HOW TO SPEC

At 10 you'll get your first talent point and the opportunity to decide where to place it. As I've written previously, you will probably level faster and with better survivability as Feral, but Balance leveling has been significantly improved. Feral's main attraction remains its manaless DPS and its generally higher health pool. But to be frank, between 20 and 40 it's a crapshoot whether you'll level faster as Feral or Balance, especially if your gear isn't very good and you have to heal frequently. Feral's mana regeneration is pretty dismal and its mana efficiency is even worse, and you may find yourself stopping to drink after every 3-4 mobs just to get the mana to shapeshift back to Bear or Cat after healing. If you find yourself preferring melee, go Feral; if you like staying ranged, go Balance; if you don't feel strongly either way, Feral tends to be faster overall (more and more true as the Cat gains damage and utility skills).

If you wish to level Feral: try using this build or one similar to it. Please note that you may want to drop a point from Shredding Attacks into Survival Instincts. Shred's mostly useful following a Pounce (which you won't get until level 36) or opening from stealth in Cat Form, so your opportunity to get mileage from Shredding Attacks is somewhat limited. I've included it here mostly because Shred is high DPS as you level, but it's also an energy hog.

Again, this depends somewhat on your gear. With lots of BoA items and blues, you probably won't need Survival Instincts unless you're prone to doing a number of incredibly risky pulls. If you're leveling in quest rewards and greens, SI is a better investment.

If you wish to level Balance: try using this build. The focus here is on maximizing burst damage and DoT's with minimum time investment in killing, which is the reason we're ignoring some otherwise valuable raid talents here (e.g. Eclipse) whose procs or bonuses are likely to be wasted between mob pulls. Players who especially dislike downtime may want to drop points from a damage talent into Dreamstate.

If you wish to level Restoration: Oh, dear sweet Lord, please don't. As a Druid, you will often be asked to heal or off-heal in any instances you do while leveling, but as long as you set aside some intellect/stamina/spirit gear as you go, healing a normal 5-man as a Balance or Feral Druid is not usually difficult. The offensive talents in the Restoration tree are almost universally oriented toward Balance and Feral abilities, and with the Resto Druid's traditional reliance on HoT's and mana efficiency over the crit-based abilities of Paladins, Priests, and Shamans, you're much less comfortably placed than, say, a Resto Shaman to get assistance with leveling from healing talents (e.g., the Shaman's Tidal Mastery).


LEVEL 12

To quote Dave Barry, "We are having some fun now, yes?"

• Enrage: This ability has been improved as of patch 3.2 and will now instantly generate 20 rage, plus an additional 10 over 10 seconds. This will help a little with Bear form's abysmal rage efficiency in early levels -- and in later levels will help in frontloading some threat if you're starting a pull with less rage than you'd like -- but the one-minute cooldown and the armor penalty are things to keep in mind.
• Regrowth, rank 1: Ah, Regrowth. Once upon a time we described this spell as "gulp(ing) mana with the approximate fuel efficiency of a 1998 Chevy Suburban" -- and, well, at early levels this is still somewhat true. Regrowth is significantly more inefficient than either Healing Touch or Rejuvenation. That said, this is the only "flash heal" you're going to get until Nourish at 80, so it certainly has its uses, and it also lasts much longer than Rejuvenation does. Useful as both a flash heal and for pre-Hotting yourself before a difficult pull.
• Revive, rank 1: Look, Ma, it's an out-of-combat resurrection!
  

LEVEL 14

Bear form gets one of its two interrupts in the form of Bash, but that's it for the truly new stuff:

• Bash: Bears are weak to caster damage before Protector of the Pack and Barkskin. At 80, we're also the only tank without a ranged silence, which proves highly annoying in several 5-man situations. Bash is your one defense against interruptible damage in close quarters, although if you can get sufficient range on a mob, you can pre-empt a cast with a Feral Charge. At 14, however, you'll still be at least 16 levels away from Feral Charge, which is the Feral tree's 21-point talent (assuming you're leveling as Feral in the first place), so get used to using Bash at opportune moments.
• Healing Touch, rank 3: standard upgrade.
• Thorns, rank 2: standard upgrade.
• Wrath, rank 3: standard upgrade.

LEVEL 16

Hurrah for Aquatic and Travel forms! The former arrives in time for Night Elves to do the infamous Deep Ocean, Vast Sea if you're leveling in Darkshore, although that quest is probably a lot easier nowadays. I remember doing that before Blizzard gave you more than a minute to survive underwater without breathing. Not a fun experience, to say the least, particularly because murlocs are everywhere and you can't eat or drink while swimming.

• Swipe (Bear), rank 1: If you're planning to tank, hotkey Swipe somewhere where it can be conveniently spammed. While Swipe has been vastly improved from its original incarnation (3-mob only, frontal cone, must-target-to-activate, all of which was a nightmare on gauntlet events or large pulls), it still has a relatively low threat modifier in comparison to other tanking classes' AoE threat abilities. This may sound like it's a bad thing, but Swipe spam has its benefits; Swipe on 2+ mobs basically guarantees a Savage Defense proc in later levels and is also enormously useful in conjunction with Primal Fury, which you get very early in the Feral tree.
  
• Moonfire, rank 3: standard upgrade.
• Rejuvenation, rank 3: standard upgrade.

A QUICK WORD ON AQUATIC AND TRAVEL FORMS

Because aquatic form has been trainable since patch 3.0.8, I'm not going to write a huge guide on how to do the old questline (this article's getting mighty long), but I still recommend doing it as it's a good piece of class lore despite being fairly time-consuming. You can find a basic guide on it here at Wowwiki. On top of its ability to breathe underwater, aquatic form is useful for covering any serious distance by sea (island quests in Desolace and Stranglethorn Vale come to mind). Also, I once used it to outdistance, root, and drown a sadistic opponent in Arathi Basin, which I can't recommend highly enough. Once glyphed, aquatic form is also the fastest possible way to get through water, and easily outruns a Sea Turtle.

Travel form is castable in combat and a potential lifesaver when you need to put distance between yourself and an enemy, but keep in mind that said enemy may land 1 or 2 more swings on you even after you've taken off. Use it proactively. If you're in real danger, shift to Bear form, Bash the enemy in question (or War Stomp as a Tauren in caster form), and then get the hell out of there. Dash in Cat form is better as an emergency speed boost but you won't get it until level 26.

Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, Features, Leveling, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives