Druid Shadowlands Leveling Guide From 1 to 60

Table of Contents

• +1. Leveling in Shadowlands
  • 1.1. Best Leveling Spec for Druid in Shadowlands
  • 1.2. Ability Unlocks for Druid Leveling in Shadowlands
  • 1.3. Best Heirloom Items for Druid Leveling in Shadowlands
• 2. Changelog

Welcome to our Druid leveling guide. Here you will find all you need to know to level up your Druid efficiently. Leveling received a lot of changes in Shadowlands, which we have documented in our Shadowlands Leveling Changes page. In addition, we now have a revamped Leveling guide, complete with detailed information on XP, mounts, addons, consumables, tips, and more. We encourage to read it to increase your leveling speed even more.

Until you are Level 5, use Wrath and Moonfire to kill enemies while leveling. This will change at Level 5 when you learn Cat Form with the ability Shred. Then at level 10 you will unlock your choice of specializations.

Druids have four talent trees: Balance, Feral, Guardian, and Restoration.

Guardian is the tank specialization for Druid, this is our suggested leveling spec, as the damage difference is not a large drop from the damage dealing specs and your tankiness allows you to pull enormous amounts of monsters and AoE them down comfortably. Guardian is also excellent in a group as you can maintain threat on all the mobs for you group.

Balance is a ranged damage specialization with decent damage over time and area of effect spells. Its main benefit is being able to move around a cast DoTs freely allowing you to tag mobs quickly.

Feral is a melee damage option for Druid, damage from Feral is mainly focused on Bleeds which does not translate very good for leveling as mobs die too quickly to gain full value from the bleeds.

Restoration is a healing specialization, and thus slower for solo questing due to its lower damage output, however if you are going to be leveling in a group or dungeons, healing is a very important role which will allow larger pulls and much quicker dungeon queues.

• At Level 1, you unlock Wrath, which is a short cast ranged damage spell, good for early levels.
• At Level 2, you unlock Moonfire, which will be your bread and butter spell for a long time and your main tagging ability.
• At Level 3, you unlock Regrowth which is one of your main heals, putting a heal over time effect on you which allows you to keep pulling quickly.
• At Level 4, you unlock Entangling Roots, which lets you root a target in place for 30 seconds.
• At Level 5, you unlock Cat Form, which unlocks cat abilities like Shred allowing you to kill mobs without spending mana.
• At Level 6, you unlock Dash, a Cat Form which increases; your movement speed by 60% while in Cat form for 10 seconds.
• At Level 7, you unlock Ferocious Bite, another Cat Form ability, a hard hitting combo point spender.
• At Level 8, you unlock Bear Form, which allows you to become the tanky bear, granting you bear form abilities like Mangle.
• At Level 13, you unlock Revive, a resurrect spell, which is very handy in group content in the case of someone in your group dying.
• At Level 13, you unlock Aquatic Form. A mobility tool for any water related content, greatly increasing your movement speed in water.
• At Level 14, you unlock Growl, your taunt spell, this can be used to tag mobs or to hold threat on them to protect others.
• At Level 17, you unlock Prowl. This is a stealth spell in Cat Form, allowing you to safely navigate through quest zones with heavy mob density to get your quest tasks done quicker.
• At Level 18, you unlock Ironfur, a Bear Form ability reducing your physical damage taken significantly at the cost of rage, great for very large pulls.
• At Level 24, you unlock Barkskin, a short defensive cooldown that reduces your damage taken by 20% for 8 seconds, usable in any form.
• At Level 29, you unlock Rebirth, a battle resurrection spell that can be very handy especially in dungeons if one of your group members happens to die.
• At Level 30, you unlock Flight Form, a passive spell granting you the ability to turn your Travel Form into a bird and fly around, this is exceptionally good while levelling as an intstant cast mount saves a lot of time.
• At Level 38, you unlock Hibernate, which allows you to force an enemy to sleep for up to 40 seconds, but only works on Beasts or Dragonkins.
• At Level 41, you unlock Soothe. Soothing the target, dispelling all enrage effects.
• At Level 43, you unlock Stampeding Roar, this is an AoE movement speed increasing ability, great for solo and group content to get around faster.
• At Level 48, you unlock Cyclone. This spell tosses the enemy into the air, disorienting them and making them invulnerable for 6 seconds.

The best Heirloom to level with are the ones with Haste and / or Versatility. That is because they increase your DPS, smooth out your rotation and increase your survivability, respectively.

Haste can also be useful to get tags faster when competing for mobs with other players, giving you a mild leveling advantage.

• 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
• 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
• 12 Oct. 2020: Revamped page for Shadowlands, with subpages for each spec.
• 28 Jun. 2019: This page has been reviewed for the release of Patch 8.2 and no changes are necessary.
• 07 Apr. 2019: Fixed Restoration Druid rotation on low levels.
• 10 Dec. 2018: Updated Feral talent choices for patch 8.1.
• 12 Aug. 2018: Consistency updates to give all leveling guides a similar feel.
• 11 Aug. 2018: Updated for Battle for Azeroth release with Balance, Feral, Guardian, and Restoration 1-120 sections.