How to DPS as Feral + Boomkin

[Knolan]

Glad I haven't been the only one using that feral build.

Played it for PvP in a while, the burst is absolutely insane. My main complaint is that sometimes you have TF/SR up and MoC procs like crazy, giving me a very nice burst even outside Incarn. On the other hand, a lot of times it simply does not and it is the most painful build ever.

Lately I have been playing with this build:

https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/druid/feral/cyIc

And 3 times the Raking Ferocity trait (rake increases the damage of next FB). Very good build to get kills and to train healers as it has a low CD burst (if you can manage your kicks well).

[Thorim]

Builds useful for sub 1 minute burst will clearly not be the best in a raiding or higher level plus key environment, if it does more burst damage on bosses which die in 30 seconds then use it for that, but it wont be the best performing spec/trait build for any real endgame content.

[Weissrolf]

Thanks for the suggestions. I like being presented with choices and practical experience reports. Very useful!

[Deleted]

I am glad this proved useful to at least some of you. Like I said before, if you can pull more dps with other builds it is all good, it is great you have found a build that works for you. I will try to update this post after my first raid and update any tweaks I have made. I think it would be nice to have some logs posted also.

All of these builds are based off of mythic+0 and heroics, not raids, there will probably be a few things I will have to change later on.

'If you can not make x build work, you are doing it wrong'. That might very well be the case, but if I can get better results using something different, is that really so bad?

[Cov]

Thanks for the suggestions. I like being presented with choices and practical experience reports. Very useful!

Same here. Thanks.
These are the threads I'm looking for. Some suggestions, some ideas and with a clear statement where the argument is coming from.

I'm looking forward to the next few weeks, where some claims can easily be veryfied by logs. And we will become more confident on how good the sim actually simulates a bossfight.

[Deleted]

So I just ran my first Uldir normal this evening with my guild (a casual guild, mind you), running x3 Wild Fleshrending. I'd like share my logs of the evenings run here for those who doubt the build, and for those who might find it interesting.

As for the build, I feel very competitive in my damage. Not only in raiding thus far, but also in m+ where my AoE feels very strong and comparable to many other classes. It's given new life to playing feral in BFA for me.

Edit: Apparently I can't link URL:s since I'm a new member on the forums, but feel free look up Taladar - Darksorrow on Warcraftlogs to see the actual logs!

[Deleted]

Very nice Taladar, impressive logs! I am glad you were doing well, that looks amazing. (Even on the same realm )
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Tb4NVtdFjX6pagJk
I posted the link for you.

My first heroic raid was very sloppy, managed to do a pretty decent normal raid today as a Balance druid.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/MnjZ1PdLXxNb3rmK
This is how our normal raid went.

[-aiko-]

People probably shouldn't sleep on the Feral build. With so many traits and ability interactions there's bound to be something the top-end theorycrafters miss. Traits like Wild Fleshrending have been considered garbage by most of these theorycrafters so they receive little to no simulation support. When, in fact, it may turn out that they have a place if you're clever enough to build around them.

This seems to be the case here. After whacking on dummies for the last hour I can report that 3x Wild Fleshrending is pretty solid. It's roughly even with the JW/SbT/BT build on sustained ST with my gear setup but has higher burst potential and makes AoE far less frustrating. The only issue is that the gameplay is simple to the point of being extremely boring. However, for those who wanted end of Legion Shred spam back this is pretty much it. They hit like a truck, too! I was seeing crits for over 20k (no raid buffs).

[Vintage]

People probably shouldn't sleep on the Feral build. With so many traits and ability interactions there's bound to be something the top-end theorycrafters miss. Traits like Wild Fleshrending have been considered garbage by most of these theorycrafters so they receive little to no simulation support. When, in fact, it may turn out that they have a place if you're clever enough to build around them.

This seems to be the case here. After whacking on dummies for the last hour I can report that 3x Wild Fleshrending is pretty solid. It's roughly even with the JW/SbT/BT build on sustained ST with my gear setup but has higher burst potential and makes AoE far less frustrating. The only issue is that the gameplay is simple to the point of being extremely boring. However, for those who wanted end of Legion Shred spam back this is pretty much it. They hit like a truck, too! I was seeing crits for over 20k (no raid buffs).

I've been slapping dummies for the past few days and can also confirm. I usually end up with about 10k dps over 5 minutes, but I only sim for 7.8k I sim for 9.2k with no raid buffs using the bleed build.

The simulations certainly aren't calculating all of the traits properly. Bloodmallet says 1 stack of Wildfleshrending at ilvl 340 adds 16 dps but 2 stacks adds a total of 11 dps. Clearly something is messed up.

[darklogrus]

People probably shouldn't sleep on the Feral build. With so many traits and ability interactions there's bound to be something the top-end theorycrafters miss. Traits like Wild Fleshrending have been considered garbage by most of these theorycrafters so they receive little to no simulation support. When, in fact, it may turn out that they have a place if you're clever enough to build around them.

This seems to be the case here. After whacking on dummies for the last hour I can report that 3x Wild Fleshrending is pretty solid. It's roughly even with the JW/SbT/BT build on sustained ST with my gear setup but has higher burst potential and makes AoE far less frustrating. The only issue is that the gameplay is simple to the point of being extremely boring. However, for those who wanted end of Legion Shred spam back this is pretty much it. They hit like a truck, too! I was seeing crits for over 20k (no raid buffs).

Real World Application is showing the same thing that the Sims are showing that the community has spent the last 6 months bitching about..

[wizardcho]

Wild Fleshrending not work with Brutal Slash from start on BFA
Blizzard hotfix 15 august
Fixed an issue where the Azerite Trait Wild Fleshrending was not increasing the damage of Swipe for Guardian Druids.
We need hotfix for Brutal Slash on feral druid

[Deleted]

I think this is done on purpose, the point of getting 3 x wild fleshrending is so swipe spam becomes viable to aoe (and it is also very good for single target damage + burst). If you do end up taking Brutal Slash (which replaces swipe), you are very limited to aoe since it only has 3 charges. It would be nice to see some actual numbers on this, but swipe spam might actually out dps 3 x brutal slash on a decent enough aoe pack, depending on how long the monsters are alive of course.

[Deleted]

I have to say, after doing few +5/+6 mythics on my cat, it has not gone as bad as expected to be honest. I was lucky to get 370 weapon from warfronts boasting 18% haste I went with Blood Cent, Wild Charge, Balance aff, Bash, Brutal Slash and Bloodtalons. Did not feel weak being honest. It could be tiny bit better but I noticed that the Wild Freshrending trait is amazing for trash packs even with no Predator. Just my opinion tho. Good luck to people sticking it out with ferals

[Deleted]

Thanks for the input Garfield, I am happy to hear you are doing well. Is is going to be interesting to see how well the Uldir traits work for feral.

[frott]

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?

Your spec is suboptimal for single target fights, and is only marginally better for cleave fights. The emphasis of your talents is for trash killing, and does not really work well in the "dps mobs down asap" boss kills. Especially the traits...

This is basically an M0 guide, and has almost zero bearing on M+ or Raids.


Force of Nature is the superior talent for all content, if you don't want the taunt just target near the mobs not on them.

Starlord is better than Incarnation for everything, the haste it yields over a 6 minute fight is much more than incarnation's damage during a lust.

Twin Moons is literally a wasted talent in most content aside from, again, the M0 "I spam moonfire" build. Stellar flare for anything beefy that will be alive for 24 seconds.


Really, you're not gaining enough from your AE spam build except for being able to get damage in before people AE down low hitpoint mobs. That's why your emphasis on moonfire matters. But you're just not gaining that much except a dps chart number, especially in timing.


Chasing that damage on 4th tier / LFR level content seems silly to me. Replace the "balance druid doing 10k" by spamming moonfire with a competent arcane mage, DH, monk, warrior and you now have a 15-25k damage class in place with zero lost.


There is a reason balance tops out in middle tier M+, and it is simply because they do a lot of things sorta well and excel at nothing, really. Why would you want that when you could have "the best" at any given role? The only AE fights in Uldir are dominated by other classes that can sustain high dps AE, for example.


Right now Balance is 4th-5th for DPS in M+. That's because we're at the middle tiers and people are still gearing. We shall see how that tapers off with full gear saturation and people pushing the limits of M+. Balance is in a very good spot right now, and cheesing meters for M0 is not going to prepare you for what you need to do in raids and m+ to be competitive.


Now, that said, the top Balance in M+ are closer to your build with the exception of taking force of nature, but their comps are built around it, and again, in the long term when people are pushing past gear limits that will essentially fail.

[Deleted]

Did you skip through a lot and not read the entire thing? One of the first sentences I wrote was: All of the things I mention will be based on current content, which is limited to mythic+0, heroics and target dummies. When I wrote this forum post raids were not out yet, and I did also mention I would have to tweak things as soon as raids came out.

Also, I am not saying you HAVE to follow anything i have written, it is meant as an optional thing to try if your current build is not working out. A lot of people, including you, are trying to push people into 1 spec. I am trying to give you options. I am happy with my dps in raids with my current build, if you do more with yours, that is amazing, good job.

