Feral Druid Frequently Asked Questions — Season 4

Many Feral mechanics benefit from the Pandemic effect. This means that you can refresh them with up to 30% of the duration remaining, and they will be added to the new application (but snapshotting will not be carried over). This includes the following abilities at the following times:

• Rake — 4.5 seconds;
• Rip — 7.2 seconds (assuming 5 Combo Points);
• Thrash — 4.5 seconds;
• Moonfire — 4.8 seconds;

With the Circle of Life and Death talent these values are proportionally shorter:

• Rake — 3.4 seconds;
• Rip — 5.4 seconds (assuming 5 Combo Points);
• Thrash — 3.4 seconds;
• Moonfire — 3.6 seconds;

Any time remaining after the above thresholds will instead be added onto the maximum duration from the new cast and combined for an extended uptime. This allows you to refresh any time within this window, whenever is most suitable for you.

In virtually all situations, you should strive to have as close to 100% uptime on both Rip and Rake, and ideally also Thrash. The latter extends especially to situations where you are playing with Taste for Blood.

Your decision comes down to the type of burst damage window you are looking for. Due to current effects Convoke the Spirits generally pairs best with the gear available, and provides an extremely condensed amount of damage to a primary target, even with the potential to be reduced to 1-minute. On the other hand, Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane is a powerful amplifier to your Berserk windows but requires a long time to get full use of, sometimes longer than priority targets or trash packs are alive, making it harder to get full use out of.

Conditionally, yes. You should avoid wasting any Energy, the primary resource you will pool. Generally, you will begin to pool this at high Combo Points and start spending when you need to refresh an effect (though with Bloodtalons taken, you will do a pool-dump-pool cycle instead). The primary rule is to use resources wisely for Feral as that dictates your output at all times, and pooling is often a core part of that. Ideally, you should put yourself in a situation where you generate your Combo Points and wait on Energy before re-entering into another Spend-Generate-Pool cycle to minimize the chance of an Omen of Clarity proc being wasted.

Currently due to the high value of Combo Points and the potential to accidentally overflow with Primal Fury, it is advised to spend at 4 when outside of cooldowns. Due to Berserk having built-in overflow protection however, during your cooldowns you should always aim to spend at 5.

Saber Jaws puts extra emphasis on making sure you consume additional Energy with each Ferocious Bite to amplify the damage. This means you need to be more mindful of your Energy state when consuming Combo Points to make sure you capitalize on this, rather than just sending it as soon as possible. It also means our Energy to damage conversion is higher with finishers, making pooling even more important in some cases to reset your cycle after a Bite. You should already be doing this, but it's made even more important when this is taken. Note that Apex Predator's Craving has no interaction with this talent.

Snapshotting refers to mechanics involving Tiger's Fury and Bloodtalons, that will confer the damage increase to the entire Bleed DoT effect if these buffs are present when you apply them. This is specific to these two effects and does not apply to trinkets or active buffs such as Sabertooth. This means maintaining Bleeds with these effects up is very important to make the most out of them, and ideally, you want to make sure Rake is buffed by Tiger's Fury, and Rip is buffed by both that and Bloodtalons if taken. You should also try to minimize the number of times you overwrite these effects without these buffs.

In virtually all situations currently, when extra targets are present, your finishing move will be Primal Wrath. While the Sabertooth effect is nice to maintain, the raw damage of Primal Wrath and Tear Open Wounds is more valuable, and instead your Ferocious Bite casts (and thus uptime of Sabertooth) is fueled by Apex Predator's Craving. This shifts slightly if you are looking for more priority damage, at which point you should maintain Rips with Primal Wrath and Bite your kill target. If you are playing Rampant Ferocity however, you have the option to spend it on Ferocious Bite for additional priority damage while still maintaining some AoE alongside it.

This depends on the type of pull you are engaged in. Usually, if there is any priority target to anchor the debuff to, using Shred to activate Bloodtalons and maintain this is a good idea to even out damage across the pack. This extends to bosses with add waves you want to cleave down, but in large AoE situations where most targets have equal health, it is not worth the effort to maintain it actively.

The answer to this question in any context will always be to simulate it. This is because what is an upgrade for you may not be an upgrade for someone else. In other words, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all answer, even when talking about 2 completely identical comparisons from you to another person. Everything in your gear affects everything else.

This applies to gear, set bonuses, trinkets, and talents.

The only exception to this rule is when a specific fight dictates a certain set of optimal talents and gear pieces that enhance their strength. If you are curious about what kind of setup to go for a specific fight, WarcraftLogs.com's rankings and statistics are a good place to see what others are doing.

We have a guide on how to sim yourself here:

For Feral, there is no strict "amount" or breakpoint of any stat you must reach. Nor are there any points at which a stat stops being desirable. In most cases, the specific secondary you have is less important than the volume. However, this is another case of a situation in which a simulation to check your ideal gear pieces and stat values will provide you with invaluable information.

Druids have limited race options for each faction, but the current simulations for races indicate the following: