I've been swapping covenants quite a lot lately to try out Feral and it's scaling with other covenant abilities. Crazily (after loads of sims and raid logging), I discovered that I pull equal to or slightly less damage than Night Fae Feral (~200 DPS loss in some sims). That being said, Necro Feral might scale better than Night Fae Feral... So I figured I'd share some knowledge about the pros / cons of Necro Feral. Especially since we should be able to freely switch between covenants soon, so ya'll should give it a shot (Necro Boomy?!?! whaaa)
First off, the pros and cons:
Pros
- Damage is consistent, as in your damage is not all front loaded into a convoke, which can be very RNG (none of your Ferocious Bite's getting crits during Convoke? Looks like you're going to be mid or lower pack on the meters)
- DoTs tick when away from the target; additionally, Moonfire builds combo points when running mechanics out, giving a ranged ability within cat form
- Buffs Sunfire when Owlweaving
- Rotation is very engaging. Between keeping Savage Roar up + maintaining all of your DoTs, you won't fall asleep.
- More burst opportunities (not as impactful as convoke mind you), but Feral Frenzy + Ferocious Bites on a 45 second window.
- Additional Damage Reduction with shield.
Cons
- Adaptive Swarm can and will jump to targets without DoTs on them, or it will jump to a target that is immune to damage / takes reduced damage. This does drop your damage drastically (losing a 40% DoT buff to your primary target. Blizzard needs to change Adaptive Swarm to jump to your primary target instead of a random target to fix this. We should ask Blizzard to help out with this.).
- Slightly less AoE damage. Convoke does *occassionally* hit additional targets, but not reliable. Not really a game changer.
- Reliant on a single legendary, Draught of Deep Focus, the buff the leggo provides to our DoTs with Adaptive Swarm is just too good.
- Not as much burst damage on priority targets. If you need CRAZY burst, you need to be Night Fae or Venthyr, this build is a rot build, and only offers burst with Feral Frenzy.
- Covenant legendary is cool, but has way too much ramp up time and is not competitive. It can mantain almost 100% uptime on adaptive swarm in ST situations, but that's not as powerful as Draught of Deep Focus. Along the lines of AoE, it takes too long to spread; however, you can spread Adaptive Swarm to everything (almost 40% buff to all targets that have rip). So maybe? I still need to test.
- If there is more than one target, and since Adapative Swarm can jump to a different target, cleave fights might be tough to pull competitive damage.
Secondly, stat weights DRASTICALLY change. Night Fae Feral requires a lot of crit (up to 40% total) before other stats become more important, but for Necro, Haste + Crit + Vers are almost identitical in weight, which is pretty awesome. I was able to get a build with 30% haste, 30% crit, 30% mastery, and 10% vers unbuffed.
Thirdly, Draught of Deep Focus is the go to Legendary, by a long shot!
These are the talents:
- Lunar Inspiration
- Wild Charge
- Balance Affinity
- Heart of the Wild
- Savage Roar
- Brutal Slash
- Feral Frenzy
DO NOT SELECT Bonesmith Heirmer as your soulbind! Instead you need to go with Plague Deviser. Uptime on the mastery buff is 100% AND you get 6% damage increase for about 50% of the fight. Which is way stronger than 3% extra damage for the last 35% of the boss's health.
Note: Take all three offensive conduits. Use the following in order:
- Evolved Swarm
- Sudden Ambush
- Carnivorous Instincts
For the skeptical people out there, I'd share logs, but I'm a new member. Just look up Aedruid - Thrall on Warcraft logs if interested.
Notice that anything with more than one target or intermission phases, Necro Feral damage does drop a decent bit. I think if Feral Frenzy gets a good buff, and with an Adapative Swarm always targeting your primary target, this will be fixed. I should get on the PTR and see if I can be persuasive.
Anyways, give it a shot, it is pretty hard to get used to / master, but it is a load of fun!