Feral Druid 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

Renewal is the better choice here, however if you are struggling with keybinds Aessina’s Renewal is fine to take, although for saving binds I personally I think macroing Renewal with Healthstone might be better, even if it can be slightly inefficient or overheal at times, simply because Renewal is so useful to have to save yourself.

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 would typically drop Natural Recovery, however I think running just 1 point in Nurturing Instinct and keep 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

Always take Innervate, Forestwalk, and Nature’s Vigil.

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.

Feral had the most diverse range of viable (and played) talent options of any spec in Dragonflight, and in The War Within this looks to only get better. It’s important you don’t simply just follow what is best, such as what a sim or others tell you, but also consider, what works best for you? Some builds might offer small gains over others, but chances are you are prone to making more mistakes than a sim or top players running x build. Don’t be afraid to play options that have fewer things to track or buttons to push.

A few examples to simplify things:

• Playing Lion’s Strength over Bloodtalons. The DPS loss is not significant at all, and could even be a gain if you make too many mistakes with BT - plus it lets you focus on other things such as mechanics or crowd control. Blizzard made this talent for this reason, and it’s viable.
• Playing single-target or M+ builds without Feral Frenzy, or M+ builds without Swarm, and instead putting the points into Carnivorous Instinct or other nodes down bottom
• Playing extra energy talents (some may find slower APM more difficult, though conversely others might find higher APM more overwhelming), such as two points in Tireless Energy in single-target, or taking builds with Moment of Clarity.

You should also always consider whether you need burst for a particular fight or situation, and if so, you may favour talents that amplify Tiger's Fury, such as Savage Fury, Carnivorous Instinct, or Taste for Blood, among others.

Update for 11.2: Druid of the Claw is now 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 likely better, 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 some other classes hero trees, 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 and Adaptive Swarm 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.

Hero Talents Options

In patch 11.2, our Hero talent choice nodes become quite cookie-cutter, where you won’t really be changing them much outside of utility options.

For DOTC, you should run Empowered Shapeshifting in all content, as the alternate node doesn’t offer a DPS gain and is generally quite useless.

Killing Strikes should be played at all times as its the better choice in all content over Ruthless Aggression.

For the final choice node, Strike for the Heart is the best choice. Tear Down the Mighty is undertuned as it currently stands.

For Wildstalker, play Twin Sprouts, as with the 11.2 2 piece the increased proc chance works great with this. Likewise, Resilient Flourishing should be played as the other option, as Implant has fallen off this patch, notably because Resilient Flourishing has great synergy with the new 4 piece (longer Vine uptime = more bursting growths).

Wildstalker also has some utility options, and really these are up to you. Bond with Nature is a passive increased healing taken and I would say often the better choice, but if you make use of your free regrowths a lot then Harmonious Constitution can definitely be good.