How to DPS as Feral + Boomkin

[Deleted]

Hello fellow WoW players,

I have seen many forum posts pop up of the struggles of Feral and Balance dps.
After some intensive testing and reading, I thought it might help some players to share my personal experiences with the specs.

First off I would like to mention that I have read many guides, including Icy Veins, and I found that a lot of stuff does not work for me personally, but I have found other ways to do competitive dps. All of the things I mention will be based on current content, which is limited to mythic+0, heroics and target dummies (I will explain later why this is important). I am currently at about 340 item level.

Balance
This is my mainspec that I will be playing for the majority of the boss fights. At first I had a lot of trouble pulling competitive dps on both single target and AoE (bursty classes beating me by a large margin), but after messing around with a lot of different traits I am able to stay competitive, usually topping single targets fights and overall dungeon damage.

Talents
For dungeons I love to run the following build:
https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/druid/balance/c8SM

This gives me a nice mixture of burst aoe (Fury of Elune Damage/Astral power + 50 astral power to start due to Nature's Balance) and a big cooldown to nuke bosses down. The most important talent being Twin Moons.

[Edit1]
https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/druid/balance/c-Sz
This is what I usually run in dungeons now. When you go into a high enough mythic+ (especially during fortified week) monsters tend to live long enough to warrant Shooting Stars. Treants are amazing, they help to clear necrotic stacks or just makes the tank survive, it is like having another tank cooldown.

Traits
Power of the Moon (2+ targets)
Streaking Stars (single target burst)

Explanation
Due to how mythic+0 works, you are still able to switch gear whenever you are out of combat. I understand this is not going to work as soon as you start running mythic+1 or higher, so you will have to make a choice of what you want to specialise in.

When pulling anything with 2 or more monsters, you keep your dots rolling and basically spam moonfire. This is not the most engaging gameplay, but it will always put you above 10k dps with a decent enough item level. Fury of Elune gives you plenty of power to keep the starfall going, and even though you do not have the burst of some other classes, it is very consistent. You'll do decent to great on every pull, unless mobs die within 5 seconds due to a bladestorm or anything like it, but there is nothing you could really do there.
[Edit1]
Power of the Moon does not seem to scale well with gear, holding me back quite a lot. I stopped running this after reaching 350+ item level.

Streaking Stars + Incarnation is completely crazy. Combined with hero and a little bit of good RNG, you are able to burst over 20k, sometimes reaching 30k. Mythic bosses should do rather fast, often resulting in an up-time of 40% on Incarnation. I usually end the fight with 12 - 16k dps, depending on RNG and how fast the boss dies.
[Edit1]
Streaking Stars is still amazing. I did get my hands on 3 heroic Uldir azerite pieces (1 laser matrix, 2 archive of the titans). Streaking Stars gives me a lot of single target burst, or trash pack damage, but it hold me back item level wise. With the Uldir pieces my burst is gone but my single target damage becomes a lot more steady. On a long enough fight it averages out at about the same dps.

Feral
After the feral adjustments (30th of August) I have put a lot of effort into making feral dps work. The first few days I could not get my head around doing proper dps, it felt like boomkin was better at just about every aspect of the game. After some tweaking and testing I have found only 1 way that works for me and that is due to the traits.

Talents
https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/druid/feral/cy-z

As far as I have read, this is not a build that many would recommend. The bleed build that many people recommend does not work for me at all, completely butchers my single target dps, and while brutal slash is great for burst aoe, the build I linked does consistent aoe and great single target damage.

Traits
Wild Fleshrending (both aoe and single target)

Explanation
Wild Fleshrending has been my saviour and makes feral very enjoyable to play for me personally. The talents I have choosen are entirely based on this trait. I have shifted away from bleed damage, and leaned towards Shred (single target) and Swipe (AoE) damage. As long as you keep Thrash up on the target you are golden. With this build I have bursted near 30k dps and I usually end between 15 - 20k dps single target (1 minute boss fights). I love the single target damage I can do with this build, and it makes AoE a lot easier (keep thrash/savage roar up and swipe spam on either 3/4+ targets - spend remaining combo points on rip on long living targets).

