What forms can I shift into and what are they good for?
Shifting costs a certain portion of your base mana. By investing in Natural Shapeshifter (balance talent) shifting cost can be lowered. While you’re shapeshifted, you will continue to regenerate mana.
Shapeshifting is already a powerful skill. It will get you out of roots, snares and polymorph (sheep). As such it is a great skill in PvP and against mobs who use those kind of effects on you. While shapeshifted you’re flagged as a beast, i.e. immune to effects that only work on humanoids (e.g. polymorph, track humanoids), but vulnerable to skills that affect beasts (e.g. hibernate, track beasts). You will also be unable to interact with NPCs.
Now let’s look at the different types of shapes you can shift into:
Bear Form
At level 10, you will receive this ability as a quest reward. The stat bonuses are +180% Armor from regular equipment; +30% Health; and +30% Attack Power. Shifting to bear form costs 20% of your base mana without talents.
When you shift into bear form, most noticeably you will look like a bear. You will have a completely different set of skills, your bear form skills resemble those of the warrior. As a bear, you will be able to take a lot more damage than in caster form, and you will be able to perform tasks like tanking or staying alive in PvP, like a warrior would (although never quite as good). With a talent point in Feral Charge, you will also be able to charge like a warrior, which is great for pulling. You’ll also be able to charge mid-fight, which is great for stopping runners.
Your performance and skills in bear form can be improved with a lot of talents, mostly in the Feral tree.
Aquatic Form

You will receive aquatic form at level 16. It will make you look like a sea lion, and you can only use it while in water (because a sea lion out of water would just look plain silly). Oh yeah, it will also double your swimming

speed, so you will be able to swim as fast as you walk, and you’ll get infinite breath. Shifting to aquatic form costs 5% of your base mana without talents.
This can be valuable to save time crossing large distances under water, but also to escape your enemies. Escaping in aquatic form is always an option when near water in open field PvP, although hunter’s pets will still be faster than you.
Cat Form
Cat Form can be learned from your trainer at level 20. You will receive an attack power bonus equal to your agility plus twice your level. Shifting to cat form costs 20% of your base mana without talents.
Again, you will be able to use a completely different skillset when in cat form. Your skills will be similar to those of a rogue, including stealth (Prowl), sprint (Dash) and backstab (Shred). You will also be able to track humanoids like a hunter. You can already see that cat form is great for PvP, it’s also nice for solo grinding and dealing damage in a small group.
Travel Form
At level 30, you can learn travel form from your trainer. It will make you look like a cheetah and increase your running speed by 40%. In can only be used outdoors, and not in deep water that would require swimming. Shifting to travel form costs 5% of your base mana without talents.
From level 30 to 40 you will use this form extensively. But even when you get a mount at level 40, the ability to shapeshift to travel form is still very useful. It’s always nice to know you can escape from fights easily using travel form, which is an instant spell that can be used mid-fight. It’s even easier if you stun / root before shifting. In PvP, only Rogues (sprint) and Hunters’ pets will be able to catch up with you. Also it’s the cheapest way to break roots, snares and sheep.
Dire Bear Form

Dire bear form is an upgrade to the bear form at level 40. Bonusses are +60% health, +380% armor from regular items and +60% attack power. Like the bear form, dire bear costs 20% of base mana to cast.

Moonkin Form
Moonkin form is a Tier 7 balance tree (requires 31 points in balance, so it’s level 40 minimum). It increases armor by 360%, and increases the casting critical strike chance of nearby party members by 3%. You will only be able to cast balance spells (nukes and DoTs) when in moonkin form. Moonkin is the only form that will let you remain flagged as humanoid, but you will still be immune to polymorph.
The high armor makes Moonkin a viable form for PvP since you’ll be able to take some melee damage. Like with cat and bear form, you have to shift out in order to heal up though. The +3% crit aura makes Moonkin druids a welcome addition to caster-heavy groups.
How do my stats affect combat?
There is more to stats than you might think. Let’s look at them one at a time, and analyze what they are good for. Note that several stat effects are true for the Druid class only, so don’t go arguing about them with other classes.
Stamina
One point in stamina translates to 10 Health Points (HP). This is true for all shapeshifting forms.
“That’s all?” you might ask. Yes, but if you’re really asking that, you probably haven’t grasped just how important HP is for your Druid. Having more HP means staying alive longer, spending less time healing yourself, having more time to heal others and having more time to deal damage. Stamina is especially important in PvP since you will be taking a lot of damage in a short time. If you have too little stamina, you will get in serious trouble in PvP.

Intellect
One point in intellect gives you 15 mana. That’s the primary use for intellect. 100 points in intellect also give you +1% chance for your spells to have critical effect. Few people know that intellect also increases the pace at which you pick up weapon skill points.
Weapon skills are of low importance to druids, so that effect can be safely neglected. You’ll only need mana and spell crits when you are in caster form, so that’s what this stat is all about. If you spend most of your time in cat or bear form, you can care less about intellect. If you’re the caster type however, intellect is your best friend. Druids have lower “natural” mana than other caster classes, so you’ll have to make up for that with +intellect and +mana equipment. Of course the spell crit chance increase is a nice bonus too.

Strength
Strength is going to go give you +2 to attack power per point. This is true for all forms.
Again, the usefulness of this stat depends heavily on your playing style. Since attack power only comes into play when calculating the damage you cause in melee combat, it won’t be of much use to you. In bear and cat form, however, your strength stat will have an immense influence on your DPS.

Agility
Agility influences a lot of combat ratings that are of importance in melee combat:
?20 agility = 1% critical strike chance (All forms)
?20 agility = 1% dodge chance (all forms)

?1 agility = 2 armor (all forms, not affected by bear / dire bear armor bonus)
?1 agility = 1 attack power (cat form only)
As you can see, agility is most important to bear and cat forms, where you will engage in melee combat. Cat form gets the most out of agility. It is not not very useful to caster type druids.

Spirit
Spirit increases mana and health regeneration rates. Let’s look at the most important formula, out of combat mana regeneration rate:
Mana per tick = (Spirit / 5) + 15
Note: You will continue regenerating mana while shapeshifted.
You can see that the time spent out of combat waiting for your mana bar to fill can be reduced by investing in spirit. So it’s a great stat if you concentrate on healing in a party, since it will reduce your party’s downtime between battles considerably. Through the talent Reflection you can further increase the effect that spirit has (part of the mana regeneration continues while casting). It’s also a nice stat to have while solo grinding as a caster.
Spirit also increases the chance that special effects on weapons “proc” (are triggered), but as a druid you won’t be needing procs, since you should only melee when shapeshifted, and weapon procs don’t have any effect in feral form.

How do bonuses to crit chances work?
Some people are still mistaken about this. A 10% increase in crit chance means that ten percentage points are added. So if you have a base of 10% crit chance and you get +10% crit chance, you will end up with 20% crit chance, not 11%. This is of course true for melee as well as spell crit chances.
How does armor rating affect the damage I take?
The basic formula for damage reduction is as follows:
Damage Reduction = (0.3 * (Armor Class-1) / ( 10 * Level + 89 ) )
This value should give you a value between 0 and 1. If, for example, you get a value of 0.6, it means that 60% of the melee damage you take is absorbed by your armor.
You can calculate the different damage reduction rates you get for the different form to get a better idea of how effective shapeshifting in bear and moonkin form really is. It’s also important to note that character level actually works against damage reduction, if you don’t upgrade your armor.

Solo PvE Strategies
Druids are very versatile and can be a powerful soloing class.
There are many different strategies how to take on mobs by yourself, and some of these strategies are going to work better for some enemies than others. For example, caster and hunter type mobs are better taken on in feral form with melee combat, while it is best to keep you distance and cast spells on enemies with heavy armor and melee weapons. The tactics that work best for you also depend a lot on your talent point distribution and equipment.
Keep in mind that with the highly flexible druid class it’s important to always test different strategies against different monsters, no matter your build. If you insist on always playing as a cat because that’s what you optimized your build for, you will certainly miss out on easy ways to kill a lot of enemies. So keep it flexible and learn how to handle all types of combat. It will make leveling quick and diverting, unlike most other classes out there. Ever leveled a hunter?
Here are some powerful solo PvE strategies:

Combat Initiation
Combat initiation is also called pulling, although most often in solo combat it doesn’t involve pulling the target towards you. This might seem basic to you, but good pulling can decide fights. It is important that you pick the right fights, and don’t let the fights pick you.
Try to engage enemies one by one. Wait for the right moment to attack patrolling mobs. When there’s a group of enemies standing around, try pulling them out in an empty area one by one. Pulling ranged mobs is a bit trickier, but it works the same way as with melees – you just have to run a little further.
You might choose to initiate combat with a spell combination like Wrath and Moonfire, and then let the aggroed target come towards you to single it out. That way you will already have damaged the target when it notices you.
In some situations casting might attract adds standing close by (e.g. in those densely crowded Murloc camps). In that case it’s safest to “body pull”, i.e. slowly move towards the target until you reach its agro range. You will eventually agro it by proximity, and monsters close by are less likely to join in than if you had pulled the target with a spell.
If you’re in caster form, make sure to root the target whenever it is where you wanted to pull it.
If you approach single enemies, however, you should already be dealing damage to them by the time they notice you, so there’s really no need to pull them anywhere. Just start dishing out the damage by opening with a nuke / DoT combo like Wrath and Moonfire and root instantly.
If surroundings are really limiting your movement and you skilled in Nature’s Grasp, it is a good idea to stand right where you want the mob pulled, cast Nature’s Grasp, optionally wait for mana regeneration and pull the target. The instant it hits you it will be rooted and you can assume position. While you will take some damage from the one hit, this method is very precise and you don’t have to waste time / mana casting entangling roots.

In cat form you can really pick your fights. Prowl to be invisible and approach your victim, ideally one that is singled out. Like a rogue, you can deal devastating opening attacks this way. (E.g. Tiger’s Fury followed by Ravage).
There are very few situations in solo PvE’ing where you would want to open a fight in bear form, but if you’re ever in the situation, Feral Dash is a nice skill to have. It can be learned through a talent in the feral tree.
Combat Routines
When you have initialized combat it is time to switch into your routine. A routine is a full sequence of spells / skills that maximizes DPS while being reasonably mana efficient and that can be repeated. An efficient routine for druids in caster form would be:
1.Root
2.Refresh Moonfire if it has worn off
3.Wrath until root breaks
4.Start over with 1.
The routine that works best for you depends on your talents and the resulting DPS and mana efficiency of the spells. Try to figure out what works best (might involve some numbers crunching) and stick to it. Be sure to include crit chance in your calculations.Before you run out of mana, you can keep the target rooted and wait for your mana to replenish, or you can switch to cat form / bear form and charge the enemy. Be sure you can take the target down in melee before you switch to cat and attack. Switching to bear is actually a great way to buy some time since you start regenerating mana five seconds after shapeshifting.
Apart from the bear part, the above is a kiting routine. Kiting means that you will always keep your distance to the target and it obviously works best against melee types.
Against caster types you might want to try this routine for cat form:
1.Pounce.
2.Get behind opponent and Shred.
3.Mangle 2x.
4.Watch for them to start casting (most likely some form of crowd control) on you.

5.Maim (with two or three combo points on them) to stun your opponent and prevent the spell from being cast).
6.Get behind them for another Shred.
7.Mangle.
8.Finish with a Ferocious Bite. Hopefully they're dead.
Against armored opponents (mail, plate) you have to make them bleed. Rip, Mangle and even a Rake are your friends. Maim an armored opponent if you are low on health (to stun them and buy yourself a few precious seconds), switch to caster and put a HoT on yourself, then back into kitty to finish the fight.
Healing
Especially when you engage in melee combat you will find yourself in situation where your health is running low. As a druid you’re in the fortunate position to be able to heal yourself, so make sure you use that ability. In fact, you should never die while you have still mana left to heal yourself!
?When you start to run low on health (we’re talking at about 40-50% here) you should start worrying about healing yourself.
?If you’re in cat form, use up all your combo points.
?Now you want to gain some distance on the enemy. If you can, stun your target with bash, pounce or Warstomp. This is also where Nature’s Grasp comes in handy.
?If you’re not already in caster form, shift back. Root the target to be sure it stays put. If the target is a beast and has no DoT currently active, hibernate would work even better.
?If you have been badly hit, use Healing touch, otherwise Regrowth will do. Before you shift again, use Rejuvenation on yourself, which is your most mana efficient heal. Regrowth and Rejuvenation effects will stay active while shapeshifted.
?Watch your mana, this might be a good time to regenerate (see below) or use innervate.
?Reengage the fight.
Buffs and Debuffs
In solo play, buff and debuff management is really straight forward.
?Always have Mark of the Wild on yourself.

