Druid Feral 7.2.5 PvE Guide

[Garn]

"Meeeeeeeooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww "
Feral Druid Guide PvE
7.2.5



Table of Content:


Introduction
Races and their racials
Abilities and Spell Priority
Talents
Main Mechanics
Stats, Gear and Artifact
Addons
Enchants and Consumables




Introduction


Welcome, this is a 7.2.5 guide for Feral Druid in PvE.

Feral on Legion on top of the general new features attributed to the patch, went through a series of changes regarding mechanics, playstyles and spells.
Since I have been asked a couple of time regarding Feral DPS ranking in raids, I will start by saying that feral are in a average spot on single target and in a good spot on cleave.
Although, you might not be at the top all the time, there is definitely a lot for those who are enjoying the spec.
Feral is one of the most difficult spec to master and requires a lot of practice. You will see throughout the guide why is that and what can you do to ease the mastering process.
On 7.2.5 Feral received a series of changes mentioned below that overall is going to give your cat a more smoother rotation.





Races and their racials

Alliance

Night Elves

• Shadowmeld Shadowmeld on top of the utility of of losing aggro quick, as a feral you can also use this offensively to cast a stealth rake each 2 minutes to maximize your damage.
• Quickness 2% dodge rating and 2% movement speed enhances feral's core attributes. mobility and survivability.
• Elusiveness Less relevant regarding damage, although useful in specific situation.
• Touch of Elune This is the reason why you would want to pick Night Elf for your feral. 2% Critical Strike chance during the day is great. 2% Haste during night is not bad either.

Worgens

• Viciousness 1% increased Critical Strike Chance is good.
• Darkflight Druids already got Dash and Stampeding Roar so this is less impacatful.

Horde

Taurens

• War Stomp Good Utility in Mythic+ and some other encounters.
• Endurance 1283 Stamina at level 110. Good for survivability.
• Brawn Slight damage increase and Heal.

Trolls

• Berserking Although Haste is not our best stats, 15% it's definitely good during specific burst windows.
• Da Voodoo Shuffle reduces snare effects, better mobility to a class that is already so mobile.
• Regeneration (wowhead link) cheap health regeneration both in and out of combat.

Discussion:

DPS wise playing the races correctly, Night Elves is better than Worgens if you want to play Alliance. For Horde, Trolls is over Taurens.

Obviously, depending on your playstyle you can choose either race, each having its own benefits as you can see above.

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Abilities and Priorities

Abilities:

• Primal Fury is the reason why Critical Strike is our main stats in single target situations. This works for Shred , Swipe / Brutal Slash and Rake initial hit.

• Omen of Clarity makes your white damage have a chance to make one of your next abilities cost no energy. It is important that you are always in range for your cat to auto-attack targets. The RPPM for this although is not increased by haste it has a high proc chance,5.25.

• Predatory Swiftness has 100% proc chance when you use a 5 combo points finisher. This also synergies offensively with our tier 7 talent Bloodtalons .

• Tiger's Fury should be used on cooldown to maximize your damage. It gives you more energy and also flat 15% damage increase. Ashamane's Energy trait increases the energy gain from Tiger's Fury. On 7.2.5 Tiger's fury also gives you Fury of Ashamane

• Berserk should be used on cooldown unless there are specific bursting windows during an encounter that allows you gain more out of this. Also provide 5% damage increase per trait with Feral Instinct .

Single Target Priorities:

Opener

Pre-pull Regrowth -> Prowl -> Wild Charge -> Rake ->Savage roar -> Berserk -> Tiger's Fury ->Ashamane's Frenzy->Shred -> 5CP Rip.

Next, you transition into keeping your bleeds up as much as you can on as many targets as possible and enhancing them periodically with Tiger's Fury/Berserk.

Thr general rule about when to use a Predatory Swiftness proc depands on what ability you want to refresh next:
If you want to refresh Rake, get to 4 combo points, then use Predatory Swiftness, then Rake.
For Rip you need 5 combo points.
For Ashamane's Frenzy get to 2 combo points.

The real reason why feral is considered a complicated spec is because requires quick and correct reaction in utilizing your combo points. That is due to feral being one of the few specs that works on a 1 second GCD and the way combo points interact with Critical Strike. You need to make the most out of it and make the right decisions when to use Predatory Swiftness and what ability to refresh next.


• Rake always up and refresh it when its about to expire. Generates 1 combo point.

• Shred Use shred when you are about to cap energy or you need to reach 5 combo points to apply a finisher.

• Rip Keep Rip always on the target and refresh it when is about to expire or when is goes below Pandemic Threshold. More about this later into the guide.

• Savage roar (Talent) Keep always up and refresh as a priority over the other finishers.

• Ferocious Bite use it when the boss is under 25% since it will refresh Rip when used or when all the other finishers are up and you will have time to refresh them.

• Moonfire Keep always up on target if Lunar Inspiration talent is present.

• Ashamane's Frenzy Artifact spell that offers a great burst damage every 75 seconds. Preferably you want to use this with Bloodtalons and Tiger's Fury . On 7.2.5 our artifact spell gives a 30% damage increase due to our concordance trait Bloodletter's Frailty.

• Regrowth Cast regrowth when you have a Predatory Swiftness proc and Bloodtalons talent.


Multiple targets Priorities:

• Savage roar Always up as a priority.

• Thrash when it’s about to expire or not on the targets.

• Brutal Slash on cooldown preferable with a Tiger’s Fury buff.

• Rake up on as many targets as possible.

• Rip instead of Ferocious Bite on as many targets as possible.

• Swipe When you have 2 or more targets instead of Shred to generate Combo Points.

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Talents
Tier 1 - Level 15



Predator is great in aoe situation such Mythic + and some boss fights with constant adds. Helya from Trial of Valor is one encounter I like to pick this talent since its offers you constant Tiger's Fury resets throughout the fight.

Blood Scent is the talent to go for most of the raid encounters since it is best DPS wise on a single target.

Lunar Inspiration Allows you to use Moonfire in Cat Form. Since 7.1.5 Blood Scent outweighs the damage from Moonfire. This is stil an option on fights with constant 2 3 targets Cleave. High HoV Mythic+ is an example where Lunar Inspiration does well.

Tier 2 - Level 30



Renewal is mostly picked in PvP but you can consider this as an alternative if you know your group is lacking healing.

Displacer Beast It a great mobile talent with a decent cooldown. Pick this for encounters where there is a lot of mobility involved.

Wild Charge This is the talent that you will pick for most fights since you can charge in prowl giving you a positional advantage in burst. Leaping behind targets sometimes can be dangerous so make sure you are aware of mechanics.


Tier 3 - Level 45



Balance Affinity increases our range on all our abilities. This provides the better utility compared to the other two during raids where survivability is not a problem. It allows you sometimes to do mechanics and also keep attacking targets.

Guardian Affinity can be situational good during encounters with high burst damage taken allowing you to mitigate a bit more of the damage.

Restoration affinity This provide a passive cheap heal but its less effective than the other two talents so you probably don't want to pick this.


Tier 4 - Level 60



Mighty Bash Great stun although less useful in PvE.

Mass Entanglement You pick this sometime where you want to keep adds in place.

Typhoon This is the talent you will pick in general. It gives you a good AoE interrupt with a decent cooldown.


Tier 5 - Level 75




Soul of the Forest gives you 60 energy per 5 CP finisher used. This talent ensures that you will have a smooth rotation giving you plenty of energy to spend on whatever you want. It does great in long cleave scenarios although, damage wise it will provide less impact than Savage roar taking into consideration that your rotation and itemization is correct.

Incarnation: King of the Jungle replaces your Berserk giving you a longer burst of 30 seconds. Shred and Rake are applied as they were applied from stealth. This talent will significantly improve with Nighthold gear when you will have Convergence of Faites - and 4 tier 19 pieces. You will use this talent for whatever short duration encounter you will face as well as easy mythic plus.

Savage Roar provides a flat 25% damage increase to all your damage. The number of combo points used for Savage Roar are only changing the duration but ideally you will always want to cast it with 5 combo points since it the energy required will always be 40 and overall will mean a DPS increase. Having this talent will put your energy management at test especially if you are less geared. Rip instead of Ferocious Bite should only be used once during Berserk and when the target goes under 25% to reapply Rip. Savage Roar will gain priority over all the other finishers.


Tier 6 - Level 90



Sabertooth Basically with this you only cast Rip once then refresh it with Rip instead of Ferocious Bite for the entire fight. The only scenario where you can consider this is a long fight consisting of 2 3 targets. Overall, Soul of the Forest servers a similar purpose and does a better job.

Jagged Wounds is the talent that offers the best damage output out of the three. This will make your Rake, Rip and to tick considerably faster.

