Feral Druid PvP guide

Feral PvP Guide 4.0.6

Stat Priority

Hit (5%)
Spell Penetration (+70 cloak enchant is enough here)
Mastery
Crit
Haste

Unlike any other class, we get benefited from mastery in two forms; bear and cat. That is the general reason why we put mastery > crit. As for your hit cap, you'll need to get hit offsets if you want to reach it. Pick up the hit bracers and belt and then as for your trinket, pick up 'Key To The Endless Chamber'. If going a PvE trinket doesn't feel right, feel free to gem and reforge some gear to hit. Spell pen is also very important, but you luckily won't need much. Simply pickup the spell pen cloak enchant and socket one or two agil + pen gems.

Gems

Red Sockets
Agility

Yellow Sockets
Agility + Mastery

Blue Sockets
Agility + Hit
OR
Spell Pen (if you need more)

Spec

You do not want Fury Swipes as part of your spec, as you want to be able to time your burst with your abilities, rather than relying on talent procs.

Feral Spec

There are a few points you could move around, but i wouldn't suggest it. Also, Bear Form has become much more useful and more reliable since cata. Therefore, you cannot pass up the 20% damage reduction in Bear Form. With all defensive cooldowns up, you are near unkillable for a period of time.

Glyphs

Prime Glyphs

Glyph of Berserk
5 seconds extra on berserk is an extra 5 seconds worth of shredding. It's your biggest offensive cooldown, you must have this one.

Glyph of Rip
With the nerf to bleed damage this patch, this glyph brings it back up and beyond where it got thrown down to. Rip will already be dealing a solid amount of damage, and 15% more can't hurt.

Glyph of Tiger's Fury
Three seconds honestly does not sound like a huge amount of time, and it really isn't, but it all stacks up when you're using it off cd in arena. Also, having it on a shorter cooldown helps you line it up with other cooldowns more easily

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Barskin
This may as well be a prime glyph, it's pretty amazing. It gives you a 25% less chance to be critically hit when you pop barskin.

Glyph of Faerie Fire
Since the rest aren't that useful, i'd go with this. Might be helpful when you need to faerie fire a rogue out of a cc to stop him restealthing.

Glyph of Feral Charge
This glyph reduces its cooldown by 2 seconds. Like Tiger's Fury, it doesn't seem like much but it adds up when you really need it.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Dash
20% cooldown on dash. The only somewhat useful minor.

Viable Arena Setups (2v2)

Restosham / Feral
The best feral comp imo. One of the best damage dealers coupled with the FoTM healer this patch is just insane.

Disc / Feral
Just as viable as an rsham, but with the nerfs to priest damage, i'd almost always take a restosham over a priest.

Holy / Feral
You'll still see people running this, but i honestly don't think it's as good as the rest.

MM / Feral
Incase you don't want to play healer/dps, this comp works fairly well. Scattertrap > Silence > Cyclone is very good if you can pull it off properly, and the damage you can pull off is insane.

Sub / Feral
Gib people in kidney > smokebomb. 'Nuff said.

'Rotation'

The most basic feral rotation i can think of would just be:
Pounce (Bleeds them)
Mangle (for the 30% buff)
Rake (To keep 1 bleed up atleast)
Tiger's Fury (For the Incr. Damage and Full Energy)
Shred til 5 combo points (Shred does increased dmg if you have a bleed on them)
Rip @ 5 CP
Shred to 5 CP again

^Don't treat this like your gospel though. Everything in PvP is dynamic. Sometimes you won't be able to shred so you'll have to mangle 5 combo points.

General Tips

1) Pounce Bleed
The bleed pounce gives you goes towards the increased shred damage. In other words, you don't HAVE TO rake to get a bleed up (if theyre on low hp, just mangle and shred spam).

2) Feral Charge: Cat
After Feral Charging, you gain a proc called 'Stampede'. This allows you to ravage them without stealth for a short amount of time. Ravage hits extremely hard, so remember to use it after charging.

3) Pooling Energy
Instead of spamming abilities the moment you get enough energy for them, save up your energy until you have about 80-90, THEN use everything. You get more out of this because a) your dps remains exactly the same (because you're not waiting for energy) and b) you have enough energy for when you actually need to burst.

4) Cyclone
Every time you use a finishing move, you get a proc which allows you to cast 1 nature spell instantly. In arena, especially, take advantage of this and keep someone cycloned when you can.

Feral playstyle

Going offensive:

Ferals have a priority system. Our bleeds a do a lot more damage if you have mangle up, so you’ll want mangle up on a target when you’re hitting it. Shred does more damage on targets that are bleeding thanks to our talents(rend and tear) and mangle also increased shred damage. Don’t shred till rake or rip and mangle are on the target. Our finishing moves, rip and ferocious bite, are designed to be used on 5combo points. Using rip on anything less is a waste. If you need fast damage, a 3 or 4 point ferocious bite can be used instead of waiting on shred energy.

