Feral DPS guide The information in this guide is intended for endgame feral dps players in group s and raid s . Pool information here and help update this to avoid having multiple out - dated guides on several different websites . Specs and glyphs . Solid base build . Solid base build with three points left over for accessory talents . Includes required glyphs ( prime ) and suggested glyphs ( major , minor ) . DPS algorithm / rotation . Feral DPS relies on a list of priorities , i . e . an - although this is commonly referred to as a rotation . The list below is in order of importance , i . e . is more important than which is more important than which is more important than . Keep in mind that the following algorithm is designed to maximize the raid ' s overall DPS as opposed to your own , and sometimes you will have to switch targets to adds that may die too fast for you to " ramp up " effectively . Do everything right , with decent to good gear , on a static fight - according to some calculations in SimulationCraft you could end up with 40 % downtime , i . e . just pooling energy - a key part of becoming a good feral DPS player is recognizing when this is a good thing , and how to line up GCDs for best effect as timers collide chaotically . The above DPS algorithm also happens to be one of the most complicated in the game , and according to the World of Warcraft Lead Systems Designer Greg Street , a . k . a . Ghostcrawler : " Note : The algorithm is not set in stone . Fight mechanics , Innervate , Rebirth , adds , void zones , standing in fire and even things like gear that necessitates that you keep a stackable buff up - will all play havoc with it . " Implications . Ferals require substantial ramp - up time before the damage really gets going , averaging 5 - 7 seconds in melee range to get Mangle , SR , Rake and Rip up . You want to draw your raid leaders ' attention to this if needed , so you don ' t end up switching targets more than necessary , especially at low energy . Other specs have little to no ramp - up time and much more burst - on - demand , but the situation and raid composition dictate tactics , which means you will have to do the best you can , given what the raid leader needs done . Keep in mind that many other dps players would rather be sticking to one single target as well . You will not always be able to remember every step in the algorithm , but in the UI section you will find solutions to this headache . " This relatively high complexity pays off ; you have the potential to top the charts on any fight without a gimmick stacked against you . " - Astrylian of < Aeon > on US - Suramar [ A ] , Author of Rawr . No other spec currently in the game needs to be behind its target to do competitive PVE damage . Feral dps players are thus disproportionately concerned with getting and staying behind the boss . Be aware that " behind " the target is defined as anywhere in melee range in the rear 180 - degree arc . ( IMAGE NEEDED ) To the side and just slightly behind the middle is fine , and sometimes it ' s possible to Shred while technically facing the wrong way inside the target ' s graphic model . Many bosses and adds rotate quickly and unpredictably , e . g . Lady Deathwhisper , Stormcaller Brundir , Lord Jaraxxus and it may be worth your while to decide whether to continually adjust or to just refresh the Mangle debuff instead . If you ' re the only feral dps then the raid may be better off positioning to your disadvantage , but if maximizing your dps becomes an issue , the raid may have to accommodate this unique positioning requirement . Keep in mind that most raid leaders are stressed , don ' t know everything about every class , rarely have perfect raid comps and face a lot of competing priorities . With the increased importance of comes a great need to be able to see personal melee positioning very clearly , while simultaneously being very aware of your health , energy , combo points , target ' s health , target cast bar , various buffs , debuffs , cooldowns , boss emotes , raid warnings , possible Innervate targets and possible Rebirth targets . A common solution to this is to use UI addon s to centralize a lot of this information much more effectively than the stock UI does - for details see the Feral druid resources page . Stat values . Feral DPS is defined as a melee , Agility based , Bleed - damage oriented class . As such , it uses WoW ' s melee stats to determine what kind of damage your character will do once you hit the button . Since Cataclysm ( Patch 4 . 0 . 1 and up ) , several of the older melee stats such as Armor Pen ( ArP ) , Attack Power ( AtP ) and Feral Attack Power on gear has been removed to simplify measuring what stats are better for which class . In Feral DPS , players concentrate on the following ( in no certain order ) : Agility , Critical Strike , Haste , Mastery , Hit and Expertise . Since Patch 4 . 