In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Feral Druid (WoW MoP 5.3). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other articles of our Feral Druid guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Fragnance, one of the best Feral Druids in the world, who raids in Method. You can watch his stream on Twitch.

1. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents offer a choice between 3 means of increasing your movement abilities.

• Feline Swiftness is a passive ability that increases your movement speed by 15% at all times.
• Displacer Beast is an active ability that teleports you 20 yards forward, activates Cat Form, and grants you a 50% increase in movement speed for 4 seconds.
• Wild Charge is an active ability that differs based on the shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
  • No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
  • Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4 seconds.
  • Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
  • Travel Form: you leap forward 20 yards.
  • Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5 seconds.

Since Feline Swiftness's bonus stacks with the movement speed increase granted by Cat Form, this talent is probably going to be the default choice in the majority of situations. Not only does the greatly increased speed allow you to reach your target(s) faster, it also allows you to easily move out of harmful void zones and other such effects.

In situations where leaping behind the target is of use (getting to a new target even faster, bypassing some encounter mechanics, etc.) Wild Charge will be better.

Displacer Beast currently has no conceivable uses outside of exceptional situations.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.

• Nature's Swiftness is an active cooldown that makes your next Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Healing Touch, Hibernate, and Rebirth instant cast, free of mana cost and usable in Cat Form. Moreover, it increases the potency of the spell by 50%.
• Renewal is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a 2-minute cooldown.
• Cenarion Ward is a buff that you can place on a friendly player, lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward activates a 6-second HoT on the player, consuming Cenarion Ward in the process.

Nature's Swiftness is the best choice, because it provides a slight DPS boost. This is due to the fact that it allows you to weave in instant cast Healing Touches, which benefit Dream of Cenarius, the Tier 6 talent of choice.

Cenarion Ward currently provides the most healing, and, thus, the most utility. However, its healing is done over time, and must be triggered by damage. It will be useful in some situations (you can keep it active on the tank, for example).

Natures Swiftness and Renewal both provide a nice amount of self-healing. For purely self-healing purposes, we recommend Renewal. If you wish to gain some versatility and be able to throw around instant-cast Healing Touches, to save low health raid members, then Nature's Swiftness may be better for you. We recommend this macro for pairing Nature's Swiftness with Healing Touch, for easier use.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.

• Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces Faerie Fire, upgrading the latter spell to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds.
• Mass Entanglement is an AoE root, that roots up to 5 targets.
• Typhoon is a spell that affects enemies in a cone in front of you, knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.

The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which best suits the encounter mechanics.

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 performance-enhancing talents.

• Soul of the Forest passively causes your Finishing Moves to grant you 4 energy for each Combo Point used.
• Incarnation: King of the Jungle removes the stealth requirement from all your abilities, removes the positional requirement of Ravage and allows you to Prowl while in combat, for 30 seconds. This ability has a 3-minute cooldown.
• Force of Nature is an active ability that summons a treant which attacks your current target for 15 seconds. Force of Nature has a maximum of 3 charges, and a new a charge is added every 20 seconds. Otherwise, it has no cooldown.

Soul of the Forest will provide you with more energy, and it will make your rotation somewhat easier overall. Since the benefit of this is entirely passive, it is easy to manage. Currently, it provides the highest DPS of the talents in this tier.

Force of Nature is a strong choice, providing a DPS boost just below that of Soul of the Forest. Unlike Soul of the Forest, however, it must be used actively, which can be more problematic.

Incarnation: King of the Jungle may provide you with some additional burst through enabling the use of Ravage freely, without any of its requirements. It may also provide some benefit in the face of adverse encounter conditions (allowing you to go into stealth).

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.

• Disorienting Roar is an AoE disorient that lasts for 3 seconds and affects all enemies in a 10 yard radius.
• Ursol's Vortex is a targeted AoE slow. When enemies first try to leave the slowing area, they are pulled back in.
• Mighty Bash is a single target 5-second stun.

The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which best suits the encounter mechanics.

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that affect your gameplay.

• Heart of the Wild increases your Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by 6% at all times. Additionally, with a 6-minute cooldown, it allows you to viably perform roles outside of your specialisation, for 45 seconds.
  • allows you to tank in Bear Form, by increasing your Agility, Expertise, Hit Chance, and armor, making you immune to critical hits and granting you the Vengeance ability;
  • allows you to DPS as a caster, by increasing your Spell Damage and Hit Chance, and reducing the mana cost of all your damaging spells by 100%;
  • allows you to heal efficiently, by increasing the healing of your spells by 100% and reducing the mana cost of your healing spells by 100%;
• Dream of Cenarius is a passive ability that grants you a healing bonus each time you deal damage, and a damaging bonus each time you heal.
  • Wrath and melee abilities increase the healing done by your next healing spell (except for Tranquility) by 30%.
  • Healing Touch increases the damage done by your next 2 melee abilities by 25%.
• Nature's Vigil is a 90-second cooldown that increases all healing and damage done by 10% for 30 seconds. While Nature's Vigil is active, all single target healing spells also damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing done, and all damaging spells heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage done.

Currently, Dream of Cenarius is the best talent in terms of improving your DPS. For now, this is the optimal choice, although we suspect that the talents will be re-balanced to favour one of the other two alternatives.

Heart of the Wild and Nature's Vigil are both strong options, although they currently rank behind Dream of Cenarius.

The choice becomes a bit more difficult if you are trying to assess which talent offers you the best "hybrid" abilities. In this case, the choice will depend on the specific requirements of the encounter, and the role you wish to perform.

8. Major Glyphs↑top

Only Major Glyphs play a part in your performance as a Feral Druid.

Glyph of Savagery is the most important glyph for you. This glyph allows you to cast Savage Roar without having any Combo Points. This applies a 12-second Savage Roar, and it is ideally suited for recovering from a mistake that caused you to drop the buff. It is also excellent for using at the start of the encounter, when you have to get all your bleeds up, ensuring that you also benefit from the damage bonus of Savage Roar without investing any Combo Points into it.

Glyph of Shred removes the positional requirement of Shred while Tiger's Fury or Berserk are active. This is not especially impressive, but it will probably be beneficial in some situations.

Glyph of Cat Form increases the healing received by you by 20% while Cat Form is active. This is a great boost to your survivability.

Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the range of Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. If using this ability is vital to your raid's strategy, this glyph is excellent.

Glyph of Rebirth is very useful if you ever intend to use your Rebirth, since it allows the target of your Rebirth to come back to life with full health, meaning that they do not risk instantly dying again to environmental damage.

9. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated Force of Nature description.
• 21 Apr. 2013: Added mention that Nature's Swiftness is the best choice in terms of DPS increase.
• 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated Displacer Beast explanation to mention the movement speed buff that it provides.
  • Updated Nature's Vigil explanation to reflect the new cooldown and the fact that the damage and healing bonus is now 10% instead of 20%.