[Guide] Feral druid raid dps

The owner of this guide who goes by the name "Nippur" is no longer active, but guide is being preserved due to the quality of it.

Feral DPS PVE raiding guide


This guide doesn't pretend to have all the truth about ferals, but since 2 years i've been playing feral as my main char, so i have some experience on this.
I will not develop until the last digit of conversion between stats, that can be seen on Elitists Jerks. Instead, i'll give some guidelines of how gemming, order of stat capping and priorities of attacks.


Raiding as feral:

Raiding is really fun when you are feral, despite that ferals are one of the last required specs to get for dps. You'll never see global warns like "ICC 25 need feral druid dps and go". Although, ferals give nice buffs to melee thanks to Leader of the Pack. This buffs aren't as significant as Moonkin Form buffs, but they are great anyway! Let's check them:

+5% crit on melee and ranged attacks
+30% Bleed dmg increased (Mangle)
+5% reduced boss armor (Faerie fire)
+4% of maximum health healed every 6 seconds to each melee that crits (almost all melee crit once every 6 secs) if specced into Improved Leader of the Pack.

Also, we bring the classic spells that are wanted from a druid in a raid: Innervate and Rebirth. Ferals don't need innervate, so you should be aware of healers mana, and if they don't have mana problems, contact with an Arcane or Fire mage, or a Shadow priest; they'll love if you cast an Innervate on them.
We also have the innate ability to off tank most of end game bosses for a short time, due to our agility stack, that becomes armor and dodge. This should give healers the time to cast Rebirth, heal and buff the main tank. So, be ready to switch to bear and Growl if necessary. Always configure your bear bar with tank abilities.

Spec:

There can be some small changes from one build to another, but this is the one i consider does the max dps:

World Of Warcraft Armory - Feral Dps talents

- NO improved mangle: mangle is used once every minute, so spending 3 talent points for a 6 saved energy every minute, it's a big waste of talent points you can make
- NO Protector of the Pack: it only increases dmg in bear form
- NO Infected Wounds: Useless in PVE because bosses are inmune to snares and slows.
- Feral charge: really useful when you need to run away from boss for some reason (like Ick's Poison Nova), you can come back to dps faster than running. It's usefull too in situations of "OMG the tank is dead!", because of the Feral Charge (Bear).

Major:
> Glyph of Rip: increases the duration of Rip by 4 secs
> Glyph of Shred: everytime you Shred, the duration of Rip increases by 2 secs, until a maximum of 6 secs.
> Glyph of Savage Roar: increases the bonus dmg increase of Savage Roar by 3%.
No discussion about this 3 glyhps, they have been proved to give the maximum improve in dps.

Optional:
> Glyph of Berserk: Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 secs.
It's a bit behind the others, but can be usefull for short encounters.
> Glyph of Mangle: increases the dmg dealt by mangle by 10%.
Prefered by Mangle spammers.........don't ever ever ever use it for raiding.

Minor:
> Glyph of Unbreathened Rebirth
> Glyph of Dash
> Glyph of Thorns


Gearing, gemming and enchanting:

Stats:
>Crit: Our dmg depends mostly on critical strikes. They deal a high amount of dmg, and reward 2 combo points, which let us finish more often. Many people think that as feral they need 100% crit chance. This is a big NO!. No matter how much crit you have, you will never be able to get 5 combo points in less than 3 hits. So, ferals need 2 hits to crit of 3 to get 5 cp; this is about 60% crit self buffed. With this crit cap, you will have 5 cp every 3 hits most of the time (90% or more), the same as if you had 100% crit chance. NEVER gem for Critical Strike Rating. Instead, go for Agility, it gives crit, attack power and armor.

>Hit rating: more important than crit, is reaching the Hit cap. What's the point on having 12k of Attack Power and 100% crit chance if you miss half the attacks you make? Before the gear score appeared, the hit rating was the way of selecting the dps for your raid. For a feral, the hit rating for bosses (level 83) is 8.03% or 247 hit rating.

