Druid PvP guide

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Contents 1 General 1.1 Feral Druid 1.2 Balance Druid 1.3 Restoration Druid 2 Rogue 3 Warrior 4 Priest 5 Warlock 6 Mage 7 Druid 8 Hunter 9 Paladin 10 Shaman 11 Death Knight

General

The druid's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Shape-shifting allows for extreme versatility, allowing you to fulfill any role and react well to any situation, but it often makes what you are about to do next very obvious to the enemy. Expect this, and be ready to change your plans at a moment's notice.

Feral Druid

Almost always, you will want to start the fight prowling and use a Ravage, or a Pounce with Mangle or Shred. Always incapacitate the enemy when you are healing yourself: before you shift out to heal, Maim or Bash (Brutal Impact helps). If they break the stun, use Cyclone or Barkskin. If you're running low on mana, use Innervate. How you fight will depend on your opponent.

Pro Tip: A player or mob/NPC that is sitting or lying down results in an automatic critical strike from your first attack. Ravage is thus generally the superior opener against drinking/afk/sitting players, especially against squishies like Mages, Priests and to a lesser extent, Warlocks. YMMV against Plate-wearers, and depending on your opponent if you expect the opponent to be expert in counter-attacking or getting out of melee range before you manage to land a second and/or third attack.

Vs. Melee:

You will spend much of the fight in Bear Form, since the extra hp and damage reduction allows the Druid to stay in this form longer without healing, and is often worth the reduced dps. Use Cat Form also, but briefly, for bleeds and maim. Below level 62, Cat Form fares poorly since the druid lacks stunlock capabilities. If you cannot incapacitate for a heal, get some distance (sprint, travel form). Remember that in Cat Form you are almost just as vulnerable as in Caster Form.

Vs. Casters:

You will spend most of the fight in Cat Form, as the armor from Bear Form makes no difference against casters. Keep it up close and personal. Get in their face. Most casters will do anything to keep their distance, and will slow you down in all kinds of ways. Almost ANY movement impairing effect can be done away with by shifting... but it's mana-expensive. You probably have a small mana pool, so you want to save almost all of it for healing. Use Travel Form to undo snares, and watch your mana. Unfortunately druids have little protection against fear, so try to preemptively keep a fearer incapacitated.

Bear Form does have its advantages against casters, however. Use Feral Charge to close the distance and interrupt spells that the opponent is casting. Use Bash to stun. Always activate Enrage, as the -armor debuff does not matter against casters.

Balance Druid

Take account of the value of Moonkin against some classes.

In the world of resilience, the ability to heal yourself outweighs the extra crit given by Moonkin Form, and as such you should only use Moonkin when the extra armor is necessary or you need protection from Polymorph. Going into Moonkin Form against casters such as shadow priests, warlocks or elemental shamans is going to use some mana and you won't be able to heal yourself with anything other than bandages during this time. That said, starting from Shadowmeld in moonkin form is the best way for Night Elf Druids to open against any class.

Moonkin truly shine in PvP. Starfire and Wrath can quickly chip away at an enemy's health while the DoT from Moonfire finishes off anyone who runs away. One thing that should be taken to heart: Moonfire spam is fun and ticks a lot of people off but absolutely destroys your mana supply. Moonfire spam should only be used to finish off a fleeing opponent, or as a last ditch effort to survive. Also, by spamming Moonfire, you never allow its DoT to run its course, because every time you cast Moonfire, its timer resets. If you insist on spamming Moonfire, cast your highest rank first then switch to your second highest. This still deals massive damage but it also allows your DoT to run its course. Also, Insect Swarm does decent damage per point of mana and its marginal reduction in hit chance isn't too shabby. Entangling Roots, unfortunately, is becoming less useful as time passes because more and more classes are being given ways to escape snare effects. If anything, it still delays a player from reaching you, which usually will give you the time to cast a Starfire/Moonfire combo.

Most players will suggest beginning fights in Cat Form, which adds surprise to your openers. If you are a Night Elf (and patient), simply shadowmeld and wait for your target to come in range then surprise them (hardly anything more surprising than a Moonkin appearing literally out of nowhere, then nailing you with a Starfire). Attacking from a feral form is quite a risky business however, as there is a large chance to miss the target without feral gear, and you will do very little damage. Try opening a fight with treants and/or starfall. Then root them, and nuke. Do not start by using moonfire, as tempting as that is, as it will detract from initial burst damage. When fighting a stealther, typhoon is a great spell to knock them out of it if you know their general location.

Restoration Druid

This guide assumes you pvp with a dps partner or with other people in general, there are few instances where you can solo anyone.

prior to Improved Tree of Life your best option when being attacked is to use travel form and hots, round corners to break line of site and throw instant cast heals when possible. Once Improved Tree of Life is attained sometimes it is best to heal through melee damage rather than trying to out run it. Remember Improved Tree of Life does nothing to mitigate magical damage.

Some good healing tips/combos:

1) "Stun Locked": Cyclone then Regrowth. If you can spare time to cast anything, but you're worried about damage burst or kicks, cast Cyclone (but try to be out of range for kicks) first because it's a faster cast time than regrowth. Once your opponent is trapped by cyclone, you can get away with casting 2 regrowths (one on yourself and one on a partner). If you want, you can save some time to recast cyclone on your opponent. Cyclone is affected by diminishing returns if recast, so you'll have less time to cast heal spells the second time.

3) don’t forget your feral abilities. When defending stealth as cat to avoid being attacked and to track opponents. Pounce and Bash are still quite usefull.

2) Bash/Maim: It's best to use these in order to give yourself time to cast your longer cast spells, especially when you're worried about being kicked/spell locked. Bash/Maim are instant cast so there's no stopping them (besides miss/dodge/parry).

Vs. Melee: Melee Damage is highly unstable. You want to avoid getting hit by it as much as possible. You must try your best to keep melee cc'd and still manage to keep your health up through blows. If it is unavoidable, hopping into Improved Tree of Life form will reduce the damage you take and (especially when talented into Master Shapeshifter) increases the power of your heals. If you don't need to put any heals on other people or yourself, it's best to stick in bear form till your services are needed.

Vs. Casters: Casters are tricky because unless you have feral charge, you can't stop them from casting spells on you. Line of Sight is your best friend against casters. You can cast HoTs on the move, while almost all high damage spells need the caster to stand still, so abuse pillars and tight corners to break their spellcasts. In most caster cases, you can cyclone them to keep their outrageous damage outputs down while waiting for a dps partner to kill their target. Mages and to a lesser extent Shamans and Warlocks with Felhunters are the exception because if they counterspell you while casting cyclone, all of your major survival spells and abilities are locked down. The best thing to do while in a lock down is go Bear Form or travel form (if you are near something you can line of sight with). Use instant casts as much as possible, use your instant hots to heal yourself and others. But if there is no mage or felhunter, go ahead and freely cast regrowths, roots and cyclones.

Controlling Healers: If you start the fight stealthed, a good high stream of CC is this simple combo: Pounce, 2xClaw(add in a Rake if you desire), Maim, (Go bear form, wait for maim to end use Enrage if you don't have Furor) Bash, (Wait for bash to end) Cyclonex3. You can throw in a feral charge if you have it, and have longer cc's and shorter cd's if you have Brutal Impact. Lots of control from that. If you are having a problem killing a healer and you're having a breeze with the healing, charge up a Starfire and hit Moonfire right at the end for maximum burst and some dot damage afterward.

Healing for a DPS partner: You can do all the tricks in the world, but you gotta make sure your dps partner can do his job, because no matter how geared you are, you're not likely to solo anything (and be keeping yourself alive at the same time). If you can keep your hots rolling you can free yourself some healing time and use it offensively.

Healing in Battlegrounds: the most important thing in BG is to not attract attention. An unmolested druid healer can easily turn the tides of nearly any battle, but if two or three opponents start attacking you, and silence/CCing, your won't survive long. When not immediately engaged in battle avoid tree form, either stealth as a cat or use bear, this will prevent attackers from immediately targeting you as a healer. If at all possible don't shift into tree until your attackers have engaged other allies and they may stick on their current target rather than switching to you. In BG such as arathi basin there are many patches of grass which a tree can hide in to help attract less attention (you would be surprised how well this works). HoTs can be powerful here, opponents are less likely to notice slow stead heals then they will if you land a healing touch and take their victim from 5% hp to 80%.

The use of healing addons like Xperl and healbot can be extremely useful in smaller scale battles. Properly configured these addons can tell you who is in range of heals and allow easy targeting and healing of allies not in your group. In larger scale battle grounds these addons can take up a good amount of screen space, but once again proper configuration of addons can minimize this annoyance. It helps to disable the group panels while in battlegrounds.

Even if at full health it can be useful to keep rejuvenation up at all times. If stunned or feared the Hot will provide extra healing through the CC, and allows instant use of swiftmend once the CC wears off. Don’t be afraid to waste mana on inefficient heals on occasion, often a battle for a flag will be over (one way or another) before you have a chance to run out of mana anyways, besides a dead tree with full mana never helped anyone. Of course if fighting opponents with mana drain or while Innervate is down one should switch to more conservative usage of mana.

Rogue

Rogues can be tough to beat if they get the opening move, because they can easily stunlock you. If you see them before they see you, immediately drop a DoT. Doing this will eliminate stealth and most of their high DPS moves. Although Vanish can break things like snares, faerie fire will eliminate that, so cast it quickly.

• When encountering a rogue, it's important to pre-HoT yourself with Regrowth and Rejuvenation, also you need to keep up Abolish Poison through out the entire fight to counter the rogues Wound Poison VII. If cheapshotted you need to respond with a Barkskin lowering your damage taken by 20%. Also doing this so early in the fight, will make it usable later in the fight if he manages to vanish and cheapshot you again (or just doing a heavy amount of damage). Keep up Faerie Fire to ensure that he does waste his cloak of shadows early in the fight. If specced for it, use Insect Swarm to lower his chance to hit by 3% AND preventing him from restealthing. Furthermore Insect Swarm is the most mana efficient DoT in-game by far. This should ensure a great counter against rogues.

• If you know there is a rogue around, having Nature's Grasp precast can be very helpful. This will probably allow you to heal uninterrupted after the first sequence of attacks, and casting it before the fight begins ensures that the cooldown is over sooner.

• There is a range at which Rogues cannot attack. If you stand in this range the Rogue cannot hit you. However it is often preferable to get as far from the rogue as possible and suffer the minor damage he can inflict with a gun or bow.

• Use Faerie Fire to ensure the Rogue doesn't perform Vanish. However, with cloak of shadows it is safer to rely on keeping a bleed effect on them if possible to ensure that their stealth will be removed after they vanish. Even with cloak of shadows you need to keep up Faerie Fire at all times.

• Moonfire is great for DoT when they might try and bandage after a stun. Also keep Insect Swarm on them, as any damage over time is more damage they take when you can't give it to them otherwise.

• Depending on your talents there are various ways to respond to an ambush. A quick Barkskin gives you bearlike mitigation helping you survive the incoming finishing move. Also it reduces your damage taken by 20% which is alot, when it comes to rogues. With Nature's Swiftness respond by either healing with Healing Touch or Regrowth immediately (milliseconds count when fighting rogues so an instant heal macro is a big help). Improved Regrowth helps greatly. Without Nature's Swiftness you need to get some distance between you and the Rogue first. This is best achieved with shifting to Travel Form, possibly supported by a quick Nature's Grasp. Cyclone is also great for heal-or-die situations, but is only effective twice.

• With a Feral setup (lots of hitpoints) be sure to have Thorns and Regrowth active. Shift to bear and attack. Use Demoralizing Roar to reduce the incoming damage further (also note that while Demoralizing Roar doesn't cause any damage, it will break Stealth on the Rogue so it is a good way to find one trying to sneak up on you without having to worry about the cooldowns on Typhoon, War Stomp, etc.). The talents Furor and Feral Charge allow you a quick start into melee and also pin the rogue in place (preventing them from backstabbing for a few seconds). If Frenzied Regeneration is not enough and you need to shift out to heal, Bash (Improved Bash helps). Again, Nature's Grasp allows you to be back in bear before the Rogue can even move. Consider using Barkskin before shifting back. Fun thing to have a Rogue kill himself on your Thorns (but don't count on it).

• With a Caster setup (lots of mana) keep your distance by using either Travel Form, Entangling Roots or Nature's Grasp. A good Rogue will use Sprint to catch up to you, be careful. Again, Barkskin helps you. When the Rogue is rooted start with a Starfire followed by a quick Moonfire - Entangling Roots probably last longer that way. Repeat as necessary. Watch out for movement reducing poisons! If they do use it on you, be sure to use Abolish Poison. If you're in another form, shift forms and shift back, which will dispel the Movement Impairing effect.

• Both tactics can be combined to great effect. Especially if you are getting low on mana, which you will regenerate while being in Bear Form.

• Unless you have the moonkin armour mitigation, when in battlegrounds you are often much better off not trying to fight a rogue at all. If you see a Rogue, cast Faerie Fire on him and if possible Root him and let your teammates do the rest. Try to keep Nature's Grasp cast at all times, to root Rogues who get the jump on you.

• Force of Nature Treants should be able to overwhelm a rogue for about five to ten seconds (enough time for you to root, Faerie Fire, DoT, and nuke them), so summon them on top of the rogue first chance you get.

• If you know the general location of a stealthed rogue, use Typhoon to knock them out of it. The knockback will help give you time to root them, too.

Warrior

Warriors are not one of the more challenging classes for a druid to face. Feral Druids do best in Dire Bear Form since the extra hp and damage reduction allows the Druid to stay in this form longer without healing. Cat Form fares poorly since the feral Druid lacks the rogue's stunlock capabilities at lower levels, lowering damage mitigation (due to low armor). Not to mention that warriors generally have very high armor, which in essence almost halves the damage that a Druid is capable of inflicting in cat form.

However, Feral druids level 62 and above with Maim can easily kill a warrior. Start in Cat and open with a Pounce which stuns and dots them. If you have Omen of Clarity, be sure to have it on before the fight begins. You should have enough time to perform a Shred and possibly a second one if Omen of Clarity procs or you have the Brutal Impact talent. At this point, you should pop Nature's Grasp and use Rip. Hopefully, they'll be rooted and take a lot of damage from your dots while you heal. There's no accounting for how long roots will last, so go for Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and get into Dire Bear Form so you can withstand their damage. At about half life, Bash and heal yourself. Chances are the warrior is almost dead by now, so you can drag it out by going into Dire Bear Form again or just go into Cat Form and finish him off. If you go for Cat, watch your health! If you drop to half health again, Maim and heal. Don't drop below 20% and let the warrior Execute you.

Casting Druids do best keeping the warrior at a distance as much as possible by using Entangling Roots and Nuking with Starfire and/or Wrath. However due to diminishing returns on Entangling Roots the druid will likely be forced into melee range. As long as you have Moonkin Form you shouldn't get hurt too bad, but do not underestimate the warrior's damaging capabilities. You will still need to distance yourself quickly. Travel form/kiting works well when paired with an innervate. The key, of course, is time and distance, and balance or resto druids have an advantage over ferals in these respects. Force of Nature is an excellent spell for using against warriors.

• A Druid fighting in Dire Bear Form should consider casting any/all of Faerie Fire, Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth before entering feral form to get in some free damage and extend the time he can spend in Dire Bear Form before being forced to heal.
• When fighting in Dire Bear Form, save Bash until you need to heal yourself, as it will give you time to begin your cast without risk of interruption.
• Nature's Grasp provides an excellent chance for the Balance or Resto Druid to put some distance between himself and the warrior and heal uninterrupted before resuming Nuking.
• If the warrior is trying to run circles around you (Running around you so your spells cannot cast because they aren't in front of you) Barkskin and Hurricane can provide a fair chunk of difficult to avoid damage while reducing the warrior's attack speed. Also remember that Entangling Roots and Insect Swarm will work no matter which way you are facing.
• Snare effects such as Hamstring and Piercing Howl can be removed by shifting forms.
• Never allow your hp to approach 20%. Once your hp drops below 20% it is all but certain that a warrior can kill you with a single Execute.
• Warriors can Pummel for a mere 10 rage, interrupting casting. Never count on successfully casting a heal if the warrior is not stunned or rooted. War stomp is a must in this fight for tauren druids.
• Remember that on bear form you have a limited healing ability, Frenzied Regeneration, at the cost of rage, so use it on an emergency.
• A smart warrior will probably try to use Retaliation at a vulnerable stage. This will most likely be while you're in Cat Form or Dire Bear Form. At this stage, you should immediately stop attacking (this should be quite obvious) and combine Nature's Grasp or Entangling Roots and Travel Form to get a safe distance. Hammering on a warrior while retaliating could be fatal while in Cat Form due to your lack of HP and armor. Getting some distance will benefit you as it allows Retaliation to expire/time out - allowing you to DPS efficient again. Also note that Retaliation will not benefit the warrior if you attack him from behind.
• Just because Druids can heal doesn't mean that they can't use bandages. This is especially helpful for Feral Druids who have small mana pools and regeneration. Root and bandage if you're low on mana.
• This is mainly a Resto Druid tip. Before beginning any fight, always Lifebloom and/or cast Rejuvenation. There is a good chance that a Warrior will open up with Charge when dueling. It's a good idea to start in Dire Bear Form and stand as close to him as possible before the duel starts. Remember that Charge can only be used at a certain distance, so being close to the Warrior eliminates his chance to use this ability. You can open by stunning him, switching forms, backing away and rooting. Once rooted, Lifebloom, Moonfire, Starfire and Wrath. As he starts to come near you, use Entangling Roots, or nature's grasp if there isn't time to cast. Keep him as far away as possible. There is no way a Resto Druid can cause major damage while in Bear or Cat form. Casting and keeping your distance is the only way to go. Root as often as possible when you need to buy some time or get away. Constantly Rejuv and Lifebloom as soon as they wear off, even if you don't need it. Use Cyclone if you ever get near 20% health, to save you from Execute. But otherwise, cyclone makes the warrior immune to DoTs, and only works for 3 casts anyway.

