Feral Druid DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.0.2

Mythic+ dungeons scale up with key level, and especially when you reach higher levels you will find this to be as challenging as some of the Mythic raiding present in WoW.

Therefore, when playing Feral your responsibility to contribute to the groups success will be higher than in most raiding groups due to the lower group size, therefore skill and execution of strategy is crucial. The importance of being versatile and able to adapt to any situation is a key factor here, and one of the main reasons that some talent choices are taken that differentiate from ideal raid selections.

Alongside damage, utility such as interrupts, dispels and control are vital to handling many of the challenges you will find. The more you can bring to the table, the more aggressively you can pull and move through the dungeon comfortably.

In this guide, we will be discussing the finer points of Feral Druid and how to get the most out of it, how to gear and set up your character, and some tips to push yourself further.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 1 page below.

If you want more information about all of the talent options and whether some could be useful in certain situations, you should use our dedicated Talent page.

Recommended talent choices for Feral Druid in Mythic+ are as follows:

Level	Choices
15	✓ Predator	? Sabertooth	✗ Lunar Inspiration
25	? Tiger Dash	? Renewal	? Wild Charge
30	? Balance Affinity	? Guardian Affinity	? Restoration Affinity
35	✓ Mighty Bash	✗ Mass Entanglement	✓ Heart of the Wild
40	✓ Soul of the Forest	✗ Savage Roar	✗ Incarnation: King of the Jungle
45	✗ Scent of Blood	? Brutal Slash	✓ Primal Wrath
50	✓ Moment of Clarity	✓ Bloodtalons	✓ Feral Frenzy

While Feral has good options to tailor the way you deal damage in different situations, strong choices are often very locked into what they are good at. That means in a lot of cases the best choice is going to depend on the dungeon and what else is present in your group composition.

Predator has huge potential due to the frequency of targets dying in Mythic+ situations granting resets. This both generates extra resource and raises the uptime on the Tiger's Fury. Sabertooth is razor focused on single-target, limiting its flexibility significantly but can be picked in Tyrannical weeks if boss damage is needed. Lunar Inspiration costs far too much Energy to make use of.

All three of these options have their uses. Your pick here will largely be defined by comfort — Tiger Dash is extra instant mobility for emergencies, Wild Charge is flexible movement in different situations, and Renewal is an on demand recovery tool.

All three Affinities now have their uses due to the additional crowd control option they grant access to on top of their passive benefits:

• Balance Affinity — Typhoon
• Guardian Affinity — Incapacitating Roar
• Restoration Affinity — Ursol's Vortex

Alongside the passives and additional abilities gained that help in different scenarios, the extra crowd control tools have different applications depending on affixes present. You will probably find use with all of these and the pick here will often be up to you and what your composition needs. Note however if playing Night Fae that you will be locked into playing with Balance Affinity to make use of the AoE it provides with Convoke the Spirits

Mighty Bash provides an extra lockdown tool for enemies immune to interrupts, and is the most flexible. Mass Entanglement is unlikely to find much use in most situations. Heart of the Wild supercharges your selected Affinity, allowing you to perform better at an off-role for 45 seconds, which can be very useful in Mythic+. This could grant room for you to cover Tank, Healing or Ranged DPS responsibilities in emergencies and is the most powerful choice if you can play around it.

Soul of the Forest is too easy to execute and too flexible to pass up. This improves the damage of your finishers (primarily Primal Wrath in AoE), and makes Energy management much smoother when Predator resets are not available. Savage Roar loses uptime when moving between packs and requires too much investment, and Incarnation: King of the Jungle is not impactful enough compared to regular Berserk to warrant the extra cooldown planning needed.

Primal Wrath is too good to pass up on this tier for AoE situations. The ability to spread Rip and have an efficient way to convert Combo Points to AoE damage is something sorely missing in the baseline kit. Brutal Slash is more flexible having a single-target impact, but the upgrade compared to Swipe is not big enough, and it suffers from the AoE target cap that Primal Wrath does not have to deal with. Scent of Blood is functionally worse than both other options in every way currently and not a good pick.

All 3 options here have their place. Bloodtalons when played around correctly will net a big gain to your finishers (primarily Primal Wrath in AoE), while flexing to single-target with stronger Ferocious Bites, and can leverage the extra Energy available from Predator to cast more of them. Moment of Clarity has an extremely good smoothing effect to your Energy pool and allows for smoother, consistent pulls, but is a bit less explosive in terms of raw gains. Feral Frenzy is great for opening strong on targets and with a low cooldown can often be used each pack to focus down a target, so is also a great pick.

Currently Feral has two options to look at in Mythic+. The first is Circle of Life and Death, which significantly increases the rate of your Bleed effect ticks working very well with Primal Wrath, which is the main AoE delivery tool for Feral.

Alternatively, Apex Predator's Craving allows you to leverage extra targets with Rip active via Primal Wrath for free Ferocious Bite casts, allowing you to focus down important targets. This is less flexible than Circle, but works well in all situations.

For more information about different Feral Druid Legendaries, you can look at our dedicated Legendary page.

Currently all but Necrolord perform well in Mythic+ in different situations, and they can all be considered. Kyrian has a low cooldown that can be leveraged for big AoE assuming you have a good partner, while Night Fae can make use of Balance Affinity to do strong burst AoE or use it to focus a single target down in Cat Form. Venthyr requires more planning and is the least flexible, but with certain routes can be explosive. Necrolord's main issue is that it takes time to make use of the effect and is mostly limited to a low target count, making it too focused compared to alternatives.

• For Kyrian, you should be using Pelagos, as Combat Meditation's uptime is excellent here for an added boost. At higher Renown levels, you can consider using Forgelite Prime Mikanikos to make use of Hammer of Genesis's high uptime.
• When playing Necrolord you can use either Emeni or Bonesmith Heirmir. Both of these have advantages, so your pick comes down to preference.
• For Night Fae, you should be using Niya. This tree has a lot of good options and the opening trait Grove Invigoration can give a good burst of AoE each use of your Covenant ability. At high Renown, you will switch to Korayn to make use of First Strike.
• For Venthyr you should be using Nadjia the Mistblade. This is due to the frequent cycling of Thrill Seeker caused by enemy deaths.

When it comes to Conduit choices, you will be picking Carnivorous Instinct and Sudden Ambush as your two Potency choices. These are both very strong and flexible given the amount of extra Energy and uptime provided by Predator, and will often outweigh any neutral traits. Having access to two Endurance Conduits is also very nice to get both Tough as Bark and Well-Honed Instincts for more survival.

With that said however, Covenant and Soulbind selections have a lot of different factors, so we recommend looking at our page discussing them for more information.

This season's new affix active at key levels 10 and above is Prideful. Every 20% of the enemy forces counter, a large enemy will spawn that when defeated will give you a damage boost for one minute. If possible you should try to save Berserk for the upcoming damage boost and use it for extra AoE, but this is not always possible and can instead be cast to burst down the add faster. When the add is defeated, the group will usually rush ahead so here is the time to burn any cooldowns with the buff active to make up time, and you will always have Tiger's Fury reset for this thanks to Predator.

The rules covered in the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page are still applicable here. Note that in most situations, however, you will be defaulting to higher enemy numbers, so cleave and AoE will be your focus. There are some additional notes that you can leverage to help improve your output due to the downtime Mythic+ creates:

• Predator makes it very easy to set yourself up between each pack due to the reset effect. Make sure that you apply Bleeds and maintain them as targets are dying (primarily via either Thrash or Primal Wrath) to trigger it.
• Due to the above mentioned resets, you should be casting Tiger's Fury very aggressively, especially as a target is about to die for the surge of Energy and damage increase window. Uptime should be very high in any dungeon with enemies that die at a staggered rate.
• Pooling Combo Points as targets are about to die so that you are able to immediately open with a high value Primal Wrath cast on the next pack gets you started quickly with each pull.
• Try to enter Prowl between each pack and open with Rake to lock down a high priority target to prevent casting. This can be followed up with the above mentioned Primal Wrath cast if any Combo Points were lost due to downtime.
• Plan your Berserk casts around when you need high burst. Due to its duration, this can often be bosses, but remember you can use the effect to spread stealth buffed Rakes to multiple targets, increasing your damage significantly.

