Feral Druid Midnight Talents Guide

Section 1 and 2

The first two (top and middle) sections offer many important talents, as well as some minor choices. The following should always be taken: Grievous Wounds, Killer Instinct, Primal Fury. Unlike in mythic+, utility nodes like Maim, Remove Corruption, Soothe, Ursol's Vortex and Typhoon are rarely useful in raids, however we are forced to take some of them for pathing.

Nurturing Instinct is technically always a damage gain due to it buffing Moonfire even when you’re not playing Lunar Inspiration, since Convoke will cast the LI version regardless.

You can swap between Wild Charge and Tiger Dash based on the fight, however neither excels on a particular fight so it's entirely up to what you prefer.

Section 3

Must take talents: Instincts Of The Claw, Lycara's Teachings, Circle Of The Wild, Gift Of The Wild. All of these provide a damage gain and should be taken in every situation.

Lore Of The Grove can be taken for a minor gain, similar to Nurturing Instinct.

Once all throughput (damage) nodes are picked, you should also take Oakskin and then freely choose between:

• Fluid Form - can even be a small throughput gain since it saves you a gcd when shifting.
• Innervate - only If your healers need it, pretty good this tier)
• Forestwalk - strong but conditional on you using your free Regrowths, only pick if you do this
• 1-min Stampeding Roar - very useful for certain raid fights
• Ursine Vigor - great if you’re using Bear Form a lot.
• Lycara's Inspiration - just a bit of extra stamina at all times
• Heart Of The Wild - a good defensive when used in Bear Form since the health persists, or alternatively a strong aoe heal in human form

Talents to avoid:

• Perfectly-Honed Instincts - on paper might seem okay but basically every other talent is better unless there’s a very specific boss with 90s timers where you’d get value out of the cooldown reduction
• Incapacitating Roar / Mighty Bash - almost never useful since bosses in raids are immune to CC.
• Symbiotic Relationship - we don’t do enough healing for this to ever be relevant

Section 1

The first (or top) section of the class tree really offers two choices after you pick up your core damage talents: Remove Corruption or Maim. You can take the latter when you don’t need to dispel anything.

Section 2

In mythic+, the utility choices here are more meaningful:

• Soothe - required for pathing, some niche uses like on Berserkers in Maisara Caverns. Cyclone is basically never useful in PvE
• Typhoon - great AoE CC ability that can save your team, or just help group mobs when a caster/archer is stuck outside of melee. Can be paired with Ursol's Vortex.
• Ursol's Vortex - good for keeping mobs stacked or preventing them from running away. Examples include displacing souls on Vordaza in Maisara Caverns or the phoenix add on Rukhran in Skyreach. Can be paired with Typhoon.
• Mass Entanglement - Similar use case to Ursol's Vortex however since the duration of the root got nerfed you’re more likely to get more value out of Vortex in every situation.

Wild Charge is generally better than Tiger Dash in keys, but you can play either.

Section 3

Must take talents: Instincts Of The Claw, Lycara's Teachings, Circle Of The Wild, Gift Of The Wild. All of these provide a damage gain and should be taken in every situation.

Once all throughput (damage) nodes are picked, you should also take Oakskin and then freely choose between:

• Incapacitating Roar - very useful AoE CC, recommend to always have this
• Fluid Form - can even be a small throughput gain since it saves you a gcd when shifting.
• Ursine Vigor - great if you’re using Bear Form a lot, useful on bosses with a telegraphed big hit.
• Lycara's Inspiration - just a bit of extra stamina at all times
• Heart Of The Wild - a good defensive when used in Bear Form since the health persists, or alternatively a strong aoe heal in human form
• Forestwalk - strong but conditional on you using your free Regrowths, only pick if you do this
• 1-min Stampeding Roar - group mobility is nice to have, but this is rarely taken in keys.

Talents to avoid:

• Perfectly-Honed Instincts - on paper might seem okay but basically every other talent is better unless there’s a very specific boss with 90s timers where you’d get value out of the cooldown reduction
• Mighty Bash - while it might have niche use cases, Incapacitating Roar is better in basically every situation.
• Symbiotic Relationship - we don’t do enough healing for this to ever be relevant
• Lore Of The Grove - even if it's technically a miniscule damage gain through buffing Moonfires applied by Convoke The Spirits, we don’t really have the points to spare for it.
• Innervate - healers are not really struggling with mana in dungeons so it's better to put the point elsewhere.

Section 1

Once you take all the mandatory talents, you are left with 3 points to put between:

• Tireless Energy (TE) & Merciless Claws (MC) - the default picks for single-target
• Primal Wrath (PW) - enables us to do AoE, useful on bosses with adds and can be taken instead of the second point in Tireless Energy. Very minor ST loss (<0.5%).
• Double-Clawed Rake (DCR) - strong on council-style fights (Vaelgor and Ezzorak, Lightblinded Vanguard). You can drop either TE or MC for it as they’re about equally as good.
• Coiled To Spring - currently useless, never take in any build.

Section 2

You should always play Moment of Clarity with the new tier-set.

Additionally for single target, the following should always be taken:

• Infected Wounds (IW)
• Sudden Ambush (SA)
• Savage Fury (SF)
• Panther's Guile (PG)
• Tiger's Tenacity (TT)

For cleave fights, you can drop PG and take Rampant Ferocity.

Blood Spattered and Wild Slashes do not provide any gain on single-target, and there’s currently no situation where you should play either on any of the bosses.

