Midnight Patch 12.0.5 OverviewFeral Druid Guide
Let's talk about the elephant in the room - stack sims. A lot of the (undeserved) hype for Feral Druid before the raid release was due to one of the few bits of data we have before a raid release, the Simulationcraft sim stack. For those unaware, for each tier, the simulationcraft maintainers will put together a near-idealised (only near; this is important) gear and talent setup, all of which will be placed in a single stack sim comparing throughput. This methodology is somewhat flawed for several reasons.
Blizzard's approach to balancing significantly affects the value of stack sims. The stack sim is generally pretty balanced because Blizzard put a lot more attention into tuning single target tightly than they do any other part of the spec's damage profile. This is largely what I'll explore later, but for now, it's worth considering that many of a spec's strengths or weaknesses might not show up in a stack sim. Specs like Moonkin in Sanctum of Domination or Devourer DH this tier have strengths that don't show up in a pure single-target sim. Massive burst, giving up no single target to maximize AOE, or free cleave - these are all strengths that don't show up in a single target overview, but might have a significant impact on your strengths in raid.
Additionally, different maintainers have varying levels of care for the stack sim. Stack sims don't really provide a lot of value other than a vague idea of balancing on pure single target, and as this tier shows, that balance overview by no means determines what's going to be strong in a tier. Some maintainers enjoy optimising their stack profile to a great extent, whereas others may just want a general profile that other tools, such as Bloodmallet or tier value sheets, can use. Stack sims are also a highly idealised view of that balance, and movement or mechanics can have varying impacts on the classes that show up in the stack. Many maintainers have an ideological opposition to stack sims; people tend to overvalue them and overindex on them as their balance bible. This tier should be a cautionary tale about how the stack sim is not a perfect predictor of balance.
Feral Specific Problems
So far, we've only mentioned general problems; other specs that showed up highly on the stack sim haven't had the same underperformance in the raid, so clearly Feral has problems in and of itself. This expansion has been one of the biggest changes to Feral Druid in a long time. Snapshotting's focus has been reduced, and the talent tree has been reworked to add new tools. Unfortunately, despite all these changes, the issues Feral is facing aren't new. These are long-running problems that have plagued the spec for at least a decade, if not more.
Feral doesn't do single-target and AOE; you have to choose. This is a long-time problem that's shown up in various ways. But currently, Feral has very strong, sustained AOE and solid, sustained ST, yet is almost completely incapable of linking these two together. Feral's AOE requires a heavy talent tree and resource investment. In return, it's incredibly strong on sustained AOE. However, in raid content, where AOE tends to be shorter-lived, the setup and investment required for Feral AOE provide a rather anemic result. Feral's AOE doesn't come from a single source; it requires multiple things working together. Primal Wrath is uncapped and applies your primary bleed to all targets. Rampant Ferocity allows you to use spenders for AOE. Frantic Frenzy is our theoretical burst AOE tool, but requires you to sacrifice one of our strongest single target talent points, rendering it pretty much a no-go in raid. I've played a few more specs than purely Feral this tier. It's notable when playing other specs and specced purely for single-target; I can still contribute to the occasional AOE. When playing Feral Druid, however, my only option is swiping for a cool 5k damage per cast. While, in general, I think choosing between Single Target and AOE is an interesting game design paradigm, it only works when it's a game-wide choice; when only certain specs have to make that choice, those specs just become bad.
This expansion has brought some new tools for Feral Druid that, at first glance, seem like they should be intended to solve these problems, along with other changes to the spec. However, they've fallen short, or in some cases, exacerbated the problem. Frantic Frenzy is the prime example. This is an ability that Feral Druids have begged for in expansions, AOE Feral Frenzy. It's a strong talent that really does make Feral Frenzy into a juicer AOE button. Surely, this should allow us to spec into some burst AOE for those bosses where we need it. The problem comes in the trade-off; to pick up Frantic Frenzy, you need to drop Focused Frenzy, a talent that point-for-point is probably the single strongest talent in the tree, which syncs our two powerful short cooldown abilities while also giving it a hefty boost. On bosses like Salhadar, Averzian, or Chimaerus, this should be the perfect talent, but with the trade-off you make and an awkward 45-second cooldown that doesn't line it up with any of the major add spawns, it goes from a talent that should solve a lot of Feral's problems to one that causes more problems.
Hunger for Battle and Blood Spattered are other talents with issues. These are both new with Midnight's talent tree rework and should work towards solving Feral's problems with interacting with adds in raid. They should allow you to, if not do significant damage to adds, gain damage from adds that allow them to contribute more to boss damage while not contributing to adds. Unfortunately, these talents have their own problems. Blood Spattered is criminally undertuned, and Hunger for Battle doesn't fulfil the role it should. Both of these talents have an attachment to rip on additional targets, meaning they only really function in conjunction with Primal Wrath, and you largely end up losing more damage on the primary target than you gain by exploiting the benefit of the talents. If Primal Wrath drove enough damage to additional targets to make this worthwhile, it would be one thing, but instead, these talents fail to fulfil the niche they should have.
Tuning
Feral's real problem is tuning; everything above is a problem, but a spec with problems can still perform if it has its niche. Feral's real problem is that it doesn't have that. If Feral is a spec that can't contribute to short-lived adds or cleave, then surely it has an area where it genuinely excels, except it doesn't. Feral in raids is a single-target specialist that doesn't even excel at single-target. Blizzard has always tuned single-target damage more tightly than other damage profiles. Specs that have advantages on single target tend to have marginal advantages, while on AOE or other damage profiles, specs tend to have more significant gaps from the mean. This is something Blizzard needs to look over. Spec design has been in a weird area for a long time; there's no consistency across specs.
Feral is a spec with major problems; it's a spec that has historically been a single-target titan focused on bleeds, but in recent expansions, it has lost its identity. It functions on single-target and sustained AOE, but doesn't really function on anything in between, even beyond the core tuning problems of the spec. The rotation lacks any exciting moments. It could be brought back, revived, and made interesting again, but it doesn't seem aligned with the game's direction. All the problems in this article have been problems for a long time, with no real solutions.
I'd be remiss to mention that Feral is currently excelling in Mythic+. Mythic + is an area where Feral gets to flex its strengths. Much of this article has been about how Feral can only do single-target or Mass AOE and nothing in between. Mythic+ allows it to make use of that AOE excellence; it's not strong enough to make it generally meta, but in comps that play to its strengths (Shout out to Turbogronil, Xhanon, Farover, Tomelvis, and Monksea for multiple seasons of grinding). Even in that content, however, these issues raise their head, while Feral in this comp trends towards excellent overall damage if you filter this down to bosses, the issues in this article start to show up.
The Future
So far, this expansion has been one of the most disappointing of all time for Feral Druid. The spec has been poorly tuned and mechanically clunky; it doesn't feel like a spec that has a lot of passion behind it, and I no longer have a lot of confidence that the spec fits in with the direction of the rest of the game, which sucks as someone so passionate about Feral for a long time. Feral has, despite its underperformance, been oddly neglected so far this expansion. This is shown evidently in the most recent tuning patch, where every spec surrounding Feral, even some above Feral, is receiving buffs while Feral languishes. I can only hope that this odd neglect of the spec is due to wider scope changes coming in the future.
