5x Druid - Which Heirloom Gear to Pick?

[Slats]

So I've decided that I just cant be bothered waiting till Cataclysm to level a new team. I've been wanting to try 5x Druids for a long time and I will not be using RAF.

I have been grinding out triumph badges with my main team. I intend to use all my Stonekeepers Shards, and Tradeskills to have Gems and all the BoE Crafted Gear and Honor Tokens I can for them at 80. I'm just about ready to blow 245 Triumph Badges per character on the Heirloom items and I'm not sure which ones I should buy for the leveling journey.

Should I level as 5x Feral? 1x Feral, 3x Boomkin and 1x Tree? 5x Boomkin? I'd like to be able to do a daily instance, but I do intend to do quite a bit of questing also.

Hopefully I"ll hit 80 before Cata comes out (I'm assuming at least 2 months of casual play should get me there) and I intend to have their secondary spec as a 5x Boomkin PvP Spec and hopefully the Stonekeeper Shards Income from my mains will allow me to purchase 3 or 4 key pieces of gear as they level.

Any thoughts or suggestions greatly appreciated. At the moment I'm leaning towards The Feral/Rogue Gear for the Primary and the Leather/Caster gear for the other 4 so I can do instances easily.

Cheers,

-Slats

[Maxion]

I agree with your leaning, that'll give you the best stats for the most useful combination of tank+3dps+healer.

[Littleburst]

At the moment I'm leaning towards The Feral/Rogue Gear for the Primary and the Leather/Caster gear for the other 4 so I can do instances easily.

Cheers,

-Slats

I'd agree with that.

I don't know if you have cloth BoE gear allready, if not then you might want to take those to avoid grinding another set when you want to level casters. Could even pick leather for the feral and 4x cloth. Since you'll probably won't level 5 cloth chars.

[ghonosyph]

I chose to level my 4 druids as boomkin, bought cloth shoulders and chest, staff, trinkets. I have a 5th druid(i know it doesn't apply to your situation atm) which is already 80 and geared as both feral and boomkin. If your intent is to quest, by all means go the feral route on all 5. You will kill stuff so quickly, and in lower levels running too and fro will be much quicker. Downtime will be less as well. This has always been the plus side of druid leveling, slow to no downtime at all as feral.

My thoughts on leveling as boomkin: Well i didn't really want to grind out a full set of boa gear for feral because i'd already ground down the caster gear for my shaman team(and i intend on leveling priests as well so thats why i got cloth)

I use my druid already 80 to tank instances but i've found that 4 boomkins in pvp once you get starfall and typhoon to be pretty much /faceroll to win. Its faster than instances, though you can still do daily instances if you had tree feral and 3 dps(any would work i would think caster or feral). Any way you roll it it will do well, though highly gear dependant once you get higher level. All in all druids are a ton of fun :)

[Slats]

Aweseom I'm really looking forward to leveling them up :) Thanks for all the advice guys.

[Zub]

To be noted,
I had decided to level my hunter, and got all the mail attack power heirlooms for him. got him to 71 and decided i infact wanted to level my mage.

Opened a GM ticket saying that i got the wrong ones etc, and asking if there was a way to change the heirlooms.
a few days later i had all the emblems and shard in my mailbox :-)
not sure it will work for you, but worth a try if you get it wrong somehow.

I would also suggest the melee leather for the main, and caster leather for the rest.
That, or (if you're like me and don't really care about armor) get CLOTH gear for all, and don't worry about grinding heirlooms ever again,
after all, i use them mostly for the xp+ and trinkets.

[moosejaw]

For those who are going to use a non-druid to tank, skip the boa weapon and look forward to picking up new swords and shields as you travel through instances. It gives me something to look forward to on the grind up. Makes each instance not as boring as it could be. :)