Feral Druid PvE Talent Build

First 20 points

For all of you lower level Druids out there (if there still are any), I’m starting a 4 part series on building a feral druid from the ground up. My pre-BC post “How to Build a Druid” still gets quite a few hits and it really needs replaced. In fact, the talent build link in it doesn’t even work since BC came out and all the talent calculators got updated. That’s just embarassing.

So I guess it is time to tackle this one. Instead of just spew out my talent build and why I chose it, I thought I’d approach this in four chunks: first 2o talent points, second 20, third 21, and post-70. As I was thinking through what I wanted to say (and looking at my own build), I think there are some interesting decisions points throughout the 61 point spectrum that makes sense to discuss separately. Then once you hit 70 and start thinking about end-game, you look at your talent build again with a different set of criteria.

Starting out as a Druid can be pretty exciting. During your first 29 levels you learn Bear form (level 10), Cat form (level 20) and Aquatic form at level 16 (if you do the research and survive the dangerous trip to distant zones to recover some quest items). You also get some introductory skills to go along with Bear and Cat that introduce you to the flavor of both of these forms. And since the forms are new to you, you’re probably still fighting a lot with weapons and spells - levelling your weapons and getting used to your spells and forms. All in all, a very fun time as a Druid with something new every couple of levels.

At level 10 when you get your first talent point, if you were like me, you probably were so excited you just clicked the first thing that sounded good. However, that first point should be given some thought (along with the 10 or so that follow) as there are some real choices to be made even just starting out as a feral Druid.

What I would really advise you to do is to flip over to your favorite talent calculator (I currently like WoWHead’s) and check out the talents you can choose. And not just the first couple tiers - take a look well into the talent trees. There may be a talent down in there you really want to get to fast - if so, make sure to select the talents above it first.

Also, please keep in mind that my posts represent just one opinion. There is no “right” build - just choices and tradeoffs. So while this is a fun exercise to go through as I need to re-build Amanna’s talent points, use your own brain and make your own decisions.

Well, the first big decision comes right off the bat with your first talent point. There are a couple great talents in our first tier, and some real tradeoffs.

Things aren’t too bad in the Feral table - you just have a choice between Ferocity, which reduces the rage/energy cost of your feral form special attacks by up to 5, and Feral Agression, which not only reduces your enemies attack power, but increases the damage of your Ferocious Bite.

Over in the Resto tier, you have a choice between Improved Mark of the Wild and Furor. Improved Mark of the Wild, increases the effects of your Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild by a percentage, and Furor gives you a chance to gain rage or energy when shifting into Bear or Cat.

Here’s where looking at the next tier of talents and having somewhat of a plan can come into play. You’ll get your first twenty talent points on the way to level 29. I don’t know about you, but during that timeframe, I was still learning a lot about being a druid and trying to stay alive. I was also doing a lot of mixed form attacking: I’d root the enemy, hit them with a couple spells, let the root do some damage, then shift to bear or cat when the root gave way to finish them off.

So looking at the second tier of talents at this level, I’m looking for talents that either help me stay alive or finish off enemies more quickly. There are a couple talents in Tier 2 that can really help both of these goals.

Thick Hide in the Feral tree, gives you a percentage bonus to armor from you gear. The nice thing about this talent is it will scale with your gear, so the benefit will just keep getting bigger as you get better gear.

In the Resto tree, you’ll find Naturalist and Nature’s Focus. The Naturalist talent is one that gives you two benefits - it reduces the time it takes to cast Healing Touch, and it increases the damage you do with physical attacks in all forms. Nature’s Focus, in my mind, is an indespensible talent for all levels and is one of our panic buttons. It reduces the chance of interruption due to damage while casting our most popular healing spells. So when your in Bear or Cat form, and you’re getting the crap beat out of you, you can shift out and get a healing spell off a lot more quickly with this talent that without.

Feel free to research the other talents in Tier 1 and 2, but I think these are the best talents for you with your first 20 talent points.

Now, how to distribute them?

In Tier 1, I would put 5 points into Feral Agression in the Feral tree to lower the attack power of my enemies as much as I can with Demoralizing Roar. The nice thing about Demoralizing Roar is it affects all nearby enemies, so if you’re getting attacked by multiple mobs, the attack power of all of them are lowered. I wouldn’t choose Ferocity this early as I feel you will still be learning your forms and probably fighting in caster form with spells and weapons a lot also. I just feel the other talents offer more benefit at this point.

Over in Resto, I’d put 5 points into Furor, to guarantee a decent amount of starting rage/energy when shifting into Bear or Cat. As I said above, during these levels I was rooting and casting a lot before directly attacking a mob, so without this talent I would have been starting with no rage or energy. Having a kickstart was great. I haven’t really done that math, but most feral discussions I’ve read about talents generally pan Improved Mark of the Wild as not offering enough payback for the talent points. At early levels I agree, although I plan on revisiting that argument now that I’m level 70 - I think the payback may be there.

Moving to Tier 2, the first priority at this level is to get 5 points into Nature’s Focus. This is the “save your butt” talent, so take all 5 points and take them early. After that, I’m going to split my last 5 points between Thick Hide and Naturalist - I’m going with 3 points into Naturalist for extra damage, and 2 points into Thick Hide for an armor bump. Your armor isn’t going to be that great at this point, but it’s all relative right? The mobs you’ll be fighting won’t have much better armor either. So this little bump will give you an edge on most mobs, and help draw you even for boss fights or higher level mobs.

Over in Feral, there’s no need at this point for Feral Instinct as you’re probably not looking to generate more threat yet, and it’s just too much to pay for increased prowling. Brutal Impact gives you a longer duration to your stun effect of Bash - but again, too little bang for the buck in my book. Over in Resto, the only other talent is Natural Shapeshifter, which reduces the mana cost for shapeshifting. You will probably being doing a lot of shapeshifting, so this may sound interesting, but again, I don’t think it is worth it at this point.

Here’s how I’d approach assigning those 20 talent points: 5 points in Feral Aggresion first to go along with getting your Bear form. After that, I’d pick up the 2 points in Thick Hide, then move on to 5 points in Furor. Reverse those two if you want the free rage earlier, but I’m going with the armor bump as soon as I can get it. After those two, I’m putting my 5 points in Nature’s Focus to be able to heal myself, then finish with the 3 points in Naturalist. If you don’t find yourself getting into trouble a lot, then feel free to take Naturalist for the extra damage first, or flip-flop points between the two.

Here’s the first 20 point build on the WoW Head Talent Calculator. Good luck.

Second 20 points

I gave you some thoughts on how to spend your first 20 talent points on a feral PvE build. I’ve received some positive feedback, especially on the increased survivability with Nature’s Focus. Let me just repeat some key points to keep in mind as you read this series:

1. Remember this is a pre-BC, PvE, mainly solo build. We will be examining how to change this build for BC and more Instancing later.
2. I am NOT the ultimate authority on Druid Ferals. Not by a long stretch. Actually, I don’t think anyone is. So, take my posts as one opinion, evaluate, mull over, do your research - then spend your points where you think they should go.
3. Have fun! You’re playing, in my opinion, one of the most fun classes in the game. If you’re not having fun, then you’re either taking it too seriously or you should switch classes.

There - that’s out of the way.

You’ll receive your second 20 talent points levelling from 30 to 49. You’ve graduated to a certain extent. More instances are opening up for you, and the mobs and zones you are facing are increasing in difficulty. By now you should have experimented with your different forms and become comfortable with all of them, perhaps even settling on a favorite. With these 20 new talent points, we’re going to get you free rage/energy, a stun mechanism, more damage, more dodge and the pulling mechanism you will use when you become your guild’s elite tank in BC dungeons!

Sound good - let’s get to work.

We’ll be finishing up our work in the Resto tree this time around. First, Omen of Clarityis a talent to take as soon as you can get it. With this talent, each melee attack has a chance of proc’ing a special buff that makes your next damage or healing spell free. This applies to all forms, so that’s a freebie in bear, cat and caster. This is a fantastic talent, amazing even more so that it’s only one talent point. There are lots of articles around the web with studies on how often it procs. The ones that say it happens around 2-3 times a minute seem about right to me.

Lastly in the Resto tree, let’s finish out the last two points of Naturalist. We had three points in it last time for an extra 6% damage in all forms, these last two points will raise that to 10% damage. Not bad at all.

Switching over to Feral, we need to take a few more points to get to tier 3. I’m not personally a big fan of Brutal Impact; an extra second of stun for 2 talent points just never sounded that great to me. No, I’m going to send you back to the top of the tree to take 5 points in Ferocity. The discount to Rage/Energy doesn’t sound like a lot, but it will add up over time. Remember you also have Omen of Clarity procc’ing a couple times a minute, so you are going to be able to use special moves a lot longer now than you could before.