Priest

Unless you are a very well geared Feral Druid there is little to no hope of damaging the priest faster than he can heal, so to beat the priest you will have to exhaust his mana. Feral Druids have the definite advantage in this fight since they have much higher Melee DPS which will allow the Druid to do his damage without wasting mana. However, a fully Restoration focused druid may find it difficult to do damage faster than the Priest's mana regen, in which case the fight is almost certain to last until one party or the other gets bored. Because of this Shadow Priests are much easier for a Druid to kill since they are likely to waste much of their mana inefficiently nuking, and have much less mana efficient heals.

Tips by spec

Balance druids will find it very hard to kill discipline or holy priests, they can heal themselves far faster than they can be damaged. Discipline priests will also be able to do a decent amount of damage and healing, but your mana may outlast theirs by way of Innervate. Shadow priests are less stellar healers and if in shadow form they can't heal themselves, try to nuke them early to force them out of it.

• Heal Early. If you are fighting a Shadow Priest he will be capable of some serious bursts of damage and a good priest will be saving Silence and or Psychic Scream for when you allow yourself to get low.
• A smart Priest will regularly use Dispel Magic to remove the HoTs from your healing spells. Whenever possible use Lifebloom to save mana. Lifebloom can be dispelled, but doing so only does you a favor as it triggers the "bloom" component which is the major portion of the heal. Use it as much as possible. Priests that don't know what they're doing probably don't know any better, it costs them 14% of their mana to do so, and you get half the mana cost of lifebloom back when it terminates.
• Try to get him to blow his Psychic Scream early. Once used, root him with Entangling Roots and cast Force of Nature on him. Remember to cast Faerie Fire and Insect Swarm to maximize damage.
• Interrupt heals whenever you can, make sure you can follow up the interrupt with a big burst of damage. Typhoon will interrupt a cast straight away and Cyclone will cast faster than a large heal. Force of Nature may give you enough hit interruption to make time for some extra damage.
• If the priest is able to consistently Mana Burn you, you will definitely run out of mana before he does, and being in feral form prevents mana burn.

Feral druids have become very adept at killing priests as of patch 3.0.2. You must have Berserk specced to make this work, but start the fight in prowl if at all possible.

• Begin the fight in Prowl, you want to be able to stun him with Pounce, you need the time it gives you to recover energy with Tiger's Fury, then use your combo point to activate Savage Roar and blow Berserk to become immune to fear. Priests will almost invariably mash Psychic Scream when attacked in this way. You now do about triple your normal damage so spam as many attacks as possible.
• Save your combo points for Maim. Wait for the priest to cast Power Word: Shield and then maim him immediately, the damage will be absorbed, but the incapacitating effect will still be applied. Use the time it gives you to burn down his shield, hopefully he will have used his shield after his fear has failed. If you fail to destroy the shield, he will heal and you'll have to start all over again.
• Shadow priests will die rather quickly to your attacks if you can catch them in shadow form and unable to heal. However, beware their DoT spells, Feral druids lack the mana or spell power gear to heal economically and you may blow thru your entire mana supply healing through the DoTs.
• Cat Form has a 1.0 attack speed which can be very effective for slowing a priest's spells dramatically due to interruption. If you are level 62 or above allow him to continue casting and uses Maim against him as the heal is about to go off, if you have enough combo points this gives you enough time to cast a heal of your own.
• Mind Flay is a movement impairing effect, you can shift out of its effect and damage but most priests will continue casting what has become an ineffective spell for it's full duration, use this to your full advantage.
• If the priest allows himself to get low on hp, drop into Dire Bear Form and Bash him to interrupt his heal. This is especially effective if you have Furor.
• If you have it, Feral Charge can also be used to interrupt a heal, though the smart priest won't let you to get the necessary distance to use this ability.
• In real world PvP and in Battlegrounds harassing the priest can be just as important as killing him.

Restoration This battle can be tough if not impossible against a well played priest, but if you play as well as he does it will either be a never ending battle or you can possibly win. Your best bet is to spend most of your time in cat form. While in cat form you cannot be mana burned and your damage dealing doesn't eat up your mana pool.

Keep a rake dot on him while using claw to get combo points, and when you need to come out to heal yourself, maim before doing so, and if you have plenty of mana go ahead and hit him with moonfire and insect swarm if you have the talent. You don't want to be caught out of cat form while feared or else he'll mana burn you down to nothing. If his psychic scream is on cooldown use rip for extra damage.

Warlock

General tips:

• Try to keep your HoTs up as often as possible. When the warlock puts his DoTs on you and fears you want to be gaining life while running.
• Heal early. Warlocks are capable of massive burst damage, and dropping below 50-70% hp for more than a few seconds can be fatal against a well-geared warlock.
• Watch your mana pool and strive to keep your mana pool full enough for another heal.

• Feral Druids: With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and the Berserk talent, Feral Druids have become very effective at killing warlocks. The immunity to fear coupled with massive melee damage makes it very difficult for warlocks to survive for very long.

Cat form should be your form of choice for dealing with Warlocks; your goal is to tear them apart before their DoTs can get your health too far down. You should ignore their pets and simply nuke them away.

Fights should be begun in Prowl, if possible, and opened with Pounce, which gives you a stun time in which you can activate Tiger's Fury, use your combo point for Savage Roar and then blow Berserk. At this point you should be able to triple your melee damage output and build up combo points at incredible speed. Your first set should be used in a Rip which is going to benefit heavily from your massive attack power, and the next one saved up for Maim which should be used as soon as Berserk wears off. Unless the warlock has a massive gear advantage over you, he should be close to death by now and you should have no trouble finishing him off with a Shred.

The use of Ravage to start a fight can be better since it has the ability to crit for massive amounts and give you two combo points. Note that Warlocks with the appropriate talents have an instant cast Howl of Terror. If this happens, allow yourself to get feared out of the minimum 8 yard range of Feral Charge (Cat) and then use berserk to clear the fear and charge him to resume damage.

Note that while Berserk gives you immunity to Fear and Howl of Terror, it doesn't help with Death Coil. If you do get Death Coiled, wait for it to wear off and use Feral Charge (Cat) to jump behind him and resume the carnage.

