My guide to Feral Druid dps
79First of all let me introduce my Character, he is a Tauren Druid named Othekar in the guild Ordnance on the server Frostmourne. He is one of the top dps(damage per second) feral druids on the server with 5k dps unbuffed on heroic training dummy. He has completed algalon 10s, heroic Trial of the Grand Crusader and full 25 Ulduar and 25 Trial of the Crusader with Ordnance.
Now to business starting with the dps rotation, this all depends on whether you have another Feral Druid (mainly a tank) or if you have an Arms Warrior in the same group/raid. Arms Warriors have a talent called Trauma which is basically the same as mangle and overrides it and should pretty much be up all the time on the mob they are attacking. With another feral druid they can keep mangle up and you won't need to worry about applying it (you might need to negotiate if they're also a dps). Now if you have neither of these you might have to invest in the mangle glyph and talents then embed Mangle into the start of your rotation and keep it up the during the fight. But if you do have an Arms Warrior or another Feral Druid then here should be your rotation.
Rotation(with Arms Warrior or another Feral Druid): First use Faerie Fire (don't bother with stealth attacks) then Rake, if you get a crit from it for 2 combo points then use Savage Roar if you don't, then Shred, use Savage Roar then keep shredding up to 5 combo points (Use Tiger's Fury if you run low on energy). At 5 combo points use Rip, make sure you have Savage Roar up when you Rip because if you don't have it up Rip won't benefit from it even if you use Savage Roar during it's duration and you will lose dps. Keep repeating this rotation with having the Rake DoT(Damage over Time) up, Savage Roar buff, Faerie Fire and the 5 combo point Rip DoT on the target, while using Shred in-between.
With using the Berserk talent on a boss you gotta be careful not to use it straight away because you will most likely pull aggro off the tank, a good idea would be to get 5 combo point Rip and a 3-4 combo point Savage Roar before-hand. But if you're in a hurry to get more dps quick and you have a good tank that can pull a lot of threat just get the 3-4 combo point Savage Roar up then use it. Important point also is to get the most out of Berserk you must use Tiger's Fury just before it, unless you already have full energy which is unlikely during a boss fight but can happen. With the Ferocious Bite ability it is really not worth using until you have 5 combo points, 10-13 seconds on Savage Roar and 12 or so seconds left on Rip. You should be able to use it during Berserk. Just a reminder if you don't have another group/raid member applying Trauma or Mangle, you'll need to apply Mangle at the start and replace one of your usual Shred attacks with it to keep up the debuff.
Othekar's User Interface
Gear Stats. Okay the basic useful stats for Feral dps are Agility, ArP(Armour Penetration), AP(Attack Power), Crit(Critical strike chance), Haste and Strength. Other mandatory stats are Hit rating(8%, 263 cap) and Expertise(6.5%, 132 rating cap with Primal Precision talent 214 without) keeping the hit cap at all times is a necessity, expertise cap isn't as important but good to have if you want max dps. Now if you're just starting as a level 80 Feral dps with dungeon/heroic dungeon gear, Agility is the best way to gem and strive for then AP, crit and haste. Now if you have 10 man raid/badge gear start going for ArP gear but don't gem for it unless your able to reach 400-500 ArP(but also make sure you always have over 50% crit unbuffed in Cat Form) and you have the item Grim Toll(788 ArP soft cap) or Mjolnir Runestone(736 ArP soft cap). These soft caps will enable you to do really high dps but will require you to have very high 25 man raid and Heroic/hard mode 10 man gear, the hard cap for ArP is 1400 which I doubt is even possible so don't worry about it until maybe when Icecrown Citadel comes out with the new gear.
Talents
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Frostmourne&cn=Othekar&gn=Ordnance
I've found this talent setup very useful and i think is pretty much the best PvE raid spec that you can get. Some talents can be quite misleading such as Protector of the Pack some people have made the mistake (I did back when i was a noob) of reading the first part and thinking that it gives 6% Attack Power overall but it doesn't, it is only in effect in Bear Form/Dire Bear Form. Also the balance talent Genesis makes you think that it would be perfect for Feral dps because a lot of your damage is Periodic but it doesn't work with either Rip, Rake or Pounce, it is only useful for periodic healing and damage spells.
Addons: These addons are useful for keeping track of your dps rotation cooldowns and recommending which moves to use next, I don't use these because i'm so used to doing my rotations without them but they could be quite useful if you're having trouble keeping your rotation up.
Bad Kitty - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/badkitty.aspx
Face Mauler - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/facemauler.aspx
Feral by Night - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/fbn.aspx
DroodFocus - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/droodfocus.aspx
Glyphs. There are only 4 Major Glyphs you need to worry about.
Glyph of Savage Roar
Glyph of Shred
Glyph of Rip
Glyph of Mangle
Now if you don't often have an Arms Warrior or another Feral druid in your raid/group, use the mangle glyph instead of the Rip Glyph. If you do then Glyph of Savage Roar, Shred and Rip is all you need to worry about. Minor Glyphs aren't really important but never the less I recommend Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, Dash and Thorns.
Consumables. Flask of Endless Rage is the best flask for Feral Druid dps, with food buffs Hearty Rhino is great if your stacking up ArP if not just use the regular fish feasts.
Thanks for reading I hope you will find this useful and go pew pew leet kitty dps :P
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Comments
what is this thing called the 'internet' thats popular with the kids these days?
Oi mate how goes things? Great write up! Tyg is trying to catch ya btw so hit up the website (it's back up!)










Tygorl says:
5 weeks ago
Kitteh goes rawr!
Nice writeup Oth :D