Feral Tank Druid Pre-Patch Guide for WotLK Classic

The Feral Tank Druid is a new player-friendly tank with surprising survivability and DPS capabilities, despite its easy rotation and ease of gearing due to being Critical Strike immune from Survival of the Fittest alone.

At least one Druid is still recommended per raid for Mark of the Wild and Faerie Fire, and Feral is decently useful as it brings physical buffs such as Leader of the Pack (with optional Improved Leader of the Pack), and an Innervate that can be given out without much cost for the Druid.

This page will go over pre-patch talents, rotation, gear, and consumables for Feral Tank Druid, allowing you to quickly get up to date with your character while waiting for Wrath to officially start!

This is the build for a main tank Druid concerned with survival, taking the best defensive talents other than the ones for reduced tank damage debuffs, such as Infected Wounds, which should be applied by other players.

Notably, Shredding Attacks and Improved Leader of the Pack are interchangeable, with the right choice coming down to whether you Cat Form DPS when not actively tanking or not.

This is the build for an off-tank Druid who spends most of their time DPSing, with King of the Jungle taken for its significant damage gain through Tiger's Fury and Cat Form DPS glyphs.

Glyphs enhance or change class specific abilities, and you can have up to two major glyphs and three minor glyphs at Level 70, with a third major glyph being unlocked at Level 80.

Some glyphs will only be available after Wrath launches, but in the pre-patch you can already obtain Glyph of Maul and Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration, which are the best defensive glyphs available. If you want to spend most of your time in Cat Form, however, we recommend Glyph of Rip and Glyph of Shred, instead.

For minor glyphs, Glyph of the Wild, Glyph of Dash, and Glyph of Challenging Roar are nice quality of life options.

1. Stamina (has no diminishing returns and scales with Dire Bear Form, Heart of the Wild, Survival of the Fittest, Improved Mark of the Wild, and Blessing of Kings);
2. 26 Expertise Points before Primal Precision to reduce Boss Dodge % to 0;
3. Agility (some Crit and Dodge, and also benefits from stat multipliers such as Survival of the Fittest);
4. 8% Hit before talents / Draenei to cap Hit;
5. Extra Expertise until Boss Parry chance is reduced to 0;
6. Extra Armor on Leather (multiplied by Dire Bear Form, Survival of the Fittest, and Thick Hide);
7. Strength (2 Atk Power before similar multipliers to Agility);
8. Haste;
9. Armor Penetration;
10. Defense (bosses cannot crit when you have Survival of the Fittest, even with 0 defense, but it still gives dodge and enemy miss chance against you);
11. Critical Strike;
12. Dodge;
13. Feral Attack Power (stat on weapons dependent on their item level, has 20% extra scaling than regular Attack Power from Predatory Strikes);
14. Attack Power;
15. Extra Armor on non-Leather pieces (no multipliers).

We will be presenting the skill rotation of a Feral Tank Druid as a priority list, which means you should try to use the one at the top of the list first for maximum DPS.

1. Use Berserk when available;
2. Use Mangle (Bear) when available;
3. Use Faerie Fire (Feral) when available;
4. Use (and refresh before it expires) Lacerate until the enemy has 5 stacks ticking;
5. Use Maul;
6. Use Swipe (Bear) if you still have excess rage after spamming Maul.

1. Use Berserk and spam Mangle (Bear) while it is active;
2. Use Swipe (Bear);
3. Use Maul with extra Rage.

Most TBC Phase 5 gear in the guide linked below is still fine, but there are a few important factors changing how you want to gear in the pre-patch and Wrath in general:

• Non-leather gear with extra Armor is now mostly sub-par, as this Armor does not get multiplied by Dire Bear Form, Survival of the Fittest, and Thick Hide, which is a huge downgrade to the effectiveness of such gear;
• Defense, Resilience, and other means of obtaining Critical Strike immunity are no longer necessary for that purpose, due to Survival of the Fittest taking care of that by itself;
• Dodge becomes subject to diminishing returns, which means that stacking it (through Agility gemming, mostly) will lead to highly reduced Dodge gains at high gear levels, thus full Stamina gemming is the new recommendation for survivability purposes;
• To complement raiding, or if it is not an option, farming Honor in the pre-patch through battlegrounds will allow you to buy the full "Brutal" PvP gear set, which is close in power to gear from Sunwell Plateau and has no randomness in its acquisition.

Enchants mostly stay the same in the pre-patch, but weapon procs such as Enchant Weapon - Mongoose can now proc when inside Dire Bear Form and should thus be used instead of flat Agility, and Enchant Boots - Surefooted goes from a niche melee enchant to a great general DPS enchant, and is also a strong option.

Elixir of Mastery and Gift of Arthas are the recommended elixir combo.

Eat Fisherman's Feast or Spicy Crawdad and use Adamantite Weightstone on your weapon.

Ironshield Potion is the best survivability potion available. You can no longer use two potions during combat, but you can use one just before entering combat, which will allow you to use another mid-fight if the encounter is long enough.