#0 - April 22, 2010, 1:28 p.m.
After seeing quite some threads on the druid forums, I decided to start writing this. In case I missed something, please post a reply and I’ll add, or change it. Im aware that my spelling and grammer isn’t perfect either, so feel free to point that out as wel!
This guide wil mainly be focussed on arena, but there is advice in here for BG players as wel ofcourse!
Lets get started!
Index
1. FB? What does that mean!
2. The good, and the bad
3. Professions
4. Talents/glyphs
5. Gearing
6. Keybinds
7. Viable arena setups
8. Feral playstyle
9. Macros
10. General tips
1. FB? What does that mean!
Before I’ll get started, I need to explain what letters, or phrases, stand for what abilities, or actions you can perform in an arena.
DR – Dimishing Returns
LoS – Line of sight
CC – Crowd control
FB – Ferocious bite
SI – Survivling instincts
SR – Savage roar
Peel/peeling – Peeling is using abilities, like maim or cyclone, to give your focussed teammate free time from the opposing dps, so he can line up his damage or get healed back up.
2. The good, and the bad
Ferals offer a unique playstyle in pvp, making it very fun to play. Ferals ofcourse have, like most other classes, their good and their weak points – wich can also help you determine if you want to try it.
Good points:
Ferals are one of the best assist classes in the game, with their arsenal of stuns and instant cc (granted you have combo points) your healer wil often rely on you to keep them save. This is mainly good against melee, but when casters decide to go on your healer, you can help him get out of los pretty good as wel. Also, when the enemy manages to get your healer out of mana, you can throw him an innervate, or use your (weak) healing spells to keep him alive during an immunity move of the opponents damage dealer, such as bladestorm.
Next to this, ferals got a truckload of damage, and the earlier mentioned instant CC (mainly cyclone) wich helps your team control the enemy players, and apply preasure.
Weak points:
Ferals don’t really kill anything if they’re on their own. We’re a very CC dependant spec, and you wil have to line up your CC (of yourself and of your partner) to score a kill.
And, unlike a lot of players tend to think, ferals can die! As a feral you always need to make the choice between catform and bearform, damage and instant casts in the catform, or the bearform to increase the damage you can take. More about this later!
3. Professions
There is only 1 profession wich really matters in pvp, and in my opinioun it does even more for ferals: Engineering.
Engineering is often seen as the “fun” professions, with as main benefit the extra DAMAGE from rocketgloves. As a pvping feral, I don’t find the damage the useful part though. Whenever you meet a warrior, or shaman team you have to deal with grounding totem and spell reflect annoying you when you want to (instant)cyclone something. These effects are also consumed by rocketgloves though! This makes engineering by far the best pvp profession for a feraldruid, because using those rocketgloves, you can get your instant cyclone in and maybe even get a kill.
The secondary profession doesn’t matter that much, in statgain they’re all about the same. I would say Jewelcrafting is probably the best after engineering, because you get to pick your own stats.
4. Talents/glyphs
You get to see quite a lot of different feral pvp builds. They all start with the same basic though, being this spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZxGMsfbzbeRhhuVk0E0z
With the exception being ferals with a manglespec who start out with the following spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZxGMscbkbeRhhuAk0E0z
And the occasional feraldruid, playing with an arms warrior usually, using the following basic spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZVGMsfbzbeRhhuVk0E0z
The rest are pretty much floater talents. Most druids decide to pick up the slowing effect, and/or the improved stun, others (like me) prefer to also spec into improved mangle, next to already having improved shred.
Glyphs: This is another point of discussion. There just isn’t a Top 3 glyphs for feral druids.
Your choices are:
Glyph of barkskin: (25% crit chance reduction on hostile attacks when barkskin is up)
Glyph of berserking: (berserk lasts 5 additional seconds)
Glyph of savage roar: (Savage roar does 3% more damage)
Glyph of mangle: (10% more damage on mangle)
Glyph of rip: (4more seconds on rip)
Glyph of shreds: (2 seconds more on rip for every shred you get in during the duration of rip, up to a maximum of 6seconds)
Glyph of SI (15% additional health from survivling instincts)
Im not gonna tell you to pick Glyph X, since they’re all good and it’s really down to personal preference (if you keep dying, you take barkskin – if you don’t have enough damge, you pick savage roar etc)
5. Stats, gems and gearing
As a feral there are a couple of stats you need to stack being:
Agility – Our best stats. Where in pve you stack arp, this is useless in pvp because 1: Agility gains in value compared to agility in pve because combo points, and with that crit, are better due to the instantprocs you want to get. You get spellpower based on your agility and agility gives armor and dodge.
Even without this agility would be the better stat compared to arp though, just because you need Pvp gear in pvp (yes, really!). Because of this you wont be able to reach high levels of Arp, wich is when it starts to get really good.
Stamina/resilience – Not so much in 2v2, where you need pve gear as wel to score kills, but in 3v3 high amounts of stamina/resilience is VERY important. There’s 2 reasons for this.
1: You want to stick in catform. Against a doublemelee setup, going in bear is really tempting because of savage defence and the increased armor, but you will loose 20% healing received by your healer (10% assuming MS is up). This isn’t the major part though, if you’re in bearform you’re pretty much out of the game. Bears don’t do ANYTHING at all, exept giving you that extra survivability. In general the rule is: The longer you can stay in catform – the higher your chance to win.
2: Casters. If you’ve already played a feral, mainly in 3v3, im sure you’ve noticed that casters tear through ferals insanely fast. If you’re not in full pvp gear against a casterbased team (wizardcleave, roguelockshaman and similar setups) – You’re dead. Bearform wont really help you here either, where it is stil useful to stay alive a bit longer against double melee, because wel, bears don’t really have extra damage reduction against casters.
So, those are the basic stats for ferals. There’s some other guidelines though.
Hit: You want to be hitcapped so you don’t mis your cyclones or stuns, you’ll need to get 164 hit for this. – this means you’ll stil be able to get misses against people with talents increasing their chance to get an attack on them “missed” by the attacker though. I don’t recommend gemming for this though.
Spell penetration: Spelpen is a stat wich you’ll need so people don’t resist your cyclones. I personally don’t think it’s worth to gem it for every combo there is though. If you play shaman feral, or priest feral you can ask your shaman/priest to dispel the opponents buffs.
The reason for this is that the only way you can resist a spell, is by having spell resistance. Nature resistance in the case of cyclone. The only thing giving this, is mark of the wild. A target without mark of the wild will NOT resist your spells.
In 3v3 (or 5v5) where the pvp action is a lot faster, your healer wont have time to dispel the opponents buffs. This means theres a chance they’ll have mark of the wild and resist your cyclones. I would advice to ALWAYS gem spelpen for 3v3, and you’ll need 75 of it to negate improved mark of the wild.
Gearsetup
In 2v2 I would recommend running with around 900resilience (wrathful gear), or max pvp gear if you don’t have acces to high level pve gear. Most optimal would be to have pve gear for at least the Neck/ring/trinket slots. These slots do not offer agility if you get the pvp equilivants, wich is our best stat.
In 3v3 I would recommend to run in FULL pvp gear, with the ashen verdict exalted ring as only pve slot. In the trinket slot I like to use the Corroded skeleton key, but a nice pve trinket works here as wel (Death’s verdict/choice, Whispered fang skull, DBW) – the trinketslot is also really easy to swap things around in, if you notice you’re dying a lot in previous matches for example.
6. Keybinds
While this is more a general topic then feral specific, I would like to talk about it anyway.
Keybinds are very important in pvp, especially for a feral druid with such a large arsenal of abilities. When you are getting serious about pvp, I really think that you should take the time to get used to keybinds. It really makes you react faster on vital moments.
To illustrate, I’ve got 2 screenshots of my UI (and yes I play on low res – and no my screen isn’t 15inch!)
The first one from early season 5 when I used 6 keybinds:
http://img340.imageshack.us/i/wowscrnshot012109202045.jpg/
And one I just took:
http://img690.imageshack.us/i/wowscrnshot042210133228.jpg/
I think we’ll all agree on what looks more efficient!
A great guide to keybinding can be found here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=11586621103&sid=1
