Duoing
Especially when you try to complete specific quests or are limited to short play sessions, you find yourself duoing with other classes quite often. Since with two people it’s very easy to tell when someone is doing something wrong, you want to be sure to know how to play your druid in those situations. Being a bad solo player only hurts your efficiency. Performing not so well in groups can be compensated by group mates - or blamed on others ;-). For duoing, that is not an option. So how to perform well in duos as a druid?
In general it’s important that you know what your partner is capable of. Some skills perceived as class-defining are sometimes only available to specific talent builds. I recommend asking your partner in advance what kind of talent build he or she is using before deciding on your tactic. Once you get going the following hints should help you to cooperate better with your ally:
Mages
?Cast Mark of the Wild on them.
?Do not cast Thorns unless they request you to. You want to be the one to hold aggro. Thorns will only make it harder to (re)gain it if your partner gets attacked.
?If the mage is about to cast Frost Nova, do not use Entangling Roots.
?When grouped with a mage you might want to stock up on water to keep your overall costs down.
?If they forget to cast it, ask them to buff you with Arcane Intellect.

Rogues
?Cast Mark of the Wild on them.
?Thorns is a mixed bag, thus I wouldn’t cast it unless they request you to. Rogues have an easy time when it comes to losing aggro, but you are putting them at an unnecessary risk. Additionally, the rogue’s DPS suffers significantly when he is using daggers and can’t get behind a mob.
?Combat sword rogues: A rare breed, but when teamed with one be prepared to fight multiple lower levels mobs at once, cast thorns on him and help position the mobs in front of the rogue.
Hunters
?Work with Entangling Roots to keep the mobs at a distance, while both you and the hunter stick to ranged combat (not taking hits is one of their natural pros - if you tank and lose hit points, you partially negate this effect)
?Alternatively you can let his pet tank and use low-aggro heals on it or, if everything else fails, switch to standard bear tanking. This is also a viable strategy when the hunter used his talent points to increase the damage of his pet.
Paladins
?Exchange buffs.
?With paladins it depends a lot on your personal and the paladin’s talent builds. I don’t recommend Paladins in two person groups since the additional security is often not required and their damage output is sup-par. This said they make excellent team mates in very dangerous areas (read: lots of potential adds or elite spawns).
Warriors
?Cast Mark and Thorns on him.
?It doesn’t get any simpler than healer-tank teams. Keep the Warrior healed with mana efficient spells. Use mana efficient damage output when grouped with a defensive specced fighter or whenever your mana exceeds 90%.

Warlocks
?Ask him to use his Soulstone on you. Since you have a rez it helps you more than him.
?There are two types of Warlocks: DoT-based ones and Shadow Bolt damage dealers. Depending on their crit rate, Shadow Bolt Warlocks will occasionally gain aggro. While they have lots of hit points you should keep their low armor in mind and watch their healthbar carefully. The same goes for succubi who suffer from very low hit points.
?For DoT based Warlocks you want to focus on your mana efficient damage spells. There is no point in quickly trying to finish a mob off when most of the damage (and mana) of a Warlock gets wasted this way.
Priests
?Buff each other
?Ask for PW: Shield before you start pulling.
?The strategy depends on your and the priest’s build. There are two possible setups:
?You tank in bear or DPS in cat form while the priest heals you.
?You both blast away in caster form (works well if the priest is shadow specced) while you try to keep it rooted at the same time.
Druids
?Decide who is going to DPS, tank and heal
?Depending on the difficulty of the mob you might both want to go the damage route – e.g. two feral kitties with ping-pong aggro.
?It’s not really an ideal team as druids are survival specialists and all-rounders. You can gain more by teaming up with a full DPS class if you are experience grinding.
Shamans
?For the most part you can follow the druid / druid routine
?Don’t be surprised by their peak damage, they can occasionally take aggro even while you’re tanking in Dire Bear Form.
?If you are the healer and gain aggro, their earth shock can help you out
?Ask him to set helpful totems: If you’re DPSing as a cat, you’ll want the Grace of Air Totem, in Bear form you want to have a strength totem placed next to you.

