With this in game guide, you can go from level 1-80 fast, saving a heap of time.

Zygor Guides – 1-80 Horde & Alliance

You free up hours of time as you get to take the quests that give good experience points and rewards, instead of the quests that give little xp or rewards.

You should know, not all quests are created equal, and so the choice of quests and the order in which you do them is so important. Instead of choosing unrewarding quests that take ages to complete and offering little reward or xp and doing quests in an inefficient order, you get to do them in an efficient way. So instead of running round in circles all day, or having to kill the same mobs all over again as you found out that the next quest is in the same area as the one you just did, you get to go on the quests that are rewarding and in an efficient order.

The guide is for someone for new players, for intermediate and also for advanced players to level up their characters.

With Zygor’s Guide:

It tells you what you need to do, step by step, at all levels, 1 – 80.

Tells you where to go, who to get the Quest from, and where to go to complete the quest. No more looking up quest logs or maps to try to navigate around, or needing to memorise where you have to go, using coordinates, and what you need to get for all the quests you’ve taken.

It leads you to the quests that gain good xp or rewards, which are a good level and gives good xp, in an efficient order that avoids aimless running around all the time.

Leads you to quests that are part of a chain of quests that ultimately gives you great rewards.

Shows the name of the mob, the number of mobs you’ve killed, and the number you need to kill for the quest so you know what you’re targeting. So you focus on playing.

It auto-detects which steps you’ve done, so it keeps up with you, as you play, and don’t have to keep ticking them.

It’s all in-game, no alt tab out to find information.

It’s easy to install, yet is so useful and powerful – get up and running in minutes.

The Waypoint arrow works excellently, and shows you the direction to go for the step you’re on, automatically. Unlike other guides, where the arrow disappears when you get to the general area, it does not disappear until you actually find the person you’re looking for! The arrow also has the person you’re looking for or step that you’re up to beneath it so that you can just focus on the arrow if you wanted to, to know what to do next.

Plus it’s the only guide that detects your level and tells you which quests are obsolete as they’re too low level. So if you decide to do some dungeons and level up a level, it will grey out the steps that you no longer need and take you to the next step. But if you want to, you can click back on the guide and put the next step where you want to. It’s got flexibility where you need it!

And future updates as new patches and updates come out, included as well, so it’s always up to date.

Zygor Guides – 1-80 Horde & Alliance

Of all the guides I’ve used, I would recommend Zygor Guides because of all these benefits.

Some guides are flawed in that they are not updated. In Zygor’s guide, there is a team of people updating the guide when changes occur and for each new update. Unlike other guides that don’t deliver on each of the points above, this guide has been always working well and this could be partly because they were the originators of the totally in game guides with all the features you’d expect from an in game guide.

Of all the guides I have used, because it has always worked in all the ways I have described above, it is the guide that I use the most and would recommend for anyone, whether they are new to the game, at the mid levels struggling, or at level 80 and want to level up a second character fast instead of slow.

And yep the guide covers both Horde and Alliance, and all the starting areas for all races including the Death Knight and all levels 1 through to 80 and beyond with Cataclysm.

Is it worth the money?

Because the guide works excellently, to get you on the high value quests, all the time saved, the frustration saved from not having to navigate with maps and focusing on playing instead, it is worth it any day of the week.

And there’s a money back guarantee for peace of mind as well.

Plus the fact that you get the updates all included, makes it totally worth it.

Zygor Guides – 1-80 Horde & Alliance

So if you’re trying to decide which guide to get, then go for the one that works the best, in all the areas described above, and get on with leveling faster and getting a whole lot more out of WoW.

Yours in WoW,

Matt

P.S. If you want the in game guide that has all the features to help you level faster, save a heap of time and frustration, and get a whole lot more out of WoW, then get Zygor Guides. This guide is the for all levels from 1 to 80 and beyond with Cataclysm and will save you time, frustration and make playing a lot more enjoyable:

Zygor Guides – 1-80 Horde & Alliance

You can take your pet with you when questing and is cool!

It breathes in snowy weather to produce a visible breath which is beautiful.

It’s a rare spawn in Stormwind city, only once every 2-3 hours.

As it’s an Alliance pet, it can sell at the Neutral auction House for over 200 Gold as a pet for Horde, especially Taurens. The highest sale price of this rare pet is reported to be 850 gold. Sometimes, a Horde can snatch the White Kitten for a bargain at less than 200 gold.

How to find the White Kitten?

You will have to go to Stormwind city and go to the location where Lil Timmy spawns.

This location is next to the pier, where often a few other children are fishing.

The coordinates are at 47.1, 56.7.

Lil Timmy spawns every 2-3 hours so you will have to wait.

The first time I got the white kitten I was lucky and only had to wait about 10 minutes, but he only carries 1 kitten at a time. I did this at a time when it was late night, so late that no one else was really competing with me.

It pays to wait at the right time!

When he appears, be the first to right click and get the Cat Carrier (White Kitten) from him.

The cost is 57 silver.

He then walks a circuit around Stormwind city along:

The edge of Cathedral square on the path where he spawns

Across the bridge towards the Trade District

The edge of the Trade District (along the water)

Across the bridge to Old Town

Along the edge of Old Town (along the water)

Across the bridge towards the Dwarven District

Along the edge of Dwarven District (along the water)

Across the bridge towards Cathedral Square

Through Cathedral Square

Back to the spawn point (then despawns)

So if you want a cool pet that you can take along with you on quests, then the White Kitten is a great one to have.

