WotLK Classic Feral Druid DPS Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Druids.

This is the main DPS build for Feral, which picks up all damage-increasing talents, including Furor and two points into Protector of the Pack for Bearweaving purposes, where you temporarily swap into Dire Bear Form when low on Cat Energy in order to deal more damage with Bear abilities while regenerating Energy. The adequate timings to shift and abilities to use are further explained in the rotation section.

One of Feral's strengths is that it is the only spec in the game that has two intended builds built into a single talent tree. This talent build makes use of that to pick up most of the important talents needed to DPS and to tank, while only making minor sacrifices in each spec. This enables you to swap between DPS and tanking anytime, making you a great choice for potentially off-tanking during a raid. Even mid-fight, you can instantly swap between DPS and tanking whenever needed.

The PvP build is similar to the PvE builds, but also gets Infected Wounds for the important slowing effect when chasing enemy players. A possible talent swap is Feral Aggression and Feral Instinct, for better stealth in matchups where the opener is critical to success.

In Wrath you will be able to unlock Glyphs that improve your abilities and can be swapped around freely as long as you have the consumable glyph item on your bags.

As a Feral DPS Druid, you will want to be using Glyph of Shred, Glyph of Rip, and Glyph of Savage Roar for maximum damage, in PvE and PvP situations.

For minor glyphs, you will want to use three out of Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, Glyph of Dash, Glyph of the Wild, or Glyph of Thorns.

The Balance Tree provides no real benefits to Feral DPS and should be ignored.

The Feral Tree carries most of the power of a Feral DPS Druid, as would be expected. It also has a lot of PvP utility, which you can learn more about in our Wrath Feral Druid PvP guide.

Feral Aggression is a minor damage gain for Feral Druids, and the maximized Attack Power debuff can be brought by other common classes, instead.

Survival Instincts is a survivability cooldown that grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 seconds, similarly to Last Stand.

Predatory Strikes increases your melee Attack Power and allows you to perform instant casts after using a finishing move, which is very important while soloing (for self-healing) and in PvP (for crowd control).

Primal Precision increases your Expertise by up to 10 and causes your missed finishing moves to refund 80% of the Energy spent on them. Since regular skills already have this refund mechanic, this means that missing attacks as a Cat Druid is not a huge deal, as you can almost immediately try again, with only a minor Energy loss.

Feral Charge allows you to quickly move through the encounter area by charging at distant enemies. This is a large DPS increase whenever it increases your uptime on enemies.

Survival of the Fittest increases your stats, the Armor gained from gear, and decreases your chance of getting critically struck by up to 6%, which makes you uncrittable by itself with zero defensive gear requirements.

Improved Leader of the Pack is the only buff of its kind and allows allies to heal when attacking, in a way similar to Judgement of Light.

Protector of the Pack increases your damage and reduces damage taken while in Dire Bear Form, which is helpful for Bearweaving and mandatory for tanking.

King of the Jungle reduces the cost of your DPS forms by 60%, allowing you to Bearweave without quickly exhausting your Mana pool and increases your damage in Dire Bear Form by 15% while Enrage is active, which is also very beneficial for Bearweaving. Its main Cat DPS benefit is making Tiger's Fury grant 60 Energy instantly upon use, which is a huge damage increase when properly used.

Mangle (Cat) applies a 30% damage increase debuff for bleeds for 1-minute, which is a huge multiplier to your damage and should always be present on your target unless you have an Arms Warrior with Trauma in your raid.

Berserk is a strong 3-minute cooldown which reduces the energy cost of your Cat abilities by 50% for 15 seconds. It also removes and makes you immune to Fear effects for its duration.

The Restoration Tree is mostly used for Furor, Naturalist, Omen of Clarity, and some minor stat buffs.