>Expertise: It reduces the chance you will be parried, blocked or dodged. But this is important when you attack from the front. None boss can parry or block from behind, that's where a feral is supposed to be always. Anyway, bosses can dodge from behind. The expertise cap for the boss not dodging your attacks is 26 expertise or 213 expertise rating. You can spend 2 talent points on Primal Precision, this talent grants you +10 expertise (83 expertise rating), so reaching the cap will be easier.

> Attack power: not a so bad stat to gem, but is behind agility and armor penetration.

> Strength: It determines how hard we hit. It grants about 2 Attack Power for each Str point. Anyway, ferals prefer Agility or Armor Penetration instead of Strength.

> Haste: Many ferals thinks they need haste, because it reduces the global cooldown and lets them use abilities faster. This is not true, our speed to use attacks has a upper limit defined by our energy regen. Our haste doesn't make our energy regain faster like rogues. Haste makes white attacks to hit faster, but our set provides us with the needed haste.

>Armor penetration: Maybe the most discussed topic for ferals, "should I stack Agility or Armor Penetration?". At low gear, Agility goes first, because you will build cp faster, till you reach the crit cap.

Hot topic: Agility or Armor Penetration?


Armor is a stat with diminishing returns. Meaning: the more Armor you have, the worse it gets in terms of damage reduction percentage. The first 1000 armor are far more valuable, than the last 1000 armor. That is the reason, that ArPen scales better than linear. When you have only a little bit ArPen, you reduce your target's armor only a little bit - but we know that the last 1000 armor are not that important. But if you manage to gather more ArPen, you will reduce your target's armor more and more, which gets more and more valuable.
Short story: ArPen scales better than linear - the more you have, the better each point of it becomes.

At about 400 - 500 ArPen, ArPen becomes the best stat
The exact amount depends on your gear (especially the trinkets). Use RAWR or Toskk to find out, when exactly ArP overtakes Agility. Also remember, that the value of both is very similar at that low lvl of ArP. The difference is extremely small and only gets bigger, when you gather more ArP.
As soon as you can reach these numbers, regemming all Agility gems for ArP gems would improve your DPS.
Our goal is to come as close to the ArP Hard Cap as possible.

And now it's time for mentioning the three ArP trinkets currently ingame:

[Grim Toll]
[Mjolnir Runestone]
[Needle-Encrusted Scorpion]

Wearing two of these trinkets is quite useless since they have a significant shared uptime and then there would be ArP wasted (assuming you've got some ArP on your gear). The goal is, to reach the ArP soft-cap. Soft Cap means: you have exactly 100% Armor Ignore when your trinket proccs.


ArP Soft-Cap: 722 ArPen, if wearing [Needle-Encrusted Scorpion]
ArP Soft-Cap: 735 ArPen, if wearing [Mjolnir Runestone]
ArP Soft-Cap: 788 ArPen, if wearing [Grim Toll]



For clarification, I will try to explain this. Let's say you don't have one of the two trinkets and x is the ArP on your gear (and with Hearty Rhino, the +40 ArP food buff):

x < 400 -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it
400 < x < 1400 -> ArPen is the best stat, gem for it
1400 < x -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it


Now finally Grim Toll drops off Gothik the Harvester and you are lucky enough to get it!

x < 400 -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it
400 < x < 788 -> ArPen is the best stat, gem for it
788 < x -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it


Just replace your soft-cap with 735, when wearing Mjolnir Runestone instead of Grim Toll and with 722, if wearing the Scorpion.(Source:Elitist Jerks)



So, this should be the stats order for gemming and enchanting:
> Hit rating, until capped.
> Expertise rating, till capped.
> Agility if you are on low gear, otherwise, read the part about Armor penetration to decide wich stat fits you better: Agility or Armor Penetration.

