Season of Discovery Feral Druid DPS Guide
Welcome to our Feral Druid guide for WoW Classic - Season of Discovery, tailored for PvE content. Here, you will learn how to play the Druid class as a DPS Feral Druid. Click the links below to navigate the guide or read this page for a short introduction.
Overview
Druids have traditionally been brought to raids for their unique utility: Mark of the Wild, Innervate, and the only WoW Classic combat resurrection, Rebirth.
While there were a handful of Feral Druids running around top tier raids, they were mostly relegated to off-tank duties due to being able to use the same talents for both tanking and DPS with just some gear swaps, but Feral Druids really became an important buff provider in Season of Discovery due to the new Wild Strikes rune!
- Alternative Windfury Totem buff provider with the Wild Strikes rune
- Great unique utility in Rebirth, Innervate and Mark of the Wild
- Great soloing / PvP / leveling spec that can do it all: self-healing, high damage, stealth, and great mobility
- Best DPS at off-tank duties, requiring a single rune swap to be at maximum tanking efficiency in Bear Form
- Top damage is still much weaker than that of the top DPS specs
- Area damage potential is very poor and good single target requires powershifting, which is an unintuitive mechanic
- Becoming a full tank requires you to lose the new Windfury Totem buff rune, Wild Strikes, in favor of Survival of the Fittest
Season of Discovery
Feral Druid DPS is much more viable in Season of Discovery due to the addition of the rune system, and the Wild Strikes rune in particular, which grants the Windfury Totem buff to nearby allies, thus allowing Alliance players to also have access to this important buff!
Berserk and King of the Jungle are also important damage increases that will only get more powerful over time, as they act as multipliers on a Feral Druid's damage.
It also helps that Bear Form Druids can now get massive damage reduction and immunity to crits from the new Survival of the Fittest rune, making it more enticing to bring at least one Feral Druid to any raid for off-tanking duties.
Feral Druids are still the best off-tanks due to using very similar talents for tanking and DPSing, and it is easy to use runes that work for both roles, as well as swapping those runes to excel at one particular job whenever needed. Thus, Feral Druids can go from tanking to DPSing almost as well as a pure DPS by just swapping their gear and Runes, or by using a mixed build to do decent damage while not tanking in a fight.
Through the addition of entirely new abilities and runes, the rotation, gearing options, and talent decisions for Feral Druid DPS has changed with the coming of Season of Discovery. Browse the guides in the Table of Content at the top of this page to find all the information you'll need to master this new game mode!
Profession Changes
The best profession to have as a Feral is Engineering. It provides powerful items that you can use in both PvE and PvP content to either deal damage or help you get out of a tough spot.
Leatherworking is also a great choice for Feral Druids due to special bind on pickup crafts such as Void-Touched Leather Gloves, Glowing Gneuro-Linked Cowl, and Paranoia Mantle with further important BoP crafts expected down the line.
Rune Engravings for Feral Druid DPS
The main feature of Season of Discovery is the new Rune Discovery system, which allows you to discover and attach special abilities to your gear slots after finding them across the world. We list all of Druid's runes and where they can be located in the guide below.
Changelog
- 10 Jul. 2024: Updated for Phase 4.
- 04 Apr. 2024: Updated for Phase 3.
- 10 Feb. 2024: Updated for Phase 2.
- 14 Dec. 2023: Removed mention of Innervate for now, as it is a level 40 spell, Mangle tooltip fix, and other text fixes
More Classic Druid Guides
More Season of Discovery Class Guides
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
This guide has been written by Seksi, original vanilla player and multi-class player, currently playing on Gehennas Horde. You can find him on the Classic Warrior, Mage and Shaman Discords, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
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