glyphs Feral Druid: Mists of Pandaria Rotation Changes, Talents, and Glyphs (Patch 5.0.4)

[Vlad 411]

This article is no longer being updated. Please check our Feral Druid guide, which is fully compatible with Mists of Pandaria, and is being constantly updated. Thank you.

In preparation for the updates to our guides for Mists of Pandaria Patch 5.0.4, we are releasing articles such as this one, explaining what has changed for a particular class and spec, and what the new rotation is likely to be.

Keep in mind that this is still a work in progress (both from Blizzard's side and from our own) and that this article assumes you are at least somewhat familiar with the Cataclysm version of the Feral Druid rotation and playstyle (such as from reading our guide).

We will first list the most important changes to the Feral Druid Cataclysm abilities, and then we will proceed to explaining the (likely to be) optimal rotation. Keep in mind that we do not document every single change or new ability, only those that impact the rotation.

Finally, we will give you some information about the most useful talents and glyphs you should choose.

New abilities

• Thrash is an ability that was previously only available when in Bear Form. It deals damage to enemies in a cone in front of you, placing a 15 second bleed on them.
• Might of Ursoc is a cooldown that increases your current and maximum health by 30% for 20 seconds. Using it will shift you into Bear Form, and leaving Bear Form cancels the effect.
• Tier 4 talents offer a choice between Soul of the Forest, Incarnation: King of the Jungle, and Force of Nature. We discuss these talents in greater depth in the Talents section.
• Tier 6 talents offer a choice between Heart of the Wild, Dream of Cenarius, and Nature's Vigil. We discuss these talents in greater depth in the Talents section.
• Symbiosis is a buff that you can place on one party or raid member. The buff lasts for 1 hour, and grants you an ability belonging to the target's class, depending on what your specialisation is. At the same time, the target receives one of your spells. A full list of all the buffs granted by Symbiosis can be found here. Note that these spells are still likely to change.

Changes to Existing Mechanics

• Tiger's Fury no longer increases your energy pool.
• Berserk now lasts 15 seconds, down from 25.
• Mangle no longer applies a bleed damage increase debuff, and now simply deals damage, adds a combo point, and applies Infected Wounds on the target.

Removed Abilities

• Stampede procs have been removed.

Rotation and Spell Usage

The rotation has changed very little from the Cataclysm version (covered in our guide). We will outline it below.

• Shred is your primary combo point builder. Mangle will only be used to build combo points when you cannot attack the target from behind, and Ravage will only be useful when you are in stealth and behind the target (at the start of the encounter).
• Keep up Rake on the target (use it once every 15 seconds).
• Keep up Rip on the target, with 5 combo points.
• Keep up Savage Roar on yourself, ideally with 5 combo points (to make your rotation easier).

It is important to note that, thanks to Glyph of Savagery (which we deem mandatory, as we explain in the glyphs section), you can apply a 12 second Savage Roar without any combo points. This is useful at the start of the fight, if Savage Roar has dropped off, or if you are going through a period of low combo point generation.

If you have combo points to spare and neither Savage Roar nor Rip need to be refreshed, you should use them on Ferocious Bite.

Cooldowns

You have the same two DPS cooldowns that you had in Cataclysm: Tiger's Fury and Berserk. Additionally, depending on your talent choices, you may also gain additional DPS cooldowns.

• Incarnation: King of the Jungle or Force of Nature;
• Nature's Vigil.

These new cooldowns are very straightforward and we anticipate that their usage will be based around the "on cooldown" and "as many times as possible during the fight" concepts. The only exception is that you may want to use Incarnation: King of the Jungle when you are unable to attack the target from the front for a short period of time.

Multiple Target Rotation

When facing multiple targets, you will want to keep up the Thrash bleed on the targets, and use Swipe the rest of the time. The combo points you generate in this way will be used to maintain Savage Roar.

Talents

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 and activates Cat Form and Prowl.
• 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 forwards 20 yards.
• Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5 seconds.

We believe that Feline Swiftness will prove to be most useful in the vast majority of situations. This is because it will grant you its bonus even over very short distances, such as when side-stepping out of a void zone.

Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.

• Nature's Swiftness is an active healing cooldown that makes your next Healing Touch, Nourish, or Regrowth instant cast and free of mana cost. Moreover, it increases both the potency of the spell and the spell's duration (in the case of HoTs) by 50%. Nature's Swiftness also affects some utility spells, but this is less important.
• Renewal is a powerful self-heal 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 powerful 6-second HoT on them, consuming the buff in the process (meaning that it will only trigger one HoT per Cenarion Ward).

In terms of your own survival, Renewal is easily the best choice (it can be used in any form, so it will not interfere with your DPS). We believe this will become the default choice, essentially granting you an additional minor cooldown. Cenarion Ward may also provide a hefty amount of self-healing, but since it is healing over-time, it is less valuable. Nature's Swiftness could possibly be useful in some situations where you wish to help out your raid, though we cannot imagine them presently.

