Let’s talk feral specs at 70.
For druids, the basic feral path is pretty straitforward.
If you are going to be focusing on feral, then the goal is to spec enough points to get Mangle, and have the basics to be a solid tank and strong cat.
It’s more a topic for another post, but as far as gear goes, I maintain 2 full sets for feral, one that is focused on high base armor, agility, stamina and +defense, and the other focused on high burst DPS from strength, agility, AP and +crit. I highly recommend this. Don’t try to get both jobs done with one set, you’ll just be average to poor in both.
The basic foundation spec for feral is as follows;
Feral Combat (40 points)
5/5 Ferocity
3/3 Feral Instinct
3/3 Thick Hide
2/2 Feral Swiftness
1/1 Feral Charge
3/3 Sharpened Claws
3/3 Predatory Strikes
2/2 Primal Fury
1/1 Faerie Fire (Feral)
5/5 Heart of the Wild
3/3 Survival of the Fittest
1/1 Leader of the Pack
2/2 Improved Leader of the Pack
5/5 Predatory Instincts
1/1 Mangle
Restoration (11 points)
5/5 Furor
5/5 Naturalist
1/1 Omen of Clarity
Assuming you are level 70, this will leave you with 10 points to play with in small variations in spec, depending on how you spend most of your time playing.
Talents that you have to choose from that will help feral in some way, in no particular order, include;
Natures’ Grasp/Improved Natures’ Grasp (5 points)
Brutal Impact (2 points)
Shredding Attacks (2 points)
Savage Fury (2 points)
Nurturing Instinct (2 points)
Primal Tenacity (3 points)
Natural Shapeshifter (3 points)
Intensity (3 points)
Well, that’s 10 points to play with, and 22 points in juicy options.
So what can you take to get the most bang for your point buck? It depends on how you intend to spend most of your time.
If your druid is your main, and you are more of a casual player than a raider, then it is likely that you will want to choose to put those extra points into Talents that will help you chew faces and keep yourself alive in a tight spot.
For a casual soloing DPS cat, you want to increase burst damage/DPS, and give yourself interrupts and better spot healing. You’re going to want the ability to shift from cat to caster for HoTs and back again in a flash.
In that case, the first thing I’d recommend is 2 points in Savage Fury to up your Mangle (Cat) DPS by 20%. Second, put two points into Brutal Impact to give yourself another second on your Bash and Pounce stuns. That extra time to shift into caster, pop off your heals uninterrupted and drink a mana potion before shifting back is very valuable.
The last 6 points are pretty controversial.
If you want to balance out your DPS by being a good tank in pinch, then put 3 points into Primal Tenacity and 3 points into Intensity. The only tanking Talent you’ll be missing is the Shredding Attacks Lacerate cost reduction, and in my opinion having more up front Rage to establish aggro is more valuable then the Lacerate reduction over a long fight. Your results may vary… but if you are noticing problems, then you are probably tanking enough to justify taking Shredding Attacks over something else.
If you honestly intend to solo DPS most of the time, and intend to tank only on a fill-in or occasional basis, then you might consider putting 3 points into Natural Shapeshifter to decrease your mana costs while flipping back and forth, and give you more to use in heals. If you do this, you really don’t have an obvious option. for the other 3. You could put all three into Primal Tenacity, or you could put 2 into Nurturing Instincts to improve your emergency heals and 1 in either Primal Tenacity or Natures’ Grasp. It’s really up to you, and depends on whether you occasionally run PvP or rely on shift healing in your playstyle.
Keep in mind that for raiding or tanking, Nurturing Instincts is a worthless Talent. But, if you are soloing, and in your DPS gear, you should be heavy into +Str. Since Nurturing Instincts gives you a +healing based on a small percentage of your strength, it could prove to be a viable option for you, and give you that little bit extra to help you out while soloing the tougher mobs.
My advice is to try and find a balance that works best for your playing style. If you can afford to, try different variations of your spec and see what feels most effective and comfortable.