Always have Thorns on yourself, even if you don’t plan on engaging in melee combat.
?When in melee, have Fairie Fire on your opponent at all times. There is no need to have Fairie Fire on them while casting, even for stealthy types since they won’t stealth after they have engaged in combat.
?Sometimes you will get some cool potion as a quest reward or from another player that boosts your attack power for example. Many people save that potion for a special occasion. In my experience that special occasion never comes along really. The potion is worth more now than it will be after the next level up, so use it. If you’re an alchemist you’re of course loaded with special cocktails at all times and you’ll probably use them more freely. Just make sure they really benefit your playing style, or the auction house might be a better place for them.
Mana Management???????????????
Druids are cursed with a very small mana pool. More often than not, you will find yourself running out of mana mid-battle. Here are some things you can do to prevent MRDs:2
?Innervate. This sweet spell can be used every 6 minutes, and it increases mana regeneration by 400% for 20 seconds. Also, it allows you to continue regenerating one full mana bar at the full rate while you’re casting away. This is one free mana bar. Plus x. Use it as needed.
?Entangling Roots. Luckily, druids have a naturally high spirit stat. So you can regenerate a considerable amount of mana while in combat. If you cast Entangling roots on your enemy and just do nothing for five seconds, you will start regenerating mana, no matter if you’re flagged in combat or not. Don’t sit down, as that will put you in a great disadvantantage should your target break root. Also, against popular belief, it doesn’t speed up regenerating in the first place.
2 MRD = Mana related death. Yes, I just made that up.

This doesn’t apply to solo combat as much as it does for group combat, but try to cast in bursts. If it takes you a long time to kill an enemy, you might as well cast root, Moonfire and Wrath and then wait a bit while your enemy remains rooted. After five seconds you will start regenerating mana.
?Tank it out. You can switch to bear form and tank the attacker. Five seconds after shifting, you will start regaining mana even though the mana bar remains hidden. Tank it out for a bit and if you have trouble dealing some real damage, bash and shift back to caster form for an easy kill.
Crowd Control and Priorization
It’s not always possible to single out an enemy, and often you will find adds (additional enemies) attack you while you are already in combat. Luckily as a druid you’re arguably the class with the best means of crowd control, so it should be easy to take enemies on one after another:
?Entangling Roots can be used to keep an enemy out of the fight until you kill another one. It might have to be recast several times, so keep on your toes and stay in caster form.
?The same goes for Hibernate. You can put beasts to sleep, how cool is that? This is great for crowd control, but can only be used on one target at a time.
When you have rooted / hibernated an additional target, move away from it but keep it in your field of vision. This will make it much easier to recast root / Hibernate.
When deciding which target to fight first, and which to root, you have to prioritize. Take these factors into consideration (in that order):
?Finish what you have started. If you’re facing two mobs and one of them is down to 50% health already, kill that one first. That way, you’ll spend less time having to worry about both targets.

Kill casters first. Casters are usually much easier to kill than melees. Also, melees are easier to keep out of the fight by rooting, so this rule extends to other ranged classes like hunter types. Kill them first.
?Kill higher levels first. If you face two mobs of the same type, one is two levels above you and the other is two levels below you, it is easier to root / sleep the one with the lower level and kill the higher one first. Although it will take longer to kill the one with the higher level, the lower one won’t break root / sleep as often, so you can have less interruptions.
Of course there’s always the option of switching to bear form, tanking it out and killing off one after another. This works especially well against weaker enemies and if you follow these guidelines:
?Make sure you have thorns on yourself, this is the type of situation it was designed for.
?Demoralizing Roar is more important than ever.
?Swipe if you have the rage.
?Heal if you need to. Boy, Warstomp sure comes in handy now. Oh, you’re a Night Elf? Nevermind.
?Priorization still applies when picking who to kill first.
Emergency Management
Sometimes you pick the wrong fight, or the wrong fight picks you. You’re getting too many adds and your health bar is dwindling. Fast. This would be a good time to run away.
If you’re in cat form, use a Maim, thendash away, switch to travel form when Dash is up, and you’re good 90% of the time. Just watch where you dash.
If you’re in bear form, switch to caster after trying bash.
When in caster form, cast Nature’s Grasp if you were smart enough to spend those points. Then switch to travel form and off you go.
In case you are rooted or snared while trying to escape, shapeshift back and forth between caster and travel form to break the effect.

After the fight
?Immediately spot the next enemy and lay out your tactic. If you plan to attack melee, you don’t have to wait for a full mana bar, this can save a lot of time.Always loot. Even if these mobs have given you crap for the last two hours, there is a slight chance they might drop a rare world drop. You don’t want to miss those.
?Skinners, time for the dirty work.
?You should always make sure you have a full health bar. First aid comes in handy, alternatively use Rejuvenation for a very mana-efficient heal.
?Rebuff if necessary
?Initiate next combat