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

• Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces Faerie Fire, upgrading the latter spell, causing it 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 in place.
• Typhoon is a spell that affects targets in a cone in front of you, knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.

None of these talents appear to have any real importance in terms of PvE raiding. You will most likely be able to choose which one of them you prefer for personal reasons (or for questing or doing achievements/dungeons). At best, they may be useful for clearing trash.

Tier 4 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that each significantly improve your DPS.

• Soul of the Forest passively causes your finishing moves to grant you 3 energy for each combo point used.
• Incarnation: King of the Jungle lasts for 30 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown. While active, it removes the stealth requirement from all your abilities, and it allows you to use Ravage without being behind the target. Lastly, it allows you to use Prowl while you are in combat.
• Force of Nature is an active ability that summons 3 treants for 15 seconds. The treants attack enemies and stun them.

Currently, Force of Nature is very underwhelming. Out of the other two talents, your choice will probably be based on encounter requirements and the balancing of these spells. King of the Jungle provides excellent burst, while Soul of the Forest makes the rotation easier to maintain.

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.

As with the tier 3 talents, these talents do not have any impact on your gameplay and will most likely be only useful for trash or PvP encounters.

Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that can 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 Feral specialisation, for 45 seconds:
  • allows you to tank in Bear Form, by ensuring that you are not susceptible to critical hits, that you gain Vengeance from damage taken, and that your melee stats and your armor are increased;
  • 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.
  • Casting Wrath, Starfire, and Starsurge, or performing a melee attack increases the healing of your next healing spell (except Tranquility) by 30%.
  • Casting Nourish, Healing Touch, and Regrowth increases the damage of your next 2 Moonfire or Sunfire by 100%, or the damage done by your next 2 melee abilities by 30%.
• Nature's Vigil is a 3-minute cooldown that increases all healing and damage done by 20% 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 single target damage spells also heal a nearby ally for 25% of the damage done.

All three talents are very powerful and interesting. Heart of the Wild increases your DPS greatly, thanks to the 6% Agility boost, but it may also turn the tide in a particularly difficult encounter where assuming another role for a short while can be crucial.

The exact usefulness of Dream of Cenarius remains to be determined.

Nature's Vigil is a very straightforward and quite powerful cooldown. It grants you a 20% increase to damage done for 30 seconds, which will compete well with Heart of the Wild.

Glyphs

There are several Major Glyphs that are useful to you as a Feral Druid.

• Glyph of Savagery allows you to apply Savage Roar with 0 combo points, granting you a 12 second duration. This glyph will undoubtedly be a DPS gain in PvE, at the very least in situations where you are unable to generate combo points. We consider it to be mandatory.
• Glyph of Shred removes the positional requirement of Shred while Tiger's Fury and Berserk are active. It will only have a minor impact on your gameplay, at best.
• Glyph of Rebirth remains unchanged from Cataclysm. It resurrects players with full health. This is a useful glyph for raiders, but less so since players are now resurrected with 60% of their health. However, since it now shares a category (Major Glyphs) with other important glyphs, it may be best to only use it when absolutely necessary, namely on encounters where there is a lot of AoE damage that can kill a newly-resurrected player.
• Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the radius of Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. This glyph may be useful in certain situations.

Minor Glyphs are purely cosmetic and play no part in your performance.

This concludes our Feral Druid preview for Mists of Pandaria. We hope you have enjoyed reading it and that it proved useful to you. As always, we are looking forward to reading your opinions on the matter!

[Fatbearirl 0]

Tiger's Fury, Berserk, Mangle, and Feral Charge (Stampede) have all been nerf'd?

I sure hope the new talents are good for kitties, else Feral DPS is looking pretty bad for MOP.

[Chiaki 0]

You're saying here that Wild Charge leaps to an enemy. This is wrong.

And Dream of Cenarius is reworked, this is true for all of the druid guides if I remember right.

And btw. the usefulness of Dream of Cenarius is clear: Do your meleehits, then throw a Regrowth somewhere and hit with two Ravages, that do double the dmg.

Edited August 9, 2012 by Chiaki

[Vlad 411]

You're saying here that Wild Charge leaps to an enemy. This is wrong.

And Dream of Cenarius is reworked, this is true for all of the druid guides if I remember right.

And btw. the usefulness of Dream of Cenarius is clear: Do your meleehits, then throw a Regrowth somewhere and hit with two Ravages, that do double the dmg.

Updated the wild charge (although the leaping part was correct, but we added the other forms).

Also updated the Dream of Cenarius in all the druid guides. The reason that we say that the usefulness of is is not clear is because we highly doubt that it will remain Blizzard's intention to have Feral Druids constantly weave Regrowth into their rotation.

Thanks!