Eventually, if you want to part with it, you can sell it for a nice profit.

Collecting rare pets is one way to make gold, and some people even make a routine of it, doing their fishing while they wait at the pier for Lil Timmy and his rare pet to appear.

Otherwise, just wait there a bit and see if you get lucky and have him appear for you in very little time.

And you can take advantage of this alibility as a warlock to summon powerful pets when soloing, playing as a duo or raiding in a group via using your pet as an off tank.

To get maximum dps as a warlock, as we talked about in our warlock leveling guide, is through leveling, class training, talent point builds, gear specs and glyphs.

Here’s the strategy on being a dps and tank at the same time.

Soloing or Group:

If you want to use your pet as a tank for soloing or off tank when raiding, use the Voidwalker as it can take a lot of damage and generate threat.

The Voidwalker is best as a tank, and Felhunter is not as strong but has anti magic effects, and so can be used as tanks. The other pet’s roles? The Imp is range damage and Sucubus for crowd control as they puts mob into a charm.

Get the pet to tank 4-5 mobs, then use AoE (area of effect) damage as your role is to do dps.

When soloing, set your Void to defensive, so that it doesn’t go beserk and start attacking everything around you, for better control.

When raiding, set your Void to passive for even better control, so that you can control which mobs it is targeting.

Then at same time, you do ‘drain tanking’, which is a term for a warlock using their abilities of Life Tap to generate mana which is needed for your dps spells but which drains health, and Drain Life, to regain health while you do damage to the mobs.

The reason why this works so well is that your drain life/soul/mana are channelled spells, and interruptions will stop the spells. So your pet is going to be taking the hits as a tank, while you’re casting your DoTs, and and will be much less likely to be interrupted while doing so.

So apply these techniques as you level your warlock.

For more, see our warlock guide for leveling here.

You can get from a scribe (inscription) or from a vendor. They in general increase amount or sped of damage done, improve critical strikes, reduces mana cost, improve healing and resist spell interruption as a warlock. If you have dual specialization, then you will have slots for 2 sets of glyphs.

As you level, you’ll have a number of glyph slots that you can use:

Level 15: 1 major, 1 minor

Level 30: 2 major, 1 minor

Level 50: 2 major, 2 minor

Level 70: 2 major, 3 minor

Level 80: 3 major, 3 minor

Here are the glyphs for warlocks, arranged in level order:

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Life Tap (level 15)

You gain 20% your Spirit as spell power for a duration of 40 seconds, when you use Dark Pact or Life Tap.

Glyph of Healthstone (level 15)

You gain 30% more healing from the use of a healthstone.

Glyph of Shadow Bolt (level 15)

Decreases the mana cost of Shadow Bolt by 10%.

Glyph of Curse of Agony (level 15)

Increases the length of your Curse of Agony spell by 4 seconds.

Glyph of Health Funnel (level 15)

Improves the chance of resisting spell interruption with your Health Funnel spell by 100%.

Glyph of Fear (level 15)

Increases the amount of damage your target can take before Fear is removed by 20%.

Glyph of Quick Decay (level 15)

Reduces the time between damage ticks of your Corruption spell.

Glyph of Imp (level 15)

Increases the amount of damage dealt by your Imp’s Firebolt spell by 20%.

Glyph of Immolate (level 15)

Increases the damage done of your immolate spell by 10%.

Glyph of Soulstone (level 18)

Increases the amount of health gained after being resurrected by your Soulstone by 300%.

Glyph of Searing Pain (level 18)

Increases the critical strike bonus of Searing Pain by 20%.

Glyph of Shadowburn (level 20)

Improves the critical strike rate of your Shadowburn spell by 20% when the target is less than 35% health.

Glyph of Soul Link (level 20)

Increases the amount of damage shared by your Soul Link by an extra 5%.

Glyph of Succubus (level 20)

Enables the seduction ability your Succubus to get rid of all damage over time effects as well.

Glyph of Voidwalker (level 20)

Increases the stamina of your  Voidwalker by 20%.

Glyph of Incinerate (level 28)

Increases the damage performed by your incinerate spell by 5%.

Glyph of Siphon Life (level 30)

Improves the healing you gain from your Siphon Life talent by 25%.

Glyph of Felhunter (level 30)

When your Felhunter uses Devour Magic, you will be healed for that amount.

Glyph of Conflagrate (level 40)

When you cast your Conflagrate spell it no longer negates your Immolate or Shadowflame spell.

Glyph of Howl of Terror (level 40)

Decreases the cooldown period on Howl of Terror by 8 seconds.

Glyph of Death Coil (level 42)

Increases the duration of your Death Coil damage spell by 0.5 seconds.

Glyph of Felguard (level 50)

Increases the attack power of your Felguard by 20%.

Glyph of Unstable Affliction (level 50)

Reduces the cast time of Unstable Affliction by 0.2 seconds.

Glyph of Metamorphosis (level 60)

Increases the length of your Metamorphosis spell by 6 seconds.

Glyph of Chaos Bolt (level 60)

Decreases the cooldown period of your Chaos Bolt by 2 seconds.

Glyph of Haunt (level 60)

The bonus damage given by Haunt is increased by an extra 3%.

Glyph of Shadowflame (level 75)

Your Shadowflame also causes a 70% slowing of movement on the target.

Glyph of Demonic Circle (level 80)

Decreases the cooldown period of Demonic Circle by 4 seconds.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Drain Soul (level 15)

Allows your drain soul ability to sometimes give you an additional soul shard.

