Still pretty new to Druids in WoW.

Wondering how we are at just killing mobs for maximum xp per hour compared to other classes??

Also what would be the best PVE grind build? Feral?

TIA

Drogo

Druids have fairly low DPS so grinding isn't the best way to level, but if you insist on grinding Feral is probably the best way to go. Little downtime can kill multiples with bear and swipe or quickly kill singles with cat. Shift kill shift heal repeat.

I have grinded out quite a few my levels. It's no where near as fast as a Rogue upfront in Exp, but our healing mitigates downtine. Catform is the best way to grind, find an area, with Green to Yellow con mobs, and pick out the softones first especially (If it's Naga it is usually the females who are soft, if it is ghosts then Spectre's, pretty any caster class of a humanoid type is soft.). Stealth, and ravage opener of course, When I grind I can usually down 2 -3 depending and then I shift out, Regrowth+Rejuvination, shift back into Catform, and away I go. Swiftshifting also helps greatly if you are going to grind, usually you can get off both spells (casting without interruption of course) and still be able to shift in the window of time you gain the swiftshifting bonus.

Make sure you put your points into Cat Feral that way you get Extra Combo points with each crit, and that leads to more Vicious bites chances per fight and with a high crit rate (When I was grinding it was about 20% or more) my Vicious Bite did pretty well. I am bad with memory so until i can pull up a good talent sheet (I am at work lol) I don't know the exact name of the talents.

I think we're one of the better classes at grinding. Just load up on a few merchant bought drinks and bandages and you're set to go indefinitely. My leveling days was pre-kitty buff, so I didn't hang out in cat a lot, most of my time was spent in caster form using OoC and moonfire. Now days, if I'm fighting mobs a couple levels below me, I prefer the bearform + swipe method. If the mobs have really low dps, I also do a moonfire/OoC combo (keep moonfire on each mob, regrowth when OoC procs, rinse, repeat).

Storm has the system I found best as well. I don't feel we are good at grinding though, IMO the freakin hunter is the best "grinding" toon of the game.

Depending on who Im fighting I'll use a different strategy. As mentioned before, both cat and bear are your best grinding tools.

In cat I like to sneak up and open with a Ravage build up combo points and then unload Ferocious Bite.

In bear I like to grab multiple mobs and start by throwing up a couple of swipes. Then I'll finish of the main target with a few Maul's to speed things up and continue with the rest of the mobs the same way. I prefer to use Maul because it seems that I plow through the mobs faster that way. Thorns is your friend.

I personally (and I'm low level so I don't know about high level grinding) root, moonfire, blast a couple of times and as the mob is running in to me at about half health, I shift to bear form and beat it down the rest of the way. I then have enough health and some rage built up that I can just run full tilt into another mob or maybe even two (at same level or even one or two higher than me) in bear form and take those out. Then it's time to shift back and heal and repeat.

I personally (and I'm low level so I don't know about high level grinding) root, moonfire, blast a couple of times and as the mob is running in to me at about half health, I shift to bear form and beat it down the rest of the way. I then have enough health and some rage built up that I can just run full tilt into another mob or maybe even two (at same level or even one or two higher than me) in bear form and take those out. Then it's time to shift back and heal and repeat.

I also do this very thing. Works pretty well. I have found that I can typically take out critters 2 levels above me without too much trouble. Once in awhile I attempt 3 levels above but depending on the critter I probably die 80% of the time. Of course like you, I am in my low levels. 16 to be exact and this may not be a viable option later on. All I know is, with my warrior, I could rarely take out something 2 levels above me let alone 3. But again, this is in my youth and this may change as well as his level goes up and he gets better equipment.

With a Druid you should be able to take on a mob 4 levels above your own. While it is a bit time consuming, it can be done.

Definitely. I can take a mob 3 levels above me pretty easy. Even if they resist the root, cast both your HoT spells on yourself before running into melee. Use the rage spell in bear form to start generating extra rage. Tap his attack, stun once, and beat him down. I rarely try one 4 levels above me but I do know it can be done. Just remember that when you get low on hp, stun, shift, root and back away to heal yourself. Never forget that stun in bear form or warstomp if you are a tauren. They come in reaaaaally handy.