Now, let’s talk tanking.
If you want to make sure that you are specced to be the best tank you can be, first and foremost, and you’ll take the hit in soloing efficiency, then the choices are much easier
You’ll want 2 points in Shredding Attacks for the Lacerate rage reduction, 3 points in Primal Tenacity for the Stun and Fear resist, and 3 points in Intensity for instant Rage generation first.
The other 2 points could go in either Savage Fury or Brutal Impact.
This can be a tough decision. The Savage Fury will help your damage output while soloing (remember, since the patch it does NOT improve Maul, Swipe or Mangle – Bear!), but the Brutal Impact will serve to reduce the total damage you take tanking by prolonging your stuns, as well as improve your stun duration in both cat and bear. If you are really looking to maximize tanking, then your choice should be Brutal Impact.
I hope that this can help you take a look at the way you like to play your druid, and balance your spec accordingly.
Any comments are welcome!
Edit – No one has mentioned this to me yet, but I see I overlooked one thing. If you are raiding, or running instances as catform DPS regularly, then you need to fit Shredding Attacks into your build. Shred is the raiding DPS cats’ bread and butter attack, and except for those times when you are reapplying Mangle to keep your debuff up on the target, you should be Shredding your furry little heart out. Sorry for the oversight.
Certainly a topic for another post, like you say, however I recommend a healing set of gear in addition to the dps/tanking set. Depending on your guild’s make-up, it will be beneficial to not lose out on that flexibility.
(Although I’m primarily geared for feral tanking, I’ve been called upon to spot heal in both Kara [on the Maiden, usually] and Gruul’s [help a boomkin tank Kiggler]…. I have +600 healing when I slap on my healie set, so I’m not an utter when I do that, either.)
I agree with you, Andrew. You should always be prepared to help your guild mates, and I do have a full set of healing gear ready and waiting… but after carrying it in my bags untouched for 3 months, I dumped it in my bank, where it languishes away. I must be fortunate that in my guild, and amongst my friends, there remains more of a need for good tanks then healers.
I’d love to have that problem. My guild has a glut of tanks, and too few healers.
Conquernfool is my first character that I’ve played in WoW and he is a lvl 58 druid with a talent spec in mostly in Feral. I just randomly chose talents with pretty good success. However, at 58 I still didn’t have mangle. So, based on your suggestions I respec’ed. I mainly do Solo work in cat form and selected those talents. I’ve tried to work on some mobs in Outland HFP with fair success, but after respec’n I’m doing much better. The next step is to start making macros to help with tedious tasks of switching out of cat to heal and back into cat quickly. Thanks for you posts.
I find this post very informative. However, I’m having a hard time deciding which Feral talents to give up in order to get other talents. I run out of points before I can get the talents I want. I’m so greedy! I want ALL the talents!
Yeah, I’m being too ambitious. I want to be a good tank, do decent DPS, and be ready for the occasional PVP.
I’m maxed out in all Feral talents, then I have 5/5 Gift of the Wild in Restoration.
I would love to be able to pick up these talents on top of that: Omen of Clarity, Furor, and Nature’s Grasp. I just can’t decide what talents to drop.
Should I drop Faerie Fire (Feral) and just use the regular (balance) FF? It has the same effect. I could just use it to pull mobs then shift to bear form.
I believe gear, play style, and talents are a function of each other. Some play styles benefit more from certain talents than from others. And some talents define what gear is most beneficial for you (i.e. Survival of the Fittest for crit immunity; Thick Hide for armor).
Im not raiding yet and I play solo most of the times. Once or twice a week I do instances. Anyone have some advice on the spec?
Sorry for the long comment. Thanks for such a great blog!
By The Light Of The Moon!
Zangano
Realm: Anvilmar
70 Night Elf Druid
Been a feral kitty for a while now (70 for about six months now). After reading this and some info on Big Bear Butt Blogger, I’ve decided to tweak my spec. The biggest thing is that I’m dropping Feral Aggression after what I learned here (and a bit of research), and I’m wondering about Improved Mark of the Wild.
