Druid Guide 10 - 20
World Of Warcraft Druid Guide, 10-20
This guide will hopefully help you from levels 10 to 20.
I’m not going to go through the ins and outs of every quest for every race that can be a Druid, instead I’ll outline a general play style that you can possibly adopt, adapt, do whatever you feel fit. If you are looking for a more detailed guide with maps and images check out our other guides here.
Level 10
This is a nice Milestone level. You are able to learn : Mark of the Wild (Rank 2), Rejuvenation (R2), Moonfire (R2), and the long awaited Bear Form Shapeshift. On top of this, you will gain access to Bear Form exclusive abilities. Demoralizing Roar, Maul, and Growl.
We already are familiar with Moonfire and Rejuvenation, so there’s no need to readdress those. R2 of these abilities is just a stronger version of the one before. Mark of the Wild, however, is slightly different.
If you’ll recall, R1 of this buff was a boost to armor. Now, on top of the boost in armor being increased significantly, you’ll also get a +2 bonus to all attributes. This buff only gets better as we go on.
Shapeshifting
Now, Shapeshifting. There is a lot to cover about this, so I’m going to try and go over this as efficiently as I can. First, the Shapeshift spell itself. You may have noticed that when you learned this ability, a second row of hotkeys appeared above the standard 1-0,+,- row. This is where your shapeshifting skills are stored.
If you’d like, you can go in to your key settings and bind a key to the setting labeled shapeshifting form 1. I used Ctrl-1, but I did not feel the need for quick access to this spell until later on in my teens. The choice is yours, of course. Once you have this all sorted out, it’s time to shapeshift. On shift, you gain a significant boost to armor, health, and attack. You also lose your mana bar, and gain a rage meter. The health and attack boost are easy, and are a set amount.
The boost to armor however is a percentage of the armor you are wearing. The better the armor you have, the larger the boost you get. This is when it becomes really nice to have good armor as a Druid, since when you shift in to bear form, you get a huge benefit from it. As of right now, your weapon does not account for any difference in your attack power while in Bear Form.
I mentioned the Rage meter. If you’ve played a Warrior, you probably don’t need any explanation of this, and can skip this paragraph. The Rage meter increases every time you hit, and every time you get hit. Obviously, you gain more rage if you hit, but you do gain a little bit when you’re on the receiving end of a blow. A critical hit will grant you a significant boost in Rage. When you are out of combat, your rage meter slowly drains down to zero. This is to signify your ‘calming down’ after a fight.
Some intricacies of the shift itself : Bear Form is an instant cast spell. The mana cost for it will scale higher as you level up, and is a decent amount. Usually the price is just under a third of your total mana. The health bonus is given to your max hp, and your current hp. Meaning, if you’re in Druid form and have 1/200 health, and the boost is (hypothetically) 100, you will have 101/300 health after the shift. When you shift out of bear form, the exact same happens. If you were at 101/300, you’d now have 1/200. You can not die from shifting out of bear form, your health will at minimum be set to 1.
While in bear form, you continue to regenerate mana, even though you do not have a mana bar. If you shift out of bear form, you lose all of your currently built up Rage. You can not cast spells, or interact with NPCs while in Bear Form, but if you cast buffs on yourself (Mark of the Wild, Thorns), they will remain on you as you shift.
Let’s move on to the new Bear Form exclusive abilities. First, setting hotkeys for them. When you shift in to Bear Form, you’ll notice your first hotkey bar goes blank. This hotkey listing will appear when you shift, so you won’t have to set up a completely separate list to use your shifted abilities. Your Bear Form abilities will be listed under, you guessed it, Abilities, not spells. Set up your bar accordingly, and get ready to move on.
You should now have : Demoralizing Roar, Maul, and Growl. Demoralizing Roars usefulness is more apparent when soloing warrior type creatures near your level, or above. When used, this takes a small amount of rage, and debuffs monsters immediately near by you. This debuff reduces melee damage of the effected targets. The range of the spell is a radius around the bear, and is very short. If you’re planning on using this, it’s probably best to save it for when you get multiple pulls simultaneously.
In 1v1 situations, try to fire off a Roar as soon as possible if fighting a melee centric class type monster. This will ensure that the debuff stays on for the greatest amount of hits. After all, what good is an attack debuff if you’ve already let the creature attack you for the entire fight.
Maul is your basic damage dealing ability as a bear right now. Like all of the bear abilities you have right now, it costs Rage. What Maul does, is it adds bonus damage to your next melee attack. If you’re fighting in bear form a lot, this is your most used ability at this level.
Growl is your taunt. Meaning it will anger the monster in to attacking you. It uses a small bit of Rage, and is completely worthless in solo fighting. There’s no reason to use this unless you’re trying to get a monster off another person. It is an instant cast spell, with the standard recast timer of about 1 second. You can fire off about 3 Growls to a single Maul for the same Rage cost, and if your groups life depends on you getting the monsters attention, this is what you use.
Druid fighting splits here.
