Feral Druid DPS Guide for PvE

Updated for patch 4.3

The Druid has it all, heals, tanking, damage… here we’re just going to focus on the Feral Cat and doing as much DPS as possible. That said, you should be ready to use your other abilities, such as Rebirth, Tranquility, or Innervate, and use CC if called for. If you have the skills and the interest then being prepared to use those abilities or pop into bear form for tanking duties is a good thing.

The goal of course is not necessarily to top the DPS meters, though you certainly can, but to help the raid win.

Feral DPS Talent Build

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Glyphs:

Glyphs come in three varieties, Prime, Major and Minor. While Druid have a vast number of abilities to pull from, the glyphs that are useful to Feral Cats are more limited. Thankfully.

Primes will add to the core abilities of your spec.
Majors provides various lesser benefits
Minors add some utility or tweaks, perhaps only cosmetic.

Feral Prime Glyphs:

Rip
Berserk
Bloodletting (used to be Shred, but the effect hasn’t changed.)
Mangle
Tiger’s Fury
Savage Roar

Feral Major Glyphs:

Ferocious Bite
Rebirth
Feral Charge
Faerie Fire

Feral Minor Glyphs:

Mark of the Wild – less mana used
Unburdened Rebirth – frees up a bag slot and you don’t have to remember the buy reagents.
Dash – faster cooldown.

Rotation:

Here are your highest priority abilities:

Faerie Fire (Feral) – To apply the Armor Debuff
Mangle – Keep bleed debuff active
Tiger’s Fury – On Cooldown
Berserk – On Cooldown
Shred – When Omen of Clarity procs
Rip – With 5 Points to keep the Bleed active
Rake – Keep the Bleed active
Savage Roar – Keep Buff active
Shred – To build Combo Points
Ferocious Bite – At 5 Combo Points when nothing else is available/needed
Swipe – Only on larger packs (5 or more mobs)

To maximize your DPS, keep the faerie fire armor debuff effect active at all times. Attack priority is to keep your variety of Bleed DoT effects active, while also using self-buffing effects such as Tiger’s Fury whenever possible and Ferocious Bite when nothing else is needed at that moment.

Cooldowns

Berserk
Tiger’s Fury

Stat Priorities:

Weapon DPS > Agility > Mastery > Critical > Haste > 26 Expertise > 8% Melee Hit

All of the secondary stats (Hit, etc.) seem to be very close in value, unlike most other classes and specs. For A of E situations Hit and Expertise will have more value than in single target applications. What this also means is that there isn’t a “cookie cutter” stats value for Feral DPS.

Weapon DPS is normalized to your paw swipes (1.0 speed) so weapon speed doesn’t matter. Grab the highest DPS weapon that you can, regardless of weapon speed.
Agility increases damage (attack power) and critical strike chance and is easily the #1 stat for any melee druid.
Strength isn’t a bad stat, but it competes with agility. Only use a Str item if it’s a lot better than your current Agility item.
Mastery: Cat Form Feral Combat mastery increases all damage done by bleed abilities.
Critical rating increases your chance of a critical strike, including on bleed/DoT ticks.
Haste increases attack speed and energy regeneration, it also increases the speed at which your DoTs tick.
Expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried. An expertise rating of 26 makes it so that your attacks will never be dodged while you are behind the target.
Hit rating reduces the chance of your attacks missing. A hit rating of 8% removes the possibility that special attacks, or yellow damage as opposed to the white damage of regular attacks, will miss your target.

Hit and Expertise are weak since so much of your damage is DoT (Damage over Time) based. Once the DoT is applied you don’t need Hit or Expertise for that damage to continue. You still need it to actually apply the strike/DoT/etc. This is why Hit/Exp aren’t superior to other stats, as they are for other classes.

Reforging

When reforging gear, it’s important that you look to reforge from your least effective stat into the most effective for whatever gear goal you are currently aiming for. See our stat priority list for more information.

For a DPS Feral Druid, the most important stats to reforge into are Mastery, Crit, and Haste.

If you occasionally perform other roles then the relative values of the stats might change. For example: Bear form, which has more value on Mastery.

Gems:

Agility is much more valuable to you than any other stat. This means that unless your socket bonus is 14 or so Agility per socket (eg: three sockets shold give a 42+ Agility bonus) then you should just equip the red Delicate gems and ignore the socket bonuses.

Epic Cata gems are very expensive and hard to get. It’s not a big DPS loss to drop down to the next best gem. You will also save a lot of gold.

Red – Delicate Queen’s Garnet/ Delicate Inferno Ruby
Yellow – Adept Lava Coral/ Adept Ember Topaz – Deft Lava Coral/Deft Ember Topaz
Blue – Glinting Shadow Spinel/ Glinting Demonseye
Meta – Agile Shadowspirit Diamond

Enchantments:

Helm: Arcanum of Ramkahen
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal
Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Greater Agility
Chest: Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats
Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Agility
Gloves: Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Leggings: Dragonscale Leg Armor
Boots: Enchant Boots – Lavawalker/Enchant Boots – Earthen Vitality/Enchant Boots – Major Agility
2H Weapon: Enchant 2H Weapon – Mighty Agility

Professions:

Each of the professions provides a self-only bonus of some sort that averages out to about 80 points of Agility. With the Introduction of epic gems in path 4.3 Blacksmithing pulls ahead since its special ability adds a gems slot to wrists and gloves. This allows you to insert two more +50 Agility gems for a +100 total Agi. bonus, as opposed to 80 total for the others.

Engineering’s Synapse Springs offers a much larger bonus, but on a cooldown. So it’s great for those times when you need to push hard on the DPS.

Alchemy: 80 agility from [Flask of the Winds]. Alchemists learn Mixology, which increases the effectiveness and duration of all concoctions they are able to make, but that bonus is for the Alchemist only.
Blacksmithing: 100 agility from 2 extra gem sockets (80 agility if all sockets are filled with Del. Inf. Ruby gems, rather than Del. Queen’s Garnets.)
Enchanting: 80 agility from ring enchants.
Engineering: Synapse Springs provide 480 agility for 10 seconds on a 60 second cooldown. This averages to 80 agility but in practice will be slightly stronger than that if used correctly, such as when heavy DPS is demanded.
Herbalism: Minor heal and 480 haste for 20 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown.
Inscription: 80 agility from shoulder enchant.
Jewelcrafting: 51 agility from self-only Chimera’s Eyes if all sockets are filled with epic gems, +81 Agi if filled with other gers.
Leatherworking: 80 agility from bracer enchant. Can also use the level 80 resistance enchants if needed.
Mining: 120 stamina, no dps benefits.
Skinning: 80 crit, not as good as other professions.
Tailoring: Swordguard Embroidery – chance to proc 1000 AP for 15 seconds. You can also make a flying carpet, which will massively improve your DPS, right?

Feral Druid DPS Build

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