Feral Druid Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 — The War Within (11.0.5)
On this page, you will find our Level by Level Feral Druid leveling guide for The War Within. Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Druid leveling guide.
Feral Druid Leveling Guide for The War Within
Welcome to our Leveling Guide for The War Within. This will help you in your journey to max level as a Feral Druid, covering talents and abilities you should know about.
Feral Druid Leveling Playstyle
Feral Druid is extremely mobile, giving it the advantage of questing quickly moving point-to-point. It is also equipped with a strong AoE toolkit, but a lot of it happens over time so requires care to not get overwhelmed. It is also very well suited to doing dungeons, though you may find your queue times are faster if you do so as Guardian to tank.
Gear Options
When leveling up, always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. You will often be replacing these gear pieces very quickly, so equip whatever comes to you without worrying about secondary stats.
Best Leveling Talents For Feral Druid
During levels 1 to 9, you will not have activated the Feral specialization and, as such, will have to spend the first 5 levels in Caster form using Wrath and Moonfire. After acquiring Cat Form at level 5, you can make use of Shred, and at Level 7, use Ferocious Bite to use Combo Points.
Your talents can be changed anywhere in the world as long as you are out of combat. Be sure to explore various combinations of talents at will while leveling to best combat a variety of encounters and use it as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with what the spec is capable of. We have included a sample leveling path through the Class and Feral skill tree below. This is an easy-to-learn but still effective leveling experience that forges a middle path between introducing core mechanics without delving into some of the more complex aspects that need to be managed.
Immediately at level 10, you will gain access to Rake and Rip from the Class tree. These are the cornerstone of Feral's Bleed-oriented gameplay, and will be DoTs you maintain as much as possible in combat. Alongside that, you will be using a dual resource system of Energy to cast Shred in single-target and Swipe in AoE to generate Combo Points used for powerful finishing moves such as Ferocious Bite.
Use the Copy button below to generate an Import Code to use in-game!
The exact order you pick the points is not crucial, but the general advice is to prioritize the Feral abilities on the leftmost side of the class tree. In the spec tree, prioritize Primal Wrath, Omen of Clarity, Berserk and Pouncing Strikes.
Level by Level Rotation for Feral Druid
To help with understanding what changes as you level up and progress through the talent tree, use the slider below to select your current level. Each time you level up, move it along and the rotation will adjust for you!
Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!
After reaching level 71 and unlocking Hero Talents, we recommend playing with Druid of the Claw to gain access to Ravage.
Due to Feral only being unlocked as a talent specialization at Level 10, you should use the abilities provided to you in the intro quests until you are presented with the option.
Always be in Cat Form during combat as Feral's toolkit requires using the shapeshift form.
Try to always start combat from Prowl to take advantage of the bonus to Rake from Pouncing Strikes.
If you are struggling to stay alive use your Predatory Swiftness procs gained from spending Combo Points on instant Regrowth casts.
- Enter Prowl before opening on your target whenever possible.
- Open with Rake from stealth.
- Cast Berserk on dangerous elites or large groups of enemies.
- Cast Convoke the Spirits on dangerous elites or large groups of enemies.
- Cast Ferocious Bite / Ravage with Apex Predator's Craving procs.
- Cast Feral Frenzy on cooldown.
- Cast Tiger's Fury on cooldown.
- Cast Primal Wrath at 5 Combo Points with multiple targets in range to apply Rip to all of them.
- Apply Rip to any high health targets at 5 Combo Points if it is not already present.
- Cast Ferocious Bite / Ravage at 5 Combo Points.
- Apply Thrash against multiple targets.
- Maintain Rake.
- Cast Brutal Slash to generate Combo Points.
- Cast Swipe to generate Combo Points against multiple targets.
- Cast Shred to generate Combo Points against one target.
- Make sure to always be in Cat Form.
Feral also has a variety of additional helpful abilities while out in the open world:
- Feral has access to a variety of shapeshift forms, most important being
Cat Form which activates the majority of Feral's damaging abilities. Others are:
- Bear Form can be used for additional survival if you are in major danger.
- Caster form allows you to use healing and magic spells.
- After acquiring Killing Strikes, you will always trigger Ravage after casting Tiger's Fury the first time in combat. Make use of this for big opening burst!
- Travel Form can be used while outdoors to move faster.
- Aquatic Form will be activated when using Travel Form in water, swimming at much faster speeds.
- Flight Form will be activated when using Travel Form outdoors and out of combat, instantly granting flying mount equivalent speed. This can also be used to interact with quest objects and gather without canceling.
- Moonfire can be used while in caster form to pull far away enemies, while Regrowth can be cast to recover health between encounters. Mark of the Wild should also always be kept active for additional Versatility.
- Prowl can be used to slip into stealth and get around dangerous enemies.
Feral Druid War Mode Talents for Leveling
In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of Feral Druid-specific PvE talents.
Feral Druid PvP Talents for Leveling
- Fresh Wound can provide additional burst to targets when applying your Rake effect, and is a solid increase across the board when cycling between targets.
- Leader of the Pack grants 10% additional movement speed and causes players to heal for 3% of their maximum health when they critically strike with a 6-second cooldown. Provides free sustain and mobility, making it a good first option.
- Ferocious Wound provides additional damage to your Ferocious Bite that can be useful on high health targets due the maximum health reduction it applies. Value is mostly tied to the difficulty of the enemies you are encountering.
- Savage Momentum causes successful interrupts with Skull Bash to reduce the cooldown of Tiger's Fury, Stampeding Roar and Survival Instincts by 10 seconds. This can be useful for moving around the world and extra burst windows on targets, but you will generally be using Predator so that overlap makes it less flexible.
- Thorns can provide some use in situations with extra enemies present, to allow you to deal additional damage back when being hit.
Other options are much more focused on enemy control, which is more oriented around PvP gameplay, rather than killing enemies more efficiently, so they are not recommended.
Congratulations!
Congratulations on reaching level 80! Now that you have hit Level 80, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level.
Changelog
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 13 May 2024: Format adjustment to move slider closer to rotation.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5, no updates necessary.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2, small tweaks to pathing and switch to Convoke.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7, no changes necessary.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5 and added Dire Fixation.
- 04 May 2023: Updated to swap to Thrashing Claws.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 22 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 29 Jan. 2023: Updated for new tree pathing.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Druid Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Wordup, a frequent theorycrafter involved in a number of class communities. He is also an experienced player who has been in the world top 100 since the days of Sunwell, currently raiding in Echoes. You can also follow him on Twitter.
- War Within and Classic Weekly Hotfix Summary: November 11th – 17th
- Not Even a Sanctuary Can Help You: Doomwalker Rampaging Through Anniversary Event Grounds
- The Most Popular Specializations in Mythic+ in Patch 11.0.5
- Is a Legion Remix on the Horizon? Ion Hazzikostas Hints at Possibilities
- Player Completes Anniversary Quest in Record 21.6 Seconds—Here’s the Trick!
- Don’t Waste Your Pots: the Ultimate Tempered Potion-Popping Macro:
- A Promotion Nightmare: The Growing Title and Queue for the Guest Relations Manager Is Getting Out of Hand!
- Blizzard Talks WoW’s Future: Player Housing, Undermine(d) Patch, and More in Windows Central Interview