Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
Single Target:
- Use Tiger's Fury on Cooldown, doing your best to be at low energy when it comes up as to not overcap
- Use Berserk on Cooldown
- Use Convoke the Spirits on Cooldown (if talented)
- Use Adaptive Swarm on Cooldown (if talented)
- At 4 or 5 Combo Points, refresh Rip if it’s in pandemic or not active at all and Bloodtalons is active, cast Ferocious Bite if not. This changes to 5 Combo points only during Berserk.
- Maintain Rake, upgrading the snapshot by clipping early if the duration is 80% or less where possible
- Maintain Moonfire if Lunar Inspiration is talented
- Cast Brutal Slash to keep the charges rolling and/or proc Bloodtalons (if talented)
- Maintain Thrash (even on Single Target)
- Cast Shred to generate Combo Points and/or proc Bloodtalons
AoE:
- Use Tiger's Fury on Cooldown
- Use Berserk on Cooldown
- Use Convoke the Spirits on Cooldown (if talented)
- Use Adaptive Swarm on Cooldown (if talented)
- At 4 or 5 Combo Points, cast Primal Wrath. This changes to 5 Combo points only during Berserk.
- Spend Apex Predator procs
- Maintain/cast Rake regardless of target count
- Maintain Thrash
- Maintain Moonfire if Lunar Inspiration is talented on up to 4 targets, use only to proc Bloodtalons on target counts larger than that
- Cast Brutal Slash to keep the charges rolling and/or proc Bloodtalons (if talented) while doing your best to use as many charges as possible during Tiger's Fury windows
Opener:
- Prowl
- Rake
- Shred if Dire Fixation is talented
- Moonfire with Lunar Inspiration talented
- Brutal Slash if talented and you’re not at 4 or 5 Combo Points
- Thrash if Lunar Inspiration is not talented and you’re not at 4 or 5 Combo Points
- Shred if not at 4 or 5 Combo Points
- Adaptive Swarm if talented
- Berserk if Feral Frenzy is not talented
- Tiger's Fury
- Rip
- Feral Frenzy if talented
- Berserk into Ferocious Bite if Feral Frenzy is talented
- Convoke the Spirits if talented
Playstyle
Snapshotting
Snapshotting is a mechanic unique to Feral. It refers to a bleed maintaining a buff that is present upon its application for the entirety of its duration. The buffs that can snapshot are as follows:
Tiger's Fury: Rip, Rake, Rips applied through Primal Wrath, Lunar Inspiration, Moonfire, and Thrash
Bloodtalons: Rip, Rips applied through Primal Wrath
Stealth: Rake (also applies during Berserk)
Snapshotting is very impactful to both gameplay and performance. It can be ignored for the most part when it comes to Thrash. However, you must always apply the strongest Rip; it can be worth not having Rip actively up for up to 5 seconds to ensure you get one up with both Tiger's Fury and Bloodtalons.
When it comes to Primal Wrath, you should always use it with Bloodtalons active. Tiger's Fury will be challenging to maintain on Rip applied through Primal Wrath since it’s the only finisher you use on AoE, but it is possible through Predator and Raging Fury. Clipping (or overwriting) a Rake with a better snapshot is worth it as long as it has 80% or less of its duration remaining. You should always let your Stealth Rakes tick out all the way to 0. The only exception to this is refreshing your Rake shortly before Berserk ends, which is something you should always aim to do.
Pandemic
The Pandemic mechanic refers to any DoT maintaining up to 30% of its remaining duration when refreshed early. This allows you not to lose any uptime while refreshing early and also, in combination with snapshotting, allows for a longer duration on your stronger Bleeds.
The Pandemic timers for your DoTs are:
- Rip: 7.2 seconds (When cast at 5 Combo Points)
- Rake: 4.5 seconds
- Thrash: 4.5 seconds
- Moonfire: 4.8 seconds
- With Circle of Life and Death talented, these change to:
- Rip: 5.76 seconds (When cast at 5 Combo Points)
- Rake: 3.6 seconds
- Thrash: 3.6 seconds
- Moonfire: 3.84 seconds
Pooling
Feral is a spec that has, by its nature, a large amount of downtime. Pooling is how you can turn your inescapable downtime into a DPS gain. You generally want to get to 5 Combo Points and wait. This has no opportunity cost and is a DPS neutral at worst. You’re more often than not waiting for either a DoT to need to be refreshed, to gain 50 Energy to cast Ferocious Bite, an additional target to either Rip or Primal Wrath, or for an Omen of Clarity proc, along with high Energy.