Rogue
Rogues are a mixed bag and with the upcoming talent changes for them there might also be quite a few surprises for you. In an open PvP encounter you can assume that they get in the first shot. Your best bet is to outlast them with bear form, mana efficient heals (with the help of roots, stuns…) and by preventing them from bandaging or disappearing to heal up.
●If you see a rogue first, drop a bleeding DoT (Claw) on him – that gives you an excellent starting point and robs him of the his powerful openers. Follow up immediately with a Faerie Fire – this will prevent them from restealthing once the DoT wears off.
●Against a rogue that’s worth his /played time you won’t get off any non-instant spells while in melee range. If he is combat skilled you are even facing a 2 sec silence from his kicks that are on 10 sec recast timers.

●Dire Bear Form helps: Due to their dependence on timers you are sometimes able to simply outlast their initial round of cool-downs and then get them mercilessly once they run out of special skills.
●Always, always, always have Nature’s Grasp precast when you know a rogue is incoming. It’s pure hell for rogues. They will have to waste one of their precious vanishes to get out of root if they don’t want to get the full DoT, Faerie Fire, Nuke routine.
●Don’t run further away then absolutely necessary when they are rooted and you are trying to heal. If you remain below a distance of 8 yards, they cannot use their (instant) throwing weapons. Additionally, you gain less time the further you run, since a rogue can pop a 70% sprint when racing towards you. He will cover the distance in a much shorter time, thus causing you to loose time by running further before you heal.
●Rogues love stun-bandage-macros. Keep DoTs on them for all the time even if they are Faerie Fired to prevent this. A successful stun-bandage gains the Rogue 1500 hit points.
●Responding to an ambush is a little talent dependent. Barkskin helps you survive the upcoming finisher (2000+ damage unmitigated). With Nature’s Swiftness you can respond by healing immediately up again. In my opinion not an overwhelmingly great option since you do not take the initiative AND lose one of your strongest timers. Travel form won’t help you against an experience rogue if you are unable to slow him down since his 70% sprint will eat you alive.
●In mass and group PvP you should DoT and Faerie Fire every rogue that is remotely near your casting range. They hate that.
Warrior
As a feral druid you want to outlast a Warrior in Dire Bear Form (anything else results in kitty salad for dinner). Balance and Restoration specs should try to keep the Warrior at a distance with roots while nuking him with Starfire and Wrath. At some point you will need to go into melee due to diminishing returns on root and to regain some mana.

●If you fight in Dire Bear Form cast Faerie Fire, Moonfire, Rejuvenation, Regrowth and Insect Farm before entering feral form. Those spells are “mana” free since by the time you change back you’ll be at full mana again.
●You gotta make Warriors and Paladins bleed. Be sure to load a Claw, Mangle, and Rip on them (in kitty form).
●Save Bash until you need to heal yourself. A bash before switching to caster form (and a potential war stamp) gives you enough time to root, back away and heal.
●With Nature’s Grasp you have an excellent tool to gain some distance every now and then to get in some nukes as a casting druid.
●Barkskin and Hurricane help against Warriors that run around you in circles (making it difficult to get your spells off).
●A Cyclone on any opponent gives you six precious seconds to heal yourself.
●Remove Hamstring and Piercing Howl by shifting forms
●Never allow your hit points to approach 20%. If the warrior has some decent rage build up there is a nasty execute coming your way otherwise.
●For only 10 rage Warriors can pummel and interrupt your spells. Don’t expect to get off a heal of if the warrior is not rooted or stunned.
●Start off the combat with a Lifebloom and a Rejuvenation already cast on yourself.
Priest
Against a typical and well-equipped priest you don’t stand a chance of nuking him down faster (and more efficient) than he can heal. You will have to exhaust his mana and rely on melee DPS. If you got a day off you might consider having a duel between a resto druid and holy priest. Usually those matches end in favor of the person who went to the restroom last before the fight started.
●As usual heal early – especially Shadow Priests can deal some serious burst damage and will save Silence and Psychic Scream till the moment you allow yourself to go low on hit points.

