Balance or Feral for leveling?

[Schizo]

I'm leveling a druid and right now he is 25. Will feral still be the best for leveling or will balance be any good? If leveling balance is doable what build would you use?

[mamacita]

Balance is best after lvl 58 when u get outland greenies.

[Stardust]

i lvled balance from like lvl 40 cause without moonkin form its kinda sucky and i enjoyed it alot; tried feral too but it was too boring

[artan]

borring or not feral will allways be more efective , you are a mele class aka no downtime.

Also you allways have a spot in any instance as a tank!

[Ufalah]

I have to agree, feral is the way to go.

After a fight if you are low on hp, just HoT up and keep going. If you are balance you are probably OOM or wasting mana healing lol.

As the above poster said, you can tank as well. Very nice when leveling.

[fijo]

try both i mean from leveling in outlands with my druid i collected both a feral green items and boomkin greens and i would switch when i got bored of one

and since blizz is adding that talent switching thing u can do it now easier

[Squirralfire]

Feral benefits to leveling:
- Stealth
- Tanking
- Not using mana to dps, so its there to heal you.
- Speed increase.

[DiscoMoonkin]

theortically you can start at 50

sunken temple has the blood fire talon, spire of hakkar, featherskin cape, and windsarong legging

BRD has the boots off the golemancer and robe of loregrain

[Schoengeist]

Yes, feral certainly has its advantages for leveling - at least from 1-70.
- virtually no downtime for drinking (-although even ferals have to drink water after long fights/shifts/heals/many pulls)
- instant invites into instance groups - tanks are always in high demand
- bearform for doing more difficult quests / taking on whole groups of enemies
- considering there's not much spelldmg equip in early levels, caster classes have a "gear disadvantage" in early levels which only gets better from lvl55 onwards.

For lvl70-80 things might look a little different.
- With decent gear (from heroics/karazhan/hero badges) moonkins now do an insane amount of damage (easily reaching 1k-1,3k spelldmg at lvl70). They kill faster / just as fast as an equally geared druid cat, yet they don't rely on slow energy regeneration or restealthing, plus they do their dmg from range.
- Downtime for drinking is reduced to a minimum (the "oomkin times" are long gone) and will get better with 3.02 and even better with the new gear in wotlk which heavily favours +spirit.
- With the changes to Moonkins (improved aoe-capabilities, roots now work indoors, inbuilt aggro reduce etc.), owls will be much more welcome to instances/raid groups.
- the new spellpower mechanism greatly favors moonkin healing, helping us with questing/soloing
- compared to moonkins, pvp'ing is a pain for ferals at lvl70, i doubt things will dramatically change in Wotlk.

All in all, things are looking better for Moonkins at later levels - at lvl70, ferals no longer have the clear advantage when i comes to leveling/questing/general gameplay.

Just my 2 cents

[midjetboy]

I am currently resto. To level to 80 i will lvl as balance, even though i have a decent feral set. Balance is more fun for me. If you are worried about mana make a dreamstate spec. You will have mana regen coming out of your ass = hardly any downtime. With wotlk coming, and the dual spec system one spec as a dreamstate spec for lvling and the other as resto for healing. Healers are in demand as much as tanks are these days. Also a boomkin can heal all the normal dungeons, so balance for lvling wouldnt be too bad. Comes down to preference, do u want to single target burn one mob as a awesome dancing bird thing, or do you want to pull 5+ mobs and kill em all slowly but still survive. Feral for lower than 60, balance for above 60

[delage35]

I am currently resto. To level to 80 i will lvl as balance, even though i have a decent feral set. Balance is more fun for me. If you are worried about mana make a dreamstate spec. You will have mana regen coming out of your ass = hardly any downtime. With wotlk coming, and the dual spec system one spec as a dreamstate spec for lvling and the other as resto for healing. Healers are in demand as much as tanks are these days. Also a boomkin can heal all the normal dungeons, so balance for lvling wouldnt be too bad. Comes down to preference, do u want to single target burn one mob as a awesome dancing bird thing, or do you want to pull 5+ mobs and kill em all slowly but still survive. Feral for lower than 60, balance for above 60

