Feral Druid leveling guide

Level as Feral: a bear from 10 to 20 and a cat from 20 to 70, with Prowl, Claw, Rake and Rip killing quest mobs faster than any Druid caster and a bear in the bag for every dungeon on the way. Druids level quickly once Cat Form arrives because they never stop: Travel Form at 30 between quests, a heal when a fight goes wrong, and a tank spec and a damage spec in the same tree. Feral Charge at 26, Heart of the Wild at 41, Leader of the Pack at 45 and Mangle at 50 are the levels where it gets better again. The leveling tree ends on the Feral raid build exactly, so there is nothing to respec at 70.

Your endgame is Feral, which in TBC is one build for two jobs: a bear that tanks raids in leather with more armor and health than a Warrior, and a cat that does competitive melee damage and brings Leader of the Pack and the Mangle bleed debuff to the melee group. The same 0/44/17 tree does both; what changes is the gear you carry. You are leveling in the spec you will raid in, and the gear section covers both sets.

Feral, 1 to 70. Wrath and Moonfire to 10, a bear to 20, a cat after that: Prowl, Claw to five points, Rip, Claw, and the mob dies while bleeding. The real priorities in the tree are Feral Swiftness at 22, Feral Charge at 26, Heart of the Wild at 41, Leader of the Pack at 45 and Mangle at 50, with Ferocity from the first point because it makes every form's main button cheaper. Balance levels slower and sits more; Restoration does not level, it heals dungeons. Feral is also the raid spec for tank and cat alike, so there is nothing to undo.

1 to 10. Wrath, Moonfire, Wrath, and Rejuvenation on yourself between fights. You are a bad Mage for ten levels. At 10 the trainer gives you the Bear Form quest chain; finish it before you quest another level.

10 to 20. Bear Form. Maul on every swing you have rage for, Demoralizing Roar on anything hitting hard, Enrage before a pull for the rage, Bash on casters. Bears kill slowly and never die, and every dungeon from Ragefire Chasm on will take you as the tank; say yes, it is how Druids get groups. Shift out to heal yourself when you are under a third, shift back; Furor later makes that free.

20 to 40. Cat Form at 20 is the leveling spec. Prowl up to the mob, Claw (Pounce from 36), Claw to five combo points with Rake in there once you have it at 24, Rip, Claw, and most mobs die to the Rip. Tiger's Fury before the opener, Dash to catch a runner, Ferocious Bite from 32 only on a mob that will die to it. Shift to bear for anything that hits too hard to kill as a cat; shift to caster to heal when you must; Travel Form at 30 between every quest. Feral Charge at 26 and Bash are your interrupts in bear.

40 to 60. Dire Bear Form at 40 is a real tank; Innervate at 40 is a full mana bar every six minutes, which for a Feral is a heal-yourself-to-full between pulls. Heart of the Wild at 41 is +10% attack power as a cat and +20% Stamina as a bear. Leader of the Pack at 45 is +5% crit for you and your group. Mangle at 50 changes the loop: Mangle, then Rake and Rip bleed 30% harder; Mangle, Rake, Claw, Claw, Rip. From here the cat kills as fast as a Rogue and the bear tanks as well as a Warrior.

60 to 70. The Restoration points arrive from 54: Furor first, so every shift into cat starts with 40 energy and every shift into bear with 10 rage; Naturalist for +10% damage in forms; Omen of Clarity at 70 for free Mangles. Maim at 62 is the cat's stun, Lifebloom at 64 the heal you put on yourself before a hard pull, Lacerate at 66 the bear's bleed, Flight Form at 68 free flying. By 70 your tree is the Feral raid build and your gear decides whether you are the tank or the cat.

Weapons: a stat stick. Your forms do not use the weapon's damage at all; a staff or mace with Agility, Stamina and attack power (and from 60, the "feral attack power" line on a weapon's tooltip, which is the weapon's damage converted for you) is the whole decision. A healer's staff with Intellect is fine when nothing better drops; the stats on it still work in forms.

Why not Balance to level? Wrath and Starfire kill a mob in the time a cat kills two, and you drink after every third one until Dreamstate and Moonkin Form at 50. Balance is a good raid spec at 70 and a slow leveling one; level Feral, carry caster gear if you want to heal dungeons as you go, and the respec plan below prices the switch. Why not Restoration? Because nothing in the tree kills anything. Restoration is a respec at 70 or in your 60s for a Druid who has stopped questing to heal dungeons; a Feral Druid heals the leveling dungeons fine out of form.