• For a Restoration Druid the key to surviving warlocks is travel form. If it comes to a competition between the druid's mana pool and the warlock's, the warlock is sure to win even if the druid heals all his damage away, as warlocks have virtually infinite mana. The main challenge is preventing the warlock from killing you faster than you can get away. The goal in fighting a warlock, then, is to do everything in your power to slow his DPS to a manageable level. Dire Bear Form is next to useless since the extra AC is meaningless, and the extra hp isn't a enough to make up for the time lost changing forms to heal. Feral forms in general are little help here since they increase the time needed to heal and decurse, and a restoration druid has no hope of competing against a warlock without making full use of his ability to heal. The key is to keep your hp high enough that you can survive the worst-case scenario of a burst of damage followed by Fear and another burst of damage, and possibly also Death Coil.

Some Tips for Restoration Spec Druids:

• Dispel Curses. Curse of Agony does plenty of damage which can easily be prevented with a cheap, instant Remove Curse. More importantly, Curse of the Elements increases warlock DPS greatly, and you need to slow his damage as much as you can to allow time for healing.
• Melee in Caster form. The damage you do might not be great, but you will slow the warlock's casting time significantly giving your more time to respond. Feral forms will add a dangerous 1 second of universal cooldown to your healing time.
• Root pets if possible. Use Nature's Grasp if you have it, or Entangling Roots if the warlock gives you enough time. For the most part pets can be ignored, though a couple specific cases are worth noting.
  • If the warlock is using his Succubus, try to maintain Regrowth and Rejuvenation on yourself. This way if the warlock casts Seduce you will likely heal to full while the warlock tries to cast a Shadow Bolt on you.
  • If the warlock is using his Felhunter, the fight will be much more challenging, and you'll want to Root the Felhunter if at all possible.
    • The Felhunter has a 30s cooldown counterspell ability called Spell Lock which a skilled warlock is likely to control directly. Be prepared for this, and if your hp gets low be ready to root the Felhunter or go into Dire Bear Form and Bash it (if you have Furor) before healing. Ideally you want to trick to warlock into wasting Spell Lock while your hp is still high.
    • A skilled Warlock will use the Felhunter's Devour Magic ability to remove buffs such as Mark of the Wild, Regrowth, and Rejuvenation and heal itself in the process. If this is the case, use it to your advantage by casting Lifebloom: some warlocks may let you get a few heals before realizing what's going on.
• Use Moonfire. It's instant cast, so they can easily be slipped in between heals. Wait until the DOT expires and then refresh it when you can. Lowering the warlock's hp this way will lower his mana pool in the long run.

• If you are a Balance Druid then surviving a warlock, even levels lower than you, can be quite difficult. It is important to summon your treants directly on top of the warlock as soon as possible. It is also advisable to remain in caster form so that you may heal more quickly unless the warlock has a felguard out. Should the warlock have a felhunter or imp out, it is also useful to take their pet out of play, by either killing it or rooting it. Basically, just like with Restoration Druids, it is a battle of attrition. Keep up your HoTs and DoTs, use treants and wrath, and cyclone their pet.Typhoon and Starfall are nice, too.

Mage

Key Concepts:

• Mages have a spell called Counterspell. It will interrupt any spell you're casting and prevent you from casting any spell from that tree (Nature or Arcane) for 8 seconds. Counterspell has a 24-second cooldown. Most commonly they will use this when you try to heal at a critical moment.
  • Counters: (1) Try to get them to Counterspell your Starfire, allowing you to heal. (2) Feign healing by starting to use your hearthstone in hopes that they use up their Counterspell on it. (3) Switch into Travel Form and run from the mage until the effect is gone. (4) Forget healing and try to kill them with spells or feral form.
  • Many mages use addons such as spell alert to let them know when you are trying to heal. If you see a mage interrupt himself in the middle of a spell it's a good bet that he is about to counterspell you. If you break off your own casting then you will only suffer the 3 second silence effect rather than the 10 second prohibition on Nature Spells.
  • Druid Engineers can profit greatly from using a grenade when counterspelled to stun the mage.
• Entangling Roots is automatically broken when a Mage uses Blink.
• You cannot be polymorphed while in any animal form and if polymorphed you can easily shapeshift out of it. Do this quickly as many mages like to polymorph enemies and run off to bandage and/or cast Evocation.
• Frost Mages often have a bonus of 50% to their crit rate against frozen targets. If a frost mage roots you, shapeshift quickly to avoid the critical damage. If you're in caster form a quick change to Travel Form and back is most mana efficient.
• Mages have some of the most mana-efficient damage spells, but their most mana-efficient spell (Fireball, 1.97 damage per mana) is still less efficient than our healing spells (Healing Touch, 2.6 health per mana). At first glance it looks like you could easily win against a mage simply by healing until he is out of mana and then killing him. This tactic can work for Restoration/Balance Druids, but Mages generally have larger mana pools than Feral Druids and can afford to be less efficient.
• Faerie Fire can cut off a large chunk of a Mage's already lacking cloth armor. Make sure you cast it if you plan on using melee attacks against him.
• It can be beneficial to approach the Mage in caster form. If he uses Frost Nova when you get close, you can instantly switch into Dire Bear Form or Cat Form (breaking the Root) and attack.
• Heal Early. Mages are masters of burst damage, and if you allow yourself to get too low a mage will easily kill you in the 8 seconds afforded him by Counterspell.
• Keep in mind that the Mage's Mana Shield is extremely mana inefficient. It can absorb up to 570 damage (at maximum rank) at the cost of up to 1280 mana. If this were a healing spell it would have a mana efficiency of 0.44 health per mana!
• Feral Druid tactic that works well (requires a little bit of luck against much better geared players):
  • Starting the fight at a distance gives the Mage a huge advantage. Instead, start stealthed; use Ravage on the Mage (and Tiger's Fury first if you can), who should then Blink. Some slower Mages may sit in place, and let you pummel them for a few seconds, but don't count on it. Remember that using Ravage on a seated target yields a guaranteed crit. While perhaps underhanded, sneaking up on a mage who is regaining mana will often result in a very quick fight.
  • Shift into Bear form. The faster the better, as many mages will blink the second you touch them, then hit you with an instant cast spell, which your Bear's higher health will help absorb.
  • Use Feral Charge to close the distance and interrupt whatever spell the mage is now casting.
  • Mage usually responds with Frost Nova; shifting into cat form will free you. Casting a Rejuvenation on yourself quickly between shapeshifts wouldn't hurt. If for some reason the mage doesn't freeze you in place, Bash him, heal yourself (either with Regrowth or a Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch macro), Moonfire him if he is still stunned, and then shift to cat. If he didn't freeze you and try to run away before, he certainly will now.
  • Use Dash to chase down the mage and kill him. Dash helps offset any slowing effects from Ice Armor.
  • Quick and efficient shapeshifts are imperative. Any Feral Druid that PvPs will suffer massive disadvantages without all their forms instantly available at their fingertips.
  • The mage's key to surviving is movement impairment. Druid's have the upper hand on this, as shifting can counter these... however, it's mana-expensive. Shift into caster form (which is really just canceling shapeshifting, and thus costs no mana) to break CC or Travel Form if you need speed, before going cat to attack.
  • Notes: A Druid's biggest strength is flexibility. The above strategy is difficult for many mages to defeat, but a Druid won't live long using concrete rules and not thinking on his or her feet. A mage may react differently from what is listed, but if the mage stays within melee range, instead of attempting to escape, a well-geared feral druid can rip him to shreds.

Druid

Your talents will feature heavily in this fight, and so it's probably best to treat the different possible combinations separately. Generally balance and resto druids fight very similarly against other druids. Of course druids with hybrid builds will require modified strategies both to play as and to fight.

• Caster Druid vs. Caster Druid
  • Since even the best-geared balance druids are usually incapable of out DPSing a resto druid's heals, and since nuking is less mana efficient than healing, neither player should nuke much.
  • If either druid continues to nuke throughout the fight he will probably run out of mana and lose.
  • Since neither druid is likely capable of enough DPS to overcome the other's mana regen this fight will last until one druid or the other either leaves or grows bored and careless. Unless the druids are fighting in a very remote location or dueling this fight will probably be determined by the first other player to wander by.
  • Probably the only important advice is not to allow your hp to get low. If you allow your hp to get low enough your opponent may be able to Moonfire spam you to death - especially if he has furor and can get a quick Bash off to interrupt a heal.

• Caster vs. Feral
  • Balance Druids generally have the edge over Feral Druids in 1-on-1 encounters. The best geared PvP Moonkins have approximately 20k HP and 16k armor - something a Feral Druid will learn to hate. Moonkins can generally out-DPS an equally geared Feral Druid due to their high damage mitigation and powerful burst damage.
  • The feral druid should use cat form for the better burst damage in hopes of outdamaging his opponent’s heals or at least of preventing him from doing anything but healing.
  • The great weakness of the feral druid is his small mana pool and low mana regen. The balance or resto druid should exploit this by rooting and dotting his opponent while keeping himself topped off on hp. Nature's Grasp is particularly useful for this.
    • If the feral druid shifts forms every time he is rooted he will rapidly consume his mana pool and be unable to heal off the damage of the dots.
    • If instead the feral druid waits for the roots to wear off he will take the full damage of the dots and will likely be forced to shift to heal himself anyways.
  • The balance or resto druid can use Hibernate to buy himself some time to heal and regen mana or escape if he needs to.
  • Balance druids do a little better than resto druids in this pairing since their increased dps allows them to force the feral druid out of feral form to heal more often.
  • The Feral druid should try to take full advantage of Bash and Feral Charge to try to catch his opponent when his hp is low and finish him off.
  • Collecting combo points in Cat Form early for a quick finishing move (much) later can be the key to victory.

• Feral vs. Feral
  • I would think that the form of choice here would be Bear Form since the added hp and damage mitigation are of immense use when fighting against a melee class, and the stun from Bash can be used either to buy time for a quick shift and heal, or to prevent the other druid from successfully healing. However the increased damage in Cat form (and the fact the their Bleed effects ignore armor) ends up making a bigger difference than the increased health and armor of Bear form, so it becomes a Maim-Heal contest.

Hunter

Hunters are not one of the harder classes for a druid to beat. Unlike Warriors and rogues they rely mostly on physical ranged damage to hurt you and deal relatively little melee damage. Don't take them lightly, however, as they have plenty of CC that can't be shifted out of to keep you at bay, and are less squishy than casters.

• Try using Root or Hibernate to switch off hunters' pets, but pets are best ignored completely, if you ignore the hunter and try to kill the pet you WILL die.
  • Appropriately specced hunters have pets with very high Nature Resistance which can cause Root or Hibernate to break quickly or fail altogether. Don't waste time trying to control pets with such high resistances.
• Bear form is ideal for mitigating the physical damage that both the hunter and his pet deal out. You can also use Feral Charge to quickly close distance with the hunter, but it is best save for the time hunter uses Disengage. The charge will also root him.
• Hunters have three "sting" attacks. These are poisons that can be removed with Cure Poison or Abolish Poison.

1. Serpent Sting: A moderate DPS, high mana efficiency DOT that lasts 15 seconds.
2. Viper Sting: Drains a good chunk of your mana over 8 seconds. This sting has a 15 sec cooldown. Don't ignore it, you can cure it for less mana than they use to apply it. If for some reason you are unable to remove it (multiple poisons stacked on you already, or if you are silenced) shift to cat or bear form (preferably bear form if balance or resto) as it cannot burn your mana in these forms.
3. Scorpid Sting: A debuff that lowers your chance to hit with melee and ranged attacks by 5%. You should probably dispel this one quickly.

• A Hunter can fear animals (scare beast) and you count as one in feral form. Once you're scared there’s nothing you can do but wait, unless you have any specific item that can dispel fear, like for example the Insignia of the Alliance or the Insignia of the Horde. So always be ready to shift back to caster form when a "scare beast" is incoming. Having spell alerts (an Interface option from the main menu) is crucial.
• Barkskin allows you to cast while the Hunter's pet is chewing on you. It is also usable if you are caught frozen in caster form. This can reduce some initial damage you will take after getting out of Freezing Trap , as the hunter has probably used the trap to gain some distance.
• Shift out of concussion shot. It has a 12 second cooldown and only lasts 4 seconds. Hunters may be counting on using every second of that time effectively so remove it ASAP. Especially true when running. Wing clip has no cooldown but if they're using it on you you're already in melee range, so stay there and pound him with every melee skill you have, as your melee DPS is superior to hunters' melee DPS.
• Hunters usually have relatively small mana pools that they can run through very quickly. Once they're out of mana their DPS drops sharply, so focus on staying alive for the early part of the fight - there will be plenty of time to do damage once the hunter is out of mana.
• Balance Druids that have the talent Force of Nature should make full use of their treants, most hunters have it set in their mind to run away from melee damage at the first hit and having 3 treants swarming them will often make them panic leaving you free to nuke them or heal, another trick is to run in and engage in melee along with your treants, few hunters can deal with the combined damage output.
• For Balance and Restoration, Keep the hunter DoTed and yourself HoTed and continually advance toward him. Keep yourself topped off in health, and you will slowly, but inevitably whittle away his health.