With access to Bear Form, you’re now able to either play the role of a tank, or that of a caster/healer. If you’re looking for the path of the caster/healer, refer to my previous guide at level 8, nothing has changed in that department.
However, if you’re looking to play the role of a tank, here is what I’d recommend. Before shifting, cast your buffs (Mark of the Wild, Thorns) on yourself. These help a lot, and never underestimate Thorns. During a fight, melee until you’ve obtained enough Rage to use Maul, then fire off this ability as often as you can. It usually takes two or three hits to get enough built up for Maul.
After one or two fights, your health is probably going to be a bit low. Shifting back to Druid form is free, and while you were a bear your mana has been regenerating, so you’re most likely at full. Heal yourself up, then shift back. This is a nice way to have very little downtime, while (excuse the pun) mauling your enemies to death.
Level 12
There’s not much new at this level. You’ll get Regrowth, and Enrage. Regrowth is like a hyper expensive, and hyper effective version of Rejuvenation. It should not be used to substitute Rejuvenation, but in different situations. The health it heals is about equal to your next Healing Touch (R3), but the mana cost is drastic, so you’re probably safer off just using your current Healing Touch, or Rejuvenation.
Enrage is a Bear Form ability that will build up your rage bar slowly, as if you were in combat. The down side to this, is that your armor is severely penalized. It’s a nice ability to have if you’re not taking the blows in a group, as it allows you to fire off more abilities with the extra Rage. You can use this ability to maintain rage while out of combat. If you’re just running around in bear form in search of quest monsters, and are in no real danger of getting jumped (we really don’t want that due to the armor decrease Enrage instills), you can easily get your meter up to 100 for the next big fight. Be sure that the icon for Enrage has faded before you start your combat though, so you have your full armor bonus.
Level 14
New abilities here include : Bash, Healing Touch (R3), Cure Poison, Wrath (R3), and Thorns (R2). Bash and Cure Poison are the newcomers, and with Thorns and Wrath just having increased damage, we shouldn’t have to cover those.
The Rank 3 Healing Touch is a very big heal. So big, that it tends to border on the line of inefficient. You may enjoy being able to heal a huge amount of health at this level, but it also takes a very heavy toll on your mana. If you’re using the warrior style of play I outlined in the level 10 section, this spell is a nice one shot for when you unshift and reshift, as it will bring you from no health to full in one shot some of the time. For group usage, R2 of Healing Touch tends to work better, if nothing else, for mana conservation.
Bash is another Bear Form ability. This is on a one minute timer, and costs Rage to activate. However, unlike Maul, this ability is a “spell” that does not require the next round of combat to come. When you use Bash, the target is stunned for a short time, usually enough for you to get one or two hits in while it sits there, unable to attack. As I said earlier, it has a one minute timer, so you can’t use it over and over again. It’s nice to Bash running opponents as they flee, then finish them off. Or, if you’re in dire need of those extra free hits.
Level 16
Moonfire (R3), Swipe, Aquatic Form, and Rejuvenation (R3) are the abilities that will greet you as you visit your trainer at level 16. Same old story with Moonfire and Rejuvenation, they’re simply upgrades to the previous versions.
Swipe is a Bear Form exclusive. This attack will attack 3 nearby enemies, doing mediocre damage. Sticking to maul may be a better usage of Rage, and won’t disrupt any crowd control your group has in place.
Aquatic Form will turn you in to a berserk walrus type creature. You won’t get any special stat boosts or combat bonuses like you did with the bear, but this form allows you to swim faster than normal, and breathe underwater. It can only be used while swimming, and will dispel itself if you walk on land. If you want to fight underwater, you can shift in to bear form, and usually finish a fight before you’re out of breath. Then, when you shift to a seal, your breath is restored, and you’re able to breathe underwater again.
Another thing this is good for, is running away. It requires that you know your surroundings though. If you’re ever fighting near a body of water, try to keep this in mind if you have to run. If a fight starts to go sour, run to the water, shift in to walrus mode, and hightail it out of there. Refer to the guide about bear form, and don’t forget that when you shift out of bear form, you lose your health bonus. So, try to run early if you can, if you have around 200 health or less when you start to run, when you shift out you will most likely have 1 health, and that usually spells death.
Level 18
Only one “new” ability here. The upgrades you’ll get are to : Maul, Regrowth, and Entangling Roots. Our new toy is Faerie Fire. This is an extremely useful spell for both group and solo play.
This spell will significantly lower the armor of the target, as well as make them unable to stealth or turn invisible (usually not an issue in Player vs Environment play, but something to keep in mind). A useful tactic is to pull with this, then shift in to bear form to do your beating. This spell is also an instant cast, and is fairly easy on the mana.
If you’re using this spell in a group, it’s usually good to save it only for creatures that take a while to die, and also if you have a very melee (read physical, archers included) centric group. Faerie Fire does not reduce magic defense, so if you’re in a group with the majority being casters and whatnot, it might be a safer bet to save the mana for healing or damage of your own.
Level 20 will bring the new Shapeshift : Cat Form.