The rule that governs the order below: a talent row is locked until you have spent 5 × (row - 1) points in that tree, and you have level - 9 points to spend. Row 2 opens at 5 points, row 3 at 10, row 9 at 40. The consequence is that you will buy talents you don't especially want purely to open the next row. That isn't a mistake; it's how the tree works. The order below has been checked against the real tree: every point is buyable at the level it is listed.

Where it ends: 0/44/17, the Feral build WoWSims ships as its preset for both the cat sim and the bear sim, point for point. The Feral tree is complete at 53 and the seventeen Restoration points after it are the same seventeen the raid build has.

One tree for the tank and the cat is the whole point. TBC Feral has no separate bear build worth the respec: Thick Hide, Feral Instinct, Feral Charge, Survival of the Fittest and Mangle (Bear) are in the cat's tree already, and Shredding Attacks, Savage Fury and Predatory Instincts are in the bear's. What changes between the two jobs is gear, and the gear section covers both sets. The "DemoRoar" variant (0/47/14) takes Feral Aggression for a stronger Demoralizing Roar and pays for it with Improved Leader of the Pack and Intensity; take it only if you tank raids and nobody else carries the attack power debuff.

Thick Hide before Feral Swiftness is on purpose. Row 3 needs ten points and you are a bear in dungeons from 14, so the armor comes first and the cat speed arrives at 22, two levels after Cat Form. If you never dungeon, swap them; the engine validates either order.

Feral Aggression is not in the order. It is the leveling talent most guides take first (+15% Ferocious Bite, stronger Demoralizing Roar), and it is not in the raid build, so taking it costs a respec at 70. Ferocity is the better first five points anyway; cheaper Claws are more Claws.

Forms

Four forms by 30 and the rule for each. Cat Form for killing: energy and combo points, Prowl, Claw, Rake, Shred from behind, Rip or Ferocious Bite to finish, Tiger's Fury for the burst, Dash to chase. Bear Form (Dire Bear from 40) for tanking and for anything that hits too hard to kill as a cat: rage, Maul, Swipe, Demoralizing Roar, Growl to taunt, Bash to stun, Enrage for rage, Frenzied Regeneration to heal with it. Travel Form for every walk outdoors. Caster form for heals, Roots, Innervate and Rebirth, and for nothing else once you have Cat Form. Shifting costs mana; Natural Shapeshifter and Furor in the talent order are why you can afford to shift, heal, and shift back, and why a shift into Cat Form at 54 starts with 40 energy.

The solo loop

Prowl. Pounce from 36 (Claw before it), Rake, Claw to five combo points, Rip, Claw. The Rip finishes most quest mobs; Ferocious Bite at five points only on a mob under a third. Mangle from 50 goes first after the opener and makes Rake and Rip 30% stronger. Tiger's Fury before the opener on anything with more health than usual. Never sit at full energy; Claw as it comes.

Two mobs: Entangling Roots one from caster form before you Prowl in, or just take both as a cat and shift to bear if it goes wrong. Three: bear. Swipe, Demoralizing Roar, Maul, and accept that it takes a while; or Hibernate the beast, Roots the second, and cat the third. A caster: Pounce from Prowl, and Bash in bear or Maim from 62 when it starts casting. A runner: Dash.

When it goes wrong: shift to bear and Frenzied Regeneration from 36; or shift to caster, Barkskin from 44, Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and shift back to cat with Furor's 40 energy. A Druid with mana does not die to anything that is not an elite. Travel Form is the escape; nothing on foot catches it.

Tanking while leveling

Every dungeon from Ragefire Chasm to Shattered Halls will take you as the bear, and from 14 you should take the job; it is how Druids get groups and it is the raid job for half the Ferals at 70. Bear Form, Enrage before the pull, Feral Charge from 26 or Faerie Fire (Feral) to pull, Maul on every swing, Swipe on packs, Demoralizing Roar on the first pull of the dungeon and whenever it drops, Growl the mob that leaves you, Bash the caster. Mangle (Bear) from 50 and Lacerate from 66 are the raid threat; before them, Maul and Swipe are enough. Frenzied Regeneration and Barkskin are the saves; shifting out to heal yourself is the one a bear does not have time for, so a Rejuvenation on yourself before the pull is the habit.

