Leveling a Druid to 20

How to level a Druid from 1 to the level 20 beta cap in WoW Forever: which race, every spell and form and when you get it, shapeshifting and healing yourself, the published Feral, Balance and Restoration leveling builds, what to press, the Bear Form and Aquatic Form quests and what Forever changed.

Written for the WoW Forever beta, where the level cap is 20 (30 is expected in mid-October 2026). Spells, forms, ranks, tooltips and talents come from the Forever beta client. Class quests come from Classic's data and are labelled as such.

The Druid in a nutshell

A Druid is a shapeshifter. In your normal caster form you cast Nature and Arcane spells and heal. From level 10 you can turn into a bear and fight in melee (close combat), and at level 20 into a cat. That makes the Druid a hybrid: one class that can be a tank (the player who takes the hits in a group), a healer or a damage dealer, depending on your talents and your form.

Your resource changes with your form: mana in caster form, Rage in Bear Form and Energy in Cat Form. Rage builds up as you hit and get hit, and drains away out of combat. Energy refills steadily on its own. You wear leather (or cloth), and the client lets Druids use staves, daggers, maces, fist weapons and, from level 20, polearms. Druids also have a relic slot for an idol.

Good at while leveling

• Healing yourself. You can top up your own health after a fight instead of eating.
• Staying alive. Bear Form adds armor and health, and it's your panic button when a fight goes wrong.
• Doing a bit of everything. You can tank, heal or deal damage in a group, and switch between them with a respec.
• Buffing. Mark of the Wild and Thorns make everyone around you tougher.

Weak at while leveling

• The first ten levels, before Bear Form, when you're a caster with a small mana pool.
• Shapeshifting costs mana, so switching forms back and forth in a fight drains you fast.
• Getting around: Cat Form arrives at 20, and Travel Form only at 30.
• Groups of mobs as a caster: Balance has no area damage spell before level 40.

Choosing a race

Four races can be Druids in Forever: Night Elf and High Order Skyborne for the Alliance, and Tauren and Windshaper Skyborne for the Horde. Blizzard says the Skyborne get new Druid forms made just for them. No race is the best: racials (race abilities) are small next to your spells and talents, so pick the faction your friends play and the look you like.

Racials from the Forever client. Starting zones for Night Elves and Tauren are Classic data; the Skyborne start on Zephras Isle, and which Skyborne gets Read Ley Line or Skysight, come from Blizzard's Meet the New Skyborne post.

Blizzard's September 24 notes added a player level requirement to Tauren Cultivation for each herb. More on every race is in races, classes and racials and meet the Skyborne.

Your spells and forms, level by level

You learn spells, and stronger ranks of spells you already have, from a Druid trainer in your starting area and in the capital cities. The client has something new for Druids at level 1 and at every even level from 4 to 20, so visit a trainer each time you reach an even level. Here's everything the client lists up to 20:

Everything a Druid learns from the class trainer up to level 20, from the Forever client.

The spells that matter, in the order you get them

• Level 1. Wrath is your first attack, a Nature spell. Healing Touch heals a friendly target, yourself included. Mark of the Wild adds armor for 1 hour; from the next rank it raises all your attributes too, so keep it on yourself and your friends.
• Level 4. Moonfire is instant: it hits with Arcane damage and then burns for 9 sec. Rejuvenation heals over 12 sec and is instant too.
• Level 6. Thorns hurts anything that hits the target with Nature damage, for 10 min. Keep it on yourself while you level.
• Level 8. Entangling Roots roots a mob in place for up to 12 sec while it takes a little damage. Damage may break it early, and you can only have one mob rooted at a time.
• Level 10 is the big Druid level: Bear Form (see the forms section below), with Maul, Demoralizing Roar and Growl to use in it. You also learn Teleport: Moonglade, and your first talent point arrives.
• Level 12. Regrowth heals right away and then over 21 sec. Enrage gives you 10 Rage at once and 20 more over 10 sec in Bear Form, but lowers your base armor by 27% while it lasts. Revive, new in Forever, brings a dead player back to life out of combat.
• Level 14. Bash stuns a mob for 2 sec in Bear Form. Cure Poison removes a poison.
• Level 16. Aquatic Form makes you swim 50% faster and breathe underwater. Swipe hits 3 nearby enemies in Bear Form.
• Level 18. Hibernate puts a Beast or a Dragonkin to sleep for up to 20 sec; any damage wakes it. Faerie Fire lowers a mob's armor for 40 sec.
• Level 20 is the other big one: see the next section.

