Feral Druid DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.2

There are a number of build options for pure single-target, but with some of the Patch 10.2 changes, this comes out as the best option:

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For the single-target builds, you do give up a great deal of AoE and cleave potential, but in exchange, you get a very powerful and flexible single-target package. With the Tier 31 set, you are required to take Feral Frenzy to activate it, but this was mostly being taken previously regardless, and now just adds in a 30-second burst damage cooldown. There is also an alternative build that reaches Convoke the Spirits / Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane for those interested, but key talents are as follows:

• Dire Fixation - probably the highest value single point for single-target on the tree, but works exclusively on one target. While the top of the tree is quite contested now, it is never worth dropping this if you are looking for single-target.
• Bloodtalons - the stronger of the two finisher amplifiers, but requires additional gameplay to make full use of. Made a lot easier to cycle with either Brutal Slash or Lunar Inspiration to inject another activator into the rotation.
• Lunar Inspiration - is an alternative as a Bloodtalons activator and much of the effects that already support it are on taken, points are just a little too tight to grab everything at once. Take either this or Infected Wounds.
• Saber Jaws - new in Patch 10.2, this significantly increases the bonus damage from consuming excess Energy with Ferocious Bite. This makes it more important to make sure you consume the extra amount with each Bite, and emphasizes pooling and management.
• Apex Predator's Craving - with the change to proc rate at low targets in Patch 10.2, this is now a worthwhile pickup to follow on from the above.
• Sudden Ambush - provides us with a way to get the Pouncing Strikes bonus for Rake much more consistently throughout an encounter.
• Adaptive Swarm - amplifies the other DoT effects and aligns well with each Feral Frenzy to push its damage further. Does not impact the 4-piece Fire DoT, though.

As an alternative to the above, this deals slightly less damage overall but does add in an additional burst cooldown with Convoke the Spirits. Depending on encounter, this is a worthwhile trade-off.

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The sacrifices to reach here are the points in Carnivorous Instinct and Circle of Life and Death, so the sustained damage loss is definitely noticeable. Convoke the Spirits is still a very powerful condensed burst window that can overlap your Feral Frenzy Set Bonus windows, especially in situations where bosses take additional damage. It can also consider switching out Adaptive Swarm to reach Ashamane's Guidance, granting access to 1-minute Convokes and additional 4-piece activators from the auto-cast Feral Frenzy.

Patch 10.2 has made the AoE build lose less when switching away from a pure single-target loadout, and as such, this is best suited for any situation with extra targets. More talent details underneath.

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Due to some of Feral's most valuable AoE tools coming exclusively from the talent tree, this is where you build most of your damage for multi-target situations. These picks range from versatile cleave options to exclusively AoE picks that have a granular impact on how far you want to invest into AoE. Some of these are preference, while others are simply too valuable to ever drop, even if they only fixate on one damage profile.

• Feral Frenzy - while mostly single-target on its own, this is required to activate the Tier 31 set bonus, so cannot be dropped.
• Primal Wrath + Tear Open Wounds - this is the crux of the AoE package and is always taken. Without these, the AoE toolkit struggles to function properly.
• Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane vs. Convoke the Spirits - both of these are worthwhile options, and it mostly comes down to what other talents you selected and the type of burst you want. Especially with the Tier 31 set , the value of Convoke is much closer and even opens up the opportunity to grab Ashamane's Guidance for 1-minute burst cycles. It also has extra synergy with Rampant Ferocity for larger pull dungeons if you select that as well.
• Apex Predator's Craving - gives a way to leverage both your active Rips, and the AoE component of Ferocious Bite from the above to keep both finishers relevant. It can also lead to additional funnel damage.
• Double-Clawed Rake - very high-value talent for AoE to make multi-target application of Rake much smoother. It has no single-target impact, however, but most of the value is improving the other Rake-related talents.
• Infected Wounds - similar to above, these are usually paired together in AoE, and if you drop one, there is sometimes room to drop the other as well.
• Sudden Ambush - this is also related to the above two talents, as these allow you to double up on the value of each proc to empower Rake casts. This also provides strong single-target and low-target cleave options, rounding out the Rake talents.
• Rampant Ferocity - while exclusively AoE, it has good value in keeping Ferocious Bite relevant at higher target counts. This is very costly to pick up, however, because of how busy the center of the tree is and the good hybrid talents that need to be dropped to fit it in.
• Tireless Energy - if you are really struggling to make use of Predator resets and need additional Energy to smooth things out; this is a very niche option to solve that. It will almost always come at the cost of throughput, though.