Healing while leveling

Out of form you are a Restoration Druid with fewer talents, and every leveling dungeon will take you as the healer if the bear slot is filled. Rejuvenation on the tank between pulls, Regrowth for the big damage, Healing Touch when there is time, Lifebloom from 64 stacked three times on the tank. Innervate on the healer who is not you if you are the bear, and on yourself if you are the healer. Rebirth once a fight, on the tank or the healer, never the Hunter.

#showtooltip Rebirth
/cast [target=mouseover,help,dead][help,dead][target=player] Rebirth

Rebirth on whoever your mouse is over, so you never target-swap mid fight.

Buffs and utility

Mark of the Wild on everyone (Gift of the Wild from 50, with Wild Berries); Thorns on the tank. Remove Curse and Abolish Poison make you a dispeller in every dungeon with either. Faerie Fire on anything the melee are hitting. Hibernate puts a beast or dragonkin to sleep for up to 40 seconds and is your only crowd control, Cyclone at 70 aside. Innervate is the raid's spare mana bar; the healer who gets it will remember you.

Macros

#showtooltip Cat Form
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form

A powershift: out of and back into Cat Form in one press, which with Furor is 40 energy for the cost of one shift's mana. The raid cat's rotation lives on this.

#showtooltip Dire Bear Form
/cast [nostance:1] Dire Bear Form
/cast [stance:1] Feral Charge

Into bear and Charge: one key, pressed twice.

Train every new spell rank the moment you can afford it; an old rank of your main nuke is the most common reason a level feels slow. Keep your bags clear of vendor trash before leaving town, and pick up every flight path you pass; the map is the biggest time-saver in the game.

Leveling set (Feral): Agility first (attack power, crit and dodge in both forms), then Stamina, then Strength and attack power, then Intellect for the shifting. Leather, and the weapon is a stat stick: your forms ignore its damage entirely, so a staff with Agility and Stamina beats a sword with more damage, and from 60 the "feral attack power" line on some weapons is the one that matters. "Of the Monkey" (Agility and Stamina) greens are made for you. Keep a few Intellect and +healing pieces in the bag for the dungeons you heal.

Feral at 70 is two sets, and you carry both.

The bear set, in order:

1. Uncrittable. Survival of the Fittest cuts the Defense you need from 490 to 415; with Thick Hide and Dire Bear Form your armor is already past a Warrior's. 415 Defense first, or the resilience that substitutes for it.
2. Armor. Bear Form multiplies the armor on your leather by 400% (plus Thick Hide), so an armor-heavy leather piece is worth more to you than to anyone. Clefthoof and the Heavy Clefthoof set are made for this.
3. Stamina. You cannot block or parry, so you take every hit that lands and you take it with health. Bears carry more health than any other tank for this reason.
4. Agility. Dodge, crit and armor; the one avoidance stat you have.
5. Hit, expertise and Strength. Threat; Mangle and Lacerate miss and get dodged like anything else.

The cat set, in order: hit to 9% first, then expertise to 26, then Agility, Strength and attack power together, then crit (Primal Fury's combo points and Predatory Instincts' damage both live on it), with the weapon's feral attack power counting as attack power. A cat's gear is a Rogue's gear with a different weapon rule; expect to compete with the Rogues for it and to lose some rolls.

Quest levels by zone, Horde side. A zone is comfortable when your level sits inside its range; move on when the quests turn green.

Dungeon ranges are the levels the quests and drops are tuned for; you can enter earlier with a group that knows the place. In Outland, every dungeon has a heroic mode at 70 that needs a key from the matching reputation at Honored.

You have not picked professions yet, so this section is the advice on which to take; pick them in the character card and it becomes the route.

The two questions. Do you want the profession to make you stronger at 70, or to make gold on the way? The crafting professions with a bind-on-pickup payoff (Tailoring's cloth sets for casters, Leatherworking's sets for mail and leather wearers, Blacksmithing's Armorsmith and Weaponsmith lines for plate, Jewelcrafting's trinkets, Engineering's goggles, Alchemy's flask that lasts through death) make you stronger and cost gold to level. The gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) make gold and cost nothing but detours. The usual answer is one of each: the crafter your tank gear wants, and the gatherer that feeds it.

For a tank: Blacksmithing with Mining for the Armorsmith chest if you wear plate, Leatherworking with Skinning for the Dragonscale sets if you wear mail or leather, Jewelcrafting with Mining for a tank trinket, Engineering with Mining for the helm and the pull.

Leveling a profession costs the least when you do it while you level the character; every zone's nodes and drops are the ones the route wants at that skill. Pick early.

