Infamous for being high effort low reward, Feral DPS in Phase 1 of Season of Discovery gets to shed that reputation, even if only temporarily. Instead of farming Manual Crowd Pummeler and powershifting for an entire fight, we get to be mobile, high-damage Windfury Totems.

Build Summary

Cat DPS utilizes a fairly simple priority system in Season of Discovery. We simply want to maintain our Mangle debuff, keep Savage Roar up at all times, and spend Clearcasting procs on Shred. If we ever have excess Combo Points, we can use them on Rip. Outside of that, we simply fill time with Mangle.

You can powershift in Phase 1 of Season of Discovery, but you are massively limited by your mana, and casting Cat Form over and over is far from sustainable.

Runes

Chest

Wild Strikes

While you are in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form, party members within 20 yards gain increased combat ferocity. Each melee hit has a 20% chance of granting the attacker an extra attack with 20% additional Attack Power. No effect if the party member is already benefitting from Windfury Totem.

Even with no other changes to Feral DPS, this Rune would be enough to make them worth bringing to every raid. This turns Feral Druids into a mobile Windfury Totem. To make things even better, this even allows us to Windfury! This also means that Windfury is no longer exclusive to the Horde.

The main downside of this is that it is a 20-yard range and only effects party members, but any melee group won’t care about that.

Gloves

Mangle

Mangle the target for 30% normal damage and cause the target to take 30% additional damage from Bleed effects and Shred for 1 min. Awards 1 combo point. This ability benefits from and triggers all effects associated with Claw and Maul.

This replaces the low-damage Claw with the more powerful Mangle. This costs the same amount of Energy, effectively fulfilling the same role entirely. In addition, Mangle also debuffs the target for 1 minute, causing them to take 30% additional damage from Bleed effects (like Rip), and Shred.

Sunfire

Burns the enemy for 55 to 65 Nature damage and then an additional 110 Nature damage over 12 sec. Awards 1 combo point.

While this is generally not the best option for our Glove Rune, if another Druid is bringing Mangle, you can leech off of their debuff and bring Sunfire for an extra DoT.

Legs

Savage Roar

Finishing move that increases physical damage done by 30% while in Cat Form. Lasts longer per combo point:
1 point : 14 seconds
2 points : 19 seconds
3 points : 24 seconds
4 points : 29 seconds
5 points : 34 seconds

Replacing Rip as our highest priority finisher, Savage Roar is an effect you want to keep up at all times. This provides us a very significant 30% Physical Damage boost, and we can easily maintain this for an entire fight. Only use Rip if you are sure you will be able to keep Savage Roar up.

With our limited energy pool and regeneration, we may find ourselves in situations where it is better to simply waste Combo Points instead of using another finisher and letting Savage Roar fall off for even a second.

Skull Bash

Charge to a target within 13 yards and bash the target’s skull, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast 2 sec.

This is a very niche option, but if your team does need an interrupt for a fight, you can always swap to this just for that encounter, and swap back after.

This also works as a small distance gap closer, which is nice but with the limited 13-yard range, that better be a small gap.

Starsurge

Launch surging stellar energies that cause Arcane damage. Starsurge benefits from and triggers most talents and effects that trigger or benefit from Wrath or Starfire.

Starsurge is not something you would expect to consider as a Feral Druid. It cannot be used outside of caster form, and it scales entirely on caster-related stats. That is what you would have thought until the ability was massively buffed. Starsurge now barely costs any mana while doing massive amounts of damage instantly. This leads to an odd niche where during some fights with high Armor you can bring Starsurge and incorporate it into your power-shifting rotation. Simply use Starsurge to leave Cat Form, and then return to Cat Form and cast Sunfire.

Talent Build

Did I say Feral DPS? Oops. Cats are known for their Balance, and turns out that remains true even in Season of Discovery. The Balance tree offers 2 incredibly powerful options for Cats this early on. The first is Natural Weapons, giving us a flat 10% damage boost in Cat Form. This by itself is stronger than almost any other option available in Feral. We also gain Omen of Clarity, a key component in making Cat DPS work. This causes our attacks to occasionally grant Clearcasting, making our next ability cost no energy. This is vital, as it allows us to negate Shreds absurd 60 energy cost for a big damage boost.

Unfortunately, to get to Natural Weapons we need to waste 5 points. We do this with Improved Wrath, but you could just as easily grab Nature’s Grasp and Improved Nature’s Grasp. Dealers choice. We also have 5 extra points that we want to place in either Furor or Ferocity. Furor would be the standard choice, allowing us to powershift to regularly gain 40 energy. The downside is that Cat Form costs almost half of our mana at level 25, and powershifting is just not likely to be sustainable. Ferocity on the other hand brings our main DPS filler, Mangle, down to 35 energy, allowing us to cast it more often.

Going into a full Feral tree offers both pros and cons. We start with Ferocity, bringing our Mangle down to 35 energy. We are then immediately met by 5 points of filler. Feral Aggression is out immediately, as we don’t even have Ferocious Bite. Brutal Impact is fine, but we are unlikely to see any value from either Bash in PvE content, and we don’t have Pounce yet. Thick Hide is a nice little boon to our survival, but we don’t want to be getting hit.

