By: Speranza

What is a Druid?

A Druid is one who believes in the ways of nature above all things. They are so in tune with nature that nature enhances their abilities and defines the way they live. In Word Of Warcraft this makes them magicians who use nature to battle their enemies, take the form of fearful beasts, and to assist them through many adventures across Azeroth. Druids are known as a “hybrid class”, this means they are a jack-of-all trades pulling abilities from several different WoW classes. They have the ability to heal, to cast ravaging magic, to stand brave in the face of an enemy, or to sneak around behind danger and attack it where it hurts the most. Because of the Druid’s wide array of abilities they are not specialized in one and cannot perform as well as another class who specialize in that area of battle. Do not let that dissuade you from become a mighty Druid for where they lack they make up in versatility.

Druids are extremely useful in many situations. This is because they have a wide variety of uses and are able to switch roles immediately. They are excellent for solo or group play because they can heal, tank, hide, provide crowd control, cast spells, and even when needed run away and live to fight another day! This is all achieved through the Druids only specialization, Shape Shifting. Shape shifting allows a druid to become one of several animal forms and also allows them to shrug off a nasty polymorph spell cast from an enemy mage. Who wants to be a sheep anyhow when you can become a mighty bear and claw you enemies to shreds?

Only two races in Word of Warcraft can chose to be a Druid. The first one is the noble Night-Elf, creatures of the night whose ways with nature are known not only by the Druids. The other race is the mighty Tauren, cow like beings that come from nomadic tribes and live in harmony with nature on the plains of Kalimador. The Benefits to a Druid of being either Night-Elf or Tauren are different but come down two 1 main decision. You must decide if you want to fight with the Alliance as a Night-Elf or war with your brothers as a Tauren! The biggest racial abilities that may affect this decision would be the Tauren’s strength and health points or the Night-Elf’s Shadow Meld that allows them to disappear in caster form and allow them to stealth better in cat form.

Druid’s selection of armor is not very great. You can go with cloth or leather. If you chose to go cloth you will be sacrificing a lot of useful armor points for caster abilities. I do not recommend it but if you do find a piece of useful cloth while leveling up by all means keep it for a few levels. Your other choice is Leather. It has a higher amount of armor points and can still give you caster points and abilities or abilities more useful in tanking or stealthing.

A Druid has a small selection of weapons to equip. These include daggers, staff, one-handed maces, two-handed maces, and unarmed. Druids do not get wands or any ranged weapon but they do have ranged spells. The most commonly used weapons are the staff and two-handed mace. The staff is useful for its caster stats or the mace for its damaging abilities. A good Druid will have one of each and switch them out according to what they need. Much like shape shifting is used to conquer every situation differently.

The number one ability of a Druid is their shape shifting. The first form you start out in is caster form. This is the normal humanoid form in which you can cast all your spells to smite your enemy or heal yourself and your comrades.

As a Druid gets older they can start to learn their animal, or feral, forms. The first one is the Bear. The Bear for allows you to become a warrior. High armor, a rage bar, taunt, and other warrior traits become a Druid’s in this form.

Later you learn the Water Travel Form, other wise known as Angry Sea Lion. This form allows underwater breathing and faster travel in water, but has some limitations such as you can only use your default attack and no special attacks. Its uses are limited but it allows for an edge of fun outside of regular game play.

Next you learn Cat Form. This is when the Druid becomes a Rogue. In cat form Druids can prowl around undetected, pounce upon your enemy from the shadows, rake your enemy with wicked claws causing them to bleed, or build up combo points for a deadly finishing move. This is one of the favorite forms of Druids because the ability to prowl, or stealth, is invaluable to survival.

Later you learn another travel form, but this time its Cheetah Form and you can travel faster over land. This form is limited like your water form because it will not last in water and can only be used outside. Don’t be fooled by its quickness though you will still want to purchase a mount if you wish to keep up with your friends beyond level 40.

Dire Bear form for now is the last form you will learn. There is nothing special or unique about this form it just upgrades the armor class to the regular Bear Form. This allows Druids with the right equipment to compete with plate mail wearers in tanking abilities.

Spells

The Druid’s caster form has a wide variety of spells ranging from direct damage to debuffs to crowd control. Wrath, Starfire, and Moonfire all have direct damage and Moonfire has a lovely damage over time. Roots and Hibernate help control nasty critters but are limited to when and what you can use them on. Druids also have an extremely useful selection of healing spells. The instacast Rejuvenation with its heal over time, the Healing Touch with its massive direct heal, and Regrowth with its direct heal and heal over time will keep you and your friends battling for some time. Druids also have one spell that allows them to stand out above all other classes, and that is Mark Of The Wild. MoTW is a buff spell it does three separate things in one spell. It upgrades your armor points, gives you magic resistances, and best of all upgrades all your stats. Druids are sought after for this wonder buff.

Talents

There are three talent trees to every class in World of Warcraft. The Druid is no exception and has a balance, feral, and restoration tree for their talents. At level ten every character begins receiving talent points and will continue getting them till level sixty giving you 50 points to spend over 3 trees. I suggest using a talent calculator to help you decided which points to get before spending them in game. You can relearn talents but it costs several gold gets more expensive each time. How a Druid spends their talent points literally defines them on what they do best. Yes you can still shape shift and do well in your feral forms if you choose to go balance instead of feral but you will have more use casting spells. Balance is for Druids who wish to concentrate on spells, Feral is for Druids who want to be animals most of the time, and Restoration is for Druids who enjoy healing on par with a priest and keeping themselves and everyone around them alive.

Druids excel in solo play. The greatest tactic is to start of in feral form, either cat or bear, and attack until the enemy is severely wounded. Then shape shift back to caster form to finish them off with a few quick spells or heal your self and go back into your feral form of choice. Druid’s crowd control spells also allow you to manipulate your enemies to fight them one at a time or to hold them in place as you run to safety. Every class in this game is good at solo play but Druids get an edge for being good at melee and healing.

Grouping with a Druid is an extremely easy thing. You are able to fill in a slot that may not be available. Lacking a Warrior? Be a bear! Lacking a Rogue? Go cat form. Need a healer or mage? Well they have that covered also. Many Druids will find though that as they progress through the game other players will only want a Druid to heal. Just remember it’s your game, your Druid, and you play him how you like. That is the beauty of being a versatile class.

Player Vs Player combat is by far one of the more challenging and fastest pace of combat you will ever engage in, in World Of Warcraft. The mechanics are similar to killing monsters but Players fight back harder, are ruthless, and are a lot smarter. Many Druids have found that their class is not as quick in PvP as other classes. The damage output of a Druid is a bit slower than other classes. Most Druids find that by using bear form to soak up damage and switching to caster form to heal keeps them full of Mana and Health and whittles away at another player’s hide rather well, but how you chose to PvP be it tanking and healing or straight out magic blasting them is a skill you will have to develop for yourself.

One of the great things about WoW is that any class can take any trade skill and not be hindered. If you are interested in making good money the gathering skills like skinning, mining, and herbalism are ideal. If you want your Druid to have cool toys and gadgets go engineering. The most recommended profession is leatherworking and skinning. You can make your own armor as you level and if you go Tribal Leatherworking all of those armors are designed for Druids.

Druids end game are more often than not expected, if not required by some guilds, to be restoration specced in their talent trees. This makes them almost as powerful healers as Priests and gives them insane survivability while soloing or PvPing. My recommendation tough is to have fun and try out all three trees of talents before settling on an end game template. However you choose your talent points you will still be a level 60 that can get the job done.