I’ve leveled a few Druids in the past but I’ve never been able to grasp the class.
I’m a dps player at heart, but I’m open to other roles and I’ve always wanted to pick up Druid.
So I’m asking the Druid mains here for advice. What specs do you recommend for a beginner player?
Who are some good content creators to look at for improving my gameplay and rotation?
Depends entirely on you…Do you like Melee more or Ranged. What do you plan on doing? Raids/Mythic Plus or just Rando world content.
Balance is considered by far the easier of the 2 specs to pick up by many. But if you hate or are terrible at Ranged you might not feel that way. I preferred Feral as solo, lowbie dungeons.
I am a caster at heart (mained a mage for most of my WoW time), so Balance really appeals to me. When I created this druid back in 2005, I first went feral since it was the most playable spec. Feral’s not bad if you like energy and combo points, but it isn’t my cup of tea (except for when running old raids for transmog where the extra speed and swipe are a nice combination). If you want to try tanking, Guardian is a an easy-to-learn tank spec since you’re mostly going to be acting like a DPS in your rotation with the active mitigation abilities added in. Restoration can be a bit complicated for somebody who isn’t used to relying on heal over time spells as their main toolkit.
As a long time Druid I am going to challenge you to make yourself learn each spec. All 4 specs have had reworks over the years and I have fallen behind in grasping the changes to the other specs that I do not play as often and I regret it. Being a Druid lets you fill any role that a group needs and understanding Tank/Heal/Ranged/Melee will help you be a better well rounded player. You don’t have to master them, just learn them until you find the spec that you are the most comfortable with.
Currently I am trying to teach myself Feral again as a side project. It can be frustrating but I have already taught myself (remembered) so much.
This is sound advice. Im a warlock and elemental main at heart so I’ll start with boomie, but bear really looks appealing too to start
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I recommend Hekili (or something like that). Its a rotational addon, thats kinda like training wheels till you want to get more indepth. I use it for alts that I just mess around on.
Bear is probably the easiest to learn rotation wise but with it comes all of the normal tank responsibilities. Feral can put out amazing numbers in aoe but its single target feels lacking in M+. While its a fun spec it can get really spammy in aoe and the ceiling for Bloodtalons and snap shotting is a bit high.
Bear
Bear is easy. Use Mangle and Thrash on CD, keep a couple of stacks of Ironfur up and if you already have them dump your extra rage into Raze or Maul (single vs aoe target.) Than use your CD’s (Incarn, RotS, and MotW) at the start of a pull for threat and high damage. If you need healing you can frenzied regen or use renewal. If you need to avoid a ton of damage use survival instincts. If its single target keep moonfire up otherwise its not worth the effort in large aoe packs.
For high end M+ runs.
General bear guide, tanking advise and just dungeon tips.
General bear guide, tanking advise and just good tips.
Feral
Feral can be complicated with snapshoting and bloodtalons or you can skip all of that and play a more laid back version.
Single Target: Keep Rake and Thrash dots up otherwise Shred. At 5 combo points keep Rip up otherwise Ferocious Bite. Use CD’s whenever available.
AOE: Keep Brutal Slash on CD. Keep Rake and Thrash dots up otherwise Swipe to generate combo points. At 5 combo points use Primal Wrath. Use procs on Ferocious Bite. Use all your CD’s whenever they are up.
High end M+ runs
Great guide for beginners and a decent channel.
I am no pro, but been played a quite bit of druid. Not really resto (not progress anyways). But for the sake of gearing, then you got more options even if you want to do something else. Boomkin and Resto share stats very well. Bear and feral not as much but doable. You’ll just need more gear between bear and feral rather than boomkin and Resto.
With that out of the way. Boomy is really easy to play too. Someone literally set me down after one of my Mythic 16+ runs and broke boomy down so easily. I had to change one talent and I fixed my dps around 5x better give or take a bit depending on what I am fighting. It gave me waaaay more time to worry about mechanics and I am literally following an actual rotation. I could even cast sequence this stuff as a beginner. I am just saying the skill ceiling is quite low. Its the weaving in other things that may get you. There is a lot of utility with druid.
I am NOT saying bear isn’t easy. It is easy. One of the easier tanks to play. I am just saying that I find both specs easy. And as I learn resto I find that easy too. I just been playing feral for a long time so it doesn’t take much to get back into it for me. I understand the confusion around snapshotting.
Nothing really pointing you into the right direction but a bit more info to help you out. I find druid overall easy to play. Just link up with someone and have them teach you at a training dummy and let you cook.
Balance. It’s easy asf.
I found the biggest advantage to playing all specs of druid is it made me a better tank. S2 was actually the first time I did a decent amount of DPS (maybe 50% of my runs). I was truly amazed at how often I died to stuff I knew how to handle as a tank. I then took the knowledge back to my tanking and resto builds and felt more competent at the roles.
Also doing so means that sometimes, I don’t don’t feel like healing, or tanking, or dpsing but maybe there is still gear I need from someplace. So i’ll do something else, and still go for the gear I need. But that’s why I pretty much just focus on druid and paladin. Been doing hybrids since day 1 of wow.
for outdoor world content and leveling, nothing beats the bear! there’s nothing you can’t handle.
for dungeons and raids, I usually go healer though. lately there has been a shift in giving resto more fun toys to play with like treant helpers so the future looks very bright for druids if you like to heal.
as for dps… although boomkin abilities and rotation feels better than it used to, you would just be better off rolling an arcane mage right now as they are even more fun to play right now and even more powerful tuning wise. or a shaman. or even a warlock.
same feedback for feral… feral is in a good place in terms of how their abilities and rotation cadence works but in a terrible place tuning wise… meanwhile sub rogue is going to absolutely pop off in10.2 on this coming Tuesday… so… yeah… feral druids ain’t looking so good in comparison right now. You can still have fun with them if you don’t care about comparing yourself to others but most people are competitive in some regards.
Personnaly lvling always prefered bear, so you can grab all mobs without dying.
If you prefer to attack 1 mob at a time, go cat