WoW Forever Feral Druid Guide (Cat DPS) - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Feral Druids like all stats, and will generally want to use the gear that just has the most stats. They do change a bit as you level and gear up, most notably while leveling being; Agility, which goes from something you don't really want to your favorite stat once you get Cat Form. The stat priority will mostly be true, with some variance depending on your current stats. The biggest things to note are Hit Chance and Reduced Dodge/Parry Chance, which are useless after the cap.

1. 1% Critical Strike Chance
2. 1% Hit Chance (8% cap)
3. 1% Reduced Dodge/Parry Chance (6.5% cap)
4. 1% Haste
5. Weapon DPS
6. Agility = Strength
7. Attack Power
8. Intellect
9. Spirit
10. Stamina

This list is based on pure throughput, where Intellect/Spirit/Stamina ends up on the bottom due to not directly giving more throughput, while leveling these stats are good for uptime. While doing group content, these other stats are mostly useless outside of the utility they bring; something like Stamina is always valuable, which you might know from the age-old saying, "Dead DPS is zero DPS". Stamina is the best defensive stat when/if you're tanking as well.

Consumables are yet to be properly explored, and to see what stacks with what. If we are to assume anything from Vanilla or Season of Discovery, we can expect a lot of different consumables that can help you in raid content, some a lot more than others. Stat Priority is a good way to see what consumables should be preferred.

Example of fully optimized consumables for Feral Druid DPS

Thistle Tea, Flask of Natural Precision, Elixir of Ferocity, Elixir of Cunning, Elixir of the Owl, Elixir of Sages, Elixir of the Phalanx, Greater Mageblood Elixir, Winterfall Firewater, Swiftstrike Steak, Dragonbreath Chili (use after food buff), Rumsey Rum Black Label, EZ-Thro Thorium Grenade, Goblin Sapper Charge, Elemental Sharpening Stone, Ground Scorpok Assay, and why not add Noggenfogger Elixir for the looks.

Although this is a fully optimized example, the most important thing is to make sure you have something that covers Strength, Agility, melee attack power, and at least one elixir with 2% increased critical strike chance since it only counts once anyway. On top of this, a Flask is always recommended, along with a Food Buff and a sharpening/weight stone.

Camping

In Forever Basic Campfire Kit is introduced allowing you and anyone else around you to get 3 powerful buffs depending on what professions people around them have. It is very good to optimize your camping buffs if you're with a group for leveling or even endgame dungeons. Later on, you also get access to Journeyman Campfire Kit and Expert Campfire Kit which allows for more profession items to be placed by the campfire. As a Feral Druid, you will prefer Camp Chair (until you get Leader of the Pack), Fish Bowl, Camp Tent, Sharpening Wheel and Lodestone.

Food Buff

Spiced Wolf Meat and a lot of other food buffs in all level ranges now have "Additionally, experience gained from kills is increased by 5%". It takes 10 seconds to get the buff, but that 5% experience increase from kills is worth the time spent.

Flank au Poivre or Swiftstrike Steak are likely to be the best food buff available at level 60.

Professions are yet to be properly explored, so we can't tell what/if any professions are required to use different items or bombs from Engineering etc. The 2 choices that I am leaning towards for endgame are Engineering and Leatherworking, where you're likely to get the most use if there is some exclusivity in the endgame.

While leveling, you could do Mining and/or Skinning instead of Leatherworking and Engineering respectively. For leveling, I recommend having 1 gathering and 1 crafting profession, as you can craft a lot of upgrades while you're leveling.

First Aid, Cooking, Fishing can all be good to pick up as well, especially Cooking to have higher uptime on the new experience increase buff from food buffs.

Alliance

Night Elf

The most iconic Druid race, which in Forever has been buffed a lot with the addition of Elune's Light giving you a 3-minute cooldown that increases your critical strike chance by 10% for 15 seconds. It doesn't work well with Berserk, which also increases your critical strike, but using Elune's Light as a follow up after you have applied your bleeds can be a massive throughput increase. Quickness increases your movement speed by a flat 2% and also gives 1% of dodge which is nice for whenever you Tank. Shadowmeld can now be used to get an extra Ravage in allowing for a slight throughput increase.

Skyborne

High Order Skyborne - the new Alliance race in Forever, it has 2 straightforward racial abilities in Elemental Insight and Wind Blessed, a flat 5% damage increase to Elementals and a flat 3% Haste increase. Falls behind Night Elf when it comes to throughput, unless the target is an Elemental where it rises above any other race. High Order Skyborne also have the unique Read Leyline which can be a massive increase to uptime, allowing you to restore health and mana 100% faster, which can be used while drinking or even in combination with Innervate.

Horde

Tauren

The previous lonely Druid race for the Horde hasn't gotten a lot of love in Forever compared to the Night Elf or even Windshaper Skyborne. We're keeping War Stomp, which can now be cast in shapeshift form, for throughput and defensively Endurance has been changed to give 5% total health and +2% critical strike bonus damage. Plainsrunning is a new movement racial that stacks up the more you run, but it sadly does not stack with Feral Swiftness or Travel Form so a lot of its value is lost as a Feral Druid.

Skyborne

Windshaper Skyborne - the new Horde race in Forever, it has 2 straightforward racial abilities in Elemental Insight and Wind Blessed, a flat 5% damage increase to Elementals, and a flat 3% Haste increase. Falls behind Night Elf when it comes to throughput, but ahead of Tauren, making it the best Horde race option.

The best race is Night Elf due to the added burst from Elune's Light, while both Skybornes end up as a close second (and by far the strongest option against Elementals). Tauren falls to the bottom, with almost no damage added from the racials, but the 5% total health increase can be really strong if you have to Tank.

Before level 10, we don't have a lot of options, mostly just spamming Wrath and Moonfire. At level 10, we get access to Bear Form which increases our throughput, while still being able to pull mobs from range with Moonfire for instant tags, especially when competing against other players. At level 16, we finally get a proper rage spender with Swipe, allowing you to DPS 3 mobs at a time. Once we reach level 20 is when we start ramping with Cat Form, at level 24 we get Rake which is our best damaging ability, Rip will practically never be used as mobs don't live long enough, so it's as simple as Rake and Claw until the mob dies (or will die from Rake) and go to the next. While being an efficient open world leveler, Feral Druid is also a solid choice for group content due to Cat Form and Bear Form sharing the same tree, meaning you can Tank without having to worry about changing specialization at all!

A very important change for Feral Druids in Forever compared to Vanilla is the weapon damage scaling, where your melee DPS in form directly scales with your weapon's DPS. This effectively just means that you wear the weapon with the highest DPS always; weapon speed isn't relevant at all, and stats will rarely make up for the DPS loss. 1 DPS on a weapon is equal to around 4 AP, or 2 Strength. Agility is not that relevant until at level 20, where it ends up being the same value as Strength.

Mana can become a problem with a lot of Shifting Power usage, so you will have to hope for good Seal of Wisdom uptime on the mobs from the Paladins.

Feral Druid in endgame will likely have a hard time getting spots as a pure DPS class, due to how strong Ferals are in the off-tank role, being able to swap from Tank to DPS in the middle of combat. And the only buff we bring to the raid being exclusive with other Ferals, doesn't make it easier. Hopefully the skill expression can push us ahead to be top throughput competitors.

For more Druid content, please check our Druid guides for WoW: Forever!