General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices for
Feral Druids in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents and
glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Feral Druid guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are
now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance
(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).
You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between
encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.
Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and
how they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents offer a choice between 3 means of increasing your movement
abilities.
Feline Swiftness is a passive ability that increases your movement
speed by 15% at all times.
Displacer Beast is an active ability that teleports you 20 yards
forward, activates 
Cat Form, and grants you a 50% increase in movement
speed for 4 seconds.
Wild Charge is an active ability that differs based on the
shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
- No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4
seconds.- Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
Travel Form: you leap forward 20 yards.
Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5
seconds.
All three choices in this tier are relatively well-balanced, and you should
choose based on personal preference and encounter requirements.
Displacer Beast has a lot of versatility to offer, and it is very
reliable at bypassing encounter mechanics (it allows you to move through
fire-wall style mechanics without taking damage).
Wild Charge is a good option if you need something with a lower
cooldown than Displacer Beast.
Since Feline Swiftness's bonus stacks with the movement
speed increase granted by Cat Form, this talent is also a strong
choice.
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.
Ysera's Gift is a passive spell that heals you for 5% of your maximum
health every 5 seconds. If you are at maximum health, then it heals the most
injured party or raid member within 100 yards.
Renewal is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a
2-minute cooldown.
Cenarion Ward is a buff that you can place on a friendly player,
lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward
activates a 6-second HoT on the player, consuming Cenarion Ward in the
process.
Ysera's Gift is arguably the best choice for most situations. Not only
is the talent entirely passive, and therefore very comfortable to use, but it
also provides the most healing out of the three choices in this tier.
Renewal provides a very reliable self-heal that may be preferable
in some situations, or if you simply prefer to have more control over your
abilities.
Cenarion Ward is may have some good uses in situations where there are
predictable bursts of damage.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces 
Faerie Fire,
upgrading the latter spell to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for
15 seconds.
Mass Entanglement roots all enemies in an area around the target
for up to 20 seconds.
Typhoon is a spell that affects enemies in a cone in front of you,
knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.
The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS
performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which
best suits the encounter mechanics.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 performance-enhancing talents.
Soul of the Forest passively causes your Finishing Moves to grant you
4 energy for each Combo Point used.
Incarnation: King of the Jungle removes the stealth requirement from
all your abilities, removes the positional requirement of 
Ravage
and allows you to 
Prowl while in combat, for 30 seconds. This
ability has a 3-minute cooldown.
Force of Nature is an active ability that summons a treant which
attacks your current target for 15 seconds. Force of Nature has
a maximum of 3 charges, and a new a charge is added every 20 seconds. Otherwise,
it has no cooldown.
Force of Nature is the best talent for single-target DPS, provided that
you have strong temporary Agility or Mastery effects.
Soul of the Forest is better if you lack the aforementioned trinkets,
as well as generally in multiple target situations.
Incarnation: King of the Jungle provides you with burst damage on a
3-minute cooldown, and it is useful if the encounter you are progressing on
calls for that, but aside from this type of situation, you should choose one of
the other two talents.
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Disorienting Roar is an AoE disorient that lasts for 3 seconds and
affects all enemies in a 10 yard radius.
Ursol's Vortex is a targeted AoE slow. When enemies first try to
leave the slowing area, they are pulled back in.
Mighty Bash is a single target 5-second stun.
The choice between these talents is largely irrelevant in terms of DPS
performance. You will simply choose the one which you prefer most, or which
best suits the encounter mechanics.
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that affect your
gameplay.
Heart of the Wild increases your Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by
6% at all times. Additionally, with a 6-minute cooldown, it allows you to
viably perform roles outside of your specialisation, for 45 seconds.
- allows you to tank in Bear Form, by increasing your Agility,
Expertise, Hit Chance, and armor, making you immune to critical hits and
granting you the
Vengeance ability;
- allows you to DPS as a caster, by increasing your Spell Damage and Hit
Chance, and reducing the mana cost of all your damaging spells by 100%;
- allows you to heal efficiently, by increasing the healing of your spells
by 100% and reducing the mana cost of your healing spells by 100%;
Dream of Cenarius is a passive ability that increases the healing done
by 
Healing Touch by 20%, and causes each Healing Touch to increase the
damage of your next two melee abilities by 30%.
Nature's Vigil is a 90-second cooldown that increases all healing
and damage done by 12% for 30 seconds. While Nature's Vigil is active, all
single target healing spells also damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing
done, and all damaging spells heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage
done.
All three talents in this tier are quite strong, each one having different
advantages (and disadvantages).
Dream of Cenarius provides the greatest single-target DPS increase out
of all three talents, but it provides far less utility than the other two
talents. It requires more active management to obtain this DPS benefit than
the other talents do, and it loses value against multiple targets. This choice
is ideal if you want to completely maximise your single-target DPS, but
otherwise we do not advise it.
Heart of the Wild provides you with a passive benefit that nearly
rivals Dream of Cenarius as far as a DPS increase goes, but also has a lot of
utility to offer. Below we list the most things you can do with Heart of the
Wild.
- You can cast
Tranquility for a massive amount of raid-wide healing
(up to two thirds of the entire raid's health).
- You can use
Hurricane to do AoE damage. Except for the AoE damage
you do while 
Berserk is active, nothing you do can rival the damage
of Heart of the Wild Hurricane.
- You can blanket the raid with
Rejuvenation, again obtaining a massive
amount of healing. Naturally, this means that you are not doing any damage
during this time, but it may be a good option in some situations.
- You can spam
Wrath, doing similar damage to what you would be doing
normally in Cat Form, but doing it from range.
- You can use Heart of the Wild as an additional damage mitigation cooldown
if you are required to tank a mob temporarily.
Note that in the case of healing and doing damage with Wrath, you
should use a Spellpower weapon for these techniques to be truly viable.
Given the great benefits of Heart of the Wild, we advise you to choose this
talent in most situations.
Finally, Nature's Vigil provides less DPS than Heart of the Wild's
passive effect, but it provides you with more healing, and it also does not
mean you need to stop your DPS in order to heal (something that is the case
with Heart of the Wild).
8. Major Glyphs↑top
Only Major Glyphs play a part in your performance as a Feral Druid.
Glyph of Cat Form increases the healing received by you by 20% while
Cat Form is active. This is a great boost to your survivability, and
we consider this glyph to be mandatory.
Glyph of Shred removes the positional requirement of 
Shred while
Berserk or 
Tiger's Fury are active. This is very useful since
reaching maximum energy is difficult to avoid during Berserk, and having any of
your Shreds fail to land because of a shift in the positioning of the
target will only make matters worse.
Glyph of Savagery is also interesting, although realistically you will
probably not find it very useful. It allows you to cast 
Savage Roar
without having any Combo Points. This applies a 12-second Savage Roar, and it
is ideally suited for recovering from a mistake that caused you to drop the
buff. It is also useful for the start of the encounter, when you have to get
all your bleeds up, ensuring that you also benefit from the damage bonus of
Savage Roar without investing any Combo Points into it. Finally, it is
particularly useful in fights where the mechanics of the encounter prevent you
from attacking any target at all.
Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the range of
Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. If using this ability is vital to
your raid's strategy, this glyph is excellent.
Glyph of Rebirth is very useful if you ever intend to use your
Rebirth, since it allows the target of your Rebirth to come back to
life with full health, meaning that they do not risk instantly dying again to
environmental damage.
9. Changelog↑top
- 20 Oct. 2013: Added Glyph of Shred to the list.
- 26 Sep. 2013: Further Patch 5.4 update: vastly improved the Tier
1, 2, 4, and 6 talent discussions.
- 12 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
- 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated Force of Nature
description.
- 21 Apr. 2013: Added mention that
Nature's Swiftness is the best
choice in terms of DPS increase.
- 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
- Updated Displacer Beast explanation to mention the movement speed buff
that it provides.
- Updated Nature's Vigil explanation to reflect the new cooldown and the
fact that the damage and healing bonus is now 10% instead of 20%.