0/44/17. The Feral build WoWSims ships as its preset for both the cat sim and the bear sim, and the build you leveled into: your tree at 70 is this one, point for point. One tree, two jobs; the gear you put on decides which one you are doing tonight.

The core for both jobs is Ferocity, Sharpened Claws, Predatory Strikes, Primal Fury, Heart of the Wild, Survival of the Fittest, Leader of the Pack, Predatory Instincts and Mangle, with Furor, Naturalist and Omen of Clarity from Restoration. The bear's points are Thick Hide, Feral Instinct, Feral Charge and Faerie Fire (Feral); the cat's are Shredding Attacks, Savage Fury and Improved Leader of the Pack; and the preset keeps all of them because the respec to drop one job's points for the other's is not worth what it buys. The flexible points are Feral Swiftness (two; Brutal Impact if you Bash on purpose), Intensity (three; for a bear it is 10 rage on Enrage, for a cat it is nothing), and the "DemoRoar" variant described in the talent section.

The bear's job: Dire Bear Form, Enrage before the pull, Faerie Fire (Feral) or Feral Charge to pull. Mangle (Bear) on cooldown, Lacerate to five stacks and kept there, Maul on every swing you have the rage for, Swipe on packs, Demoralizing Roar on the boss and kept up. Growl the moment the boss turns; Challenging Roar for the pack that went for the healer; Frenzied Regeneration and Barkskin before you are at 20%, not after, and say so. You cannot block or parry, so you are not uncrushable and never will be; what you have instead is more armor and health than any Warrior, and Survival of the Fittest's 415 Defense for uncrittable. Bears tank anything a Warrior tanks in Karazhan and most of what comes after; the fights with crushing-blow-heavy single hits are the ones a Warrior or Paladin takes.

The cat's job: Cat Form behind the boss. Mangle (Cat) to put the bleed debuff up (30% more from Rip, Rake and the Rogues' Rupture and the Arms Warrior's Rend), Shred to five combo points, Rip, and keep both up; Mangle again when the debuff falls, Shred otherwise, Ferocious Bite only when Rip and Mangle both have time left and you are capped. Tiger's Fury is not worth the energy in a raid. Powershift (the macro in the basics section) when you are under 40 energy and nothing is ready, because Furor gives 40 on the shift and Natural Shapeshifter makes it cheap. Leader of the Pack is on the moment you are in form, which is why you stand with the melee.

Bear or cat? The raid decides. Most raids want one Feral Druid as a bear for the fights with adds and a second as a cat, and most Ferals carry both sets and swap by the boss. The gear section covers both; the talent build does not change.

When to respec: never, unless your raid needs a Moonkin or a Tree more than a Feral. You leveled in this build; the respec plan below covers both.

Pre-raid gearing, the short version.

1. Two sets, and the bear set first if your raid wants a tank: 415 Defense, then armor and Stamina from the Clefthoof set (a Leatherworker's, not bind-on-pickup) and the Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm leather rewards. The Heavy Clefthoof pieces are the best pre-raid bear gear in the game and anyone with Leatherworking 365 can make them.
2. The cat set: hit and expertise first from quest rewards and dungeon blues, then Agility and attack power. Honor Hold or Thrallmar Honored for the first heroic key; Lower City, the Sha'tar, Cenarion Expedition and Keepers of Time for theirs.
3. A weapon with feral attack power; the Earthwarden from Cenarion Expedition Exalted is the bear's, and it is a long grind worth starting at 60.
4. Crafted leather from the auction house where it beats the drop: Heavy Clefthoof for the bear, Fel Leather for the cat.
5. The Karazhan attunement chain runs through every dungeon on this list; do it as you gear, as a bear when the group lacks a tank.

The heroic keys are reputations from the dungeons themselves: Honor Hold or Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, the Sha'tar and Keepers of Time, each to Honored. A Druid who can tank or heal gets groups as fast as anyone; a Druid who can do both gets them first.

Karazhan attunement starts in Deadwind Pass and runs through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Arcatraz to Black Morass. Do it as you gear; every one of those dungeons drops something you want.

Start reputations before 70. Every Outland dungeon reputation reaches Honored from normal runs on the way up, and Honored is what buys the heroic key. Cenarion Expedition (Coilfang), Honor Hold or Thrallmar (Hellfire Citadel), Lower City (Auchindoun), the Sha'tar (Tempest Keep) and Keepers of Time (Caverns of Time) each gate a heroic; run the normal versions while they are your level and the keys are waiting when you arrive.