Paladin

If you are Tauren use Warstomp once the first stun is gone. Otherwise repeat until you get bored.

• Feral Druids should have no trouble defeating a paladin, especially if you have Nature's Swiftness. Your DPS (after mitigation) in bear form will greatly exceed theirs. They will need to heal more often, and you can always innervate to extend your mana pool.
• It's extremely important to take note of the paladin's weapon. There's a big difference between fighting a paladin equipped with the Hand of Edward the Odd and a paladin who is equipped with Sulfuras. It all comes down to whether you can use Cat Form to kite (only works if you have talents invested in Feral Swiftness and/or 4 pieces of the PvP set equipped) and bleed the pally. This is a feasible tactic only if the paladin is equipped with a low DPS weapon. You simply outdistance them, wait for your energy to come back and dash in to Shred, Claw, Rake and finally end it with a 5 point Rip finisher.
• It is vital for balance druids to keep them out of melee range. The typical moonkin's mana pool is better than that of a damage-specced paladin, and with innervate and a mana pot, kiting a pally should be easy enough.
• Once again, Force of Nature, Insect Swarm, and Moonfire provide a momentary advantage against one's opponent, especially if it's already rooted.
• Use travel form to get to range if you need to buy time.
• Save your Bash or War Stomp for when they're at low health and try to pull off a heal.
• A Paladin can regenerate mana faster than a Resto Druid can do damage.
• If you still want to try start with Moonfire, Faerie Fire and Dire Bear Form. At half health shift out, use Barkskin, Regrowth, Moonfire, shift back. Should he ever get to about 20% health then use Bash and spam Moonfire.
• Restoration Druids are, like always, slow duelers. A paladin-versus-druid encounter can easily take as much as five minutes given the right circumstances, and generally finishes when one of the two parts has run out of mana. A useful progression is to begin in cat form, cast a regrowth with nature's swiftness as soon as your health drops a reasonable amount, and keep fighting in bear form. With the HoT and frenzied regeneration you can keep yourself in good shape for a while. When he's low on health and tries to heal, bash, heal yourself and finish him in cat form. He'll already have some combo points from the initial attack.
• Heal early; remember Paladins have a stun and (as of 2.0) decent burst DPS. Even if you have nature's swiftness, he may just stun you before you get the chance to cast a healing touch.
• Remember that their bubble works both ways; you can (and should) heal while they are bubbled.
• Entangling Roots isn't terribly useful against a paladin, who can break roots fairly easily.

Balance Druids will find a fight of moderate difficulty in the Paladin. Against Holy-spec paladins, who have very mana-efficient heals, drop your treants on them immediately. Then shift into bear form and bash, removing their ability to heal for several seconds. You may be able to get their health down very low, but as soon as the stun wears off they will bubble and heal themselves back to full health. But if you nuke with wrath while they are stunned, and if you can stun them when they are at 3/4 health or less, they will sometimes die too fast for them to bubble. If this is not the case, then simply nuke them with starfire(do not use wrath, as it is less mana-efficient) until you are nearly out of mana. Then root and innervate. Starfire will also stun the paladin occasionally. If you are lucky, the stuns will prevent your holy pally from being able to heal long enough for them to die, but this is not dependable.

Against retribution paladins, keeping them away from you is vital. Always stay in Moonkin form against these guys, as without the armor you are like a marshmallow on a hot day. Make liberal use of entangling roots, nature's grasp, cyclone, force of nature, and starfall. While a ret pally can do massive damage, you can too, and with the advantage of crowd control. But if you let them close to you for a moment, they can stun you and deplete nearly half your health or more before it wears off. Be Careful!

Protection paladins are perhaps the easiest pally spec for a Balance druid to defeat. Root them, drop moonfire, insect swarm, and your treants. When they cleanse or break free and run towards you, typhoon is always annoying for them to run into. They will likely heal themselves once or twice, though this is substantially less mana-efficient than a holy-spec pally, meaning less mana for spells against you. He will typically save his bubble until he is almost dead, as any good paladin will. While your treants and roots hamper his way towards you, chip away at his health with wrath. Have nature's grasp on when he gets to you. He may stun you as well, but can't do dangerous damage against your armor. Shift into travel form and put some distance between you and him. Keep DoTs on him, and just kite using this method of rooting and running, with typhoon whenever it is available. Heal if it is necessary, but not unless he is immobile. Cyclone is ideal for this, as he cannot break out in any way, except via an Insignia of the Alliance or Insignia of the Horde. After the first cast however, the duration is reduced to 3 seconds, and then 1.5 after that, rendering it pretty much useless. Before death, he will bubble and heal to full health, and may even use lay on hands the next time death approaches. Use starfall if you are in a hurry.

Shaman

• Shamans are similar to Druids in a way. They can be built either as Healer, Melee or Ranged DPS; so, you have to adjust a bit. How can you tell the difference? If they are trying to keep their distance from you, chances are they are Elemental or Restoration (although their shocks, like cyclone, have a 20 yd range).

• Feral Druids should use cat form against Elemental shamans and bear form against Enhancement shamans. Time your stuns carefully; shamans are just as likely as druids to have Nature's Swiftness.

• Balance druids should have no trouble whatsoever against elemental shamans - the use of Force of Nature at the correct time keeps them from casting almost any heals. Night elf druids have an exceptional advantage when ambushing shamans from Shadowmeld, a starfire hit or a quick spam of Wrath will normally drain their life a good chunk and get them to where you can use your treants for full effect. Stay in caster form to heal early and keep it up at all times, remember that purging Lifebloom does the druid a service so never have it off you.

