Feral Druid DPS Guide — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.0.1

1. Feral Druid Overview

Feral, the Melee DPS specialisation for Druids, forms its core gameplay around balancing two separate resources whilst also leveraging those to apply powerful Bleed Damage over Time effects on targets. In terms of single target DPS, Feral is powerful and can often shine in these situations. When it comes to multiple target situations, Feral can perform well due to increased targets to apply Bleed effects too, and has large-scale AoE tools to contribute well with.

2. Patch 8.0.1 Changes for Feral Druid

Feral remains largely intact, with very few changes being implemented aside from some systems alterations with how some stats and mechanics operate.

• Berserk now only reduces Energy costs by 40%, and is now on the Global Cooldown.
• Tiger's Fury now lasts 10 seconds and only grants 50 Energy.
• Your Bleed effects ( Rake, Rip, and Thrash) now deal damage faster based on your Haste.
• Dash has been reduced to a 2-minute cooldown, and is down to a 60% movement speed bonus for 10 seconds.
• Bear Form has been reduced to a 25% Stamina gain, but the Armour increase has raised to 220%.
• Hibernate and Soothe return as baseline spells.

3. Feral Druid's Strengths

• Solid single target damage
• Very high mobility and flexibility in a raid environment
• Powerful burst AoE option in Brutal Slash
• Strong low target cleave achieved through maintaining DoTs on multiple targets
• Flexible talent choices allowing for advantages in different fight archetypes

4. Feral Druid's Weaknesses

• Can require ramp-up to reach full damage on priority targets
• Gameplay relies on pooling and smart resource management, and can be punishing
• Can be hampered by enemies dying too early before your Bleeds deal their full damage
• Weak burst cooldown options even considering talent choices

5. The Viability of Feral Druids in the Current Patch

Feral still retains the same versatile toolkit with a large amount of customization, alongside having access to some very powerful individual abilities and now having excellent scaling with Haste. However, some key aspects such as burst damage options may hurt it in the long run. It still retains good multi-DoT capabilities, but burst AoE is now less impactful. Due to the large number of post-test changes in Battle for Azeroth, however, it is too early in the process to actively guage where Feral will land.

6. Changelog