Flight Form

Flight Form (aka The Raven or Storm crow) is a level 30 Druid ability that is learned after training Expert Riding. This form is only usable in areas where flying is allowed and unlocked.

Tips and tactics

 * This form is instant cast, so it can be used to beat a strategic retreat if a fight is going badly. As soon as you are out of combat, it is possible to attempt an instant upwards escape.
 * Skydiving! With practice and if you are high enough in the air when you start, you can dismount or unshift, cast an instant spell, and then shift back before hitting the ground and dying.  In a case where you are being chased aerially, this allows you to heal and re-buff without making yourself vulnerable by landing.  Be very careful of crashing when you do this!
 * Flight Form can of course be used to avoid taking falling damage, by shifting before hitting the ground.
 * Flight Form can be used to scout or bypass small obstacles quickly without the inconvenience of taking the time to mount up.
 * This form can be used to quickly bypass content in a manner similar to that of stealth, but with differing limitations. It is also very useful for browsing for herbs, minerals, or rare-spawn mobs.
 * If there is something you want to loot (herb, skinnable corpse) but there are some (up to three) nearby ground mobs that you don't want to fight, go to a safe distance and cast Nature's Grasp on yourself. Shift back to Flight Form and fly to your target area. Go to zero altitude, aggro the mobs and make sure they get rooted some distance away from the object you want to loot. Once they are rooted, you can stay in Flight Form (stay at zero altitude or you will break combat and reset the mobs) and loot the object at your leisure, after which you can just fly up and away.
 * As of Patch 2.3, your corpse will no longer stay in the air if you die in flight. Your corpse will fall to the ground at the point you died in the air.
 * In order to do a loop, enter the command /mountspecial. This only works while on the ground and not moving.  There are two actions, Pitch Up and Pitch Down, that can be key-mapped to permit gradual loops in motion.
 * Moonbomb: In a heavily farmed area you can gain an advantage by scouting for mobs and Moonfiring immediately after reverting to caster form and before landing.
 * RAWRbomb! Shift out of Flight Form while airborne, shift to Bear Form, and Feral Charge your target before you land.  Practice until you can accurately land on top of your victims.  Important note: You must have the restoration talent Furor to get enough rage while falling to be able to Feral Charge; if not, you perform a RAWRsplat (unless you time Enrage perfectly).
 * Sneaky Sneaky Sir: You can even shift out of Flight Form, pop into Cat Form, then Prowl all before hitting the ground. Perfect for surprise attacks!  This also allows you to shift out from a higher altitude, with the Cat Form's inherent lowering of fall damage.
 * You cannot be dismounted while in Flight Form or Swift Flight Form by a mob's Daze effect. This makes mobs like the Monstrous Kaliri in the Skettis area not nearly as annoying to Druids as they are to normal mount users.
 * Flight Kite: In your Flight Form, at zero altitude, you are able to aggro ground mobs. You can instantly break combat by gaining altitude.  And, since you move at the speed of a ground mount, you can easily kite by getting close, getting aggro, and fly away; when you've gotten it far enough, lift off and back they go. Let them hit you once in a while for the damage from Thorns to keep them interested. This mechanic can be used to distract mobs around a resource node or quest object that another player can then loot safely. While this is also possible with a normal flying mount, Flight Form has no chance to be dismounted by getting hit from behind.
 * While the Flight Form doesn't run along the ground, it does seem to act as a ground mount at zero altitude. If you fly down and touch the ground, you bounce up to standard flying beast height, and follow the terrain more slowly than when flying.  This seems to allow movement-affecting effects to apply.  It's also possible to fall off of things in Flight Form while doing this.  You do take falling damage after sliding down steep slopes, unless you have a moment of free-fall, prompting your character to fly again.
 * Water to Flight Form: rapidly and in this order - jump straight up from the surface of the water, move forward (or backward), then shift into Flight Form.
 * Cliff escape: if you're caught in a tight spot near one of the endless Outland cliffs and don't have the time, health, or space to run far enough to drop combat, just jump off the cliff. You may have enough distance falling to break combat with the mob, and by spamming flight form you will stop yourself before you die.  Note that this is far from guaranteed; vertical distance does not break combat like ground-level distance does.
 * Farming/grinding quests: when doing quests where you have to pick up 10 items of some kind from the ground, you can fly over the item and loot it without changing out of Flight Form. If all mobs in the area only can do melee damage, you will be able to do this quest with no fighting in less than a minute.
 * Entering the command  while hovering over a flat surface will cause you to perch upon it.  Entering the command   while hovering causes you to freeze in place.
 * Escape Combat: Night Elf druids can use Shadowmeld to leave combat and then shift to Flight Form, allowing them to get out of the area. Flight Form of course breaks shadowmeld.

Lore

 * Only the most skilled and powerful of druids are able to learn the mysteries of flight.