Some enchants to seek:
> Head enchant from Knights of the Ebon Blade(requires Exalted): +50 Attack Power, +20 Critical Strike Rating
> Shoulders Enchant from Sons of Hodir (requires Exalted): +40 Attack power, + 15 Critical strike rating
> Weapon: Berserk or Mongoose

Idols:

> Idol of Mutilation: your Mangle and Shred abilities grants 200 agility for 15 secs.
> Idol of the corruptor: your magle ability grants you 153 aglity for 10 secs.
> Idol of the Crying Moon: Each time your periodic Rake bleed inflicts damage, you gain 44 agility for 15 secs. Stacks up to 5 times.


Rotation:

First of all, FERALS DON'T HAVE A FIXED ROTATION. If you want a fixed rotation, reroll an arcane mage. Instead, we have a list of attack and finishing moves priorities, really situational and difficult to master (even Blizzard has recognized that our dps is the most difficult to master). You will need time of dummy practice before getting the timing needed for reaching your max dps.
Our dps comes most from bleeds, Rip and Rake being the abilities to use. Also, a big hunch of our dmg (around 30%) comes from white hits. So, even if you are without energy, stay on the boss as normal, so the auto attacks keep damaging.
Don't expect to top the metters at the very beggining of the battle, our dps its maximum once we have applied our long bleeds, and have Savage Roar up; so we need to "warm up" a little before the dps becomes significant.
The following abilities are used in our "rotation" (single target) : Rip, Rake, Shred, Mangle, Ferocius Bite, Tiger's Fury, Savage Roar,Faerie Fire and, of course, Berserk. Configure your bars to have them near your fingers (don't click!!!).
Some abbreviations of attacks: SR = Savage Roar, TF = Tiger's Fury, FB = Ferocius Bite.
Some details about our abilities:

> Mangle : Increases 30% the dmg from bleeds ticking while the debuff is up. That means that a bleed applied without the debuff, will anyway tick 30% more when the debuff is on.

> Savage Roar : The biggest dps increase that a feral can have. It increases ALL damage done by 30% (33% if glyphed). SR is the first finishing move to apply, and must be ALWAYS up. No matter what, no matter who, you must refresh it when it fades, because it increases the dmg of white attacks too. One side effect of this ability, is that bleeds applied when SR is up, will tick always as if SR is up, even if it has faded.

> Rip : Our highest dmg ability. It makes the target bleed for a long time, and refreshes with Shred if glyphed (for a certain maximum period of time). It must be always applied with 5 cp. Finishing this with less cp results in a high dps loss.The periodic bleed can be crit due to talents (Primal Gore).

> Rake: basic bleed, rewards one combo point (2 if crits). It is the most efficient ability ferals have in dps/energy relation. In T10 4P bonus receives the ability to make it's perdiodic dmg crit. Must be renewed when it fades, but clipping (renewing before it fades) it is a dps loss.

> Shred: The cp builder. Makes extra dmg if the target is bleeding, and effects that increase bleed dmg (like mangle debuff) increase also it's dmg. You must be behind your target. So, it's vital for ferals to stay behind the boss at all times (or as much as you can).

> Tiger's Fury : Energy filler. Regains 60 energy and increases dmg. Many people use TF to regain energy and then instantly Berserk. This is a dps loss, because Berserk removes the dmg increase of TF. It should be used as soon as it is available, and only when you are low on energy. It also must be reserved for when Berserk finishes, because, if well used, after Berserk you should be starving for energy.

> Berserk: Reduces by 50% the cost of all attacks in cat form. Lasts 15 seconds. During this time, you should get cp faster than usual, increasing your dps by a high amount. Use it as soon as it is available. Pro tip: reserve it for phases of battle when the boss receives extra dmg, you will raise your dps.

> Ferocious Bite: At the same time, the noob and pro finishing move. It deals the highest crits you will see as feral. However, it makes less dmg than Rip. Why is noob finisher? Cause noobs use it instead of Rip because they think the big numbers mean big dps. Why is the pro finisher? If you have enoguh cp, and Savage Roar and Rip have still enough time left to fade, it's your finishing move. Pro ferals have the timing to FB often. I must recognize that i haven't mastered enough to FB as often as pro ferals.

