New Druid... been away for a while....Follow

Everyone,

I have been trolling the boards for about 2 weeks now trying to find all I can to decide on whether I want to play a Lock or Druid. I am leaning more and more to druid and started the process of leveling my first ever druid (Horde on Akama) as well as a BE Lock on same server.

Please understand that I have been away for over a year thanks to work and travel, so I do not have WotLK and I only have ever really played on Bonechewer a lvl 70 priest and rogue as well as getting a pally up to the mid 50's.

So I am seeing a lot of confusion on the boards currently as to what is best for a Druid to play currently due to changes from recent patches. As I am only currently lvl 16 druid I know I have a ways to go, but I like to play the toon the way I plan them to end up. It can be slower at times, but makes me ready for higher level content even at lower levels or gear.

So to the point finally... My plan prior to reading through all of this was to create a Feral Tank... and still leaning towards that. I realize that while solo'ing I will be kitty most of the time, but I want to learn how to tank as a druid. However, there seems to be the consensus that Bears are limited to near dead for end game.

So does it make sense for me to stay feral and go Boomkin at or around 40 (knowing that I want to practice being my end game; game.) or stay feral as there have been comments alluding that Bears will get fixed in a near patch. In terms of guild and so forth... not worrying about it too much for now until I get to the 60's plus unless something comes up. It makes little difference to me as I would like to play something besides a healer as 2 of my mains or strictly dps as my other.

Any thoughts on the future of the game would be appreciated and thanks ahead of time to all of you consistent posters who have put alot of info out there. I have not seen notes about the pending changes though as that would help my decision... as stated, I only see it alluded to often enough.

Appreciate all your help...

I too am leveling a low lvl druid, so I don't speak from experience of the class.
But it seems that some consider the talk of bears not cutting the mustard as false or at leas wildly exaggerated.

I can though speak from experience of how the masses can be dead wrong when it comes to specs.
My warlock was in a hardcore raiding guild in BC and I raided BT with a Fel Guard spec.
A spec that was considered "unplayable" in raids by a vast majority, even among warlocks.
In my own experience however, I found the spec not only playable but very powerful, and a lot of fun.

I too intend to play bear :)

Edited, Jan 16th 2009 11:22pm by pompa

Welcome back, I think you'll enjoy playing a Druid. I love it. I leveled my Druid as Feral and at 80 I'm still Feral. Prior to the expansion I DPS'd as kitty, but when the expansion hit I decided to switch to tank. So as I leveled I built up my tank gear. I didn't have any problems tanking in the end game, although due to the large number of tanks in my guild I'm back to DPS'ing as kitty.

Feral tanks have a place in end game so if thats what you want to play go for it. From my understanding to successfully tank Malygos you have to have a Druid. I haven't run this yet, just what I've heard.

As Housemouth mentioned, I too have switched into bear form, grabbed a bunch of mobs and mowed them down. Great way to farm for leather.

If your healing set is kept up to date, almost as much as your solo set, you should be fine for BC instances, and probably WotLK too though I haven't done a lot of those so I can't say for sure.

There may be a few fights that will be more challenging because of that, but you should be able to pull it off, especially if the Elem Shammy throws a heal or two every once in a while.

That being said, if you think you'll be spending most of your leveling time in instances or group-questing, going Resto isn't a bad idea. If you'll solo even just half the time I'd say stay Feral, or maybe Balance since a few talents will also benefit healing.

If you know you are going to be consistently healing the same static group but stay feral for solo purposes, looking into grabbing Intensity and Naturalist .

After Mangle of course.

Thanks for the great responses! I think I'll give it a shot and see how it goes. It may work well at first but get progressively more difficult. If so, then I'll see if I can find a spec that works well. I do (if you're curious to know) solo at least half of my time online, so being able to solo efficiently is important. Thanks!