I know, the Tankspot guide guy beat me to it a little, and did a great job, but this touches on a lot of things I've seen people ask here that aren't explicitly covered there. Edit: Whoops, forgot link:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/40464-3-0-feral-druid-pre-wrath-leveling-guide.html

Q: Whoah, a patch. What happened?
A: 3.0 is the content patch that introduces the new mechanics required for Wrath of the Lich King. Like when 2.0 came out a little while before The Burning Crusade was launched. You have new, 51-point deep talent trees, and some base class mechanic changes to get around.

Q: What do I really need to know?
A: Feral has been overhauled. For a full list of changes, see the patch notes. Some important stuff:
- There are now "cat" specs and "bear" specs. Cat specs give up tanking ability for DPS, like a fury warrior. Bear specs give up DPS for tanking ability, like prot. The net result is that both are now closer to their counterparts, but you can no longer do both well in the same spec.
- Go visit your trainer! A number of abilities are now trainable, or have been changed and need to be re-trained, and you have a brand new ability as well.
- Crushing blows have been removed from raids, and feral armor has been significantly reduced as a consequence.
- Feral Druids also now finally have access to pots and procs in forms, and Windfury Totem now affects us (although it too has been changed).
- Agility has been nerfed somewhat. It provides less crit and less dodge than it did, and there are diminishing returns on dodge chance now.
- The raid buff system has been overhauled.
- Glyphs and the Inscription profession have been added.
- A bunch of other abilities also now work indoors, or in forms.
- Druids no longer need defense or resilience to be uncrittable

General
Q: Pots and healthstones work in forms now?
A: They do indeed. Load up on health pots, healthstones, and other tanking consumables, you can use them without macros and without worry. Haste potions are easily usable without being built into your powershift macro.
- Noggenfogger, hallow's end costumes, and the like will still not funciton with feral forms, as they are considered "shapeshifts" as well.
- The only exception seems to be Rage potions. They still had the Class: Warrior tag on them on the PTR.

Q: My pot cooldown isn't starting! What's up?
A: Blizzard has limited everyone to one potion per round of combat. Once you take a potion in combat, you must drop combat for a few seconds to start the potion cooling down.

Q: Where did Nature's Grasp and Feral Faerie Fire go??
A: Nature's Grasp was made trainable at level 10, and you essentially get Improved for free. Feral Faerie Fire was made trainable at level 18. Visit your friendly druid trainer to learn them.

Q: I heard that roots would work indoors?
A: Roots now work indoors, yes. You can now CC melee mobs while you tank or DPS. Nature's Grasp works indoors too, for CCing while tanking without shifting out.

Q: What about Barkskin?
A: Barkskin now works in feral forms without shifting out.

Q: ZOMG. Anything else?
A: You can use quest items in forms now. Example of stuff you can do on the Isle of Quel'danas, for instance, without shifting out: Convert robots. Open ore chests. Loot Bloodberries. Throw Murloc Control orbs. Impale the Emissary. Measure Ley Lines. It's fantastic. You still can not mine in feral forms though.

Q: I specced for Omen of Clarity, but it's not in my spellbook. Why?
A: Omen of Clarity is now, finally, passive. You do not need to buff yourself with it, it will just automatically work. It has changed slightly, however. Its proc rate has been increased a bit, but it now will not proc off instant abilities. It procs only off autoattack swings, but this DOES include Maul.

Q: What's Revive? Are we losing Rebirth?
A: Revive is druid's new persistant, out-of-combat res spell. It was introduced so that resto druids would not be discriminated against in 5-man groups for not being able to pick up people who died. There is no effect on our battle res spell, we still have it and can use it as normal.

Q: Does this mean I can't go AFK when we wipe in raids anymore?
A: Sure does! No sammich for you. Get to work rezzing the warriors and rogues who HAVE gone AFK, sucker!

Q: Will my raid believe me when I say I didn't spec for Revive?
A: Maybe once, but probably not. If there are other members who are/have druids, try to convince them to back you up.

Q: What about raid buffs?
A: Many party buffs are now raid-wide. Many classes also now bring overlapping, non-stacking buffs. Here's how some of the buffs affecting feral druids have changed:
- Leader of the Pack - Is now raid-wide. Fury Warriors bring a similar buff which does not stack - Rampage is now 5% crit chance that procs when they crit. LotP is constant, so slightly better, and the warrior version does not have a self-heal on crit.
- Gift of the Wild - Is now raid-wide. Click it once, buff the whole raid.
- Mangle - The debuff is now identical to the arms warrior debuff "Trauma". Trauma is applied whenever an arms warrior crits.
- Totems - All buff totems are now raid-wide. Strength of Earth and Grace of Air have been combined into one totem. Windfury Totem has been changed to a 20% haste buff, and works for ferals.
- Unleashed Rage - Trueshot Aura is now a copy of Unleashed Rage but is always active. Both are raid-wide.
- Blessing of Might - Now is the same buff as Battle Shout (although longer duration). Both are raid-wide.
- Blessing of Salvation - Has been removed. Its threat reduction is built in to cat form now.
- Blessing of Sanctuary - Now reduces all damage taken by 3%, and grants 10 rage whenever you dodge. This is now a good blessing to have as a feral tank.

Q: What are Glyphs?
A: Glyphs are new ways to enhance your abilities. You can see your Glyph slots by opening your spellbook (P) and clicking on the Glyph tab. At level 70 you can have two Major glyphs and three Minor. A third Major glyph slot will open up at level 80.

Q: What Glyphs should I use?
A: There are quite a few options. See http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?items=16.11 for a full list. Which you use is up to you, depending which abilities you use most and how you use them. Glyph of Shred is great for soloing. Glyph of Maul is great for multi-tanking. Glyph of Rip is great for raid DPS.

Q: How do I use Glyphs?
A: To add a glyph, get one you want from a friendly scribe, find a Lexicon of Power (there should be one in each major city, ask a guard to direct you to the nearest one), right-click the glyph, and click on the spot you want to put it in. You can change glyphs like you would enchants or socketed gems - put the new one on over the old one. You will destroy the old one in the process.

Q: Should I take Inscription over _______ for my druid?
A: Originally, the bonus for Inscription was supposed to be an extra glyph slot. This was changed, now Scribes will have access to special self-only shoulder enchants (much like enchanters can enchant their own rings). Inscription is a neat profession, but it doesn't afford an enormous advantage over any other. You should continue to pick whenever professions you enjoy most, whether that's inscription or something else.

Q: What happened to combat ratings?
A: Some ratings were combined. Critical Strike and Hit ratings now work for both melee and spells - as a feral druid at the melee hit cap, you will now never see a cyclone resist against another player, for instance, unless they have nature resistance or use cloak.
Also, spell damage and healing were merged into a single stat, spell power. Healing spells benefit more from spell power than damage ones do, so the actual amount done by a given spell has not changed.

Q: Why does rank 1 roots cost more than rank 7 now?
A: Downranking has been removed. Blizzard decided they wanted everyone using max rank of everything, and so all spells were changed to use a percentage of base mana. The result is that all ranks cost approximately the same, however the current top rank of a spell is usually slightly cheaper than previous ranks. If you have rank 1 roots on your bars for PVP, go ahead and replace it with rank 7. The same goes for healing spells.

Q: Are we still getting new models from Glyphs?
A: No. Blizzard realised that having to use a minor glyph slot for a purely cosmetic purpose, when other glyphs did things like reduce spell cooldowns and remove reagent costs, was a little unfair. New models for druid forms are currently slated for the next content patch after the expansion launches.

Q: Berserk or Omen of Clarity at 70?
For sustained DPS, Omen of Clarity. It provides a much bigger sustained DPS increase.
For tanking, Berserk. It provides MASSIVE initial and multi-mob threat.
For PVP, Berserk. The fear break is useful, and the on-demand burst damage is something we sorely need.
For questing, whichever you like best.

Bear
Q: MY ARMOR!! What happened???
A: Raid bosses are no longer capable of crushing. As such, bears did not need their excessive amounts of armor anymore. All bonus armor on leather gear (which showed up in green on the tooltip) has been removed, and Bear Form's bonus armor has been reduced from 400% to 370%.
- Armor on cloaks, weapons, rings, and trinkets remains intact.
- The loss of mitigation is made up for by a Bear-specific talent: Protector of the Pack.

Q: What's Protector of the Pack, and how does it work?
A: Protector of the Pack is the new talent designed to make up for our loss of armor. It works exactly like a warrior's defensive stance, except that it works off the number of people in your group when you enter bear form - 3% per player (not counting you), up to 12%. It works regardless of whether the player is anywhere near you, dead, or disconnected, they only have to be in your group.
- Note that it is NOT additive with armor reduction, it is multiplicative.
Example: If a raid boss hits for 10,000, and you have 70% reduction from armor, you would be hit for 3,000. With PotP, that 3,000 is then reduced by 12%, to 2,640. PotP also works on spell damage.
- The net result is that low-geared druids will gain a little mitigation, end-game druids will lose a few percent, but it doesn't appear to be a huge amount.

Q: Do I need defense or resilience now?
A: Nope! 3 points in Survival of the Fittest is all you need to be uncrittable by raid bosses.

Q: So defense does *nothing* for us anymore?
A: No, it still adds a chance to be missed and a chance to dodge. Each point of defense skill (2.37 defense rating = 1 defense skill) still initially grants 0.04% chance to be missed and to dodge, although it is subject to diminishing returns.

Q: What happened to my dodge chance?
A: Blizzard made a few changes because Druids scaled too well with agility. First, our Agility:Dodge ratio was nerfed, to about 19.7 agility to 1% dodge at 70. Then, diminishing returns were implemented for all avoidance. At 700 agility, for instance, it takes about 31.5 agility to add 1% dodge. Base dodge chance for all druids was increased by 5%, and the talent Natural Reaction was added to help compensate.
- Sunwell Radiance was also removed from the game, meaning that druids will still be able to tank fine in Sunwell.

Q: Do I need to re-gem?
A: Somewhat, maybe. If you have defense or resilience gems to stay uncrittable, you can replace those. However, agility vs. stamina will be something of a personal choice. Diminishing returns on dodge mean that the more agility you have, the less useful it is, however after a certain amount of HP, stacking more stamina doesn't particularly do much either. The average tank shouldn't need to regem much.

Q: How about enchants?
A: Most enchants will remain the same as well. Like gems, if you have defense or resilience gems to stay uncrittable, they can be replaced. However, some slots, like helm and shoulder enchants, there isn't much alternative right now. Also, weapon proc enchants like Mongoose now work for ferals, and you can use them if you like.

Q: Which weapon enchant? Mongoose or 35 agility?
A: Mongoose will have a higher proc rate in bear form than cat, because of bear's slower attack speed. It's estimated to have about a 66% uptime, and be worth approximately 80 agility, making it much much better than straight +35 agility, although slightly streakier.
- Executioner is not considered because avoidance is much more important than threat for a feral tank - threat comes easily.
- 35 agility is still the default cheaper enchant for weapons that will be replaced.
- Note that weapon proc enchants reduce in effectiveness after the level for which they were designed. After Lich King ships, the amount of agility and haste you receive from Mongoose will likely drop slightly for each level you gain. However, it provides enough of a stat increase over 35 agility for tanking that it is unlikely to fall behind it before you replace your tanking weapon.

Q: How should I spec at 70?
A: Search the forums for some threads on this, there are plenty. For serious tanking, you need Protector of the Pack, anything that gives dodge chance, all 3 ranks of Improved Mangle, and Berserk is a better choice than Omen of Clarity.

Q: Why did we lose our threat from Feral Instinct?
A: We didn't. The bonus threat was made base in bear form - all druids have it now. This is a buff - we now get extra swipe damage for free with the talent. A similar change was made to all tanking classes.

Q: What happened to Predatory Instincts?
A: It no longer works in bear form at all. Neither the AOE damage reduction nor the +10% to crit damage portions. Skip it entirely if you're not going to be DPSing.

Q: So how do I tank now?
A: Same as you did before, basically. The difference is that with Improved Mangle, you mangle, then only two Lacerates or Swipes, then Mangle again. Maul also does a LOT more threat than it did.

Q: And what about AOE threat?
A: Swipe now hits an unlimited number of targets in a cone in front of you. Along with the talent changes, it might not make you a prot pally, but you'll be much closer than you were. Round 'em up and let loose!

