Playstyle & Rotation
Single-Target Rotation:
- Use Tiger's Fury on cooldown, doing your best to be at low energy when it comes up as to not overcap energy.
- Maintain Rake, and upgrade its snapshot by refreshing it early if Tiger's Fury comes off cooldown.
- Maintain Rip with 5 combo points and ideally with Tiger's Fury active too. If Tiger’s Fury is not active, but your previous Rip was snapshot with Tiger’s Fury, wait until it expires before refreshing. If you have Tiger’s Fury up, you can refresh anytime in the pandemic window (less than 5.8 seconds remaining).
- Use Berserk on cooldown, used with or immediately after Tiger’s Fury.
- Use Convoke the Spirits on cooldown (if talented), paired with Tigers Fury and Berserk.
- Use Feral Frenzy / Frantic Frenzy (if talented) on cooldown and you have low combo points.
- Cast Ferocious Bite with 5 combo points if Rip is not in its pandemic window (less than 5.8 seconds remaining) or you would downgrade the Rip (Tiger’s Fury is not active).
- Maintain Moonfire if Lunar Inspiration is talented.
- Cast Chomp on cooldown (if talented), try and deplete energy before it comes off CD.
- Cast Shred to generate Combo Points and to try proc Panther’s Guile. Don’t spam Shred, always be on the lookout for proccing these extra combo points and reacting by weaving additional Ferocious Bites.
Single-Target Opener:
- Prowl
- Rake
- Shred and Moonfire (to 5 combo points).
- Tiger's Fury
- Rip
- Berserk
- Feral Frenzy (if talented) + Ferocious Bite
- Convoke the Spirits if talented
AoE Opener:
- Prowl
- Rake
- Swipe (to 5 combo points)
- Tiger's Fury
- Primal Wrath
- Berserk
- Feral Frenzy / Frantic Frenzy + Ferocious Bite
- Convoke the Spirits if talented
- Primal Wrath again to refresh Rips.
AoE Rotation:
- Use Tiger's Fury on cooldown
- Maintain Rip via Primal Wrath if it has expired or is within pandemic and you have Bloodtalons and Tiger's Fury active.
- Maintain Rip via Primal Wrath if it is going to fall off, or refresh it early if you can upgrade the snapshot with Tiger's Fury.
- Use Berserk on cooldown, used with or immediately after Tiger’s Fury.
- Use Convoke the Spirits on cooldown (if talented), paired with Tigers Fury and Berserk. Make sure Rip will last the full duration of the channel.
- If you are at 5 combo points and Rip has a healthy duration (5+ seconds), weave a Ferocious Bite if you have the energy to do so.
- If Tigers Fury is not active, but your previous Primal Wrath was snapshot with Tiger’s Fury, try to weave in a Ferocious Bite with energy+combo points if Rip has enough time remaining that it won’t fall off, in order to not downgrade the snapshot.
- Spend Apex Predator procs.
- Use Feral Frenzy / Frantic Frenzy (if talented) on cooldown and you have low combo points, you can hold briefly for cooldowns if you want to prioritise burst.
- Cast Chomp on cooldown (if talented), try and deplete energy before it comes off CD.
- Cast Swipe to generate combo points.
- Cast Rake on any priority targets.
- Cast Moonfire on any priority targets (if talented).
Note: if playing Wildstalker and Double-Clawed Rake, you should try and spread Rake more over purely Swiping.
Additional 12.0 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.
With Chomp, there is a two second grace period after reaching the 30% energy threshold, so you can actually Tiger’s Fury and then Chomp immediately after to buff it.
Sudden Ambush is a lot simpler than in The War Within as it no longer snapshots Rake, however there is still some min-max involved where you ideally don’t want to use this on Rake, instead prioritise Shred in single-target and Swipe in AOE.
Playstyle
Snapshotting
Snapshotting is a mechanic unique to Feral. It refers to a bleed maintaining a buff that is present upon its application for the entirety of its duration. The buffs that can snapshot are as follows:
Tiger's Fury: Rip, Rake, Rips applied through Primal Wrath, Lunar Inspiration Moonfire, and Feral Frenzy (including Frantic Frenzy).
Pouncing Strikes (Stealth): Rake - you won’t need to worry about this much, generally only applies to your openig Rake in combat, however for Night Elf you can utilise Shadowmeld to apply this more frequently.
Snapshotting can be quite important, although it's simplified quite a bit in Midnight. You can refresh Rake and Moonfire early if you are upgrading the snapshot, likewise with Primal Wrath you will want to reapply your Rips immediately in AOE to upgrade them all. For regular Rip, try and cast inside of Tiger's Fury as soon as it needs refreshing. If you apply a Rip at the start of Tiger’s Fury, you can often refresh right before it falls off to ensure it lasts until the next Tiger’s Fury.
Pandemic
The Pandemic mechanic refers to any DoT maintaining up to 30% of its remaining duration when refreshed early. This allows you not to lose any uptime while refreshing early and also, in combination with snapshotting, allows for a longer duration on your stronger Bleeds.
It should be noted that Circle of Life and Death also influences the pandemic, and generally you only need to learn to follow the pandemic timers with Circle, as even if you’re playing without it, there’s still a large window to refresh in and you will never accidentally refresh early. Whereas if you learn
The Pandemic timers for your DOTs (with Circle) are: