With the guild perk for movespeed (Mount Up) you're going almost as fast on a druid as on a DK, with the added bonus of not having to dismount/fight mobs to herb/skin.

While it is true that you still have to level a druid from 1 to 85, if you already have both classes at 85 (or have a paladin at 85) then they are all comparable.

@Techvoodooguy

Yeah, that's an aspect I have considered. And since most druids don't serve any other very useful function, why not turn them into farmers.

Seriously though, the flight speed with the [Mount Up] buff is 451% vs 492%.

I started doing the math but since I have a druid at 85 in a guild with the buff I can attest that the druid visits fewer nodes per hour than the DK. Anyway, to each his/her own. It still doesn't invalidate the main point that farming is a good way to get started in gold making. It can feed your other toons or provide capital to get started with more risky ventures.

And all of this conversation leads to another important point. MIN/MAX doesn't just apply to raiding. The gold making meta game enjoys just as many players willing to squeeze out the best performance. If I visit 10 more spawn points on my DK per hour than you do on your druid and half those nodes yield product that sells for 4g each node, I just made 20 gold more than you with the same amount of effort.

Unless that Druid is a Tauren... so maybe your DK *sees* more spawn points, but how many of those points were too close to a mob to avoid aggroing?

How long did it take you to kill those mobs and mount back up? The Tauren Druid with Cultivation didn't fight a single mob; they probably aggro'd several of them, got smacked one time, and were able to start *and* finish herbing faster than the mob was able to get another swing in.

Not trying to be a jerk; just sayin'... I mean if someone already has a Druid and it just happens to be a Tauren (hey, one in four chance, aye?); that's *always* going to be their best choice for herb farming IMHO.

@Swifteye,

Ok, um, sure. If I stand with one foot on a banana peel, one foot in a grave, while waving a stuffed bunny around my head and eating a dry roasted peanut, I will have a better chance of farting into a tornado.

Of course if I want to send any herbs or ore to my alliance bank alt, I will need to enlist the help of a friend and pay the extra 15% neutral AH cut.

@Hrothgar

You can dismiss Swifteye, but he/she's onto something there.

Tauren druids can pick an herb in .5 sec as opposed to everyone else's 2.0 seconds. So there's 1.5 seconds. Add another 1.5 seconds for you to get back on your mount, and I'm 3 seconds ahead of you. After one herb.

Keep your master DK flying speed, we'll still flat outrun you.

Swifteye's point was exceedingly valid. Tauren druids are worth the time spent levelling just for herb farming alone.

Eh, I levelled up a Tauren Druid specifically to be a herbalism mule. They're ridiculously overpowered at farming herbs (you get a lot of hate whispers even if you're pretty polite while farming), and levelling really doesn't take that long. If all your toons are Horde (like mine) you don't need to do any neutral AH shenanigans either.

I expect a Death Knight would be the best to level as a farming mule Alliance side, but Horde side you're better off spending the extra day or two levelling a Tauren Druid up, it's definitely worth your while.

Plus, I just like Druids... otherwise why would I have two on the same server =P?

Farming cata herbalism and mining i havent aggrod a single mob.

@Emophia - you must not farm Whiptail in Uldum then, a lot of those crocs sit right on top of the nodes.