Arathi Basin for druids in WoW Forever

If you’ve queued Arathi Basin on a druid and stood at the gate unsure whether to guard the near base, ride for the Blacksmith or heal whoever got there first, you’ve met the question this map puts to every druid, because we can do all four jobs and the team rarely says which one it needs. This guide works through it, from the rules and the arithmetic of the resource race to what a druid does at each node, for every spec.

Whilst I’ve spent years on druids across both factions, a fair share of them stood on the Blacksmith flag with a Moonfire ticking on whoever touched it, Forever has only been live since 4 November 2026 and I haven’t yet timed one of this map’s rules on the live client. The guide was first written before launch, from the Classic rules, Forever’s development notes and the community’s map guides, and updated for the live game on 7 November 2026.

The short version

If you only want to know where to stand and why, these are the thirteen calls the guide turns on, each with its reason and a link to the detail, and if you’d rather have them on paper, the cheat sheet further down prints on one page.

Before we start

This guide assumes you’re at or near 60, or at least in a bracket where your form kit is complete (Travel Form arrives at 30 in Classic, and that matters more on this map than any talent). It assumes you know the movement and shifting basics from Balance druid PvP mechanics, because I link to them rather than teach them twice, and that you’ve set up nameplates and the battleground graphics profile from the settings guide. It’s written for solo queue first (a random team, nobody in charge), with the premade version split out where the druid’s job changes. It doesn’t assume a spec, and where the 35/0/16 Balance and Restoration hybrid this site is built around does something differently, the guide says so.

Anything Blizzard has published about Forever, in its notes, its articles or its live hotfixes, is stated plainly below, but Blizzard hasn’t published Arathi Basin’s own rules for Forever, so every map rule here is the Classic one, from the Classic guides or the community server data, and says so where it’s used. The About page explains in full how to read these guides.

The map knowledge here is the community’s, and this guide only adds the druid reading of it. Seksixeny’s Arathi Basin guide at Icy Veins and RenataKane’s Classic strategy guide at Wowhead are the two every rule here was checked against, and the second has the team strategies the premade section builds on. The heights and distances come from the battleground map data in the TrinityCore and CMaNGOS projects, which are community server rebuilds rather than Blizzard’s code, so this guide treats them as Classic evidence and no more. The Warcraft Wiki editors keep the patch history that tells you which numbers came later, and Kaivax’s Forever development notes are where the Forever facts start, with his 5 November hotfixes and known issues list the live posts they’ve been checked against since launch.

Arathi Basin in Forever

Arathi Basin is essentially a resource race, two teams of fifteen fighting over five nodes (bases, each one a banner you capture) and earning resources for every one they hold, with the first team to 2000 taking the match, as in Classic. The five are the Stables, the Gold Mine, the Blacksmith, the Lumber Mill and the Farm. Forever’s development notes, from the first post on 24 September to the 2 November notes, don’t mention Arathi Basin once, and nor do the 5 November hotfixes or the known issues list, so nothing published changes the map itself. What did change is the druid’s kit, and these are the changes you’ll feel on this map, each linked to where it matters:

• Hurricane, which has no cooldown in Forever, so a defender can drop it over the banner whenever two try to cap at once.
• Roots and Overgrowth, because Roots work indoors and Overgrowth keeps them on up to three targets at once, which is the heart of the hybrid’s defence.
• Swiftmend, which now needs your own HoT on the target, so a Restoration defender keeps one rolling on themselves.
• Wild Growth, now a 3 second cast, which makes it a spell you plan rather than an instant you press.
• Damage, because the final notes (Blizzard’s last patch notes, posted two days before launch) raised Starfire’s base damage by about 40% and put damage increases behind the Cat side of Feral.
• Auras, since Leader of the Pack no longer stacks with Moonkin Form’s crit aura, and how far the Moonkin one reaches, which decides where a premade puts the two, is still unsettled.
• Polymorph, which Travel Form and Moonkin Form make you immune to by their live tooltips, whilst Bear and Cat are immune only by the Classic rule, which helps a roamer arrive in one piece.
• Potions and War Stomp, because potions and racials, War Stomp included, work in forms by Blizzard’s druid deep dive, so a Tauren defender can stun five cappers without leaving Moonkin Form.
• Plainsrunning, which the 26 October notes doubled to 2% a stack, up to 60%, and took it off mounts, and the 5 November hotfix stopped it stacking in the preparation phase, so nobody leaves the gate already stacked (more under the roamer).

Capturing a node is a channel on the banner, 8 seconds in the WoW Classic guides and broken by any damage or stun, after which the node sits contested for 60 seconds and only then becomes yours. The 8 is the least certain of those numbers, because the wiki’s patch history has the channel at 10 seconds until patch 3.2.0. Whilst a node is contested it earns nothing for either side and its graveyard belongs to nobody, and if the team that held it clicks it back inside those 60 seconds it’s theirs again at once, which is the whole case for a defender who stays alive.