Glyph of Unending Breath (level 15)

Improves the swimming speed for those affected by your Unending Breath by 20%.

Glyph of Kilrogg (level 22)

Increases the speed of movement of Eye of Kilrogg by 50%. It can also fly in areas where flying mounts can go to.

Glyph of Enslave Demon (level 30)

Decreases the casting time of Enslave Demon by 50%.

Glyph of Souls (level 68)

Decreases the mana cost of Ritual of Souls spell by 70%.

Glyph of Curse of Exhaustion (level 70)

Improves the range of Curse of Exhaustion spell by 5 yards.

Back to our warlock guide here for tips on warlock leveling and dps, including how to use your pet as tank.

You can spec your warlock in a few different ways, depending on which areas interest you the most, and also on whether you are soloing, playing as a duo or want to mainly raid.

See our warlock leveling guide here for more on how to spec your warlock.

There are 3 groups of warlock talent builds:

Affliction: improves the damage caused by damage over time spells, curses and channelled spells, including healing given by certain damage spells and drains. This combination of increased damage and health support is an advantage when it comes to leveling a warlock. At the end of combat with the right combination of spells to drain life and life tap, you end up with almost full health and mana and is excellent for leveling.

Demonology: improves the abilities of your pets, including the damage done and their tanking abilities.

Destruction: improves damage done, mostly instant damage, but at the expense of using a lot of mana. This is ideally suited for instances and raids with groups so that your health is rejuvenated by a healer otherwise, you will have to stop all the time to mana up with potions which will slow your leveling.

To summarise, think of your warlock talent build in this way:

Soloing

If you’re leveling your warlock solo, and want to do it faster then choose Affliction tree mainly to improve damage over time, curses and drains and restoration of mana.

Duo

If you’re playing in a duo, you can develop your Demonology to play your pet as a tank, you as dps and your partner as healer.

Group

If you’re raiding in a group, then you can specialise in any 3 areas which interests you the most, being Destruction for damage, Affliction for damage over time, curses and drains, or Demonology to develop your pet as an off tank.

When you choose talent points, they don’t all have to be in one single tree, they are usually mostly in one tree and some in another, to result in the best overall improvement for your warlocks abilities.

Here’s a talent spec that I use for Affliction warlocks. They are mostly in the Affliction and some in the Destruction group.

Affliction

Improved Curse of Agony – Increases the damage done by Curse of Agony by 5 or 10%.

Suppression – Increases your chance to hit with spells by 1-3%, and reduces the mana cost of your Affliction spells by 2-6%.

Improved Corruption – Increases the damage done by Corruption by 2-10%, and increases the critical strike rate of your Seed of Corruption by 1-5%.

Empowered Corruption – Increases the damage of Corruption by 12-36% of your spell power.

Improved Drain Soul – Gives you 7 or 15% of your maximum mana if the target is killed while you’re draining soul. Also, your Affliction spells generate 5 or 10% less aggro or threat.

Improved Life Tap – Increases the mana generated via Life Tap spell by 10 or 20%.

Soul Siphon – Increases the amount drained by Drain Life and Drain Soul by 3 or 6% for each Affliction effect on the mob, to a maximum of 9 or 18%.

Amplify Curse – Your global cooldown for your Curses is decreased by 0.5 seconds.

Grim Reach – Increases the range of your Affliction spells by 10 or 20%.

Nightfall – Gives you a 2-4% chance enter a Shadow Trance state when you use the Corruption and Drain Life spells. Being in Shadow Trance decreases the cast time of your next Shadow Bolt by 100%.

Shadow Embrace – You produce the Shadow Embrace effect when you use Shadow Bolt or Haunt, which increases damage  done by 1-5%, and reduces the healing done to the target by 2-10%, lasts 12 seconds and can stack 3 times.

Improved Fel hunter – Enables your Felhunter to regain 4 or 8% of mana when it hits with its Shadow Bite ability, increases Fel Intelligence by 5 or 10%, and reduces the cooldown period of Shadow Bite by 2 or 4 seconds.

Shadow Mastery – Increases the damage done or the life drained by your Shadow spells and your Felhunter’s Shadow Bite by 3-15%.

Eradication – Gives a 6% chance, when you use Corruption, to increase casting speed by 6-12% for 10 seconds.

Contagion – Increases the damage done by Corruption, Seed of Corruption and Curse of Agony by 1-5% and decreases the chance of your Affliction spells being dispelled, by an additional 6-30%.

Dark Pact – This returns 1200 of your summoned demon’s mana to you.

Malediction – Increases damage by 1-3% and critical strike rate of your Unstable Affliction and Corruption by 3-9%.

Death’s Embrace – Increases the effect of your Drain Life by 10-30% when you’re at or less than 20% health. Also increases damage by Shadow Spells by 4-12% when your target is at or less than 35% health.

Unstable Affliction – Causes X damage over 15 sec, and if Unstable Affliction is dispelled, will cause Y damage to the dispeller plus silence them for 5 seconds.

Pandemic – Your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells has the ability to critically hit for 100% increased damage, plus increases the critical strike damage bonus of Haunt by 100%.

Everlasting Affliction – Your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells gain an extra 1-5% of your bonus spell damage, and Drain Life and Haunt spells have a 20-100% chance to reply your Corruption spell on the target.

Destruction

Bane – Decreases the cast time of Immolate , Shadow Bolt and Chaos Bolt by 0.1-0.5 seconds and Soul Fire by 0.4-2.0 seconds.