0 . 1 , Blizzard has simplified the manner in which every class selects gear to use . Classes have 1 primary stat ( Strength , Agility , Intellect ) that they concentrate on above all others , and then several other secondary stats ( Spirit , Critical Strike , Haste , etc . ) depending on your spec / class . For Feral DPS , you will concentrate on obtaining ONLY LEATHER for your gear slots ( i . e . Head , Chest , Legs , etc . ) that has Agility as its primary stat . The reason behind this first filter is due in part to the new Specializations each class has , providing a flat 5 % bonus to your primary DPS stat , if and only if all of your gear slots are filled with your class ' armor type ( sans trinkets , rings , neck , weapon and relic ) . Gear . After making sure you ' ve selected leather agility gear , the next step is to determine what exactly you are gearing for in terms of content . If you are a fresh out of the gate 85 Kitty , chances are you don ' t quite have the item level required for heroics just yet and should concentrate on obtaining ilvl 333 gear from normal instances , 346 gear from the Justice Point vendor , and a few 359 pieces from Faction rep and Leather Working . Once you ' ve breached the point were you can queue for heroic instances , concentrate on getting exalted with factions that have epic dps leather pieces , such as Dragonmaw ( for Horde Kitties ) or the Alliance equivalent , while building up JP to fill in non 346 / 59 slots in your gear . Remember : if you have the 333 version of a piece of gear , the heroic 346 version will have the same stat layout , but with more of each stat . As for relics , use only ones with agility . Extra care should be given to obtaining a strong staff or polearm as all of your abilities are based off of your weapons dps value , and your white swings off of its speed . Since Burning Crusade , certain gear pieces have 1 - 2 colored " Sockets " , red , blue , yellow , chromatic or meta . When a gem of the corresponding color is placed into a socket and all sockets on a piece of gear are filled as such , an additional socket bonus is activated . Feral concentrates on filling sockets in the following manner : Examples of gear comparisons , stat caps for heroics / raid content hit / expertise , suggested chants / rep items / crafted items , links for feral leather specialization and gems . Consumables . Feral DPS raiders usually come prepared with a for more difficult content , and use the slightly suboptimal for most raids . If you truly wish to min / max your performance you will need to use the food and flask or elixir that Toskk , Rawr or SimulationCraft estimates is most useful for you based on your buffs , debuffs or raid composition . The two most common non - feast foods are and . " Pretty simple : eat for whatever your best stat is . Fish Feasts are slightly suboptimal , but they ' re much better than nothing . " - Alaron ( http : / / thefluiddruid . wordpress . com ) Professions . Min / maxed raiders will likely go with Blacksmithing / Jewelcrafting on their feral raiding main , but other professions like Leatherworking , Enchanting and Alchemy also have good bonuses . Alchemy will also cut down on the consumable s cost of raiding a fair amount . Even Engineering is nowadays no longer the pvp - only profession it used to be , and offers yet another useful high - mobility speed boost in the form of Nitro Boosts . Mining and Herbalism are generally to be avoided as they do not currently confer worthwhile dps bonuses , though Mining ' s Toughness bonus is good for tanking if that is your main role . Keep in mind that these and other long - term and costly player choices can change in relative benefit with any given patch . For Engineering , it is useful to macro Hyperspeed Accelerators to Tiger ' s Fury and additionally to Berserk , as the on - use hand tinker haste bonus stacks well with the Tiger ' s Fury buff and with Hysteria and Shattering Throw which ferals generally try to time with Berserk . From Alaron ' s Dps Guide post on his blog The Fluid Druid ( http : / / thefluiddruid . wordpress . com ) : Buffs and debuffs . While you don ' t really have any control over this , here ' s a list of the ( major ) raid buffs / debuffs which will increase your DPS , with a note over who brings what and a rough estimate of how big a buff it is . I ' ve included our own buffs for comparison . TLDR version : bribe your RL to bring an enhancement shaman and a ret pally . Keep in mind that these buffs will change in upcoming patches . Included in above Raid buffs section . The Utopia addon will let you monitor in real time the buffs and debuffs you should be concerned with - - and is especially useful if you think someone in the raid isn ' t keeping a certain debuff up consistently . It can also alert you to gaps in Mangle