I played a Feral druid back in Vanilla and mostly specced deep feral with the occasional 30/21. I am really excited to remake my feral druid
The Vanilla Feral druid was a totally different beast than on Retail. It was a class difficult to master but when you did you could really turn it in a very pvp viable class. So in this thread lets discuss the tips and tricks we remember to make us better druids.
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Abolish poison: this spell to remove poisons ticked every 2 second for 8 seconds. This made it a very interesting counter versus rogues. For example, you need to heal and your going to root the rogue (after a stun or feral charge) you should thrown on the abolish poison for the inevitable blind that is coming. This way you can get almost instantly out of blind.
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You can not be sapped, seduced or poly-morphed in shapeshift forms BUT hunters can fear you (scare beast) and other druids can sleep you. Hunters have to cast the fear for a few seconds. So simply shift out of your form and use this time to thrown on a heal on yourself or a moonfire on the target.
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Hunters will try put you an ice trap and call back their pets not to attack you. Aggro the pet with Challenging roar and go after hunter and walk in to the ice trap. The pet will then free you from the trap as it is forced to attack you for 6 seconds.
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Bears demo roar can catch rogues and druids out of stealth.
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Feral charge in bear form interrupts spells and holds people in place, after the opener in cat form a warlock will fear you, save the trinket for a fear you can not interrupt. Feral charge the first fear by jumping back and charging, bash the second fear. Trinket the third fear and feral charge the 4th fear again.
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Feral Faerie fire is amazing. Its instant, has a 6 cd and costs nothing. This really screws over rogues and druids as it lasts 40 seconds and it can not be removed by them.
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Roots are actually great in classic. Most classes can not escape your roots. Even if they do they can probably only do it once.
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You are actually by far the most fast class around and nothing can run away from you or keep up with you. Unlike on retail where most classes can keep up with you even if it is just temporarily in classic it is easy to get away. Not to mention natures grasp which really makes it easy to get away from melee attackers.
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You can actually heal well and do some nice dps with spells. Feral charge your opponent. Root him Throw a spell followed by moonfire. Health pools are often low and just throwing 2 quick spells can take away 25% of your opponents health.
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Shifting is different… You can not shift directly from one form to another but you can shift very quickly from Cat to caster to Bear form. It is almost instant depending on server lag. This really makes for some nice play between forms, root shifting and power shifting.
In general Ferals when played well were very hard to kill and definitely could quite handily beat any class they were fighting. Sure our consistent dps is quite low compared to other classes but with some decent gear you could still open with crits of 1500 ravages, 750 - 1000 Shreds, mauls that crit for 1000+ and ferocious bites that crit for 2000 +. Considering most classes only had around 3 - 4000 Health or so it really did not take much to kill them.
That said the strength of the Feral was not in killing, it was in all the other things you brought to the battle. They are Great flag runners, great at defending flags, great at killing other flag runners, ninjaing flags, etc.
Feral druids can really shine in group battles but be ready to not be the one getting healed most of the time. Prepare to spend a lot of time in bear form. Staying in cat form is usually not an option. I played in the best premades on my server back in the day and the way I really help out most in fights was being a versatile druid.
I would start in cat and pounce one target, perhaps root him and then shifting to bear to and feral charging another target, bashing a third. Shifting out and throwing out some heals. Throwing out some roots, baiting a melee class with natures grasp in cat form, Making sure all the rogues got Fearie fired, etc.
I remember our server was one of those servers dominated by the horde. While leveling in the level 40’s I remember losing all the time as alliance. The horde pretty much always had the same team and would play much better. I made some friends we would que with 4 of us. A ret Paladin who would run the defensive team (7 would stay in base) and a rogue, hunter and myself would go for the flag. The hunter would give us cover to cross the open field while the rogue would help me get the flag by sapping, blinding and stunning their defenders. It worked every time and their team would not be able to stop me as soon as i was out in the open. We completely turned around the 40’s bracket and made it so we won almost every game. Ah good times. All he rivalries, it was great. I remember they were often specifically hunting me down but often we also gave each other respect and especially when in the open world we would mostly not fight each other.
anyway my point being ferals are very viable but there are lots of tips and tricks to make them great. Yes gearing is hard because there is not much feral gear around but you have so many tools that if you use them all you can really become a beast.
I started dueling level 60’s in front of Iron forge from level 54 and won most of my duels. Once I hit level 60 and got decent gear I lost very few duels. Duels with Shadow priests would go on forever but were definitely winnable. The only really tricky duels were versus very geared warlocks who even when in bear form could kill you in 2 or 3 shots.
I am curious to hear if we can get some more advice, tips and tricks for playing WOW’s most interesting class!