Improved Shadow Bolt – Increases damage done by Shadow Bolt by 2-10%, and increases critical strike rate by 5%, lasting 30 seconds.

Ruin – Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Destruction spells and Imp’s Fire Bolt spell by 20-100%.

Destructive Reach – Increases the range of Destruction spells by 10 or 20% and reduces agro caused by 10 or 20%.

You will know that from soloing a druid that you can cast healing spells on yourself, but when in a party or raiding situation, especially when the instance is very challenging, the life of the entire team could be depending on you. See our druid guide here for more on druid leveling.

Before we go into the specific tips for druid healer, check your talents and gear spec.

Firstly, ensure that you spec your talent points to being a healer. This will make you much more effective as a healer and critical if you are a healer at the intermediate to highest level instances.

Find out more about how to druid healer build with talent points here.

Secondly, spec your gear to healing as well. If you have dual specialization or play two roles regularly, have two sets of armor and gear, one for healing and one for dps or other role, and use your character pane to change your armor set to that of the healer.

Find out more about how to druid healing spec with gear here.

If you want to do healing and another role, then have 2 sets of gear, and equip the appropriate one from your character pane or the Outfitter addon.

Ready to be an effective druid healer? Here are the tips that you should know:

1. Prepare yourself before the instance or raid.

As a druid healer, the 3 things to do before your role as a healer in an instance or raid is to:

a) Have enough mana potions.

Choose a couple of different mana potions, the most effective potion that restores the most mana over time, and another which restores less mana, but which you can get for less gold. Depending on how much mana is remaining, you can choose the particular strength mana potion. Even if you have innervate, you may need potions during the cooldown period.

b) Have the reagents you need for your Rebirth spell to resurrect during combat, or have the Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth so that you can do rebirth without the need for reagents.

This is handy as you will not be caught out if you forget to stock up on reagents.

c) Repair all armor in a major town or city.

Fully repaired armor is important for a healer, as you will get damage as you pull agro in instances. So always ensure that you get repaired before instances as there is usually no repairer closeby once in the dungeon.

2. Buff the party with your buffs prior to an instance and keep this up during the dungeon on instance.

Your buffs will help your team improve their armor and resistance to damage and they in turn will buff you with their buffs. Which buffs to use on who?

In general, you would want to use Mark of the Wild/Gift of the Wild for everyone, as this increases the person’s armor, all attributes, and resistances for 30 minutes. Buff yourself and everyone else at the same time, and use your countdown to keep track of when you need to rebuff.

Used Thorns on characters who do melee dps and the tank, as this causes nature damage to attackers when the character is hit, and lasts 10 minutes. This is most useful for characters who are in contact with mobs than those who are caster dps.

And buff the party first as the buffs do take up some mana, then mana up fully yourself.

3. Use the addon to make it way easier for you to heal.

If you use the traditional way of trying to see who is falling in health, clicking to target someone which can be very difficult if not impossible to see during combat, then clicking on a spell to heal them, it will be a slow and ineffective way to heal.

This addon will show you the health and mana of everyone in your group, and you can stack it neatly beneath another, so that you can see who needs healing, and where you can heal them by left, right or middle clicking on their health bars.

Set it up so that you perform a specific heal when you left, right or middle click, for example:

Left, right, middle clicks

1. Left click does a milder heal, such as Rejuvenation, which is an instant cast, that heals over 15 seconds, and takes up less mana.

2. Right click does a stronger heal, such as Regrowth, which is a 2 sec cast but heals x amount and then y amount over 21 seconds. It does a larger heal and takes up more mana.

3. Middle click does an even stronger heal, such as Healing Touch, which is a 3 sec cast and heals for a certain amount. It does the largest heal and takes up more mana again.

Shift left, right, middle clicks

For Remove Curse and Abolish Poison, set these to eg Shift left click and shift right click. It’s way quicker than targeting then clicking on the right icon on the action bar.

Set Tranquility to a spot on your task bar or even as a keybind so that you can hit this to heal everyone in emergency situations! This does a big heal and heals everyone and has saved my team’s lives on many occasions. When health for everyone is falling and your usual heals are not keeping up and you think the team will wipe, then hit this one and see everyone being saved!

Set Innervate when you get it, similarly on the taskbar or keybind, so that you can regenerate your or someone else’s mana over 10 seconds, when you need to.

This is so that you can do a certain level of healing as needed simply by clicking on the health bar of the addon. Just be aware that the bigger heals have longer cast times, so you will have to start them not too late otherwise the person may die before it is cast.

Control middle click

Set Nature’s Swiftness (a talent granted ability) on the taskbar or keybind eg control middle click, as this can save lives in emergency situations. It causes the next nature spell, such as a healing spell, with a casting time less than 10 sec to be instant (with 3 minute cooldown).

In situations where the damage on the tank is so fast that you need to heal big and do so immediately, use Nature’s Swiftness and then immediately use Healing Touch. It is a life saver!

4. Use a heal early in the tank’s offence, or pre-heal if the situation needs it.

When in a situation where you anticipate greater damage on the tank, do a heal over time, such as Rejuvenation or Regrowth just after the tank has run in to grab the mobs. But do this at the right time. It’s best and safest to do this just after the tank has started combating the mobs and before hsi health falls too much. This could be for situations with multiple mobs or high level or elite mobs, so it pays for the tank to communicate with you to let you know what situation you’re facing.

