Caverns and other small group content. Cure Poison can also prove useful when you are fighting a rogue.
• Aquatic Form: This quest is obtainable at level 16. 50% speed increase while in water can be very useful in the open world.

Equipment

• Druids can use cloth and leather armor. Leather will provide a slightly better physical damage resistance, but your main priority is to pick equipment that provides you with useful stats. If you find cloth gloves with plenty of Agility, they’ll definitely be an upgrade over a pair of leather ones without them.
• This also makes weapons less important for a druid. Your attack damage is not calculated based off the damaging stats of your weapon (damage range, DPS), but instead is a combination of your stats. Weapons tend to offer the most stats compared to other pieces of gear, which makes them important, but not because your damage is solely dependent on them.
• Leatherworking gear is especially useful for druids. You can craft several pieces as you level up that have plenty of Agility. When you get to higher levels, you can craft things like Wolfshead Helm, great for giving you Energy/Rage when swapping into a form. You can also craft Devilsaur gear, which can give you an extra edge in the last few legs of leveling!

Noteworthy Feral Gear

• Tunic of Westfall – Chest -Lvl 14 – Dungeon Quest Reward “The Defias Brotherhood” Deadmines
• Triprunner Dungarees – Pants – Lvl 25 – Dungeon Quest Reward “The Grand Betrayal” Gnomeregan
• Loksey’s Training Stick – Staff – Lvl 31 – 10% Drop off Houndmaster Loksey Scarlet Monastery
• Ironshod Bludgeon – Staff – Lvl 37 – 20% Drop off Ironaya in Uldaman
• Masons Fraternity Ring – Ring – Lvl 40 – Dungeon Quest Reward “Divino-matic Rod” Zul’Farrak
• Wolfshead Helm – Head – Lvl 40 – Crafted by Leatherworkers – Great for Powershifting
• Warden Staff – Staff – Lvl 43 – BoE Epic Weapon .025% Chance World Drop
• Devilsaur Gauntlets – Hands – Lvl 53 – BoE Rare Crafted by Leatherworkers
• Devilsaur Leggings – Legs – Lvl 55 – BoE Rare Crafted by Leatherworkers

Professions

Professions definitely aren’t a requirement to level, but they can make the process much more enjoyable. Not only do they give you a break from the typical grind of questing and killing, but they can offer you substantial equipment and consumables. If you take the time to level your professions, your character will be much stronger overall. Not only that, but professions are a great way of making gold, something that becomes quite important if you want to purchase a mount!

Here are some great professions to train while leveling a druid:

• Skinning – Skinning is a great first choice for a druid because you’ll already be up close to enemies when they die. Not only that, but the leather you’ll acquire can be used to level up leatherworking, turning it into quite useful gear!
• Leatherworking – Leatherworking is a fantastic profession to have for any leather-wearing class. You can make several pieces of gear to make yourself stronger while leveling. You can also create armor kits, which can give you an extra sense of security and tankiness!
• Herbalism – If you don’t want to be a leatherworker, you can also take up herbalism. Herbalism will allow you to gather herbs necessary for alchemy. You can also combine it with skinning for a great gold-generation combo. Tauren also have a natural bonus to herbalism, making them prime candidates for this profession.
• Alchemy – Alchemy is another fantastic profession for leveling. You can make several different potions and elixirs that offer useful bonuses. Whether you need some mana regeneration, health restoration, or agility, you can find some kind of alchemy concoction for that!

Useful Macros

Maul

#showtooltip Maul
/startattack
/cast Maul

Swipe

#showtooltip Swipe
/startattack
/cast Swipe

Cancel Form and Cast Entangling Roots

#showtooltip Entangling Roots
/cancelform
/cast Entangling Roots

Hurricane Mouseover

#showtooltip Hurricane
/cast [@cursor] Hurricane

Cancel Form Cast Moonfire

#showtooltip Moonfire
/cancelform
/cast Moonfire

Dismount Stealth

#showtooltip Prowl
/dismount
/cast Cat Form
/cast Prowl

Powershifting – Powershifting is referring to going from a shift form to your race form back into your shift form again.

Powershift Bear Form Potion

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] Bear Form
/use [stance:0] Healing Potion
/cast [nostance:1] !Bear Form

Dash to Cat Form From Any Form

#showtooltip Dash
/cancelform [noform:3]
/cast [noform:3] !Cat Form
/cast [noform:3] Dash