I currently main a boomkin but am interested in feral for wotlk as I never played the spec. I keep hearing how extremely difficult feral dps is though, how difficult we talking? I just don’t want to gimp my guild with terrible parses lol
Its not difficult, but its…complex. You have a ton of debuffs you have to keep on the boss. Mangle/Rip/Rake/Faerie Fire. You also have to keep up Savage Roar (which is the druids version of Slice and Dice). Use tigers fury on cooldown and shred for combo point generation. When the debuffs are on the boss and you don’t have energy for shred, you faerie fire to fish for an Omen of Clarity proc. Power shifting is gone.
Its difficult to learn but once you master it, you’ll never be bored doing your rotation again. Its also extremely self rewarding to see yourself at the top of the damage meters.
Its been a really long time, but your opening rotation would look something like this on a boss pull:
Faerie Fire as you’re running in
Mangle
1-2 point Savage Roar
Rake
Shred
Shred
Tigers Fury
5 point Savage Roar
Rake
Shred
Shred
Rip
Faerie Fire when you have no energy to do anything
Keep mangle up and make sure rake and rip are on enemy at all times, and refresh with 5 point Savage Roar.
Edit:
There are also some ‘bite’ based rotations where you’d bite at 5CP instead of Rip. Not much info in the druid discord on this yet, but I believe this is more optimal in later tiers of WOTLK should you choose to go the armor pen build over the pure agility build.
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that actually sounds cool
any other fun specs for wotlk pve? i like prot warr in tbc
Prot warrior in WOLTK IMO is the most fun tank to play. You can charge/interecept/intervene all in defensive stance, you have a ton of CC, and are the most mobile tank in the game. Not to mention party wide spell reflect. You can really tell when you’re running with a skilled prot warrior.
As for DPS, enhance shaman is up there with feral. Its not as complex as there isn’t a ‘rotation’, more of a priority based rotation.
You get a new talent that stacks ‘maelstrom’ from auto attacks, at 5 stacks you can instant cast Lightning Bolt or Chain lightning. Keep flame shock up on the boss, Stormstrike on CD, and Lava Lash. You also have to keep a totem down for the aoe fire ability. You can now also proc your Lightning Shield charges while doing damage, so you occasionally will have to refresh it. The ‘priority’ part of it is you always use Maelstrom procs over everything else, then Stormstrike, then lava totem, shocks, then lava lash. Your rotation will almost never be the same because maelstrom can get 5 stacks in 3 seconds or 5 stacks in 20 seconds, its all RNG.
Its really fun to play and a good enhance can PUMP in later tiers.
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right on. good to hear prot is still fun. resto sham looks cool in pvp still too
Just quoting for context.
While trying to snapshot Rake refreshes and Rip applications for bleeds before the damage buff wears off, without energy capping. It does make a pretty significant difference, particularly Rip.
The good news is that Wrath has target dummies. I spent a ton of time practicing on dummies. Mid-late tier raiding ferals can get a ton of crit too (>50%), so you do start generating 2cps per special more often than not.
'Course then, you get to start to practice bite/rip weaving =/. Rip still has time left, and I’m sitting on 5cps, but TF is on cd. Do I bite, or just shred some more and “waste” cps to make sure I don’t lose Rip uptime?
Fun times.
Great responses guys! I’m gonna give it a go, it will be nice to spice things up a bit.
Just look up a couple guide videos before hand and use weak auras (or similar) to track your debuffs on the boss
Part 1
Part 2
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Affliction is mega dot juggling and can top meters if you’re good
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Unholy DK is a complex one. I’m planning on swapping it up when wrath comes out. I currently play enhance as my main.
Really depends on what my guildies want to do
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Wouldn’t the Faerie Fire from Moonkin (if you have one) make it so that Feral Faerie Fire can’t be used?
This is super helpful info, my other raiding character is a Balance Druid and with dual spec I’m looking forward to trying out Feral while also staying Balance.
I’m probably going to spend hours at a training dummy trying to get rotations down.