Some people do a ‘pre-heal’ even before the tank reaches the mob, but beware that this may cause agro to fall on you so mobs may end up attacking you instead of the tank. If this happens, you may end up losing health very rapidly as you’re not built for taking damage like the tank is. So be careful and heal yourself and get the tank to get agro off you as soon as possible.

5. Heal in the most efficient way.

There are a few things to know to heal efficiently, meaning you get more effect and you avoid running out of mana and end up dying yourself.

Firstly, avoid over healing.

If you heal too much, and the person’s health is over 100%, the healing effect is wasted and you’ll end up with low mana all the time and either die in combat or use up your mana potions very fast. So practice healing just enough to maintain good health without going overboard.

This takes practices as it depends on the situation with how many mobs are on the tank at a time, whether the mobs are doing extra damage from totems or stun or silence spells, and the effect of your heal over time that is already going on. It takes a bit of practice, and can be a real art.

Secondly, don’t clip your heal over times.

Clipping means doing one heal over time spell, and before the effect of that spell is over, you reapply it. It is a very common mistake. The reason why it’s not a good ideas is that when you reapply, the remaining heal over time of the original is lost. Plus, the delay between heals can be almost doubled.

For example, say the cast time is 2 seconds and the heal over time occurs every 2 seconds. If you wait until the heal is over, and recast there’s a 2 second delay between heals. But if you apply it before it is finished, you can have potentially a 4 second delay between heals. How to tell? The addon has a countdown indicator for each heal that you put on each person, so you can tell exactly, what spell is on who and how much is left.

6. Have your task bar set up properly for healing.

Make sure that you have placed your spells on the task bar for all your forms, especially caster form, so that you can access any spell easily. Being organised can be the difference between saving your own life or the entire team, and having the team wipe.

Set both your healing and dps abilities in an organised way, and be familiar with it. Why? As a druid healer, you may occasionally need to root enemies which run, as mother classes may not be able to do so, or have good enough range dps. Rooting a mob can save the entire party as it prevents it from drawing all the other mobs to your team when you’re not ready.

A most helpful way is to put:

a) Your form specific task bar (the task bar that changes as you change form):

Caster DPS spells together (eg Attack, Faerie Fire, Moonfire, Wrath, Starfire), then your caster healing spells (eg Rejuvenation, Healing Touch, Regrowth, Tranquility, Abolish Poison, Remove Curse, Rebirth, Revive).

b) In the task bar that stays the same:

The spells that are useful for any form so that you can access them when in any form, quickly. These include:

All the healing and resurrection spells, distance rooting spell (eg Entangling Roots), threat reduction (eg Cower), speed (eg Dash), contact rooting spell (eg Nature’s Grasp), mob calming (eg Hibernate, Soothe animal) and stealth (eg Shadowmeld)

7. If you encounter agro, get the tank to take them off you.

The team relies on you as a healer, You can’t do your job if you’re running low on health. So if you’re attacked by a mob, tell the tank to get them off you. Use a program like Ventrilo or Mumble to talk to each other is easiest. You can also run towards the tank so they know you’re being attacked as a sign but this needs to be communicated first and arranged beforehand so the tank understands what it means.

8. Use manoeuvres to survive combat.

Sometimes, you can survive combat instead of dying. Here are 3 tips for you to use when you need it:

a) If low on mana, and you desperately need to heal yourself, use the heals that require no mana.

These are the items such as potions for health or mana, and belts and items that give health. These may not be hugely powerful but in some cases, it can save your life. Once you have innervate, then you can use that instead, which has a 3 minute cooldown.

b) When you’re attacked and you can’t get agro off you and risk dying, you can use shadowmeld.

This can get all the mobs off you, let you recover. Sometimes, you can be the sole survivor, and when safe, come out of shadowmeld and resurrect the others.

c) If stunned or silenced by a caster, you won’t be able to do anything.

You can break this by changing form (any form) and continue on. This is another advantage of a druid’s ability to change form.

9. Know when to resurrect.

As a Druid, you can self resurrect if you’re given a soulstone by a Warlock, which will happen, as you’re the healer in the party. Instead of returning by release of spirit to the graveyard, you resurrect on the spot you died. But you have to make a call as to when to resurrect. If you think the situation is savable, you can resurrect and heal the other members and survive the combat.

But if the situation is hopeless, and you resurrect, you and the entire team wipes. So you will have to make the call. It is often best to wait until the team wipes, and the mobs run off, before using the soulstone. You can then resurrect yourself, and then resurrect others in your team. Who to resurrect first? You can resurrect another healer who has resurrection ability.

10. Improve your heal abilities with Glyphs.

You can improve your abilities as a healer with Glyphs for druid healers. These will decrease cast times, increase healing effects, give you the ability to do certain spells without reagents such as Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth we talked about above, and the ability to resurrect characters to life with full health and mana with the Glyph of Rebirth. This is something that can save a team when rebirthing during combat, and reduce the recovery time for the next combat.

The glyphs good for healers are found in the category of Glyphs for druids for healing (restoration) as well as the general druid glyphs and minor druid glyphs. So don’t just look under the category of restoration as a healer. See here for more on Glyphs for druids for healing and other roles.

Ensure that you spec  your talent points for tanking, as well as spec your gear for tanking as well. See here for more about how to:

Druid tank spec with talents

How to druid tank spec with gear

Druid tanking glyphs

You will need all of these specs (especially talents and gear) chosen properly to tank at the mid to high levels, otherwise you’ll take too much damage and not survive combat.

