Feral Druid DPS Guide — Dragonflight 10.0.5

Last updated on Jan 24, 2023 at 14:08 by Wordup and Xanzara 25 comments
General Information

Welcome to our Feral Druid guide for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.5. Here, you will learn how to play as a Feral Druid in both raids and Mythic+ dungeons: from the very beginning to maximizing your DPS.

If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Feral DPS Druid guide.

1.

Feral Druid Overview

Feral, the Melee DPS specialization for Druids, forms its core gameplay around balancing two resources while leveraging those to apply powerful Bleed DoT effects on targets. Alongside that, Energy and Combo Points are used in tandem to set up high burst windows via pooling gameplay.

2.

Strengths and Weaknesses

V Strengths
  • +Variety of high value damage profiles
  • +Versatile talent tree with different builds
  • +Strong AoE both in cleave scenarios and uncapped situations
  • +Good burst cooldowns for priority damage
  • +Gains damage from low priority enemies dying
  • +Powerful defensive toolkit and off-healing capabilities
  • +Good group utility options
X Weaknesses
  • -Raid utility is limited
  • -Resource mis-management is very punishing
3.

Dragonflight Changes for Druids

We are maintaining a list of changes for Druids, so you can see what changes with every patch of Dragonflight.

4.

Dragonflight Feral Druid Changes

Moving from Shadowlands, Feral has refocused toward its Bleed DoT effects, substantially increasing their contribution to output while at the same time reducing the highly focused Ferocious Bite Icon Ferocious Bite focus that had become prevalent. It has also received several extra tools to improve its AoE gameplay, allowing it to deal damage in various scenarios more efficiently. It has a diverse number of talents for different damage profiles. Notable inclusions are:

5.

Leveling a Feral Druid

If you are interested in playing a Feral Druid but have yet to get one at max level, you can look at our leveling guide for pointers to help you along the way.

Adjusting once you hit max level to a new UI can also be quite difficult, especially with the number of things that Feral requires you to track. Therefore, we recommend looking at our Addons and Macro page to use these while leveling to get used to them to make the transition smoother.

6.

Basics of Feral Druid Gameplay

Feral is one of the more complex specs to grasp due to relying on a dual resource system that requires you to manage and pool them correctly at different times. It has a slow passive resource in Energy that can be converted into Combo Points via generator spells, such as Shred Icon Shred, and then spent on finishing moves, such as Ferocious Bite Icon Ferocious Bite.

Alongside this, Feral also has Bleed mechanics that apply debuffs to your target that require different resources, e.g., Rake Icon Rake needing Energy and Rip Icon Rip needing Combo Points. This creates a spec that, on paper, seems very busy with a lot to pay attention to but tends to play slower and more measured. This puts more weight on your decision-making and foresight than your snap gameplay. Once you grasp the concepts, however, it tends to click into place and becomes a lot more fluid to manage; it just takes a little practice!

If you have never played Feral before and are looking to learn the basics of what the spec has access to, we recommend looking through our Spell Summary first, as well as the Easy Mode page linked below too.

7.

How to Gear Up as a Feral Druid

While giving hard rules on how to gear directly due to the increasing number of variables and systems in World of Warcraft, you can find some basic information on what you should be looking out for, especially Best in Slot options in the current tier on our dedicated gear page.

Once you have started to gear, you must ensure that you have the appropriate consumables, gems, enchants, and more. We have a dedicated page that covers these questions and a stat page that covers what stats are good, when, and what to aim for.

8.

End-Game as a Feral Druid

Like all specs, Feral, when leveling, plays very differently at max level when progressing or doing end-game content. Therefore we have dedicated pages for Mythic+ and PvP to cover the nuances of these content paths.

9.

Improving as a Feral Druid

If you are looking for an answer to a specific question, often these are common queries many players have. We keep pages that cover the most frequently asked questions and also mistakes players tend to run into.

10.

Viability of Feral Druid in the Current Patch

Dragonflight Season 1 already showcased that Feral is much improved from Shadowlands in terms of damage delivery profiles, with strong uncapped AoE and a decent Mythic+ toolkit for different situations. The flexibility of the tree is a strong point, and the 10.0.5 changes improve many of the previously undesirable weaker talents bringing its single-target potential up. While it does now enforce Survival Instincts Icon Survival Instincts in the pathing, the buffs that came with it are generally a net positive, and the spec is likely to be in a good place.

11.

Changelog

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