So, this is the priority list of abilities, and how they should be used:

1> Keep Savage Roar up.
2> Keep Rip up.
3> Keep Rake up. (but don't clip it)
4> Keep Mangle debuff up.
5> If all the list before is ok, Shred

> Use Tiger's Fury to regain Energy.
> Use Berserk when available
> Renew Faerie Fire when it fades(once every 5 mins, lol).
> If both Rip and SR have more than 8 seconds left, and you have 4 or 5 CP, Ferocius Bite!
> Try to decouple the fade time of Rip and SR. If they fade near, you won't be able to refresh both with 5 cp. The decoupling can be done by finishing SR with less combo points, so it will fade some time before Rip, and then you can keep refreshing both with 5 cp.
> If you are under 50 energy, and rake is about to fade, don't shred, wait for it to fade, refresh and then shred. Not refreshing rake makes you lose more dps than missing a shred.
> Be patient. You don't need to be always near 0 energy. Keep between 25 and 80 energy. Use abilities when above 50 energy if you have time.

Some extra tips for dps:

> If you are pulling much aggro, first of all, be prowd! XD; then use Cower to help the tank keeping aggro. Remeber, a dead dps makes 0 dmg, so watch your aggro.
> Use Barkskin before heavy raid damage.
> If there is a phase of the boss in which you need to be far from it, before leaving the boss, apply a Rip at the last second to keep dps going (at this point, Rip is more important than SR).
> You don't need to be at melee range to use SR (if you have cp on the target).
> Use Berserk to refresh your SR and Rip if you have problems keeping both up. If you don't have problems with them, try to use Berserk when SR still has long time to fade, and you have just applied Rip, this should give you 15 secs of pure dps with Ferocius Bite (you can have between 2-3 FB during this time).
> Apply Thorns on the tank, this will give you about 70 dps (but don't apply it if there is a Resto or Moonkin, due to their thorns hit harder than yours because of their spell power).
> When Lord Marrogaw is on Bone Storm, it's back points always to the side it was pointing before the bone storm.(Don't try this at home!).
> Don't LoS the healers, if you are running low on health, stop dpsing and run near one of them.
> If your healers are having trouble at healing, you can cast an instant Healing Touch on yourself to help (Predator's Swiftness), or even a Tranquility. For example, last part of Toravon fight, when there is heavy AoE dmg due to debuff stack, Tranquility can keep your party alive (Barkskin negates pushback and loss of Tranquility pulses).

As a last topic, some NOs of ferals:

> Don't use mangle for building cp.
> Don't die from AoE effects. We move faster than any class+ we have Dash, so the fire of Lord Marrogaw or the nova from Lady Deathwhisper and Ick shouldn't hit us (or hit for a short time). Don't be afraid to run away a little, we have bleedings to keep dps going, and with Feral Charge you will be near the boss in a second after the danger has gone.
> Don't apply mangle if there is an Arms Warrior or Bear tank in the raid, they have talents that increase bleed dmg.
> Don't apply Faerie Fire if there is a Moonkin in the raid. They have an improved Faerie Fire that boosts their dps, and feral's one overwrite it.
> Don't use openers. Ravage and Pounce are only a waste of energy.

Last of all, enjoy your character. Shapeshifting is fun, i love running in cheetah form, even when it is slower than riding. If u practice enough, you will see how top dps classes think they are doing something wrong when a feral is above them on the dps charts.

Feel free to criticize, i can't know everything, and can make mistakes too.

Sorry for the bad english. If you speak spanish better than i speak english, then you can criticize my spelling.

Edit: Added Idol of the Crying Moon (Thx tomtomz). Added suggestions about ArPen gemming (but still need some corrections to be perfect).

Edit: fixed ArPen part, thanks to Lightiningheal!

Edit: Fixed Strength part. I still wonder why this guide wasn't stickied.... i worked hard to keep it complete, and i think it's better than the one is actually stickied.