Feral Druid Midnight Talents Guide

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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 in M+ when you don’t need to dispel anything. In some niche scenarios you could also talent Moonkin Form for if you need to leap backwards in a fight with Wild Charge, but it remains quite niche.

Section 2

You can take Nurturing Instinct in raid as a very small gain when playing Lunar Inspiration or Convoke, but for M+ take extra utility or defensives over this. You should typically have a free point in the middle for this, however if you want both points, I would typically drop Natural Recovery. That being said, I think running just 1 point in Nurturing Instinct and keeping Natural Recovery is best.

You should swap between Wild Charge and Tiger Dash based on the fight.

I recommend always taking Well-Honed Instinct’s.

Section 3

Highly recommend taking Innervate (in raid), Forestwalk, Nature’s Vigil, and Lycara’s Inspiration.

Once all throughput (damage) nodes are picked, you can freely choose between Fluid Form, Incap Roar, Perfectly-Honed Instincts, 1-min Roar, and Ursine Vigor.

For the Midnight prepatch, Druid of the Claw is likely the best Hero tree for single-target, so you will want to play it on most raid fights. For Council fights, like The Soul Hunters, Wildstalker is competitive, and if there’s fights with the occasional add(s), Wildstalker can be useful here as it loses less single-target damage to pick up talents like Primal Wrath.

Feral receives two pretty cool hero trees: Druid of the Claw (DOTC) and Wildstalker (WS). While they may not have as many flashy spell effects as hero trees of some other classes, they are quite thematic to Feral and bring some pretty cool nodes that synergize with our kit and make Feral even more satisfying to play.

WS is the more bleed/DOT focused hero tree, while DOTC is more Bite/Claw focused. However that doesn’t mean bleeds are neglected as DOTC, nor Bite as WS, however you will feel differences when swapping between them, including notable shifts in damage profile.

Additionally they both vary in terms of defensives, with DOTC we share the tree with Guardian, thus it enhances Bearform and Frenzied Regeneration via talents such as Wildshape Mastery and Empowered Shapeshifting. Conversely, WS is more focused on the Resto side of things, enhancing our self-healing and Regrowth through talents such as Thriving Growth, Vigorous Creepers, and Harmonious Constitution.

Hero Talent Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, Druid of the Claw revolves heavily around the Ravage proc, with additional little bits of gameplay sprinkled in via Berserk through Claw Rampage, where maximizing uses of certain builders such as Shred and Brutal Slash equates to more Ravage procs. There’s also the Dreadful Wound extension, where spending energy after using Ravage extends this bleed.

There are also some Bearform perks too, and being able to cast Frenzied Regen in Catform (although it's generally better to go Bear to save the energy). Killing Strikes also gives a deterministic way to proc Ravage and can create decisions with when to use Tiger's Fury, for example to maximise your burst or to not overwrite any current Ravage proc.

Wildstalker puts a bit more emphasis into our base kit, but puts more emphasis on spreading Rake in AOE and multidotting to proc more Bloodseeker Vines, and using Ferocious Bite targets with Vines on them to trigger Bursting Growth. There is also Implant that creates opportunities for you to choose targets to Vine, which goes nicely with Vigorous Creepers, as well as many Feral talents. WS also benefits active talents such as Lunar Inspiration a little bit more, which themselves can add a lot to the rotation.

Now you might be asking, which one is stronger?

Hero Talent Choice

DOTC is very much the burst Hero tree, with Ravage being a very bursty Ferocious Bite replacement as a proc, and a capstone that enhances our Berserk, and even other optional nodes that can increase Shred and Swipe damage, which notably increases Berserk damage through things like Berserk: Frenzy, and even Killing Strikes making Ravage uses grant Agility, which while not specific to Berserk, you get the most Ravage procs inside of it so you get more uptime of this Agi in Berserk - where you benefit from it the most.

It’s also a little bit more AOE-focused in general than Wildstalker too, but both can do great AOE, just different AOE damage profiles. DOTC feels stronger the bigger the pulls get and it’s less affected by mobs dying too quickly as well, whereas Wildstalker benefits a lot from spreading Rakes.

Both trees do good priority or funnel damage in AOE, but DOTC has the edge not only due to Ravage itself but the way you optimize talents and stats more around Biting as well.

Wildstalker on the other hand, is generally a little bit stronger in pure single-target (update: not necessarily true for 11.2 anymore, see start of this section), as well as stronger in sustained AOE or cleave scenarios, notably situations where Rake gets value (where you can reliably spread them, and they won’t die too quickly with Rake on them).

In terms of defensives, Druid of the Claw has a slight edge here, although it is partly dependent on utilising Bearform. Wildstalkers self-healing is definitely underrated if you can regularly weave in Regrowth on yourself, not only through the talent Harmonious Constitution, but also each Symbiotic Bloom that procs from Regrowth increases all your other self-healing by 20% (per stack of Bloom) via the capstone Vigorous Creepers - this means Wildstalker can also buff Frenzied Regeneration, as well as subsequent Regrowths, and even your health pot.