This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this guide here.

Click here for the Druid Class Guide, also check out this page for more world of warcraft leveling tips & tricks.

Index:
1.0 - Introduction
2.0 - Talents
3.0 - Gear & Progression

Druid’s are a truly great class, and a fun one more importantly, they present what I would say is the greatest level of variety amongst all the classes.  Variety counts for a lot, it keeps you interested, having fun, get tired of melee? Go balance, or healing perhaps, and at all times you still remain capable of fulfilling up to 3 or more roles such as tank, melee DPS, healer, and with balance, damage caster.

Still, even more important is that, no-matter the role, druids provide effectiveness.  When properly talented they can tank with the best of them, or for the purposes of this guide, dish out massive amounts of melee damage in cat form.

So, read on and I’ll give you some help towards leveling your druid in the most efficient and fun manner possible.

2.0 – Talents

1/46/14

This talent build is entirely focused on providing the greatest level of possible
damage while within primarily cat form, although it can be used for those bear form lovers out there as well.  Either way, with a combination of massive DPS and respectable healing capabilities, this can easily set pace to match both rogues and hunters at the head of the leveling race.

Most classes talent tree’s will be a mixture of excellent and filler, being forced to drop a point here and there to simply fill the gaps between the truly desired abilities.  Luckily for druids, this is not the case at all.  Instead, our tree is largely a stacking improvement of abilities, all the way from the top tiers to the bottom of the tree.

Ferocity, it helps by reducing the rage/energy cost of your widely used attack abilities while in feral forms, what’s not to like?  Although it seems like a small decrease, you’ll really notice it as time passes, in moments when your rage/energy pool is tight and you need to finish the enemy, it comes in handy.

Brutal impact is another seemingly bland choice, however the reality is that this is yet another gem of a talent.  By speccing into brutal smash, you make it perfectly possible to switch into bear form, bash the opponent, exit bear form and heal yourself,  and finally returning to either bear or cat form and continuing the attack *before* the enemy is un-stunned.

Feral charge provides us with an opener, a very useful thing to have, and also reduces the downtime between combat.   With this you can now charge opponents immediately upon entering combat through usage of Furor, the restoration talent.

Predatory strikes, heart of wild, shredding attacks, savage fury – These choices all present stacking buffs to our offensive and defensive capabilities, by the time you’ve picked them all up I expect you’ll have an easily noticeable increase in damage output.

Leader of the pack along with improved leader of the pack result in a large damage increase via criticals as well as a small accompanying health return when you do critically hit, win-win situation in my eyes.

Finally, predatory instincts and Mangle round out the feral combat tree, giving us an always helpful increase to critical strike damage as well as a new and extremely effective attack ability – Overall the tree ends in spectacular fashion, making you a lean-mean DPS machine.

10 - 14 Ferocity
15 – 16 Brutal Impact
17 – 19 Feral Instinct
20 – 21 Feral Swiftness
22 – Feral Charge
23 – 27 Furor
28 – 30 Sharpened Claws
31 – 32 Primal Fury
33 – 35 Predatory Strikes
36 – 37 Shredding Attacks
38 – 39 Savage Fury
40 – 44 Heart of the Wild
45 – Leader of the Pack
46 – 47 Improved Leader of the Pack
48 – 49 Survival of the Fittest 2/3
50 – 54 Predatory Instincts
55 – Mangle
56 – Survival of the Fittest 3/3
57+ - Branch out at this point and pick up whatever you think works best, more points in feral, restoration, balance, etc.

3.0 – Gear & Progression

Feral druids, our leveling spec of choice for this guide, focus primarily on melee stats in a similar manner to other melee-based classes such as enhancement shamans, rogues, warriors, etc.  To put it simply, this makes it fairly easy for us to gear up given the massive amounts of DPS gear exist at all levels, 1 – 70.

In order of priority, strength comes first.  Strength equals an increase in attack power which is augmented further by your heart of the wild talent – meaning a lot of attack power overall and therefore a lot of damage.

Second tier stats include stamina and agility, agility is yet more increase to attack power and damage, stamina gives you more health and thus survivability.  I’ll leave it up to you to prioritize these depending on your current health at any given level.

Finally, last place is given to intelligence.  Int is fairly useless to search for on armor unless it also possesses decent damage stats such as some strength, agility, or attack power, as a feral druid your mana pool is exclusively used for healing after going through multiple fights, and that doesn’t take much to do.

Overall itemization for druids is fairly well done and I doubt you’ll experience difficulties finding the right equipment at any level.