●Use decurse to remove Vampiric Embrace.
●Use Healing Touch to save mana since dispel magic costs the priest less mana to cast than your (wasted) HoT.
●Remain in Feral form as long as possible since you are immune to Mana Burn during that time. He in return will try to nuke you down to get you to switch. The longer you can last in bear form meaning the more you interrupt him, the higher your chances of winning the match.
●Save your nukes for critical burst damage, otherwise you are simply throwing your mana out of the window.
●Cat form gives you 1.0 attack speed and can mess up their ability to cast spells significantly.
●Against a careless priest who goes low on health drop into Dire Bear Form, bash him and go for peak DPS.
●If you can maintain the necessary distance use Feral Charge to interrupt heals.
●In real world PvP and in Battlegrounds harassing the priest can be just as important as killing him. Good use of the fast Cat Form attacks, Bash and Feral Charge can dramatically reduce a priest's effectiveness as a healer, allowing your team mates to kill him or his allies easily.
Warlock
As a restoration druid you will be trying to outlast a Warlock. If it comes to druid mana pool versus warlock mana pool (including life tap), you’ll win. The challenge is to heal faster than the Warlock can dish out DPS.
●Bear form doesn’t help since most of a Warlocks damage will be magic based (though succubi can dish out a serious amount of damage as well) and the additional hit points are hardly worth shifting shapes.
●You are facing a possible damage peak, followed by fear, another damage peak and Death Coil. Surviving that requires you to stay at 70-80% hit points at all times and keeping your HoTs up at all time.
●Decurse Curse of Agony, Elements and Shadows – the mana saving aspect being less important than the DPS reduction. You don’t want your opponent to gain any momentum in this fight.

●Melee even in caster form – slowing his casting time gives you more to react while avoiding the dangerous cool-down of shape-shifting.
●Pets: Nature’s Grasp should do, though Roots are good if you have the time (no need to if he uses an imp).
●Maintain Regrowth and Rejuvenation on yourself when a Succubus is up. Unless your Warlock friend is extremely lucky he won’t gain much by seducing you since the healed amount will make up for the incoming shadow bolt.
●Felhunter: A nasty dog you want to keep rooted at all times. Has a 30 sec cooldown counterspell called spell lock. Make sure you change into bear form and bash it before you heal. You can also fake a heal against a Warlock by using (and aborting) your hearthstone. Expect the Warlock to use the Felhunter’s ability Devour Magic to remove buffs such as MotW, Regrowth and Rejuvenation.
●Moonfire and Insect Swarm are instant casts which help you to reduce the Warlocks mana indirectly. It’s a good idea to keep it on the Warlock to get some initiative.
Mage
Key Concepts:
?Approach a Mage in Caster form. If he Frost Novas you, you can change into bear form and attack – saving you one shape-shift.
?Mages will use Counterspell – a 30 seconds cool-down that prevents you from casting any spells of the school you were casting when it hit you for 10 seconds. Usually used against critical heals. How to deal with it:
?Try to get them to counter your Starfire
?Use the hearth stone trick to fake a heal
?Switch to travel form and run until the effect wears off
?Disregard healing and go full DPS in caster or feral form
?A commonly used Add-On is spell alert – it lets them know when you are trying to heal. If you see them abort a spell of their own, do the same. Chances are high that they have done so to get in a counter spell after seeing your spell being cast.
?Hotkey grenades (engineering is great in PvP hinthint) to counter counterspells

Mages use blink to get out of Entangling Roots
?While in animal form you cannot be polymorphed – you can also use shape-shift to get out of sheep. Mages sometimes only use it to gain time for bandages or evocation, so you have to be quick.
?If you get frost-rooted, shape-shift quickly to avoid the 50% additional crit rate of frost mages against frozen targets. The most efficient way to handle this in caster form is to change into travel form and back.
?Mages have some of the most efficient damage spells (Fire Ball deals roughly 2 damage per mana point – no match though in a direct comparison to Healing Touch with 2.6 health per mana). However, that only works if you have more mana then the Mage – which is probably only the case for Restoration / Balance Druids.
?With Faerie Fire on the mage you get excellent returns on your melee attacks, especially since a Mages armor isn’t that high in the first place.
?As always heal early. A successful Counterspell gives the Mage 10 seconds to unleash his full damage potential.
Druid
Druid vs. Druid fights depend heavily on you and your opponents talent distribution. Restoration and Balance Druids fight in a very similar way, while hybrid ones are more complicated to play (and to fight):
?Balance/Resto vs. Balance/Resto
?Short facts: The healing potential is by far greater than the damage potential so nuking is not an option. This is even true for the best geared balance druids.
?If one druid lets their hit points run low and the other manages to moonspam (or maybe a fortunate Starfire stun) in combination with furor and a quick bash that duel has a chance to end. Otherwise you are probably standing there and healing yourself for all eternity.
?Balance/Resto vs. Feral
?As a feral druid you can outdamage the healing abilities of your opponent, especially in cat form and with a lucky burst damage streak
?Additionally balance/resto druids suffer from diminishing returns, especially when the Feral Druid owns decent resist gear and spells need to be recasted more often.

