Druid’s can benefit from most of the professions available in the game. Blacksmithing and tailoring are typically not good crafting choices, as there are very few items that they can make that are useful to a druid.

Gathering Professions

Herbalism
A great choice for druids, as they can harvest herbs without leaving travel form, cutting out a lot of the down time other classes experience when harvesting herbs. If you are not interested in making your own potions, many herbs sell for a great deal on the auction house.

Mining
Still relatively easy for a druid to use, although unlike with herbalism you do have to shift out of a form to mine a vein. Druids will typically pick up mining in combination with engineering, or just as source of money by selling the metal and gems they find on the auction house.

Skinning
The obvious choice if you plan to be a leatherworker so you can provide your own leather for crafting. You can skin things in forms, and higher level leather is sellable on the auction house for a decent amount. Combine skinning with either herbalism or mining if all you care about is making money.

Crafting Professions

Leatherworking
Allows you to make your own armor, although in general, with a few exceptions, you’ll find armor that drops off monsters is superior to crafted gear. Choose leatherworking if you like the idea of crafting, and for the few high end recipes that are very worthwhile, but don’t expect to make every piece of armor you’ll ever need.

Alchemy
Allows you to make a wide variety of potions, some of which are very useful. Since you can harvest herbs more easily than most classes by picking them in travel form, this is a good choice for any druid.

Enchanting
Enchanting is as valuable to a druid as to any other class. There are wide variety of enchants that any type of druid will find valuable. While it can be tough to make money selling enchants, it is possible to make a good amount by simply selling the enchanting materials you’ll get from disenchanting weapons. Like Alchemy, enchanting is a fine choice for any druid interested in crafting.

Engineering
If you are interested in PvP primarily, engineering is a great choice, as it provides a number of handy items and tricks that can turn the tide of a PvP battle. It is less useful in most PvE situations (especially in the end game), so if you only plan to engage in PvE content, its probably not the best choice.

Secondary Professions

Be sure to pick up First Aid and keep it leveled as you level up. When you are almost out of mana as a druid, its very useful to be able to root or hibernate whatever you’re fighting and heal yourself with a bandage.

Fishing and cooking are useful as well, although they are somewhat more tedious to level. Fishing is especially useful if you are an alchemist, as some fish are used in alchemy recipes. If you enjoy crafting then dive into these professions, but you won’t be gimping yourself too much if you ignore them.

Different class balances, especially in relation to one on one PvP, tend to change with each patch, as different classes are reviewed and new abilities are added. For this reason, this section will try to give some specific tips and tricks that should be remembered when fighting each class, but will not give specific, set strategies, as those are likely to go out of date upon further patching, but rather just some general observations about fighting each class.

Info is included on both one-on-one PvP and group PvP. Blizzard has stated many times that the classes are balanced for group PvP, so don’t be surprised if you find it relatively easy to beat some classes and extraordinarily difficult to beat others. Healing can make a huge difference in group PvP, and there are often a lack of healers available for PvP groups, so it’s important for feral and balance druids to not underestimate the importance of healing. Feral druids especially should make sure that they don’t just sit on a full mana bar while staying in a form, but toss some heals around so some of that mana gets used while they’re ripping people up in cat or bear.

Fighting Warriors

There isn’t much variety when fighting warriors; they’ll do their best to close with you quickly and stay close until you’re dead. Entangling roots are your friend against warriors. If you are able to get them rooted, either with Nature’s grasp or by casting the normal spell, use the time to first top off your health, and then start hitting them with ranged damage spells and DoT’s (magic damage won’t be diminished by a warrior’s armor). In group PvP, rooting a warrior effectively takes him out of combat until the root breaks, so make sure your group knows to focus on other targets while the warrior is stuck rooted and can only plink away with his ranged weapon.

When a warrior hamstrings you to slow you down, shapeshifting will remove the effect. If you plan to keep fighting him in caster form, shapeshift to travel to remove the effect, its a lot less mana than bear or cat.