up - time . Discussed in previous section . Assuming the player is already doing near - top dps , Cat Druids are arguably the best choice for - - doing purely physical dps and able to stack and on - use items with it . Class synergies . Other classes ' burst dps cooldowns don ' t stack with Hysteria or a significant portion of their damage is elemental . From Murna ' s ElitistJerks Cat DPS Guide for Dummies : Cats benefit by far the most from Hysteria . As long as you are quite close to the top DPS in your raid , try to convince your Blood - DK or your raidleader , that you should get Hysteria ! Realistically the minor damage differential between you and a Blood DK isn ' t crucial unless you ' re attempting content that ' s at the limit of what your guild can handle , a . k . a . a progression fight . You might very well see more of a dps increase by min / maxing your professions or working on your skill usage , or trying to optimize the raid composition . A can also be stacked with Hysteria and / or Shattering Throw . It ' s also possible to stack weapon - enchant procs and trinket procs with Berserk and / or Hysteria , but that involves keeping track of internal cooldowns . is generally reserved for classes / specs that have much more reliable or better threat dumping or Aggro Dumping abilities . It should only be used on Feral Dps when or similar is immediately available or tank threat is simply not an issue . Mana users will love you for this skill . Using it on will shift you out of cat form and initiate a global cooldown , which will lower your effective dps for the fight unless you do this while not in melee range . It is useful to have mana - users that need an Innervate make a macro with a few lines of " / w INNERVATE ME PLEASE " - or similar . Many raiding addons exist that keep track of other people ' s cooldowns , if your raid is using a variant of these the mana - users should be able to monitor when your Innervate cooldown is up so as not to bother you needlessly . Keep in mind that many specs have their own mana - return cooldowns available , and responding to a call over vent with an immediate Innervate may lead to several Innervates simultaneously on one target - wasting an important raid resource . Simple macros are available that can announce who you just Innervated , and it ' s not difficult to set up a macro that immediately and without de - targeting your current target uses a skill on your focus target if you know ahead of time who you will use a skill on , see Feral druid resources for details . There are also addons that fulfill these functions , and can detect when the skill didn ' t go off as planned so you avoid spamming " Player X has just been Innervated ! " to the raid if the ability was on cooldown still and you accidentally pressed it , or the target was out of range . Knowing who is a good target for Innervate and when is a hallmark of a good feral player and one of the reasons a feral player can rarely get away with not having a full set of raid frames visible at all times on the UI , in contrast to many other dps specs who are rarely concerned with who is alive / dead or out of mana . Your raid members will have to be coaxed into asking for early Innervates . If you don ' t use Innervate on a progression fight , you ' ve wasted a significant amount of class synergy as the skill is seldom worth much to you , and always try to Innervate a battle - rezzed mana user , though they will usually pop a potion or cooldown right after . has a long and glorious history of chain - rezzing numerous people and saving a fight , or making an already lost battle last longer , or simply causing one of your frenemies a double repair - bill . Ideally you and your raidleader would keep track of all available Rebirth cooldowns , and always consider rezzing a fellow druid if you have multiple victims to choose from to get a Rebirth chain going , where one druid rezzes the next who rezzes another who rezzes someone who has appropriately bribed the druids . As the long cooldown on this skill recently was cut in half , it has never been more important to learn how to use this skill quickly , efficiently and with a minimum of fuss in an already clogged vent communication channel . stacks with stacks with stacks with stacks with and many on - use trinkets . Learn the different cooldown lengths of all these skills and communicate with your fellow raiders ahead of time on how to best use your skills together . Coordinating these and various tanking / healing cooldowns is one of the hallmarks of successful WOTLK raiding , not unlike how raid composition was a major issue in TBC raiding . One of the things you should ask the raid prior to each progression fight is : With some prompting , most Warriors can be cajoled into putting a / yell somethingsomething macro ' d with - enabling you to more easily keep track of their usage of this skill , not unlike what ' s already common practice with Shaman ' s Bloodlust / Heroism usage . Threat management . Cower , the feral threat reduction skill , only lowers your threat by a flat 2432 , which is a silly low number , less than the average white auto - attack . It doesn ' t scale at all , which means as everyone ' s gear gets better it just gets WORSE . You ' re better off just pulling out to save energy , since in the GCD that you use Cower , you will also auto - attack , immediately negating the threat - reduction . This is where adds become important - - try to attack some adds whenever you can if you know threat will be an issue . It ' s entirely possible for Feral DPS ' ers to be top on threat but behind " pure " damage - dealing classes on damage , even given reasonably equivalent gear and skill . Plan accordingly , recognize the warning signs of a problem early and ask for or as early as possible or just back off . Make sure Hunters are using Watch out or the Blood DK might try to get you to pull aggro by giving you Hysteria even when you don ' t ask for it . A third class - synergy thing is Intervene , which requires a Warrior in Defensive Stance ( or with a good macro ) who ' s around 8 - 25 yards away and not busy tanking and / or moderately to very skilled . Before a progression hardmode / heroic bossfight when there will be a tanking warrior and you know you may have threat problems , ask the raid : Fight mechanics . All the gear and skill in the world won ' t help you if you don ' t know the fight mechanics . Read up on the fight and watch a video or two before the raid ( Google , StratFU , TankSpot , BossKillers or use Wow Wiki ' s own Instances by level page ) , use Berserk asap unless there ' s a time in the fight when the boss takes extra damage . Ferals excel at mobility in WoW - no other class has so many movement options . Leverage this to your advantage by maximizing time in melee range as well as what you do while not directly causing melee damage . Don ' t try too hard or you ' ll push the limits too far on waiting for a melee nova to go off , or get tunnel vision trying to get in range to use Rebirth only to have them rez in a slime pool / void zone / fire . Commonly used class - defining skills are Feral Charge - Cat and Dash . Time away from the boss or out of melee range is time best spent making sure you ' ll be able to get back in range asap , glancing at your raid frames to see Innervate targets and Rebirth targets - - generally healers or top dps players . If you know you will have enough time to shift back into Cat Form and regen to full energy , it may be worthwhile to get a free Omen of Clarity proc by using Gift of the Wild while away from melee range . Predator ' s swiftness . The Predator ' s Swiftness buff from the Predatory Strikes talent now allows us to instantly battlerez someone . Therefore make sure Rebirth is easily accessible somewhere not on your primary Action Bar , as you need to be able to just press the hotkey without having to shift out first . Cyclone , Entangling Roots and Abolish Poison / Remove Curse / Healing Touch ( or Regrowth ) and Innervate should all ideally have buttons not on your form - specific Action Bar , though with the massive amount of different skills a feral druid has to keep track of , this is easier said than done without UI addons . Analyzing your performance . See the Combat Log page for a list of 3rd - party programs that serve as central data collections where your raid members can analyze individual and group performance after or even sometimes during the raid . How to use these different websites and programs is complicated and beyond the scope of this guide , though you should at least learn how to check your Savage Roar and Mangle uptime on any fights which don ' t require significant time away from melee range . Anything less than 90 - 95 % on those types of fight means you ' re probably doing something wrong . " Another easy thing to check is how often you Berserked on a fight . If the fight lasted 3 minutes and 30 seconds and you only Berserked once , then you probably * * * * ed up . " - Allev of < Serious Casual > on US - Mal ' Ganis [ H ] , feral theorycraft er 7 minute fight ? Probably should have Berserked three times , first time in the first ten seconds of the fight , second at or before 3 : 30 mark , then at or before 6 : 30 and so on . Some of the combatlog - parsers offer real - time feedback , but usually you need to use an instant combat log - parsing damage meter like Recount or Skada for that - the latter of which also serves as a threat meter . UI . For commonly - used Feral UI addons , see Feral druid resources . It is possible to play as feral dps using only the stock UI . It ' s just very difficult to do so effectively . Feral DPS players have to keep track of : and that ' s