WoW newbie looking for advice

[Monkey]

Which leads me to a couple more questions. Before I go with a Tauren Druid, it would help to know:

1. Does equipment matter for a Druid that shapeshifts? As in, do armor, weapon damage or enhancements carry over into the bear/cat form?
2. Is the Druid solo-able? Does he have crowd control?

I ask the second one because so far the little grouping I've done has been more frustrating than enjoyable. People seem to be clueless about the roles of other characters, or even simple things like pulling one target away instead of rushing in to fight all three. It's like D2 public games all over again.

1. Yes, but not everything counts. Druid forms draw benefit from the stats of their armor; Various talents higher up in each druid tree even amplify the benefit. Weapons are a different story. Weapon DPS and any damage or proc enchant will be irrelevant to a cat or bear; according to Blizzard, your paw is always just a paw and it can't be magically enchanted. This is why high-end feral weaponry typically has huge amounts of "Feral Attack Power" to make up for the absence of weapon DPS. In practical terms, a +agility enchant on a weapon is great, +damage is a waste.

2. Druids have great solo-ability once they have a range of forms. You're going to suffer at least until level 20, though. Soloing things as a druid frequently means power-shifting between forms to maximize your survivability. Open in cat with a stun, switch to bear when they come out, stun (with bash, a bear talent) when you get low and pop into caster to heal yourself, go back to bear and finish them off. And druids have an outdoor CC called 'root' that fixes the target to the ground; this makes it effective on melee, but not ranged.

Honestly though, the teens are typically bad no matter what you choose--I've spit and cursed my way through them on most classes, and reaching 20 just makes everything come together.