LEVEL 79

• Claw, rank 8: standard upgrade. /sigh.
  
• Healing Touch, rank 15: standard upgrade.
• Maul, rank 10: standard upgrade.
• Ravage, rank 7: standard upgrade.
• Rebirth, rank 7: standard upgrade, but stock up on Starleaf Seeds unless you're rocking a Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth.
• Tiger's Fury, rank 6: standard upgrade.
• Wrath, rank 12: standard upgrade.

LEVEL 80

Hallelujah! Until Cataclysm hits and everyone rerolls to a worgen, this is as far as you'll get, and now it's time to hit the trainer for one last round of ridiculously overpriced skill-ups and talent ranks.

• Nourish: For years, druids were the sole healing class in the game without access to two key things: a). an out-of-combat resurrection, and: b). a flash heal. Both issues were dealt with for Wrath, and while you've had Revive for a while, it'll take you until 80 to get Nourish. Oddly enough, the skill didn't go live to great fanfare on the Wrath beta because it was competing against the Healing Touch glyph, and early on, that wasn't much of a contest. As we've previously observed, Nourish has had the motherloving snot buffed out of it since Wrath went live in addition to getting a glyph, while the other druid mainstays -- out of 5-second mana regeneration and the workhorse Lifebloom -- have been nerfed. So how's it supposed to be used? To an experienced resto, it's an answer to the classic-and-BC question, "How do we deal with burst damage when Nature's Swiftness and Swiftmend are on cooldown?" -- but you can also use it in a proactive fashion. A glyphed Nourish on a tank with full HoT's running is a beefy heal with a decent raid-buffed crit rate (although you're still not going to get anywhere near the crit rates of, say, a paladin or a shaman). And what makes Nourish better than a glyphed Healing Touch these days? Lissanna had a recent look at the issue here that should be pretty illuminating for anyone interested in how these two spells play against each other ingame (don't miss the comments section either).
  
• Gift of the Wild, rank 4: standard upgrade. Don't forget to hit a reagent vendor and purchase some Wild Spineleaf.
  
• Hurricane, rank 5: standard upgrade.
• Lacerate, rank 3: standard upgrade.
• Lifebloom, rank 3: standard upgrade.
• Mark of the Wild, rank 9: standard upgrade.
• Moonfire, rank 14: standard upgrade.
• Rejuvenation, rank 14: standard upgrade.
• Revive, rank 7: standard upgrade.
• Rip, rank 9: standard upgrade.
• Shred, rank 9: standard upgrade.
• Tranquility, rank 7: standard upgrade.

Before you go anywhere, it's time to gear that drood of yours up a bit. Earlier in Wrath, we wrote a series on how to gear each druid spec, and while most of the information is still accurate, I'll be updating these in the next few weeks to reflect new choices available from Trial of the Champion and tradeskill pieces. As always, I'll be assuming that you don't necessarily have access to raids or a huge sugar-daddy main to siphon gold from:

• Gearing your balance druid at 80
• Gearing your bear druid at 80
• Gearing your cat druid at 80, part 1 and part 2
• Gearing your restoration druid at 80

And you're also going to need to work on reputation with the game's factions, so you should know what it is you can get from each:

• Kalu'ak and Horde Expedition/Alliance Vanguard guide
• Wyrmrest Accord and the Kirin Tor guide
• The Frenzyhearts and the Oracles guide
• The Argent Crusade guide
• The Knights of the Ebon Blade and Sons of Hodir guide

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Every week, Shifting Perspectives treks across Azeroth in pursuit of truth, beauty, and insight concerning the Druid class. Sometimes it finds the latter, or something good enough for government work. Whether you're a Bear, Cat, Moonkin, Tree, or -- for some unaccountable reason -- stuck in caster form, we've got the skinny on Druid changes in patch 3.2, questions and answers on new Bear and Cat forms, and thoughts on why you should be playing the class (or why not).

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