Mists of Pandaria Classic Guardian Druid Leveling

Guardian Druid is one of the best leveling specializations due to being almost immortal in world content, allowing you to do massive pulls safely, while also having a simple rotation that scales well with the amount of targets. You will also get instant queues for any group finder activities, which makes leveling much faster!

In Mists of Pandaria, you will unlock a new row of talent selections every 15 levels, starting at level 15. We will give row by row recommendations in order to make leveling as quick and smooth as possible, along with a short explanation.

This tier of talents is dedicated to mobility increases and alternative options for quickly moving your character around.

• Feline Swiftness is a straightforward 15% movement speed increase and is the recommended talent for leveling.
• Displacer Beast teleports you 20 yards forward like Blink, puts you into Cat Form, and has a long 30-second cooldown making it a weak talent for leveling.
• Wild Charge grants the Wild Charge ability while in Bear Form, which is usually more than enough for quickly moving around, with the added benefit of rooting your target for 4 seconds. Because it requires a target, it is not ideal for leveling since you will spend most of your time running to the next quest location rather than from target to target, but it can be of use in dungeon leveling.

This tier of talents focuses on ways to self-heal and recover sustained damage, which is of critical importance while leveling.

• Ysera's Gift heals you for 5% of your health every 5 seconds, or a nearby injured ally if you are at full health. This is a great passive choice for Guardian Druids and the recommended leveling talent in most situations.
• Renewal heals you for 30% of your maximum health every 2 minutes. Its high cooldown makes it do very low healing overall, and thus be a bad leveling talent.
• Cenarion Ward allows you to place a ward on a friend target which activates when the target is directly attacked and does very high healing for 6 seconds on a short 30-second cooldown. This can be superior to Ysera's Gift for dungeon leveling, as it will enable larger pulls because of its burst sustain value.

This tier of talents has multiple crowd control abilities. These are situational, but there are a few good leveling options which can help you be more efficient.

• Faerie Swarm allows your Faerie Fire to slow affected targets by 50% for 15 seconds. While this can occasionally be useful in solo situations, you will generally be able to easily apply the baseline Infected Wounds instead.
• Mass Entanglement roots every enemy around its target for 20 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. This is one of the most unique Druid talents overall, and can be very useful if a pull goes wrong, to allow you to easily run away without being chased down.
• Typhoon pushes away enemies in front of you and slows them for 6 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. Pushing enemies away generally interrupts their casts which makes this a very powerful talent, just be wary of spreading enemies while in a dungeon, as that will lower your group's DPS potential.

This tier of talents grants you extra DPS throughput and more defensive capabilities through increased Rage generation.

• Soul of the Forest is a strong passive talent which increases the Rage generation of Mangle by 30% and causes it to deal 15% more damage. Due to synergy with other effects that increase the availability of Mangle, this talent increases Rage generation significantly, making it a great passive for leveling.
• Incarnation reduces the cooldown of your melee damage abilities and Growl to 1.5 seconds while active and thus makes your damage and Rage generation skyrocket while active. Due to its 3-minute cooldown and 30 second duration, it is not recommended unless you are consistently doing huge dungeon pulls with it.
• Force of Nature has 3 charges on a 20-second recharge timer and creates a Treant ally which deals minor DPS and taunts enemies. While it can be occasionally useful for extra DPS and distracting enemies, it is generally forgettable.

This tier of talents has another set of situational crowd control abilities.

• Disorienting Roar disorients nearby enemies for 3 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. Since it has an extremely short cooldown and no downsides, this is one of the best tools for countering masses of caster enemies, provided you have managed to stack them close to yourself first.
• Ursol's Vortex is an especially interesting Druid talent which creates a ground zone that slows enemies and pulls them to its center whenever they try to leave it for the first time. It lasts 10 seconds on a short 60-second cooldown, and combos very well with Typhoon to avoid spreading enemies after you push them away or even have them stack more tightly than before the Typhoon!
• Mighty Bash stuns one target for 5 seconds every 50 seconds. This can be occasionally useful if solo leveling but lackluster for dungeon leveling.

Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria are much weaker than they have ever been since their introduction. Still, there are a few exceptions that can be useful while leveling, and we discuss them below.

While not all recommended glyphs affect your throughput, we still recommend using the glyphs listed below for their high quality of life improvements.

• Glyph of Maul — causes Maul to also hit one nearby target for 50% damage. This is great while leveling, as you should always be pulling multiple enemies as Guardian and using most of your Rage for damage.
• Glyph of Fae Silence — makes Faerie Fire silence enemies for 3 seconds, but also adds a 15-second cooldown. This can be very useful while leveling in order to have more interrupts for caster pulls.
• Glyph of Prowl — removes the movement penalty while using Prowl, which can be a huge speed increase while leveling in the world.
• Glyph of Stampeding Roar — this glyph triples the radius at which Stampeding Roar will affect nearby allies, making it much more usable while dungeon leveling.
• Glyph of Dash — reduces the cooldown of your Dash ability by 60 sec, making you more mobile in the process but only when you are not actively tanking as using Dash puts you in Cat Form.
• Glyph of Rebirth — causes players resurrected by Rebirth to return at 100% health, making them more likely to survive.

Guardian Druids only have quality of life Minor Glyphs, but there are a few useful ones listed below.

• Glyph of Aquatic Form — increases your swim speed by 50% in Aquatic Form, which is a great quality of life benefit while doing world content.
• Glyph of Grace — decreases the damage you take from falling even while not in Cat Form which has this bonus baked in. This makes it much harder to die or get heavily injured from fall damage, which is occasionally useful.
• Glyph of the Stag — allows your Travel Form to carry party members, which can be occasionally useful if all of you need to move somewhere quickly.

Your leveling rotation as a Guardian Druid is very similar to your max level rotation, as most core spells unlock quickly.

Make sure to keep yourself buffed with Mark of the Wild and debuff enemies with Faerie Fire when pulling unless using Glyph of Fae Silence, in which case you should use it on caster enemies to ensure they run to melee.

1. Cast Enrage whenever available to generate Rage;
2. Use Mangle to generate even more Rage;
3. Cast Thrash if its debuff is no longer present on the target;
4. Activate Berserk, preferably while there are multiple targets nearby you can cleave;
5. Remember to use Rage on Savage Defense or Frenzied Regeneration if taking more damage than the healer can handle;
6. Use your extra Rage on Maul whenever you get a Tooth and Claw proc;
7. Cast Lacerate up to 3 stacks against fewer than 3 targets;
8. Cast Swipe against 3 targets or more.