?If you work together well, you can both blast DPS and once one person goes low on hit points he gets healed by his partner (or he heals himself if his partner has gotten aggro in the meantime).
Full Groups
In most cases you will end up as the tank or a healer. In 10-15 person raids you might be assigned to a specific group of people to keep an eye on, either your own group or the cloth healers for example. If that is taken care of, you can help with occasional DPS. Roles you can take (depending on your group’s setup either full-time or when there is a need for it):
Buffer
Mark of the Wild and Thorns are buffs that will be appreciated a lot. This is something they expect from you in all roles, unless there are multiple druids in the group. Keep in mind that the same rules apply as when duoing, so only cast thorns on people that are supposed to tank.
Damage Dealer
This can be either in cat form or ranged caster damage – depends on your build and the mobs you are fighting.
Offtank
?You are responsible for everything that breaks aggro
?Watch out for mobs that break away from the group and attack casters. Try to get their aggro while watching out for them using any crowd control abilities. You want to avoid breaking their sheep spell if they use it as self-defense.
?Save in-combat rezzes for situations that would otherwise result in a wipe
?Sometimes the main tank or his main healer dies – save your ICR for those classes
Healer
?If you are a Balance or Feral Druid – tell people so they know that you are more suited to be a backup emergency healer and won’t make a good choice for a primary healer in any serious encounter.
?Come prepared with a stock of mana potions. You will not have the mana a Priest does, so alternate popping mana potions with using your innervate ability on yourself.

?Where priests react, Druids prepare. Your job is not as much to fill health bars up, but to keep them up without wasting too much mana. Get to know your group mates – how good their equipment is and how aggressive their playstyle. This helps you a lot in determining who and how to cast proactive heals. Not only does this make encounters safer and saves you mana (compared to emergency heals,) it also draws much less aggro.
?Rejuvenation is an excellent spell to use when healing a party with many people taking damage. Dropping Rejuvenation on each player taking damage will likely keep most of them topped off allowing the druid to focus his larger heals on whoever needs them most.
?Always keep a Lifebloom on the tank. Lifebloom will not only keep them healed (and can be stacked on them) but Lifebloom will also increase the tanks agro – the final burst heal will be credited to the tank (or whoever has the spell on them) and will draw the agro from the heal.
?Regrowth causes the most aggro, Healing Touch is significantly less risky, while Rejuvenation can usually be cast without a second thought. Keep this in mind when playing in a group where the tanks have problems holding aggro.
?If you draw unwanted aggro change into cat and pop a Cower, then turn into bear for the armor and stamina.
?If you are in caster form, run low on mana and have aggro on you – throw in your last heal, barkskin and change into bear.
?Remember that your rezz can be hit off during battle. Used in a timely fashion you can rezz a healer or a tank and get them back in time to turn the tide.
?If you are with the Alliance and need to decide whether to rez the paladin or the priest: Go with paladin since he has a better chance to survive a patrolling mob while he is trying to rez.
?Restock reagents after every instance. No one wants to hear that you are out of maple seeds halfway through an instance.

Healer in AoE groups
?Heal cloth casters preemptively: Casting heals when the mage is at 50% health is too late. Start casting at 90% and cancel the cast if necessary. You will have plenty of time to land a 3.5 second cast time healing touch on an AoEing mage if you heal preemptively.
?Preheal: Stack Regrowth and Rejuv on your mage(s) at the pull. This will buy you the time to get that 3.5s HT off once they start taking damage.
?Chain healing: Start with Healing Touch, then Rejuvenate, Regrowth and follow up with another Healing Touch. By this point the fight is probably nearly over so you can Rejuvenate again cast Healing Touch where it’s necessary.
Dungeons
Aside from general strategies, there are also a few important facts about the different high-level dungeons that you should be familiar with when grouping there.
Stratholme, Scholomance and Lower Blackrock Spire
Strategy
?Should there be a lack of warriors, your job will be to off-tank
?Discuss your roles and tasks if there are multiple druids present
?Watch out for curses and poisons – curing them saves a lot of mana over healing through
Drops
?All pieces of our Wildheart Rainment set drop in these dungeons; excluding our BP which drops in UBRS. Most drop off of specific boss type mobs but some pieces can drop from various trash type mobs.
Upper BlackRock Spire
Strategy
?Dragonkin can be hibernated – take advantage of that.
?Due to this fact druids make excellent pullers in some parts of UBRS.
?Mortal Strike - UBRS is the first place most healers experience Mortal Strike. MS will not only do significant damage to the target but also put a short duration debuff on them that reduces healing effects by 50%.
Quests

UBRS is not just for loot, but also has to be done for several quests – including the quests for Onyxia, Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. All of them are designed as raid quests. More information about available quests can be found here: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/qlookup.html?zone=54
?Most of the smaller quests are gotten from the small villages in Burning Steppes or in Kargath.
Drops
?In UBRS drops the Wildheart Vest. This BP drops from General Drakkisath along with the breastplates for every other class.