on top of cooldowns , moving out of void zones , not pulling aggro , attacking the right target , adds , listening to calls over vent , making sure you ' re behind the boss , running out , running in etc etc . - no wonder that some stressed out feral player created this : http : / / coldbear . files . wordpress . com / 2009 / 11 / catdps . jpg ? w = 500 & h = 1312 , also known as the JOHN * * * * ING MADDEN cat dps flowchart . Watch the UI tutorials made by Daniel Moy at http : / / www . pvptutorial . com / and then decide how you ' d prefer to deal with this issue . His UI philosophy translates very well to a feral dps pve environment . Other UI tutorials are also available on YouTube or on the addons ' hosted websites . The most important information should ideally be within a short radius of where the player ' s eyes are usually focused on the screen . Scrolling combat text is a good tool for this , but if you like to keep your number of addons to a minimum you ' ll find it useful to only display the information you really REALLY want or your screen will just become a cascading waterfall of green text . A popular way to get things more centralized and effective is to use one of many timer addons , a frame addon and an actionbar addon , or simply an addon to move the default Blizzard frames around to a more convenient location . For more information , see the Feral druid resources page . Any ideal Feral UI would also make it easier to keep track of some important buffs and debuffs from other players : Horn of Winter , Sunder Armor , Totem of Wrath or Heart of the Crusader or Master Poisoner , Blood Frenzy or Savage Combat Poison , Hysteria and Shattering Throw . " Note on Spell Recommendation addons : Due to the nature and complexity of the Feral Dps Algorithm many feral dps ' ers like to use a spell recommendation addon like Feral By Night or the newly developed and updated Ovale scripts . These are only ever accurate on static fights , and care must be taken to avoid slavishly following the recommendations since it will lead to standing in fire or ignoring how much target - switching and extremely dynamic fight situations play havoc with the algorithm . For more information , see the Feral druid resources page and ElitistJerks . " Macros . If you want to be successful at feral dps , you will have to learn how to use Macros . For commonly used feral macros , see Useful macros for druids . A " / startattack " line in each non - stealth , direct - damage , melee skill macro means you start auto - attacking even when you don ' t have enough energy to use the skill you just pressed . With 10 slots on your primary Cat Action Bar and TWENTY - THREE abilities commonly used in Cat Form you simply have to find a way to double up some skills on the same hotkeys or use an Action Bar Addon , a lot of modifier keys and / or the non - form - specific action bars . Experiment and search Wow Wiki , the EJ and official forums for macros that suit you . Count yourself lucky - - at least you don ' t have to deal with Powershifting anymore ! Hardware and keybindings . It is possible to play a melee dps spec by using your keyboard to turn and the mouse to click skills . It is NOT possible to do this efficiently . If you ' re a keyboardturning clicker and want to learn how to do things faster & better , play a first - person shooter game for a while on your computer . Many players find the default " WASD " set up constraining , and re - bind their keys to " ESDF " , with S and F for strafing - and just turn with the mouse . Your left hand stays stationary , but you have more keys within reach . There are many variations to this . It ' s also possible to play WoW with the stock mouse that came with your computer , but it ' s inefficient , slow and getting a good mouse can dramatically improve your gameplay for less than $ 100 . Though new computer hardware is released continually , the best solutions for WoW players typically involve extra buttons , a gamepad , and / or keyboard with more / better features than the stock one . Bind your most used abilities to the mouse buttons available . If you spend $ 100 to acquire a second monitor you will be able to do research and browse the internet during downtime in the game . Example keybindings : Research and development . To keep up with new developments and patches you can visit various blogs or websites like ElitistJerks once in a while , especially a little while after a patch once the really knowledgeable people have had time to figure out the new mechanics and priorities using tools like Rawr , Toskk ' s Dps Gear Calculator and SimulationCraft . You can also stop by the official forums or just read Wow . com . Some really good feral blogs currently active are Think - Tank , The Fluid Druid and Feral Aggression . For a list of websites and blogs , see the Feral druid resources page .