The State of Feral DPS On Your RealmFollow

I have been feral dps since they day Lich King rolled off the shelves. Previously in BC I had focused more on tanking but when 2.3 came out and the feral tree was split to accommodate a more focused effort on either tanking or dpsing I opted to abandon tanking and be a melee.

It's been loads of fun and even with the time off I took recently I came back and jumped right back into the swing of things. Even though I am no longer top geared on my realm like I had been a few months ago when my guild was competing for one of the top 5 spots overall on Thrall I can still hang with the best. In any 10 man I push over 5k dps and in 25 mans I easily push 6k and on some occasions I can break 7k dps and my gear score is 5115 (as much as I despise the whole notion of basing things off gear scores I have bought into the hype and downloaded the addon).

What surprises me is the responses people have to seeing this. Since my return I've had numerous people say straight up to me, "I had no idea feral could do so much dps!" or "Wow, I almost never see feral dps around, it's so rare." But the most surprising statement of all, and I've heard this a bunch of time posed as a question, "I heard the feral dps rotation is difficult, is that true?"

Is it really so surprising and rare to see kitty dps? And is the rotation really that hard? Granted, I've been doing it for a long time now and it feels entirely like second nature but I am just perplexed by the responses.

So my question to everyone: is feral DPS really that rare on your server?

Oddly enough yes. I've seen a lot of boomkin/tree, the occasional bear, but very few true kitty spec'd players. Myself, I only use kitty when we have another tank and healer in the group. I'll throw kitty gear on my bear spec and pretend.

The rotation is more involved for sure, and it's taken some practice to get decent at it. But I've never really put the effort into it a true DPS would. I can't imagine someone who really wants to do kitty being stopped from doing it by the rotation alone. But it certainly has a reputation as being one of the more difficult classes to DPS as. A slower ramp up time to max DPS probably deters people as well. People don't want to risk a group kick in a random heroic because they were doing low DPS maybe? :S

When the kitty swipe buff came around I saw a lot of people giving it a try and doing really impressive damage. Lately I think the novelty of raping trash packs with aoe has gone down for most druids and you see a more practical trend in talent build selection.

Even if you assume there are more druids than any other class on a given server (which may or may not be the case), the 4 different roles a druid can perform in a group make each one relatively more scarce than say a pure dps class like rogue or mage.

Given the ToL/Moonkin auras, the fact that bears also have leader of the pack, the only time you're going to really "need" a kitty is either in melee heavy 10 mans with no bear, or 25 mans with no bear. Of course kitties do nice deeps so it's a nice dual spec option for bears.

Browning can attest to this.

We've got three good feral dps on my server.

One of them is galen and the other two are in my guild.

I think this is the main reason. On my server/battlegroup you have the choice of waiting 15 mins as DPS, 1-2 mins as a healer or less than 30 seconds as a tank. I assume this is the same no matter what server you are on.



I have had the same/a similar response too and I don't think I was doing anything special at the time so maybe there is a lack of (good) kitties around. I am the only kitty and bear offspec in the guild so the people who benefit from the extra crit and mangle debuff love me being in the raid....one of the hunters tells me often that he is always happy to see me in the raid ;)

If something is harder than anything else, wouldn't you say it's hard?

Kitty DPS is hard. I say that having played every other class currently in the game. The rotation is unlike anything I have ever tried before. I mean, Warlocks come close, but not even close enough. The issue is the debuffs/buffs we have to apply and keep up while performing a Rogue-ish rotation. Mangle debuff, Savage Roar buff, Rake DoT, Rip DoT and keep Shredding that thing without anything falling off. It's like trying to build a house of cards during a light earthquake.

When the alternative is to spec Boomkin and mash three buttons, who can blame them?

Have yet to raid with a feral DPS on my server.

I have 1 or 2 times but usually they are tanks, healers or chickens.

I'm all for challenging games, but when you effectively gimp your performance in a specific role just to make it more challenging, don't blame people for not bringing you. During T8, I was barely scraping 2k DPS in Kitty and when I switched to Boomkin (with my Restoration gear), I went up 1,500 DPS without even trying. I'm back to Feral (and have been for a while), but only to tank. I tried running as a DPS a few times (Twins, for instance) and while I was usually pretty high on the list, even in tanking gear, the rotation had a certain stress factor attached to it that had my heart pounding and my teeth gritting whenever Clearcasting didn't proc when needed and such. I play the game to relax and Kitty DPS isn't exactly the best way to do that.

I've dual spec'd my resto to feral DPS ... she is my main, and yes, I rarely see other feral dps' in groups, not just only on my server, but in DF as well.

I've got other toons that I level regularly, and I've often been told I'm a loon for starting with a resto druid, and then dual specing with feral dps ... it is something to get used to, and t is a smidge difficult at times, but only because you have soo much you have to pay attention to, but I pull off a decent DPS for not being geared...

also should mention, I do not have LK (will soon enough, yay! my kitty gets to hit 80, yay!)... but so far, at lvl 70, in OL instances, I rarely see other kitties ... and if I do, its only because they're stealthing past something....

Seeing everyone say that they never see a kitty makes me sad :( We have 2 ferals in my raiding guild. Both of which do over 7k on bosses. It's funny seeing them do upwards of 22-24k dps on trash packs lol. Then again we also have 2-3 Boomkins in that same group... We love druids.

It isn't unusual for our raid to have 7 druids in it :) 2-3 ferals, 1-2 boom & 2-3 restos. Plenty of battle rezs & innervates to go around - our arcane mage GM often gets an innervate when the healers are under control :)

Unfortunately, our Trauma-bot is taking a break to look for work at the moment so all us ferals are sad :(

Trash in heroics these days are pretty much mangle=>savage roar=>swipe spam

With the occaisional 5pt SR then Beserk & SwipeSpam on raid trash providing immense amusement in raids when the pull finishes with me sitting on 25k dps :)

/sigh Makes me want to go DPS a heroic. But I couldn't be bothered switching off healing in the LFG and having to wait 15 mins for it to pop instead of insta-queues for heals or tanks. Mind you, I tend to die more often as most tanks doing heroics don't put out enough threat. A 4.5k GS tank struggles to hold back 5.8k DPS :) and taunt isn't much good when swipe spam has pulled agro on 3-4 mobs.

It's still fun though :)