As a druid tank, here are the things that you have to know:

1. Repair before the big quest,  instance or raid

Prepare for your role by repairing all armor before a major quest or instance or raid, in a major city or town, as after you start an instance it will be difficult to get a repair. This is unless you have a warlock in your team to create a portal, so that you can hearth to repair and then to get back via summoning. You can do this if you need repairs urgently during a long instance!

2. Get the best buffs you or your team can offer

Buff yourself with druid buffs of Mark of the Wild/Gift of the Wild and Thorns, unless there’s a druid healer in your party with better or higher ranked version of your buff. In this case, get them to buff you.

3. Use threatmeter addon

Use a threatmeter to see who in your party is drawing the most threat. As a tank, you play your role to keep the mobs on you, and at the same time keep an eye on your team to see whether you will need to draw a mob away from your dps or healer in your party.

4. Draw the mobs the best way possible

Set the pace of the instance by drawing a mob or mobs to your team. The decision as to whether to draw one or two or more mobs will depend on the levels of the mobs. Also, whether they’re casters which can cause havoc with totems or spells, whether they’re elite, and their proximity to each other.

If you want to draw a small number of mobs but not more, draw them to an area that is out of sight to the other mobs. You should tell your team to stay in a certain area before you draw them back to where you are, otherwise you’ll draw unwanted mobs if your team members rush in and agro too many mobs. It helps if everyone in the team knows that you as the tank is the leader and sets the pace but some people don’t know the various roles, so just hint and remind them what to do.

If you’re not sure about the situation ahead and it’s difficult to assess, go into prowl form and check out the situation more closely this way to decide what you need to do.

5. Mark the mobs the dps should attack, with a skull, a cross and circle.

This will indicate which mobs to target and which priority. Your dps members must know which mobs to attack so that you kill one set of mobs before moving on to another. You can set your targets to key binds such as F1 to F3 so you can easily do this during the instance.

6. Ensure that you have your task bar set up for effective tanking as a druid.

In bear form, make sure that your abilities are set to an order that makes sense to you as a tank. Foe example, you can place the taunting abilities first, then the enrage ability, then the damage abilities, so you can use them in this approximate order from left to right. You can keybind them to number 1 to 0 as well as place them on the action bar. For example, you can set them to something like this:

Attack – put you into attack mode where you will swipe every few seconds when a mob is in range.

Faerie Fire (feral) – to draw a mob as well as to reduce their armor for 5 minutes, and do some damage when in bear or dire bear forms.

Growl – to taunt a mob towards you.

Challenging Roar – use this instead if you want to taunt all mobs towards you, instead of just one.

Enrage – to increase rage so that you can perform the damage abilities to follow which require rage.

Demoralizing roar – to reduce the melee damage by mobs for 30 seconds.

Swipe – to damages nearby enemies. This helps to keep the agro on all nearby mobs.

Bash – to stun mobs for 30 seconds.

Maul – increases your melee damage, so use this repeatedly to increase the effect of your next melee.

Frenzied Regeneration – use if you need to heal, as it converts rage to heal over 10 seconds.

7. Keep the attention of the mob/s on you by attacking the mob and being the biggest threat, and so the mob is not targeting the others, ie not the dps or healer.

When you’re doing this, keep an eye on the threatmeter to check if you need to taunt a mob off another person in your party such as a dps or healer. If you are using a chat system, then they can verbally tell you that they’ve got a mob on them, but if not, it will be even more important for you to pay attention to the threatmeter.

8. Beware of patrols.

If you notice that a patrol is coming back and is about to attack your healer or dps, then taunt them as well. As a leader, you should look out for these events and warn your party. But if you forget, you should notice that someone is being attacked and draw the mob off them as this happens.

Often patrols will be killed before you reach a certain area, but often they maybe coming the other way so are still alive, and may even be in groups, and also be elites. So watch out for them.

9. Watch out for runners.

Some mobs will be runners and run to collect the other mobs. If you have a dps or healer that has entangling ability, then they should entangle them and stop them from getting the mobs. Often they do this when they are low on health. It is a good idea to check before the instance or combat to see who can do this and can watch out for this situation and entangle the runners as needed.

If needed and you have enough health and you know the runner is going to a huge group of mobs that your team is not ready to handle right at this point, you can use your entangling roots ability and come out of bear form for a moment to do this, then return to bear form.

10. Set the pace accordingly after combat and check if your healer need to mana up, as after all, they are the one keeping you alive during combat.

Druid tanks often have better knowledge of what it’s like to be a healer as they can do that role themselves. The most important thing is to let the let the healer know that there’s a big boss coming up and that they should be mana’d up.

Also, if you’re going to run into a room and gather all the mobs for a huge combat or are facing many higher level mobs or elites, then let the healer know that you may need a pre-heal as you run towards them or early heal just after you contact the mobs. This can save your life when your healer is doing the preheal.

Note that if the healer does a pre-heal on you that they may take agro and if this happens, may fall in health very fast. In this case, get the mob off the healer as soon as possible, It’s often better to tell the healer to do an early heal instead of the pre-heal for this reason.

When you’ve got your druid tanking gear, druid tank build by talents as well as know how to tank, then you’ll be a real great tank in any situation.

As we mentioned in our druid guide here, the benefits can help in tight situations when questing, or in instances or raiding with others. It all fits in the greater scheme if things. So get your class training, wear good gear, place talent points appropriately and if you can, get the glyphs.

Glyphs are made by scribes (inscription). You can get the reagents of inks (pigments made from herbs) and parchments from a vendor and ask a scribe whom you know or don’t know and offer some gold, to make the glyph.

