Level 20 Druid thoughtsFollow

My experience on my level 20 Druid

I played a priest until level 41 (and intend to continue leveling it), specced it shadow and was quite happy with him, except that its weak melee resistance started to become more obvious at higher levels. I could deal a fair amount of damage (600 damage with mind blast) but would die relatively fast if more than one mob attacked me. I did some instances as a healer (even shadow, I could heal with no problems) but I would die even faster from the elites pissed off at my healing (for some reason, my group mates were never around to pull that aggro off me  ). I found that people don’t generally know about healing generating aggro and how a priest generally works – and they forget fast even if they are informed about it at the beginning of the instance.

I looked at all the other classes and decided a druid would be most interesting. This guy can wear leather which gives him a better armor, can still cast spells and has better aggro resistance with the shapeshifting ability. So I started a Night Elf Druid. Here is my experience:

The druid gets 2 GREAT spells early on: “entangling roots” and “moonfire”. Compared to the priest, these are lifesavers especially if you fight against more than one mob at a time (and you CAN!). “Moonfire” can be cast while moving, and it is a great finishing spell.

First 10 levels were kind of slow and sucked for most part. I had to drink and heal after each fight (I took first aid, which helped). “Entangling roots” was my friend, to keep me away from losing health, but then I would spend mana quite fast. Still, I could take on 2 mobs my level and survive most of the time.

At level 10 I got “bear form”, after a quest that I found a bit silly, but whatever … Bear form is ok, just ok, it’s slow (both moving and fighting) but I could take on one or two mobs with ease. On one mob I would use the following tactic: wrath, moonfire, Fairie Fire, (by this time the mob would be in melee range) shapeshift to bear and fight until mob dies – or, if the mob started to run away at low health, shapeshift back to human form and moonfire him. It worked great and would save mana too – I only needed to drink after 4-5 fights. Good grinding sequence for me. The bear form can easily face 2 mobs at the same time, but more than that and you are in trouble. And the bear is kind of slow, so you cannot run away efficiently, need to turn back to human form (lowers the armor considerably, which is bad especially at low health) and run while casting rejuvenation. Still, in these cases I would die most of the time running. For 3 linked mobs, I would use this risky strategy: target one, wrath, moonfire, roots, (by this time the other 2 mobs would start beating on me, but I ignored them) Faerie Fire, moonfire, moonfire .. . etc until the mob was dead, then run and hope to survive. If I didn’t die, I would heal, drink etc., then come back and take on the other 2 mobs: wrath, moonfire, FF + roots on mob1, moonfire + FF on mob 2, then bear form and fight until they die. If I died running, many times by the time I would come back, there would still be 2 mobs at that spot (third mob did not respawn yet) and could still fight the other 2. However, time consuming and kind of frustrating …. So I would avoid taking more than 2 mobs at a time. Compared with the priest though, this was a big step up – poor priest could not even think of taking on 2 mobs at the same time and survive.

The aquatic form was a MAJOR PAIN – what a stupid stupid waste of time, and what a stupid quest line !! It took me over 6 hours to get that, and frankly, I don’t think I am going to use aquatic form that much. What were you Blizzard thinking ??? Same thing with the poison healing quest … Anyway, that delayed my leveling quite a bit, plus it took me a while to figure out how to start the questing line (I was in Stormwind, and the druid trainer there did not say anything about aquatic form, so at level 17 I started to look around). For those of you who want to know: both quests start in Darnassus at the druid trainer, he sends you to Moonglade, where the whole shebang starts. For aquatic form you need to go to Darkshore and Westfall to retrieve 2 parts of an amulet (LONG LONG walks !!), come back to Moonglade and put the amulet together, then more fighting and walking around, etc. I am getting pissed just thinking about it. Search allakhazam, they give you the coordinates – I probably could not have done the quest without the coordinates. The poison thing, after a lot of inane walking around, you need to heal sickly deer in Darkshore, then you get the spell. Whatever. I still have to see the usefulness of aquatic form and poison cure spell.

This biggest step up though is the cat form at level 20 – thank god, there is no quest involved! Compared to previous levels, the cat deals huge dps (maybe because it’s fast, the moves deal only about 25-35 damage but the attacks come one after the other really fast!), it moves around very fast and can stealth (during stealth mode, it becomes transparent, but moves 40% slower). With cat form came “claw” and “rip”, both dealing quite a lot of damage. Compared to before, now it takes about half the time to kill a mob my level (and I finish with 85% health). I also fought a mob my level without using “claw” and “rip”, and the mob died quite fast, with me having about 70%+ health. Cat form is great for grinding and sneaking around nasty mobs. On stealth mode I came very close – within melee range - to mobs my level and they did not detect me. The cat also moves around fast (use the jump key often while running !). If things get iffy, the cat can also run away fast. The bad is that if you are attacked by 2 mobs, RUN !!! Cat will die very easy from 2 mobs. Or, shapeshift back to human then to bear – I don’t recommend that though, you will take a lot of damage in the process.

So now I am at level 20 and having lots of fun. I am specced feral (4/5 Ferocity, 1/5 Feral aggression, 2 brutal impact, 3 feral instinct, 1 feral swiftness taken in this order). This druid will level fast, it might even become my main. I will continue on the feral line, according to some builds that I found on this forum.

One thing I don’t get though – the combo points system. Anybody can explain that to me? I also understand that next levels will also bring more cat moves, they also give combo points. Rip gets more damage with higher combo points, but how to get them? It seems that “claw” gets 1 combo point only, even if used repeatedly ?

Any thoughts appreciated. Thank you for reading.

LMAO, I have a 40 druid, and I never knew what those dots were supposed to mean XD Thanks so much for inadvertently informing me!

Edited, Apr 24th 2007 11:51pm by Beetlecat

You'll have to wait until you get up to your Priest's level before you make a final judgement. Just about every class in the game (even Paladins) are all wine and roses until you reach the 30-40 level range. At that point the game starts to get harder and put your class (which by this point should have enough spells/talents to give you a real feel for it) under enough duress that you'll be able to tell whether or not you truly like it.

Not trying to discourage you, just saying don't get too infatuated with the class or you'll be setting yourself up for a disappointment later.

thank you for the info. I'll keep an eye on those red dots ... and will explore the cat fighting 2 enemies at the same time.