Pre-raid gear is dungeon blues, reputation rewards and crafted pieces. Heroics drop the best of it and pay Badges of Justice for the rest. Quest blues from Nagrand, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley fill the gaps; do not skip the last three zones' quest lines on the way to 70, they are the fastest gearing there is.

The Karazhan attunement (the Master's Key chain through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Old Hillsbrad, ending in the Black Morass) is the first raid gate on the Anniversary realms; start it the week you hit 70 because it takes a group for every step.

Anniversary realms have Dual Talent Specialization, so the cleanest plan is two trees: Feral for everything you do alone and for the raids that want a bear or a cat, and Restoration or Balance in the second slot. A Druid gets more out of dual spec than any class in the game, because every raid job is open to you. Check the trainer for the price in game; sources disagree on what TBC Anniversary charges.

Reading an order from any level. Every talent order on this page is a list of which point to buy at which level, and the trees in the talent section have a level slider that can show any of them. To respec into a build at level 60, pick that build above the trees and drag the slider to 60: the highlighted cells are the 51 points to buy, in the order the table lists them. Every order has been checked so that each row is open by the time you reach it.

You are already there. The Feral leveling order is the raid build, and it is the raid build for both the bear and the cat. The only respec a Feral pays is the one into Restoration or Balance when a raid asks, and dual spec on Anniversary realms makes that a second slot.

The number to budget: 50g per respec on original rules, the dual-spec price once on Anniversary. A Druid who respecs once at 70 pays well under 60g; nobody should be flipping specs per dungeon.

A Druid watches a different resource in every form, and the default UI changes the bar but not the habit.

• A form-aware action bar: the default bars switch with form; make sure every form has its heal-and-shift macros and Travel Form on the same keys so your hands do not relearn the layout four times.
• Combo points and energy near your character in Cat Form, like a Rogue; rage and Lacerate stacks in Bear Form; Lifebloom stacks and remaining time on every frame as a healer.
• WeakAuras: Rip and Rake remaining on the target, Mangle debuff remaining, Tiger's Fury and Dash ready, Faerie Fire missing from the target, Mark of the Wild missing, Lacerate stacks and Demoralizing Roar remaining as a bear.
• Healing frames (Grid with Clique, or Healbot) from the first dungeon you heal, and for Rebirth and Innervate on a mouseover in every spec.
• A threat meter (Omen) in every group; as a bear you are the one reading it.
• One boss-mod addon, DBM or BigWigs, not both.

The addons that pay for themselves on any class: a quest helper (Questie) so you stop reading quest text for coordinates; a bag addon (Bagnon or similar) so you can see what you are carrying; a boss mod (Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs, never both) the day you start dungeons; and WeakAuras once you have a cooldown or buff you keep forgetting. Bind every ability you use in a fight to a key before you hit 20; clicking is the single biggest thing that makes a character feel weak.

Ticks are remembered in this browser for this class and spec.

Now

• The Bear Form quest chain at 10 before anything else; the Aquatic Form chain at 16 when you pass it
• Ferocity 5/5 first; Feral Swiftness and Feral Charge the moment row 3 opens
• Mark of the Wild on everyone you meet; Thorns on the tank
• Tank every dungeon you can as a bear from 14; carry Intellect pieces to heal the ones that have a tank
• The Rebirth mouseover macro from the basics section on a key by 20

20 to 70

• 20: Cat Form, Prowl, Claw, Rip; the powershift macro on a key
• 30: Travel Form between every quest; 36: Pounce as the opener, Frenzied Regeneration as the bear's save
• 40: Dire Bear Form, Innervate; 41: Heart of the Wild; 45: Leader of the Pack; 50: Mangle
• 60: epic riding; 64: Lifebloom on yourself before hard pulls; 68: Flight Form, free
• No respec at 70; you are already in the raid build, and the bear and cat sets decide the job

At 70

• Bear: 415 Defense, armor, Stamina; Mangle and Lacerate to five, Maul on every swing, Demoralizing Roar up
• Cat: hit and expertise, then Agility and attack power; Mangle, Shred from behind, Rip, powershift with Furor
• Innervate on the healer who asks; Rebirth once a fight; Gift of the Wild on every group with a stack of Wild Berries
• The Swift Flight Form chain from Sethekk Halls; Honor Hold or Thrallmar Honored for the first heroic key