Feral druid-Help me increase DPS?

[Rakrakoth 0]

Hey guys,

As the title says, I need help increasing my general DPS.

Information about my character below:

 

I have mostly iLevel 700 PvP gear from ashran, with the legendary ring. I have a few pieces of the 710 conquest gear also. I was told this will give similar stats to raid gear of the same level. I'm currently trying to get some better raid gear from normal and heroic HFC, but often find myself kicked from raids for having low DPS so I can't really get better gear.

 

I have bloodtalons as my primary talent, also taking incarnation: jungle king for DPS related talents.

 

I use glyph of cat form, glyph of savage roar and glyph of ferocious bite.

 

My opener/rotation goes:

Healing touch-incarnation-rake-shred-berserk-shred (to 5 combo points)-rip

Then I just keep bleeds and savage roar up and use excess combo points for ferocious bite. I also tend to save healing touch till just before I use a finisher so that the bloodtalons will go further.

 

My stat priorities go Crit>mastery>haste>everything else

 

At first, I found myself unable to get past 25k DPS but with some guides and practice I've increased it to about 30k. However, i'm still unable to get my DPS up to around 50k which most heroic HFC raids are demanding.

 

The weird thing is that I can easily 1v1 the majority of alliance I meet while questing.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[Ihatehealing 1]

with what you have posted isnt giving us much to go by in trying to help you improve your dps. the only thing right now i can say without seeing anything else is your stat priority. depending on what type of build your going for your stats should go as followed

single target - crit>multistrike>mastery>haste>vers.

AoE dps build- Crit>mastery>multistrike>haste>vers.

 

 but if you can give us a link to your character so we can see your gear. also if you have some time of logs from a most recent raid would also be very helpful.

[archdruidd 1]

As the previous poster stated having your armory link would be really useful for evaluation :D.  But just a couple of things:

1.  I would not use incarnation when you do my normal opening rotation is

     Healing Touch-Stealth-(prepot if you so chose at this time)-rake-Shred till 5 points-Rip-Shred-Healing Touch-Ferocious Bite-Repeat refreshing bleeds and Roar as needed.  I always hold Incarnation to pop with Berserk on the first Tigers fury then on cooldown unless their is a burn phase (IE Gorefiend)

2.  Always Use Finishers on 5 points unless your under 25 percent on the boss and need to quickie refresh Rip

3.  Always pool 50 energy before you Hit Ferocious Bite.

4.  In my experience the AOE Stat Build is overall the best stat build especially once you get your 4pc tier 18

5.  If possible pop your cooldowns on Hero/bloodlust

6.  Make sure using some sort of Addon to help track bleeds/SR etc refreshes

[Desks 0]

As the previous poster stated having your armory link would be really useful for evaluation .  But just a couple of things:

1.  I would not use incarnation when you do my normal opening rotation is

     Healing Touch-Stealth-(prepot if you so chose at this time)-rake-Shred till 5 points-Rip-Shred-Healing Touch-Ferocious Bite-Repeat refreshing bleeds and Roar as needed.  I always hold Incarnation to pop with Berserk on the first Tigers fury then on cooldown unless their is a burn phase (IE Gorefiend)

2.  Always Use Finishers on 5 points unless your under 25 percent on the boss and need to quickie refresh Rip

3.  Always pool 50 energy before you Hit Ferocious Bite.

4.  In my experience the AOE Stat Build is overall the best stat build especially once you get your 4pc tier 18

5.  If possible pop your cooldowns on Hero/bloodlust

6.  Make sure using some sort of Addon to help track bleeds/SR etc refreshes

My opener is: Healing Touch>Stealth>Prepot>Incarn(this is at ~2 seconds before pull)>Rake>Shred to 5 CP>Berserking(racial)+Berserk+TF>Rip. Then go into keeping bleeds up and dumping CP's on bite when I don't need to refresh a bleed. 

 

Incarn's 30 second duration makes it long enough to use it before initiating the fight and have it active during your other cd's (even when you have Seeds, which makes Berserk last ~20 sec and TF last ~8). I used to use incarn right before my 1shot, but found I get a better opener and higher dps when I use it in stealth (not entirely necessary to use in stealth since it makes your attacks work like you're stealthed, but I like getting as close as possible to the boss before we pull).

[Sauryn 0]

Feral is one of the more demanding specs of the game. it requires you to keep track of both rip and rake as well as savage roar for the time being (legion changes to spec).

 

As for me, i have mained a feral druid since Seige of Orgrimmar and loved it ever since. I currently raid in a guild progressing through Mythic HFC where we are 5/13 cleared (Gorefiend is monster).

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/hyjal/Phxntom/advanced

 

Im no expert of the class but im willing to help share what i know of the spec to help someone else out that is struggling.