Level 20: Cat Form and more

• Cat Form: a melee form that uses Energy. Its first two attacks come with it.
• Claw hits for 110% of normal damage plus a bit more and adds a combo point to the target.
• Rip is a finisher: it spends your combo points on a bleed that lasts 12 sec, and more points mean more damage.
• Prowl lets you sneak around in Cat Form, at the cost of 40% of your movement speed.
• Feral Charge is new in the Forever client. In Bear Form you charge an enemy, which also stops its spell and holds it in place for 4 sec.
• Starfire is a big Arcane spell with a long cast, the Balance opener.
• Rebirth raises a dead player during a fight, with 400 health and 700 mana. It has a 30 min cooldown in the client.
• New ranks too: Healing Touch, Mark of the Wild and Demoralizing Roar.

Coming by level 30

These arrive when the cap rises to 30, expected in mid-October. They're in the client now, but you can't train them in the beta yet.

• Shred at level 22: a strong Cat attack that only works from behind the target.
• Rake at level 24: a Cat attack that makes the target bleed over 9 sec.
• Remove Curse at level 24: removes a Curse or a Bane.
• Dash at level 26: 50% faster movement for 15 sec.
• Challenging Roar at level 28: every nearby enemy attacks you for 6 sec, a tank's emergency button.
• Tranquility at level 30: your first group heal.
• Travel Form at level 30: a faster way to travel outdoors.

Forms and shapeshifting

Click a form's button to shift into it, and click it again to go back to caster form. While you're in a form, your action bar swaps to that form's abilities, and you can't cast caster spells like Wrath or Healing Touch until you shift back. Every form in the client says the act of shapeshifting frees you from Polymorph and from movement-impairing effects, so shifting is also a way out of a slow or a root.

Shifting costs mana. In the client, Bear Form and Cat Form each cost 55% of your base mana (the mana your level gives you, not counting Intellect), and Aquatic Form 20%. So pick a form before the fight and stay in it; heal yourself in caster form between fights, not in the middle of one.

Druid forms in the Forever client.

• Rage comes from hitting and being hit. A fresh Bear Form starts with little, which is what Enrage is for.
• Energy refills on its own. Claw builds combo points on your target, and Rip spends them.
• The Feral leveling build's Feral Swiftness makes Cat Form 30% faster, which is how Feral Druids get around between 20 and 30.
• On a gamepad, Blizzard's September 24 build added a shapeshift flyout to the Druid action bar.

Watch out: Blizzard's known issues list a bug where armor bonuses from consumables and buffs are multiplied by Bear Form's armor bonus. Your bear may look tougher than intended in the beta until it's fixed.

Healing yourself and staying alive

Healing yourself is the Druid's big leveling advantage. After a fight, shift back to caster form, heal up, and drink if your mana is low. Healing costs mana, so you still sit down sometimes, but you rarely need to buy food.

• Rejuvenation is cheap and instant: put it on yourself when a fight drags on, or right after it. Blizzard's September 24 notes say it can now land critical heals.
• Regrowth (level 12) heals right away and then over time, the best single heal after a hard fight.
• Healing Touch is your big heal. Higher ranks take a long time to cast, so use it between fights, not while a mob is hitting you.
• Thorns on yourself hurts every mob that hits you. Blizzard's notes say it now grows with your spell power.
• Entangling Roots: if a melee mob reaches you with lots of health left, root it and step back. Damage may break the root, so don't count on it lasting.
• Bear Form is your emergency button. If a fight as a caster goes wrong, shift and let your armor take the hits.
• Revive (level 12) raises a dead friend after a fight, and Rebirth (level 20) raises one during a fight, with a long cooldown.
• Forever adds campfires: sit by one for a few moments to get rested and pick up one-hour buffs. The Deep Dive recap explains how they work.

Talents: which spec to level

Your first talent point arrives at level 10 and you get one more every level, so you have 11 points at 20. Druid talents sit in three trees, Balance (caster damage), Feral Combat (Bear and Cat) and Restoration (healing), and your spec (specialization) is the tree you put most points in. The first row of a tree is open from level 10, the second from 15 and the third from 20.

ForeverDB publishes a leveling build for each tree at 20, and the same build carried on to 30, on the Druid builds page. You can try them in the talent calculator. Each level 20 leveling build fills one talent from level 10 to 14, a second from 15 to 19, and takes a one-point talent at 20:

The published level 20 leveling builds. The builds page explains every point and has the level 30 versions.

Our pick for a first Druid is Feral. Bear Form is sturdy, rarely needs to stop to heal, and turns you into a tank for dungeons; at 20, Cat Form with Feral Swiftness gets you around quickly. Pick Balance if you'd rather cast from range. The builds page itself says that if leveling speed matters most, you should level as Feral or Balance and respec to heal later.

Two things to know about Druid talents in the client. Insect Swarm is a Restoration talent here, not a Balance one. And Blizzard's Deep Dive said Improved Mark of the Wild would become baseline, but the client still lists it as a talent, so the Restoration build takes it; if it's baseline in game, spend those points elsewhere in the first row.

Tip: Changing your mind is cheap in the beta. Blizzard's September 24 notes set a talent reset to 1 silver if you haven't reset recently; after a reset the next one costs much more, and the price drops back to 1 silver after an hour. Blizzard says this is for the beta only.

What to press

Your rotation is the order you use your abilities in. These come from the builds page, in plain words. A pull is how you start a fight, and a mob that's attacking you is said to have aggro on you.

Feral, one enemy (Bear Form, levels 10 to 20)

1. Pull from range with Moonfire (instant) or Wrath.
2. Shift into Bear Form as the mob runs at you.
3. Use Enrage if you need Rage to start with. Skip it if you're already taking heavy hits, since it lowers your armor.
4. Demoralizing Roar, so the mob hits you softer.
5. Maul whenever you have Rage to spare: it adds damage to your next swing.
6. Save Bash to stop a dangerous spell.
7. After the fight, shift back, heal with Rejuvenation or Regrowth, and drink if you need mana.

At 20, Feral Charge closes the gap from 8 to 25 yards away and interrupts a spell, so you can pull a caster to you. It can't be used on a mob that's already next to you.

Feral, Cat Form (from 20)

Shift into Cat Form, Claw until you have 4 or 5 combo points, then Rip anything that will live for most of its 12 sec. Cat Form only has Claw and Rip at 20, so it's best on single mobs; stay in Bear Form when two or three mobs come at you.

Balance, one enemy

1. Open with Starfire from as far away as you can once you learn it at 20 (Wrath before that).
2. Cast Moonfire right after, and whenever you have to move.
3. Cast Wrath until the mob dies. Improved Wrath makes it cheap, and it doesn't use up Clearcasting.
4. When Omen of Clarity gives you Clearcasting, spend it on your most expensive spell: Starfire in a fight, or Healing Touch after one.
5. If a melee mob reaches you with lots of health left, root it with Entangling Roots and step back.

Several enemies

• Bear: Demoralizing Roar first, then Swipe, which hits 3 nearby enemies at once, and Maul on your main target with leftover Rage.
• Balance: root one melee mob, or Hibernate a Beast or Dragonkin, then Moonfire each mob and kill them one at a time.
• Restoration: Moonfire, Insect Swarm, then Wrath; put Rejuvenation on yourself if the fight drags on, and shift to Bear Form if two mobs come at once.

Class quests up to 20

In Classic, Druids earned Bear Form at 10, Cure Poison at 14 and Aquatic Form at 16 through class quests, several of them in Moonglade, which you reach with Teleport: Moonglade. The Forever client lists all three spells at those levels like trainer spells, so it isn't confirmed whether you still need the quests. The table is Classic's data. It only has Night Elf and Tauren versions, so Skyborne Druids may get their own path.

Classic data (CMaNGOS classic-db) for class quests the Forever client has. Map pins use Classic positions placed on Forever's maps.

• Body and Heart (10): in Classic you use Cenarion Moondust or Lunardust on a Moonkin Stone (near Auberdine for Night Elves, between Mulgore and The Barrens for Tauren) and defeat Lunaclaw.
• Gathering the Cure (14): Classic's version asks for 5 Earthroot and 12 Lunar Fungus (Alliance) or 5 Earthroot and 5 Kodo Horns (Horde). Curing the Sick then has you treat 10 Sickly Deer in Darkshore or 10 Sickly Gazelles in the northern Barrens.
• Trial of the Lake and Trial of the Sea Lion (16): in Classic you find a Shrine Bauble in Lake Elune'ara and use it at the Shrine of Remulos, then find the two halves of the Pendant of the Sea Lion; the people of Moonglade give clues.

Speculation: If Forever teaches Bear Form, Cure Poison and Aquatic Form at the trainer, the quests may become optional or change. Until someone confirms it in the beta, go to your trainer at 10, 14 and 16 first, and pick up the class quest if the trainer can't teach the spell.

Gear, weapons and professions

Wear leather: it has more armor than cloth, which matters most in Bear Form. What stats you want depends on your spec. Feral wants Stamina, Agility, Strength and armor. Balance wants spell power, Intellect and Spirit. Restoration wants healing power, Spirit and Intellect. Blizzard's Deep Dive says bonus healing now also gives a third as much bonus damage, and that caster weapons now give spell damage, which helps a Druid who both fights and heals.