So I’ve started with the key “basic” feral spec:
5/5 Ferocity
3/3 Feral Instinct
3/3 Thick Hide
2/2 Feral Swiftness
1/1 Feral Charge
3/3 Sharpened Claws
3/3 Predatory Strikes
2/2 Primal Fury
1/1 Faerie Fire (Feral)
5/5 Heart of the Wild
3/3 Survival of the Fittest
1/1 Leader of the Pack
2/2 Improved Leader of the Pack
5/5 Predatory Instincts
1/1 Mangle
This is one point shy of what you need to hit Mangle, so I’m going right ahead and putting it in Shredding Attacks, to give me 42 points.
2/2 Shredding Attacks
So this leaves me with 19 more points. Obviously, Omen of Clarity is amazing. It seems that it procs on almost every fight, and sometimes twice – many mobs are dead before they break the stun lock. Free ability = dead mob faster.
So to get there, what choices do I have? I used to go 5/5 Furor and 5/5 IMotW; yet no one seems to think IMotW is worth it. When I read this post and Big Bear, I realized what I was missing out in Naturalist (duh – 10% more melee damage? Yes please!). And Furor is still worthwhile, even though I’m largely soloing as a kitty (it comes in handy when you get an add, need to go bear, and need rage RIGHT NOW);
So that gives me:
5/5 Furor
5/5 Naturalist
1/1 Omen of Clarity
Which means I have 8 points left.
At this point, it comes down to choosing feral abilities that seem to only benefit one form or the other, cat or bear. I spend more time in cat, but I do occasionally offtank in my guild, so I want that ability (plus the aforementioned times when a pull goes bad while soloing). For my playstyle, these seem to make the most sense:
2/2 Savage Fury
2/2 Brutal Impact
20% more kitty damage is simply huge; and having pounce or bash last longer means more kitty dps on an opening, or more time to get away, heal or take a potion as a bear.
Which means I’ve maxed this tree leaving out three abilities. Why?
1. Feral Aggression (theorycrafters say the AP reduction amounts to 2 DPS from your attackers, which isn’t worth 5 points).
2. Nurturing Instinct (I can actually see the case for this if you’re doing kitty dps – you have high strength gear, and need to heal yourself when things go bad – so why not have your gear add to your heal bonus? It’s just too situational for me; I’d rather have the points used in an all the time ability, rather than an “in case of screwed, use this”).
3. Primal Tenacity (resisting stun can be good, resisting fear is again really situational. And in a group situation, if you’re not the MT, and now that Fear Ward if trainable, should you be resisting fear as your tank runs away? Probably not)
So that leaves one burning question.
Where do I put my other 4 points?
I’m just curious why no one seems to think Improved Mark of the Wild is worth the points… It seems I’m always reading that MotW is “the best buff in the game” – so why isn’t it worth 5 points to make it better?
Basically, I’m leaning towards Nature’s grasp (good for escapes), and Intensity (not only does this allow the mana to regen during healing, etc., which seems to make Natural Shapeshifter obsolete, but it also has the bonus of giving you more rage when you hit the “oh crap” button (Enrage).).
I’d love some opinions!
If you don’t have Primal Tenacity, you’re not qualified to tank. Period.
IMotW is a good buff, its a great buff, but if you are tanking, you won’t want to drop points from much of anything for it, not if they’re serious about tanking.
Besides, lots of druids like to think they need it. Let another druid in the party, esp. a tree, take IMotW. They should already have it anyways (think of it this way, how many trees do you know that have Furor?).
The party will be much happier that their tank kept them alive, rather than have anyone die because you weren’t the absolute best tank you could be.
Now, outside of regular dungeon running or if the group you run with has a dearth of druids, it is not a bad option. as pointed out, for feral druids, there are lots of options to choose from. Depending on your play style, you can definitely afford IMotW.
,ValentineS