The problem I found with shifting into bearform is that bear's mana requirement starts jumping up exponentially so a quick shift becomes very expensive and not very efficient for a quick beat down. In other words, it becomes cheaper to stick it out in caster form and heal yourself.

Regrowth, tag mob at max distance with fairie fire, moonfire, rejuv, bear form as mob reaches you, demo roar, maul til dead. Used this method successfully at 21-23 on the 25-26 gnolls in Redridge by the Stormwhatever Keep in the ENE portion of the zone. Of course I'm always hurtin pretty bad at the end of each fight and I highly recommend sticking with at most +1/2 to yourself for best efficiency. FF and Demo debuffs both make noticable differences in how well a fight goes, at least at my low level anyway.

Meh, just my 2cp.

Close, my mana pool allowed this in the mid 30's through 40s, same mentality, but more use of your instant casts,
starfire
ff
mf
rejuv
bear
roar
maul.

Made for some quick fighting, once I specced for OoC and innervate it went even faster with little downtime. Often when comfortable, I would shift out of bear to get the free heal towards the end of the fight. Even level mobs, I had a mograine back then with a +7, worked well to just stay in caster form and bangem on the head, using the OoC proc for the free heals. Literally, that is zero downtime grinding for me. Sure it's slower dps wise than other classes, but I bet it's near even with all with no downtime except for a hunter.

same here... zero downtime. Mana regens while I'm in bear form and shift back to heal and repeat the process. :)

Druids suck at grinding. People say we have no downtime. whoppity doo. Downtime in WoW is 15 secs max to eat some food or take a drink. So while you are sitting there killing mob after mob and feeling happy that you have no downtime, the rogue or hunter or warlock is sitting there killing 2-3 mobs and drinking/eating inbetween your one kill.

Dude, dont complain. I played a mage for a LONG time. Now THAT.. is downtime.. Yesterday I took on 8 constant mobs (all adds) w/o any downtime in between. They were all +- 1 level of me.

And no, Downtime for a mage is mostly around 30 seconds to drink. The water that they conjure is 95% of the time is only enough to fill the Mage's base mana pool. W/ Int gear, I found myself having to drink 2 waters fairly often.

Personally, I don't believe WoW is set up for the grinder like EQ was. Quests give great xp and are much less boring. If anything, doing instance runs is the best way to quickly level.

Jareck is right in that regard, I quested/ground up to about 40, from that point on I used quests/instances. In a long sit I gained about 85000 xp from "grinding" an instance and closing out that instances quests, think it was about a 6-7 hour session and involved 3 instance runs, it was a blast. I was called the "instance wh***" by my guildies from about level 54 to 60 as anytime they logged I was chewing through one somewhere. Why not, the loot is awesome, the challenges are great and learning to work with unknowns really helped out pickup groups in endgame.

Grinding is slow though, although again, I think only a hunter can outgrind a druid. If you want seriously hit it, hook your druid up with a mage, HoT him as he runs in causing all kinds of hate then keep him up with an innervate and your heals as he lays multi mobs to rest. Seriously if you want to grind for leather or such, lone wolf it, if you want to grind for pure mob xp, the druid/mage is one heck of a combination.

Dude, dont complain. I played a mage for a LONG time. Now THAT.. is downtime.. Yesterday I took on 8 constant mobs (all adds) w/o any downtime in between. They were all +- 1 level of me.

And no, Downtime for a mage is mostly around 30 seconds to drink. The water that they conjure is 95% of the time is only enough to fill the Mage's base mana pool. W/ Int gear, I found myself having to drink 2 waters fairly often.
Not complaining. Just saying anyone who thinks druids make good grinders compared to any of the DPS classes are clueless. You took on 8 mobs without any downtime, that's great but has nothing to do with the discussion. The only thing that matters when grinding is how many X mobs can you kill in Y amount of time. And the higher X is in relation to Y, the better you are at grinding XP. Druids would be near the bottom of that list.

Hardly. Rogues have to be careful who they grind on, and if they get an add they have to vanish or they can attempt to do it. The difference between a rogue and a druids grind is almost the same principle as long distance running compared to Short distance. Druids are able to engange in a contiuous grind, it doesn't look as fast rewarding as a Rogue's grind who appears to be plowing through mobs, but factor in everytime they have to sit down to eat food, or vanish due to adds. Now factors those into a Druids grind, who can handle the adds, heal and continue into a grind taking maybe half as much downtime as a rogue sitting and eating to heal and go about their business. I will agree though Rogues naturally grind faster because they kill faster, but to say a Druids grind sucks because of that is digging deep to find a reason to disagree.

I cant speak for a rogue, but I know for a FACT that right now at about 2/3'rds of the way to 60, Im averaging over 10k exp per hour.

Also consider this about grinding.

How many people want rogues for an instance and how much does he get asked to go? How many people want Druids for an instance and how often does he get asked to go?

How many people want rogues for an instance and how much does he get asked to go? How many people want Druids for an instance and how often does he get asked to go?

I'm a newbie to WoW - just got my Druid to level 10. Could you answer your question for me? Are Druids wanted more for instances than Rogues, or vice versa?

I am only speaking for the experiences of a 60 rogue of mine who shelved his Rogue, along with another in 60 rogue in my guild for a Priest or a Warrior alt to become their main. As a Druid I get more random /tells in-game for groups than I see messages in guild chat sometimes. We are wanted for groups alot. Rogues are wanted in groups too, but there are so many that the spot is usually filled in seconds by a ready Rogue who's been waiting to run that instance and knock out some quests.

I'm one of those people who has shelved a 60 rogue. My reasoning was mostly due to how hard it is to find groups caused by the sheer number of rogues.

Anyway, I've been finding it much easier questing with my druid than I found it with my rogue. A couple factors might be contributing to this: I know where to go now and my druid has been twinked a little. I also played a dagger specced rogue, so there was a lot of waiting for enough energy to backstab while the mob is gouged.

As for play style, I like to mix it up. I find I have no problems being fully restoration specced so far, at lvl 37. Usually, I will open with moonfire, wrath, starfire, ff and melee it down in caster form, refreshing starfire when needed. Other times I will moonfire, starfire, ff, rejuv, bear. And root rotting is always fun too, although somewhat slower.

Edit for spelling

I'm a newbie to WoW - just got my Druid to level 10. Could you answer your question for me? Are Druids wanted more for instances than Rogues, or vice versa?

Yea. Rogues are a popular class.. at least on my server.. Some rogue guildies of mine complain that they only can instance with the guild as random groups don't want (or already have) a rogue.

Healers in general are wanted in groups. I get random invites all the time when I sit around IF waiting for something. Nice to be appreciated I guess, but it kinda sucks that every group sees druids as priests in leather that can take a _little_ more beating than ordinary priests. :(

One of my rogue guildies had a theory that the reason why there are so many lvl 60 rogues running around ganking people is because they can't get groups and have nothing else to do.

One of my rogue guildies had a theory that the reason why there are so many lvl 60 rogues running around ganking people is because they can't get groups and have nothing else to do.

i had never made that leap of logic, but it would account for the extraordinary number of rogues you run into out there.

A bunch of my friends and I left our heavily populated server to join one of the newly created ones. And tired of my shaman, I decided to try a Tauren druid. He is now lvl 26 and uses the blue Crescent Staff you get from the Wailing Caverns quest. Probably the best overall weapon (stats plus dps) a druid can have at this level.

When I grind I really only use starfire and moon to draw a mob and then just hit away. I have omen talent so when I freebie cast I usually moon or heal depending on if I need health. And with mobs equal level to mine, I go through them pretty quickly with no downtime. It is also very uncomplicated to do, no shifting in and out of forms. The key to this approach is having the omen talent and a high dps weapon.

However, I was wondering if it would be more effective if I switched to a high speed weapon - maybe the the dagger from BlackFAthom Deep or the meteor one from SFK. The faster speed would well over double my proc chance of omen. I would lose a little bit in weapon dps and in stats (int and stamina) but for mob grinding where I'm not in real threat of dying, the stats aren't critical. Really I'm only looking for speed of grinding. And the two things that effect that are how fast you can kill the mob and how little downtime you have. With doubling my proc rate of omen, I can cast more free damage and heal spells.