For Mythic+, picking up the highest value options that have more broad applications is generally preferred, with some of the explicitly AoE picks taking a back seat. Patch 10.2 has mostly limited this to Rampant Ferocity however, as much of the other core AoE toolkit can be grabbed at little cost.

For a stronger leaning to AoE situations, the focus is on empowering Primal Wrath (and Ferocious Bite through Rampant Ferocity and Apex Predator's Craving), dealing extremely high sustained AoE damage but at the cost of some single-target focused options. This is recommended in extended sustained AoE encounters or trash-heavy dungeons in Mythic+ where you can consistently maintain multiple targets, and also ideally when you can rely on some Predator resets for additional Energy.

Ability	Explanation
Omen of Clarity	Causes your auto-attacks to have a chance to make your next Shred, Swipe or Thrash cost no Energy. This generates a significant amount of Energy and is required to sustain the rotation in most cases, so is always taken.
Dire Fixation	Dealing damage to an enemy with Shred applies Dire Fixation to them for 10 seconds, increasing all damage you deal to that target by 8%. This can only be active on one target at a time. This is one of the most powerful one-point single-target talents on the tree, and is generally always taken.
Primal Wrath	An active finisher that deals direct damage and applies Rip to all targets hit. This is our AoE spender and is taken in any situation where more than one target is present.
Tear Open Wounds	Causes Primal Wrath re-casts on targets with Rip present to consume some of the remaining duration. This is what allows us to recast Primal Wrath so frequently without the worry of losing DoT damage and is taken in multi-target situations.
Merciless Claws	Increases Shred damage by 20% and Swipe / Brutal Slash damage by 15% against Bleeding targets. This is effectively a passive boost due to our Bleeds and is a solid passive increase, especially in single-target.
Thrashing Claws	This is moreso an ease-of-use option, causing Shred and Swipe to apply the Thrash effect. This removes Thrash entirely from your rotation, making it easier to maintain the Bleed, but at a performance loss.
Predator	Provides a flat bonus to Tiger's Fury duration and causes its cooldown to reset whenever an enemy affected by your Bleeds dies. This provides a lot of additional Energy and uptime whenever there are frequently dying targets and is a consistently useful talent.
Double-Clawed Rake	Causes Rake casts to apply to a second target. Makes multi-DoT maintenance easier and is taken in multi-target situations.
Sabertooth	Increases Ferocious Bite damage and causes each Combo Point spent by it to increase all your active Rip damage. Provides additional incentive to Bite targets and has good synergy with follow-ups for most situations, and is generally a required pathing node, so it is always taken.
Tireless Energy	Increases base Energy regeneration by 10/20% and max Energy by 30/60. It gives more room for pooling and is a solid choice in most situations, but when points become tight, they are often dropped for stronger effects so long as you have enough resources to maintain the key cycle.
Pouncing Strikes	Grants a 60% damage bonus to Shred and Rake from stealth, gives Shreds buffed this way double the Critical Strike chance and Rake a stun effect. On its own, it is not very important, but with supporting talents such as Sudden Ambush, this can provide some extra damage. Regardless, though, this is mandatory for pathing deeper into the tree.

The first block of talents are mostly universal increases to the core rotation, dictating your access to Energy-related effects to build the primary cycle. The only big decision here is whether you take Primal Wrath and the supporting AoE talents around it, but you will always path through Sabertooth and Pouncing Strikes to unlock the second tier of talents. Ideally, you will spend the minimum possible points here to gain access to later options.

Ability	Explanation
Survival Instincts	Powerful, but long cooldown defensive option. While this is not throughput, pathing must reach our major offensive cooldown, so it is always taken.
Berserk	Our major cooldown, causing Shred and Rake to deal 50% increased damage, and cause Finishing moves to also refund up to 3 Combo Points generated above the cap of 5. Also causes all Combo Point generating abilities to generate an additional Combo Point, and passively generates 1 Combo Point per second. It provides a huge flood of resources alongside overflow protection, and has some enhancing talents to focus more on this window.
Berserk: Heart of the Lion	Each Combo Point spent reduces the cooldown of Berserk by 0.5 seconds. Generally will reduce the cooldown by roughly 1 to 1.5 minutes, making it align more conveniently for most encounters, so is often taken due to the other Berserk empowering talents.
Berserk: Frenzy	Causes Combo Point generating abilities to apply a Bleed effect for 100% of the damage dealt over 8 seconds. Adds further Strength to your Berserk windows, especially in single-target, due to the damage increase it provides to Shred and is always taken.
Sudden Ambush	Gives finishing moves a 6% chance per Combo Point to cause your next, Shred or Rake to deal damage as if you were stealthed. Thanks to Pouncing Strikes, this is an extremely strong single-target option, and keeps up in some cleave situations as well.
Raging Fury	Causes your Finishing moves to extend the duration of your active Tiger's Fury effect by 0.4 seconds per Combo Point. This competes on a choice node with Tiger's Tenacity, but is a significantly better option for a much higher, consistent Tiger's Fury uptime.
Infected Wounds	Increases the damage of Rake by 30% and adds a small slow while active. An all-round good talent that works well in multi-target thanks to Double-Clawed Rake.
Dreadful Bleeding	Increases Rip damage by 18%. This affects all of your active Rips and is always taken.
Moment of Clarity	Increases the chance for Omen of Clarity procs to trigger by 50%, allowing it to accumulate a second charge and increase the damage of abilities that consume it by 15%. A good all-round talent that smooths out the rotation, but can be dropped in AoE should you be stable on Energy.
Brutal Slash	Replaces Swipe with a stronger, cooldown/charge-based ability. This is generally worth the trade-off as you rarely need to Swipe more than once when building Combo Points back up to 5, and has benefits in single-target, especially with Bloodtalons. Competes with Wild Slashes on the choice node, but this is more of a simple passive, which is generally weaker.
Taste for Blood	Increases the damage dealt by your Ferocious Bite by 5% per Bleed, you have active on the target. A solid option for a variety of builds that lean into a Bite playstyle, especially in single-target.
Relentless Predator	Reduces the Energy cost of Ferocious Bite by 20%. Helps with some of the Energy issues caused by frequently using Bite in single-target, but is an optional choice for Bite oriented builds.
Rampant Ferocity	Causes your Ferocious Bite casts to also deal damage-based on Combo Points spent to nearby enemies affected by your Rip. This is affected by Mastery and is Feral's way of converting Ferocious Bite casts into AoE damage.
Lunar Inspiration	Allows you to cast Moonfire in Cat Form, but causes it to cost 30 Energy and generate 1 Combo Point. This is now a worthwhile single-target option that can be used to activate Bloodtalons, but is in an awkward place and has a higher gameplay requirement than alternatives. It can be worthwhile but is optional, depending on comfort and how many points you have spare.
Predatory Swiftness	Mandatory pathing node that allows Regrowth or Entangling Roots to be instantly cast in Cat Form following successful Finishing moves, providing a good survival boost or crowd control.

This tier of talents mostly dictates what final talents you have access to and round out your focus depending on if it is more Bleed or Bite-focused. Many choices here are quite versatile, but some are specialized, allowing you to pick and choose based on how you want to navigate the tree and where you want to end up. Generally, though, the central block of Berserk, Dreadful Bleeding and Raging Fury are always taken.