Those are the basics. After that the talents come into play. Tiger’s fury also increases our damage by 15% for 6 seconds, next to restoring 60(80) energy. Bleeds applied during this increased damage effect, will profit from it for their entire duration! Meaning, that if it’s possible – you should apply your bleeds during tigers fury – allowing you to create more preasure afterwarts. Don’t use Tiger’s fury for the extra damage though! It’s an energy generator, so use it on 25 or less energy. And, do not use it at all if you think it will be good to have 10seconds later.

Another important talent is Stampede, giving you a free ravage after you charge an enemy. There are several uses for this. If you charge someone before you open or when they’re running away, you can use it there for extra combopoints. Make sure to use something else first though. If you’re on 100energy and you use it, you’re wasting the energy that could have been regenerated if you used another global first. I generally hit rake first, then mangle and ravage after that. You can’t use it much later, because ravage also gets 50% increased crit chance against players above 80% hp.

One of the most important parts of playing aggressive, is your CC. Being a feral druid, your damage has a small ramp up time. The damage starts to come when your bleeds are up. That’s why, generally, you wait with CC’ing their healer until their partner is bleeding. If you CC him before that, you wont do as much damage and the healer will be on DR, making you cause a lot less preasure. If you throw a cyclone after you get rip/rake up, those bleeds are ticking already while you’re cycloning and you regenerate energy even though you’re not in catform. Causing you to hardly loose any damage, exept 3 autoattacks.

And as last point for aggressive play, Savage roar. Savage roar gives quite a bit of extra damage, but not enough for you to have in a standard opener anymore. However, if you have spare combopoints on a target you’re not hitting anymore – use them for savage roar. If you got combopoints on a target and you’re trying to restealth; Use savageroar just before you restealth. This way you’ll get a fair bit of extra preasure out.

Playing Defensive:

There are 2 categories of defensive play. The first one involves keeping yourself alive, the second one is keeping your partners alive.

As a feral you’ve got a lot of ways to peel for your partners. Your options are:

1: Cyclone
2: Entangling roots
3: Mangle slow
4: Feral charge inmobilize
5: Cat or bear stun
6: Taunt

You can’t use everything in the same situation though. If you’re partner is running away from a meleeclass, or trying to LoS a caster following him – root or charge is your best bet. But when your partner is stunned by a melee that is already hitting him, rooting won’t do a damn thing! Cyclone is by far the safest peel you can use. Always be prepared for an opponent trinketting though. It’s often a good idea to cast a second cyclone inmediatly after your first one if your partner is in a lot of trouble. 4/5 times they’ll trinket and get right into another cyclone. After that you got some times to run up there, and use Bash. This should give your partner plenty of time to get away, especially if you give them a quick movement speed increase with stampeding roar.

And, I wasn’t joking about taunt. You can taunt or challenging roar most pets, wich wil them attack you for the duration. It used to be like that at least, this might have been patched.

Now that your partners are still alive, it’s time to look after yourself. Most of the peels described above will also work to peel of yourself. But, because you’re a feral – it gets a bit easier. The best thing to do to keep yourself alive, is to be close to a pillar at all times. This way you’ll only need a small window to pop behind a pillar on your own, and throw some quick heals to get decent HP again. If you’re far away from a pillar, a nice trick is to charge a hostile player, totem or pet that might be near a pillar, and run around the corner there. Make sure you keep your healer up to date about what’s going on if you’re doing this though!

If you can’t get away, and your healer is CCd It’s often smart to go bearform – especially against melee. You’ll take a bit les damage from your talents and higher armor, and you can use an extra defensive cooldown (FR) FR is best used under 30% hp, because it restores hp up to 30% hp instantly. Keep in mind that trying to save it very long can kill you as well though. If your healer is free to cast, it’s usually better to stay in catform. You’ll take 20% extra healing in catform, and you also get combopoints to use on instant casts. When im getting close to dying, I often just savage roar on low combopoints hoping to get a lifesaving instant proc.

Talents: http://db.mmo-champion.com/utils/talents/#k=-bKEte2SH.bqj.druid.

Practice makes perfect. Hopefully this guide helped a bit as well, but in the end it’s just a wall of text. Ingame practice is what teaches you the most. Have fun.

You can take the 2 points from Feral Aggression and put them anywhere you want.

http://db.mmo-champion.com/utils/talents/#k=-bKl53sHm.bqj.druid.9gnjHb

I prefer to take that instead of 2 points for fury swipes. You do not want Fury Swipes as part of your spec, as you want to be able to time your burst with your abilities, rather than relying on talent procs.

http://db.mmo-champion.com/utils/talents/#k=-bKEte2SH.bqj.druid.

Fury Swipes does 22k crits....i think its a pretty nice pick. And its passive

ROFL

I don't think you need spell pen on molten servers as a feral, i have literally never seen someone resist my cyclone and i played several hundred arena games without spell pen.

Also, i think fury swipes are a viable option if you play 2s with a healer. Many game you'll face DPS/Healer where you rather need every bit of damage instead of survivability to solo-kill someone. In 3v3 you should never go for fury swipes imho, survivability is a lot more important there.

For glyphs: Everyone should pick Berserk and Rip, but you can swap out TF for Mangle or even Shred. It's hard to judge which one of these 3 is best.

ofc you need spell pene.