Every node has a graveyard beside it, and each start has its own, and you rise at the nearest one your team holds in waves every 30 seconds, in Classic. So a defender who dies on a node they still hold is back beside it inside half a minute, whilst a defender who dies after the banner has been assaulted rises somewhere else, which is why the 8 seconds of the channel matter more than the 60 that follow. The buildings also hold power-ups in Classic, Berserking (30% more damage for a minute) and Restoration (health and mana), which respawn on a timer. Later server data adds a Speed power-up too, and no source says whether Classic or Forever has one. The figure below shows where the five nodes sit, with the Blacksmith in the middle and each start closest to a node of its own.

Read from the Horde side on the community map data, the Farm is the node you take for free at the start, the Blacksmith is the crossroads every reinforcement passes, and the Stables are the long ride, which is the shape every role below works with.

Arathi Basin is live in Forever, one of four battlegrounds beside Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley and the new Darkspear Islands, which uses Arathi Basin’s node rule in all but name (four capture points, more for holding more, first to 2000, or “Arathi Basin-style” as Sam Okonkwo puts it), though its central flag changes the job enough that it gets its own guide. Which levels can queue it is still open, because the Forever guides and the client data disagree on the brackets and client data isn’t a queue anyway, and no Classic source gives a time limit (modern Arathi Basin has 25 minutes, and that’s retail).

On rewards, Marks of Honor now stack to 30 rather than 20, the Honour cap went from 15,000 to 25,000 on 1 October, but the PvP vendors are temporarily unavailable by Kaivax’s known issues list of 5 November, so marks and Honour can be earnt but not spent yet. Three marks for a win and one for a loss, with The Defilers and The League of Arathor as the reputations, is the Classic rule and what the Forever guides report, and nobody has published Forever’s Honour per match, so this guide doesn’t guess it.

Three bases, in numbers

The resource race comes down to rates rather than totals, because a team’s resources come in ticks (a fixed amount at a fixed interval) and the interval shortens as you hold more nodes. The table below gives the Classic rates, and every role later in the guide is built on it, because the race is for time on nodes rather than kills, and once you know the numbers you know where to stand.

Here’s the arithmetic, on the community server rates. If you hold three bases and they hold two, you earn 100 a minute and they earn 67, so from a level start you reach 2000 at twenty minutes with them on about 1330. If you’re 400 behind at three bases to two, you close the gap at 33 a minute and draw level in twelve minutes.

One node changing hands at three to two drops you from 100 a minute to 67 and lifts them from 67 to 100, so your 33 a minute lead becomes a 33 a minute deficit, a swing of 67 a minute for one banner, and that swing is what makes a single node worth fighting for. The assault costs the holders straight away too, because a contested node earns nothing, so for the 60 seconds of the contest the old three to two becomes two to two and the defenders’ lead is gone before the node has even changed colour.

Four bases is where the rate doubles rather than creeps, from 100 to 200 a minute, which is why a team on four can lose a fight in the middle and still win the match. Five bases is 1800 a minute, so a team that holds all five for 67 seconds wins from nothing, which is why the one thing never to do in solo queue is let your own team’s last node go quiet whilst everyone chases kills, because a five-cap ends a match faster than a group can ride back.

The one and two base ticks are where the sources split, because Wowhead’s Classic guide gives 11 and 10 seconds (55 and 60 a minute rather than 50 and 67) whilst the community server code gives the 12 and 9 in the table, so neither pair is settled for Forever. The conclusion stands either way, because three, four and five bases agree in every source. The figure below draws the rates side by side, and the two steps worth looking at are the climb to three bases and the doubling at four.

Node by node

Each node is essentially a banner, a building and a graveyard, and the druid’s job at each one depends on the ground around it more than the building itself. The distances and heights below come from the community map data, which rebuilds the Classic map, the distances as straight lines (roads run longer) and the heights measured from the Blacksmith, which sits in the middle in every sense. Each one is written for both factions, because your near node is the Farm if you’re Horde and the Stables if you’re Alliance, and the job is the same with the names swapped.

The Blacksmith

The Blacksmith is the centre of the map, 158 yards from the Lumber Mill and about 250 from each of the other three, which makes it the node every reinforcement passes and every roamer checks first. Wowhead’s guide warns it can become a trap if you get surrounded. A team that commits everything here also leaves its other nodes bare. Its graveyard is the one most worth holding, since it puts your dead back in the middle of the map.

