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) & Coiled To Spring - 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 Coiled To Spring. Very minor pure ST loss, so it's usually worth, as it will usually net you more bites through Apex Predator's Craving.
• Rampant Ferocity (RF) - similar to PW, allows us to cleave without doing anything extra.
• Double-Clawed Rake (DCR) - can be strong on council-style fights, you can drop TE for it on

Section 2

For single target, the following should always be taken:

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

Depending on which hero talents you decide to go with, you’ll also take:

• Infected Wounds (IW) for Wildstalker
• Merciless Claws (MC) for Druid of the Claw

For cleave fights, you can drop PG and take Blood Spattered.

Wild Slashes does 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

Currently, must-pick talents for single-target are:

• Frantic Momentum & Convoke The Spirits
• Lacerating Claws
• Feral Frenzy & Focused Frenzy
• Saber Jaws

With the leftover points, there’s a difference between the two hero trees.

For Wildstalker:

• Circle Of Life And Death
• Lunar Inspiration (LI)

For Druid of the Claw:

• Ashamane's Guidance (AG)
• Carnivorous Instinct (CI)

If you plan on taking Primal Wrath and hitting ads, you should always take Apex Predator's Craving instead of LI/CI for WS/DoTC respectively

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
• 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.
• Chomp - This talent does very low damage and you should never take it

FAQ for Talent Choices

Everyone is playing Rake builds, yet guides recommend Swipe??

Both archetypes are about equally good, and it's mostly preference. A lot of people will copy the top build, which is why if you look at logs, one build will be over-represented. Swipe leaning builds are significantly easier to play, as they don’t require you to look for targets that are missing Rake, allowing you to focus on more important things while doing the same damage. Top players like Skollcat and Turbogronil have even said they think Swipe is better numerically, but they simply prefer Rake leaning builds.

Rip and Tear vs Veinripper

The introduction of Unseen Predator has added a lot of damage tied to maximizing the number of bites we send out. Veinripper allows you to bite more between refreshing Primal Wrath, which not only results in better priority damage, but also more overall damage through more Unseen Attacks. As a consequence, Rip And Tear has become weaker than Veinripper when it comes to maximizing overall damage, and it doesn’t come with the strong boost to priority damage.

1 minute vs 2 minute Convoke

1 minute is very strong but it also makes it very easy to desync your cooldowns and lose casts, which by far costs you the most damage out of the common mistakes. You can use Wowanalyzer to check your cooldown usage & efficiency and then decide if it's worth it for you to play it.

DOTC: Tear Down the Mighty vs Strike for the Heart (aka scary face vs paw)

Strike For The Heart is overall better, but if you really want a cd-oriented build that plays around Frantic Frenzy & 1 minute Convoke, you can play Tear Down The Mighty.

Section 1

With Rampant Ferocity being moved to this section, our choices here are diminished - you only really have one free point to put either in Tireless Energy (TE) or Double-Clawed Rake (DCR).

Which one you take is largely up to you and comes down to whether you like to spread rakes in AoE or not. The choice does have a major impact on your rotation in AoE, see swipe vs rake section for more info.

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

Section 2

Must take talents:

• Survival Instincts / Berserk / Berserk: Heart Of The Lion
• Tiger's Tenacity
• Soul Of The Forest

Forced “choice”:

• Infected Wounds (IW) or Panther’s Guile (PG)

Due to the new positioning on these talents, you are forced to take at least one of those to gain access to Soul Of The Forest. The default choice is IW, as PG is comparable to IW on single target, but doesn’t contribute to anything in aoe. With that said, it’s close enough that if you like the dopamine from PG, by all means, go for it.

Standard picks:

• Savage Fury (SF)
• Sudden Ambush (SA)
• Moment Of Clarity (MoC)

Choices:

• Wild Slashes (WS)
• Merciless Claws (MC)
• Blood Spattered (BS)

If you’re playing a Swipe-focused build, WS and MC are effectively the same, with the latter giving you marginally more ST.

With a Rake-focused build, you’ll likely just default to BS, since after the buff it got in 12.1 it's pretty good. If you want to take it in a swipe-focused build, you’d be dropping WS or MC for it, whichever one you have.

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 the generic choices:

• 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.
  • New with 12.1 - due to the tierset, every 2nd convoke with AG will be buffed by the 10% from 2 set bonus, making it a bit stronger than season 1.
  • 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 (HfB) - potential big damage boost when tanks pull around it well
• Rip And Tear (RnT) - 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.
• Merciless Claws / Wild Slashes - when playing a swipe-oriented build as DoTC, it’s actually decent to move a point down back to section 2 and pick up whichever of the two talents you

Niche choices:

• Incarnation: Avatar Of Ashamane:
  • 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) and Wildstalker over DOTC.
  • Not recommended for dungeons that have damage amps.
• 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.
• Veinripper (VR) - 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.

Talents to be avoided:

• 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.