So I’ve looked up what is used for Feral Druids and from what I play I play open world and Dungeons. The specs I see taken and try are Predator - Wild Charge - Balance Affinity (This feels random and weak where’s the melee option…) and Heart of the Wild for my current go cuz my guys only lvl 35. Ignore my 50 druid it’s been years since I played him on a new server I feel like I do no damage though. Also Heart of the Wild from what I looked up seems weak on feral, it just turns you into a boomkin and feral are agility not spell casting! My survivability also feels a little low rn. I feel ok in my AoE with Predator in dungeons constantly resetting but in open world those mini boss’ for quests I struggle with and litterally stuck on one rn as I can’t kill the Siren. Do you have any suggestions for a path to go on and rotation if possible from experianced Feral Druids out there that even though a lot of people rank Feral as weak rn still are a lover for them?
Your best bet:
Icy Veins can also help with your class specs.
your talents seem okay.
Predator = more Tigers fury = more energy to use abilities
Wild Charge - gets you into the battle a lil quicker
Balance affinity - All your abilities have 5yard more reach
Heart of the Wild - you have a burst DPS cooldown and generate combo points
Feral is mostly about bleed damage.
Maintain Rake, Rip, and Thrash as best you can and working in a 5pt ferocious bite when you can.
At least thats how I play mine, although to be fair i do not do a lot of dungeon/ raid stuffs
The Balance Affinity serves a few functions:
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Your abilities, including melee abilities, have an extra 5 yard range. Trust me, you’ll notice it if you swap it out.
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It gives you access to Typhoon. A prime piece of dungeon utility. Use it to interrupt a group of casting mobs, group mobs up, or to get them away from somewhere they shouldn’t.
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Owl-weaving. You may have noticed that Feral has a lot of down time while it waits for energy. Well if you have below 40 energy and nothing needs to be refreshed, you can shift to Moonkin form and fire off a quick Sunfire before going back into cat form without losing any DPS uptime. You may be an agility character but thanks to Balance affinity your Balance spells in Moonkin form actually do not-insignificant damage. Not enough that you want to sacrifice Feral abilities for them, but enough that if you can fill the dead space with them you should. If you’re using Heart of the Wild, this makes Owl-weaving more powerful both for the spell power buff and because Starsurge is now instant. So you have enough time every time you Owl-weave to Starsurge, Sunfire, then shift back.
I would generally use Mighty Bash in dungeons over HotW though. HotW is more of a raid thing since the benefit over normal Owl-Weaving isn’t THAT huge in a dungeon environment and Mighty Bash’s dungeon utility is just too good to pass up. Plus the other main reason to run HotW in dungeons is so you can combine it with Convoke the Spirits to Starfall a big pack of mobs. But you don’t have Convoke yet and won’t for a while. In raids I run HotW though.
Don’t worry about your dungeon damage too much. It’s going to kind of suck until you get Primal Wrath. That’s your money AoE ability.
The other skill I’d practice is predicting how long mobs will take to die. If they’ll die soon and their bleed is about to fall off, it’s better to use a direct damage spell than to reapply the bleed only for the mob to keel over a second later. If they won’t die soon, make sure everyone is Rake’d up, Thrash to refresh it, and use Swipe for filler.
For more general-purpose rotation tips my only advice is that if you don’t know what snapshotting, pandemic timers, or energy pooling are, learn them. All three are very important to playing Feral well.
On the topic of survivability… Feral actually has a ton of survivability tools but I’m not sure how many are available at your level. Make sure you’re remembering your Warlock cookies and health potions (if you’re willing to spend them) when they’re available too.
The easy one is Barkskin. Its CD is short enough that you can be pretty liberal with it. Just try to save it for predictable damage spikes like if you get a DoT put on you or something. Survival Instincts is the same thing but heavier duty. The true heavy duty though is both at once. You need a truly exceptional circumstance to warrant that though.
Once you get Predatory Swiftness you can fill your natural downtime when pooling energy with Regrowth casts. Start by just mindlessly using them on yourself but as you get more comfortable you can try making sure they go onto party members who need healing. You’ll get one charge of Predatory Swiftness every CP cycle so use it or lose it. Though between things like Owl-Weaving and Heroism there will be some CP cycles where you just won’t be able to use it.
Finally you have Bear Form. A bit harder to use but if there is predictable physical damage that you don’t need to be in contact with the boss for, you can pop Bear Form and mitigate a fair bit of it. Bonus points if your throw out a Mangle and Ironfur on top of it. The situations where this is useful are somewhat specific but don’t forget you have it.
Lastly if you don’t mind wasting the GCDs, you can always just chain-cast Regrowth on yourself. This takes you out of Cat Form though so be aware of that.
Oh, and if you’re in open world content and are willing to turn on War Mode, Thorns and Leader of the Pack are great for personal survivability. Thorns you should actually use any time you’re engaged in melee combat with mobs. Short cooldown and it does insane damage. If the mob buffs their own attack speed they’ll kill themselves even faster.
Your best bet is to roll balance