Q: When does Swipe pass Lacerate for single-target threat now?
A: It's unknown if Lacerate's built-in threat or threat modifiers on damage have been increased. If they have not, then your Swipes must be hitting for an average of about 340 damage to surpass Lacerate. With a 30% crit rate, and no more PI in Bear, that means you have to be hitting for about 260 non-crit. Disclaimer: This is napkin math, I may be off slightly.

Q: Why does Bash say it "interrupts spellcasting"? Stuns already do!
A: Bash now interrupts spellcasting even when the target is immune to the stun. This allows feral druids to interrupt spells on instance/raid bosses, or on players who are immune due to diminishing returns.

Q: What else is cool?
A: Growl (taunt) now has a 20 yard range, like death knights and paladins. Woo, lazy tanking!
- Frenzied regeneration now heals 30% of your HP, instead of a measly 2500.
- Maul is now affected by Mangle.
- Bear Mangle and Maul are now back on the Savage Fury talent, after they were removed over a year and a half ago.
- Feral Faerie Fire in Bear form now causes a small amount of damage along with some extra threat. This lets you actually tag mobs from a distance in bear form.

Q: Hey, my PVP gear still has extra armor?
As of this writing, yes, arena/honor gear still has its extra armor, although this may be hotfixed at any time Blizzard sees fit. That does mean that, currently, PVP gear is just about on par with equivalent tier PVE gear for tanking.

Q: So what about the Heavy Clefthoof set for tanking?
A: Its extra armor is gone, and its defense is much less useful now. It's probably best to either grab some pieces of S2 from PVP, or find some decent level 70 blues that have decent all-around tanking stats. It still has a bunch of stamina, though, so it's not useless if you're still using it, it'll tide you over until you get a replacement.

Cat
Q: WTF?? Mangle no longer increases Shred damage??
A: This is a poorly-worded change that may freak some people out. Never fear! Shred itself has been changed so that ALL effects which increase bleed damage also increase shred's damage. This means that not only will Mangle still increase Shred damage exactly like it did before, but so will arms warriors' talent "Trauma". If you have an arms warrior in your raid, he will essentially mangle-bot for you. This is a nice buff to our raid DPS.

Q: What happened to my crit chance?
A: Blizzard also nerfed our agility:crit ratio to be the same as rogues. It is now 40 agility to 1% crit at 70.
To compensate, they increased base crit chance slightly, and added the talent Master Shapeshifter. There have also been buffs to many DPS talents to make our DPS higher than it was before, even with a lower crit chance.

Q: Do I need to re-gem?
A: If you have decent gear, no, not yet, agility is still the best stat, although not by as much as it was. It *just* squeezes out ahead of Hit (which is the second best stat now if you're not capped) and Strength (only inches behind).

Q: How about enchants?
A: Most enchants will remain the same as well. However, weapon proc enchants now work for ferals.

Q: Which weapon enchant? Mongoose, Executioner, or 35 agility?
A: DPS, Mongoose is estimated to have about a 30-33% uptime, making it worth about 40 agility and 0.7% haste. This is a small (10-12 DPS) upgrade from 35 agility. On a really good weapon, it may well be worth it, but it's very expensive to put on anything else.
- Executioner does not seem to be considered a viable choice by most ferals who have weighed in on the subject, because a fair amount of our damage bypasses armor, but preliminary math indicates that it might actually be very competitive for raid DPS. More to come I hope.
- 35 agility is still the default cheaper enchant for weapons that will be replaced. Savagery is still the bottom of the barrel, its only advantage being its price.
- Note: Weapon proc enchants decrease in effectiveness after the level for which they were designed. When Lich King ships and druids start leveling, Mongoose will likely slip back behind 35 agility after a few levels. You may wish to keep 35 agility for DPS if you foresee keeping your current weapon far into Northrend.

Q: What happened to Powershifting?
A: Furor was changed to remove powershifting. It was an "unintended mechanic" that was getting too good, and Blizzard either had to balance around it (making druids who didn't know how to do it much worse), or take it out. Now, energy regenerates in any form, and you retain up to 100 of it when you shift into cat form. This makes shifting out to clear a snare with a full energy bar much less punishing, as you will retain all your energy.
- Furor has not changed for Bear form.
- The energy gains from Powershifting have been replaced by the feral talent "King of the Jungle", which causes Tiger's Fury to restore 60 energy when used.

Q: How should I spec at 70?
A: There are a number of threads on this subject. Try a forum search. The gist is that for DPS, you need Shredding Attacks, King of the Jungle, and Rend and Tear, and that Omen of Clarity is better than Berserk.

Q: How were Rake, Mangle, and Ferocious Bite buffed?
A: Mangle had its damage increased from 160% to 200% before talents. Rake had its scaling from attack power tripled, and now tends to do about as much damage as a crit Mangle. Ferocious Bite's energy to damage conversion now scales with AP, and it is almost a guaranteed crit if your target is bleeding.

In PVE, Mangle is still mostly used as a debuff and for soloing. Rake is used on very high armor targets, and to put a bleed on the target for Rend and Tear if Rip is not up. Ferocious Bite mostly remains a soloing ability.
In PVP, Mangle stings a lot more than it used to if you can't get behind your target, Rake is actually worth using on everyone rather than just rogues, and Ferocious Bite is a fantastic finisher on a low health target.

Q: Whoah, Feral Charge (Cat)?
A: Yes, Cat form now has a Feral Charge as well. It is sometimes referred to as "Kittystep" because of its similarities to rogues' Shadowstep ability. It works in or out of stealth, and dazes the target. It does NOT break stealth, but neither does it interrupt spellcasting like the Bear version does.

Q: Is Tiger's Fury useful now?
A: Yes. It no longer costs energy, and instead has a 30 second cooldown. This means you can use it every time it's up for no penalty and get a DPS increase. With the talent King of the Jungle, using Tiger's Fury restores energy instantly. This ability should be on your bar now.

Q: Why does Maim say it "interrupts spellcasting"? Incapacitates already do!
A: Maim now interrupts spellcasting even when the target is immune to the incapacitate. This allows feral druids to interrupt spells on instance/raid bosses, or on players who are immune due to diminishing returns. Basically, the PVP glove bonus is now built in. Maim still consumes all of your combo points when used in this fashion.

Q: So, what is the maximum DPS cycle now?
A: Close to what it was. Keep Mangle up, or have a warrior with Trauma attacking the target. Shred to 4-5 combo points, then Rip. Whenever Tiger's Fury is up, make sure you have less than 40 energy, then use it and go nuts. Due to Glyph of Rip, you will probably have plenty of extra Shreds in between Rips. However, unless you can use Tiger's Fury immediately after, using Ferocious Bite to burn combo points in between rips will probably lose you DPS.
- Using rake in the rotation does not seem to yield a significant increase in damage, but nor does it cause a huge decrease either. It becomes more useful on high armor targets and fights with a lot of movement.

Q: What about Savage Roar?
A: As you don't train it until level 75, it's beyond the scope of this FAQ, which is meant to ease the transition into the new game mechanics only. But yes, it will be part of the optimum DPS rotation at 80, or should be.

Q: Is there a DPS calculator for 3.0?
A: Yes, because Toskk is the man. It's a downloadable HTML file here:
http://druid.wikispaces.com/file/view/30xa_dps_calculator.html

Reserved just in case

I know that mongoose is better than 35 agi for both dps and tankage, but has anyone done the math on executioner? Hows it compare?

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Q u o t e:
I know that mongoose is better than 35 agi for both dps and tankage, but has anyone done the math on executioner? Hows it compare?

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Hmm, actually quick math with Toskk's old calc suggests that 840 armor pen is worth quite a lot on a fully-debuffed Gorefiend. It has a better uptime than Mongoose, slightly, (if the 1.2 ppm from wowwiki is correct), 2% proc chance and 84 attacks per minute result in an average of 42% uptime. Average of 353 armor pen, which Toskk's calc says is worth about 131 AP. That would make it easily compete with Mongoose. Would have to see more convincing figures than my doodlings on a scratch-pad though.

Of course for tanking you're comparing avoidance to threat, and there's no right answer there, beyond "whichever you need", and tanks apparently no longer have to worry as much about threat as they did.

For DPS, though, it could be very competitive with Mongoose on a debuffed boss.

shameless bump for the guide in my sig, thanks for the recognition btw.

awesome job yourself. you touch on a lot of the general casual issues i did not have the time or space to addess. i added this to the useful links at the bottom of my guide http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/40464-3-0-feral-druid-pre-wrath-leveling-guide.html

reported for sticky btw


everyone please report this for sticky

You should throw this in after the Q about revive.