A "normal" geared warrior can be beaten by simply fighting him in bear form, using bash to stun him long enough to heal, and just staying in bear at other times and wearing him down. Against a well geared warrior with a very strong two-handed weapon, however, bear form likely won’t mitigate enough damage to be effective, unless you have bear form gear that is equivalent to their high end weapon levels.

Fighting Rogues

Somewhat similar to fighting a warrior, rogues will do even more damage however, and will make casting any spell much more difficult with their stuns and spell interrupts. If a rogue is beating on you don’t even try to cast a non-instant spell, he’ll almost certainly counter it with a kick or stun. If you have it, Nature’s grasp is a great way to escape, or you can shift to bear form, bash him to stun, and then get a few feet away and cast root. Rogues have a “vanish” ability that will break the root, but it’s on a long cooldown, so they won’t be able to use it more than once in a fight more than likely. Most rogues also use some kind of poison on their weapons, so be ready to cure poison on yourself if they put on one of the poisons that slows your movement speed or casting time.

Always try to get faerie fire on a rogue. This prevents them from entering stealth, and is doubly important in group PvP. If you’re fighting with a group, the first thing you should do to any rogue is Faerie Fire him…that way, even if he does kill you, he won’t be able to stealth again and the rest of your group can finish him off. Like a warrior, rooting a rogue effectively takes him out of the fight for a time in group PvP.

Fighting Mages

Mages are normally not particularly difficult for druids. Most mages will try to kite other players by holding them in place with frost nova and slowing them w/ frostbolts, while hitting them at range. Since shapeshifting frees a druid from polymorph, slowing, and freezing effects, a mage has no real way to keep you at distance. They will be able to throw out some heavy burst damage, so be ready w/ a NS heal or a stun to get a heal off, but if you can weather that one burst you’re fine. Mages will often try to counterspell your heal; Tauren druid’s can use their hearthstone, which looks exactly like a heal, to fake them out. Let them Counterspell the hearthstone, then start your heal right after.

In group PvP, people tend to focus on mages, so they die pretty quickly. If you’re focused on healing, just focus on keeping up your group until the mage dies, and if possible do what you can (w/ stun, feral charge, etc) to keep them from casting till the rest of the group can burn them down.

Fighting Druids

Fighting other druids takes a very long time. Unless there is a big gear disparity, neither druid will be able to do enough damage to get their opponent down before they can heal back up, and in the event one gets too low, its fairly easy to just shift to travel and escape from the other druid. Many druid’s don’t even bother attacking opposite faction druids when they find them alone, it simply takes too long.

Keep in mind druids in animal forms can be hibernated, and the length of the spell makes it a great crowd control ability in group PvP. Its possible to shift while hibernated, but it won’t break the sleep effect.

Fighting Priests

Fighting a holy or discipline priest is similar to fighting a druid…neither side can dps enough to wear out the other, and both will have enough mana to stay alive almost indefinitely. Try to wear their mana down by hitting them w/ rank 1 moonfire…if they’re not paying too much attention they’ll waste mana continually dispelling the DoT. Otherwise, just keep up the damage, don’t let your health get too low, and eventually you’ll wear them down.

A shadow priest can do a significantly greater amount of damage, but they will run out of mana much quicker. Do your best to stay alive through their initial damaging barrage, dispel Vampiric embrace if they put it on you, and generally focus on living until their mana gets low…once it is, start up the slow steady damage and go to cat form for the kill.

In group PvP your teammates will likely go for the priest early, keep them up as other dps will focus on them, and be ready to use feral charge if you have it or bear form stun to stop the priest from healing once he gets low, to ensure he dies.

Fighting Paladins

Similar to fighting druids, fighting a paladin can take an extremely long time. The rank 1 moonfire trick can get them to waste their mana if they’re not paying attention, but otherwise its just a long battle of attrition as you watch each other’s mana slowly dwindle. Hit them w/ as many low mana status debuff’s as possible (rank 1 moonfire, insect swarm, rank 1 root), so they are forced to waste a lot of mana cleansing. Keep in mind other than there 6 second stun ability (which is on a 1 minute cooldown), they have no way to stop you from running, so if you find yourself getting the worst end of a paladin fight you should have little trouble getting away.