The gear planner scores every item for your spec and level (switch the spec to Feral Combat or Restoration there), and the gear lists on the Druid PvE page show the best items for each slot at 20 and where they come from. Some highlights from those lists:

• Leatherworking makes much of the best leather at 20. Feral: Brawler's Leather Hood (level 20), Defender's Leather Armor (level 15) and Defender's Leather Pants (level 20). Balance: Stormrider's Leather Armor (level 15) and Stormrider's Leather Pants (level 20). Restoration: Wisdom's Leather Armor (level 15), Wisdom's Leather Pants (level 20) and Wisdom's Leather Hood (level 20).
• Idols: the client has Druid idols from level 1. Windcharged Leaf makes your shapeshifting spells cost 40 less mana, Mark of Urs'endris raises the armor from your items by 4%, and Mystic Mushroom (level 20) adds 5% Spirit and is made by Enchanters.
• Dungeons: Classic's loot tables put Rhahk'Zor's Hammer in the Deadmines and Footpads of the Fang in Wailing Caverns.
• Class quest rewards: in Classic's data, Veildust Medicine Bag (level 14 quests) and Aquarius Belt (level 16 quests).

Professions that suit a Druid: Skinning and Leatherworking (you skin the beasts you kill anyway, and Leatherworking makes your armor), or Herbalism, which pairs with Alchemy and, for a Tauren, with Cultivation. Enchanting is an option too, since it makes the Mystic Mushroom idol. The professions guide explains how each one works in Forever.

Grouping and your first dungeon

In a group you can fill any role, which makes Druids easy to find groups for. The tank holds the mobs' attention, the healer keeps everyone alive, and the damage dealers kill what the tank is holding. Whatever you play, damage and healing both build threat (how much a mob wants to attack you), so let the tank get a few hits in first.

• Everyone: Mark of the Wild on the whole group before the first pull, and Thorns on the tank.
• As a bear tank: Demoralizing Roar and Swipe on packs, Maul on your main target, Growl to take back a mob that runs at the healer. Growl does nothing on a mob that's already attacking you.
• As a healer: keep Rejuvenation on the tank, use Regrowth for big hits and Healing Touch for steady damage, and remove damaging poisons with Cure Poison.
• As Balance: single-target damage and crowd control (CC): Hibernate a Beast or Dragonkin, or root one melee mob away from the group. You have no Moonkin Form before 40, so you can throw a heal at any moment.
• Rebirth can save a pull that's about to wipe, and Revive raises people after it's over.

The first dungeon guide walks you through your first run. The dungeon list has every instance with its bosses and quests, and the Druid PvE page has a tank, healer and damage build.

Common beginner mistakes

• Skipping the trainer. New ranks are big upgrades; check in at every even level.
• Shifting back and forth mid-fight. Each shift costs a big share of your mana. Pick a form and stay in it.
• Trying to heal in Bear Form. You have to shift back to caster form to cast heals.
• Using Enrage while you're taking heavy hits. It lowers your armor; use it at the start of a fight.
• Growling a mob that's already hitting you. It does nothing.
• Hitting a rooted mob and expecting it to stay rooted. Damage may break Entangling Roots.
• Hibernating the wrong target. It only works on Beasts and Dragonkin.
• Taking Cat Form into a pack at 20. It only has Claw and Rip; Bear Form handles groups.
• Forgetting your buffs. Keep Mark of the Wild and Thorns on yourself.

What Forever changed for Druids

• New spells: Feral Charge is a level 20 trainer spell, and Revive gives Druids an out-of-combat resurrection at level 12. Both are new in the Forever client.
• September 24 notes: Rejuvenation and Tranquility can now crit, Wrath's base damage is up about 50% (the client tooltips we have don't show it yet), and Thorns now grows with the caster's spell power, falling back to its base values if the caster is too far away.
• Feral renames: Mangle is now Primal Bite (not learnable at 20), and the Primal Fury talent is back to its original name, Blood Frenzy.
• Stronger basics: going by the client's old and new tooltips, Mark of the Wild lasts 1 hour (30 min in Classic), Bear Form adds 180 health (20 in Classic), Enrage now gives Rage instantly, and Entangling Roots no longer says outdoors only.
• Reworked talents: Improved Wrath now also halves Wrath's mana cost, Omen of Clarity is a passive that can proc from spells, Feral Swiftness makes Cat Form 30% faster (15% outdoors in Classic), and Nature's Focus covers all your Arcane and Nature spells.
• Spells scale better with gear: the client gives Wrath and Healing Touch rank 1 0.429 of your spell power, up from 0.123 in Classic.
• Polearms from level 20 and idols from level 1, going by the client.
• Skyborne Druids for both factions, with forms made for the race.
• Cooldown Manager: Druids can test Blizzard's new Cooldown Manager (Options, Gameplay Enhancement).

Every change we've found is on the Druid changes page, and our Druid outlook covers what's coming after 20.

Checked against WoW Forever beta build 1.60.1.70009.