Now we’re going to buy all of Tier 3: Feral Swiftness, Feral Charge, and Sharpened Claws. With Feral Swiftness, we’re not so interested in the increased movement speed as we are the 4% dodge for just two talent points. This is phenomenal payback and 4% dodge will only pay larger and larger dividends as you progress toward and into end-game. Feral Charge gets you a stun mechanism and a way to quickly re-engage a target that has moved away. Sharpened Claws is simple: more crits = more damage = more combo points = more damage. ‘Nuff said.

With our last 5 points, we’re going to take Predatory Strikes and Primal Fury. Predatory Strikes increases our attack power by 150% of our level, so it will scale nicely. Primal Fury generates free rage or combo points when you score a critical hit. Primal Fury along with the extra 6% to crit from Sharpened Claws is a great combination.

With the one talent point we’ve got left, we’re going to take Faerie Fire. This gives you the feral version of the ranged spell you may have been using in caster form. Having access to Faerie Fire in feral form is great: you don’t have to switch out to cast it, you get the same armor reduction as in caster form (with trainable ranks), and Faerie Fire lets us Bear perform as tanks as FF can be used as a pulling mechanism.

So, how to take your points?

I’d take Omen of Clarity right away - the proc is fairly frequent and this is just a great talent to have. (Don’t forget you have to cast this one every once in a while).

After Omen, I’d fill in Ferocity for the rage/energy discount, then start to fill in Tier 3 of the Feral tree, delaying Feral Charge if you want - I didn’t use it much soloing; it’s of more use in instances. Anytime you feel your damage needs a boost, jump over and complete Naturalist, but I don’t think there is any rush on that one.

From there, you’ll want to move right into Predatory Strikes and Primal Fury - they’re both great talents so just pick the one you want more when you get a level. Personally, I’d take Faerie Fire as soon as I could, but you can wait on this one if you like as you can still cast it and switch into form.

Here’s the final 40 point build. Have fun!

Last 20 points

I gave you some thoughts on how to spend your first 40 talent points on a feral PvE build. I’ve received some positive feedback, even given the basic nature of the overview. I frankly had let this last post slide thinking it was too basic for most of my readers. (Most of the commenters on the site seem like they are mostly upper-levels.) Then I received this E-Mail from Chris:

”I know your pretty busy but I was wondering if you had the 3rd 20 points of the feral build. I’m currently in the second part. Thanks for all the great info.”

Never too busy for a loyal reader, Chris. Before I get started, my lawyers have advised me to once again repeat some key points to keep in mind as you read this series:

1. Remember this is a PvE, mainly solo build. We will be examining how to change this build for more focused Instancing and Raiding later.
2. I am NOT the ultimate authority on Druid Ferals. Not by a long stretch. Actually, I don’t think anyone is. So, take my posts as one opinion, evaluate, mull over, do your research - then spend your points where you think they should go.
3. Have fun! You’re playing, in my opinion, one of the most fun classes in the game. If you’re not having fun, then you’re either taking it too seriously or you should switch classes.

There - that’s out of the way.

You’ll receive your last 21 talent points leveling from 50 to 70. You’ll hit the previous milestone of level 60, and once you hit 58 you can venture into Outland and push on to level 70. More instances are opening up for you, and the mobs and zones you are confronting are the most difficult you will face. With these 21 new talent points, we’ll continue to select good, all-around PvE-centric abilities that tend to benefit you in both bear and cat forms. You’ll be getting some significant defensive abilities in addition to stats and damage plusses. The icing on the cake will be party buffs giving 5% boost to critical hit chance and some free healing to everyone in range in your party.

Sound good - let’s get to work.

Our work in the Restoration tree was completed last time so we’re sticking exclusively to the Feral tree this time around. There’s not a lot of subtlety to what I’m going to tell you here - basically we’re going to select everything under Predatory Strikes, starting with Heart of the Wild.

However, we need 25 points in Feral for HotW, so put one point into either Shredding Attacks or Savage Fury. Shredding Attacks is a rage cost reduction for abilities, and Savage Fury increases damage caused by some cat abilities. We’re only going to be putting 1 point into one of these abilities, so I’m looking for a good return on that investment. For my money, getting a 10% damage increase on three cat abilities is pretty good for one talent point, so I recommend putting your 25th point there. Of course, if Shredding Attacks appeals to you more, there is no good reason not to go there.