• When ambushed by a shaman, you can easily get out of range. If they decide to pursue you in Ghost Wolf, sleep it; it's a beast.

• Most Shamans deplete their mana pool quickly which will make them terribly vulnerable, but they can still use Wind Shear to interrupt your heals.

• A good Shaman can remove all of Regrowth, Mark of the Wild, Rejuvenation, Innervate, Thorns and Nature's Grasp. Purge costs 8% of their base mana and can remove up to 2 buffs.

• Use Lifebloom or Nature's Swiftness. If Lifebloom is purged it will trigger the "bloom" component; incompetent shamans will do you a favor and purge the spell, granting you a fast heal. Lifebloom is also very mana efficient; so, you don't lose much from it. Nature's Swiftness is nearly impossible to purge (with any lag or macros, impossible); so, you can quickly use that to gain back life.

• A good Shaman will probably drop totems once you’re fighting him in melee. Most of the totems don't really do that much. Strength of Earth and Grace of Air give him 77 more strength/agility, which is annoying, and needs to be dealt with. Luckily, they have 5 HP but cost very little mana; he may get tired of putting totems down if you just keep killing them. They also have a very short range in which they work. It's not a bad idea to waste a hit or so on them (especially in cat form).

Note: You will not lose your combo points when you change targets; however, gaining a single Combo Point on any other target than your last will make you lose any previously gained Combo Points. As such, you can simply use a quick Cat attack to destroy any totem that the Shaman is laying down, as long as you do not make use of a combo point skill.

• If you are fighting a shaman who uses their Fire Elemental Totem, normal methods of wasting an attack on the totem will not work as the elemental shares a 4-5k health pool with the totem. Your best option is to ignore the elemental and hope you can kill the shaman before either of them kill you. This is a 20 minute cooldown ability and is therefore very tough to survive.

• Without mana, a Shaman is forced to rely on auto-attack. Windfury is physical damage, which Dire Bear Form seriously negates. You will generally out DPS him because of a catch-22. If he has a shield, his Windfury Procs, on a 20% chance on hit, will be so small, and even further negated by your large armor. Dual wielding shamans are another story, but again their damage mitigation will be poor.

• Faerie Fire will wreck havoc on a shaman's armor if they use a 2h weapon or dual wield.

• Earth Shock, Frost Shock, and Flame Shock share the same timer. The shaman's shocks are a large part of his DPS, and they cannot be spammed. Because of this, you get enough time to land even your slowest heal. Force him to not use them, but when he does, quickly pop to caster form and heal. Use Healing Touch and Lifebloom more than Regrowth; Purge is very potent against HoT's.

• If any Restoration specced Shaman is dumb enough to attack or duel you, use cat or bear form to force him to heal; shaman heals are inefficient and even if they pop mana potions there is little chance they can heal through the damage your forms can do. Resto shamans deal little melee damage and using mana for spell damage will reduce their mana pool even further.

• If you manage to root him, move to your maximum spell range to avoid his shocks (20 yards). Considering Earthbind Totem, various means to remove roots and diminishing roots, this can only be part of your strategy.

• Shamans get a spell (Lightning Shield) similar to Thorns. However, unlike thorns, any damage you inflict on them will trigger it. There's basically nothing you can do about it; so, don't let it influence your thinking.

• Enhancement shamans when low on mana may try to use shamanistic rage and bloodlust/heroism to regain some mana. The way to counter this is to root them or stun them constantly, and keep them from hitting you a lot with melee.

Death Knight

This is a tough fight for feral druids, and depending on their spec, you may or may not be able to beat them. Death Knights have good physical mitigation and can do a decent amount of disease and magic damage to you. Frost and Unholy DKs are beatable, but blood-specced death knights are a serious problem since you'll suffer from a catch-22 situation: Either you go cat form where you have enough dps to hurt them faster than they can heal (but lose your mitigation against their mostly physical attacks), or you go bear form in which case you probably won't have enough rage to deal damage faster than they can heal it. The key to this fight is managing to get your heals off despite the Death Knight's fearsome array of anti-caster abilities. Bashing and healing or cycloning is good, but don't wait too long, as they can pop Icebound Fortitude to become immune to stuns for 12 seconds (18 talented). The best way is to use Nature's Grasp and root them. Be sure to cast Nature's Grasp just before their melee strike hits, as if they see you cast it they can use Anti-Magic Shell to negate it. Once they are rooted run far away from them, beyond the range of Death Grip and Strangulate, before healing or they will interrupt it. They will likely use Death Grip and Strangulate to drag you back to them and delay you healing anyway, so again don't wait too long before healing. Of course if they use Chains of Ice then simply shift out of it.

Balance druids will find this fight much easier, despite the Death Knight's anti-caster abilities, due to the Death Knight having few counters to being rooted barring trinkets or racials. This fight is quite similar to fighting a warrior, with Death Grip taking the place of Intercept. Root them as quickly as possible before they can get the Runic Power for a Mind Freeze or Anti-Magic Shell, then nuke them. Anti-magic zone can seriously hamper this strategy. If they Death Grip you then just run away again while they're still rooted, shifting out of Chains of Ice if they try it. If they trinket and Death Grip then use Nature's Grasp to root them again. Once diminishing returns are up on roots dot and kite them in travel form until you can root them again. If they Death Grip you then bear or moonkin form will give you reasonable protection until you can Bash them to get distance again (watch for them popping Icebound Fortitude and if so wait until it's gone to bash). Alternatively pop Barkskin and nuke them with Starfire to make them blow their Mind Freeze on your Arcane school, then cyclone them. If you heal at any point make sure you're at maximum range so that they can't Death Grip you, as a Glyph of Death Grip can leave you stunned and vulnerable in caster form for 1 second.

Restoration druids will treat this fight similarly to balance when fighting 1v1 but with a few more complications. Lacking the extra armor of Moonkin form will mean that their ghoul will do much more damage to you, but hopefully your extra healing power will make up for it. The main thing to watch out for is that when they Death Grip you it's imperative that you shift to bear form while in the air to mitigate the melee damage that's coming and hope they don't have Glyph of Death Grip. On the plus side your Nature's Swiftness will allow you to instantly root or cyclone them if you're caught out.