Feral Druid Midnight 12.0.5 Guide

Hello! I’m Drufearr and I’ve been maining Feral Druid since TBC. Throughout the years I’ve peaked in all different forms of content, but nowadays I focus on raiding with Santa Maria - Kazzak (EU), a healthy amount of mythic+ on the side, and of course, helping aspiring Ferals in whatever way I can. You can basically always find me in the Druid discord, as well as on Twitch.

Feral Druid is a melee specialization which uses energy & combo points as its resources and utilizes DoTs (damage over time effects) as the primary source of damage. A distinct feature of the spec is that downtime is common and expected, which is the first big challenge to players coming over from other melee specs.

Patch 12.0.5 Changes for Feral Druid

With patch 12.0.5, our apex talents Unseen Predator are getting a small rework:

• Unseen Predator (Rank 1) now has an additional effect – Unseen Attack damage is reduced if less than 5 combo points and 50 Energy are spent on Ferocious Bite.
• Unseen Predator (Rank 2) has been updated – Unseen Attacks increase your damage done by 8%/15% for 1 second per combo point spent to trigger it. Additional applications extend this effect.
• Unseen Predator (Rank 3) has been updated – Tiger's Fury causes you to perform an Unseen Attack for maximum damage after your next 2 combo point generating attacks. Rip and Unseen Attack damage increased by 30%.
• Unseen Slash and Unseen Swipe base damage increased by 25%.

TL;DR - Unseen Attacks damage now scales with combo points and energy spent on Ferocious Bite, rather than a flat amount. This means we go back to always spending on 5 combo points for all finishers (Rip, Ferocious Bite, Primal Wrath), as well as always pooling 50 energy before you bite. This is a marginal buff at ~0.7% for both ST and AoE.

For those who preferred the 12.0.1 playstyle of spending on 4 points and not pooling - if you really want you can still do it, as the scaling breaks even with the old flat damage at 4 (meaning you gain nothing, you lose nothing).

Alongside the spec changes, in 12.0.5 we’re also getting access to the Voidforge system, which comes with Nebulous Voidcore for bonus rolls and Ascendant Voidcores for upgrading the max ilvl on weapons/trinkets. More on how this affects us can be found in the gearing section.

Midnight Feral Druid Changes

Going into Midnight, Blizzard has attempted to streamline the spec and make it more approachable by new players. The most notable changes are the removal of Brutal Slash, Thrash, Bloodtalons, Adaptive Swarm, and Berserk: Frenzy (a.k.a Frenzyband). Even so, Feral still has to juggle up to three DoTs while reacting to different gameplay-altering procs, which keeps the rotation quite engaging. You can find the full list of changes in the official patch notes.

Notably, we press fewer builders (abilities that generate combo points) than before - Thrash being gone means one less button overall, and the removal of Brutal Slash leaves Shred as our only filler builder in single-target. In AoE, you’ll be deciding between Rake and Swipe as your go-to builder, depending on target count and what talents you choose to play.

The damage profile of the spec has been adjusted on top, with the spec being a lot less bursty than before as Berserk Frenzy has been removed, and Claw Rampage nerfed on AOE to now only proc per cast rather than per target hit. This has narrowed the gap between Druid of the Claw and Wildstalker in mythic+, however the former is still generally preferred.

Some new additions to the spec include the optional talent Chomp, which is pretty simple but adds a little bit of engagement to the rotation (see rotation section), and we also have an AOE version of Feral Frenzy through the talent Frantic Frenzy.

It will take time to adjust to the changes, and while it may appeal to some, overall the changes are quite extreme with some of the fun gameplay loops of the spec gone or diminished. However, the spec will still have a similar ‘feel’ where you continue to maintain Rip and Rake, with the ability to snapshot them through Tiger's Fury while weaving in Ferocious Bite, it's just a lot more barebones now with not too much more to consider.

Midnight also comes with a new talent: Unseen Predator. This makes our Ferocious Bite proc some extra damage, as well as grant a damage buff. It’s a passive that you don’t have to think about.