At the time I wrote this post there were a lot of topics showing up feral/balance druid was bad in mythics, hence why I tried to help people. Feel free to write a detailed guide on how to dps in raids and mythic+, because that is not what this post was initially about.

[frott]

Now on to feral: just no. This is so far off base I have no idea how to help you here.

lunar, jagged, sabertooth, bloodtalons for raids, no way around it.

For M+? Ehhh... it's so clunky and bad, and actually made clunkier with higher damage due to the haste change / dmg buff that it is really just a pseudo single target build. Every analysis I've made comes down to feral AE being worse than feral just single targetting one down at a time. You have a special group if they're more than just tolerating a middling DPS who will sorta/kinda catch them up on boss fights.

You just lose faaaaar too much 1t dps to become 6th-7th tier ae dps.

- - - Updated - - -

Did you skip through a lot and not read the entire thing? One of the first sentences I wrote was: All of the things I mention will be based on current content, which is limited to mythic+0, heroics and target dummies. When I wrote this forum post raids were not out yet, and I did also mention I would have to tweak things as soon as raids came out.

Also, I am not saying you HAVE to follow anything i have written, it is meant as an optional thing to try if your current build is not working out. A lot of people, including you, are trying to push people into 1 spec. I am trying to give you options. I am happy with my dps in raids with my current build, if you do more with yours, that is amazing, good job.

At the time I wrote this post there were a lot of topics showing up feral/balance druid was bad in mythics, hence why I tried to help people. Feel free to write a detailed guide on how to dps in raids and mythic+, because that is not what this post was initially about.

the title is "how to dps as feral+boomkin" and not "how to dps in m0 kinda mediocrely." Yes, I read your anecdote about how you impressed other people with your top damage (they're either doing something massively incorrect or are simply lower output specs/classes if that's the case).


And replace "raids" with "single target" . which is every boss in the game... you are sacrificing a stronger run overall for a slightly faster trash clear speed (much lower 1t clear) and a number in your damage meters that makes it look like you were contributing, because real AE classes at low content will blender the mobs when traditional balance druids feel "too slow." Yes, spamming moonfire is the best you can do when mobs die in 2 seconds and you're caught with slow hardcasts.

And as I said at the bottom of my post, your build IS close to the top balance M+ builds, that's because the mobs take much longer to die and you can do a real rotation, not a spam rotation.


But I'm sure you expected criticism when posting a "how to dps" guide on a public website, yea?

Your refusal to believe that druids are "poor" or a willingness to think that blizzard has actually balanced things is what prompted me to respond. I don't like the idea that you're positing the "one weird trick to dps" or whatever, as though there is some hidden secret to how not to be mediocre, which is what druids are in most cases. Especially feral.

Balance can be built around, the top M+ runner right now is balance... so the whole "I refuse to believe they're bad" is a bit silly. In content where things die quickly, they simply are.

[Deleted]

I do not mind criticism at all, you can not please everyone. You disagree with a lot of things, while some others have found it helpful.

Also, what is wrong with being mediocre? Someone has to be the best, someone has to be the worst (Which I do not believe we are). Balance its weakness is when mobs die fast, I agree. Our strength lies somewhere else. And that is exactly what I mean with; I refuse to believe that we are bad, because overall, we are quite the strong spec.

As to feral being 'far off', a few posts back there is a feral druid who was kind enough to share his logs with us. He was doing really well.

I value your input though, there are a lot of players who do run those cookie cutter specs really well and are top parsing with it.

[Snullyguster]

I tried the x3 wild fleshrending build and I found it to be a lot better than I expected it to be considering the lack of info on it currently. I usually raid as Resto and do Resto/boomkin for mythic plus, but this feral build gave me something I could use on low keys as boomkin is lackluster when things dies too quickly.

Thank you for the post. I am happy to join the wild fleshrending train.

[Cov]

Now on to feral: just no. This is so far off base I have no idea how to help you here.

lunar, jagged, sabertooth, bloodtalons for raids, no way around it.

Please present something to back up your claim. Or try to look through this thread again .. there is already a log with a 99% with triple fleshrending.


Anyway, I did try it myself and ended up with 2x fleshrending traits and a 355 with the uldir aura on it. We were fighting against Vectis for a couple of pulls, here is the kill:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done
its a 95% log, while the rest who usually have higher rankings struggled. So it looks like a quite bad fight execution for rankings. That with Blood Scent, Incarnation, Savage Roar and Omen of Clarity.

There is still a lot of potential about the execution as I'm lacking a lot of practise as a cat. I'll play around with that a but more, hopefully with some new logs in the next reset.