Druid PvP Guide
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:
In Wrath of the Lich King, 1 on 1 Feral vs Melee situations, you will generally stay in cat form unless they severely outgears you. When you are low on health, make sure you insta-cyclone them or bash them before you heal, you can also use an inferior Entangling Roots on melee classes.
Below level 62, Cat Form fares poorly since the druid lacks stunlock capabilities.
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.