Now that we have our 25 feral points, we can move down the tree. Let’s look at the abilities you’ll be selecting and their benefits.

Heart of the Wild: Put 5 points here, no questions asked. This is the ability people say make you “more of a Druid”, as it benefits both feral forms, in addition to caster form. For 5 talent points, you get a 20% increase to Intellect, a 20% increase to Stamina while in bear form, and a 10% increase to Attack Power while in cat form. Note that in Patch 2.3, the increase to cat form was changed from Strength to Attack Power. Make sure to take this into account when evaluating new gear.

Survival of the Fittest: Put 3 points here for two increases. The 3% increase to all stats isn’t much to get excited about, but the real payoff is the 3% reduction in chance to be critically hit by melee attacks. This is a huge reduction to be crit and will pay off big time the closer you get to end game content and the more you instance/raid. With 3 points here, the additional defense you need from your gear to be effectively “crit-immune” in end game raids is significantly reduced.

Primal Tenacity: With 3 points here, you get a 15% bump to your resistance to Stun and Fear mechanics.

Leader of the Pack: With this ability, any party member within 45 yards of you gets a 5% bonus to their crit chance. This affects both melee and ranged. 5% is a pretty significant bonus and most party members I’ve grouped with that weren’t aware of this buff, were very pleasantly surprised. You won’t see this show up on your damage meters numbers, rather everyone’s overall numbers will be just that much higher. An outstanding buff for one talent point.

Improved Leader of the Pack: With Leader of the Pack, we raised our party member’s crit chance by 5%. With ILotP, party members will get free heal of 4% of total health whenever they critically hit an opponent. There are limitations here - the healing effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds, and the healing applied is 4% of your total health at the time you had the crit (not your total undamaged health). I struggled with this talent a bit as 4% healing didn’t sound like much. In the end, I have two points in this talent under the heading of “every little bit helps”.

Predatory Instincts: 5 points here will get you two nice bonuses; 10% increase to crit chance on melee and 15% increase to avoid area effects. Highly recommended.

Mangle: One talent point enables the Mangle ability for both bear and cat forms. Mangle is a melee attack that not only does increased damage (115% for bear and 160% for cat) and adds in additional damage (155 for bear and 264 for cat); it’s kicker is that it increases Bleed damage from Shred and other bleed effects. This means not only your Shred and Lacerate attacks will do more damage, but any other Bleed effect will also. I’m not an expert on all Bleed effects in the game, but I know there are several at your Rogue’s disposal. Mangle is a great ability not only for increased damage but also for threat generation in bear form. Mangle + Lacerate is the standard rotation for aggro-generation in bear form. NOTE: One point here gets you the Mangle talent, then there are three trainable levels for both bear and cat.

My Selection strategy recommendations
You need 25 points in Feral to move into Heart of the Wild and beyond, so your first point can go anywhere you like, although I recommend either Shredding Attacks or Savage Fury.

Once you’ve got your 25 points, fill out Heart of the Wild. You get bonuses to all forms, and I just can’t see moving past it until you have it maxed. With 5 points there, three talents open up: Survival of the Fittest, Primal Tenacity and Leader of the Pack. Use your own judgement as to which could benefit your more (or your party). If you’re grouping a lot, then your party might appreciate Leader of the Pack. However, if you’re getting crit, stunned or feared a lot it might make sense to pick the other two. Personally, I’d pick Leader of the Pack (again, assuming I’m grouping a fair amount). The increased damage should really help your instancing success. From there, I’d go with my three points in Survival of the Fittest.

After Survival of the Fittest, I’d hold off on Improved Leader of the Pack for a while as I don’t feel it’s a strong as some of the other talents. My next point goes into Primal Tenacity. Then again you have a choice. You can fill out Primal Tenacity or move into Predatory Instincts. The question is really whether you want additional resistance to stun and fear or want to increase your critical strike damage bonus. Make your decision, then fill out both on your own schedule until Mangle comes available.

Take Mangle as soon as you can. For one talent point, you get a pretty damage generator, a great threat generator, and an ability that compliments any bleed effect. Don’t forget to visit your friendly local Druid trainer for your three ranks in both bear and cat. After Mangle, fill in whatever is left of Primal Tenacity and Predatory Instincts, then Improved Leader of the Pack.

Here’s the final 61 point build. Have fun!