Q: Will my raid believe me when I say I didn't spec for Revive?
A: Maybe once, but probably not. If there are other members who are/have druids, try to convince them to back you up.

Nice post btw.

Added!

And thanks for the link, but I don't believe this thread needs to be sticky really. Certainly not a permanent one. It will serve its purpose quite well for the next few days, maybe weeks, as people come to grips with the changes, and then gracefully fall off when it's no longer required. As long as we keep it fairly close to the top, people should have no trouble finding it.

Excellent post. Very well done and should help cut down on the number of questions being asked. Thanks for your effort.

love the guide.

One question I have since I don't pvp. Does the main interrupt require you to waste precious combo points to use it? I can see this as a problem when you have 5 points on a boss then have to waste them all on maim.

really solid post. thanks for putting this up here.

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Q u o t e:
love the guide.

One question I have since I don't pvp. Does the main interrupt require you to waste precious combo points to use it? I can see this as a problem when you have 5 points on a boss then have to waste them all on maim.

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yes it uses CP

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Q u o t e:
yes it uses CP

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Damn :(
and thank you for the fast reply

Thanks for sharing this.

tagged for reference.

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Q u o t e:
Hmm, actually quick math with Toskk's old calc suggests that 840 armor pen is worth quite a lot on a fully-debuffed Gorefiend. It has a better uptime than Mongoose, slightly, (if the 1.2 ppm from wowwiki is correct), 2% proc chance and 84 attacks per minute result in an average of 42% uptime. Average of 353 armor pen, which Toskk's calc says is worth about 131 AP. That would make it easily compete with Mongoose. Would have to see more convincing figures than my doodlings on a scratch-pad though.

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I believe you're underestimating the benefits of armor pen. It gets better as you add more, 800 armor pen for 15 seconds is better than 400 armor pen for 30 seconds. You can't just average the armor pen into a nice neat AP number or you're undervaluing its benefit.

But since armor pen is a percentage this is a moot point. Does anyone have a link to the new percentages on armor pen and what they are going to be like in 3.0?

Obviously this changes the mongoose/executioner debate a lot, and we can't use old numbers when discussing new mechanics.

Great guide.

I've been resto, and am looking at going feral to tank along with my friend's priest healing on the way up to 80.

I did just find out that I wasted money gemming out defense. (doh)

... So ... with crappy tank gear (heavy clefthide and such) should I gem for agi or for dodge?

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Q u o t e:


I believe you're underestimating the benefits of armor pen. It gets better as you add more, 800 armor pen for 15 seconds is better than 400 armor pen for 30 seconds. You can't just average the armor pen into a nice neat AP number or you're undervaluing its benefit.

But since armor pen is a percentage this is a moot point. Does anyone have a link to the new percentages on armor pen and what they are going to be like in 3.0?

Obviously this changes the mongoose/executioner debate a lot, and we can't use old numbers when discussing new mechanics.

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Hmm. Good point. I don't really know a whole lot about it, and if that's the case, it'd take more modeling than I can do on my rather full napkin.

Although the tooltip for Executioner on the PTR remains "ignores 840 of your opponent's armor", not "increases armor penetration rating by ___". So it doesn't look like it's changing. Hard to say.

Worse, we'd need a raid boss, a full set of raid debuffs, WWS, and some careful analysis to reach a proper answer. Looks like a job for people who are bored this week.

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Q u o t e:
Great guide.

I've been resto, and am looking at going feral to tank along with my friend's priest healing on the way up to 80.

I did just find out that I wasted money gemming out defense. (doh)

... So ... with crappy tank gear (heavy clefthide and such) should I gem for agi or for dodge?

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You should gem for not-using-heavy-clefthoof-anymore :P
It's losing its bonus armor, and defense is pointless, so all it has going for it is a lot of stamina. I'm sure there's better out there to tank with. S2 is a LOT better right now.

Seriously, though,I would still gem for Agility. While agility gives you SLIGHTLY less dodge than dodge rating now, agility still contributes two armor per point, and crit chance which increases threat significantly.

Is rake never going to be used? even though it got bumped? same with ferocious bite? for pvp