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Playstyle & Rotation
Feral’s core gameplay loop revolves around maintaining damage over time effects while weaving in instant damage abilities in between and using numerous procs as they occur. We use energy and combo points as our two resources, and the rotation follows a “builder-spender” flow where we use builders to get combo points, and then use finisher abilities to spend those points.
The spec is historically slower than most melee specs, with our limiting factor being how much energy we have rather than the global cooldown (gcd). As an energy spec, our gcd is locked to 1 second and does not change with haste. Downtime during gameplay is normal and expected, and in my experience this is normally the first big hurdle for players looking to pick up the spec, especially if they’re used to the faster-paced gameplay of other melees.
As a Druid specialization, Feral has a cool shapeshifting fantasy, a lot of passive movement speed, access to a lot of different utility, self-healing through instant Regrowths (through Predatory Swiftness), a very strong on-demand defensive in Bear Form as well as more traditional cooldown-based defensives in Survival Instincts and Barkskin.
What is Pandemic?
Pandemic refers to a mechanic in WoW which applies to damage or healing over time effects and some buffs/debuffs, which allows the duration to be extended by up to 30% of the new application when the target is already affected. This means you can refresh a DoT before it fully expires without “losing” out on those few seconds that were left. The ideal window for this is commonly referred to as “pandemic range” and is an important concept to Feral Druid.
To illustrate this, here’s an example with Rake, which has a base duration of 15 seconds:
- refresh with 3s remaining, target now has a 18s dot (3s from prior dot)
- refresh with 10s remaining, target now has a 19.5s dot (only up to 30% of 15s - 4.5s from the prior dot)
In the second example, 5.5s of the dot were lost due to refreshing early - this is known as clipping.
What is Snapshotting?
Snapshotting is when a damage over time effect’s strength is determined by the state of your buffs upon applying the DoT, rather than updating dynamically as buffs are gain/lost. This is a very rare mechanic that only applies to two buffs: Tiger's Fury and Pouncing Strikes. By default, everything else is dynamic and you should always assume this is the case.
Here’s a list of DoTs that are affected by Tiger's Fury’s snapshotting properties:
Rake also benefits from Pouncing Strikes, which is why we prefer to open with Rake when in Prowl (Shadowmeld also works!). This stacks with Tiger's Fury multiplicatively - you can have both buffs for a giga Rake.
Note: How much we care about the strength of our bleeds varies. Currently:
- Rip / Primal Wrath - never matters, only refresh in pandemic.
- Rake / Lunar Inspiration - clip if you can upgrade the snapshot, refresh in pandemic otherwise. In AoE it's not worth clipping.
- Feral Frenzy - you always want buffed.
Read more about this in the rotation section below.
Single-Target Opener
- Pre-cast Algeth'ar Puzzle Box if you have it
- Prowl
- Tiger's Fury (pre-pull)
- Rake
- Berserk (potion here as well if you are using one)
- Feral Frenzy
- Rip
- Convoke the Spirits
- Ferocious Bite
The main idea of the opener is to press your cooldowns as soon as possible. Tiger's Fury is used pre-pull to get the Unseen Predator buff asap, plus we do not use the extra energy so wasting it does not matter.
If you are playing Lunar Inspiration, you can use it after you Rip, then build back to 5 combo points, Bite to spend, before pressing Convoke The Spirits. Convoke will however cast Moonfire most of the time, so you can skip manually applying it and just send the Convoke.
If you are playing Chomp, you’ll want to deplete your energy before you pull through Swiping the air, that way, you can Tiger's Fury -> Rake -> Chomp, and continue as you normally would.
If you need to hold your cooldowns for something (e.g. Crown of the Cosmos or Belo’ren), you can skip puzzlebox, Berserk and Convoke The Spirits, but still press Tiger's Fury & Feral Frenzy since their cooldown is only 30s.
Single-Target Priority
This priority list should be followed after completing your opener. It is separated into three sections since each has a different priority:
Highest Priority (Cooldowns):
- Tiger's Fury on cooldown
- Berserk on cooldown. If for whatever reason it is desynced from Tiger's Fury and/or Convoke, you should hold it until they come off cooldown.
- Feral Frenzy on cooldown
- Convoke on cooldown, if:
- Target has Rip and Rip won’t expire during Convoke The Spirits
- Tiger's Fury is active
- Berserk is active (unless you’re playing Ashamane's Guidance, in which case only every second Convoke will line up for this)
For Feral Frenzy and Convoke, ideally you have 2 or fewer combo points when you use, but sometimes that’s not possible (especially during Berserk), and using them on cooldown is more important.
Second Priority (Finishers):
- Ferocious Bite asap whenever you have an Apex Predator's Craving proc
- Rip if it is missing or in pandemic range. Always with at least 5 combo points.
