Shifting Perspectives: 4 tips for intermediate ferals
by Chase Hasbrouck 
Nov 20th 2011 at 8:00PM
This week, we're going to break away from Mists of Pandaria talent speculation and look more at concrete matters: how to improve your DPS in a raid. Judging from the mail I've received recently, several newer feral players have mastered the basic rotation but are having troubles dominating the meters. Forgive the Cosmopolitan-esque title, but I've compiled four helpful tips to help ferals in their quest for blood, destruction, and nice purples.
1. Work out keybindings and movement. While you're still learning your rotation, clicking your abilities is fine. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to succeed in a raid setting as a "clicker." Our primary DPS ability is facing-dependent, necessitating constant awareness of our position. Modern encounters are heavy on quick-reaction movement. By keybinding your main abilities, you'll be able to free up your mouse for situational awareness and positioning.
Personally, I use keys 1 through 5 for my most commonly used abilities (Shred, Rake, Mangle, Tiger's Fury, Faerie Fire), Shift-1 through Shift-5 for finishers and cooldowns (Rip, Savage Roar, Ferocious Bite, Maim, Berserk), and Alt-1 to Alt-5 for shapeshifts, which flip the first two rows to separate abilities. At this point, I ran out of keys I wanted to use, so I mapped the remaining critical abilities to mouse buttons. I have a four-way mouse wheel/button, so middle-click is my Feral Charge/Ravage macro, mouse wheel left is Barkskin, mouse wheel right is Survival Instincts, mouse wheel up is Dash, and mouse wheel down is Stampeding Roar.
If you don't want to use the mouse for abilities, the ~/Q/E/R/F keys are easily rebindable and easy to reach, if you're using the typical WASD setup. (Also, make sure A and D are used for strafe, not turn; all your camera movement should be via mouse.) This will change a bit with the new tier 13 set bonus, as I'll have to find another button for Ravage, but this setup is perfectly workable for raiding. If it's not listed here, it's something you're probably safe clicking. Everyone has their own setup for keybinds, so feel free to experiment and use what works best for you.
Once you work out your keybinds, then practice! If I listed it above, you need to be able to use it on the move. Once you can execute a full rotation and stay in melee range of a boss that your crazy tank is dragging all over the place, you'll see a large DPS increase. Once you master that, than start mixing in your movement abilities. Whenever you need to close a gap, Feral Charge. Whenever you need to run out and back in, Dash or Stampeding Roar, etc. Maximize your melee time, and you'll see your DPS improve markedly.
2. Get used to quicker (or no) global cooldowns. Feral druids, rogues, and death knights (in unholy presence) are the only DPS classes in the game with a 1-second global cooldown. This means a couple things. First, if you're coming to feral from a 1.5-second GCD class, you'll have to adjust to pressing your buttons significantly faster. (It also means playing another melee class after one of those feels unbearably slow.) This doesn't mean you always want to be spamming abilities heedlessly; after all, maintaining high uptimes on Rip, Rake, and Savage Roar is still the key to feral DPS. During things like Berserk, though, hammer away on that Shred key.
Second, realize that there are a few abilities with no global cooldown at all -- specifically, Tiger's Fury and Survival Instincts. You'll definitely want to get in the habit of hitting TF and the next ability you want to use simultaneously, since you want to get off as many abilities as you can while under the 15%+ damage from TF.
3. Manage your energy regeneration. Back when I played a caster, I asked my raid leader for tips on how to improve my DPS. His response: "Just follow your ABCs: 'Always Be Casting.' We can work on your spell selection for marginal improvements, but ensuring you always have a spell queued will greatly improve your numbers." Thankfully, we ferals don't work quite like that, but it's similar.
The only time you want to see a full energy bar is before the fight starts. At any other time, full energy (or energy capping) means you're not regenerating energy, which is a large waste. If you see that bar get to 90, just go ahead and hit Mangle. It's probably not the optimal choice in the situation you're in, but it'll always work and prevent your energy from capping for a couple of seconds while you figure out where you are in your rotation.
The concept of energy pooling is similar; just as too much energy is bad, too little is also bad (though not as terrible). If all of your DoTs and Savage Roar is up and you're simply Shredding, there's no reason to hit the button as soon as it lights up. Delay a few seconds, let your energy get to 70 to 80, then Shred. Getting into this habit will prevent you from encountering situations where you're low on energy and multiple DoTs are expiring, killing your uptime.
4. Maintain chemical superiority. Potions of the Tol'Vir are frequently overlooked by many players, and I don't understand why. First, they're not that expensive; according to The Undermine Journal, they only run about 10g each or, if you're willing to buy the components for your neighborhood alchemist, less than 5g each. A few dailies should give you enough for a stack. Second, they have a significant impact. A single potion (used in conjunction with Berserk for best effect) will boost your DPS by 10% to 15% during the duration, giving you an overall boost of about ~2%.
That's not even addressing pre-potting. Simply, this means taking a potion immediately before your tank pulls. Since you're not in combat yet, the one potion per fight rule doesn't kick in, so you only have to wait for the standard 2-minute potion cooldown to use another, typically with your second Berserk. This doesn't work on all fights, but if you can get your tank to count down his pull over voice chat, you'll be able to reap the benefits of most of the second potion.
Starting next week, I'll be focusing on preparing you for patch 4.3 content. Got more tips for fellow ferals? Feel free to share in the comments!
Looking for the latest and greatest in feral cat druid guides? Shifting Perspectives has the answers! Check out our cat 101 for Cataclysm. Also don't miss gearing your cat for Firelands raiding, addons for cat druids and raiding strats for feral cats, as well as our feral cat Firelands boss strats.
Filed under: (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
aelastain88 Nov 20th 2011 9:14PM
With the change to focus, Hunters also switched to a 1 sec GCD with the exception to a few abilities.
Skarn Nov 20th 2011 10:19PM
Hey, Chase? Ya missed one. Like Aelastain said, hunters also have a 1s GCD. :)
djsuursoo Nov 21st 2011 12:25PM
enhancement shaman too.
Matt Nov 20th 2011 9:19PM
It should be obvious, but the number of ferals I see making this mistake is HUGE...
ALWAYS use feral charge rather than prowl once you get it.
Why?
Feral Charge is 10 energy, and then Ravage is FREE. Ravage from Prowl (and don't EVER use Pounce on a boss fight.. ravage >>> pounce) is 60 energy.
That is FIFTY energy you just saved... which is MORE than enough for a Mangle, and almost enough for a Mangle + Rake.
So, Prowl->Ravage->Wait for energy...->Begin rotation
OR
Feral Charge->Ravage->Mangle->(some energy will have regened in the time it takes to do the Ravage and Mangle)Rake
The later is so obviously superior that I have no idea why I ever see a feral druid open a fight (ANY PvE fight...) in Prowl...
If your tank can handle it, the later will take you to almost zero energy, and you can use Tiger's Fury without it going to 100 (if TF puts you over 100 energy, that is a waste... just like Chase said), pop trinkets, and Berserk for some AWESOME initial burst damage
gewalt Nov 21st 2011 1:57AM
wrong, since FC makes ravage free, (and it hits hard) you want to use it after you have run out of energy, and have popped TF.
Elorah Nov 21st 2011 2:09AM
Just wanted to mention this; you are not stuck choosing to use pounce or ravage, you can use both.
You can feral charge while stealthed, and after gaining the free ravage proc (which also allows you to use ravage without needing to be stealthed!) you can use whatever else you like while the free ravage proc buff is on you, and then you can still get your free ravage.
I say this because I usually begin my fights in stealth, and when combat begins, I feral charge while stealthed, use pounce, use mangle, THEN use my free ravage, before going about my normal rotational business.
Matt Nov 21st 2011 6:36AM
@gewalt
It is not *wrong*... It is "intermediate". :)
If I was teaching a feral druid to dps, I would get them 90% (maybe 95%?) of the way there with the rotation I suggested. Then, after they got that down, I would mention saving the Ravage proc until after TF (which, IIRC, happens when the Ravage proc has 1-2 seconds before expiring). Better that they USE the free Ravage rather than to lose it due to being a second slow while learning.
@Elorah
You should really never use Pounce...
On my druid, Pounce does ~8700 dmg for 50 energy.
Shred does ~11000 for 40. And Rake does ~21000 for 35 energy
**None of those dmg values are counting a bleed increase debuff like mangle**
If you are going to spend the energy, use Shred or Rake, not Pounce. And if you aren't going to use Pounce, then you have no reason for Stealth (Prowl)
That is why Pounce just sucks as anything other than a Stun opener... (which all bosses are immune to anyway).
slingsandarrows10 Nov 20th 2011 9:39PM
Some pretty good tips in here. For people who don't have a customizable mouse and don't want to use Shift modifiers, my feral main is the only class that can use the default Blizzard action bars and get everything I need on the main bar (buttons 1 through =).
Here's how. As you said, the main attacks should be on 1-5 or 1-6. You should try to minimize the ones you have to click, but some things are not as time critical, so they can be moved to the right bars and remain clickies. Things like Berserk (3 min cd so not very time critical), Tol'vir's Potion, Barkskin, Survival Instincts, Stampeding Roar, Faerie Fire can all remain clickies, or moved to the right like buttons 9 through =.
So, button 1 is auto attack. Button 2 is Rake. Button 3 is Shred (Shred is our most used button so put it where it's most comfortable to hit it constantly, while still being able to keep your fingers on ASWD). 4 is Mangle. 5 is Savage Roar and 6 is Rip. 7 is Ferocious Bite because while it's not used that often, when the boss is under 25% you need to be able to reach it. I have 8 as my Feral Charge/Ravage macro right next to Faerie Fire (button 9) and keep my two fingers on those for the moment a fight starts. You want to FF in the air as you fly towards the boss to make sure it's up before your first attack, so I find this works well for me.
Buttons 0, - and = are too far away so might as well be clickies. I put things like Dash on those.
I also do something that is not recommended, but again works for me. I macro my Rip finisher with Tiger's Fury. Everyone and their dog will tell you this is a dps loss. Don't do it if you don't like it. But it works for me because I can make sure that TF is up every time I Rip, and for me, ensuring that my most powerful attack is boosted by TF every time is more important than the very slight dps loss of having to click TF on cooldown. Yes it means I waste a few seconds when TF is on cd and Rip needs to be up (usually only 1-2 seconds, it can be as much as 3 seconds with a lot of haste), but it saves me a button and less buttons means faster reaction time.
I also keybind my interrupt to the G key for all my toons. It needs to be close to ASWD because when you need it, you need it fast. But since I keep it on the same button for all my toons, I get used to where it's at and don't have to learn more than one spot.
The one most valuable piece of advice for a feral dps is this: get an addon that shows all your buffs and debuffs in one spot on the screen. We have so many things going on that you will save a huge amount of time not searching all over the screen to make sure everything's up. Not to mention the improvements to your situational awareness. I use Badkitty. Other options are Power Auras (takes awhile to set up, but more powerful), Rogue Timers, Cat's Eye, Need to Know... there's a lot of them. Choose one you like but make sure you have one - your dps will go from middle of the pack to top of the bars immediately.
Terrant Nov 20th 2011 10:16PM
I think WoW Insider needs more Cosmopolitan-esque titles. "How to please your raid leader!" "Make your mana last all fight!" "Stop your new tank from blowing cooldowns prematurely!"
Finnicks Nov 20th 2011 10:21PM
My druid has picked Bear tanking back up this expansion (and it's quickly become my favorite tanking class) after having given it up in Wrath due to the spammyness of it back then.
However, I often find myself in fights where I have nothing better to do than cat form DPS while not tanking, so I've been dabbling with kitty DPS.
The one piece of advice I'm taking away here is the idea of staying between 50-80 energy, rather than using abilities as soon as possible and spending the fight between 0 and 50. I will be trying that out. I feel silly for never having considered it.
Zani Nov 21st 2011 12:15AM
You're totally right about the 1.5s GCD classes feeling soooo slowwww afterwards. My main is a frost dk, and I play my kitty druid a ton as well. The other day I switched to blood spec to help some friends out running ICC, and it felt like I spent half the fights twiddling my thumbs waiting around for my abilities. lol
Kistikoom Nov 21st 2011 1:29AM
Super handy guide, with awesome advice. I am new to the feral world and loving it, having just come over from the ranks of the laser chickens, and I find myself in desperate need for some macros to help clean-up my action bars. I have played around with some but I am not having much luck. Any advice out there from fellow kitties would be appreciated.
Mycroft Nov 21st 2011 3:45AM
I too would like some macro help! I wrote a feral charge ravage macro a while back, but found it wouldn't work unless I had ravage on my hotbar somewhere else.
I mainly want a good space saving macro for an endangered catbear. A single button that will stampeding roar for either form, skull bash either form, mangle either form, etc.
Macroing in pounce to the opener and tf to the finisher sounds life good advice when I want to be lazy in a dungeon or solo, which is the only time I cat. My guild tells me I'm too good a healer to "waste" as dps or tank.
EaterOfBirds Nov 21st 2011 2:37AM
I feel like im the only one who hates using 12345 for common stuff. I like `,1,4 and 5 for some stuff but for my common abilities I prefer Q, E, R, X and C tbh, with loads of shift, alt and ctrl modifiers in of course. Maybe I dont like using my middle finger so 2 and 3 feel a bit awkward, I still use them but not for super core stuff.
Kythlar Nov 21st 2011 3:07AM
My main bar keybinds are as follows: `="Power macro"; yes I use the ` key. 1=Savage Roar. 2=Mangle macro. 3=Rake. 4=Shred. 5=Rip. 6=Ferocious Bite. 7=Prowl macro. 8=Feral Charge macro (w/Ravage! in it). 9=Maim. 0=every form Faerie Fire macro. -=Swipe macro (which is additionally keybound to a thumb button). ==Dash.
My "power macro" pops Tiger's Fury with Synapse Springs in cat form and just enrage in bear form (don't wanna waste the springs unless I need to, which I have the icon for it right next to the macro for Omni CC to work showing me the cd on it)
My "aggro macro" is Cower in Cat Form and Growl in Bear Form... and Soothe in caster form just for ease of keybinding.
Auxillary keybinds... Tab=berserk macro that pops TF, Berserk, & Synapse Springs. Shift+Tab=Innervate. T=Barkskin. Shift+T=Thorns. F="default tab through enemies". G="Aggro Macro". F5=Skull Bash.
The forms are F1-F4. F1=Bear Form. F2=Cat Form. F3=Flight Form. F4=Bird/Manatee Form macro.
I have another bar that is mostly used for Predatory Swiftness proc keybinds and Remove Corruption and is only accessible via alt. 1- are as follows: 1=Healing Touch. 2=Entangling Roots. 3=Remove Corruption. 4=Cyclone. 5=Nature's Grasp. -=Ravage (used when Feral Charge macro glitches occasionally). Hibernate is actually 1 on my caster bar (used while I was a skinner from Flight Form).
I actually have a /startattack macro'd to every spammable ability. After using this for so long, I'm able to very accurately predict which enemy the code will automatically select to start attacking (the one in the very middle of the screen). I even have it macro'd to Feral Charge and Skull Bash. It's a lot of fun to be flying the through the air in flight form, pop cat form, and hit my feral charge macro that (1) automatically selects my target, (2) activates autoattack, and (2) casts Feral Charge if close enough. Sure beats the hell out of having to click on an enemy is a looooot more fun. >^.^<
This wouldn't work for everyone and I've wanted to change some of it up, but it's just what it has evolved as over the years and I've become a creature of habit with my keybinds.
lastfatalfck Nov 21st 2011 4:56AM
Also, do not forget to keybind B-rez, since you will not want to have to first open your spellbook to find it once you are needed to cast it!
I personally use Vuh-do, since it does not require extra keybinds for rezzes (when mouse-overing the raid frames), and I can also use Tranq in a pinch.
Matt Nov 21st 2011 6:32AM
@gewalt
It is not *wrong*... It is "intermediate". :)
If I was teaching a feral druid to dps, I would get them 90% (maybe 95%?) of the way there with the rotation I suggested. Then, after they got that down, I would mention saving the Ravage proc until after TF (which, IIRC, happens when the Ravage proc has 1-2 seconds before expiring). Better that they USE the free Ravage rather than to lose it due to being a second slow while learning.
@Elorah
You should really never use Pounce...
On my druid, Pounce does ~8700 dmg for 50 energy.
Shred does ~11000 for 40. And Rake does ~21000 for 35 energy
**None of those dmg values are counting a bleed increase debuff like mangle**
If you are going to spend the energy, use Shred or Rake, not Pounce. And if you aren't going to use Pounce, then you have no reason for Stealth (Prowl)
That is why Pounce just sucks as anything other than a Stun opener... (which all bosses are immune to anyway).
Matt Nov 21st 2011 6:33AM
Holy crap I hate this comment system. Why on earth doesn't adding a comment to a COMMENT SPECIFIC view reply to that particular thread rather than to the thread as a whole???
Xayíde Nov 21st 2011 7:14AM
"While you're still learning your rotation, clicking your abilities is fine."
No no no, 1000x no.
I don't understand why clicking would ever be fine. I've never been a clicker, not even in my noob days and I can't figure out why some people find that easier than hitting keys. Not only is it slower, it is clunkier and bad in every way. I does NOT help in learning anything.
If you want to do it right, start out right. If you are unsure how to keybind, learn that as your first priority.
And that is an advice for any spec and class.
Sharaltan Nov 21st 2011 7:56AM
I use a G13 and a Razer Naga, so I'm keybind heavy, which is fine,.
However, I can pull the same dps if I choose to click buttons, and I manage not to stand in fire.
To be honest, both work fine. Only advantage KBs have is taht you can mouseturn, but as a healer using movesovers for a long time, I got used to straffing and keymoving, and its never been an issue.
Click, keybind, whatever works for you.