Feral Druid - How to DPS in raid's / 5 mans

[Arcdelad]

Ahhh….the sweet sound of mangle is great aint it? Since most of our new druids are either going tree or feral, here is a guide on cat form DPSing for raids and 5 mans.

Openers

There are two druid openers that can be done.  Both of them require that you be stealthed, so as a rule ALWAYS stealth before a pull.

• Pounce â€" This opener can be done facing the target from any direction. It does some weak up front damage, adds a short duration bleed effect, and stuns the target for 3 seconds. You CAN attack the target during the stun with no chance of breaking the stun, which is great.
  
  WHEN TO USE POUNCE: When you have a pally tank or the druid or warrior tank has agro under control and has some rage built up.
  WHEN NOT TO USE POUNCE: Before a druid or warrior tank has aggro or rage, or when a tank is trying to LOS targets to a certain location. Also never use this opener on a boss â€" they are stun immune and the damage and bleed are not sufficient enough on their own to warrants its use.
  
  



• Ravage â€" this does 400% damage (I think 450% now, but not sure) and can only be done from behind the target. No bleeds, no stuns, just pure damage. This is your go to opener â€" its PERFECT for bosses, can be used on a mob when a druid or warrior is tanking safely, and won’t stop a pally from LOSing a target back.
  
  The one thing to watch with ravage is that a crit can do some high damage (ive had them crit for 5k). If the tank hasn’t established threat yet, this means you might steal aggro. Watch omen….if the tank has 2k threat or more built up go ahead and hit it (this assumes you have salvation on).
  

Main attacks â€" building up those combo points

Most or a good portion of your damage, believe it or not, is going to come from your auto attacks. With a 1.0 (or less potentially with some haste) attack speed, you are going to be constantly throwing up some very large white damage.

For the special moves though, here is a list of what they are and when to use them:

• Mangle â€" mangle is a great, high damage attack that applies a debuff to the MOB that increases all bleed damage to that target (from anyone attacking it, even warriors or rogues who may be stacking bleeds). Additionally (and most importantly), the mangle debuff adds 30% damage to any shred attacks done during its duration.
  
  Mangle should be used as your first attack â€" to put the mangle debuff on. This is critical to have up at all times, because 30% extra damage on shred is crucial for good dps output. Always make sure the mangle debuff is up.
  
  If you ever get into a position, though, where you cannot be behind a mob (since shred requires that you be behind the mob), spamming mangle then doing a finisher is the next best thing. An example is if during the Prince fight in Kara some infernals drop that cause you to be close to infernal damage if you get behind the prince â€" just spam mangle, then do your finisher.
  
  IF you are lucky enough to have a feral druid tanking in bear form, he is using mangle to gain threat, meaning he is keeping the mangle debuff up for you. In this scenario, all you need to do is shred and your finishers and you don’t even need to use mangle.
  
  



• Shred â€" this is your bread and butter attack. This attack puts up monstrous damage â€" currently my Shred crits hit for around 3-4k damage â€" which is as much damage as a Ferocious Bite 5 combo point crit.
  
  The catch, of course, is that you need to be behind the target to use shred (which is why this attack is pretty useless for soloing). However, Blizzard’s definition of “behind” is pretty loose, and I’ve found that you can actually be almost 90 degrees from exactly behind the target. This means that if your facing Nightbane, or the Lurker Below, where they have a tail attack, you CAN attack from the side using Shred still.
  
  



• Rake â€" simply put, DON”T waste your time with it. This does some small up front damage and puts a weak bleed on the target. For your energy efficiency, Shred, or even mangle, is FAR better.
  
  The one time IMO where this might be okay to use is PVP against a high armor target like a warrior or pally or a healer, where bleeds can be pretty effective. Other than that, this should be collecting dust in your spell book.
  

Finishers

Once you have 5 combo points built up, let your energy build up to at least halfway (80% if your patient…which I am not lol), its time to unleash the fury! You have three options:

• Ferocious Bite â€" This is the druid version of Eviscerate, and simply does a crapload of damage based on the number of combo points up and your energy level. My crits on this are in the 4-5k range.
  
  Having said that, this is NOT your finisher of choice. Rip is going to, over the course of its effect, do more damage plus it ignores armor since it is a bleed effect.
  
  Ferocious bite should be used if your target is IMMUNE to bleeds, or the target is about to die (try and never leave unused combo points on a target) and rip wont be able to go full effect. Also, if you have a target that is dying fast, use ferocious bite instead of rip because you wont be getting the full effect of rip since the target will die quickly.
  