Ability	Explanation
Carnivorous Instinct	Provides a flat increase to the damage bonus provided by Tiger's Fury. This is a strong selection due to the high uptime of the buff, and usually has at least one point taken, but the bottom rows are contentious enough that there is often not enough room to take two.
Bloodtalons / Lion's Strength	Both options are strong, effective buffs to your Finishing Moves. Bloodtalons is the more complex of the two, requiring you to pool slightly and cycle your abilities correctly, but rewards you with a higher damage buff to your Finishers. Lion's Strength on the other hand is less conditional if you do not have other talents, such as Brutal Slash to conveniently trigger it, and it is easier to execute. One of these two options is almost always taken and, generally Bloodtalons is superior so long as you can handle the extra gameplay requirements.
Feral Frenzy	Deals a small amount of damage and applies a heavy, short-duration Bleed on your target with a 45-second cooldown and generates 5 Combo Points when activated. This is a powerful instant generator and is taken in most single-target situations.
Adaptive Swarm	is a short DoT/HoT that increases the potency of your over-time-effects when active on a target. It will also jump between allies and enemies in a cycle, healing, and dealing damage in the process. Due to the Strength of Rip and our other bleeds and its relatively high uptime, this is a strong single-target option but falls off in multi-target.
Unbridled Swarm	Adds a multi-target component that improves Adaptive Swarm further in situations where you can have multiple active, but it has minimal effect in single-target.
Frantic Momentum	Grants Finishing moves a 6% chance per Combo Point spent to grants 10% Haste for 6 seconds. A solid increase in any target count is required pathing to reach strong end talents.
Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane / Convoke the Spirits	Both of these are powerful options, either improving your Berserk by increasing the duration and reducing Energy costs while active or grants a powerful burst cooldown in Convoke the Spirits that will cast a flurry of Druid spells (preferring Ferocious Bite) over a 4-second channel. Both of these are strong in different scenarios depending on if you want condensed or extended burst, but we generally take Incarnation for additional duration to take advantage of all the supporting Berserk talents.
Ashamane's Guidance	Improves your previous talent selection Reduces the cooldown of Convoke the Spirits by 1 minute and reduces the number of spells cast by 4 while increasing the chance for it to trigger Feral Frenzy. Causes your Rake and Rip to each individually increase targets' damage taken from you by 3% while Incarnation is active and for 30 seconds after it fades. This is a strong option regardless of which you take, however, points are quite tight in this row, making it hard to fit in. With Incarnation, this can be extremely powerful for single-target but struggles to get the same value in AoE as consistently.
Saber Jaws	This increases the bonus damage conferred to Ferocious Bite when it spends additional Energy. This does put additional resource strain on the spec, but in exchange, it turns Bite into an extremely potent finisher that can be pooled for extra burst, working well with the Tier 31 set windows.
Soul of the Forest	Increases the damage of your Finishing moves and causes them to generate 3 Energy per Combo Point spent. This is a powerful talent in all situations and has a big impact on how smooth the rotation plays with regards to your Energy available, so it is always taken.
Circle of Life and Death	Causes your Bleed effects to deal their damage 20% faster. This effectively gives you more ticks of all of them in a shorter time, and due to how much damage they deal, this is a powerful talent taken in almost every situation regardless of target count.
Veinripper / Rip and Tear	A choice node that is mostly used for pathing, and both are valid options but provide modest increases. Rip and Tear is generally preferred in AoE situations where you are casting a lot of Primal Wrath while Veinripper removes some of the maintenance components of your Bleeds, increasing their duration.
Apex Predator's Craving	Gives all of your Rip damage ticks a small chance of causing your next, Ferocious Bite to cost no Energy or Combo Points and guarantee it deals the maximum possible damage. This has a 7.2% proc chance that scales down with each additional Rip active, so while it procs more often in AoE, it is less linear than previous patches. With the addition of other Bite talents and the more consistent proc rate, this is an extremely solid pickup in all situations.

All of the talents below this line are quite powerful, so you ideally want 10 points spare when you reach here to spend. That means pathing earlier should be done with that in mind. What you take depends on preference, target count, and desired damage profile, as what is selected here will warp your focus.

Feral Druids are given Rake and Rip by default, and there are a variety of performance-related talents that should be taken in any talent build:

• Thrash
• Improved Swipe
• Killer Instinct
• Primal Fury
• Rising Light, Falling Night
• Lycara's Teachings

Due to pathing as well you will always take Astral Influence, which provides a great deal of comfort by improving our melee range. It is also always recommended to pick up Skull Bash both as an interrupt and a short charge.

In addition to the above talents, it is generally recommended for all builds to include a variety of defensive talents. The recommended options are:

• Well-Honed Instincts*
• Renewal
• Thick Hide
• Matted Fur*
• Ursine Vigor*

Only one point is necessary to get good value out of Well-Honed Instincts, and the second is often spent better elsewhere. Matted Fur adds a small extra benefit to your Barkskin casts if you can fit it in, but Ursine Vigor greatly improves Bear Form, which, while it does stop you from dealing damage, has no cooldown, so it can always be used to survive dangerous moments.

Finally, it is also strongly recommended that all builds include a few mobility talents:

• Feline Swiftness
• Wild Charge / Tiger Dash
• Stampeding Roar / Improved Stampeding Roar*

Both mobility options in the middle are valuable, and it comes down to preference between more burst speed or a displacement charge. Improved Stampeding Roar does bring the cooldown to 1 minute, which is very valuable, but points are tight at the bottom of the tree, so they cannot always be fit in.

Not all defensive or mobility talents need to be included, but you should try to incorporate an appropriate number of each into your builds, as having none is often a bad idea. The remainder of your points can be spent as you desire for specific Utility, crowd control, or pathing requirements; however, we strongly recommended that you at least consider including some of the following generally applicable utility options:

• Skull Bash
• Incapacitating Roar
• Typhoon
• Ursol's Vortex
• Innervate
• Nature's Vigil

Of note here is Innervate and Nature's Vigil. This provides both an external boost to healers in your team via additional mana and a healing cooldown that converts some of your damage into additional healing. Control options are especially useful in Mythic+, with the stand-out being Incapacitating Roar as a low cooldown AoE interrupt tool.

For a more detailed description of each of our class talents, please refer to the Feral Druid DPS Spell Summary page.