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“Extremely” is definitely overselling it. Compared to so many other DPS specs? Yes, absolutely, much more difficult, but you’re still only juggling like 8 skills and some of the priorities are a very small DPS loss if you mess them up.
You have four debuffs (Rake, Rip, Faerie Fire, and Mangle) to maintain, a buff (Savage Roar), two CDs (Tiger’s Fury and Berserk), and the usual shenanigans with Energy/CPs. Having three finishers is what really complicates the whole thing because sometimes you can squeeze in a Ferocious Bite and sometimes you can’t
As others have noted, there are quite a few nuances when you’re in various states. Back in the day we had an addon called Feral By Night and it took all these various priorities into account and basically told you what to hit next. It wasn’t perfect and sometimes it was slow to update but it got the job mostly done. I won’t be surprised when a WA that’s more refined and using all the most up-to-date theorycrafting gets made to simplify the rotation.
Unlike a lot of other rotations, Feral never really gets into a steady “flow” that you can feel out since Omen procs and Critical Hits throw everything off.
Protection Warriors are a blast to play in Wrath. So many tools, so much mobility, stuns galore, and suddenly it feels GOOD to hit Cleave/Thunder Clap in AoE situations since everything scales with AP now (and you get oodles of Strength on all your gear). Plus you can subspec into Deep Wounds or similar to make you even more offensive oriented and if you’re never the Tank eating the big Tank-Must-Die hits, you don’t need to waste Glyph slots on lowering the CD on Shield Wall or Last Stand.
Enhancement Shaman are supposedly more complex in their priority list like Feral, but I’ve never looked too closely at it. They get Maelstrom Weapon procs that let them instant cast spells, plus dog summons.
Unholy DKs have some niche complexities but it mostly revolves around snapshotting your pets and the various spec options (Blood or Frost secondary). ArP really makes classes alter how they prioritize their skills and talents in Wrath, making early builds go one way whereas late-game builds go entirely another.
Beyond that everyone else is much simpler, albeit fun to play still. The DoT classes are probably the most complex next to the rest, simply because you want to frontload all your procs and trinkets and so forth to snapshot max DPS into your persistent spell (Corruption for Affliction, SW:P for Shadow). Everyone else is mostly a “spam X, hit Y when it pops up, maintain Z” kind of rotation and it isn’t particularly hard to do.
Most likely, which sucks if you run with a Balance Druid but it isn’t the end of the world either.
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It’s difficulty is often over stated.
Takes like a week to master if you’ve played any version of retail for a long time.
Classic era wow is such a simple game that every class is easy so long as you’re not a complete newbie.
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its not difficult. not at all. Its complex but not complicated. Its cool being able to self heal with Hots as well as heal others while still doing a ton of damage. Good versatility. I have 2 feral Druids. One i mainly tank with. The other mainly DPS but i can also heal with either. Toughest thing for me was gear for pvp. the pvp epics are lacking for pure DPS. Your almost forced to either go Boomkin or Heal in pvp using just the pvp gear. Not saying feral cant get good gear, just that the pvp gear isnt as good for feral as it is for other classes. Its kind of hybrid gear.
I still use wolfshead helm to this day. Not all the time but whenever i want to solo something difficult, i put it on first. every time you power shift, you can get 2 skills off then just power shift again and repeat. you can keep bleed and rip up 100% while keeping mangle multiplier up as well. As long as you have enough mana and mana regeneration you can do that all through the fight and throw up some Hots and invernate in between. Of course you do lose a lot of stats from wearing the helm but i find it makes fights go a lot quicker on single target. never have to wait for energy or rage
My reply was in the context of Wrath feral, which was my main in OG from TBC on until I quit the retail stream for good in MoP.
My current main is this warlock. I’m really only using my TBC feral for open-world farming, if that.
it’ll take some getting used to but once you figure it out it’s rewarding.
Wrath was the start of the John F***ing Madden Rotation
sorry the image has swear words … but its internet history
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Shamans are incredibly fun in WOTLK, all specs. All 3 specs are excellent in PvP too, in the right hands.