For a druid, the Blacksmith is the node where the ground helps a caster most and a lone defender least. The building is a wall to break line of sight against, the flag sits outside it in the open, and anyone assaulting it can be reached from three sides, so this guide recommends two defenders there in solo queue, not one, with a druid as the one who stays. When you don’t get that second defender, the fight is Holding Blacksmith alone from the mechanics guide, which walks a Rogue and a Priest arriving from the Farm road.

The Lumber Mill

The Lumber Mill sits on a ledge in the south-west, about 56 yards above the Blacksmith and the highest node on the map, with a road that winds up to it and a drop that comes straight down. The wiki notes that Mages and Priests slow-fall off it to defend the Blacksmith, and Wowhead’s Classic guide adds the danger that comes with the height, a Priest on the ledge using Mind Control to walk you off it. It’s the node where height matters, because a caster on the edge can see the Blacksmith road and reach anyone climbing.

This guide recommends the Lumber Mill ledge as the best seat on the map for a Balance druid, because 30 yards of range with Nature’s Reach (the Balance talent that lengthens it) on top and a view of the road below turns every assault into a walk under Moonfire and Roots. Stand back from the edge, though, because Mind Control and knockbacks are how ledge defenders die, and nothing published says whether a druid takes less fall damage in any form, so don’t count on it. Going down is quick and coming back up is slow, so if you drop to help the Blacksmith, you’ve left the Lumber Mill for at least the climb, and you should say so in chat.

The Farm

The Farm is the Horde’s near node in the south-east, 193 yards from the Horde gate and level with the middle of the map. Icy Veins notes it’s closer to the Blacksmith by land than the Stables are, which matters for how fast it can be reinforced. For the Horde it’s the node you take for free at the start and the one that quietly loses you the match when everyone forgets it, and for the Alliance it’s the deepest back-cap on the map, 628 yards from their gate (679 from their graveyard).

The Farm is open ground with buildings scattered round the banner, which makes it a good node for one druid to hold against one or two attackers, with Roots and the buildings, and a bad one to hold against five. A group of five will cap it whatever you do, so when a big push comes, the job becomes the early call and the delay, then the call for reinforcements, not the last stand.

The Stables

The Stables are the Alliance near node in the north-west, 143 yards from their gate, and the Icy Veins guide describes them as usually quiet. For the Alliance it’s home, and for the Horde it’s the back-cap that’s 672 yards from your gate (715 from your graveyard) and rarely worth a group of more than one.

This guide recommends sending a druid as that one. A Feral in Prowl can reach the Stables unseen, and a Balance or hybrid in Travel Form can get there and leave again faster than most of the people sent to stop them, and a back-cap at the Stables pulls defenders away from the Blacksmith even when it fails. Two people there in solo queue is one too many, because the second one is a player the middle needed.

The Gold Mine

The Gold Mine is the north-east node, sat in a pit about 66 yards below the Blacksmith and the lowest point on the map. Icy Veins calls it the hardest node from which to reach the others, and the shape explains why, because everything at the bottom is short sightlines and a long climb out, and anything coming down the road can see you long before you see it.

For a druid the Mine is a node where Roots and Hurricane work well and range doesn’t, because the pit pulls every fight in close. This guide rates a Feral or a Bear above a Balance druid there, and a Restoration druid at the bottom with two allies is close to unbreakable for a small group. Nobody has said whether the mine’s interior counts as indoors for Travel Form, and Roots work indoors in Forever either way.

Solo queue

Solo queue is essentially fifteen people with fifteen plans, and the druid who does best in it is the one who does the job the team is missing rather than the one they’d prefer.

At the gate, look at who’s going where. The near node (the Farm for Horde, the Stables for Alliance) is taken by one or two players at the start, the rest of the team rides for the Blacksmith and one of the side nodes, and someone always forgets to stay. If nobody has said they’re holding the near node, this guide recommends taking it yourself, because a druid holds it better than anyone, and it’s one of the team’s three bases, with the other two down to whoever takes the Blacksmith and a side node. If a big push comes, the job becomes the delay and the call for reinforcements, not the last stand.

In the first two minutes, the map settles into three to two either way, and the druid’s job is to make sure your three stay yours. If your team has three, defend or roam between them. If you have two, the third you take is worth more than any kill, so roam with Moonfire up and pick the node where the defenders are fewest. If you finish a match not knowing where you should have been, the battleground review checklist is the way to find out.

When the game is lost, which happens, the druid’s job changes to the five-cap. A team on four bases needs one more to end it in a minute, so the last node you hold is the one to defend with everything you have, and a druid who stays on it buys the time to turn a five-cap into a long match. A loss at 1600 still earns more reputation and Honour than a loss at 800, since both scale with resources in Classic.

Every druid role

Arathi Basin has four jobs, and a druid can do every one of them, which is both the reason we’re welcome in any team and the reason we’re so often in the wrong place. Below, each role gets what it is, how to do it, how each spec does it, and when not to.