Or you can get them from the Auction House, which usually cost more gold.

At various levels, you have a certain number of glyph slots:

Level 15: 1 major, 1 minor

Level 30: 2 major, 1 minor

Level 50: 2 major, 2 minor

Level 70: 2 major, 3 minor

Level 80: 3 major, 3 minor

Which ones to choose?

In general this is the guideline:

As a caster or range DPS, look at balance.

As a melee dps or tank, look at feral.

As a healer, look at restoration.

For everyone, look at the general glyphs and minor glyphs for the ones that apply.

By apply I mean that they affect the abilities that you are finding that you will use, or that you do use the most in your current role. If you are interested in speed of leveling, then choose the glyphs that enhance your major attack skills as well as the minor glyphs that affect speed.

Here are the druid glyphs arranged in their groups:

Balance

Glyph of Entangling Roots (level 15)

Increases the damage enemies can take before the entangling roots take, by 20%

Glyph of Wrath (level 15)

Reduces the pushback of your wrath spell by 50%

Glyph of Moonfire (level 15)

Increases the periodic damage done by moonfire by 75% but initial damage is reduced by 90%

Glyph of Insect Swarm (level 20)

Increases the damage done by insect swarm ability by 30% but no longer affects your victim’s chance to hit

Glyph of Starfire (level 20)

Increases the duration of moonfire effect by 3 seconds, to a maximum of 9 seconds

Glyph of Hurricane (level 40)

Your hurricane ability now also slows the movement of enemies by 20%

Glyph of Monsoon (level 50)

This reduces the cooldown of your typhoon spell by 3 seconds

Glyph of Startfall (level 60)

This reduces the cooldown of your starfall spell by 30 seconds

Glyph of Focus (level 70)

Increases the damage done by starfall by 10% but decreases its radius by 50%

Feral

Glyph of Maul (level 15)

Your maul ability now affects 1 additional target

Glyph of Claw (level 15)

Reduces the energy cost of claw by 5

Glyph of Growl (level 15)

Increases the chance of your growl working successfully by 8%

Glyph of Rip (level 20)

Increases the duration of rip by 4 seconds

Glyph of Survival Instincts (level 20)

Grants an additional 15% of your maximum health

Glyph of Shred (level 22)

For every shred, the duration of rip is increased by 2 seconds, to a maximum of 6 seconds

Glyph of Rake (level 24)

Your rake ability prevents your targets from fleeing

Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration (level 36)

While frenzied regeneration is active, the healing effects on you is increased by 20%

Glyph of Barkskin (level 44)

Reduces the chance of being critically hit by melee attacks by 25%

Glyph of Mangle (level 50)

Increases the damage of mangle by 10%

Glyph of Beserk (level 60)

Increases the duration of berserk by 5 seconds

Glyph of Savage Roar (level 75)

Your savage roar ability grants an additional 3% bonus damage done

Restoration

Glyph of Regrowth (level 15)

Increases the effect of your regrowth effect by 20%

Glyph of Healing Touch (level 15)

Decreases cast time by 1.5 seconds, mana cost by 25%, amount healed by 50%

Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation (level 15)

Your haste now reduces the time between periodic ticks of your rejuvenation spell

Glyph of Rejuvenation (level 15)

While your targets are below 50%, you will heal them for an additional 50% health

Glyph of Swiftmend (level 40)

Your swiftmend no longer consumes a rejuvenation or regrowth effect from the target

Glyph of Wild Growth (level 60)

Your wild growth can affect 1 additional target

Glyph of Lifebloom (level 64)

Increases duration of Lifebloom by 1 second

Glyph of Nourish (level 80)

Your nourish heals an additional 4% for each of you heal over time effects

General

Glyph of Rebirth (level 20)

Players are resurrected are returned to life with 100% health

Glyph of Innervate (level 40)

Gives the caster 45% of their mana pool over 10 seconds in addition to the normal effects of Innervate

Minor

Glyph of the Wild (level 15)

The mana cost of mark of the wild and gift of the wild is reduced by 50%

Glyph of Thorns (level 15)

Increases the duration of thorns by 50 minutes when cast on yourself

Glyph of Aquatic Form (level 16)

Increases your speed by 50% while in aquatic form

Glyph of Dash (level 16)

Decreases the cooldown of your dash ability by 20%

Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth (level 20)

Your rebirth spell no longer requires a reagent

Glyph of Challenging Roar (level 28)

Reduces the cooldown of challenging roar ability by 30 seconds

Glyph of Typhoon (level 70)

Decreases the cost of your typhoon spell by 8% but it no longer knocks them back

When you pick up gear during quests as a druid, you will have to decide which armor or clothes to wear. As we mentioned in our druid leveling guide, this is crucial for performing in the mid to high levels as a druid tank, dps or healer.

So which attributes to choose?

Solo

If you’re soloing a character from 1-80 and want to level fast, then the priority would be to choose items that improve your dps. Doing this will allow you to kill mobs quickly. In particular, as a druid in cat form doing melee damage is faster compared to humanoid form with spell damage. This is because you don’t use up mana in cat form which you would with spell damage, which means you will need to frequently stop to mana back up.

Duo/Group

If you’re playing as a pair or as a group on the other hand, and you want to be a tank or as a healer, then you would choose  items that help tanking and healing. You can level as a duo or even as a group and choose the role you enjoy the most. You can always re-spec or Dual spec later if you find that you prefer to perform another role, or more than one role with your character.