However, balance/resto druids can fight back by kiting the feral druid with Nature’s Grasp and Roots. This forces the feral to use up his mana to shift shapesor heal the damage. With a significantly lower mana pool this is his most important weakness.
?Balance/resto druids can use Hibernate to buy themselves some time to heal, regen or flee
?Balance druids have a slight edge over Restoration druids since their increased DPS forces the Feral more often out of feral form, causing him to burn his mana faster.
?Feral vs. Feral
?Usually a bear vs bear duel with the better equipped druid winning.
?The added hitpoints and armor are already a good choice against a rogue, so against a half-rogue cat druid they give you an immense advantage. Bash also helps you to buy time or prevent the other druid from healing.
Hunter
Keep pets out of the fight by using Root or Hibernate. Depending on the spec of the hunter the pet can have an extremely high Nature resistance. If you notice your spells braking fast and often that’s probably the case and you shouldn’t bother recasting them. Instead use barkskin to keep casting.
·The skill you need to learn against a Hunter is to determine the “dead zone” quick and accurate. This is the 5-8 yard range, where neither melee nor ranged weapons can be used. Root the hunter, move into the dead zone and blast away.
·Use cure or abolish poisons to remove Hunters’ sting attacks
·Serpent Sting: 15 sec dot, very mana efficient
·Viper Sting: drains mana over 8 secs – very annoying
·Scorpid Sting: Debuff that lowers strength and agility for 25-30% for 20 seconds
·Feral form is risky since Hunters can use fear animals. You can shapeshift and use your PvP trinket to get out of it, but that costs you a lot of time while you are being moved in position for the hunter.

·Shift out of concussion shot – with a 12 seconds cool-down and a 4 seconds duration this is one of the most favourite tools of most hunters.
·Hunters rely heavily on mana to keep their DPS at such a high level. If you outlast their mana pool and can keep the pet out of your way you pretty much won the fight.
·Balance Druids should root in moonkin, head for the dead zone, throw up bark skin and blast away with Starfire.
Paladin
A hassle to fight since a paladin can regenerate mana faster than a Druid can do damage
If you want to try, go the Moonfire, Faerie Fire route followed by Dire Bear. At half health shift to Caster and throw up Barkskin, Regrowth and hit him with a Moonfire before shifting back. If you get him down to 20%, use Bash and spam Moonfire followed by Warstomp once the first stun is gone.
If the Paladin is using a low damage weapon you can kite him in cat form (either with the PvP set or with talents invested in +movement). Spam your energy, outdistance them, regenerate energy. Shred, claw and rake until you have 5 points in and land your finisher. Rinse and repeat
Shaman
Tough fight and difficult to predict. They can either act as a healer, melee class or ranged damage dealer. If you attack first, watch them fight other mobs/players while stealthed so you know what you are facing.
·Shamans’ Ghost Wolf has a 3 second cast time (1 second with talents). Just like the druid travel form it provides 40% speed increase. In other words – you should always be able to run from a Shaman when you want to avoid the fight
·Ideally you counter with Regrowth, Moonfire and Dire Bear Form.
·Shamans’ main weakness is their limited mana pool compared to druids. He’ll make up for it by removing Regrowth, Nature’s Swiftness, MotW, Rejuvennate and Innervate

·Use Moonfire level 1 to take care of any totems the Shaman places
·With Windfury and some luck a Shaman can be a serious danger even while you are in Bear Form and when he is out of mana
·Earthshock, Flameshock and Frostshock are on the same timer – wait till he casts one of them and then heal or run to kite, depending which option you can use.
·His shocks have got a shorter maximum casting distance than most of your spells, meaning you can kite him to a limited degree. As a balance druid you have quite a few problems here: Ideally you try the kite strategy after opening up with a cat pounce, rake and rip combo. Wrath them when they heal and if they let their hit points fall low, use a stun in combination with wraths.
·A good shaman will use his mana to heal himself since heals are more mana efficient. You should stick to the same strategy. Keep in mind that he’ll use Earth Shock rank 1 to interrupt your spells and silence that spell school. You can go for the fake-heal-hearthstone trick to work around that problem.