  



• Rip â€" this does a GREAT long duration bleed effect that is modified by the mangle debuff. Point per point this is your go to finisher, as it will do the most damage. As mentioned above, it ignores armor and can’t be cleansed since it’s a bleed. A side benefit of this is its great for bosses that make you run away like the Prince or Gruul fight. Pop rip on that boss, and even when your away your still doing damage to the boss. I’ve also killed bosses while dead too with this finisher lol
  
  If the target is bleed immune though, like a mechanical boss or something, then use Ferocious Bite.
  
  


• Maim â€" this finisher does moderate to weak up front damage and stuns the target for a set amount of time depending on how many combo points are up when you use it. Overall, this is not too useful in PVE. There are times, though, when its helpful â€" use it to stun a non-boss target that is aggroing you then get away or go bear form, or use it to interrupt a non- boss’ spell cast.
  
  However, if you have [item]Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves[/item], maim gets some nice ADDED usage for PVE (which is funny since you have to PVP to get those lol). With these equipped, maim now acts like a rogues kick and will interrupt BOSS spell casts, like Jules in Kara, the Shade, the Priest in High King Maulgar, etc etc etc…this will work even if the boss/mob is not stunnable. I would highly recommend doing arenas for these (they are the cheapest of all the gear to get in terms of arena points).
  
  

Ideal attack rotation

For a standard, bleedable raid boss and most mobs, the ideal attack rotation is: Ravage â€" Mangle â€" Shred to 5 combo points â€" Rip

DPS is nice but…

Don’t forget that we ARE a hybrid class, which means we have things we can do besides put up great damage numbers. Innervate, battle rez, tranquility, and some timely hots may not add to the damage meters, but they will make your raid / run more successful. For example, in a 10 man scenario, its just awesome to see the 4 other people in your group on the verge of collapse only to have you hit tranquility, full heal them all, and rescue the raid from wipage.

If your not using Bongos or something, I would strongly recommend putting Innervate, Battlerez, Tranquility, and maybe your HOTS above your main bar â€" that way you can target someone if needed and hit it â€" you will then auto pop out of cat form which makes getting these helpful moves off easier.

[Tolwen]

Thanks for this great guide Arc!
Very well written!

[Telfurion]

Someone should write a similar rogue guide.... *cough* Un4 *cough*

[JohnnieRat]

Part 2) Flea baths

[Melonni]

Nice writeup, Arc.

Someone should write a similar rogue guide.... *cough* Un4 *cough*

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16940-roguecraft_101_a/ explains combo point cycles and a lot more. =)

[un4]

Someone should write a similar rogue guide.... *cough* Un4 *cough*

http://forum.twilightonalex.com/index.php?topic=4478.0

[Nixphire]

Part 2) Flea baths

http://forum.twilightonalex.com/index.php?topic=4695.0

[Vengeance]

FB should NOT be used even while their bleed immune (next to nothing now) because shred (with mangle) is alot better on the energy usage...unless you use it while your at ~35-38 energy
BTW, what happened to mangle spam-happy druid? 
One more thing-the glove bonus just doesnt seem to work, Ive tried it again and again on non-bosses and it seems as if the decapitate effect is going in affect before the silence and not simultaneously so that means they wont be casting while decapped and thus not be silenced 

[Arcdelad]

This is all subject to personal tastes of course dep, but the damage of a 80% energy 5 point FB makes it the second best thing over and above a shred crit IMO (I also have points in talents for extra FB damage).

The glove bonus works fine and again, I would STRONGLY recommend every feral druid getting it for the added ability to do boss spell interupts. The silence is moot and only useful when you have multiple people dpsing the target:

Example: Shade of Aran - he casts Fireball, you interupt it, the raid's DPS still hits him, and his next spells for 3 seconds will never be a fireball, but isntead frostbolt or something.

Example 2: Your in the arenas doing 3v3 and you interupt a pallie's heal with maim, BUT someone else keeps DPSing him...the pally does nto get stunned, but he still is subject to the 3 second silence on any spell in that school of magic.

It works out fine, but the point here and of thsi post is that those gloves let you interupt boss spells, which is increasingly important in raids and 10 mans.

Dep...you still using an obvious tanking staff as your dps weapon?

[Vengeance]

Lol, 70 badges and counting for the dps one coming up, but I rarely get to run kara anymore 

[Arcdelad]

As Nix would say, L2Heroic...

I have badges for the staff, the [item]tameless breeches[/item], and one other item ready to rock...

[Arcdelad]

This video was made for molen core, but the principals behind HOW to raid as a feral druid are still VERY much viable.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tps2OWR5vU[/youtube]

[un4]

Kinda like the other druid MC video I saw, heh.

And now, for the question of the day: how is Arc's mom like MC?  PM me for the answer! 

[JohnnieRat]

Update for Wrath: Roll boomkin

[Arcdelad]

why would I want to lose dps?