Tanking damage went way up, so I wouldnt even say slowly anymore. Its really melee vs. cast preference... whatever you like to play most since both grind very quickly

[Spoonerism]

yet they don't rely on slow energy regeneration or restealthing,....

puzzled by this.... this is a bit like saying that boomkins have to wait a long time to cast wrath.

energy is ideal for soloing and questing, and as for stealth if your gear allows you to kill the mob in 3 seconds yes your stealth CD of 10 seconds seems long, but if your geared well enough to do just that why not just run to the mob or feral charge cat without stealth? oh noes I cant ravage for 90% of the mobs hp? :

and if your gear is crap, you will take 10 sec+ to kill the first mob anway.

the other thing is the way gear and mechanics work at the moment, its quicker to grind by gathering mobs in bear and 'aoe tanking' them down with swipe - it would not be crazy to level as tanking spec and do 99% of grinding in bear, and just use stealth to bypass the mobs you dont need to kill.

I'm feral now, I was feral from lvl 10, I'll be feral at 80, guess how I'm levelling? ;D

just so you know the resto druids in my guild/raid comm are gonna be levelling as balance - mainly because their current healing gear is fine for levelling in, rather than using a hap-hazard set of leftover feral/rogue items that no-one else wanted.

[xebtria]

I'm leveling as bear in a mixture of bear vs cat spec. e.g. i'll take king of the jungle to get max profit out of enrage, then I'll going to pull as many mobs as possible, something between 10 and 20 should work well, pop enrage + barkskin and swipe everything away. then regen ot max, next round.

should go very well.

[Flanky]

I leveled from 1-70 as feral, and its the best spec no matter what. You got no downtime, as your crits heal you + you got stealth, which helps in quests BIG TIME + you got bear form, gives you a chance to kill 5 mobs at same lvl.

Alltho if you get good moonkin gear at lvl 70 you can do good damage, but you will, no matter what, have a larger down time.

Im going for moonkin myself tho, as I got no feral gear :P

[Crazhr]

Well yea bear aoe is very very nice now, BUT so is barskin->starfall>-hurricane.
A druid from my guild said he stopped using wrath when he is quest and is just aoeing everything down.

But all in all its just a question about how do you like to play, and no mater if you like to be a caster/melee/tank/healer then the difrence in /played to 80 is not going to be very big. Yes ofc you can maybe get to 80 3-4 maybe even 5 weeks before alot of other players but its still a very small difrence, when we are thinking about the time to takes to gather gear, raid/pvp or what ever you want to do in the +1year untill the next expansin.

[Mikki]

I know people are Bear AoE alot and with the new change to PotP this will probably become more common. But i like Cat Grinding. I never do any downtime, I kill each mob in an average of 10 secs. And i flick to Bear to use Berserk at its just OP for quick downing of Mobs.

But with AoE you get downtime. Weather to heal or Drink. In Cat form i got nothing at all if i stick to single target. I find it rediculasly easy and quick.

[talibear]

borring or not feral will allways be more efective , you are a mele class aka no downtime.

Also you allways have a spot in any instance as a tank!

wrong answer, you have to spec and if you dont pick the right talents you can only do both ok, but if you want good meelee dps then you will have to sacrifice some bear talents.

[Rimba]

Actually, levelingwise, you should be able to tank any instance as cat specced. I recall reading some blue posts to that effect, though I couldn't be bothered digging them up right now.

Just like you can heal any leveling instance not in a healing spec. It won't be as easy doing either not properly specced but you shouldn't have any great difficulties.

[mechleader]

ATM I enjoy feral.

Feral Pros to balance

You can tank or DPS
You can level almost limitlessly no downtime
You can survive anything
You can solo lots more than other classes could hope to.

Balance

You can do good burst
You can heal or DPS

[Wilshire153]

After I got moonkin form barkskin and hurricane I tanked a lot of instances as moonkin until outland.