In group PvP beware the Paladin who spends his time healing and debuffing his party members, they are the real danger. Use stun’s and feral charge to try to disrupt their healing while your other party members take down his friends. You are a superior healer to a Paladin, so keep your friends up more effectively than he keeps his up and you’ll come out on top.

Fighting Warlocks

Warlocks are very difficult fights, especially if they use a felhunter or succubus. If you are able to catch a warlock with no pet, just heal yourself through his damage until he runs out of mana. If he has a felhunter or Succubus out though, you’ll find it very difficult to get a heal off due to those pets’ interruption abilities. If you’re facing a succubus you may be able to kill the pet first, as she has little hp and over a little while moonfire DoT’s and feral damage will take their toll, but a felhunter goes down significantly slower. Remember warlocks use a variety of nasty curses to debilitate you, so be ready to remove them ASAP. If you are able to kill a warlock solo, be ready for them to instantly resurrect through the use of a soulstone.

In group PvP try to keep you party members decursed, and harass the warlock w/ bear and cat form as much as possible.

Fighting Hunters

Hunters’ main goal will be to keep you at range, so they can use their ranged abilities to quickly drain your health. Since shapeshifting can remove the slowing effects of “wing clip”, you shouldn’t have too much trouble staying close to them. Their pets are an annoyance, but unless they are highly specced in beast mastery you should be able to hibernate or root them to keep them away from you. Be very aware of your debuff’s when fighting a hunter. One of their stings will poison you and drain a great deal of mana. Be sure to remove poison on this immediately, as if he is able to completely drain your mana you have very few options left. Hunters also have a scare beast ability which they may try to use on you in animal forms, just watch for the hunter to begin a casting animation, and as soon as they do, shift to caster form, so the spell is wasted. Scare beast is the only casting animation spell hunters have.

In group PvP root the hunter to make it more difficult for him to get range on you and your party members, and be sure to get the mana drain poison off of any of your casters.

Fighting Shaman

Shaman can be difficult fights, as there is a great diversity to shaman builds. An elemental shaman will try to burn you down quickly with spells…treat him like a warlock (sans pet), and just heal through his attacks till he runs out of mana. A restoration shaman, like a druid, will be very difficult to kill, and it will become a battle of attrition to see who runs out of mana first…expect a long, long fight. An enhancement shaman is a combination of both, and will attempt to keep you in melee range to burn you down w/ big windfury crits…use roots and travel form to keep them at range from you and slowly bring them down w/ moonfire and its DoT. Keep rank 1 moonfire on your bar to use on totems to quickly destroy them for no mana cost.

Druids can fulfill a number of important roles in PvE content in the end game. While a druid will best fill whatever role is appropriate to the spec he has chosen (balance, feral, or restoration), the most important thing to remember is to be versatile and quick to react to changing situations. Don’t become so locked into the 3 or 4 abilities that you are specced for and forget about all the other abilities you have available…if you play your druid solely as a substitute for a rogue (cat form), mage (balance druid), or priest (resto druid), you’re wasting a great deal of your abilities.

Universal Druid Roles – Crowd Control and Status Curing.

No matter what your spec, you will be of great help to any dungeon or raid group by using your crowd control and status curing abilities to their best effect.

A Druid’s primary crowd control ability, hibernate, works on beasts and dragonkin. Druids are the only class that can effectively crowd control dragonkin, and using hibernate on beasts lets mages save their polymorphs for humanoids. It is difficult to think of a contribution to a group that is more valuable than keeping a monster out of combat while your group can work on killing other enemies. In many encounters in WoW, divide and conquer really is the name of the game. Do not forget about entangling roots either as another form of crowd control. While it only works in outdoor dungeons (currently for end game that means Zul’Gurub and the Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj), it is a very effective crowd control spell if used correctly. Be sure to target enemies that are going to be rendered harmless by the crowd control (in general, this means enemies that use melee attacks), and be ready to explain to your group to treat a rooted enemy as controlled, as many players won’t expect this form of crowd control. In specific situations within these outdoor dungeons, a druid working with hibernate and entangling roots can crowd control 2 enemies at once….no other class can do this like a druid can.

