How to Pressure as Feral Druid

Classes Druid
1

Recently started playing feral in 8.2 and am looking for tips on how to pressure better. Did some skirms and wpvp to get a feel for the class, but I know there’s better ways to optimize the rotation then how I’m playing.

Biggest things are:

When to tigers fury - typically I’ve been holding it to when I know I’ll be able to get a 5 CP rip out with it. Aside from rip, what else should I be trying to pump into the TF window?

Energy capping during Beserk - can’t seem to spend it fast enough during beserk to not cap and waste it, especially if the target uses any escape mechanics

Keeping up with targets - I’m so used to playing a class with a slow (a real slow). How do you keep up someone with any sort of mobility from getting away? Was chasing a shaman yesterday and his ghost wolf just kept outdistancing my cat. Do we have to rely on roots to keep them in place until we can get back in distance? Also, when opening on someone mounted, they’d just stay mounted and keep running and I’d have no real way to keep them snared. Tips for keeping people close to me?

As far as pressuring I’ll open with Rake to a 5 CP Rip to a Feral Frenzy Bite.

Should Brutal Slash be used on CD or pooled and dumped with all 3 charges at once?

2

Pressure?

I started using the add on called “Hekili” and its made me understand how to maximize energy regen and when to use what. It’s not an add on to make us button smashers but helps me control my energy. I recommend it for anyone with energy questions. And the dps boost is always nice.

Always use tigers fury whenever possible. For the time being make sure to stack Jungle fury x3 and wild fleshrending x3. You’ll see a gigantic boost.

3

Should have clarified, for PvP. Pressuring to land a kill eg big burst dam rotation

4

Don’t use 5 CP for a rip.

Open with heal (if possible, for BT), buffs (berserk, tigers, etc), rake (from stealth), RIP, then 5 CP bite for maximum damage per energy and to maintain a much stronger RIP.

5

for berserk windows, what i do is make sure i have all my DoTs down, and then spam shred to 5 CP and then ferocious bite, repeat. that will refresh your rip and since you have a ton of enerrgy, it will consume the bonus energy for bonus damage, and hopefully stop you from capping.

6

If you’re running FF your opener should look like this:
Rake -> Rip -> TF -> FF -> FB -> Thrash…

This ensure you have a full 5CP rip without using 5CP to rip, FB debuff and every bleed on.

From here you want to ensure you keep all bleeding ticking, only bite when you have 5 CP (which will refresh Rip) and Brutal Slash/Shred only when you have Thrash up. I don’t pool charges, but I will save them for burst windows (often with Maim/Bash damage or in the opener if I stun out of the rake stun.)

As for burst windows, I often save Incarn and rarely even need to use it. When I do use it, it’s after I’ve been able to get big defensive’s out of my target, Berserk/Incarn just solidify the kill and put more pressure they can’t come back from.

PvP is very much a cooldown war, saving yours and forcing more from them will always net you in the positive in terms of the fight. Of course it’s always situational, but the longer you can save or not even need to use your big CDs the better off you’ll be.

I would suggest playing around with different traits. Jungle Fury/Wild Fleshrending and Masterful instincts are solid choices. Try to stack mastery/versa.

Keep in mind Feral is very much hit and run, and if possible you want to try and get as many resets as you can. Ferals can “brawl” but our toolkit really strives on bleeding/biting/reset and then back into combat. Form shifting is very important as well.

7

Could you elaborate a little bit more on the thrash interaction with shred/brutal slash? I recently moved thrash to a undesirable hotkey thinking it was just used for PvE aoeing down mobs.

8

If you read the azerite trait it says you do additional damage with Shred/Brutal Slash when Thrash is applied. It’s a pretty hefty buff and you shouldn’t shred/brutal slash without thrash applied:

Ideally you want to stack these traits as much as you can along with Jungle Fury or Masterful Instincts (though I wouldn’t recommend Masterful Instincts until you’re cozy with Feral as it does require you to utilize your wall for damage.)

As for unused buttons, there’s a time and place for every ability for Feral Druids, it’s what makes Feral and Druid as a whole one of the more complex classes because there are so many things you can do as a Druid.

As you say for Thrash is an undesirable button, it’s actually quite good as is Swipe. Keep in mind as a Feral you will be using bear form a lot, be sure to use these abilities while you’re in Bear so you’re not just sitting there doing no damage. Since they recently made moon fire take you out of bear form as a Feral druid, you’re limited with the amount of offensive abilities you can use while in Bear form, so abilities like Thrash/Swipe are often used a lot when Mangle or Maul are not available.