 

First off you should have an addon that you can track your bleeds and savage roar with. Personally i use Droodfocus. it clearly lets me know when im able to apply a stronger Rip or Rake then what i currently have applied. It even has little colors att he bottom of the icon telling me whats making the bleeds stronger. Since this addon likes to break at the beginning of an expansion Pawkets Weak Aura string is a good alternative. I will include a link below to a forum post where you can get the files and string for the weak aura. Due to blizzard rewriting things in the LUA files im sure this will also break when legion drops.

http://fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5034

 

the fluid druid is also a good place to go having questions since its a website with all things druid.

 

Next you should know when and when not to refresh your bleeds. This gets really technical so bear along with me. 

 

Some terms i use during this Description

 

Clipping Bleeds - Refreshing a bleed before it has fallen off the target or entered purgatory to apply a stronger bleed

 

Purgatory Bleed or Buff - When a bleed has reached a certain amount of time left where refreshing the bleed or buff will add the remaining time left onto the new bleed or buff

Rake Purgatory - 4 seconds

Rip Purgatory - 8 Seconds

Savage Roar Purgatory - 12 Seconds

 

Refreshing Rake - Rake bleed should be clipped whenever you can apply a rake that is stronger, Savage roar, tigers fury, bloody talons, improved rake. Improved rake comes from using rake out of stealth or applying it with incarnation up. you should never clip an improved rake unless you have a stronger improved rake. When you pop incarnation apply a rake immediately as it will be stronger than any other rake you have. Reapply rake as incarnation is about to end and make it as strong as you can get it. an improved rake is the strongest rake.(DroodFocus doesn't track it unfortunately) 

 

Refreshing Rip - Rip doesn't follow the same rules as rake. Usually once you have a Rip applied it stays that way until it enters purgatory. The reason for this is because the 5 combo points you should use on the Rip would be better spent on a ferocious Bite. My rule of thumb is if i can apply a rip that is 2 buffs stronger than my current one i will clip it. I.E i only have a savage roar buffed rip on my target. IF i can apply a 5 point rip buffed with savage roar, tigers fury, and bloody talons, i will clip, if i already have 2 of the 3 i will wait for purgatory to refresh my rip.

NOTE: Rip DOES NOT have an improved state like Rake. It does not follow the same rules

 

Refreshing Savage Roar - this one is way more simple. Both rake and Rip get a buff from this when they are applied with it active. It is imperative that this stays active or you will watch your DPS fall to the ground. Refresh it with 5 combo points when it enters purgatory. The one exception and you will see it, is when both Savage roar and RIp have entered Purgatory at the same time and you do not have enough time to refresh both  without letting one fall off. In this case you should refresh Rip before savage roar falls off, then reapply roar as soon as you can.

 

Now that's the hard stuff and what makes feral difficult. I literally have practiced all those rules on a dummy for countless hours to make sure i have it down pat. i still find myself hitting a dummy to make sure I'm always in practice

 

Other things to note about your stat priority. i saw your priority as

Crit>Mastery>haste> everything else

This is fine until you get your 2 and 4 set of Tier18. Until then i imagine you are pretty energy starved. Once you get your T18 Bonuses your priority should be 

Crit>Mastery>Multi>everything else

 

Other items worth mentioning

Seed of Corruption off Archimonde - Amazing trink for feral druids. Increases the Buff from Tigers Fury and Berserk. This is a great trink because it makes managing your Dots that much easier with tigers fury, the increased up time on berserk is really nice for spamming as well.

 

Soul Capacitor off of Socrethar - My favorite Trink in the game right now. i like the added play style it brings to our class. This trinket absorbs all the damage you you do for about 15 seconds, then unleashes it with extra damage spread evenly among all mobs within 25 yards of you.There are certain times when it should be cancelled using a cancel aura macro so damage is not wasted (Mostly before you are forced to move away from a boss). There is also the part where it acts funky with the legendary ring. This only applies When someone has popped the DPS ring and you get a proc from this trinket. you should cancel the aura before the ring explodes. This is because when the trinket is active you are technically dealing no damage for the ring to absorb, hence you are getting no benefit from the ring other than the percent of increase damage your doing with the buff. But if you cancel the soul capacitor aura before the ring goes off then the damage will feed the ring, dealing the percentage of extra damage when the ring explodes.

 

I know this is quite a lot of information to take in at first look. A lot of this can be found on the Icy-veins feral druid guide where I'm sure they do a much better job of explaining it than i can, and discussions about feral can be found on the fluid druid website.

 

Feral is a very gear dependent spec and I hope this information helps you to pull some better numbers for the mean time. Happy Raiding