- You should never clip it - it is not worth caring about the Tiger's Fury buff
- Ferocious Bite with at least 5 combo points and 50 energy
Last (Builders):
- Shred with Sudden Ambush procs
- Rake if its missing or in pandemic
- You should clip it if you would be increasing its strength
- Moonfire when playing Lunar Inspiration
- You should clip it if you would be increasing its strength
- Shred
Additional Midnight Tips
With the new talent Panther’s Guile, you will always want to be watching your combo points and reacting by weaving additional Ferocious Bites or other finishers from these combo points. We will be spamming Shred a lot, but you can’t blindly queue two in a row now in case of the proc.
Sudden Ambush is a lot simpler than in The War Within, as it no longer snapshots Rake, and instead buffs the initial damage plus guarantees a crit. This means you never want to use it on Rake, instead prioritise Shred in single-target and Swipe in AoE.
For all intents and purposes, AoE is considered to be anything with 2 or more targets.
AoE Opener:
- Prowl (can be skipped if you don’t want to stun mobs)
- Rake or Swipe to 5 combo points
- Algeth'ar Puzzle Box (if you have it)
- Tiger's Fury
- Primal Wrath
- Berserk
- Frantic Frenzy + Ferocious Bite
- Convoke the Spirits
This opener should ideally only be done once per dungeon. After the first pack, you should aim to carry over 4-5 combo points into the next pull every time, and thus you can just start with Primal Wrath and then follow the regular priorities.
AoE Priority
AoE applies to 2 or more targets.
Highest priority: Cooldowns:
- Tiger's Fury on cooldown*
- Berserk on cooldown. If for whatever reason it is desynced from Tiger's Fury and/or Convoke The Spirits, you should hold it until they come off cooldown
- Frantic Frenzy on cooldown, always during Tiger's Fury
- Read section below to find out how to do this
- Convoke The Spirits on cooldown, if:
- Targets have Rip and Rip won’t expire during Convoke
- Tiger's Fury is active
- Berserk is active (unless you’re playing Ashamane's Guidance, in which case only every second Convoke will line up for this)
For Feral Frenzy and Convoke, ideally you have 2 or fewer combo points when you use, but sometimes that’s not possible (especially during Berserk), and using them on cooldown is more important.
Second priority: Finishers:
- Ferocious Bite asap whenever you have an Apex Predator's Craving proc
- Primal Wrath if it is missing or has less than 6.5s remaining. With 5 combo points
- The breakpoint is at 6.5s instead of pandemic because you have to account for how long it takes to get to 5 combo points. It’s less of a “refresh Primal Wrath under 6.5s” and more of a “don’t spend on bite under 6.5s”
- Ferocious Bite with at least 5 combo points and 50 energy
Last: Builders:
- Rake enemies that don’t have it
- Swipe during Berserk for Claw Rampage (only for DOTC)
- Swipe with Clearcasting and/or Sudden Ambush procs
- Rake if it's missing or in pandemic.
- Important: the target thresholds depend on talents, see section below
- Swipe
Rake vs Swipe
Due to the removal of Brutal Slash, which replaced Swipe, had a cooldown and was always better than Rake, our priorities in AoE have become a lot more convoluted. Rake vs Swipe depends on target counts, and the target counts depend on which talents you’re playing:
As Wildstalker: always maintain Rake on all mobs, regardless of number of enemies.
If playing Double-Clawed Rake: always maintain Rake on all mobs, regardless of number of enemies.
As Druid of the Claw:
- No Infected Wounds + No Wild Slashes: maintain Rake on all mobs, when facing up to 5 enemies
- No Infected Wounds + Wild Slashes: maintain Rake on all mobs, when facing up to 3 enemies
- Infected Wounds + No Wild Slashes: maintain Rake on all mobs, when facing up to 8 enemies
- Infected Wounds + Wild Slashes: maintain Rake on all mobs, when facing up to 5 enemies
Do not refresh Rakes early (before pandemic) - if all enemies have Rake and none is in pandemic, use Swipe. In large target counts, you’re not expected to be able to maintain Rake on every enemy.
When facing more enemies than the designated amount, you do not use Rake at all, and only use Swipe instead.
These breakdowns assume enemies survive the entire duration of Rake, if mobs are very close to dying you should default to Swipe.
Lining up Tiger’s Fury and Frantic Frenzy
Since Tiger's Fury is a big buff, and Frantic Frenzy is a lot of our damage in AoE, you always to make sure you’re using FF during TF. Despite their misaligned cooldowns (30s and 45s), TF lasts 15s which means after using them together on pull, you can delay your second use by 3s and sneak a FF use at the very end. Afterwards, you’ll have to delay the third FF by those same 3s to sync them back up. An example of this is:
- TF: 0s 33s 63s 93s 126s 156s 186s
- FF: 0s 45s 93s 138s 186s
In practice, through downtime between packs in dungeons and other factors, this becomes a lot messier, and you end up just having to hold FF for TF most of the time.