Has anyone tried this yet? I haven't gotten either of those daggers so haven't been able to yet. And I think a lesser dps dagger wouldn't work.

blizzard has stated that OoC doesn't proc more with a faster weapon, it procs a certain number of times in a given timeframe independent of how fast you are hitting a target. i can testify that this seems accurate because i do not notice an increase in the number of procs when i switch between a dagger and a two-handed mace which takes twice as long to swing.

Daggers lengthen the time of a battle since you're doing less dps, so while you may get three OoC procs in a given battle compared to a slower 2h mace which only procs twice, you're probably fighting for a third longer overall battle time.

Now the big "However" -
<i>However</i>, I've found that while in caster form, even with a truckload of +str gear, your dps between daggers, staves, maces, doesn't really move up or down radically - maybe +/- 10dps. For the most part, the best "constant" damage that I produce is moonfire. A mob that takes "3 moonfires" worth of time to die, will probably take about the same amount of time whether I'm using a dagger or a 2h mace.

Here's the part that people argue about the most - from my personal experience I have noticed that with the dagger you have a better <i>chance</i> of OoC proc'ing since you "swing" more often. Note that this <i>does not mean</i> that OoC procs more often with a dagger.

In other words, if we could find a mob that had 100khp and 0ac which we never missed a swing on, in the course of a ten minute battle, the number of times that OoC proc'd would probably be within +/- 2 procs no matter what the delay of your weapon. But if you shorten that battle to a 2min battle, the number of times that OoC proc'd would probably be a little more drastic between the weapon delays - because the number of times that OoC procs is usually an <i>average over time</i>.

So say in a 2min battle, you attack 80 times with a dagger (120/1.5), a hammer 40 times (120/3) - for OoC to proc, you've got to actually connect with the mob - add in a few misses here and there (lets say 1:10 ratio) and the fact that the hammer is better dps (and thus a shorter fight - even if by a few seconds), suddenly it's a lot harder to proc OoC consistently like with a hammer compared to a dagger.

Therefore at the end of the day, if you assume that moonfire is the best constant damage that you output, and that the length of time that a battle takes does not vary greatly between weapon types, that's why faster weapons will usually proc OoC more often than a slower weapon.

blizzard has stated that OoC doesn't proc more with a faster weapon, it procs a certain number of times in a given timeframe independent of how fast you are hitting a target. i can testify that this seems accurate because i do not notice an increase in the number of procs when i switch between a dagger and a two-handed mace which takes twice as long to swing.

Okay, I got the dagger from Blackfathom Deeps, and tried it out. Just as you said, it procs about the same rate is my staff even though the dagger swings 2.5 times as much. So long story short, I'm going back to the staff which has better staffs and a slightly higher dps.

Moral of the story, stick with the highest dps weapon (plus good stats) because the speed of the weapon doesn't effect the frequency of OOC proccing. Similar to the Shamans fire weapon buff, it is scaled to the speed of the weapon.

As for moonfire, I do use it at the beginning of the battle and for tougher battles, recast it when it wears off. But although you can end the battle faster by spamming moonfire, the long down-time that that causes doesn't make it an effective method for grinding.

Yea. Rogues are a popular class.. at least on my server.. Some rogue guildies of mine complain that they only can instance with the guild as random groups don't want (or already have) a rogue.

Healers in general are wanted in groups. I get random invites all the time when I sit around IF waiting for something. Nice to be appreciated I guess, but it kinda sucks that every group sees druids as priests in leather that can take a _little_ more beating than ordinary priests. :(

One of my rogue guildies had a theory that the reason why there are so many lvl 60 rogues running around ganking people is because they can't get groups and have nothing else to do.

In reference to Rinulin's question.

I totaly agree with Goa. I have gotten 10x the random invites for instancing as a Druid than I had as a Mage or Warlock. In fact I recall being in Uldaman at lvl 38 to be main healer with a shaman backup.

And yeah, rogues do have a reason to be disgruntled. Its not often that I hear, "we need a rogue". Although I personally like to party with them because of PvP reasons and DPS. Mages more than 2-3 levels below the mobs are fairly useless while a rouge's MELEE dps is effective against most mobs above their level. I've seen a 48 rogue take down a lvl 60.