Your status curing abilities, remove curse and abolish poison, are very useful to groups as well. While restoration druids will naturally be looking for these debilitating effects and curing them, balance and feral druids need to remember they can do this too. If a party member gets a particularly nasty curse on him, jump out of cat form for a moment and get it off. Never count on another class to remove the status effect…remember, you’re a druid, which means you’re playing a much more sophisticated, complex class than the mages and priests out there … it’s up to you, as someone who has leveled a character reacting to a great deal of situations and requiring a tremendous amount of flexibility, to be on the ball and react quickly. You can’t expect the mage who has spent 60 levels pressing one button to cast frostbolt to think as quickly on his feet as you have to.

Balance and Feral Druids

In general, a balance or feral specced druid is going to be fulfilling the role of a Mage or Rogue (or possibly warrior). The general strategies for playing these specs are similar to playing a normal mage or rogue. For a balance druid, do ranged damage with spells and watch your aggro, while a feral druid should do melee damage, and use cower and some restraint to manage aggro.

When playing one of these roles, however, always remember you have other abilities, and use your versatility. If a priest is out of mana, take over healing while he regens. If a monster gets on a caster, shift to bear and pull it off of the cloth wearer until a warrior is able to pick it up. Don’t become so focused on your feral dps or balance abilities that you completely forget the other things you can do, or you really will be no better than a weak rogue or mage. Be sure to gather gear appropriate to all your roles, not just to your chosen spec. For some encounters, a feral druid is simply not as useful as a healing or decursing druid; in these situations, you don’t want to be stuck with trying to heal with the tiny mana pool provided by feral gear.

Restoration Druids

Druids who focus on healing can be very effective additions to end game raids. In general, you will function best in complement to a priest. Your HoTs and his HoT will function well together. Try to coordinate with other druid’s in the raid to figure out who will heal who and who will use what spells, as your HoT effects from regrowth and rejuve will not stack with each other. Experiment with lower ranks of healing touch as well, as it can be very useful to throw around some lower rank heals to save mana when party members are only taking a small amount of damage. If you’ve specced for innervate, use it early and often; many end game fights take much longer than 6 minutes, so you may get to use it 2 or even 3 times if you don’t hoard it. You should generally save innervate for yourself or other druids and priests. The other mana using classes have their own ways to recover mana, and druids and priests, with their high spirit, benefit much more from innervate than most other classes. Overall, focus on learning to coordinate and work well with other healers in the raid. No single healer can do everything in the game’s end dungeons, only a well coordinated healing team has a chance to succeed.

There are a plethora of add-ons and mods available to druids that can help them in end game PvE and PvP. Here are a few of the most popular. Many more are out there and available as well. Most can be easily found with a google search.

CTMod and CTRaidAssist
CTMod is a compilation of a number of different add-ons, many of which are very helpful. It is a very popular mod, and some guilds will even require it. CTRaidAssist lets you see everyone in your raid group (beyond the 5 in your party), as well as what buff’s and status ailments they have on them. While WoW has its own built in version of this, at the time of writing CTRaid’s version seems considerably smoother and more polished.

Decursive
Decursive is a simple mod that automatically clears debuffs from party members by casting the appropriate spell, such as remove curse or abolish poison. It makes it considerably easier to clear negative status effects from large raid groups. CTRaid has its own built in version of this, although decursive is small and simple to use.

A Wardrobe Mod
Many different mod lets you designate various outfits to wear- some examples include ItemRack and AceWardrobe. Its very useful for druids who tend to carry around 3 or 4 different sets of armor for different situations (Healing, Bear, Cat, etc.) Once outfits have been set, switching between them is accomplished with one button click. An enormously convenient type of mod for druid’s with multiple armor sets. There are a wide variety of this type of mod available, so check around and find one you like.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide has given some insight into the various options available to druids, and the different roles they can play in WoW. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your druid, as there are a great many ways to play them, and nothing’s more exciting than discovering some new trick or strategy on your own. Best of luck and happy druiding!