Another Druid questionFollow

raikuken has a nice little talent suggestion guide, so you should check that out for a few ideas. generally, restoration is the most powerful and versatile of our three trees, and you can mix feral or balance with restoration pretty much any way you want abd be successful. balance isnt bad, not as great for soloing, but it makes you a great nuker, and feral is probably (imo) the worse of the bunch; it doesnt even have an "ultimate" skill like the balance and rest trees do. its not really that feral sucks, rather, balance or restoration give way more bang for the buck than feral does.

as for weapons, staves tend to have better caster buffs on them (spirit, int etc.) and decent damage, in addition to some higher quality staves having nice add-on abilities like +healing power or +arcane damage.

2h maces are probably the best from a pure damage standpoint, and they provide the best stat buffs for a meleeing druid, along with some nice proc effects and other add-ons on higher quality hammers. however, they are slow....slower than staves, and so they wont see much use unless you go against heavy armor classes (warriors and paladins).

1h maces are the middle ground between daggers and 2h maces; fast, strong, good physical buffs on them and a propensity for some nice higher quality add-ons as well. this is usually my main stay in pvp when im against others, as it hits harder than a dagger (meaning good armor penetrating power) but its not as slow as a 2h mace (so those misses dont hurt nearly as much). these are nice on all targets, from cloth to plate, but youll see lower damage than 2h hammers vs mail and plate armor as time goes by. still, the increased number of swings can make up for that to an extent, especially vs higher level opponents where missing REALLY hurts.

daggers are your anti-light armor weapon. these work best vs cloth-wearing casters. mages, warlocks and priests all really dont like dagger users, because fast hits interrupt casting, and if they cant cast, they cant win. they lose some power on mail/plate wearing characters tho, since the high-end damage of a dagger is rather low, meaning its penetration vs stronger armors is rather anemic.

of course, the crux to all this is, if you REALLY need to melee, you should use one of your feral forms (usually bear, sometimes cat). not only that, but you need to consider the counter for what class it is your playing; bear form makes a good tank, almost as good as a warrior, but you wont beat a warrior in a straight melee fight while you are in bear form. in other words, you need to play druid to the weaknesses of other classes. mages rely a lot on polymorph and high damage nukes to kill their opponent, along with slowing effects and frost nova to keep them away. since feral forms are immune to polymorph, using bear (for bash and feral charge (if you get it)) would be ideal. you get more HP, some stunning skills, and whenever you shift into or out of bear, you break any movement impairing effects, allowing you to close the distance much sooner. add feral charge+bash for a mage that stunned for 8-9 seconds in a row while you sit there wailing on him.

conversely, with a warrior or a rogue, you need to play to your caster power, namely range. root your target (and faerie fire the rogue) and then nuke from a distance, play hard to get until you have a clear advantage over them, then shift into bear form to finish them off.

and thats just the tip of the iceberg. druid requires you adapt to what your opponent does in order to succeed, and rarely will you be using your caster form melee attack in pvp combat with another class. even if you choose to get omen of clarity, the fact is that druids melee capacity is far enough below that of rogue, warrior, paladin, or shaman, that engaging those classes in melee combat is suicidal. conversely, NOT being in a feral form vs a mage is suicide, and even vs priests and warlocks, being in caster form is best only for healing a nuking, rarely for meleeing.

so keep that in mind. most melee weapons a druid uses in caster form will be geared towards pve, but you can still choose weapons for pvp that grant you important stats (like stam for hp and str for more attack power). however, there are some situations, however rare, that are made much easier by having the right weapon. my final advice would be to train em all, and skill all of em up, because you never know when youll just see that one weapon thats SOOOO good and you cant live without it, so no sense in limiting your options.

yeah qour hit it right on the head. that's what i call a detailed follow up!