9

Ahh makes sense, I have zero WFR traits so that explains why I don’t see the benefit from thrash currently. Ill have to keep my eyes peeled for some of these traits.

10

Keep in mind azerite traits only do 50% damage in PvP. Most times, using thrash isn’t viable as you have to have all 3 WF traits, and be confident you’ll be able to remain on the target the duration of the trash for it to be a net gain in damage.

11

Ferals bleeds doesn’t do good damage right now, so the best way is buff Ferocious Bite and other non-damage over time abilities instead.

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12

Feral bleeds add up overtime and can do a good amount of damage, specially with Blood Talons and TF snapped in. They’re not our primary source of damage, but they do absolutely make a dent.

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13

Usually TF first, as it is usable in stealth, and will still be up by the time you bite.

14

the feral that beat me today in 2s (I was playing rdruid/ww, they were playing rdruid/feral) basically just kept bleeds rolling on both of us, didn’t really try to chase my ww too much (he’d swap to me to refresh bleeds/get some damage in when my ww would try to position towards his healer). They didn’t really clone at all, and just both kept dots/bleeds rolling and then eventually took down my ww when I was basically oom with 2x 5pt ferocious bites from both and I think a cyclonic blast from the resto. The feral took a lot of damage, but it was honestly pretty suffocating to play against and feral seems a lot stronger this season.

A few weeks ago that would have been a free win for us, not so much now. I mean, I dont think we played the games correctly, and I do think we should beat that, but still, it was a lot of damage. Im not sure on his traits but Im gonna guess he was playing w/ 2 or 3x gushing lacerations just judging by how much his bleeds were hitting for and how many bites he was able to get off

15

So you have an addon that basically plays the game for you? It literally tells you what spells to use in what order and when? All you have to do is react to the picture/text that shows up?

Why even play the game then if you’re just going to mindlessly have a robot do all the work for you?

16

Let’s apply your logic to cooking.

No, clearly a book doesn’t cook for you, just as much as an addon doesn’t play for you.

Chefs still follow a cooking recipe, but put it away once they’ve mastered it, adding things of their own. This addon is no different, once you know what you’re doing with your class you’ll probably find it to be a hindrance and turn it off.

Sure, there are people that will keep using it, just as much as we keep using and rely on raiding addons to tell us when to move when fire is coming.

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17

WW is much much better than Feral right now. If what you say is true then your WW was not good /and/ that Feral was really good.

Feral is def stronger in 2s but at best it’s A tier while WW is easily S tier along with DH & Assn.

@OP

Zac kinda covered it. You want to TF in the opener and use FF to get the 5cp to get a bite and ST bumps up the duration of Rip to max.

I prefer using the TF in stealth so that it snapshots the Rake as well.

I stopped using Bloodtalons since they forced us to pick between LI and ST, otherwise I’d love to have all three.

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18

It definitely was a combination of that feral being good and us not playing it correctly, not gonna blame the ww, I def should have been initiating more clone swaps. I’m too used to playing with rogues and locks where I don’t really need to clone much, if at all.

Just saying the damage output seemed really consistent and right in line with most classes over the course of the game. I agree with you though that it probably won’t be s tier in 3s, and ww is def stronger, but I could see jungle having a bit of a resurgence (a jungle comp had a 3-0 in the awc this weekend)

19

That would be nice cos we were pretty f.shyte last season. No one even wants to run with you and I just hate 2s :cry:

Idk what changed with feral in 8.2 besides essences. Maybe he was running Lucid dream? I have that and Blood, maybe I should try playing some games. :sweat_smile:

20

I was having issues with this pulling me out of stealth for a while, but I always re-rake after the rip anyways and TF is still rolling.

BT + SotF + Lucid Dreams is amazing uptime and pressure.

They didn’t lose a single series and played nearly every round. I think they went like 15-1 lol

All 3 were all syncing the Inner Fire one (I can’t remember all of the names.) Basically the one that fires off a big hit, I think it’s the first essence everyone gets. Between that and Feral/Survival burst/control it was impressively strong. They were winning games in less than 2 minutes.

Really it came down to 2 (3ish) things; Zuniyaki being a God tier Priest player and utilizing the essence that gives him a ton of mana regen, and Cassidy/Kara putting out amazing setups with really good burst.

Definitely the highlight of the weekend.

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