Elune's Guidance Offers better potential for burst windows especially if you don't have the legendary hands The WildShaper's Clutch .

Tier 7 - Level 100



Moment of Clarity gives you 3 stacks for each Omen of Clarity proc. This talent its less reliable since its based on RNG and provides less impact compared with the other tier 7 talents.

Bloodtalons is our bread and butter when it comes to single and cleave fights. It scales very well as it can also be enhanced with our feet legendary Ailuro Puncers . You will only want to use your bleeds and damaging finishers as well as Ashamane's Frenzywith a stack of Bloodtalons no exceptions made.

Brutal Slash transforms our Swipe in some 3 stacks heavy damage ability on a 12 seconds recharge time modified by haste. It is the talent you will want to pick for most Mythic+ dungeons but, can be also used in raids for specific AoE bursting windows. The common rule is if you have at least 4 targets for 50% of the duration of a fight you will want Brutal Slash over Bloodtalons.

MAIN BUILDS

MYTHIC+/AOE FIGHTS



RAID



Beginner/Practice




Use this build to practice keeping your bleeds uptime as high as possible and always with a stack of bloodtalons.
When you feel yourself able to you can transition into Savage roar which requires precocious energy management especially when your gear is low.

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MAIN MECHANICS

Pandemic


Starting from warlock on previous patches, this mechanic on Legion is applied to most of the DoTs, HoTs and also some buffs as well.
For Feral it means reapplying Rake, Rip, Thrash or Savage roar will add 30% of the full duration to the new application. If you used a 24 seconds Savage roar the pandemic window will be anywhere under 7 seconds so reusing Savage Roar anytime inside the pandemic window the remaining duratio will be added to the new application of Savage Roar. This provides great flexibility and requires constant track of your buffs and bleeds.
For our main bleeds we have different pandemic windows whether we use Jagged Wounds or not. Because this talent basically makes our bleeds tick faster the duration will be shorter therefore the pandemic window will be shorter.

This is a guideline when you should refresh your bleeds without losing duration.

If you don't have Jagged Wounds :

Rip = 7.2 seconds
Rake and Thrash = 4.5 seconds
Moonfire = 4.2 seconds
Savage roar = 7.2 for a 5 combo points duration.

If you have Jagged Wounds :

Rip = 4.8 seconds
Rake and Thrash = 3 seconds



Snapshotting


Feral is one of the few specs on Legion that still uses the snapshotting mechanic for some of their abilities. In order to fully increase your DPS this mechanic is really important to understand and utilize.
Snapshotting means that your bleeds Rake, Rip, Thrash and Ashamane's Frenzy will snapshot the damage increase from Tiger's Fury, Savage roar and Bloodtalons and keep it for the entire duration even if the buff expired.
To make it easier to understand, if you refresh any of your bleeds when Tiger's Fury has 1-2 seconds remaining it will benefit from it for the entire duration. It is always worth to reapply stronger bleeds to extend their duration even if they are not inside the pandemic window.


Pooling


Pooling is the concept of saving energy and resources and use them at a better timing to further increase your damage. If you are running the Savage roar , Jagged Wounds build it is vital that you understand and use this since otherwise you will find yourself energy starved most of the time and your will end up in a bad spot. To make it simple you should never spam your energy, the biggest mistake ferals make in general is spamming Shred , you should only use it if your energy is about to cap
or you need combo points for a finisher. If you see Tiger's Fury is coming off cooldown let your energy build up a little bit and then reapply and extend your bleed with Tiger's Fury to further maximize your DPS.

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STATS, GEAR and ARTIFACT

Although Critical Strike and Mastery are our main secondary stats having a bit of Haste will not be bad and is actually advisable to have at least 1-2k Haste.

Critical Strike 30% > Mastery > Critical Strike over 30% > Versatility > Haste



Single Target

BiS Legendary:

Tier I
• Soul of the Archdruid;
• Behemoth Headdress;

On 7.2.5, these 2 new legendaries becomes our top tier legendary choices since its amazing synergy. The ring gives us plenty of energy to maximise Tiger's Fury duration as per the bonus given by the head.
Therefore, the energy starving issues feral had on 7.1.5 now are almost nonexistent since these great additions.

Tier II
• The WildShaper's Clutch
• Ailuro Puncers

AoE Legendaries

Chatoyant Signet
• Luffa Wrappings
• Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish


ST Trinkets:

• Eye of Command - Viz'aduum the Watcher in Karazhan.
• Enginge of Eradication - Meiden of Vigilance in Tomb of Sargeras.
• Vial of Ceaseless Toxins - Mistress Sassz'ine in Tomb of Sargeras.
• Nightblooming Frond - High Botanist Tel'Arn in Nighthold.



AoE Trinkets:

• Umbral Moonglaives - Sisters of the Moon in Tomb of Sargeras.
• Specter of Betrayal - Kil'Jaeden in Tomb of Sargeras.




Tier 20 Bonuses:


2 Piece bonus: Gain 1 Energy each time Rip deals damage.
4 Piece bonus: Rip deals 10% increase damage and last 4 seconds longer.

Tier 20 is much better than the previous tier 19 set. It is further increase our energy regeneration on top of the Soul of the Archdruid. It is definitely worth to acquire the 4 bonus pieces from ToS on top of everything.

ARTIFACT

This is the most effective path to follow from a DPS point of view.

Golden Traits:



Ashamane’s Bite
This is our best single target trait on the artifact. It has basically 10% chance when you use a combo generator ability to make a replicate of the current Rip you have on target.

Open Wounds
Although the tooltip might be misleading this decreases only the armor reduction by 15% not the entire armor. If your abilities are reduced by 30% then open wounds gives 15% reduction out of 30%. This is roughly 4-5% damage increase.

Shadow Thrash
Shadow Trash is our AoE golden trait. It has 25% chance when you cast Thrash to deal shadow damage around you over 2 seconds. Important to mention that range and damage scales with Luffa Wrappings.

Bloodletter's Frailty is going to make our burst significantly better. It is worth to mention that this needs to happen with as many as possible damage increases.

RELICS

Best relics are Tear the Flesh and Razor Fangs , those being close as value DPS wise. Rake relics are preferred since its gives the edge in cleave fights and when you run the Incarnation: King of the Jungle build.
Other relics you can consider are: Feral Power, Feral Instinct and Ashamane’s Energy .

Tear the Flesh:

• Frost Relic = Neltharion's Lair, Mistress of Sassz'ine
• Blood Relic = Arcway, Tichondrius
• Life Relic= Maw of Souls, The Desolate Host

Razor Fangs :

• Frost Relic = Maw of Souls,Kil;Jaeden
• Blood Relic = Neltharion's Lair, Mistress Sassz'ine, Gul'dan
• Life Relic = Darkheart Thicket, Goroth

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Addons

DejaCharacterStats An extended version of your character stats.

ElvUI Interface addon, you can manipulate nameplates, unitframes, actionbars etc.

TellMeWhen Addon to track your spells cooldown, buffs, debuffs such as Rake and Rip etc.

Details

Deadly Boss Mods

Recount

Miks Scrolling Battle Text

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Enchants and Consumables

Enchants

•Neck - Mark of the Claw
•Back - Binding of Agility
•Rings - Binding of Critical Strike


Consumables

•Flask - Flask of Seventh Demon
•Potions - Potion of Prolonged Power
•Food - Leybeque Ribs
•Augment Rune - Defiled Augment Rune

Special thanks to:
Frostfang
Kenket@MFF

** To be updated

Posting a new BUG REPORT has to follow the template you get when opening a new topic or it can be instantly rejected.

Freakz Lich King 25H

[vicezx]

Nice update to the previous guide Garm also wanted to recommend and additional addon for druids starting to lean the rotation

I allready mentioned before, but hedd is an amazing rotation addon made by a druid main that will keep track of your resources, remaining CDs, bloodtalons, procs etc and suggest you wich skill to use next. Its 7.2 update now also includes a semi transparent time bar appearing on screen each time you apply a bleed/roar that will tell you how much time it has left before it runs out, and will also become clearer when you enter the pandemic window to re apply them so even if you dont need the rotation help, its still good for dot/pandemic tracking

[Garn]

Thanks. Anyone is free to come and add anything to the guide and will put his name on it.
I will also come back and add a couple of things.


Posting a new BUG REPORT has to follow the template you get when opening a new topic or it can be instantly rejected.

Freakz Lich King 25H

[toamuka]

Nice guide however on aoe trinkets I would not reccomend specter of betrayal as it does not increase in aoe situations the damage is spread across units therefore does not do any bonus DMG in aoe situations .

I don't sleep because Arms is bork.