Raging Fury, TT’s alternative, is really weak compared to TT and you should never pick it.

Section 3

The final section offers the most choices depending on the fight. Currently, must-pick talents for single-target are:

• Frantic Momentum & Convoke The Spirits
• Lacerating Claws & Circle Of Life And Death
• Feral Frenzy & Focused Frenzy

This leaves you with 3 points left, which can be spent between:

• Lunar Inspiration (LI)
• Apex Predator's Craving (apex)
• Ashamane's Guidance (AG)
• Carnivorous Instinct (CI)

How you spend them on single-target is mostly up to you - any combination is within ~0.2% of the best.

If you plan on taking Primal Wrath and hitting ads, you should always take Apex.

If you’re facing a boss with a damage amp (Bel’oren), you should avoid AG since that nerfs your burst.

Out of the other talents:

• Veinripper / Rip And Tear - not good enough to be taken on ST, however both are strong in council-style fights (Vaelgor and Ezzorak, Lightblinded Vanguard)
• Saber Jaws - Similar to VR/R&T, its not awful but worse than all the alternatives
• Hunger For Battle - strong on paper but the short duration and the high cost (using or even spamming Primal Wrath instead of Bite) means this talent is only situationally worth on Vaelgor and Ezzorak. The worse your team is at killing the orbs, the better the talent will be.
• Chomp - This talent does very very low damage and you should never take it

Section 1

After taking the mandatory talents, you are left with 2 points to spend between:

• Merciless Claws (MC)
• Tireless Energy (TE)
• Double-Clawed Rake (DCR) (this choice has major rotation implications, see rotation section)
  • If you’re playing Wildstalker, you’ll always want DCR.

This choice is largely up to you and comes down to whether you like to spread Rakes in AoE or not. Since DCR does not provide any value in single target, while being equally good in AoE, a lot of players opt for going MC+TE. For those that like Rake and want to take it, generally you want to drop TE for it, as in AoE we already have a lot of energy (through Apex & Soul Of The Forest), so it provides less value than MC.

Coiled To Spring is currently useless and should never be taken.

Section 2

Must take talents:

• Survival Instincts / Berserk / Berserk: Heart Of The Lion
• Rampant Ferocity
• Tiger's Tenacity
• Soul Of The Forest
• Moment Of Clarity - required due to the current tierset

This leaves us with 3 points to spend between:

• Savage Fury (SF)
• Sudden Ambush (SA)
• Wild Slashes (WS) (this choice has major rotation implications, see rotation section)
• Infected Wounds (IW) (this choice has major rotation implications, see rotation section)
• Blood Spattered (BS)
• Panther’s Guile (PG)

You can really go with any combination here, they’re all close overall.

SF & SA are the standard picks, paired with either WS or IW depending on whether you want your build to be more Swipe or Rake focused. If you’re playing DCR, you’ll probably want to go IW (but the opposite is not necessary).

Blood Spattered seems strong on paper but it lacks behind the other choices because you rarely get full value out of it.

Panther's Guile is only useful on single-target so if you want to boost that, you can take it.

Section 3

Must take talents:

• Apex Predator's Craving - provides a ton of damage through Rips ticking on multiple mobs in AoE, plus Bite being our main finisher
• Circle Of Life And Death - Rip is by far our biggest contributor to damage in AoE, and this talent buffs it massively as well as improving other talents like Apex
• Frantic Frenzy - AoE FF which is uncapped and thus extremely strong in dungeons

This leaves us with 2 points between:

• Carnivorous Instinct (CI) - just overall good damage boost.
• Ashamane's Guidance (AG) - not only does it reduce the cooldown of Convoke, but it also increases the chance of the exceptional spell from 1/5 to 1/2 - Frantic Frenzy, which means AG is really strong this season.
  • Try playing with and without this talent and decide for yourself - it's strong on paper but it might feel awkward to keep CDs synced while maximizing their usage due to downtime between pulls.
• Hunger For Battle - potential big damage boost when tanks pull around it well.
• Veinripper - extending your rips means you can squeeze more Bites in between refreshes, which gives you more priority damage in packs as well as more overall damage from Unseen Attacks.

Niche choices:

• Dropping Frantic Frenzy and Feral Frenzy to grab any of the other good talents:
  
  • Makes gameplay a lot simpler because you don’t have to go through the mental gymnastics of syncing TF and FF. Hard for the change to be quantified because it depends on how efficient you are with your FFs, but it's overall comparable.
  • You can also try Focused Frenzy for more prio/ST.
• Incarnation: Avatar Of Ashamane:
  • Okay alternative if you hate Puzzlebox, similar to dropping Frantic in terms of logistics.
  • All the choices from the rest of the tree apply in the same way, including AG (meaning you can play both with and without it).
  • Not recommended for dungeons that have damage amps (e.g. AA, NPX).
  • Do not play as Wildstalker!

Talents to be avoided:

• Rip And Tear - due to our apex talents, RnT has become strictly worse than Veinripper in every single scenario, so if you take the node, just play VR.
• Saber Jaws (SJ) - does not buff apex/convoke bites & every other talent is better. Even if you’re chasing a very ST-focused build, you’re better off just grabbing anything else.
• Lunar Inspiration (LI) - While strong in ST and low-target cleaves, it lacks behind every other option in the section.
• Chomp - pure single target ability which is bad even in ST, never take this.