Which spec does what

Every spec has a home on this map, whatever the folklore says about Arathi Basin belonging to Balance and Restoration. Each spec is better at something here than the other two, and whichever you play, the near node is yours if nobody has claimed it (hold it, and when a big push comes, delay it and call for reinforcements), as shown below:

• Balance, the best denial on the map, with Moonfire, Insect Swarm and Hurricane breaking caps from 30 yards and the Lumber Mill ledge giving you range nobody else gets. Starfire’s base damage went up about 40% in the final notes, which makes a hard-cast Starfire on a rooted capper a real threat, and my read of the final notes covers when it’s worth the cast.
• Feral, the best roamer and, if a click leaves your form alone, the best clicker, with Prowl for back-caps, Bear for the longest stand on a banner, and the damage increases in the final notes behind it.
• Restoration, the anchor, the player who turns two defenders into a node that holds. A Restoration druid at the Blacksmith with two allies is, by this guide’s reckoning, the hardest single thing to break on the map.
• The 35/0/16, recommended here as a defender, at the Blacksmith with a partner or on the Lumber Mill ledge alone, as argued in the defender role, because the hybrid is the only build with every denial tool and a heal for itself.

In a premade

A premade (a group that queues together, up to the full fifteen) changes the druid’s job in one way, which is that you’re told where to be, and it’s worth agreeing who does what before the gates open. The Classic strategies in RenataKane’s Wowhead guide are the place to start, and the druid’s place in each is below:

• Three and hold, the team takes the near node, the Blacksmith and one side node, and holds them. The druid is a defender, ideally the near node’s lone defender, because a druid holds it against one or two attackers, and against a big push delays it and calls for reinforcements. This is where this guide puts the 35/0/16.
• Five, five and five, three groups of five take the Blacksmith, the Lumber Mill and the Gold Mine, and whichever group rides past the near node drops one player to cap it on the way, so that group arrives four strong. Each group wants a healer, and a Restoration druid is a good one, whilst Feral and Balance druids slot into any group as damage and denial.
• Seven, seven and one, two groups of seven and one player on the near node. The one is a druid, and that druid’s job is to hold it, and if a big push comes, to delay, call for reinforcements early, and survive.
• Auras, Moonkin Form’s crit aura and Leader of the Pack don’t stack in Forever, so if the Moonkin aura only reaches your party in practice, put a Moonkin and a Feral in different groups so both work, and if it reaches the whole raid, where you put a Feral doesn’t change it. The live Leader of the Pack tooltip says it “cannot be used together with Moonkin Aura”, and whilst the live Moonkin Form tooltip gives its aura to “all party or raid members within 45 yards”, Leader of the Pack’s reaches only “party members within 45 yards”. The deep dive and the 16 October notes disagree on the Moonkin aura’s reach (party-wide against raid-wide), and its tooltip’s 3% spell crit conflicts with the 2 November notes’ “all types of critical strikes”, so its real reach in a battleground raid, and which crit it raises, are both unsettled.

Calls matter more in a premade, because the team is listening, and a defender who calls “3 inc farm” at first sight is the reason the roamers arrive before the banner is clicked.

Before the gates open

The checklist below is for the minute before the gates open, written in your own voice so you can read it straight off the page. It assumes the settings guide’s battleground graphics profile is already on.

• Kit
• Nature’s Grasp up, and HoTs rolling on myself before the gates open
• Mana and health potions in the bags, which work in forms (the fishing guide covers the fish they come from)
• Travel Form and Moonfire on keys I can reach without looking
• Plan
• I know which node I’m going to and whether I’m defending, assaulting, roaming or healing
• I know who is holding our near node, or I’m holding it
• I know the call format, a number and the node
• Settings
• Enemy nameplates on, with cast bars, so I see who’s capping
• The battleground graphics profile on, with view distance at 5 or more

Arathi Basin rewards the druid who reads the map before the fight, and the arithmetic is simple enough to carry in your head once you’ve seen it. Take the near node when nobody else will, keep a DoT on every capper and call every attack early, and your team should learn to leave the Blacksmith to you.

The guide is corrected in its change log as live matches settle the Classic rules it leans on. The build it hangs off is in the Restokin build, and the techniques behind every role are in Balance druid PvP mechanics.

Contributing to this guide

If you’ve timed a capture, a tick or a resurrection wave in a live match, or you can show me a rule here that’s wrong on the live client, I want to hear it, and I’ll credit you by name when I correct the guide. The way that doesn’t get lost is an issue on the Restokins GitHub, with a clip or a screenshot of the score if you have one. Every claim this guide still rests on a precedent for is on the open questions page, as a question anyone can settle in game.