Final thoughts
As I have mentioned before, everything is based on my personal experience. If you have found different builds that work better for you, feel free to disagree with me entirely, or even better, share it with the rest of us. I am open for suggestions and improvements, and I will definitely have to tweak some things once I start raiding and clearing mythic+. I hope this post helps some of you. Do not be discouraged if you are not pulling the numbers you want to, good traits can make or break your dps.

[Deleted]

You performed very good job on testing. As a Balance druid I use 2333322 build for both Single and AoE fights. It works a little bit better for me becouse I can put extra spells in Incarnation window.

I havent played feral since Pandaria and you made me curious about it.

[Deleted]

I have not done a lot of testing with Warrior of Elune, which could actually work well with the Moonfire traits, because it has a small chance to give you a lunar empowerment. I am curious to hear how boomkin has been treating you so far Sykstus, and what your opener on single target would be when specced into WoE. Do you start slow and pool up empowerments?

I have noticed that the one thing that decreased my dps by a lot overall is to not pool Astral Power for the next pack. I would start a trash pack like usual, and blow all my astral power on the last mob for the maximum amount of dps on that 1 pack. However, I have now shifted into building astral power to 100 on the last mob alive in a trash pack, so that I have 100 energy to start the next trash pack with. 2 Starfalls right off the bat is amazing.

[Deleted]

Force of nature is the best talent in the first row btw. Balance is a hybrid nowdays. Everything outperforms it in dps, but the utility you provide is the best. Knock, root, offheal, debuff reset, dispell, kite, tank etc.

[Deleted]

I do agree with Force of Nature being amazing to have as utility, but I refuse to believe every other class is better at dpsing. I have been running with pugs (meaning I am heavily outgearing most of them), but also with guildies with the same, or sometimes higher item level than me. So far there are not many fights I have lost dpsing at, and I am usually topping the overall list also. Would you be able to give me some examples, owlmygod, where other classes beat you (situation), and by how much?

[Deleted]

Force of nature is the best talent in the first row btw. Balance is a hybrid nowdays. Everything outperforms it in dps, but the utility you provide is the best. Knock, root, offheal, debuff reset, dispell, kite, tank etc.

Neither balance is bad in dps nor does it bring the best utility, but two unique utilities: innervate & mass-silence.
But there is no need to pick a moonkin instead of a mage.

The best talent of moonkin is: Change your spec to any other roll in WoW.
I'm tired of farming with more than one character.
Azerite isle, reputation, buying/upgrade outposts, daily quests, raiding, warfront..... I will never ever twink again in WoW.

Thank god I'm a druid.

[Deleted]

I do agree with Force of Nature being amazing to have as utility, but I refuse to believe every other class is better at dpsing. I have been running with pugs (meaning I am heavily outgearing most of them), but also with guildies with the same, or sometimes higher item level than me. So far there are not many fights I have lost dpsing at, and I am usually topping the overall list also. Would you be able to give me some examples, owlmygod, where other classes beat you (situation), and by how much?

Mages? Rogues?

[Deleted]

To me it sounds like a percentage of the druid community thinks either spec is underperforming, but I have had no problems at all getting into groups. When I apply as a dps they usually ask me if I am feral or boomy, as a feral groups are not very likely to invite me, but as a boomy it usually results in an instant invite. I personally feel like we are in a pretty good place right now, and boomies bring plenty of utility and dps to a group (mass aoe taunt with treants, aoe interrupt, combat ress, significant offheals when specced into resto affinity, typhoon (to help kiting/interrupt), sustained aoe dps, burst single target dps) just to name a few. I also see no reason to pick a mage over a balance druid, it boils down to player experience/knowledge, and I would rather take both a mage + druid than 2 mages. We also have pretty diverse talents, so we can spec into certain talents to supplement the weaknesses of the group.

I am curious to hear if anyone has had trouble finding a group as a balance druid since BfA launch.

- - - Updated - - -

Mages and rogues have been beating me on burst AoE, but if balance would be able to compete with that also, we would be quite overpowered right now I feel like.

[BosQuar]

Nice post ReginnFSS, its nice to see someone trying and experimenting and not only complain when icy veins guides wont automatically give you best dps ingame

[BoomkinHell]

Personal Anecdotes > Facts is mmo-champ forums. The problem is how reliant we are on our azerite traits. We either do good damage ST or AOE depending on trait setups. This is the exact problem we had in legion when we had to talent swap all the time.

[Deleted]

I am not sure if that was a burn on my behalf or not, BoomkinHell. I have made this post for the people that struggle to do good dps, and to show you other options apart from Icy Veins. It seems like players are really fast to judge and just accept the fact they can not pull more dps than they should be able to do. Feel free to completely ignore everything I have written and follow the 'factual guides', but for the ones eager to try something different, this might be something worth trying?

It is true that we either have to spec for ST or AoE, but is that really so bad? I like having options, and I do not feel like we should excel at everything we do. We have great options to do either, and from my experience most groups are more than happy to have a balance druid in their group. You can spec into what your group needs, and I expect it to become even better once monsters live longer than they do now.

Did you not like Legion's balance druid?

Thank you very much BosQuar

[bearlolzx]

1. tellmewhen

2. raidbots

[zeoos]

I tried your Balance spec and I can say that i do better thamage than with the icy veins spec, not only that but the gameplay feels faster.
Nature's balance is good for bursting things down in open world but i feel that warrior of elune is better for fights longer than 1-2 minutes.
With 1-3-3-3-2-2-1 on dummy I was hitting 6.4k. Now I am going 8k, feels good.

Sent from my Mi A1 using Tapatalk

[Deleted]

No... What?! Your Feral spec is all wrong, you're probably losing out on 20-30% damage by running that... And why aren't you using Sabertooth? It sims higher than SR.

Sorry, but this spec just gives you a ton of burst and 0 sustain.

[Deleted]

No... What?! Your Feral spec is all wrong, you're probably losing out on 20-30% damage by running that... And why aren't you using Sabertooth? It sims higher than SR.

Sorry, but this spec just gives you a ton of burst and 0 sustain.

I actually found this spec to be really nice, pulled way more dps with it, both burst and sustained.

[Deleted]

I actually found this spec to be really nice, pulled way more dps with it, both burst and sustained.

Either you're bad with your uptimes, or you're lying.

[Ribesal]

No... What?! Your Feral spec is all wrong, you're probably losing out on 20-30% damage by running that... And why aren't you using Sabertooth? It sims higher than SR.

Sorry, but this spec just gives you a ton of burst and 0 sustain.

While simulations aren't bad and in general a good way to determine what is better, they are not the holy grail.
I haven't tested it lately, but the last time i did wild fleshrending was shown as zero dps gain in sims. And with zero i don't mean low, i mean literally zero, which is simply wrong.

I have the three best azerite pieces from the dungeons (2x dagger in the back, 1x rezans fury), aswell as three pieces with wild fleshrending. I've tried a few times to beat this wild fleshrending style with the standard style (1, x, x, x, 2, 1, 2). I'm not perfect, and there may have been place to improve a bit, but even if i never used incarnation with wild fleshrending, although being specced into it, this wild fleshrending style was roughly 6% ahead.

[cencene]

No... What?! Your Feral spec is all wrong, you're probably losing out on 20-30% damage by running that... And why aren't you using Sabertooth? It sims higher than SR.

Sorry, but this spec just gives you a ton of burst and 0 sustain.

You can give your opinion all you want based on sims. But until you've personally done it yourself and can show your proof of this being incorrect, then please don't be so damn ignorant to someone else's hard work and effort.

[Deleted]

No... What?! Your Feral spec is all wrong, you're probably losing out on 20-30% damage by running that... And why aren't you using Sabertooth? It sims higher than SR.

Sorry, but this spec just gives you a ton of burst and 0 sustain.

Obviosly its a m0 dungeon build with short boss fights and no need for sustain, not a 5min patchwerk build.

[Deleted]

Obviosly its a m0 dungeon build with short boss fights and no need for sustain, not a 5min patchwerk build.

Ohh how i love you Sim Riders. "OMG you nuub it sims waaay lower, it doesnt work! bla bla i wont even try it bla bla"... right. Now go play with your toys.

On topic though, with 3x wild fleshrending (2 blues 1 epic), this build works A LOT better for me, than that god awful bloodtalon "standard" spec, which i hate with a passion. For sustained, its still better.

My aoe still sucks though, but is still better anyways

Thx for this, now i actually feel like i can do WQ as feral ! Still boomie for dungeons until we get some love though.