Feral Druid has access to a lot of differnt tools to assist the group, mostly relating to crowd control and dispel effects.

• Skull Bash is the Feral interrupt tool on a 15-second cooldown and 13-yard range, and with a small charge. This should be used frequently to disrupt enemy casts, and can also be used to re-engage targets at range using the charge aspect.
• Remove Corruption removes both Curse and Poison debuffs from a targeted ally with an 8-second cooldown. Some dungeons have these effects present, and this can assist your healer in dangerous periods.
• Soothe is an offensive Enrage effect dispel. This has a 40-yard range and a 10-second cooldown, and can be used in Cat Form. In any dungeon that has Enrage effects or during Raging affix weeks is incredibly valuable to any group.
• Bear Form allows you to assume a Tank-oriented form when used, and also grants access to Growl as a taunt effect. This can help in emergencies, increasing your survival and allowing you to redirect pressure from your tank.
• Predatory Swiftness allows you to instantly cast Regrowth or Entangling Roots after casting a finishing move at 5 Combo Points. This can assist with off-healing or provide emergency crowd control.
• Rebirth is a combat resurrection effect, allowing you to revive a player outside of the combat restrictions in the event of an unexpected death, but does require you to leave Cat Form.
• Stampeding Roar grants movement speed to you and all allies within 15 yards. This can be used for getting back into range for damage, or helping allies to avoid dangerous effects.
• Infected Wounds is passively applied by your Rake effect, slowing targets by 20% for 12 seconds. Not a strong slow, but can be useful if kiting is needed.
• Maim and the Mighty Bash talent are both stun options available to Feral that can be used to lock down single targets and prevent non-interruptible casts.
• Typhoon is granted by the Balance Affinity talent, and can be used to push enemies back or interrupt casts from enemies that are immune. It can also be used to force targets out of ground effects such as Sanguine if needed.
• Incapacitating Roar is granted by the Guardian Affinity talent, and can be used as an AoE interrupt effect on targets that are otherwise immune. The low cooldown of this makes it incredibly useful for large groups of enemies.
• Ursol's Vortex is granted by the Restoration Affinity talent, and is used to lock targets in one area. This has less versatile uses than the two alternatives, but can be helpful to keep enemies in place for its duration by pulling them back if they leave the area. This also allows for more stacked AoE by grouping them all in a small clump.
• Entangling Roots is a soft crowd control option to lock down enemies in certain situations you want to keep out of range, but they are still able to cast or attack from a distance if possible.
• Hibernate is a crowd control option that can be cast on Beasts and Dragonkin with a 1.5-second cast, and a 30-yard range. This puts your target to sleep for up to 40 seconds, but any damage taken will break the effect.
• Cyclone is an emergency crowd control tool that will banish your target for 6 seconds, making it unable to act and immune to all damage and healing effects. This can be used to lock down a a dangerous target briefly, but has a 1.5-second cast time and only one enemy can be affected by this at once.

There are no significant alterations to the gear choices you should be making compared to normal single-target and AoE situations, however we heavily recommend simming your own character to make sure. Having Patchwerk, and then Dungeon Slice profiles to see what can be optimized are the ideal profiles to use. Dungeon Slice in particular is very important, as this will generate activations of Predator with simulated enemy deaths.

Trinkets tend to lean toward on use or proc effects that are powerful in all situations rather than specific ones, so your mileage may vary compared to those that are picked in raids. If you want to know more about gear to aim for, you can look at our gear page.