Finally, Feral Instinct reduces our chance to be detected in stealth, as well as giving us a threat boost in Bear Form. I chose to grab this as stealth has its use occasionally, and being detected can easily screw you and your group over. The additional threat is also valuable if you ever have to step in as a tank unexpectedly.

Feline Swiftness gives us 30% movement speed while outdoors in Cat Form. This of course gives us nothing in raids or most dungeons, but will make your life a lot easier while traversing the general world, especially without mounts available. Sharpened Claws is probably the best talent available in Feral by level 25, giving us 6% increased Critical Chance in Cat Form. Finally, we grab 1 point in Blood Frenzy, giving us a little bit more Combo Point generation. This could be enough to take you over the edge and allow you to regularly use Rip as well as Savage Roar. We could have grabbed Predatory Strikes, but at this level that would barely be double digits of bonus Attack Power.

Key Spells and Abilities

Cat Form

Be prepared to never see your gear again, as you will spend 90% of your time in Cat Form. This gives us a nice boost to Attack Power, as well as making us effectively immune to Polymorph-style spells.

Cat Form also turns your Mana Bar into an Energy Bar, as well as unlocking a new set of abilities to use. These spells are the basis of our gameplay, and this is where we deal all of our damage.

The main downsides of Cat Form are the incredibly high mana cost to shift, as well as us having zero energy once we shift.

Claw

The default attack for Cats, either this or Mangle will be your basic filler spell, spammed for Combo Points whenever you have the energy.

Rip

Our default finisher, Rip places a high damage Bleed on the target for 12 seconds. The damage is based on the amount of Combo Points spent, and we always want to have 5 Combo Points before using this.

Tiger’s Fury

This ability is barely useful, but it does have one tiny niche. If you use this before a pull, but with enough time to have full energy before the fight starts, you can take advantage of the tiny damage boost for one or two hits of your opener.

Faerie Fire

By level 25 we don’t have access to Faerie Fire (Feral), so we are stuck casting this outside of Cat Form. Even with that in mind, it is very much worth keeping this maintained on the target, just make sure you don’t lose your Energy by shifting!

Shred

This was the primary damage dealer and filler for Feral Druids in Classic, with the addition of Mangle we are unlikely to use this as often as we previously would. Shred does heavy damage but costs over half our max energy to use, meaning we spend a lot of time simply waiting for energy.

We will almost exclusively be using Shred combined with Clearcasting from Omen of Clarity. This avoids the steep energy cost.

Example Best-in-Slot

BiS lists can vary drastically from fight to fight, even more so as a Tank. There is rarely a one-size fits all solution for any given dungeon or raid, so you will need to find what suits your needs best.

Below is an example of an all-round Best-in-Slot list that you can tweak to fit your individual needs.

Armor

• Twilight Slayer’s Cowl (211510)
• Bristlebark Amice (14573)
• Twilight Slayer’s Tunic (211512)
• Deftkin Belt (16659)
• Leggings of the Fang (10410)
• Twilight Slayer’s Footpads (211511)
• Bindings of Serra’kis (209524)
• Void-Touched Leather Gloves (211423)
• Sergeant’s Cloak (213088)

Weapons

• Fist of the Wild (209577)
• Mind-Expanding Mushroom (209576)

Jewelry

• High Tide Choker (209422)
• Thunderbrow Ring (13097)
• Band of the Iron Fist (211467)
• Avenger’s Void Pearl (211449)
• Rune of Perfection (21566)

Noteworthy Items

Smite’s Mighty Hammer

Easily accessible from The Deadmines, this is an ideal weapon for us, giving both Agility and Strength.

Heavy Dynamite

Dynamite is an iconic tool for Classic WoW, and Season of Discovery is no different. Make sure you stock up, at this level the damage is higher than any of your spells.

Unfortunately, we do have to shift out of form to use these, but they are also our best AoE damage, making it worth it.

Race Choice

Druids don’t have the luxury of choosing a race, we simply choose our faction and get what we’re given.

Night Elf

The four racials here are all negligible, but they’re nice to have. Nature Resistance is likely to be useful in at least some situations, even if that ends up being against another player. Quickness is likely the least useful of the bunch. 1% Dodge chance is great, but you shouldn’t be getting hit anyway. Shadowmeld is a neat little out-of-combat stealth, but unless you plan on ambushing players on the roads, you will struggle to find a time to use it. Finally, Wisp Spirit is (unfortunately) the most useful. We move 50% faster while dead, making corpse runs that much faster.

Tauren

These four racials are the stronger of the two races. Nature Resistance is identical to Night Elves, likely useful in a few niche scenarios. Endurance gives 5% more total Health, which while not a massive boost, still sees some value. Cultivation gives a flat 15-skill boost to Herbalism, allowing us to pick later flowers earlier. Of course, that is only useful if you decide to go with Herbalism. Finally, War Stomp is a Melee range AoE stun. This is still fairly niche, but can see regular use for larger trash packs, or while soloing.