2 or more sets of gear?

If you are interesting in doing a variety of different roles, then you can have 2 or more sets of gear, and equip the appropriate one from your character pane or the Outfitter addon.

Keep the gear sets you want to use in your bag and store the others in the bank.

This is the way to go if you enjoy more than one role, so choose gear that will strengthen all of these roles.

Attributes

Let’s have a look at the attributes you will see for items that you’ll get during quests and see what they actually mean, and then show you how to choose gear depending on what you want to do.

Strength – Increases melee attack (gain 2 melee attack points per point of strength)

Agility – Increases melee attack for druids in cat form (gain 1 melee attack point per point of agility), and slight increase in armor (by 2 points)

Stamina – Provides health (1 health per stamina for the first 20 points, and 10 health per stamina after that).

Intellect – Increases spell critical strike rate and increases mana points (1 mana per intellect for the first 20 points, and 15 mana per stamina after that).

Spirit – Increases health (when out of combat) and mana regeneration (in and out of combat, except for 5 seconds immediately after casting a spell). In general, 1 Spirit point = 1 mp5 (mana return per 5 seconds) while not casting.

Spell power – Increases the amount of damage and healing done with spells

Armor – Decreases damage done by attacks on yourself

Melee DPS

If you are damage or DPS with melee eg cat or bear, choose items with:

Strength

Agility

Stamina

Spell DPS

If you are damage or DPS with spells, choose items with:

Intellect

Spirit

Spell power

Tank

If you are a tank, choose items with:

Armor

Agility

Stamina

Healer

If you are a healer, choose items with:

Spell power

Intellect

Spirit

As you can see, all attributes can be helpful in some way, but as dps, tank or healer, there are ones which give you a lot more benefit.

At mid and high levels, and especially when in a group in instances, dungeons and raids, it is essential that you gear spec properly – you can cause the team to wipe pretty fast if you’re not -  so that you can perform your role effectively.

From level 10 onwards, you have 1 talent point per level, to spend on your talent point tree. So from level 1 to level 80 you have 71 points in total to use.

So which areas should you strengthen?

Placing talent points improve your abilities in a particular area, such as dps, tank or healing. You will want to spend your points towards one specialty which means that you’ll be really good at that role and can play that role real well in a team situation eg instances and raids.

How to place the points? Let’s have a look at how you would decide.

Soloing vs duo/team

If you’re soloing up a character from 1-80 you will be able to level faster if you focus on dps (mainly in cat form) as you’ll kill mobs faster. And you will  not need to stop to mana up all the time as you would if you do spell dps.

If you want to spec as a healer, it will be slower to level as a solo, but if you level as a duo, eg as 2 druids, or as a team, then you can be a healer, tank or dps. And as a combination of healer and tank, you will be very popular in random dungeons as most players are wanting to do dps.

You can level as a solo as melee dps, and later re-spec to the talent build you prefer. When you reach level 80, you can re-spec to tank or healing if you prefer these roles for instances and raids. Otherwise if you really want to practice healing at all stages, team up with someone to level together. Leveling together is just as fun!

Changing your spec or Dual spec

As I said, you can level as one spec and respect later. Some people also start as one specialty then do change their mind. How? You will have to spend one gold to change all the talent point allocations that you have allocated to that point. But if you do this again, it will cost more gold each time, to a maximum of 50 gold.

If you have the gold at level 40 onwards, you can have Dual Talent Specialization.For 1000 gold, you can get dual talent spec from your class trainer and have the ability to have two separate talent specs and glyphs. This is for you if you enjoy a character and like to perform 2 different roles when in a group!

Allocating talent points

For best performance in one role, you should allocate most points (though usually not all) into predominantly one tree.

For druids, your talent trees are:

Balance: Range or caster DPS

Feral Combat: Melee DPS or Tanking

Restoration: Healing

Note that often you will put say 50 points into the predominant tree, eg DPS, and the rest in others.

This is because good DPS talents are also located in other trees, eg the resto tree of which some talents provide good DPS and healing at the same time.

This is the talent build I used for druid DPS:

Feral

Ferocity – 5/5

Savage Fury – 2/2

Feral Instinct – 3/3

Feral Swiftness – 2/2

Sharpened Claws – 3/3

Primal Fury – 2/2

Predatory Strikes – 3/3

Feral Charge – 1/1

Primal Precision – 2/2 OR Brutal Impact – 2/2

Shredding Attacks – 2/2

Heart of the Wild – 5/5

Leader of the Pack – 1/1

Improved Leader of the Pack – 2/2

Survival of the Fittest – 3/3

Infected Wounds – 3/3

Survival Instincts – 1/1

Mangle – 1/1

King of the Jungle – 3/3

Improved Mangle – 3/3

Predatory Instincts – 3/3

Rend and Tear – 4/5

Berserk – 1/1

Restoration

Furor – 5/5

Naturalist – 5/5

Omen of Clarity – 1/1

Natural Shapeshifter – 3/3

Master Shapeshifter – 2/2

As you can see, some worthwhile dps talents are located in the resto tree.

For example furor gives you 100% chance of gaining 10 rage when you shapeshift into bear or dire bear form and keep 100% of your energy when you change to cat form. Natualist increases damage by 10% as well as reduce the time for the healing touch cast. Omen of clarity reduces the mana, energy and rage costs of your next healing or damage by 100%. Master shapeshifter increases damage and critical strike chance and healing.

There are many variations of what is a good talent build, and you can choose one and model off it.